Sweden and Denmark had come to issue with England concerning the right of search in 1798 and 1799, when four frigates, two Swedish and two Danish, were captured and brought into English ports. True, they were afterwards given up, but without any satisfaction, for the English still insisted upon the right of search. The dispute became most vehement in the case of the Danish frigate Freya, which, together with the merchantmen under her convoy, were brought into an English port, after a sharp engagement on the 25th of July, 1800; and the English, aware of the hostile negotiations which were going on in the north, at once despatched an expedition against Denmark.
Sixteen English ships of war suddenly appeared before Copenhagen, and most unexpectedly threatened the harbour and city with a destructive bombardment, if Denmark did not at once acknowledge England’s right of search at sea. Had this acknowledgment been made, Bonaparte’s and the emperor’s plan would have been frustrated in its very origin; but Denmark had the good fortune to possess, in its minister Bernstorff, the greatest diplomatist of the whole revolutionary era, who contrived for that time to save Copenhagen without the surrender of any rights. It was quite impossible to resist by force, but he refused to enter upon the question of right or wrong; and in the agreement which he signed with Lord Whitworth on the 25th of August, 1800, he consented that in the meantime all occasion for dispute should be avoided, and thus the difficulty be postponed or removed. Denmark bound herself no longer to send her merchantmen under convoy—whereupon the Freya, and the vessels by which she was accompanied, were set at liberty. On this occasion the emperor Paul offered himself as arbitrator; and when Lord Whitworth rejected his interference or arbitration, he immediately laid an embargo on all the English ships in Russian ports.
The news of the agreement entered into at Copenhagen, however, no sooner reached St. Petersburg, than this first embargo was removed, and the dispute carried on merely in a diplomatic manner. At last the emperor Paul put an end to this paper war, when Vaubois, who had defended Malta since July, 1798, against the English, Russians, Neapolitans, and sometimes also the Portuguese, at length capitulated, on the 5th of September, 1800. The island was taken military possession of by the English without any reference whatever to the order, to Naples, to the promise which they had made to the emperor, or to Bailli de la Ferrette, whom Paul had named as the representative of the order. As soon as this news reached St. Petersburg, Paul’s rage and indignation knew no bounds. On the 7th of November, he not only laid an embargo upon three hundred English ships then in his ports, but sent the whole of their crews into the interior of Russia, and allowed them only a few kopecks a day for their support.
Lord Carysfort, the English ambassador in Berlin, was unable for six weeks to obtain any answer from the Prussian government with respect to its connection with the northern confederation, although he insisted strongly upon it; and yet Stedingk, the Swedish minister, and Rosenkranz, the Danish minister, had signed the agreement for an armed neutrality in the form of that of 1780 as early as the 17th of December, 1800, in St. Petersburg, and the Prussian minister, Von Luft, in the name of his king, had signified his acceptance of the alliance on the 18th. When Lord Carysfort at length obtained an answer on the 12th of February to his demands, so long and repeatedly urged in vain, Haugwitz had drawn it up equivocally both in form and contents. The emperor of Russia was so indignant at the ambiguity that he not only expressed his feelings on the subject warmly, but also took some hostile measures against Prussia.
On the other hand, the emperor invited Gustavus IV to St. Petersburg where he was received with the greatest splendour. He arrived at St. Petersburg at Christmas, 1800, and immediately, as if to insult the English, a grand meeting of the order of Malta was held; the king himself was loaded with marks of honour of every possible description, and at the end of December he signed a new agreement, by which the objects of that of the 16th of the same month were greatly enlarged. In the former alliance defensive operations alone were contemplated; but now offensive measures were also agreed upon, with the reservation, indeed, if they should become necessary. Paul took measures to refit his fleet, and an army was equipped which was to be placed under the commands of Soltikov, Pahlen, and Kutusov; the Danish fleet was in good condition; the Russian minister in Paris appeared to regard the circumstances as very favourable for gaining Hanover to his master without danger or risk; and Pitt himself considered the state of affairs so unfavourable, that he seriously contemplated the propriety of retiring and making way for a new ministry, in order to render a peace possible. This close confederacy against England was, however, dissolved at the very moment in which the first consul appeared to be disposed to favour Naples and Sardinia, in order to gratify the wishes of the emperor of Russia.
ASSASSINATION OF PAUL (1801 A.D.)
[1801 A.D.]
The catastrophe in St. Petersburg is easily explained by the continually changing humours of the emperor, by his mental derangement, which had been constantly on the increase for several months previous to his murder, by the acts of violence and injustice which he suffered himself to commit, and by the dreadful apprehension which prevailed among all classes of society, from the empress and the grand duke down to the very lowest citizen. The emperor’s sober and rational intervals became progressively rarer, so that no man was sure for an instant either of his place or his life; thousands of persons completely innocent were sent to Siberia, and yet goodness and mildness alternated with cruel severity. The emperor one while exhibited the most striking magnanimity, at another the meanest vindictiveness.
The beautiful and virtuous empress had patiently submitted to her husband’s preference for the plain Nelidov, who at least treated her with honour and respect; but she was obliged also to submit to his attachment to Lopukhin, who continually provoked strife. She endured these things patiently, lived on good terms with the emperor, slept immediately under his chambers, and yet neither she nor her sons, Alexander and Constantine, were able to escape the suspicions of his morbid mind. It was whispered, by persons in the confidence of the court, that the emperor had said he would send the empress to Kalamagan, in the government of Astrakhan, Alexander to Shlüsselburg, and Constantine to the citadel of St. Petersburg. It is not worth while to inquire what truth there may have been in these reports; everyone felt that the time had arrived to have recourse to the only means which can be employed in despotic kingdoms for effecting a complete change in the measures of government. This means is the murder of the despot, which in such circumstances was usually effected in the Roman Empire by the Pretorians, in Constantinople by the Janizaries, or by a clamorous and infuriated mob, in St. Petersburg by a number of confederated nobles; and in all these cases was regarded as a sort of necessary appendage to the existing constitution.