Jan.-July 1762. it with sword bare !"-but Peter's wits were all flying miscellaneously about, and he could resolve on nothing. Peter and his Czarina never met more. Saturday (tomorrow), he abdicates; drives over to Peterhof, expecting, as per bargain, interview with his Wife; freedom to retire to Holstein, and "every sort of kindness compatible with his situation:" but is met there instead, on the staircases, by brutal people, who tear the orders off his coat, at length the very clothes off his back,and pack him away to Ropscha, a quiet Villa some miles off, to sit silent there till Orlof and Company have considered. Consideration is: "To Holstein? He has an Anti-Danish Russian Army just now in that neighbourhood; he will not be safe in Holstein;-where will he be safe?" Saturday 17th, Peter's seventh day in Ropscha, the Orlofs (Scarred Orlof, and Four other miscreants, one of them a Prince, one a Playactor) came over, and murdered poor Peter, in a treacherous, and even bungling and disgusting, and altogether hideous manner. "A glass of burgundy" (poisoned burgundy), "your Highness?" said they, at dinner with his poor Highness. On the back of which, the burgundy having failed and been found out, came grappling and hauling, trampling, shrieking, and at last strangulation. Surely the Devil will reward such a Five of his Elect?— But we detain Herr Büsching: it is still only Friday morning, 9th of the month; and the Czarina's Hackney Coach, in the manner of a comet and tail, has just gone into other streets: 'After this terrible uproar had left our quarter, I hastened 'to the Danish Ambassador, Count Haxthausen, who lived near 'me, to bring him the important news that the Czar was said to 'be dead. The Count was just about to burn a mass of Papers, fearing the mob would plunder his house; but he did not pro'ceed with it now, and thanked Heaven for saving his Country. 'His Secretary of Legation, my friend Schumacher, gave me all 'the money he had in his pockets, to distribute amongst the poor; ' and I returned home. Directly after, there passed our house, 6 at a rate as if the horses were running away, a common two'horse coach, in which sat Head-Tutor (Ober-Hofmeister) von 'Panin with the Grand Duke' (famous Czar Paul, that is to be), 'who was still in his nightgown,' poor frightened little boy!— Jan.-July 1762. 'Not long after, I saw some of the Foot-guards, in the public street near the Winter Palace, selling, at rates dog-cheap, their 'new uniforms after the Prussian cut, which they had stript off; 'whilst others, singing merrily, carried about, stuck on the top of their muskets, or on their bayonets, their new grenadier caps ' of Prussian fashion.58 I saw several soldiers, out on errand or otherwise, seizing the coaches they met in the streets, and driving on in them. Others appropriated the eatables which "hucksters carried about in baskets. But, in all this wild tumult, 'nobody was killed; and only at Oranienbaum a few Holstein 'soldiers got wounded by some low Russians, in their wantonness. July 11th, the disorder amongst the soldiers was at its height; yet still much less than might have been expected. Many of them entered the houses of Foreigners, and demanded money. Seeing a number of them come into my house, I hastily put a quantity of roubles and half-roubles in my pocket, and went out with a servant, especially with a cheerful face, 'to meet them,'-and no harm was done. 6 6 Saturday, July 17th, was the day of the Czar's death; on 'the same 17th, the Empress was informed of it; and next day, his body was brought from Ropscha to the Convent of St. 'Alexander Newski, near Petersburg. Here it lay in state three days; nay, an Imperial Manifesto even ordered that the last 'honours and duty be paid to it. July 20th, I drove thither 'with my Wife; and to be able to view the body more minutely, we passed twice through the room where it lay' (An uncommonly broad neckcloth on it, did you observe?) "Owing to the rapid dissolution, it had to be interred on the following day :and it was a touching circumstance that this happened to be the very day on which the Czar had fixed to start from Petersburg on his Campaign against Denmark.'59 6 Catharine, one must own with a shudder, has not attained the Autocracy of All the Russias gratis. Let us hope she would once,-till driven upon a dire alter 58 See in Hermann (v. 291) the Saxon Ambassador's Report. Jan.-July 1762. native,―have herself shuddered to purchase at such a price. A kind of horror haunts one's notion of her redhanded brazen-faced Orlofs and her, which all the cosmetics of the world will never quite cover. And yet, on the spot, in Petersburg at the moment-! Read this Clipping from Smelfungus, on a collateral topic: 'In Büsching's Magazine are some Love-letters from the old 'Marshal Münnich to Catharine just after this event, which are 'psychologically curious. Love-letters, for they partake of that 'character; though the man is 82, and has had such breakages ' and vicissitudes in this Earth. Alive yet, it would seem; and 'full of ambitions. Unspeakably beautiful is this young Woman 'to him; radiant as ox-eyed Juno, as Diana of the silver bow,'such a power in her to gratify the avarices, ambitions, cupidities ' of an insatiable old fellow: Oh divine young Empress, Aurora ' of bright Summer epochs, rosy-fingered daughter of the Sun,— " grant me the governing of This, the administering of That: 6 and see what a thing I will make of it (I, an inventive old gentleman), for your Majesty's honour and glory, and my own advantage !60-Innumerable persons of less note than Mün'nich have their Biographies, and are known to the reading public and in all barbers'-shops, if that were an advantage to 'them. Very considerable, this Münnich, as a soldier, for one thing. And surely had very strange adventures; an original 'German character withal :-about the stature of Belleisle, for example; and not quite unlike Belleisle, in some of his ways? Came originally from the swamps of Oldenburg, or Lower 'Weser Country,-son of a Deichgräfe (Ditch-Superintendent) 'there. Requiescant in oblivious silence, Belleisle and he; it is 'better than being lied of, and maundered of, and blotched and 'blundered of. 'Biographies were once rhythmic, earnest as death or as life, earnest as transcendant human Insight risen to the Singing * Büsching, Magazin für die neue Historie und Geographie (Halle, Year 1782), xvi. 413-477 (22 Letters, and only thrice or so a word of Response from " ma Divinité:" dates, 'Narva, 4th August 1762'... 'Petersburg, 3d October 1762'). ( Jan.-July 1762. 'pitch; some Homer, nay some Psalmist or Evangelist, spokes'man of reverent Populations, was the Biographer. Rhythmic, 'with exactitude, investigation to the very marrow; this, or else oblivion, Biography should now, and at all times, be; but is 'not, by any manner of means. With what results is visible 6 enough, if you will look! Human Stupor, fallen into the dis'honest, lazy, and unflogged condition, is truly an awful thing.' Catharine did not persist in her Anti-Prussian determination. July 9th, the Manifesto had been indignantly emphatic on Prussia; July 22d, in a Note to Goltz from the Czarina, it was all withdrawn again.61 Looking into the deceased Czar's Papers, she found that Friedrich's Letters to him had contained nothing of wrong or offensive; always excellent advices, on the contrary,-advice, among others, To be conciliatory to his clever-witted Wife, and to make her his ally, not his opponent, in living and reigning. In Königsberg (July 16th, seven days after July 9th), the Russian Governor, just on the point of quitting, emitted Proclamation, to everybody's horror: "No; altered all that; under pain of death, your Oath to Russia still valid!" Which, for the next ten days, or till his new Proclamation, made such a Königsberg of it as may be imagined. The sight of those Letters is understood to have turned the scale; which had hung wavering till July 22d in the Czarina's mind. "Can it be good," she might privately think withal, "to begin our reign by kindling a foolish War again?" How Friedrich received the news of July 9th, and into what a crisis it threw him, we shall soon see. His Campaign had begun July 1st;-and has been summoning us home, into its horizon, for some time. CHAPTER XI. SEVENTH CAMPAIGN OPENS. FRIEDRICH'S plan of Campaign is settled long since: Recapture Schweidnitz; clear Silesia of the enemy; Silesia and all our own Dominions clear, we can then stand fencible against the Austrian perseverances. Peace, one day, they must grant us. The general tide of European things is changed by these occurrences in Petersburg and London. Peace is evidently near. France and England are again beginning to negotiate; no Pitt now to be rigorous. The tide of War has been wavering at its summit for two years past; and now, with this of Russia, and this of Bute instead of Pitt, there is ebb everywhere, and all Europe determining for peace. Steady at the helm, as heretofore, a Friedrich, with the world-current in his favour, may hope to get home after all. Austrian Headquarters had been at Waldenburg, under Loudon or his Lieutenants, all Winter. Loudon returned thither from Vienna, April 7th; but is not to command in chief, this Year,-Schweidnitz still sticking in some people's throats: "Dangerous; a man with such rash practices, rapidities and Pandour tendencies!" Daun is to command in Silesia; Loudon, under him, obscure to us henceforth, and inoffensive to Official people. Reichs Army shall take charge of Saxony; nominally a Reichs Army, though there are 35,000 Austrians in it, as the soul of it, under some Serbelloni, |