Meanwhile Russia made advances in other quarters of nearly equal extent. As the remnant of the Saracen at Granada cut off the Castilian from his southern coast or the Mediterranean, for more than two hundred years, so did the remnant of the Tartar in Crim cut off the Russian for as long a time from his southern coast on the Euxine. ♦Occupation of Azof. 1696-1711.♦ Peter the Great first made his way, if not to the Euxine, at least to its inland gulf, by the taking of Azof. But the new conquest was only temporary. After seventy years more the work was done. ♦Independence of Crim 1774.
Annexation of Crim. 1783.♦ First came the nominal independence of the Crimean khanat, then its incorporation with Russia. The work at which Megarian and Genoese colonists had laboured was now done; the northern coast of the Euxine was won for Europe.[73] The road through which so many Turanian invaders had pressed into the Aryan continent was blocked for ever. ♦Conquest of Jedisan. 1791.♦ The next advance, the limit of Russian advance made strictly at the expense of the barbarian as distinguished from his Christian vassals, carried the Russian frontier from the Bug to the Dniester.
♦Russian conquests from Persia. 1727-1734.♦
The chief Asiatic acquisition of Russia in the eighteenth century took a strange form. It was conquest beyond the sea, though only beyond the inland Caspian. Turk and Russian joined to dismember Persia, and for some years Russia held the south coast of that great lake, the lands of Daghestan, Ghilan, and Mazanderan. ♦Superiority over Georgia. 1783.♦ Later in the century the ancient Christian kingdom of Georgia passed under Russian superiority, the earnest of much Russian conquest on both sides of Caucasus. ♦Superiority over the Kirghis. 1773.♦ And nearly at the same time as the first steps towards the acquisition of Crim, the Russian dominion was spread over the Kirghis hordes west of the river Ural, winning a coast on the eastern Caspian, the sea of Aral, and the Baltash lake.
♦Survey at the end of the eighteenth century.♦
Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century, the Swedish power has fallen back. Its territory east of the Baltic is less than it was at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Denmark, on the other hand, has grown by an advance in the debateable southern duchies. All Sleswick is added to the Danish crown; all Holstein is held by the Danish king. Poland has vanished. The anomalous power on the middle Danube, whose princes, it must be remembered, still wore the crown of the Empire, has thrust itself into the very heart of the old Polish land. But the power which has gained most by the extinction of Poland has been the new kingdom of Prussia. If part of her annexations lasted only a few years, she made her Baltic coast continuous for ever. But Prussia and Austria alike, by joining to wipe out the central state of the whole region, have given themselves a mighty neighbour. Russia has wholly cast aside her character as a mere inland power, intermediate between Europe and Asia. She has won her way, after so many ages, to her old position and much more. She has a Baltic and an Euxine seaboard. Her recovery of her old lands on the Duna and the Dnieper, her conquest of new lands on the Niemen, have brought her into the heart of Europe. And she has opened the path which was also to lead her into the heart of Asia, and to establish her in the intermediate mountain land between the Euxine and the Caspian.
§ 6. The Modern Geography of the Baltic Lands.
♦The French revolutionary wars.♦
The territorial arrangements of Northern and Eastern Europe were not affected by the French revolutionary wars till after the fall of the Western Empire. At that moment the frontier of Germany and Denmark was still what it had been under Charles the Great; “Eidora Romani terminus Imperii.” Only now the Danish king ruled to the south of the boundary stream in the character of a prince of the Empire. ♦Holstein incorporated with Denmark, and Swedish Pomerania with Sweden. 1806.♦ The fall of the Empire put an end to this relation, and the duchy of Holstein was incorporated with the Danish realm. In the like sort, the Swedish kingdom was extended to the central mainland of Europe, by the incorporation of the Pomeranian dominions of the Swedish king. ♦Russian conquest of Finland, 1809.♦ Before long, the last war between Sweden and Russia was ended by the peace of Friderikshamn, when Sweden gave up all her territory east of the gulf as far as the river Tornea, together with the isles of Aland. ♦Grand Duchy of Finland.♦ These lands passed to the Russian Emperor as a separate and privileged dominion, the Grand Duchy of Finland. Thus Sweden withdrew to her own side of the Baltic, while Russia at last became mistress of the whole eastern coast from the Prussian border northward. ♦Union of Sweden and Norway. 1814-1815.♦ The general peace left this arrangement untouched, but decreed the separation of Norway from Denmark and its union with Sweden. This was carried out so far as to effect the union of Sweden and Norway as independent kingdoms under a single king. ♦Swedish Pomerania passes to Denmark.♦ Denmark got in compensation, as diplomacy calls it, a scrap of its old Slavonic realm, Rügen and Swedish Pomerania. ♦Exchanged with Prussia for Lauenburg.♦ These detached lands were presently exchanged with Prussia for a land adjoining Holstein, the duchy of Lauenburg, the representative of ancient Saxony.[74] ♦Heligoland passes to England.♦ Denmark kept Iceland, but the Frisian island of Heligoland off the coast of Sleswick passed to England. Thus the common king of Sweden and Norway reigns over the whole of the northern peninsula and over nothing out of it. No such great change had affected the Scandinavian kingdoms since the union of Calmar.
♦Holstein and Lauenburg join the German Confederation.♦