Many negotiations were set on foot after the return of Charles to his dominions, but nothing had been done. That prince thought he could raise a sufficient number of ships of war and privateers, to put a stop to the rising power of the czar by sea; with respect to the land war, he depended upon his own valour; and Gortz, who was on a sudden become his prime minister, persuaded him, that he might find means to defray the expense, by coining copper money, to be taken at ninety-six times less than its real value, a thing unparalleled in the histories of any state; but in the month of April, 1715, the first Swedish privateers that put to sea were taken by the czar's men of war, and a Russian army marched into the heart of Pomerania.
The Prussians, Danes, and Saxons, now sat down with their united forces before Stralsund, and Charles XII. beheld himself returned from his confinement at Demirtash and Demirtoca on the Black Sea, only to be more closely pent up on the borders of the Baltic.
We have already shewn, in the history of this extraordinary man, with what haughty and unembarrassed resolution he braved the united forces of his enemies in Stralsund; and shall therefore, in this place, only add a single circumstance, which, though trivial, may serve to shew the peculiarity of his character. The greatest part of his officers having been either killed or wounded during the siege, the duty fell hard upon the few who were left. Baron de Reichel, a colonel, having sustained a long engagement upon the ramparts, and being tired out by repeated watchings and fatigues, had thrown himself upon a bench to take a little repose; when he was called up to mount guard again upon the ramparts. As he was dragging himself along, hardly able to stand, and cursing the obstinacy of the king his master, who subjected all those about him to such insufferable and fruitless fatigues, Charles happened to overhear him. Upon which, stripping off his own cloak, he spread it on the ground before him, saying, 'My dear Reichel, you are quite spent; come, I have had an hour's sleep, which has refreshed me, I'll take the guard for you, while you finish your nap, and will wake you when I think it is time;' and so saying, he wrapt the colonel up in his cloak; and, notwithstanding all his resistance, obliged him to lie down to sleep, and mounted the guard himself.
It was during this siege that the elector of Hanover, lately made king of England, purchased of the king of Denmark the province of Bremen and Verden, with the city of Stade, (Oct. 1715.) which the Danes had taken from Charles XII. This purchase cost king George eight hundred thousand German crowns. In this manner were the dominions of Charles bartered away, while he defended the city of Stralsund, inch by inch, till at length nothing was left of it but a heap of ruins, which his officers compelled him to leave; (Dec. 1713.) and, when he was in a place of safety, general Ducker delivered up those ruins to the king of Prussia.
Some time afterwards, Ducker, being presented to Charles, that monarch reproached him with having capitulated with his enemies; when Ducker replied, 'I had too great a regard for your majesty's honour, to continue to defend a place which you was obliged to leave.' However the Prussians continued in possession of it no longer than the year 1721, when they gave it up at the general peace.
During the siege of Stralsund, Charles received another mortification, which would have been still more severe, if his heart had been as sensible to the emotions of friendship, as it was to those of fame and honour. His prime minister, count Piper, a man famous throughout all Europe, and of unshaken fidelity to his prince (notwithstanding the assertions of certain rash persons, or the authority of a mistaken writer): this Piper, I say, had been the victim of his master's ambition ever since the battle of Pultowa. As there was as that time no cartel for the exchange of prisoners subsisting between the Russians and Swedes, he had remained in confinement at Moscow; and though he had not been sent into Siberia, as the other prisoners were, yet his situation was greatly to be pitied. The czar's finances at that time were not managed with so much fidelity as they ought to be, and his many new establishments required an expense which he could with difficulty answer. In particular, he owed a considerable sum of money to the Dutch, on account of two of their merchant-ships which had been burnt on the coast of Finland, in the descent the czar had made on that country. Peter pretended that the Swedes were to make good the damage, and wanted to engage count Piper to charge himself with this debt: accordingly he was sent for from Moscow to Petersburg, and his liberty was offered him, in case he could draw upon Sweden letters of exchange to the amount of sixty thousand crowns. It is said he actually did draw bills for this sum upon his wife at Stockholm, but that she being unable or unwilling to take them up, they were returned, and the king of Sweden never gave himself the least concern about paying the money. Be this as it may, count Piper was closely confined in the castle of Schlusselburg, where he died the year after, at the age of seventy. His remains were sent to the king of Sweden, who gave them a magnificent burial; a vain and melancholy return to an old servant, for a life of suffering, and so deplorable an end!
Peter was satisfied with having got possession of Livonia, Esthonia, Carelia, and Ingria, which he looked upon as his own provinces, and to which he had, moreover, added almost all Finland, which served as a kind of pledge, in case his enemies should conclude a peace. He had married one of his nieces to Charles Leopold, duke of Mecklenburg, in the month of April of the same year, (1715.) so that all the sovereigns of the north were now either his allies or his creatures. In Poland, he kept the enemies of king Augustus in awe; one of his armies, consisting of about eight thousand men, having, without any loss, quelled several of those confederacies, which are so frequent in that country of liberty and anarchy: on the other hand, the Turks, by strictly observing their treaties, left him at full liberty to exert his power, and execute his schemes in their utmost extent.
In this flourishing situation of his affairs, scarcely a day passed without being distinguished by new establishments, either in the navy, the army, or the legislature: he himself composed a military code for the infantry.
Nov. 8.] He likewise founded a naval academy at Petersburg; dispatched Lange to China and Siberia, with a commission of trade; set mathematicians to work, in drawing charts of the whole empire; built a summer's palace at Petershoff; and at the same time built forts on the banks of the Irtish, stopped the incursions and ravages of the Bukari[96] on the one side, and, on the other, suppressed the Tartars of Kouban.
1715.] His prosperity seemed now to be at its zenith, by the empress Catherine's being delivered of a son, and an heir to his dominions being given him, in a prince born to the czarowitz Alexis; but the joy for these happy events, which fell out within a few days of each other, was soon damped by the death of the empress's son; and the sequel of this history will shew us, that the fate of the czarowitz was too unfortunate, for the birth of a son to this prince to be looked upon as a happiness.