ed their most christian and catholic majesties to open their eyes to the crying injustice of pursuing against Portugal the war kindled against Great Britain: he desired them to consider, that they were giving an example which would produce the destruction of mankind; that there was an end of the public safety, if neutral nations were to be attacked, because they have defensive treaties with the belligerent powers; that a maxim so destructive would occasion desolation in all Europe, the moment a war was kindled between any two states; that, therefore, if their troops should enter his dominions, he would, in defence of his neutrality, endeavour to repulse them with all his forces, and those of his allies; and he concluded with this magnanimous declaration, that it would affect him less, though reduced to the last extremity, of which the Great Judge is the sole Arbiter, to let the last tile of his palace fall, and to see his faithful subjects spill the last drop of their blood, than to sacrifice, together with the honour of his crown, all that Portugal holds most dear, and to submit, by such extraordinary means, to become an unheardof example to all pacific powers, who will no longer be able to enjoy the benefit of neutrality, whenever a war shall be kindled between other powers, with which the form r are connected by defensive treaties. When this final resolution was thus spiritedly declared, passports were demanded for the ambassadors of the 27 April. two crowns, who immediately departed; and in a little time after, France and Spain jointly declared war against Portugal. We have dwelt some time upon this transaction: we hope the reader will not think the narrative drawn into a blamcable length. The subject is interesting, the procedure uncommon, and the example alarming. This war against Portugal was the first fruit of the Bourbon compact: they shewed very early to the world, what it was to expect from the maturity of this league; when they were so elevated by the superiority they imagined they had attained, even in forming it, that they thought themselves dispensed from those decorums, and plausible appearances, which the most ambitious princes commonly make use of in the exécution of their most ambitious designs. If they had invaded Portugal without any declaration at all, it might, perhaps, be considered as a piece of convenient injustice, which they left the previous necessity and subsequent success of their affairs to justify as they could but so many memorials and reasonings on the subject, shew that this oppression was deliberate, and they had not been driven to it by a sudden emergency, but that it became a regular and avowed part of their political system. Having laid open the manner in which the southern part of Europe so surprizingly became engaged in this war, it is now our business to relate in what manner some of the northern parts were as surprizingly extricated out of it. CHAP. CHAP. III. Death of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia. Her character. State of the power of Russia on her decease. Her nephew, Peter III. succeeds. Entire change of system. Peace with Russia. Peace between Prussia and Sweden. Prussian conquests restored. The Czar enters into an alliance with the king of Prussia. War with Denmark threatened, Its cause. Extorted loan from Hamburgh. Campaign between Prussians and Austrians opens. Prussians obtain advantages in Saxony and Silesia, Sudden revolution in Russia, WE have seen, in the close of last year, that, by the taking of Colberg, on one hand, and Schweidnitz, on the other, the king of Prussia's dominions were entirely at the mercy of his enemies; his forces were worn away, and even his efforts had gradually declined: a complete victory, though this was an event not at all probable, could not save him. The Russians, by wintering in Pomerania, and by the possession of Colberg,which insured them supplies by a safe and expeditious channel, were in a condition to commence their operations much earlier than usual, as well as to sustain them with more spirit and uniformity. No resource of policy could be tried with the least expectation of success. After such a resistance for five years, of which the world never furnished another example, the king of Prussia had nothing left, but such a conduct as might close the scene with glory, since there was so little appearance of his concluding the war with safety. In the midst of these gloomy appearances, his inveterate and inflexible enemy, the empress of Russia, died, in the fifty-second Jan. 2. year of her age, and the twenty-second of her reign. This princess was second daughter to Peter the Great, and a descendant not altogether unworthy of that illustrious founder of the Russian empire. From being little better than a prisoner, she became in a moment a despotic sovereign. At the accession of this princess, the Russian power, so newly created, seemed to be in danger of a decline, from the many revolutions to which the empire had been subject; and the institutions of Peter the Great, by which that extensive part of the world was drawn out of barbarism, began perceivably to decay, until her accession to the throne, when the former was put out of all question by the vigour of her government, and the latter cherished and promoted by the encouragement which she gave to every valuable art and science. The academy at Petersburgh is at present one of the most flourishing in Europe, and has already enriched the learned world with considerable discoveries. In fact, she governed the Russian empire with more lenity than any of her predecessors; and, perhaps, carried this amiable disposition to an impolitic excess. She regulated and increased her finances; kept alive, and even increased, the discipline of her armies; and in all her transactions with foreign states, and in the the various faces which her politics assumed, she always supported the dignity and importance of her country at the highest point. For her private pleasures, indeed, she has been much censured; but as they were merely pleasures, and of such a nature that sentiment had little in them, they had little influence on her public conduct, which was always manly and firm." The part she took in this war, though it might in some measure have been dictated by resentment, was at the same time the result of the soundest policy. No power but that of the king of Prussia, was capable of checking hers. He was, not only from his strength and character, but from the situation of his dominions, the only prince in Europe from whom it could be materially her interest to make conquests, By the retention of Prussia, and by the dominion which, in another name, she held over the duchy of Courland, she possessed a very great share of the Baltic coast, and thereby possessed the means of becoming a maritime power of the first order. With these advantages she might easily complete all that had been wanting towards establishing an uncontroulable power over Poland. By the same means she might entirely overawe Denmark and Sweden; and also, by her vicinity, she would be enabled to interpose in the concerns of Germany with much more authority than she had hitherto possessed, although her intervention had always been of con and supported each other. For nothing is more evident, than that Russia would set up for a defender of the liberties of Germany, if ever she got any footing in its neighbour. hood: that she would animate the powers there to assert a greater degree of independence than they do at present; that she would render, by her machinations, the empire in the Austrian family very precarious; and might even find means of setting some feeble prince on the imperial throne, in order to embroil the whole Germanic body, and to keep it in entire dependence upon Russia. On the whole, if the projects of Austria had succeeded in their full extent, she would have very soon found in Russia a more powerful restraint than ever she had either in France or Sweden, even in the greatest heights of their power and credit in Germany. She would in. deed have ruined the king of Prussia; but she would have purchased his ruin with her own independency, These were the prospects that lay before all political reasoners at the time of the death of the empress Elizabeth. Charles Peter Ulric, of the house of Holstein, who had been created grand duke of Russia, and appointed heir apparent to that vast empire, by the late czarina, succeeded, under the name of Peter III. None but those who were intimately acquainted with the character and disposition of the new czar, could have any reason to imagine that he would abandon the system of his predecessor,which was certainly founded on the true interests of the country he governed. The king of Prussia himself seemed for some time to have entertained no great hopes from this change. The czar had, however, sometimes discovered marks of esteem for the character of this monarch. He had the black eagle, of which order the king of Prussia is grand master. But the king of Prussia could place very ? little confidence in this; however, > with the air of pleasantry, which never entirely forsook him in all his misfortunes, he said in a letter to Mr. Mitchel, the British minister at the Russian court, "Is not this a very extraordinary knight, to feed 80,000 men at my expence? He is the only one of my knights C that takes that liberty. If every knight of the garter did the same, your England (England though it is) would be devoured by them. I beg you would endeavour to make my knight more tractable, and tell him it is against the institutes of the order for a knight to eat up his grand master." The eyes of all Europe were now fixed upon the steps which the czar might take. With regard to the government of his country, nothing could be more popular and auspicious than his first measures. The earliest use he made of his absolute power, was, to set the Russian nobility and gentry free, and to put them on the same footing with those of their rank in the other more moderate governments of Europe. Almost all the exiles were recalled to court, and amongst the rest the unfortunate count Biron, who, from a sovereign prince, had been reduced to the most wretched condition, in the most wretched country on the globe. He had been many years a peasant of Siberia; and may very probably once more become a sovereign prince. It is in those despotic governments we see the most striking excesses and dismal reverses of fortune, in which one day a person is raised to something almost above man, and the next is perhaps in a moment degraded to the lowest station of humanity. The new emperor proceeded in his reformation to abolish some severe and tyrannical jurisdictions, and, intending the same benign disposition to all degrees of his subjects, he lessened the tax upon salt, to the very great and universal relief of the poor. These beginnings gave the most favourable impressions of his domestic government. But Europe was principally concerned in his foreign politics. It was not long before his dispositions to peace became apparent. What astonished the world was the high rate at which he valued this blessing. In a memorial, which he caused to be delivered on the 23d of February, to the ministers of the allied courts, he declared, that, in order to the establishment of peace, he was ready to sacrifice all the conquests made by the arms of Russia in this war, in hopes that the allied courts will on their parts equally prefer the restora· tion of peace and tranquillity, to the advantages which they might expect from the continuance of the war;" but which they cannot obtain but by a continuance of the effusion of human blood. The allies praised the disinterestedness, spirit, and humanity of this declaration; but recommended to his attention the fidelity to treaties, which constitutes a no less valuable part of the royal character, and a no less considerable branch of the duty of a monarch to his subjects. They shewed a disposition to imitate his desire for peace, but by no means to follow the example in pur chasing chasing it by a cession of all the advantages which they had acquired, or hoped to acquire by the war. The czar having thus far complied with decency, and being of a character little fitted to wait the slow produce of a joint negociation, gave way to his ardent desires for peace, and to the sentiments of that extravagant admiration which he had conceived for the king of Prussia. A suspension of hostilities was concluded between them on the 16th of March; and it was followed not long after by a treaty of May 5. peace and alliance. Nothing was stipulated by the czar in favour of his former confederates, whom he entirely abandoned. He even agreed to join his troops to those of the king of Prussia, to act against them. In a little time a Russian army was seen in conjunction with one of Prussia, to drive out of Silesia those Austrians, who had been a few months before brought into that province by the Russian arms. This was a miraculous revolution. Fortune,who had so long abandoned the king of Prussia to his genius, after having persecuted him for near five years, and overpowered him with the whole weight of her anger, at length made amends by a sudden turn, and did for him, at one stroke, the only thing by which he could possibly be saved. Sweden, who since she has recovered her liberty has lost her political importance, and for a long time acted entirely under the direction of Russian councils, followed, on this, as on all other occasions, the example of the court of Petersburgh, and signed a treaty of peace with the king of Prussia on the 22d of May. In order to account for whatever was not the result of mere personal character in this extraordinary revolution of politics in Russia, it will be necessary to remind the reader, that the czar Peter the Third was duke of Holstein; and that the dukes of Holstein had pretensions to the duchy of Sleswick. These pretensions were compromised by a treaty in 1732. But as the cession made by the house of Holstein in this treaty was the effect of necessity, it had always been apprehended that she would make use of the first safe opportunity of reclaiming her ancient rights. The czar seized eagerly on the great one, which the possession of the whole Russian power afforded him, and he resolved to enter into an immediate war for this object, to which his predilection for his native country gave in his eyes a far greater importance than to all the conquests of his predecessor. As long as this war with the king of Prussia subsisted, it was impossible that his designs against Denmark could be prosecuted with any hope of success. Wholly indifferent therefore to all others, and passionately fond of this object, as soon as he came to the throne, without any dispute or negotiation, he offered the king of Prussia, in his great distress, every thing he could have hoped from a series of victories; and whilst he joined his arms to those of that monarch in Silesia, he caused an army to march towards Holstein. It Thus the peace with Russia, far from conducing to the general peace of Europe, did very little more than change the face of the war. brought in new subjects of dispute, and new parties; and by threatening Denmark, left not a single power |