Lord Holderness, the English Foreign Secretary, gave the new Ambassador to Russia minute directions concerning what he was expected to do at St. Petersburg. In a letter dated April 11, 1755, he said among other things: “On this occasion it will be proper to convince the Russians that they will remain only an Asiatic power if they sit still and give the King of Prussia an opportunity of putting into execution his ambitious, dangerous and long-concerted schemes of aggrandizement. His Majesty has authorized you, by your full powers and instructions, to do what may be necessary for preventing such a calamity.”
The new Ambassador went to work with great energy and if the private letters and memoirs of the time are to be credited he soon found that he was engaged in a most expensive undertaking. Nearly everybody about the Russian Court wanted money and wanted it badly. Ten thousand pounds, it is stated, besides “the usual diplomatic presents” were given to the Chancellor. “An extraordinary gift” was made to the Vice Chancellor. After that the Secretary to the Cabinet had to be considered and a letter to London said that this person could be obtained “for fifteen hundred ducats ready money, and five hundred per annum pension.” But the money grabbers did not end here, for the bribery continued all along the line.
As a climax to this wholesale palm greasing, a convention was signed on the 9th of August, 1755, the chief feature of which was that Russia’s aid to England should extend to all the allies of King George and that on the first demand for help from England, Russia would march 30,000 men against Prussia. This arrangement was to be ratified two months from the date of signing, but in the meantime was not to be binding.
Such were the methods of diplomacy 160 years ago! Is it surprising that the word at that time should come to have a shady meaning?
But unexpectedly an obstacle arose. Louis XV of France wished to renew diplomatic intercourse with the Court of Elizabeth. The Empress was favorable to this but her ministers knew that if it were accomplished the new treaty with England would be “merely a scrap of paper”—that it would be consigned to the waste basket.
Every attempt on the part of the French authorities to communicate with her was frustrated. Presently a Frenchman, the Chevalier de Valcroissant, appeared in St. Petersburg. His mission was to ascertain the feelings of the Russian Court toward the French monarch. He found out sooner than he expected, and in a way he did not relish. Charged with being a spy, he was arrested and shut in the fortress of Schlosselburg. Louis XV was furious but helpless. France did not have the power to protest against this proceeding because Valcroissant was not an accredited agent; he had only been sent as a private emissary to get the lay of the land.
Louis XV was not the sort of a man to abandon an enterprise. He considered how he could penetrate the barrier of diplomats and spies who were surrounding the Empress Elizabeth. And suddenly he thought of the man to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat.
It was the Chevalier D’Eon.
THE CHEVALIER D’EON