A SQUADRON SENT TO THE BALTIC.
By this time Peter the czar of Muscovy was dead, and his empress Catharine had succeeded him on the Russian throne. This princess had begun to assemble forces in the neighbourhood of Petersburgh, and to prepare a formidable armament for a naval expedition. King George, concluding that her design was against Sweden, sent a strong squadron into the Baltic, under the command of sir Charles Wager, in order to anticipate her views upon his allies. The English fleet being joined at Copenhagen by a Danish squadron, alarmed the court of Russia, which immediately issued orders for reinforcing the garrisons of Wilbourg, Cronstadt, Revel, and Riga. The English admiral, having had an audience with his Swedish majesty, steered towards Revel, and sent thither a lieutenant, with a letter from the king of Great Britain to the czarina. This was an expostulation, in which his majesty observed, that he and his allies could not fail of being alarmed at her great preparations by sea and land. He complained that measures had been taken at her court in favour of the pretender; that his repeated instances for establishing a lasting friendship with the crown of Russia had been treated with neglect; and he gave her to understand, that he had ordered his admiral to prevent her ships from coming out of her harbours, should she persist in her resolution to execute the designs she had projected. The czarina, in her answer to the king, expressed her surprise that she had not received his majesty’s letter until his fleet was at anchor before Revel, since it would have been more agreeable to the custom established among sovereigns, and to the amity which had so long subsisted between her kingdoms and the crown of Great Britain, to expostulate with her on her armament, and expected her answer before he had proceeded to such an offensive measure. She assured him that nothing was farther from her thoughts than any design to disturb the peace of the North; and with regard to the pretender, it was a frivolous and stale accusation, which had been frequently used as a pretext to cover all the unkind steps lately undertaken against the Russian empire. Sir Charles Wager continued in his station until he received certain intelligence that the Russian galleys were laid up in their winter harbour; then he set sail for the coast of Denmark, from whence he returned to England in the month of November.