Chapter XIII

THE NORTHERN NATIONS FROM THE TREATY OF
OLIVA TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT

1660–1715

The rivalry between Sweden and Brandenburg--Monarchical revolution in Denmark--Weakness of the aristocracy in Sweden--Frederick William makes himself absolute in Prussia, Brandenburg, and Cleves--His policy of centralisation--War between Sweden and Brandenburg--Battle of Fehrbellin--Monarchical revolution in Sweden--The rise of Russia--The reign of Alexis--Regency of Sophia--War with the Turks--Peter the Great becomes absolute ruler--His character and policy--Coalition against Sweden--Career of Charles XII.--His invasion of Russia--Battle of Pultava--The campaign on the Pruth--Treaty of Nystädt--Supremacy of Russia--Reign of Frederick III. of Brandenburg--Frederick recognised as king of Prussia--Condition of the north in 1720.

[Sidenote: =Rivalry between Sweden and Brandenburg.=]

The treaties of Oliva and Copenhagen were to the smaller nations grouped round the Baltic, what the peace of Westphalia and the treaties of the Pyrenees were to the great powers of Europe. They not only put an end to a long period of war and disturbance, but also decided the relations of the northern powers to each other for more than half a century. To use the language of a later period they adjusted the balance of power in the north. They mark the end of Danish domination over the Baltic, they mark the beginning of the supremacy of Brandenburg in northern Europe, they mark the first great failure of Sweden to maintain the pride of place gained for her by Gustavus Adolphus. So far the alterations in the relations of the northern powers to each other are clearly defined. So far no sense of impending danger from the half barbarous and distracted kingdom of Russia has made itself felt. Until that event happens there is a breathing space in the affairs of the Baltic states for fifty years, and during that time the main questions of interest in their external politics are whether Brandenburg will be able to maintain the supremacy which she has acquired, and whether Sweden will be able to recover the lead which she has lost. The rivalry between Sweden and Denmark is therefore no longer the leading feature of the politics of the Baltic states, the rivalry between Sweden and Russia is still in the womb of futurity, the rivalry between Sweden and Brandenburg remains for the time the only serious question unsettled.

[Sidenote: =Monarchical revolution in Denmark.=]

The respite thus gained from foreign war was occupied by all the powers concerned in altering their domestic institutions. The first to move was Denmark. In that country as in Poland the authority of the elected king was completely overshadowed by that of the nobility. They were in possession of political power as well as of social privilege. They owned most of the wealth of the country, paid no taxes, and held all the chief posts in the kingdom. Consequently at each election of a king they were able not only to decide the election, but to make bargains with the elected candidate exceedingly profitable to themselves and burdensome to the rest of the people. There was no country in Europe where the nobles had made themselves so justly hated by all the other classes of the community. National misfortune led naturally to the desire for national revenge. Frederick III. put himself at the head of the movement, and at a meeting of the diet in 1661 successfully carried out a _coup d’état_, with the applause of the clergy, the burghers, and the peasantry. The revolution was entirely in favour of the king. The Crown was made hereditary and transmissible to females as well as to males. The privileges of the nobles were abolished, the capitulation signed by the king on election annulled, and the government vested in the Crown. At one blow and without bloodshed the monarchy in Denmark was remodelled on the pattern of that of France, and Frederick III. became an absolute king with all the powers of government centralised in himself, and his throne secured by a professional army.

[Sidenote: =Misgovernment of the nobles in Sweden.=]

In Sweden matters took a different turn. During the minority of Charles XI., as during the minority of Christina, the administration fell wholly into the hands of the great aristocratic families. Unfortunately there was no Oxenstjerna at their head. The council of regency, under the nominal leadership of the queen-mother, found it necessary to propitiate the nobles in everything. The suicidal policy of making grants of the crown lands to them was again weakly adopted, and the Crown was impoverished while its most dangerous rivals were enriched. The itching palms of the great nobles found in the gold of Louis XIV. the loadstone of their country’s policy, and as long as the French supplies lasted Sweden remained true to the French alliance. Once only, like Charles II., in the hope of greater spoils she showed a momentary independence, when she yielded to the persuasions of de Witt, and joined the Triple Alliance. In a few months she returned in penitence to her old allegiance, and when the young king took the reins of government into his own hands in 1672, he found that if eleven years of aristocratical rule had secured for him abroad the friendship and support of the greatest prince in Europe, it had made him the heir at home to an empty treasury and a discredited administration.

[Sidenote: =Despotic policy of the Great Elector in Prussia.=]

While Sweden was falling into bankruptcy, and was being threatened with disruption, Frederick William of Brandenburg was diligently employing the time in making his authority over his various dominions absolute and unquestioned. He had already succeeded in reducing the diets of Brandenburg and Cleves to impotence, and organising an administration dependent on himself alone outside the scope of their interference. But in Prussia the task was far more difficult, and directly the treaty of Oliva was signed he applied himself seriously to the business. Under the suzerainty of Poland the nobles and burghers of Prussia had been accustomed to exercise a considerable amount of independence, but now that the Great Elector had been recognised as immediate sovereign over Prussia by the treaties of Wehlau and of Oliva, both sides understood that the old relations between the duke and his subjects would have to be modified. The Prussian diet determined to yield as little as possible. It refused to ratify the treaty, it drew up a constitution to secure its own authority. By the treaty Frederick William only succeeded to the same rights over Prussia which Poland had enjoyed, _i.e._ those of a feudal suzerain, but he was determined if possible to make himself absolute sovereign, and reduce the diet to insignificance. Most foolishly the diet played into his hands. The two parties of which it was composed, the landed gentry and the burghers, quarrelled over the nature of a tax which was to be imposed. Each side wanted the other to bear the burden, and Frederick William was enabled, under cover of settling the dispute, to march troops into Königsberg, and arrest Rhode, the leader of the burgher party, in 1662. This display of determination awed the burghers into submission, but the nobles and the landed gentry still remained to be dealt with. Led by Kalkstein, and secretly favoured by Poland, they were too strong to be crushed.

[Sidenote: =The Charter of 1663.=]

Frederick William had recourse to the arts of diplomacy and dissimulation of which he was so consummate a master. In 1663 the diet accepted at his hands a charter which defined its rights. It was expressed in ample but vague phraseology. By it the Great Elector agreed that his own powers of government should be only those formerly enjoyed by himself and the king of Poland, that the diet should be summoned at least once in six years, and should be consulted in all important business, and that no new taxes should be imposed without its consent. But by the very definition of its powers the diet lost all which was not expressed, while the elector gained all that was not refused. The balance of authority in the state had clearly shifted from the diet to the elector. Frederick William had only to avoid for a few years giving the diet the opportunity of exercising the rights secured to it, while the authority of his own administrative officers was being established, and he need no longer fear the diet when it did meet, than the kings of France need fear the States-General. It might be troublesome but it could not be dangerous. So gradually by thrifty management and careful policy Frederick William succeeded in extending his personal authority more and more over the country, until in 1672 he felt himself strong enough to strike a final blow. Kalkstein, the head and front of the opposition to him, had been banished to his estates for treasonable correspondence with Poland in 1669, but breaking his parole he escaped across the frontier to Warsaw. Frederick William demanded his surrender from the king of Poland, but it was refused. [Sidenote: =Execution of Kalkstein.=]Taking the law into his own hands, he had him arrested on Polish ground, brought to Memel, and there beheaded. A more flagrant breach of the rights of nations could not have been conceived, but the Great Elector well knew it could not fail to be successful, and with him success justified everything. Poland was in no condition to declare war, and the death of Kalkstein was the one thing wanted to make the submission of Prussia complete.

[Sidenote: =Establishment of personal government by the Great Elector.=]

By these measures Frederick William succeeded in crushing all open opposition to his will over the whole of his incongruous dominions. In Cleves and in Prussia, as in Pomerania and Brandenburg, he was the centre and the mainspring of government. There was no local or constitutional authority which could legally claim superiority to him, or practically exercise equality with him. But though he was the supreme power in the state he had not yet gained absolute power over the state. There were still many local bodies of advice and administration, with well-ascertained powers, whose assistance was necessary to him in carrying his will into effect, though they had no right to dictate to him the policy which he was to pursue. He had given to his state political unity, he had gained for himself and his successors political independence, he had won for himself and his family within his own dominions political leadership, but he had not as yet established administrative uniformity. That was necessarily a work of slow growth, of a century rather than a lifetime. It was not completed till the days of Frederick William I. and Frederick the Great, but it was begun by the Great Elector. The important department of patronage he at once took under his personal control, and appointed all the chief administrative officers in his various dominions. As head of the army, he separated the military from the civil revenues, and placed the former entirely under the management of the minister of war, who was of course his own nominee. War expenditure was thus wholly removed from the control of the civil authorities, and the army was organised on a professional basis. By a series of ordinances he established an elaborate system of social distinctions and privileges, which tended to centralise society under him, and attach the nobles to him by social distinction now that he had deprived them of political power. In these ways the government of Brandenburg-Prussia received from him that military and aristocratic character which its greater prosperity has only increased.

[Sidenote: =Encouragement of trade and manufactures.=]

Frederick William was also by no means unmindful of the general welfare of his people. The constant want of money under which he laboured, was in itself enough to draw his attention to the fact, that the real weakness of his power lay in the sterile and poverty-stricken state of his country. To improve this, he set an excellent example of economy in the wise and careful management of his own domains, he promoted numerous schemes of industrial and commercial enterprise, and he cordially welcomed the Huguenot exiles from France, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, who brought into Brandenburg many of the finer manufactures, of which France had for some time had the monopoly.

[Sidenote: =War with Sweden, 1674.=]

This policy of steady but quiet centralisation and industrial development was rudely interrupted by the war of aggression undertaken by Louis XIV. against the Dutch. Frederick William was closely connected with the Dutch by marriage and by trade interests, and was one of the first of European sovereigns to draw the sword in their favour in 1673. Beaten hopelessly in the field by Turenne, he was obliged to withdraw from the struggle six months after he had declared war; but in the next year the increasing difficulties of Louis emboldened him again to enter the field. Louis, however, was prepared for this move, and the presence of 16,000 Brandenburgers on the Rhine was the signal of the advance of Charles XI. with a Swedish army on the road to Berlin. Frederick William at once hastened back to defend his capital, reached the Elbe in June 1675, and, dashing forward his cavalry between the two divisions of the Swedish army, seized Rathenow, and prevented their junction on the Havel. [Sidenote: =Battle of Fehrbellin, 1675.=] To do this he had been forced to leave the bulk of his infantry behind. Nevertheless, with the brilliance of decision which marks a great general, he determined to throw himself with the few troops which he had with him upon the Swedish column, which was retreating from Brandenburg, before they reached the pass of Fehrbellin. Pursuing them by forced marches, he came up with their rear-guard on the 17th of June, and on the 18th forced them to accept battle. The weight of numbers was sadly against him. He had but 6000 men against double the number of his enemies, but the Swedes were dispirited, and the elector, in spite of the advice of his generals, insisted on the attack. The battle was hotly contested, but Frederick William had the better position and the more effective artillery, and by nightfall a counter-charge, promptly delivered, carried destruction into the ranks of the enemy. They broke and fled in complete rout through the pass. The day of Fehrbellin is the first great victory of the power of Brandenburg-Prussia, the first step in the ladder which has led to Sadowa and Sedan. It is also the death-day of the military prestige of the Swedes in Europe. From the battle of Lützen to the battle of Fehrbellin, they had never been defeated except by superior numbers. They were now seen not to be able to hold their own with Brandenburg, for Fehrbellin was no isolated victory. The elector pushed on into Swedish Pomerania, victorious and almost unchallenged,--Wohlgart, Stettin, Stralsund and Greifswald fell successively into his hands. By October 1678 Sweden held not a foot of territory in Pomerania. Had it not been for her potent ally at Paris, the work of Gustavus Adolphus and of Oxenstjerna would have been completely undone long before the close of the century, and Frederick William would have been admittedly the master of the north. [Sidenote: =Treaty of S. Germain en Laye, 1679.=] But Louis XIV. insisted upon the full restoration to Sweden of all which she had lost as the price of peace, and the Great Elector had to sign the treaty of S. Germain en Laye in June 1679, by which France evacuated Cleves, which she had occupied and paid to Brandenburg the sum of 300,000 crowns, while Brandenburg restored to Sweden all her conquests in Pomerania, except a small strip of land on the Oder.

[Sidenote: =Monarchical revolution in Sweden.=]

Sweden thus emerged from an unsuccessful and mismanaged war, without payment of indemnity or substantial loss of territory. As things turned out she proved to be the gainer rather than the loser for her misfortunes, for they enabled her to rid herself of her incapable aristocratical government. Charles XI. did for Sweden what Frederick III. had done for Denmark. Taking advantage of the unpopularity of the government, he effected a revolution in favour of the Crown without difficulty. With the help of the clergy and the people the royal power was made absolute, and the domain lands, which the nobles had divided among themselves, were ordered to be restored. This destroyed at a blow a large part of the wealth of the noble class, and reduced them to a position of dependence upon the Crown. Charles proved himself worthy of the responsibility which he had undertaken. Until his death in 1697 Sweden was at peace, commerce revived, the abuses of the administration were rooted out, and the government carried on without the assistance of French subsidies. For eighteen years tranquillity reigned on the shores of the Baltic. The Great Elector and his son Frederick III. were busy with schemes of internal reform and personal aggrandisement. Denmark under Christian V. was mainly occupied with the pleasures and extravagances of a courtly magnificence, while Sweden was recovering from the evils of administration, brought about by the corrupt rule of the nobles during the king’s minority. The interest of the politics of the Baltic veers further north, where behind the swamps of the Neva and the Dniester the barbaric power of Russia was preparing to enter upon the stage of the civilised world.

[Sidenote: =Condition of Russia.=]

Russia is the last-born child of European civilisation. While the nations of the west were painfully hammering out their culture and their polity, under the leadership of the Church, in the school of feudalism, through the inspiration of Roman law, the thinly populated expanse of forest and morass, which stretches between the Baltic and the Ural mountains was subject to Tartar rule and made no claim to civilised life. Even Christianity, which might under happier circumstances have become a bond of union between the backward north and the cultured south, proved rather a hindrance than a help, on account of the enmity between the East and the West. [Sidenote: =Ivan the Terrible.=]As long as Constantinople stood, Moscow was its disciple and its ally; when Constantinople fell, Moscow claimed to be its heir, and its avenger. It was not till the days of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century that the domination of the Tartar was overthrown, and Russia began to be a nation and to enter into relations with other nations. Its prosperity was short-lived. [Sidenote: =The troublous times.=] Hardly had the breath left the body of the savage autocrat in 1584, than a period of anarchy and misery began, which has left its mark upon the country in the legal establishment of serfdom, and was only ended by the accession of the Romanoff dynasty to the throne in 1612.

[Sidenote: =Michael Romanoff.=]

Michael, the first of that ill-fated house, could do little more than repress the elements of disorder, and restore the authority of the Czar, but so well was this work done, that he was enabled to hand on to his son Alexis, on his death in 1645, a crown which was at once popular secure and despotic. Two dangers only threatened the infant state; one from the turbulent spirit of the local nobles, the boyárs, the other from the physical power wielded by the national guard, called the Streltsi, who played the part of the Prætorian guard, or the Janizaries, of the court of Moscow, and were always as ready to intimidate as to protect their sovereign. [Sidenote: =Reign of Alexis.=] In the earlier years of the reign of Alexis, however, all went well. In 1648 he began the march of Russia towards the south-east of Europe by assuming the protectorate of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, then in revolt against Poland, and succeeded in obtaining legal sanction for the absolute autocracy of the Czar, by the passing of a code, or constitution, which concentrated all the powers of the state in his hands. By these two measures, which established the internal polity of Russia, and indicated the direction of her foreign policy, Alexis may with some justice claim to have been the real founder of the greatness of his country. Unfortunately a change soon took place. The weak and amiable Czar fell quickly into the hands of courtiers and favourites. Corruption and faction asserted themselves among the boyárs. The government became disorganised. Sedition broke out in the chief towns, and more than once Alexis had to sacrifice his ministers to the fury of the populace, in order to save his own life. Even the Church was split into two by an ill-managed effort to revise the antiquated service-books, and the evils of ecclesiastical schism and religious persecution were added to those of domestic strife.

[Sidenote: =Reign of Theodore I.=]

Such was the condition of Russia when the Czar Alexis died suddenly in 1676, leaving behind him by his first marriage two sons, Theodore and Ivan, both extremely delicate in health; and one sturdy little boy of four years of age, named Peter, by his second wife Natalia Naryshkin, whom he had married in 1669. The death of Alexis was the signal for the outbreak of a series of palace revolutions, which afflicted the unfortunate country for some years. [Sidenote: =Recognition of Peter as Czar, 1682.=] The Naryshkins, who had absorbed all places of profit and influence during the later years of Alexis, were banished at the accession of Theodore in 1676, but on the death of that prince without children in 1682 they came back to power, and with the assistance of the boyárs were able to procure the recognition of the young Peter as Czar, in exclusion of his elder brother Ivan, who was physically deformed and intellectually incapable. An act so high-handed naturally created many enemies. [Sidenote: =Revolt of the Streltsi.=] The opposition party among the nobles called in the aid of the Streltsi, espoused their grievances, fanned their discontent, and, persuading them that the life of Ivan was in danger hurled them suddenly in riotous fury against the palace, in May 1682. The Naryshkins were murdered. Ivan was proclaimed Czar in company with his brother Peter, and the princess Sophia, the most capable of his sisters, was made regent during the infancy of the Czars. The regency lasted for seven years. [Sidenote: =Regency of Sophia.=] During that time the real power was in the hands of prince Basil Golitsin, the head of one of the oldest of the noble families of Russia, and the acknowledged lover of the princess Sophia. His talent however proved unequal to his opportunities. In 1686 a definitive peace with Poland, called the treaty of Eternal Peace, put a finishing touch to the truce brought about by the treaty of Andrusoff in 1667, on terms which secured the important town of Kief to Russia, but obliged her to join the Emperor and the Poles in their efforts to beat back the Ottoman Turks. In consequence of this pledge, Golitsin waged two campaigns against the Tartars of the Crimea, who were subjects of the Porte, in 1687 and 1689, the unsuccessful issue of which filled up to overflowing the cup of hatred which was preparing for him. Peter allowed himself to be put at the head of the opposition. On September 17th, 1689, the regency came to an end. The princess Sophia was sent to a convent, prince Basil Golitsin banished to an obscure village in the inaccessible north, and the government fell into the hands of the rival aristocratic faction.

[Sidenote: =Peter becomes the head of the government, 1689.=]

At the age of seventeen, in the year when William III. made himself master of Great Britain, and the war of the league of Augsburg really began, Peter the Great became nominally the head of the government of Russia. In reality he exercised but little influence upon the fortunes of his country for some years. He was as yet but a boy, brimming over with health and spirits, exulting in the physical enjoyment of life, supremely happy when he could get away from the wearisome routine of the palace to his forge and his carpenter’s shop, or his ship-building yards at Pereyaslavl and Archangel. The demon of ambition had not yet waked in his breast, and his ships and his military sham fights, like his displays of fireworks and his theatricals, were the amusements of a spoilt child’s fancy, rather than the materials of a man’s policy. [Sidenote: =War with the Turks, 1695.=] The rude touch of actual war quickly brought about a change. In 1695 the government determined to revive the slumbering war with the Turks, and attack the port of Azof on the Black Sea. Peter threw himself into the scheme with characteristic impetuosity, worked as a bombardier in the army like a common soldier, and took his place as Czar in the councils of the generals. But the result was unfortunate. Partly through sheer bad management, partly through the inexperience and impulsiveness of the Czar, the attack on the fortress completely failed, and the Russian army had to retreat as best it could across the frozen steppes amid great privations. But Peter was one of those who learn best by experience. The campaign taught him the necessity of forethought and preparation. Next year all was different. A flotilla of boats, constructed especially for the river service at Voronezh, occupied the mouths of the Don under Peter’s own orders, and prevented the Turks from relieving Azof from the sea; while the engineering works on land were pushed on by General Gordon. On July 29th 1696 a general assault was ordered, but the Turks seeing that the town was no longer tenable surrendered, and Peter found himself to his great joy the master of a port on the Black Sea. The capture of Azof is the turning-point in the life of Peter the Great. His imagination was fired by the opportunities opened out to his country by the possession of an outlet for her commerce and a harbour for her fleet in southern waters. The death of his brother Ivan without male heirs in February left him undisputed master of his vast dominions. From that moment he bent all the energies of his powerful intellect and iron will to the service of Russia. He took the reins of government into his own hands, and, without regard to precedent, to tradition, to public or private right, he drove the chariot of the state straight towards the goal of his own ambition, and his country’s greatness.

[Sidenote: =Character of Peter the Great.=]

Peter himself was well fitted to become the hero of such a policy. His friendship with Gordon and Lefort and others of the foreign residents at Moscow had taught him how far Russia lagged behind all other European countries in the march of civilisation. His quick wit showed him that he must organise his country on the European model, and make it formidable by its army and navy to its enemies, and useful by its resources to its friends, before it could be admitted into the brotherhood of European nations. To change the institutions and overthrow the traditions of a country like Russia was a revolution, but Peter was not the man to shrink back appalled at the consequences, when he had once made up his mind to act. Sunny, jovial and open-hearted under ordinary circumstances, in the presence of opposition, when his blood was up, he became a fiend incarnate. No savage could be more cruel, no tyrant more brutal, no criminal more lustful and drunken. He knew not what it was to accept a rebuff, or deny himself a desire. To incur his suspicion was torture, to thwart his will was death. After the revolt of the Streltsi in 1698 more than a thousand men were put to death and eighteen hundred tortured by the knout and roasted at the fire, many of them in the presence of the Czar himself. He allowed his eldest son Alexis to be knouted to death in 1718, and personally superintended the torture of many of his alleged accomplices. His drunken orgies lasted for days, and were worthy only of Comus and his crew. Yet with all this hateful savagery there was much that was attractive about Peter. When free from his fits of depression, there was a buoyancy and vivacity of intellect, which, combined with singular simplicity of thought, made him a most delightful companion. No one could be a truer friend, if no one could be a more brutal enemy. He was perfectly natural. If there was much of the barbarian about him, there was nothing of the schemer. He was free from the civilised vices of deceit and double dealing. Rough, honest, and quick-tempered, he moved through society like a lion cub among pet dogs, dangerous but noble.

[Sidenote: =Objects of his home government.=]

His two years of foreign travel enabled him to see with his own eyes the advantages of European civilisation and government, and to learn how to make with his own hands the ships which were to spread the greatness of the Russian name round the shores of the Black Sea. Neither lesson was thrown away. Directly he got back to Russia he began to foster everything western at the expense of everything national. He introduced western dress, western habits, western dancing, and even western shaving. He encouraged the settlement of foreigners, and spent a good deal of his time in the German suburb of Moscow with his foreign friends. Directly he obtained possession of the mouth of the Neva, he built his new capital S. Petersburg, to take the place of conservative and traditional Moscow, as the centre of his new polity. At the same time he took good care to make the foundations of his government secure. The revolt of the Streltsi in 1698 gave him the opportunity of abolishing a force, which was too much mixed up with the old aristocracy of Russia ever to be really loyal to the new regime, and to replace them by a professional army trained on the European model under foreign officers. He tried as much as possible to depress the power of the boyárs, surrounding himself with friends and ministers like Menschikoff, who were drawn from a lower class of society. So successful was this policy that in 1711 he felt himself able to bring the political power of the boyárs to an end by forbidding their council to meet any longer. With a similar object he refused to nominate a successor to the patriarch Adrian on his death in 1700, but placed the powers of the patriarchate in the hands of a commission, afterwards called the Holy Governing Synod, which brought the affairs of the Church more definitely under his own control.

[Sidenote: =His foreign policy.=]

While Peter was thus engaged in winding the chains of despotism more tightly round the necks of his subjects at home, he was equally busy in trying to extend the frontiers of Russia to the sea, at the expense of his neighbours abroad. No one could doubt that the first essential of the due development of Russia was to obtain a footing upon the Baltic. The port of Archangel on the frozen White Sea, and the port of Azof on the Black Sea, closed as it was to the trade of the Mediterranean by the straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles in the hands of the Turks, were not sufficient to enable Russia to expand into a commercial nation. But since the treaties of Stolbovo and Kardis, renewed as late as 1684 by the princess Sophia, Russia had acquiesced in the annexation of the Baltic lands by Sweden, and it was certain that Sweden would not tamely surrender her treaty rights. But in the year 1697 an opportunity offered, which was too tempting for Peter’s slender stock of virtue to resist. [Sidenote: =Coalition against Sweden, 1699.=] Charles XI. of Sweden died, leaving as his heir and successor his youthful son Charles XII., only fifteen years of age. Patkul, a nobleman of Livonia, who was eager to restore the independence of his country, applied to Denmark, Poland, and Russia, the hereditary enemies of Sweden, for assistance. Each power, thinking only of its own aggrandisement, caught willingly at the chance of crushing Sweden when she was weak, and in 1699 this nefarious alliance was concluded, in which the independence of Livonia was used merely to cloak a policy of pure aggression.

[Sidenote: =Defeat of the allies by Charles XII.=]

But the allies soon found that they had reckoned without their host. Charles XII. of Sweden was one of those rare spirits who are born with a perfect genius for fighting. Without any gifts as a strategist, without any studied knowledge of the art of war, he was a born fighter. He loved fighting for fighting’s sake. He was never happier than when on campaign. He enjoyed the very hardships of war, and every soldier in his army knew that whatever might be his own privations, his king was sharing them all. With an unlimited belief in his own fortunes he succeeded in making every one else believe in them too. The enthusiasm of his army was unbounded. They willingly rendered to him an unquestioning obedience, and followed him gladly wherever he pointed the way. A man with such gifts was not going to wait until his unwieldy antagonists had united their forces. Early in May 1700 he sailed straight to Copenhagen and ended the Danish war at a blow. Frederick IV. could not defend his capital, and was obliged to accept the mediation of England and Holland, and to conclude the treaty of Travendal, by which he withdrew from the alliance with Poland and Russia. Leaving Denmark, Charles sailed to the Gulf of Finland where Peter was besieging the important fortress of Narva. Although he had only some 8000 men against Peter’s 60,000 Russians, he did not hesitate to order an attack. The huge undisciplined masses of Peter’s army were quickly thrown into confusion, and fled panic-stricken to their own country, leaving Charles the undisputed master of the Baltic coast. Turning southwards the Swedish king marched through Livonia and Courland into Poland, occupied Warsaw in 1702, defeated the king, Augustus the Strong of Saxony, who had been elected to the Polish crown on the death of John Sobieski in 1697, at the battle of Clissow, and drove him into Saxony. In 1703 he captured Thorn and Dantzig, procured the deposition of Augustus in an assembly held at Warsaw in February 1704, and imposed Stanislas Leczinski upon the Poles as king in his stead. He then resumed his course of military triumph, overran Lithuania, driving out the Russians in 1705, defeated Schulenberg at Frauenstadt in 1706, and finally invaded Saxony in 1707, where he forced Augustus to conclude the peace of Altranstadt in the September of that year, by which Stanislas Leczinski was recognised as king of Poland, and the unfortunate Patkul was surrendered as a victim to the cruelty of Charles, who, in defiance of every principle of humanity, had him broken on the wheel as a traitor.

[Sidenote: =Position of Charles XII., 1708.=]

When Charles XII. rested at Altranstadt in the winter of 1707–8, at the age of twenty-five, he felt himself with reason to be the wonder of the world. He was courted on all sides by the great powers, at that time distracted by the throes of the war of the Spanish Succession, and had he cared to play the rôle, might have posed as the arbiter of Europe. From Versailles came one of the most trusted diplomatists of Louis XIV., to remind the young prince of the long friendship of Sweden and France, and to entreat him to acknowledge the benefits of S. Germain en Laye by drawing his sword manfully for Louis at the crisis of his fate. But on behalf of the allies there appeared at the court of Charles metal still more attractive. Marlborough, the greatest soldier of the age, came personally to Altranstadt to plead the cause of Europe before Charles, with the laurels of Blenheim and of Ramillies still green upon his brow. His task was the easier one. He wanted not the assistance but the neutrality of Sweden. Charles was flattered by the attention paid to him, fascinated by the address of the hero diplomatist, and lent a willing ear to his suggestions. His Protestantism rejected the idea of an alliance with the author of the ‘dragonades.’ His desire for vengeance impelled him to come to close quarters with his enemy in the north. His soldierly pride shrank from committing himself to a war in which he would have to take a subordinate place. So in the spring of 1708 he turned his back deliberately on Germany and the Rhine, and marched to his ruin in the inhospitable north.

[Sidenote: =His invasion of Russia.=]

While Charles had been engaged in the conquest of Poland and Saxony, Peter had well employed the breathing space allowed to him in the diligent training of his undisciplined armies, and the occupation of the Baltic sea-coast on either side of the Neva. He had already overrun Ingria and Carelia, and had begun the fortifications and houses of a town at the mouth of the Neva, which was one day to be his capital city. Charles did not disturb himself over trifles of that sort. He struck, as was his wont, straight at the heart of his enemies’ power, and having made an alliance with Mazeppa, a hetman of the Cossacks, who promised to join him with a large force of those questionable allies, marched straight upon Moscow at the head of 30,000 men. Misfortune dogged his steps from the first. The roads were incalculably bad, the weather unexpectedly severe, progress was hopelessly slow. When no news had been heard of Mazeppa for some time, Charles, in order to try and open communications with him, left the main track, and plunged into the expanses of forest and morass which lie between Little Russia and the Ukraine. Winter surprised him on the march when he was still many hundreds of miles from Moscow. Food and supplies became very difficult to procure. Disease ravaged his army. Still with the courage of despair he pushed on. Spring found him exhausted but with his face still set towards Moscow. He was destined never to see it. Peter, at the head of immensely superior forces, fell upon Levenhaupt who was bringing a convoy to his aid and cut him to pieces. [Sidenote: =Battle of Pultava, 1709.=] Eventually he came up with the king himself at Pultava in the month of June 1709. The defeat of Narva was quickly avenged. Surrounded by the Russian forces, outnumbered two to one, the Swedes could only sell their lives dearly. Twenty thousand officers and men surrendered. Charles himself wounded in the foot made his way with a few companions across the frontier and took refuge with the Turks. The dream of his ambition was shattered at a blow, the work of Gustavus Adolphus was finally overthrown. Livonia and Esthonia with the important towns of Riga and Revel fell into the hands of the Czar. Russia made good her hold upon the Baltic, and took the place of Sweden as the leading power of the north.

[Sidenote: =War between Russia and the Turks, 1711.=]

The battle of Pultava, if it destroyed the power of Sweden, did not put an end to the war. Charles XII., from his refuge at Bender on Turkish soil, tried to stir up his hosts to take his part and declare war against Russia. Peter himself, flushed with triumph and ever steady to the policy of enlarging the sea boundary of his country, was by no means averse to the idea of driving back the Turkish empire from the Dniester to the Danube. The intense religious spirit of the Russians, always a potent factor in the policy of Russia in the East, impelled the Czar to put himself forward as the liberator of the oppressed Christians of Moldavia and Wallachia. But he was too wary to take the first step. After much hesitation the Sultan made up his mind. Urged on by his fear of seeing a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, he declared war against Peter in 1710, and the next year saw the Czar at the head of a large army on the Pruth. Fortune however now declared against him. By sheer bad management Peter contrived to get his army completely hemmed in between the river, the marshes, and the Turkish army, and was completely at the mercy of his enemies. Luckily for him the grand vizier was willing to treat for peace, and Peter was enabled to save himself and his army from an ignominious surrender, by giving back to the Turks the port of Azof, and destroying all Russian fortresses on Turkish territory. Charles XII. was sent back to his own dominions, which he found threatened from all sides by the Russians, the Danes and the Poles. For seven years he struggled in vain against superior forces abroad, and the disaffection of the nobles at home. [Sidenote: =Pacification of the North, 1720.=] By 1716 he had lost every acre of German soil. In 1718 a bullet shot by one of his own men terminated his career as he was besieging the fortress of Friedrickshall in Norway. The death of Charles XII. put an end to many intrigues, and made the restoration of a general peace more easy. Sweden had learned the lesson which her king had refused to learn. By a succession of treaties, which culminated in the peace of Nystädt between Sweden and Russia in 1720, Hanover became the possessor of Bremen and Verden; Augustus of Saxony was recognised as the rightful king of Poland, Prussia obtained part of Swedish Pomerania, with the islands of Usedom and Rugen, and the towns of Stettin and Dantzig; Frederick of Denmark was permitted to annex the duchy of Schleswig, but had to restore the rest of his conquests and possessions to Sweden, while Russia, the largest gainer of all, obtained Ingria, Esthonia, Livonia, and part of Carelia, and promised to surrender Finland.

While Russia was engaged in claiming the supremacy of the north at the hands of Sweden, Brandenburg-Prussia was pursuing a policy of steady and quiet growth under her undistinguished ruler. [Sidenote: =Creation of the kingdom of Prussia, 1700.=] It was the business of Frederick III. to consolidate what the Great Elector had won. Under him national prosperity quickly increased in a land which was no longer the theatre of war. The court became more splendid, roads and canals more numerous, manufactories more active, while the foundation of the university of Halle in 1694 marks a distinct advance in German culture. In foreign affairs he adhered steadily to the policy of his father, and sent his contingent of sturdy Brandenburgers to the assistance of the League of Augsburg with praiseworthy regularity. But the treaty of Ryswick contributed nothing either to his dignity or his possessions, and Frederick, profoundly dissatisfied, proclaimed aloud that if the great powers wanted his aid again he should exact his reward beforehand. In two years’ time the opportunity came, and Frederick, true to his word, insisted on the title of king, as the condition of supporting the Emperor in the matter of the partition treaties in 1700. It was some time before Leopold gave way. The thought of a kingdom in north Germany within the limits of the Empire itself was hateful to him, and opposed to the traditions of the Empire. He would have preferred to diminish, rather than to augment, the dignity and influence of the House of Hohenzollern. But necessity knows no law. Leopold wanted the aid of the Brandenburgers in the field, and could get them on no other terms. To save appearances it was arranged that Frederick should take his title from Prussia, which lay outside the German Empire, and accordingly in the year 1700 Frederick III. elector of Brandenburg, became Frederick I. king of Prussia. In the following year the Grand Alliance was set on foot, and the allied powers all recognised the new king in order to gain his help. Frederick fulfilled his part of the bargain faithfully enough. As long as the war lasted the Prussians fought steadily and well on the side of the allies, and the peace of Utrecht set the stamp of an international treaty to the newly made dignity, besides giving to Prussia the more substantial endowment of Spanish Guelderland.

[Sidenote: =Northern Europe at the end of the century.=]

The treaties of Utrecht and Nystädt, like those of Carlovitz and Passarovitz, mark the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. The history of northern Europe in the seventeenth century is the history of the effort of Sweden to obtain mastery over the Baltic and a footing in Germany; of the successful assertion by Brandenburg of leadership in north Germany; of the birth of Russia as a serious political power. Those questions, fought over so strenuously during the seventeenth century, received their final answer in the great treaties which usher in the next epoch. Sweden, stricken from her place of vantage, deprived of nearly all her German possessions, relegated to her own side of the Baltic, is dismissed into the obscurity of a third-rate power, from which she had been originally raised only by the quarrels of her antagonists, and the unprecedented personal ability of her sovereigns. Prussia, acknowledged as an equal by the monarchies of Europe, stands forth without rival as the unquestioned leader of the northern Germany, and is biding her time until the hour shall strike, which will permit her to wrest from the House of Habsburg the leadership of the German people, and inherit from it the duty of defending the German Fatherland. In the far north Russia, under its savage but capable ruler, has made her voice heard among the councils of Europe. Seated firmly on the eastern shores of the Baltic, she is bent on making herself into a commercial and maritime power, while in the far south-east corner of her empire, policy has already pointed the way along which her destiny must move. After the conquest of Azof in 1696, after the campaign on the Pruth in 1711, Turkey and Russia stand face to face in south-eastern Europe, and the Eastern Question has begun.