VOLTAIRE
BOOK
V
The
state of the Ottoman Porte—Charles retires to Bender—His occupations—His
intrigues at the Porte—His plans—Augustus restored—The King of Denmark attacks
Sweden—All the King’s other territories are invaded—The Czar keeps festival at
Moscow—The affair of Pruth—History of the Czarina.
ACHMET
the third was then Emperor of the Turks. He had been placed on the throne in
1703, replacing his brother Mustapha, by a revolution like that which in
England transferred the crown from James II to his son-in-law William. Mustapha
was under the control of his Mufti, whom the people hated, and made his whole
empire revolt against him. His army, with which he had reckoned to punish the
malcontents, joined them, and he was seized, unceremoniously deposed, and his
brother taken from the seraglio to be made Sultan, almost without bloodshed.
Achmet confined the deposed Sultan in Constantinople, where he survived for
several years, to the great surprise of the Turks, who had been accustomed to
see the dethronement of their kings followed by their death. The only return
the new Sultan made to the ministers, the generals, the officers of
janissaries, and to those who had part in the revolution, was to execute them
one after the other, for fear they should subsequently attempt another
revolution. By the sacrifice of so many brave men he weakened the empire but
strengthened his throne. Henceforth his mind was bent on amassing treasure. He
was the first of the sultans who ventured to make a small alteration in the
money, and to impose a new tax; but he was obliged to give up both these plans
for fear of a rebellion, for the rapacity and tyranny of the Grand Seignior is
felt only by the officers of the empire, who, whoever they may be, are slaves
of the sultan; but the rest of the Mussulmans live in absolute security, with
no fears for their lives, fortunes and liberty.
Such
was the Emperor of the Turks, to whom the King of Sweden fled for refuge. He
wrote to him as soon as he arrived in his territory. His letter is dated 13th
of July, 1709. Several different copies of it are extant, which are all
condemned as mere fabrications, but of all those which I have seen there is not
one which does not display pride, and which was not rather in accordance with
his courage than with his situation.
The
Sultan did not reply till towards the end of September. The pride of the
Ottoman Porte made Charles feel the gulf that it considered existed between the
Turkish Emperor and a Christian fugitive and conquered King of part of
Scandinavia.
Charles
was, as a matter of fact, treated as an honourable prisoner. But he formed the design of turning the Ottoman arms against his
enemies; he believed he could subdue Poland again, and reduce Russia to
submission; he sent an envoy to Constantinople, but his best helper in his
great project was Poniatowski, who went to Constantinople unofficially, and
soon made himself indispensable to the King, agreeable to the Porte, and
dangerous to the grand vizirs themselves.
One
of those who seconded his designs most cleverly was a Portuguese doctor,
Fonseca, living at Constantinople, a learned and able man, who had knowledge of
men as well as of his own art, and whose profession gave him access to the
Court, and often intimacy with the vizirs. I knew him well at Paris, and he
confirmed all the details which I am going to relate. Count Poniatowski told me
himself that he was clever enough to get letters through to the Sultana Valida,
mother of the reigning Emperor, who had been at one time ill-used by her son,
but was now beginning to recover her influence in the seraglio. A Jewess, who
was often with the princess, was perpetually talking of the King of Sweden’s
exploits, and charmed her by reciting them. The Sultana, by a secret
inclination which most women feel for extraordinary men, even without having
ever seen them, took the King’s part openly in the seraglio and called him “her
lion.” “When will you,” she said sometimes to the Sultan her son, “help my lion
to devour this Czar?” She even went beyond the strict rules of the
seraglio so far as to write several letters with her own hand to Count
Poniatowski, who still possesses them.
However,
the King was taken to Bender with pomp, across the desert formerly called the
desert of Getæ. The Turks took care that his journey
should be made as agreeable as possible; many Poles, Swedes and Cossacks, who
had escaped from the Russians, came from different directions to increase his
train. When he arrived at Bender he had 1,800 men with him, all fed and lodged,
they and their horses, at the expense of the Grand Seignior.
The
King chose to encamp near Bender rather than in the town. The Serasquier, Jussuf, had a
magnificent tent pitched for him, and also furnished all his suite with tents;
some time after the King built a house on this spot, and his officers followed
his example. The soldiers, too, raised barracks, so that the camp became
gradually a little town.
The
King was not yet cured of his wound, and had to have a decayed bone removed
from his leg, but as soon as he could mount a horse he renewed his usual
exercises, rising at sunrise, tiring out three horses a day, and making his
soldiers drill. His only amusement was an occasional game of chess. If details
are typical of character, it may be remarked that he always brought out his
king in the game; he used him more than his other pieces, and so always
lost the game.
At
Bender he found plenty of everything about him, rare good fortune for a
conquered and fugitive king; for besides more than enough provisions and the
500 crowns a day he got from the Ottoman generosity, he got money also from
France, and borrowed of the Constantinople merchants. Part of this money was
used to carry on the intrigues in the seraglio, in buying the vizirs or
procuring their downfall; the rest he distributed profusely among his officers
and the janissaries who guarded him at Bender.
Grothusen, his favourite and
treasurer, dispensed these bounties; he was a man who, contrary to the custom
of a man of his station, was as eager to give as his master. One day he brought
him an account of 60,000 crowns in two lines, “10,000 given to the Swedes and
janissaries, and the rest eaten up by me.” “This,” said the King, “is the kind
of balance-sheet that I like; Mullern makes me read
whole pages for the sum of 10,000 francs, I like Grothusen’s laconic style much better.” One of his old officers, thought to be slightly
covetous, complained to the King that he gave everything to Grothusen.
“I give money,” answered the King, “to none but those who know how to make use
of it.” This generosity often reduced him to such straits that he had nothing
to give. Better economy in his liberality would have been more to his
advantage and no less honourable, but it was the
Prince’s failing to carry all the virtues to excess.
Many
strangers hurried from Constantinople to see him. The Turks and the neighbouring Tartars came in crowds; all honoured and admired him. His rigid abstinence from wine,
and his regularity in attending public prayers twice a day, spread the report
that he was a true Mussulman. They burned to march with him to the conquest of
Russia.
During
this life of leisure at Bender, which was longer than he had expected, he
developed unconsciously a great taste for books. Baron Fabricius, nobleman of
the duchy of Holstein, an agreeable youth who had the gaiety and the ready wit
which appeals to princes, induced him to read. He had been sent to him as envoy
from the Duke of Holstein, to protect the interests of the latter, and
succeeded by the amiability of his manner.
He
had read all the French authors, and persuaded the King to read the tragedies
of Corneille, and of Racine, and the works of Despreaux;
the King did not at all enjoy the latter’s satires, which are by no means his
best performances, but he appreciated his other writings, and when he read the
passage in the eighth satire, where he calls Alexander a “frantic madman,” he
tore out the leaf.
Of
all the French tragedies Mithradates pleased him most, because the condition
of the King, conquered and breathing forth vengeance, was like his own. He
pointed out to M. Fabricius the passages that struck him, but he would read
nothing aloud, nor venture on a word of French. Even afterwards, when he met M. Desaleurs, the French ambassador to the Porte, a
person of distinction, who only knew his mother-tongue, he answered him in
Latin, and when the ambassador protested that he did not understand a word of
that language he called for an interpreter, rather than express himself in
French. Such were the occupations of Charles at Bender, where he was waiting
till a Turkish army should come to his assistance.
His
ambassador presented memoirs in his name to the Grand Vizir, Poniatowski, and
supported them with his readily-acquired prestige. The intrigue succeeded
entirely; he wore only Turkish dress, and he insinuated himself everywhere; the
Grand Seignior had him presented with a purse containing 1,000 ducats, and the
Grand Vizir said to him, “I will take your King with one hand, and a sword in
the other, and I will lead him to Moscow at the head of 200,000 men.” But the
first minister soon changed his mind. The King could only treat, while the Czar
could pay; he did pay, and it was the money that he gave that Charles used; the
military chest taken at Pultawa provided new arms
against the vanquished. No more mention was made of making war on Russia.
The Czar’s influence was all-powerful at the Porte; they granted honours and privileges to his ambassador at Constantinople
such as had never been enjoyed by a previous envoy; he was allowed to have a
seraglio, that is, a palace in the quarters of the Franks, and to converse with
foreign ministers. The Czar even felt strong enough to demand that Mazeppa
should be handed over to him, just as Charles had demanded Patkul. Chourlouli-Ali-Pasha now found it impossible to
refuse anything to a Prince who made demands with millions behind him. Thus the
same Grand Vizir who had solemnly promised to take the King of Sweden to Russia
with 200,000 men, had the impudence to propose to him that he should consent to
the betrayal of Mazeppa. Charles was enraged at the request. It is hard to say
how far the Vizir would have carried the matter had not Mazeppa, who was then
seventy years old, died at this juncture.
The
King’s grief and resentment increased when he heard that Tolstoy, who had
become ambassador from the Czar to the Porte, was served in public by the
Swedes who had been enslaved at Pultawa, and that
these brave men were daily sold in the market-place at Constantinople. Besides,
the Russian ambassador remarked aloud that the Mussulman troops at Bender were
there rather as a guard to the King than for his honour.
Charles,
abandoned by the Grand Vizir, and conquered by the Czar’s money in Turkey, as
he had been by his arms in Ukrania, found himself
deluded, scorned by the Porte, and a kind of prisoner among the Tartars. His
followers began to despair. He alone remained firm and did not show dejection
even for a moment. He thought that the Sultan was ignorant of the intrigues of
his Grand Vizir; he determined to inform him, and Poniatowski undertook this
bold task. Every Friday the Grand Seignior went to the mosque, surrounded by Solacks, a kind of guard, whose turbans were so high that
they hid the Sultan from the people. Any one who had a petition to present to
the Sultan, must mingle with these guards, and hold the petition up in the air.
Sometimes the Sultan deigned to take it himself, but generally he bade an aga
take charge of it, and afterwards, on his return from the mosque, had the
petitions laid before him. There was no fear that any one would importune him
with unnecessary petitions, or petitions about trifling affairs, for at
Constantinople they write less in a year than at Paris in a day. Much less dare
any one present petitions against the ministers, to whom the Sultan hands them
generally without reading them. But Poniatowski had no other means of conveying
the King of Sweden’s complaints to the Grand Seignior. He drew up a strong
indictment of the Grand Vizir. M. de Feriol, then Turkish ambassador from
France, got it translated into Turkish. A Greek was hired to present it;
he mingled himself with the King’s guards, and held up the paper so high, and
so persistently, that the Sultan saw it and took it himself.
Some
days after, the Sultan sent the King of Sweden, as the only answer to his
complaints, twenty-five Arabian horses, one of which had carried his Highness,
and was covered with a saddle enriched with precious stones, and with massive
gold stirrups. With this present he sent a polite letter, couched in general
terms, and such as seemed to show that the Vizir had acted with the Sultan’s
orders. Chourlouli, too, who knew how to dissemble,
sent five fine horses to the King.
Charles
said haughtily to the man who brought them, “Return to your master and say that
I do not receive presents from my enemies.” M. Poniatowski, who had already had
the courage to get a petition against the Grand Vizir presented, had formed the
bold plan of having him deposed; he knew that the Vizir was no favourite of the Sultan’s mother, and that he was hated
both by Kislar-aga, the chief of the black eunuchs,
and by the aga of the janissaries. So he urged them all three to speak against
him. It was a strange sight to see a Christian, a Pole, an unaccredited agent
of the King of Sweden who had refuged with the Turks, caballing almost openly
at the Porte, against a Viceroy of the Ottoman Empire, and one who was, too,
both a useful minister and a favourite of his
master.
Poniatowski
would never have succeeded, and the mere notion of his design would have cost
him his life, had not a stronger power than those on his side given the last
blow to the Grand Vizir Chourlouli’s fortune. The
Sultan had a young favourite, who has since governed
the Ottoman Empire and been killed in Hungary in 1716, at the battle of Petervaradin, gained over the Turks by Prince Eugene of
Savoy. His name was Coumourgi-Ali-Pasha; his birth
much the same as that of Chourlouli; he was the son
of a coal-heaver—as the name signified—for Coumir is
Turkish for coal. The Emperor Achmet II, uncle of Achmet III, meeting Coumourgi as a child in a wood near Adrianople, was so
struck by his great beauty that he had him taken to the seraglio. Mustapha,
Mahomet’s eldest son and successor, was taken with him, and Achmet III made him
his favourite; he was then only selic-tar-aga,
sword-bearer to the crown. His extreme youth did not allow him to stand for the
office of Grand Vizir, but his ambition was to make it. The Swedish faction
could never gain this favourite; he was never a
friend of King Charles, or of any other Christian prince, or their ministers,
but on this occasion he was unconsciously of service to the King. He united
with the Sultana Valida, and the leading officer of the Porte, to bring about
the fall of Chourlouli, whom they all hated.
This old minister, who had served his master long and well, was the victim of
the caprice of a boy and the intrigues of a stranger. He was deprived of his
dignity and his wealth, his wife, daughter of the last Sultan, taken from him,
and he himself banished to Cassa in Crimean-Tartary. The bul,
i.e. the seal of the Empire, was given to Numan Couprougli,
grandson of the great Couprougli who took Candia.
This new Vizir was what misinformed Christians hardly believe a Turk can be, a
man of incorruptible virtue and a scrupulous observer of the law, which he
often set up in opposition to the will of the Sultan.
He
would not hear of a war against Russia, which he thought unjust and
unnecessary, but the same respect for the law which prevented him from waging
war against the Czar, made him punctilious in the duty of hospitality to the
King of Sweden. “The law,” he said to his master, “forbids you to attack the
Czar, who has done you no harm, but it commands you to help the King of Sweden,
who is an unfortunate Prince in your dominions.”
He
sent his Majesty 800 purses (a purse being worth 500 crowns), and advised him
to return peaceably into his own country, through the territories of the
Emperor of Germany, or in some French vessels that were then lying in the harbour at Constantinople, and which M. de Feriol, the
French ambassador, offered to Charles to take him to Marseilles. Count
Poniatowski continued negotiations with the minister, and gained in the
negotiations an ascendancy of which Russian gold could no longer deprive him in
dealing with an incorruptible minister. The Russian faction thought that the
best plan was to poison such a dangerous diplomat. They bribed one of his
servants, who was to give him poison in his coffee; the crime was discovered in
time; they found the poison in a little vial which they took to the Grand
Seignior; the poisoner was judged in full divan, and condemned to the galleys,
because, by Turkish law, crimes that have failed of execution are never
punished by death.
Charles,
still persuaded that sooner or later he would succeed in making the Turkish
Empire declare against that of Russia, would agree to none of the proposals for
his return in peace to his own dominions; he persisted in pointing out to the
Turks as dangerous the very Czar whom he had long despised; his emissaries kept
up their insinuations that Peter the Great was aiming at gaining control of
shipping in the Black Sea; that, after having beaten the Cossacks, he had
designs on the Crimea. Sometimes his representations roused the Porte,
sometimes the Russian minister nullified their effect.
While
he was thus letting his fate depend on the caprice of a vizir, and was forced
to put up with the affronts as well as accept the favours of a foreign power—while he was presenting petitions to the Sultan, and living
on hospitality in a desert—his enemies roused themselves to attack his kingdom.
The
battle of Pultawa was at once the signal for a
revolution in Poland. King Augustus returned thither, protesting against his
abdication and the Peace of Altranstadt, and openly
accusing Charles, whom he now no longer feared, of robbery and cruelty. He
imprisoned Finsten and Imof, his plenipotentiaries,
who had signed the abdication, as if in so doing they had exceeded their orders
and betrayed their master. His Saxon troops, which had been the excuse for his
dethronement, brought him back to Warsaw with most of the Polish counts who had
formerly sworn fidelity to him, had afterwards done the same to Stanislas, and
were about to renew their oath to Augustus. Siniawski himself joined his party,
forgetting the idea he had had of making himself King, and was content as Grand
General of the crown. Fleming, his first minister, who had been obliged to
leave Saxony for a time, for fear of being given up as Patkul had been, managed matters at that time so as to bring over a great part of the
Polish nobility to his master.
The
Pope released his people from the oath of allegiance they had sworn to
Stanislas. This step of the Holy Father, taken at the right time, [Pg 195]and
supported by Augustus’s forces, had no small weight in establishing the
interests of the Court of Rome in Poland, where they then had no wish to
dispute with the sovereign pontiff the chimerical right of meddling with the
temporalities of kings.
Every
one was ready to submit to Augustus’s authority again, and received without the
least opposition a useless absolution which the Nuncio did not fail to
represent as necessary.
Charles’s
power and the greatness of Sweden were now drawing to their last phase. For
some time more than ten crowned heads had viewed the extension of Sweden beyond
her natural boundaries, to the other side of the Baltic, and from the Duna to
the Elbe, with fear and envy. Charles’s fall and absence awakened the interests
and jealousy of all these princes, after they had lain dormant for a long time
through treaties and inability to break them.
The
Czar, who was more powerful than them all together, making the best use of his
victory, took Wibourg, and all Carelia,
inundated Finland with troops, besieged Riga, and sent a corps into Poland to
help Augustus to recover the throne. The Emperor was then what Charles had once
been—the arbiter of Poland and the North; but he consulted only his own
interests, whereas Charles’s ambitions were always of glory or vengeance. The
Swedish monarch had helped his friends, and overcome his enemies, without
exacting the smallest reward for his victories; but the Czar, rather a prince
than a hero, would not help the King of Poland except on condition that Livonia
should be given up to him, and that this province, for the sake of which Augustus
had begun war, should belong to the Russians for ever.
The
King of Denmark, forgetting the treaty of Travendal as Augustus had that of Altranstadt, had from that
time thoughts of making himself master of the Duchies of Holstein and Bremen,
to which he renewed his claim. The King of Prussia had long-standing claims to
Swedish Pomerania which he wished to revive; the Duke of Mecklenburg was
provoked at seeing Sweden still in possession of Wismar, the finest city in his
duchy. This Prince had married the Emperor of Russia’s niece, and his uncle was
only looking for an excuse to establish himself in Germany, after the example
of the Swedes. George, Elector of Hanover, also wanted to enrich himself from
the spoiling of Charles. This Bishop of Munster, too, would have been glad to
have made some claims had he possessed the means to do so.
There
were about 12,000 or 13,000 Swedes defending Pomerania, and the other districts
which Charles held in Germany; here was the seat of war. But this storm alarmed
the Emperor and his allies. It is a law of the Empire that whoever invades one
of the provinces should be considered an enemy to the whole Germanic body.
But
there was still greater difficulty involved, for all these princes, except the
Czar, were then leagued against Louis XIV, whose power had for some time been
as formidable to the Empire as that of Charles himself.
At
the beginning of the century Germany found herself hard pressed between the
French on the south and the Swedes on the north. The French had crossed the
Danube, and the Swedes the Oder; if their victorious forces had united, the
Empire would have been lost. But the same fatality that had ruined Sweden had
also humbled France; yet some resources still remained to Sweden, and Louis
carried on the war with vigour, though
unsuccessfully. If Pomerania and the Duchy of Bremen became the seat of war, it
was to be feared that the Empire would suffer, and being weakened on that side
would be the less able to withstand Louis. To prevent this, the Princes of
Germany, Queen Anne of England, and the States of Holland, concluded at the
Hague, in 1709, one of the most extraordinary treaties ever signed.
It
was stipulated by these powers that the seat of the war should not be in
Pomerania, nor any other German State, but that Charles might be attacked by
his enemies anywhere else. The King of Poland and the Czar themselves agreed to
this treaty, and had a clause inserted which was as strange as the treaty
itself, to the effect that the 12,000 Swedes in Pomerania should not leave it
to defend their other provinces.
To
safeguard the treaty it was proposed to raise an army, which was to encamp on
the Oder, to maintain this imaginary neutrality. It was an unheard-of thing, to
levy an army to prevent war! Those who were paying the forces were, for the
most part, very much concerned to bring about the war they were pretending to
prevent. The army was, by the treaty, to consist of the troops of the Emperor,
the King of Prussia, the Elector of Hanover, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the
Bishop of Munster.
This
project was, as might be expected, not carried through. The princes who were to
furnish their quota for the army contributed nothing; not two regiments were
formed. There was much talk of neutrality, but no one observed it; and all the
Northern princes who had any controversy with the King of Sweden were left at
full liberty to dispute who should have his spoils.
At
this point the Czar, having stationed his forces in Lithuania and left orders
for carrying on the siege of Riga, returned to Moscow, to show his people a
sight as new as anything he had yet done in his kingdom. It was a triumph
little inferior to that of the ancient Romans. He made his entry into Moscow
under seven triumphal arches, erected in the streets, and adorned with all that
could be produced in that climate, and that the flourishing trade which
his energy had nourished could supply. The procession began with a regiment of
guards, followed by the artillery taken from the Swedes at Lesnow and Pultawa, each piece being drawn by eight horses
with scarlet trappings hanging to the ground. Then came the standards,
kettle-drums, and the colours won at these two
battles, and carried by the officers who had won them; all the spoils were
followed by the Czar’s picked troops. After they had filed past, the litter of
Charles XII, in a chariot made for the purpose, appeared as it had been found
on the battle-field, all shattered by cannon-shot. Behind this litter marched
the prisoners two by two, and among them Count Piper, Prime Minister of Sweden,
the famous Marshal Renschild, Count Levenhaupt, Generals Slipenbak,
Hamilton, and Stackelburg, and all the officers and
soldiers who were later scattered through Russia. Immediately behind them came
the Czar, riding the same horse he had used at Pultawa;
just behind him were the generals who had their share in the success of this
battle; after them came another regiment of guards, and the wagons loaded with
Swedish ammunition brought up the rear.
This
procession was accompanied by the ringing of all the bells in Moscow, by the
sound of drums, kettle-drums and trumpets, and an infinite number of
musical instruments, echoing each other. Volleys were discharged from 200
cannon, to the acclamations of 5,000,000 men, who at every halt of the Czar in
his entry cried, “God save the Emperor our father!”
This
imposing procession increased the people’s veneration for his person, and gave
him greater prestige in their eyes than all the good he had really done them.
In the meantime he continued the blockade of Riga, and the generals subdued the
rest of Livonia and part of Finland. At the same time the King of Denmark came
with his entire fleet to attack Sweden, where he landed with 1,700 men, whom he
left under the command of Count Reventlau.
At
that time Sweden was governed by a regency, composed of some Senators appointed
by the King at his departure from Sweden. The Senatorial body, which regarded
the right of governing as their prerogative, were jealous of the regency. The
State suffered from these divisions, but directly they received news at
Stockholm after Pultawa, that the King was at Bender
in the hands of the Turks and Tartars, and that the Danes had made an attack on
Schoner and had taken the town of Elsingburg, all
jealousy disappeared, and they concentrated on saving Sweden. There were now
very few regulars left, for though Charles had always made his great
expeditions with small armies, yet his innumerable battles for nine years,
the continual necessity for recruits, the maintenance of his garrisons, and the
standing army he was obliged to maintain in Finland, Livonia, Pomerania,
Bremen, and Verden, had cost Sweden, during the course of the war, more than
250,000 men; there were not as many as 8,000 of the veterans who, with raw
forces, were now Sweden’s only resource.
The
nation is born with a passion for war, and every people unconsciously imitate
their King. Nothing was discussed from one end of the country to the other but
the great exploits of Charles and his generals, and of the old regiment which
fought under them at Narva, Duna, Crassau, Pultask, and Hollosin. Thus the
humblest of the Swedes were filled with a spirit of emulation and thirst for
glory. Besides this, they loved their King, were sorry for him, and hated the
Danes thoroughly. In many other countries the peasants are slaves or are
treated as such; here they form part of the body politic, consider themselves
citizens, and think worthy thoughts. So that in a short time these forces
became the best in the North.
By
order of the regency, General Steinbock put himself at the head of 8,000
veteran troops and 12,000 recruits, to pursue the Danes, who were ravaging all
the country round Elsingburg, and had already put
some places far inland under contribution.
There
was neither time nor money to get uniforms for the soldiers; most of the
country labourers came dressed in their linen smocks,
with pistols tied to their girdles by cords. Steinbock, at the head of this
extraordinary army, came up with the Danes three leagues from Elsingburg, on the 10th March, 1710. He intended to rest
his troops some days, to entrench, and to give his raw recruits time to get
accustomed to the enemy; but the peasants clamoured to fight directly they arrived.
Some
officers who were there told me that they saw them almost all foaming with
rage, so great is the Swede’s hatred of the Dane. Steinbock took advantage of
this disposition, which is almost as effective in war as military discipline.
The Danes were attacked, and the strange sight was seen—of which there are,
perhaps, no two other instances—of raw forces equalling in bravery a veteran corps at the first attack. Two regiments of these
undisciplined peasants cut the Danish army to pieces, and left only ten survivors.
The
Danes, entirely routed, retreated under the cannon of Elsingburg.
The passage from Sweden to Zeeland is so short that the King of Denmark heard
of the defeat of his army in Sweden the same day at Copenhagen, and sent his
fleet to bring off the remnant of his army. The Danes hastily left Sweden five
days after the battle, but, being unable to bring away their horses, and not
wishing to leave them to the enemy, they killed them all and fired their
provisions, burning their corn and baggage, and leaving 4,000 wounded in Elsingburg. The majority of these died from the infection
from the large number of dead horses, and from lack of food, which even their
own countrymen deprived them of, lest they should fall into Swedish hands.
At
the same time the peasants of Delecarlia, having
heard in the depths of their forests that the King was prisoner in Turkey, sent
a deputation to the Regency at Stockholm, offering to go, at their own expense,
to rescue their master from the enemy’s hands with a force of 20,000 men. This
proposal, useless as it was, was heard with pleasure, because it proved the
courage and loyalty of the proposers, though it was rejected; and they gave the
King an account of it, when they sent him word about Elsingburg.
King Charles received this cheering news in his camp near Bender, in July 1710,
just after another event which confirmed him in his hopes.
The
Grand Vizir Couprougli, who was opposed to his plans,
was turned out of office after he had been in the ministry two months. Charles
XII’s little Court, and his adherents in Poland, boasted that he made and
removed vizirs, and was governing Turkey from his retreat at Bender. But he had
no hand in the ruin of this favourite.
The
rigid justice of the Vizir, it was said, was the only cause of his fall; his
predecessor had been accustomed to pay the janissaries, not out of the Imperial
treasury, but from the money he got by extortion. Couprougli,
on the other hand, paid them from the treasury. For this Achmet accused him of
putting the subjects’ interest before that of the Emperor. “Your predecessor, Chourlouli,” he said, “managed to find other ways of paying
my troops.” The Grand Vizir replied, “If he had the art of enriching your
Highness by theft, it is an art of which I am proud to be ignorant.”
The
great secrecy observed in the seraglio rarely lets such stories leak out, but
this got known at the time of Couprougli’s fall. The
Vizir’s courage did not cost him his head, because real goodness often forces
even those whom it offends to respect. He had leave to retire to the island of
Negropont.
After
this the Sultan sent for Baltagi Mahomet Pasha of
Syria, who had been Grand Vizir before Chourlouli.
The Baltagis of the seraglio, so called from balta, meaning an axe, are slaves employed to cut wood for
the use of princes of the blood and the Sultana. This Vizir had been baltagi in his youth, and had always retained the name,
according to the custom of the Turks, who are not ashamed to bear the name of
their first profession, their father, or their birthplace. While Baltagi was a servant in the seraglio he was fortunate
enough to do Prince Ahmet some trifling service, that Prince being then a
prisoner of State in the reign of his brother Mustapha. Achmet gave one of his
female slaves, of whom he had been very fond, to Baltagi Mahomet, when he became Sultan. This woman made her husband Grand Vizir by her
intrigues; another intrigue deposed him, while a third made him Grand Vizir
again. Baltagi had no sooner received the seal of the
Turkish empire than he found the party of the King of Sweden dominant in the
seraglio. The Sultana Valida, the Sultan’s favourite,
the chief of the black eunuchs, and the aga of the janissaries, were all in favour of war against the Czar. The Sultan had decided on
it, and the very first order he gave the Grand Vizir was to go and attack the
Russians with 200,000 men. Baltagi had never been in
the field, but was no idiot, as the Swedes, out of pure malice, have
represented him to be. When he received from the Sultan a sabre set with precious stones, “Your Highness knows,” he said, “that I have been
brought up to use an axe and fell wood, and not to wield a sword, or to command
armies. I will do my best to serve you; but if I fail, remember that I have
begged you not to lay it to my charge.” The Sultan assured him of his favour, and the Vizir prepared to carry out his orders. The
Ottoman Porte’s first step was to imprison the Russian ambassador in the castle
of seven towers.
It is
the custom of the Turks to begin by seizing those ministers against whom they
declare war. Strict observers of hospitality in every other respect, in this
they violate the most sacred of international laws. They act thus unfairly
under the pretext of fairness, persuading themselves and trying to persuade
others that they never undertake any but a just war, because it is consecrated
by the approbation of their Muphti. Thus they look
upon themselves as armed to chastise the violation of treaties (which they
often break themselves), and argue that the ambassadors of kings at variance
with them are to be punished as accomplices of their masters’ treachery.
Besides this, they affect a ridiculous contempt towards Christian princes and
their ambassadors, whom they regard as only consuls and merchants.
The
Kan of Crimean-Tartary had orders to be ready with 400,000 Tartars. This Prince
rules over Nagai, Bulziac, part of Circassia and all
the Crimean district called by the ancients the Tauric Chersonese, whither the Greeks carried their commerce and their arms, building
large cities there; and whither the Genoese afterwards penetrated, when they
were masters of the trade of Europe.
In
this country there are the ruins of Grecian cities, and some Genoese monuments
still subsisting in the midst of desolation and savagery. The Kan is called
Emperor by his own subjects, but in spite of this grand title he is a mere
slave to the Porte. The fact that they have Ottoman blood in their veins, and
the right they have to the Turkish Empire on the extinction of the race of the
Sultan, make their family respected and their persons formidable even to the Sultan
himself: that is why the Sultan dare not destroy the race of the Kans of
Tartary; but he hardly ever allows them to continue on the throne to an
advanced age. The neighbouring pashas spy on their
conduct, their territories are surrounded by janissaries, their wishes thwarted
by the Grand Vizir, and their designs always suspected. If the Tartars complain
of the Kan, this is an excuse for the Porte to depose him; if he is popular
among them it is regarded as a crime, for which he will be even more readily
punished. Thus all of them leave the throne for exile, and finish their days at
Rhodes, which is generally both their place of exile and their grave.
The
Tartars, their subjects, are the most dishonest folk in the world; yet, at the
same time (inconceivable as it seems), the most hospitable. They go a fifty
leagues’ journey to fall upon a caravan and to destroy towns, but if any
stranger happens to pass through their country, he is not only received and
lodged everywhere, and his expenses paid, but everywhere the inhabitants strive
for the honour of having him as guest.
The
master of the house, his wife and daughters vie with one another in his
service. Their ancestors, the Scythians, transmitted to them this inviolable
regard for hospitality; and they still retain it, because the scarcity of
strangers in their country, and the cheapness of provisions, makes this duty in
no way burdensome to them. When the Tartars go to war with the Ottoman army
they are maintained by the Sultan, but receive no other pay but their booty;
this makes them more ardent at pillage than at regular warfare.
The
Kan, bribed by the presents and intrigues of the King of Sweden, got permission
to have the general rendezvous of troops at Bender, under the King’s eye, that
he might realize that the war was being made for him. The new vizir, Baltagi, not being bound in the same way, would not flatter
a foreign prince so far. He countermanded the order, and the great army was
collected at Adrianople.
The
Turkish troops are not so formidable now as they were when they conquered so
many kingdoms in Asia, Africa and Europe. Then they triumphed over enemies less
strong and worse disciplined than themselves by physical strength, courage and
the force of numbers. But now that Christians understand the art of war better,
they seldom failed to beat the Turks in a drawn battle, even when their forces
are inferior in number. If the Ottoman empire has lately gained some success,
it is only in a contest with the Republic of Venice, reputed more wise
than warlike, defended by strangers, and ill supported by Christian princes,
who are always divided among themselves.
The
janissaries and spahis attack in disorder, and are incapable of action under
command, or of a rally; their cavalry, which should be excellent, considering
the good breed and agility of their horses, is unable to sustain the shock of
German cavalry; their infantry were not yet able to use the fixed bayonet;
besides this, the Turks have had no great general since Couprougli,
who conquered Candia. A slave brought up in the idleness and the silence of the
seraglio, made a vizir through favouritism, and a general
against his own inclinations, headed a raw army, without experience and without
discipline, against Russian troops, with twelve years’ experience in war, and
proud of having conquered the Swedes.
The
Czar, according to all appearances, must have vanquished Baltagi,
but he made the same mistake with regard to the Turks as the King of Sweden was
guilty of in his own case; that is, he had too poor an opinion of his enemy.
Upon the news of the Turkish preparations he left Moscow; and having given
orders to change the siege of Riga into a blockade, he drew up his army of
24,000 men on the Polish frontier. With this army he marched to Moldavia and
Wallachia, formerly the country of the Daci, but now inhabited by Greek
Christians, tributary to the Sultan.
Moldavia
was then governed by Prince Cantemir, a Greek by
birth, who had the talents of the ancient Greeks together with a knowledge of
letters and of arms. He was reputedly descended from the famous Timur, famous
under the name of Tamberlain: this genealogy seemed
more distinguished than a Greek one. They proved it from the name of the
conqueror; Timur, they said, is like Temir: the title Kan, which Timur had
before his conquest of Asia, appears again in the name Cantemir:
thus Prince Cantemir is a descendant of Tamberlain; that is the sort of basis on which most
genealogies are built.
To
whatever house Cantemir belonged, he owed all to the
Ottoman Porte. Scarcely had he been invested with his principality than he
betrayed the Emperor his benefactor for the Czar, from whom he had greater
expectations. He believed that the conqueror of Charles XII would easily triumph
over an obscure vizir, with no military experience, who had appointed as his
lieutenant the chief customs officer of Turkey; he reckoned on all Greece
joining his faction, and the Greek priests encouraged him in his treachery. The
Czar made a secret treaty with him, and having received him into his army,
marched up country, and arrived in June 1711 on the northern side of the river Hierasus, now Pruth, near Jazy, the capital of Moldavia.
As
soon as the Grand Vizir heard that Peter had arrived, he left his camp at
once, and following the course of the Danube, was going to cross the river on a
bridge of boats near Saccia, at the same spot where
Darius had built the bridge that bore his name. The Turkish army marched so
rapidly that they soon came in sight of the Russians, with the river Pruth between them.
The
Czar, sure of the Prince of Moldavia, never expected that the subjects might
fail him; but the Moldavians often oppose their interests to those of their
masters. They liked the Turkish rule, which is never fatal except to the
grandees, and pretends a leniency to its tributaries; they were afraid of the
Christians, especially the Russians, who had always used them ill.
Those
who had undertaken to furnish the Russians with provisions made with the Grand
Vizir the same bargain they had made with the Czar, and brought all their
provisions to the Ottoman army. The Wallachians, neighbours of the Moldavians,
showed the same care for the Turks, for to such a degree the remembrance of
former cruelties had alienated their minds from the Russians.
The
Czar, thus frustrated of his hopes, which he had perhaps indulged too readily,
found his army suddenly destitute of food and without forage.
In
the meantime the Turks crossed the river, cut off the Russians, and formed an
entrenched camp in front of them.
It is
strange that the Czar did not dispute the passage of the river, or at least
repair this fault by engaging the Turks at once, instead of giving them time to
tire out his army with fatigue and famine. But that Prince seems, in this
campaign, to have acted in every way for his own ruin; he was without
provisions, with the river Pruth behind him, and
about 4,000 Tartars continually harassing him to right and left. In these
extremities he said publicly, “I am at least in as bad a case as my brother
Charles at Pultawa.”
Count
Poniatowski, indefatigable agent to the King of Sweden, was in the Grand
Vizir’s army with some Poles and Swedes, who all thought the Czar’s ruin
inevitable.
As
soon as Poniatowski saw that the armies must inevitably meet, he sent word to
the King of Sweden, who, eager for the pleasure of attacking the Russian
Emperor, started that moment from Bender, with forty officers. After many
losses, and several destructive marches, the Czar was driven back on Pruth, and had no cover left but some chevaux de frise and
some wagons. A party of the janissaries and spahis fell immediately on his army
in that defenceless condition, but they attacked in
disorder, and the Russians defended themselves with an energy inspired by the
presence of their Prince and despair.
The
Turks were twice driven back. Next day M. Poniatowski advised the Grand Vizir
to starve out the Russians, for they lacked all necessaries, and would be
obliged to surrender at discretion in one day.
The
Czar has since then repeatedly acknowledged that he never felt anything so
acutely as the difficulties of his position that night: he turned over in his
mind all that he had been doing for so many years for the glory and good of his
people, so many great plans, always interrupted by war, were perhaps about to
perish with him, before having reached completion. He must either die of hunger
or attack nearly 200,000 men with feeble troops, reduced by half from their
original number, a cavalry with scarcely a horse between them, and infantry
worn out by hunger and fatigue.
He
called General Czeremetoff at nightfall, and ordered
him peremptorily to have all ready by daybreak for an attack on the Turks with
fixed bayonets.
He
gave strict orders also that all baggage should be burned, and that no officer
should keep more than one wagon, so that in case of defeat the enemy might not
have the booty they expected.
Having
made all arrangements with the general for the battle, he withdrew into his
tent overcome by grief, and seized with convulsions, to which he was subject,
and which worry brought on with redoubled violence. He forbade any one to enter
his tent during the night on any pretext whatever, not wanting to receive
remonstrances against a desperate but necessary resolve, and much less
that any should witness the wretched state he was in. In the meantime they
burned the greater part of the baggage as he had ordered; all the army followed
this example with much regret, and some buried their most cherished treasures.
The generals had already given orders for the march, and were trying to give
the army the confidence which they did not feel themselves; the men, exhausted
by fatigue, and starving, marched without spirit or hope. The women, of whom there
were too many in the army, uttered cries which further unnerved the men; every
one expected that death or slavery would be their portion next morning. This is
no exaggeration, it is the exact account of officers who served in the army.
There
was at that time in the Russian camp a woman as extraordinary as the Czar
himself. She was then known only by the name of Catherine. Her mother was an
unfortunate country woman called Erb-Magden, of the
village of Ringen in Estonia, a province held in villeinage, which was at that
time under the rule of Sweden. She had never known her father, but was baptized
by the name of Martha. The priest of the parish brought her up out of pure charity
till she was fourteen, then she went into service at Mariemburg,
in the house of a Lutheran minister whose name was Gluk.
In
1702, at the age of eighteen, she married a Swedish dragoon. The day after her
marriage part of the Swedish troops were beaten by the Russians, and the
dragoon was in the action. But he never returned to his wife, and she could
never learn whether he had been taken prisoner, nor later could she get any
news of him.
Some
days after she was taken prisoner herself, and was servant to General Czeremetoff, who gave her to Menzikoff,
a man who had known fortune’s extremes, for he had become a general and a
prince from being a pastry-cook’s boy, and then was deprived of everything and
banished to Siberia, where he died in misery and despair. The Czar was at
supper with this prince when he first saw her and fell in love with her. He
married her secretly in 1707, not fascinated by womanly charms, but because he
found that she had the strength of mind to second his designs, and even to
continue them after him. He had long since put away his first wife Ottokefa, daughter of a boyard,
on a charge of opposition to certain political reforms he had made.
This
was the greatest of all crimes in the Czar’s eyes. He would have none in his
family who differed from him. In this foreign slave he expected all the
qualities of a sovereign, though she had none of the virtues of womanhood. For
her sake he scorned the petty prejudices which would have hampered an ordinary
man, and had her crowned Empress. The same capacity which made her Peter’s
wife gave her the empire after her husband’s death. Europe was amazed to see a
bold woman, who could neither read nor write, supply her lack of education and
her weakness by spirit and courage, and fill the throne of a legislator
gloriously.
When
she married the Czar she left the Lutheran faith for that of the Russian
Church; she was baptized again according to the Russian rite, and instead of
the name of Martha she took that of Catherine, by which she has been known ever
since. This woman was in the camp at Pruth, and held
a private council with the generals and the Vice-Chancellor while the Czar was
in his tent.
They
agreed that it was necessary to sue for peace, and that the Czar must be
persuaded to this course. The Vice-Chancellor wrote a letter to the Grand Vizir
in his master’s name, which the Czarina, in spite of the Emperor’s prohibition,
carried into the tent to him, and after many prayers, tears and argument, she
prevailed on him to sign it; she then took all her money, all her jewels and
valuables, and what she could borrow from the generals, and having collected by
this means a considerable present, she sent it with the Czar’s letter to Osman
Aga, lieutenant to the Grand Vizir.
Mahomet Baltagi answered proudly, with the air of a vizir and
a conqueror, “Let the Czar send me his first minister, and I will see what
can be done.” The Vice-Chancellor came at once, loaded with presents, which he
offered publicly to the Grand Vizir; they were large enough to show they needed
his help, but too small for a bribe. The Vizir’s first condition was that the
Czar, with all his army, should surrender at discretion. The Vice-Chancellor
answered that the Czar was going to attack him in a quarter of an hour, and
that the Russians would perish to a man, rather than submit to such shameful
conditions. Osman seconded him by remonstrances.
Baltagi was no soldier. He knew that the janissaries had been
repulsed the day before, and was easily persuaded by Osman not to risk certain
advantages by the hazard of a battle. He therefore granted a suspension of
hostilities for six hours, during which the treaty could be arranged.
During
the discussion an incident occurred, proving that the word of a Turk is often
more reliable than we think.
Two
Italian noblemen, related to a M. Brillo, colonel of a regiment of grenadiers
in the service of the Czar, going to look for forage, were taken by the
Tartars, who carried them off to their camp, and offered to sell them to an
officer of the janissaries. The Turk, enraged at such a breach of the truce,
seized the Tartars and carried them before the Grand Vizir, together with the
two prisoners. The Vizir sent them back at once to the Czar’s camp, and
had the two Tartars who had carried them off beheaded. In the meantime the Kan
of Tartary opposed the conclusion of a treaty which robbed him of all hopes of
pillage. Poniatowski seconded him with urgent and pressing reasons. But Osman
carried his point, notwithstanding the impatience of the Tartar and the
insinuations of Poniatowski.
The
Vizir thought it enough for his master the Sultan to make an advantageous
peace; he insisted that the Russians should give up Asoph,
burn the galleys that lay in that port, and demolish the important citadels on
the Palus-Mæotis; that all the cannon and ammunition
of those forts should be handed over to the Sultan; that the Czar should
withdraw his troops from Poland; that he should not further disturb the few
Cossacks who were under Polish protection, nor those that were subject to
Turkey, and that for the future he should pay the Tartars a subsidy of 40,000
sequins per annum—an irksome tribute which had been imposed long before, but
from which the Czar had delivered his country.
At
last the treaty was going to be signed, without so much as a mention of the
King of Sweden; all that Poniatowski could obtain from the Vizir was the
insertion of an article by which the Russians should promise not to hinder the
return of Charles XII, and, strangely enough, that a peace should be made
between the King and the Czar if they wished it, and could come to terms.
On
these terms the Czar got liberty to retreat with his army, cannon, artillery, colours and baggage. The Turks gave him provisions, and
there was plenty of everything in his camp within two hours of the signing of
the treaty, which was begun on the 21st July, 1711, and signed on the 1st of
August.
Just
as the Czar, rescued from his dangerous position, was drawing off with drums
beating and colours flying, the King of Sweden, eager
to fight, and to see the enemy in his hands, came up; he had ridden post haste
about fifty leagues from Bender to Jazy, and
alighting at Count Poniatowski’s tent, the Count came up to him sadly and told
him how he had lost a chance which would perhaps never recur.
The
King, beside himself with rage, went straight to the tent of the Grand Vizir,
and with flushed face reproached him for the treaty he had just made.
“I
have authority,” said the Grand Vizir, calmly, “to make peace and to wage war.”
“But,”
answered the King, “had you not the whole Russian army in your power?”
“Our
law,” said the Vizir solemnly, “commands us to grant peace to our enemies when
they implore our mercy.”
“Ah,”
replied the King, in a rage, “does it order you to make a bad treaty, when you
can impose the terms you please? Was it not your duty to take the Czar
prisoner to Constantinople?”
The
Turk, thus nonplussed, answered slyly, “And who would govern his empire in his
absence? It is not fitting that all kings should be away from home.”
Charles
replied with an indignant smile, and then threw himself down on a cushion, and,
looking at the Vizir with resentment mingled with contempt, he stretched out
his leg towards him, and, entangling his spur with his robe, tore it; then
jumped up, mounted, and rode to Bender full of despair.
Poniatowski
stayed some time longer with the Grand Vizir, to see if he could prevail on him
by gentler means to make some better terms with the Czar, but it was
prayer-time, and the Turk, without one word in answer, went to wash and attend
to his devotions.
