Pomerania is the most northern province of Germany, bounded on the east by Prussia and Poland, on the west by Brandenburg, on the south by Mecklenburg, and on the north by the Baltic Sea. It has changed masters almost every century: Gustavus Adolphus got possession of it in his famous thirty years war, and it was afterwards solemnly ceded to the crown of Sweden by the treaty of Westphalia: with a reservation of the little bishopric of Camin, and a few other small towns lying in Upper Pomerania. The whole of this province properly belongs to the elector of Brandenburg, in virtue of a family compact made with the dukes of Pomerania, whose family being extinct in 1637, consequently by the laws of the empire the house of Brandenburg had an undoubted right to the succession; but necessity, the first of all laws, occasioned this family compact to be set aside by the treaty of Osnaburg; after which, almost the whole of Pomerania fell to the lot of the victorious Swedes.
The czar's intention was to wrest from Sweden all the provinces that crown was possessed of in Germany; and, in order to accomplish his design, he found it necessary to enter into a confederacy with the electors of Hanover and Brandenburg, and the king of Denmark. Peter drew up the several articles of the treaty he projected with these powers, and also a complete plan of the necessary operations for rendering him master of Pomerania.
In the meanwhile he went to Torgau, to be present at the nuptials of his son the czarowitz Alexis with the princess of Wolfenbuttel (Oct. 23, 1711.), sister to the consort of Charles VI. emperor of Germany; nuptials which, in the end, proved fatal to his own peace of mind, and to the lives of the unfortunate pair.
The czarowitz was born of the first marriage of Peter the Great to Eudocia Lapoukin, to whom he was espoused in 1689: she was at that time shut up in the monastery of Susdal; their son Alexis Petrowitz, who was born the 1st of March, 1690, was now in his twenty-second year: this prince was not then at all known in Europe; a minister, whose memoirs of the court of Russia have been printed, says in a letter he writes to his master, dated August 25, 1711, that 'this prince was tall and well made, resembled his father greatly, was of an excellent disposition, very pious, had read the Bible five times over, took great delight in the ancient Greek historians, appeared to have a very quick apprehension and understanding, was well acquainted with the mathematics, the art of war, navigation, and hydraulics; that he understood the German language, and was then learning the French, but that his father would never suffer him to go through a regular course of study.'
This character is very different from that which the czar himself gives of his son some time afterwards, in which we shall see with how much grief he reproaches him with faults directly opposite to those good qualities, for which this minister seems so much to admire him.
We must leave posterity, therefore, to determine between the testimony of a stranger, who may have formed too slight a judgment, and the declaration of a parent, who thought himself under a necessity of sacrificing the dictates of nature to the good of his people. If the minister was no better acquainted with the disposition of Alexis than he seems to have been with his outward form, his evidence will have but little weight; for he describes this prince as tall and well made, whereas the memoirs sent me from Petersburg say, that he was neither the one nor the other.
His mother-in-law, Catherine, was not present at his nuptials; for though she was already looked upon as czarina, yet she had not been publicly acknowledged as such: and moreover, as she had only the title of highness given her at the czar's court, her rank was not sufficiently settled to admit of her signing the contract, or to appear at the ceremony in a station befitting the consort of Peter the Great. She therefore remained at Thorn in Polish Prussia. Soon after the nuptials were celebrated, the czar sent the new-married couple away to Wolfenbuttel (Jan. 9, 1712), and brought back the czarina to Petersburg with that dispatch and privacy which he observed in all his journies.
Feb. 19, 1712.] Having now disposed of his son, he publicly solemnized his own nuptials with Catherine, which had been declared in private before. This ceremony was performed with as much magnificence as could be expected in a city but yet in its infancy, and from a revenue exhausted by the late destructive war against the Turks, and that which he was still engaged in against the king of Sweden. The czar gave orders for, and assisted himself in, all the preparations for the ceremony, according to the usual custom; and Catherine was now publicly declared czarina, in reward for having saved her husband and his whole army.
The acclamations with which this declaration was received at Petersburg were sincere: the applauses which subjects confer on the actions of a despotic sovereign are generally suspected; but on this occasion they were confirmed by the united voice of all the thinking part of Europe, who beheld with pleasure, on the one hand, the heir of a vast monarchy with no other glory than that of his birth, married to a petty princess; and, on the other hand, a powerful conqueror, and a law-giver, publicly sharing his bed and his throne with a stranger and a captive, who had nothing to recommend her but her merit: and this approbation became more general as the minds of men grew more enlightened by that sound philosophy, which has made so great a progress in our understandings within these last forty years: a philosophy, equally sublime and discerning, which teaches us to pay only the exterior respect to greatness and authority, while we reserve our esteem and veneration for shining talents and meritorious services.
And here I think myself under an obligation to relate what I have met touching this marriage in the dispatches of count Bassewitz, aulic counsellor at Vienna, and long time minister from Holstein at the court of Russia; a person of great merit, and whose memory is still held in the highest esteem in Germany. In some of his letters he speaks thus: 'The czarina had not only been the main instrument of procuring the czar that reputation which he enjoyed, but was likewise essentially necessary in the preservation of his life. This prince was unhappily subject to violent convulsion fits, which were thought to be the effects of poison which had been given him while he was young. Catherine alone had found the secret of alleviating his sufferings by an unwearied assiduity and attention to whatever she thought would please him, and made it the whole study of her life to preserve a health so valuable to the kingdom and to herself, insomuch, that the czar finding he could not live without her, made her the companion of his throne and bed.' I here only repeat the express words of the writer himself.