Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden

by Voltaire

The Czar’s behaviour was just the opposite: as he was not named but only hinted at by distant references in the letters of Gortz and Gyllemburg, he wrote a long letter full of congratulations to the King of England on the discovery, with assurances of his good-will. King George received his protestations with incredulity, but pretended to believe them. A plot laid by private men is at an end when once discovered, but where kings are concerned a discovery only makes it go further. The Czar came to Paris in 1717, and did not spend all his time in viewing the wonders of art and nature there: the academies, public libraries, cabinets of the antiquaries and royal palaces. He made a proposal to the Regent which, had it been accepted, would have put the finishing touch to the greatness of Russia. It was this: to himself ally with the King of Sweden, who would yield many countries to him, to take from the Danes their power in the Baltic, to weaken England by a civil war, and to attract to Russia all the trade of the North. He had thoughts, too, of setting up Stanislas against King Augustus, so that when the fire was kindled in all directions he could fan the flame or damp it as he saw fit. With these views he proposed to the King’s Regent to mediate between Sweden and Russia, and to make an offensive and defensive alliance with them and Spain. The treaty, though so natural and so useful to the nations concerned, putting into their hands the balancing of power in Europe, was yet rejected by Orleans, for he did just the opposite and made a league with the Emperor and the King of England.

Political motives were then so powerful with all princes that the Czar was going to declare war against his old friend Augustus, and to help Charles his mortal enemy; while France, for the sake of the English and Germans, was going to declare war against a grandson of Louis XIV, after having so long supported him at great expenditure of blood and treasure against those very enemies. All that the Czar could obtain was that the Regent should interpose for the freeing of Baron Gortz and Gyllemburg. He returned to Russia about the end of June, having shown a rare example of an emperor travelling to improve his mind. But what most of the French people saw of him was a rough, unpolished exterior, the result of his education, while they were blind to the legislator and the genius who had founded a new nation. What he had sought for in Orleans he soon found in Alberoni, who governed all Spain. Alberoni wanted to restore the Pretender: first as the minister of Spain, so ill-used by the English, and secondly because he had a personal quarrel with the Duke of Orleans for his close alliance with England against Spain; besides, he was a priest of that Church for which the Pretender’s father had lost his crown.

The Duke of Ormond, as unpopular in England as the Duke of Marlborough was admired, had left the country at the time of George’s accession, and was now in Spain. He went with full powers from the King of Spain to meet the Czar, in Courland, accompanied by a certain D’Irnegan, an Englishman of ability and daring. The business was to ask the Princess Anna, the Czar’s daughter, for marriage with James’s son, in the hopes that such an alliance would bring the Czar over to the King’s side. Baron Gortz, among his other schemes, had intended this lady for the Duke of Holstein, who did marry her later. As soon as he heard of the Duke of Ormond’s plan he grew jealous and did what he could to defeat it.

He left prison in August with the Count Gyllemburg, without any apology from the Swedish to the English King. At the same time the English ambassador and his family were released at Stockholm, where their treatment had been a great deal worse than Gyllemburg’s in London.

Gortz at liberty was an implacable enemy, for besides his other aims he now sought vengeance. He went post-haste to the Czar, who was now better pleased with him than ever, for he undertook to remove in less than three months all obstacles to a peace with Sweden. He took up a map which the Czar had drawn himself, and, drawing a line from Wibourg, by Lake Ladoga, up to the frozen ocean, promised to bring his master to part with all that lay east of that line, besides Carelia, Ingria, and Livonia. Then he mentioned the marriage of the Czar’s daughter to the Duke of Holstein, holding out hopes that the Duke would readily give his country instead, and if once he became a member of the Empire the Imperial crown would, of course, come to him or some of his descendants. The Czar named the isle of Aland for the conferences between Osterman and Gortz; he asked the English Duke of Ormond to withdraw lest the English Court should take alarm. But D’Irnegan, his confidant, remained in the town with many precautions, for he only went out at night and never saw the Czar’s ministers but in the disguise of either a peasant or a Tartar.

As soon as the Duke of Ormond went, the Czar impressed upon the King his courtesy in having sent away the chief partisan of the Pretender, and Baron Gortz returned to Sweden with great hopes of success.

He found his master at the head of 30,000 troops with all the coast guarded by militia. The King needed nothing but money, but he had no credit at home or abroad. France, under the Duke of Orleans, would give him none. He was promised money from Spain, but that country was not yet in a position to support him.

Baron Gortz then tried a project he had tried before. He gave copper the same value as silver, so that a copper coin whose intrinsic value was a halfpenny might, with the royal mark, pass for thirty or forty pence, just as the governors of besieged towns have sometimes paid their soldiers with leather money till they could get better. Such expedients may be useful in a free country, and have often been the salvation of a republic, but they are sure to ruin a monarchy, for the people quickly lose confidence, the minister is unable to keep faith, the money paper increases, individuals bury their specie, and the whole plan fails, often with disastrous results. This was the case in Sweden. Baron Gortz had paid out his new coin with discretion, but was soon carried beyond what he had intended by forces he could not check. Everything became excessively dear, so that he was obliged to multiply his copper coin. The more there was of it the less was its value. Sweden was inundated with this false money, and one and all complained of Gortz. So great was the veneration of the people for Charles that they could not hate him, so the weight of their displeasure fell on the minister who, as a foreigner and financier, was sure to suffer their opprobrium.

A tax that he arranged on the clergy gave the final touch to the universal hatred; priests are only too ready to plead that their cause is God’s, and publicly declared him an atheist, because he asked for their money. The new coins were embossed with the figure of heathen gods, and hence they called them the gods of Gortz.

The ministry joined in the universal hatred of him, all the more ardently because they were powerless. None in the country liked him except the King, whom his unpopularity confirmed in his affection. He placed absolute confidence in him, giving him also his entire confidence at home. He trusted to him, too, all negotiations with the Czar, especially as to the conference at Aland, which of all things he wished to urge on with the greatest haste.