You are closely pressed by thousands of athletes; you are mightily struck by the flash of angry lightnings. You cannot withstand: the thunder is ready not in jest. Your ramparts are without defence; the earth opens up abysses; roofs fly into the air; your walls are emptied of men.
If all the powers combined were to aid you, O Dantzig; if the elements defended you; if from all the ends of the world soldiers came to spill their blood for you,—yet nothing would be able to save you from suffering and to stop your misery, and wring you out of Anna’s hands.
Your adversaries see to-day the bravery of Russian soldiers: neither fire nor water harms them, and they advance with open breasts. How readily they advance! How forgetful they are of their lives! The cannon’s thunder frightens them not! They make the assault, as if going to a wedding feast! Only through smoky darkness one may see that their brows are facing the forts.
Within the walls of the wretched city all are struck down with fear: everything falls and flies to dust,—the besiegers are on the walls! The last magistrates, seeing from their tower their vain hope in the distant armies and Stanislaus who had taken refuge within their walls, besides themselves, exclaim: “We are fated to fall!”
What I have prophesied is about to happen,—Dantzig begins to tremble: all think of surrendering, as before they all decided to fight, and of saving themselves from the engines of war, from flying bombs and from all the pests the city is oppressed by. All cry, for the burden was too heavy to carry, “It is time now to open the gates to Anna’s army.”
So it is done: the sign for surrender is given, and Dantzig is at our feet! Our soldiers are happy in their success; the fires have gone out; there is an end to misery. Immediately Glory took its flight and announced with its thundering trumpet: “Anna is fortunate! Anna is unconquerable; Anna, exalted by all, is their common glory and honour.”
Lyre! abate your song: it is not possible for me properly to praise diadem-bearing Anna and her great goodness, any more than I can fly. It is Anna’s good fortune that she is loved by God. He always watches over her, and through Him she is victorious. Who would dare to oppose her? May Anna live many years!
Princess Natálya Borísovna Dolgorúki. (1714-1771.)
The Princess Dolgorúki was the daughter of Count Sheremétev, who was intimately connected with the reforms of Peter the Great. In 1729 she was betrothed to Prince Iván Aleksyéevich Dolgorúki, the favourite of Peter II.; Feofán Prokopóvich performed the ceremony of the betrothal, and the whole Imperial family and the most distinguished people of the capital were present. A few days later Peter II. died, and Anna Ioánnovna ascended the throne. Dolgorúki was banished to Siberia, and she married him in order to follow him into exile. They passed eight years in the Government of Tobólsk, when her husband was taken to Nóvgorod and executed. For three years she remained in ignorance of his fate, when the Empress Elizabeth permitted her to return to St. Petersburg. In 1758 Princess Dolgorúki entered a monastery at Kíev, and ten years later she wrote her Memoirs, at the request of her son Michael. In 1810 her grandson, the poet Dolgorúki (see p. 422), had these Memoirs printed. The Princess Dolgorúki has become a synonym for a devoted Russian woman, and she has frequently been celebrated in poetry, especially by Rylyéev, Kozlóv and Nekrásov. There is also an English book treating of her life: The Life and Times of Nathalia Borissovna, Princess Dolgorookov, by J. A. Heard, London, 1857.