434

THE CZAR PETER III. DEPOSED.

[BOOK VI. which the Czar Peter was inimical; but feelings of piety and honour led him to respect the oath which he had taken, and he contented himself with working on its fears. The conduct of the negociations was intrusted to the Queen, Frederick II.'s sister. An armistice was agreed to, April 7th, followed by the Peace of Hamburg, May 22nd, by which everything was replaced in the same state as before the war.19

These events enabled Frederick to concentrate his forces in Saxony and Silesia. He had not only got rid of the Russians as opponents, but even expected their friendly aid; but in this hope he was disappointed by another revolution. Peter was deposed through a conspiracy organised by his own consort (July 9th), who mounted the throne in his stead with the title of Catherine II.20 In the manifest which she published on her accession, dated June 28th (O. S.), she charged her husband, among other things, with dishonouring Russia by the peace which he had made with her bitterest enemy, and Frederick therefore could only expect that she would revert to the policy of Elizabeth.21 But Catherine, the daughter of a Prussian general, born at Stettin, and married into the Russian Imperial family through the influence of Frederick, was not hostilely inclined towards her native land; and the King's alarm at her manifest was soon assuaged by a communication which he received from her that she intended to observe the peace with him, but to withdraw the Russian troops from his service. Frederick, however, persuaded the Russian general, Czernischeff, to remain by him with his corps for three days after the receipt of this notice; and during this interval, aided by the support which he derived from their presence-for though they took no part in the action, Daun, being ignorant of their recall, was compelled to oppose an equal number of men to them-he drove the Austrians from the heights of Burkersdorf. Two or three months afterwards he took the important town of Schweidnitz (October 9th), when 9000 Austrians surrendered themselves prisoners of war. This event closed the campaign in Silesia. Prince Henry had succeeded in maintaining himself in Saxony; and on October 29th he defeated the Austrians and the army of the Empire at Freiberg.

In Western Germany, Prince Ferdinand had also been, on the whole, successful. He drove the French from a strong position which they had taken up near Cassel; and though the Hanoverians

19 Martens, t. i. p. 12; Wenck, t. iii. p. 307.

20 We shall return to this subject in a subsequent chapter.

Biographie Peters III., B. ii. S. 64, ap.

Stenzel, B. v. S. 300; Hermann, Gesch. Russlands, B. v. S. 288. The date of the revolution, and consequently of the manifest, is erroneously given by Schlosser, Gesch. des 18ten Jahrh., S. 428, 451.

CHAP. VI.]

THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL.

435

were defeated at Friedberg, August 30th, they succeeded in taking Cassel, October 31st. This was the last operation of the war in this quarter, hostilities being terminated by the signing of the preliminaries of a peace, November 3rd. But before we describe the negociations for this purpose, it will be necessary to advert to the war with Spain.

Portugal had been forced into the war through the threats of the Bourbon Courts. Joseph I. now occupied the throne of that kingdom. John V. died in 1750, and Joseph, then a minor, was left under the guardianship of his mother, the Queen Dowager, an Austrian princess. During this period, Sebastian Joseph of Caravalho and Melo, better known afterwards in European history as the Marquis of Pombal, acquired a complete ascendancy over the mind both of the young King and his mother, and continued for many years to administer the affairs of Portugal with an absolute authority. He had established his influence through his wife, the Austrian Countess Daun, a daughter of Marshal Daun, and a friend and confidante of the Queen. Pombal introduced many searching reforms both into Church and State, which he carried through 22 with an arbitrary despotism more resembling a revolutionary reign of terror than the administration of a constitutional minister. Like Charles XI. of Sweden, he impoverished the nobles by revoking all the numerous grants which had been made to them by the Crown in the Portuguese possessions in Asia, Africa, and America, for which he accorded but very slender compensation. Those who ventured to oppose his measures were treated with the greatest harshness and cruelty; every lonely tower, every subterranean dungeon, was filled with State prisoners. His enlightened principles formed a strange contrast to the despotic manner in which he enforced them. He abolished the abuses of the middle ages by methods which seemed only fitted for those periods, and proceeded in his work of reform regardless alike of civil and ecclesiastical law. He gave a signal proof of his severity after the terrible earthquake which, in 1755, shook Lisbon to its foundations. Upwards of 30,000 persons are said to have perished in that calamity; thousands more, deprived of all employment, wandered about homeless and starving; the Government stores were opened for their relief, and contributions poured in from all parts of Europe. It was not one of the least dreadful features of this terrible catastrophe that hundreds of wretches availed themselves of the confusion to plunder and

22 Respecting Pombal, see Jagemann, Das Leben Sebastian Josephs von Carvalho und Melo, Markis von Pombal, &c. (Des

sau, 1782); Moore, Life of the Marquis of Pombal, London, 1814; Smith, Memoir of Marquis of Pombal, 1843.

436

PLOT AGAINST JOSEPH I. OF PORTUGAL.

[Book VI. commit all sorts of violence. Pombal put an end to these excesses in the most summary manner. Guards were stationed at every gate and in every street, and those who could not satisfactorily account for any property found upon them, were hanged upon the spot. Gallowses were to be seen in every direction amid the ruins filled with the dead and dying. Between 300 and 400 persons are said to have been hanged in the space of a few days.

Perhaps the most searching and salutary of Pombal's reforms were those which regarded the Church. He abolished the annual autos da fé, abridged the power of the Inquisition, and transferred the judgment of accused persons to civil tribunals. He especially signalised himself by his hostility to the Jesuits; but we reserve his proceedings against that order to another chapter, in which we shall have to record its fall. The weak and superstitious Joseph was by nature fitted to be the slave and tool of the Romish Church; it was only the still greater awe inspired by Pombal, combined with fears for his own life, that induced him to banish the Jesuits from Portugal. The King had formed an adulterous connection with the wife of the Marquis of Tavora. During the sojourn of the court at Belem, while Joseph was supposed to be occupied with affairs of State in the apartments of his minister, he would secretly steal out to visit his mistress. The Duke of Aveiro, head of the family of Tavora, felt, or pretended to feel, indignant at the dishonour of his kindred, and laid a plot against the King's life. The disgrace, however, had been quietly endured several years. The story is involved in considerable mystery, and political motives were probably mixed up in the plot. However this may be, several desperadoes were placed in ambush at three different spots of the road traversed by the King in his secret visits; and on September 3rd 1738, while Joseph, in order, as he thought, to preserve his incognito, was proceeding to the house of the marchioness in the carriage of his friend Texeira, an attempt was made upon his life. The Duke of Aveiro himself fired the first shot at the coachman without effect. The coachman, instead of driving on, turned back, and thus avoided the other ambushes; but those in the first fired after the carriage, and slightly wounded the King in the shoulder. The members of the Tavora family were now arraigned and condemned. The old Marchioness of Tavora, mother of the King's mistress, was beheaded; the Duke of Aveiro was broken on the wheel; their servants were either burnt or hanged; and even those distantly connected with the accused were thrown into loathsome dungeons. The young Marchioness alone, who was suspected of having betrayed her mother and relatives, experienced any

CHAP. VI.]

ENGLAND AIDS PORTUGAL.

437

lenity; and as the family of Tavora was closely connected with Malagrida and the Jesuits, Pombal seized the opportunity to involve that order in the accusation, and to procure their banishment from Portugal, though it seems very doubtful whether they were at all connected with the plot. The weak and superstitious King himself was blindly devoted to the Jesuits; Pope Clement XIII. took them into his protection, and Joseph, haunted by the fear of hell, at length consented to their banishment only from the more immediate danger with which, according to his minister, his life was threatened from their machinations.

Pombal, among his other reforms, had not overlooked the army; but a horde of undisciplined vagabonds, who resembled rather gipsies or bandits than soldiers, cannot be converted all at once into effective troops. Joseph's ragged and hungry soldiers would ask an alms from the passers by, even while they were standing sentinel; nor were their officers much better, though they strove to put on a military swagger. Even had the Portuguese army been better organised, it could apparently have offered but a slender resistance to the military force of Spain when, early in 1762, Charles III. marched an army to the frontiers of Portugal, and, in conjunction with Louis XV., required Joseph I. to join them in the war against England. They offered to occupy Portugal with a powerful army, to protect it against the vengeance of England; and they required an answer within four days, intimating that they should consider any delay beyond that period as a refusal of their demands. Joseph answered by declaring war against Spain and France, May 18th 1762; and he applied to England for aid; which Lord Bute, notwithstanding his pacific policy, could not of course refuse. This step was immediately followed by an invasion of Tras los Montes by the Spaniards, who, aided by a French corps, made themselves masters of Miranda, Braganza, Chaves, Almeida, and several other places; but the assistance of an English force, commanded first by Lord Tyrawley, and afterwards by the celebrated German general, the Count of Lippe Schaumburg, and ultimately reinforced by 15,000 men, under Generals Burgoyne and Lee, turned the scales of fortune in favour of the Portuguese. The Spaniards were not only compelled to evacuate Portugal in the autumn, but the allies even crossed the Spanish frontiers and took several places.

Meanwhile, as already intimated, the negociations for a peace between England, France, and Spain were brought to a close by the signing of preliminaries at Fontainebleau, November 3rd.23 They

23 Martens, Recueil, t. i. p. 17.

438

PEACE OF PARIS.

[Book VT would have been completed earlier had not Grimaldi, the Spanh minister, deferred his signature in the hope that the Engish expedition directed against the Havannah would miscarry. It proved successful, and the British Cabinet consequently raised its demands. Spain, besides the Havannah, had also lost, in her short war with England, Manilla and the Philippine Isles, nine ships of the line, and three frigates, and treasure and merchandise valued at three millions sterling. She had fully realised the proverbial fate of those who interpose in quarrels, and was not inclined to prolong the war, even could she have reckoned on the continued aid of France, for which country peace had become a matter of necessity. France also, in the course of 1761 and 1762, had lost the West India Islands of Dominica, Martinique, Grenada, St. Lucie, and St. Vincent, and in the East Indies, her important settlement of Pondicherry. But the conclusion of a definitive treaty was delayed till the differences between the other belligerents were arranged.

Frederick, who had concluded an armistice with Austria, but not with the Imperialists, resolved, in order to hasten the peace, to annoy the Princes of the Empire. In the autumn of 1762, a Prussian corps entered Franconia and Bavaria, took Bamberg, menaced Nuremberg, and pushed on to the very gates of Ratisbon. The Elector of Bavaria, the Bishop of Bamberg, and other sovereigns now demanded peace, and resolved to withdraw their contingents from the army of execution, so that Prince Stolberg, who commanded it, was compelled to negociate with the Prussian commanders for a suspension of arms. Peace was highly neces sary for Prussia; Frederick therefore readily listened to the overtures of Baron von Fritsch, a counsellor of the King of Poland, and a congress assembled at Hubertsburg, a hunting seat of Augustus, between Leipsic and Dresden. The Conferences were opened at the end of December, and lasted till the middle of February 1763.

24

The definitive PEACE OF PARIS, between France, Spain, England, and Portugal, was signed February 10th 1763.25 Both France and England abandoned their allies, and neither Austria nor Prussia was mentioned in the treaty. While Bute expressly stipulated that all territories belonging to the Elector of Hanover, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Count of Lippe Bücheburg, should be restored to their respective sovereigns, he displayed his enmity to the King of Prussia by making no such stipulation with 25 Martens, Recueil, t. i. p. 33; Wenck, t. iii. p. 329.

21 Menzel, Neuere Gesch, der Deutschen, B. v. S. 508 f.