Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348

“Just as I am going to make up my packet, I am informed that a treaty of partition, disposing of several parts of Poland, was signed at Petersburg on the 15th of last month, and that as soon as the certificates can be exchanged between the courts of Vienna, Berlin, and Russia, a congress will be held at Warsaw.” A few statements respecting the Prussian officers dispatched to the Polish frontier are given; and this seems to be the whole announcement of one of the most atrocious acts of perfidy and blood in the memory of Europe.

The French Revolution was begun on grounds independent of foreign disturbances. But no man can read the annals of the French war, without a conviction, that one of its providential purposes was the punishment of the three monarchies which had perpetrated this atrocity. Within a brief period from the first ruin of Polish independence, the French armies began those sweeping conquests which were destined especially to ravage Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The punishment seemed even to bear something like a proportion to the degree of guilt in each of the parties. The original proposer of the partition was Frederick, the strenuous participator was Catharine, and the unwilling, though consenting accomplice, was Joseph. Before that war was over, Napoleon reduced Prussia to the lowest condition of a conquered country, plundered her of millions of gold, held her fortresses by his garrisons, and treated her like a province. His invasion of Russia was next in havoc: the ravage of the country, the repulse and slaughter of her brave and patriotic armies, and the destruction of her ancient capital, were her share of the punishment. Austria suffered, but her suffering was of a lighter order—defeat in the field, havoc of the people, and the double capture of her capital; yet those wounds were rapidly healed, and the close of the war saw Austria taking a higher rank in Europe. Those struggles and sufferings extended over nearly a quarter of a century of unexampled bloodshed. It is remarkable that a project so fully entitled to excite the vigilance of all courts, seems to have been almost wholly overlooked by the English ministry; Lord Suffolk, in his confidential answer to the ambassador, simply styling it a curious transaction; and even in the more advanced stage of the affair, when the attention of the cabinet was called to it by the memorials of the Polish king and people, all that could be obtained was a verbal answer, evidently declining any interference on the subject, and contenting itself with the avoidance of approbation. The result of this singular negligence distinctly points out the course which should be taken by England in her continental policy. Her natural office is that of mediator and protector. Entertaining no views of conquest for herself, it is her duty to repress them in all others. If, in 1772, she had instantly issued a strong remonstrance to the three governments, it would have acted as an appeal to the reason of Europe. A fleet sent to the Baltic in support of that remonstrance would have acted upon the fears of the aggressors, and Poland would have been saved. The blood of the thousands shed in the war of independence would have been spared—the great crime of the century would have been partially avoided—and its punishment, in the shape of the revolutionary war, might never have been inflicted. The diplomatic and formal portion of this fatal event was thus announced by the ambassador to the British cabinet:—“Berlin, 19th September 1772.—I received a message from Count Finckenstein yesterday morning, desiring   to speak to me between twelve and one. On my waiting on him, he informed me that his Prussian majesty having come to an agreement with the courts of Vienna and Petersburg to renew certain ancient claims they had on parts of the kingdom of Poland, they had instructed their respective ministers at the court of Warsaw to signify their intentions to the king and republic, by presenting him with a declaration on this subject.

“That his Prussian majesty, desirous of seizing every opportunity of showing his friendship and attention to the king, had ordered him, Count Finckenstein, to take the earliest moment of acquainting me with this event, and at the same time to give me a copy of the declaration, which I here enclose—that his chargé d’affaires in London had likewise received orders to inform the king’s ministers on this subject, and to communicate to them the declaration.”

The reply of the English minister to this momentous announcement, exhibits, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary instances of ministerial negligence on record. On a subject which might have moved the very stones to mutiny, and which, in its consequences, involved the interests of all Europe, the only answer of the King of England was contained in the following note, written in French:—“The king is willing to suppose that the three courts have convinced themselves of the justice of their respective pretensions, although his majesty is not informed of the motives of their conduct.” “You will observe,” adds Lord Suffolk, “in the terns in which I express myself, that though this mode of expression was preferable to an absolute silence, the utmost caution has been used.” The caution was indeed sufficiently circumspect, for it was wholly useless; and the consequence was perfect impunity to the perpetrators.

Frederick was the great infidel of his day. He had been so long involved in hostilities with Austria, the most superstitious court in Europe, that he adopted “free-thinking” as a part of his policy; and his eagerness for European fame connected him with Voltaire and the French infidels, whose wit and wickedness had made them the leaders of philosophical fashion. But there is a principle of belief in human nature which revenges itself on the infidel. There are no men more liable to groundless fears, than those who reject the object of legitimate awe. The man who will not believe in a deity, has often believed in witchcraft; and those who will not acknowledge a Providence, have often trembled before a conjurer. At this period, Frederick had grown peculiarly anxious and irascible—a temper for which the ambassador accounts by a sudden impulse of superstition. He says—“Amongst several other incredible follies in so great a character, he has that of not entirely disbelieving judicial astrology; and I am told, from one whose authority is not despicable, that the fear of a prediction being this year fulfilled, which was pronounced by a Saxon fortune-teller whom his majesty was weak enough some time ago to consult, dwells on his mind, and augments the sourness of a disposition naturally crabbed. I should have paid no attention to these reports, which savour so much of the nursery, had I not myself observed him displeased at a mourning coat at his levee, and seen his countenance visibly alter on being informed of any man’s dying a sudden death.”

We then have a curious letter from Lord Grantham, the ambassador at Madrid, giving an account of an expedition to Algiers, which derives an interest from the present state of African affairs.

“You will learn that a very unsuccessful attempt has been made at Algiers, and that the Spanish troops have been repulsed with a loss and disablement of upwards of 5000 men. The fleet, consisting of 450 sail, and carrying about 40,000 men, sailed from Carthagena, and reached Algiers the 1st inst., (July 1775.) On the night of the 7th, the infantry, and two detachments of about 8000 men each, landed. The first detachment advanced too eagerly, could not be supported to any purpose, and, after thirteen hours’ engagement, all that could regained the ships. But the loss of killed and wounded, first estimated at 3000, certainly exceeded five or six. The transports with the army are returned to Carthagena and Alicante. I leave you to judge how   deep an impression this severe failure makes here. The Marquis de la Romana is killed—all the generals, except Buck, are wounded. Among the wounded are twenty-eight officers of the Spanish guards, and twelve out of seventeen engineers.”

The court of Frederick would form a singular contrast to what is called the British Household, composed of the great officers of state. “You are not ignorant,” says Harris, writing to William Eden, “that the great officers of the court are merely titular, and never allowed to have any authority annexed to their office. This is given to some menial servants, who are constantly about the king’s person, and his treasurer was a Russian named Deiss, in whom his Majesty placed more confidence than he appears to have deserved; since for maladministration, or some equally notorious fault, his majesty a few days ago, dismissed him from his high post, and ordered him to be employed as a drummer in a marching regiment. Deiss affected to submit patiently to his sentence, and, on being arrested, begged leave of the officer only to go into his room, adjoining the king’s writing-closet, to fetch his hat. This being granted, he immediately locked the door, took a pistol from his pocket, and shot himself through the head. The king heard and was alarmed by the report of a pistol so near him, and being told what had happened, he pitied Deiss, said that he was out of his senses, and ordered all that he died worth to be distributed equally among his children. Deiss had charged the pistol with small-shot and crooked nails, and put the muzzle of it into his mouth.”

A striking anecdote is given of General Seidlitz, the officer who formed the Prussian cavalry. When only a lieutenant, he happened to be near the king on a bridge which crossed the Oder. The king asked him, “if both the avenues of the bridge were possessed by the enemy, what he would do to disengage himself.” Seidlitz, without making an answer, immediately leaped his horse over the rails into the river, and notwithstanding its breadth and rapidity, swam safe ashore. The king, who took it for granted that he must be drowned, on seeing him come towards him, said in French, “Major, I beg of you not to run such hazards in future.”

Despotic power has certainly great advantages, in its rapid administration of justice, and sometimes in its reaching offences which would altogether baffle trial by jury. Frederick was ridiculously fond of exhibiting his musical attainments; and among the other preparatives for the reception of the Russian grand-duke (afterwards the Emperor Paul) at Berlin, was a piece of music composed by the king. The husband of the first singer at the opera, the well-known Madame Mara, was imprudent enough to observe of this performance, that “the composer knew more about soldiers than music.” The king ordered him to be instantly made over to the corps-de-garde, with orders to punish him, enough to make him more cautious of criticism in future. The soldiers accordingly, as there happened to be no punishment in the military regulations for impertinent remarks on royal amateurs, took the affair into their own hands. They began by dressing him in a uniform, covering his face with a huge pair of whiskers, and loading him with the heaviest firelock which they could find, they then made him perform the manual exercise for two hours—accompanying the lesson with all the usual discipline of the cane—then ordered him to dance and sing, finishing their discipline by making the surgeon take from him a large quantity of blood, obviously to reduce the heat of temper which had given rise to such impertinence. After this lesson he was sent back to his wife. Severe as it may have appeared, Harris regarded it as earned by many previous impertinences of the same kind, but of which it may fairly be presumed this was the last.

At last the grand-duke arrived, and was received with the most unusual pomp and ceremony by the Prussian court. By some curious instance of choice, Sunday is selected on the Continent as the day for every thing in the shape of show. The Russian prince made his public entry into Berlin on Sunday, and was met by the trading companies in uniform, by escorts of cavalry, and the equipages of the king and royal family. In the evening, after a sumptuous dinner, there was a concert and ball.   The rest of the week was similarly occupied. The grand-duke had come to demand the Princess of Wirtemberg in marriage. When we recollect the fate of this unhappy monarch, murdered on the Russian throne, and contrast it with the brilliancy of his early reception in the world, and his actual powers when master of the diadem, a deeper lesson of the instability of human fortune has seldom been given to man.

A laughable anecdote of Russian and Prussian discipline is told. All the domestics belonging to the Imperial family of Russia have military rank; the grand-duke’s coachman and the king’s going one evening to drink together, a dispute arose about precedence. “What is your rank?” said the Prussian. “A lieutenant-colonel,” said the other. “Ay, but I am a colonel,” said the German, and walked first into the ale-house. This came to the king’s ears. The colonel was sent for three days to prison, and received fifty blows of the cane.

The ambassador now obtained a new instance of the favour of his court. He was recalled from Prussia in 1776, and shortly after was appointed to the most important of our embassies at that period, the embassy to Russia.

The politics of England at this period bore an appearance of perplexity, which evidently alarmed her cabinet, and which as evidently excited the hopes of her enemies. At this period she had two enemies in Europe, hostile in every thing except to the extent of open war—France, always jealous and irreconcilable; and Prussia, which, from her dread of England’s interference in her Polish usurpations, pretended to believe that England was conspiring with Austria against the safety of her dominions. The feebleness with which the American war was carried on, had deceived Europe into the belief that the power of England was really on the point of decay. Foreigners are never capable of appreciating the reality of English power. In the first place, because they prefer the romantic to the real; and in the next, because, living under despotisms, they have never seen, nor can comprehend, the effect of liberty upon national resources. Thus, when they see a nation unwilling to go to war—or, what is the next thing to reluctance, waging it tardily—they imagine that this tardiness has its origin in national weakness; and it is not until the palpable necessity of self-defence calls out the whole energy of the people, that the foreigner ever sees the genuine strength of England. The capture of two small armies in America, neither of them more numerous than the advanced guard of a continental army, had given the impression that the military strength of England was gone for ever. Thus the European courts thought themselves entitled to insult her; and thus so diminutive a power as Prussia, however guided by an able and politic prince, was suffered to despise her opinion. But the English ministry themselves of that day palpably shared the general delusion; and, to judge from their diplomatic correspondence, they seemed actually to rely for the safety of England on the aid of the foreign courts. They had yet to learn the lesson, taught them by the Revolutionary war, that England is degraded by dependence of any kind; that she is a match for the world in arms; that the cause of Europe is dependent on her; and that the more boldly, directly, and resolutely she defies France, and its allies and slaves, the more secure she is of victory. In the pursuit of this false policy of conciliation and supplication, Harris was sent to Petersburg, to counteract Prussia with the empress, and to form an offensive and defensive alliance with Catharine. Count Panin was at that time prime minister—a man of the old ministerial school, who regarded diplomacy as the legitimate science of chicane, was a master of all the littleness of his art, and was wholly under the influence of the King of Prussia. The count was all consent, and yet contrived to keep the ambassador at arm’s-length; while the empress, equally crafty, and equally determined not to commit herself, managed him with still greater subtlety.

In speaking of the Empress Catharine, it is impossible to avoid alluding to the scandals of her court. The death of her husband, suspicious as it was, had left her sole mistress of an empire, and of the power of public opinion, in a country where a sneer   might send the offender to Siberia. The wretchedly relaxed religion of the Greek church, where a trivial penance atones for every thing, and ceremonial takes the place of morals, as it inevitably does wherever a religion is encumbered with unnecessary forms, could be no restraint on the conduct of a daring and imperious woman. By some of that easy casuistry which reconciles the powerful to vice, she had fully convinced herself that she ought, for the sake of her throne, never to submit to matrimonial ties again; and she adopted the notorious and guilty alternative of living with a succession of partners. The ambassador’s letters frequently allude to this disgraceful topic, and always with the contempt and reprobation which were so amply its due. “The worst enemies”—such is his expression—“which the empress has, are flattery and her own passions. She never turns a deaf ear to the first, let it be ever so gross; and her inclination to gratify the latter appears to grow upon her with age.”

The policy of Russia had two grand objects, both of them wholly inconsistent with the policy of England; and therefore rendering the ambassador’s zeal wholly useless. The King of Prussia favoured both, and therefore commanded the highest influence with the empress. It was thus the impossible task of the unfortunate diplomatist, to convince a haughty and self-sufficient woman against her will. Of course, failure was the necessary consequence. But in the mean time, dining and dancing, feasting and frivolity, went on with Asiatic splendour. The birth of the grand-duke’s son, “Constantine,” (expressly so named with a view to Turkish objects,) gave occasion to fêtes which it tasked the whole power of Russian panegyric to describe. The empress gave one in the period of the Carnival, ultra-imperially magnificent. The dessert and supper were set out with jewels to the amount of upwards of two millions sterling! and at the tables of macao, the fashionable game, besides the stake in money, a diamond of fifty rubles’ value was given by her majesty to each of those who got nine, the highest point of the game. One hundred and fifty diamonds were distributed in this manner.

But a new event occurred to stir the lazy politics of Europe—that act of infinite treachery on the part of the French government—the breach of treaty with England, and the alliance with America. The menaces of war which are held out at this moment by the Jacobin party, and its insolent eagerness to turn every trivial incident into a mortal quarrel, give a new and additional interest to this former act of desperate perfidy. But let it be remembered with what tremendous vengeance that perfidy was punished—that the American alliance was the precursor of the French republic; and that the long train of hideous calamities which broke down the French throne, banished the nobility, and decimated the population, dates its origin from the day when that fatal treaty was signed. A letter from Sir Gilbert Elliott (afterwards Lord Minto) to the ambassador, (March 20, 1778,) thus briefly communicates the intelligence:—“We had just passed the bills for repealing some of the obnoxious American acts, and for enabling the king to appoint his commissioners to treat with America with very large powers, when the report of the French treaty with the colonies became very prevalent, and obtained credit here. Government, however, had certainly obtained no authentic account of it which is singular enough; and Lord North positively disclaimed all knowledge of it. A loan of six millions was made on very hard terms for the public, much owing to the report of the French treaty; the three per cent consols being at 66½—monstrously low. The first payment was fixed for Tuesday last. On the Friday before, the Marquis de Noailles delivered a paper to Lord Weymouth, communicating the ‘treaty of commerce and alliance’ with the colonies, and acknowledging their independency. The manner and style of the communication were inexpressibly insolent, and were no doubt meant as a studied affront and challenge. On Saturday, all the French in London were sent to the opera, plays, clubs, coffee-houses, and ale-houses, to publish the intelligence, which they did with their natural impertinence. On Tuesday, the two Houses received a message from the king, informing them of the communication from the French   ambassador—that he had recalled his ambassador from Versailles; and assuring them that he would exert every means in his power to protect the honour and interest of his kingdom. In answer to which, the two Houses voted an address, promising to support him with our lives and fortunes. Opposition, like good patriots, in answer to this message, proposed to address the king to remove his ministers; and C. Fox assured us, ‘he thought an invasion a much better thing than the continuance of the present administration.’ When this proposal was negatived, they therefore refused their assent to our address. There is no declaration of war yet; but as it is quite certain, and as France will undoubtedly act immediately, I do not see what we gain by delaying it. I hope at least we shall begin taking their ships immediately. The militia is to be called out; credit is dreadfully low—stock was a few days ago at 60. The French are poorer than we—that’s something.”

Exaggeration is a propensity which seems common to ambassadors. We certainly have never seen an ambassadorial correspondence, in which the most groundless views did not make a large part of its communications. The British diplomatist in Russia was unquestionably a shrewd man, and yet his letters abound in predictions of Russian ruin. His descriptions run in this style:—“Great expenses, and nothing to show for them. The army in a state of decay; the navy incomplete and ill-equipped; the political system languid, and such as, if pursued, must ultimately reduce this immense mass of power to that state of Asiatic insignificancy from which it so lately emerged.”

And this high-coloured and rash statement, it is to be remembered, was not a page in a popular novel or in a summer’s “Tour,” but was given as the deliberate opinion of a statesman conversant in continental politics, and addressed to the government of this country. He seems to have altogether overlooked the boundless territory and growing population of Russia, her forty millions of men—a number already exceeding that of any other kingdom in Europe—the inaccessible nature of her dominions, the implicit and Asiatic devotion of her subjects, the unrivaled vigour of her despotism, and the fact that she had but that moment secured an immense tract of Polish territory, and was stripping the Turks on the other side—that to the north she was touching on the Vistula, and to the south had nearly reached the Danube. The subsequent career of Russia is a still stronger refutation. Every war, instead of shaking her power, has only given it additional strength and stability. Like England, she has gone on with almost involuntary but rapid progress; and the period may arrive when there will be but two nations left in Europe—England the ruler of the seas, and Russia holding the kingdoms of the Continent in vassalage. It is true, that the ambassador adverts now and then to the inaccessible nature of the Russian territory, and the success of the national arms; but the former would be but a negative source of power, and the latter he uniformly attributed to good-luck. He ought to lave attributed them to the causes which would have produced the same effect in any age of the world—to the mastery of an immense population; to the daring of a head of empire possessed of remarkable ability, and filled with projects of unbounded supremacy; and to the growth of a new generation of soldiers and statesmen, encouraged to the highest exertion of their talents by the most munificent rewards—the policy of the empress making the evidence of courage and genius in the soldier the only requisite for promotion; and exhibiting the strongest personal interest of the sovereign in the elevation of those able servants of the crown. The consequence was, success in all the enterprises of Catharine, the rapid advance of the nation in European influence, the establishment of an insecure throne on the strongest footing of public security, the popularity of a despotism, the comparative civilization of a people half Asiatic, and who but half a century before had been barbarians, and the personal attachment of the nation to Catharine in a degree scarcely less than adoration. The chief cause of this triumphant state of things, beyond all question, was the high spirit, the generosity, and the affability of the empress. The unhappy   transactions of her private life are matters of painful record; and the letters of the ambassador are full of the reprobation which the memoirs of the time authenticate. But we have no gratification in dwelling on such topics. We infinitely prefer paying the tribute due to great talents splendidly exercised, to the public achievements of a powerful intellect, and to the superiority which this munificent promoter of the genius of all classes of her people exhibited to all the haughty, exclusive, and selfish sovereigns of her time.