The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia

by Voltaire

Gortz had a private conference with general Steinbock,[92] at which he promised to deliver him up the fortress of Toningen,[93] without exposing the bishop administrator, his master, to any danger: and, at the same time, gave the strongest assurances to the king of Denmark, that he would defend the place to the uttermost. In this manner are almost all negotiations carried on, affairs of state being of a very different nature from those of private persons; the honour of ministers consisting wholly in success, and those of private persons in the observance of their promises.

General Steinbock presented himself before Toningen: the commandant refused to open the gates to him, and by this means put it out of the king of Denmark's power to allege any cause of complaint against the bishop administrator; but Gortz causes an order to be given in the name of the young duke, a minor, to suffer the Swedish army to enter the town. The secretary of the cabinet, named Stamke, signs this order in the name of the duke of Holstein: by this means Gortz preserves the honour of an infant who had not as yet any power to issue orders; and he at once serves the king of Sweden, to whom he was desirous to make his court, and the bishop administrator his master, who appeared not to have consented to the admission of the Swedish troops. The governor of Toningen, who was easily gained, delivered up the town to the Swedes, and Gortz excused himself as well as he could to the king of Denmark, by protesting that the whole had been transacted without his consent.

The Swedes retired partly within the walls, and partly under the cannon of the town: but this did not save them: for general Steinbock was obliged to surrender himself prisoner of war, together with his whole army, to the number of eleven thousand men, in the same manner as about sixteen thousand of their countrymen had done at the battle of Pultowa.

By this convention it was agreed, that Steinbock with his officers and men might be ransomed or exchanged. The price for the general's ransom was fixed at eight thousand German crowns;[94] a very trifling sum, but which Steinbock however was not able to raise; so that he remained a prisoner in Copenhagen till the day of his death.

The territories of Holstein now remained at the mercy of the incensed conqueror. The young duke became the object of the king of Denmark's vengeance, and was fated to pay for the abuse which Gortz had made of his name: thus did the ill fortune of Charles XII. fall upon all his family.

Gortz perceiving his projects thus dissipated, and being still resolved to act a distinguished part in the general confusion of affairs, recalled to mind a scheme which he had formed to establish a neutrality in the Swedish territories in Germany.

The king of Denmark was ready to take possession of Toningen; George, elector of Hanover, was about to seize Bremen and Verden, with the city of Stade; the new-made king of Prussia, Frederick William, cast his views upon Stetin, and czar Peter was preparing to make himself master of Finland; and all the territories of Charles XII. those of Sweden excepted, were going to become the spoils of those who wanted to share them. How then could so many different interests be rendered compatible with a neutrality? Gortz entered into negotiation at one and the same time with all the several princes who had any views in this partition; he continued night and day passing from one province to the other; he engaged the governor of Bremen and Verden to put those two duchies into the hands of the elector of Hanover by way of sequestration, so that the Danes should not take possession of them for themselves: he prevailed with the king of Prussia to accept jointly with the duke of Holstein, of the sequestration of Stetin and Wismar, in consideration of which, the king of Denmark was to act nothing against Holstein, and was not to enter Toningen. It was most certainly a strange way of serving Charles XII. to put his towns into the hands of those who might choose if they would ever restore them; but Gortz, by delivering these places to them as pledges, bound them to a neutrality, at least for some time; and he was in hopes to be able afterwards to bring Hanover and Brandenburg to declare for Sweden: he prevailed on the king of Prussia whose ruined dominions stood in need of peace, to enter into his views, and in short he found means to render himself necessary to all these princes, and disposed of the possessions of Charles XII. like a guardian, who gives up one part of his ward's estate to preserve the other, and of a ward incapable of managing his affairs himself; and all this without any regular authority or commission, or other warrant for his conduct, than full powers given him by the bishop of Lubec, who had no authority to grant such powers from Charles himself.

Such was the baron de Gortz, and such his actions, which have not hitherto been sufficiently known. There have been instances of an Oxenstiern, a Richlieu, and an Alberoni, influencing the affairs of all parts of Europe; but that the privy counsellor of a bishop of Lubec should do the same as they, without his conduct being avowed by any one, is a thing hitherto unheard of.

June, 1713.] Nevertheless he succeeded to his wishes in the beginning; for he made a treaty with the king of Prussia, by which that monarch engaged, on condition of keeping Stetin in sequestration, to preserve the rest of Pomerania for Charles XII. In virtue of this treaty, Gortz made a proposal to the governor of Pomerania, Meyerfeld, to give up the fortress of Stetin to the king of Prussia for the sake of peace, thinking that the Swedish governor of Stetin would prove as easy to be persuaded as the Holsteiner who had the command of Toningen; but the officers of Charles XII. were not accustomed to obey such orders. Meyerfeld made answer, that no one should enter Stetin but over his dead body and the ruins of the place, and immediately sent notice to his master of the strange proposal. The messenger at his arrival found Charles prisoner at Demirtash, in consequence of his adventure at Bender, and it was doubtful, at that time, whether he would not remain all his life in confinement in Turkey, or else be banished to some of the islands in the Archipelago, or some part of Asia under the dominion of the Ottoman Porte. However Charles from his prison sent the same orders to Meyerfeld, as he had before done to Steinbock; namely, rather to perish than to submit to his enemies, and even commanded him to take his inflexibility for his example.

Gortz, finding that the governor of Stetin had broke in upon his measures, and would neither hearken to a neutrality nor a sequestration, took it into his head, not only to sequester the town of Stetin of his own authority, but also the city of Stralsund, and found means to make the same kind of treaty (June, 1713,) with the king of Poland, elector of Saxony, for that place, which he had done with the elector of Brandenburg for Stetin. He clearly saw how impossible it would be for the Swedes to keep possession of those places without either men or money, while their king was a captive in Turkey, and he thought himself sure of turning aside the scourge of war from the North by means of these sequestrations. The king of Denmark himself at length gave into the projects of Gortz: the latter had gained an entire ascendant over prince Menzikoff, the czar's general and favourite, whom he had persuaded that the duchy of Holstein must be ceded to his master, and flattered the czar with the prospect of opening a canal from Holstein into the Baltic Sea; an enterprise perfectly conformable to the inclination and views of this royal founder: and, above all, he laboured to insinuate to him, that he might obtain a new increase of power, by condescending to become one of the powers of the empire, which would entitle him to a vote in the diet of Ratisbon, a right that he might afterwards for ever maintain by that of arms.