70

THIRD TREATY OF VIENNA.

[CHAP. XLIV. November, but the signature of a definite treaty was delayed more than three years through secret negotiations between the Cabinets of Vienna and Versailles, the subject of which is not certainly known, but probably related to the Pragmatic Sanction. The delay seems to have been caused by Cardinal Fleury listening to the representations of the Elector of Bavaria.

The Spanish Sovereigns were naturally indignant at the conduct of France; but the arming of the maritime Powers, and the appearance of an English squadron on the coasts of Spain, alarmed them into an acceptance of the peace (May, 1736). By the THIRD TREATY OF VIENNA, November 18th, 1738, it was arranged that King Stanislaus should abdicate the Crown of Poland, but retain the Royal title. Augustus III. was to be recognized in his stead, while the Polish Constitution and liberty of election were guaranteed. Tuscany, on the death of the Grand Duke, was to be assigned to the Duke of Lorraine, whose duchies of Bar and Lorraine were to be transferred to Stanislaus; the former immediately, the latter, so soon as the Duchy of Tuscany should become vacant. Stanislaus was to hold these duchies for life; and upon his decease they were to be united to the French Crown. The County of Falkenstein, however, a small district separated from Lorraine, and situated at the foot of Mount Tonnerre, was reserved to the Duke Francis Stephen, in order that he might hold a possession under the Empire, and that it might not be objected to him, when he should hereafter aspire to the Imperial Throne, as sonin-law of the Emperor Charles VI., that he was a foreign Prince. The Diet subsequently agreed that the vote which the Dukes of Lorraine had hitherto enjoyed in their quality of Marquises of Nomény should be attached to the County of Falkenstein. Naples and Sicily, with the Tuscan præsidia, were to remain in the possession of Don Carlos. The King of Sardinia to have the Novarese and Vigevanese, or the Tortonese and Vigevanese, or the Novarese and Tortonese, according to his option. Parma and Piacenza were to be assigned to the Emperor. France guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction, and acquiesced in the marriage of the Duke of Lorraine with the Archduchess, Maria Theresa-a union which had hithertobeen opposed by France, because Lorraine would thus have been. ultimately added to the Austrian dominions. The King of Sardinia acceded to this treaty, February 3rd, 1739; and the Courts

1 Coxe, Spanish Bourbons, iii. p. 277. 2 It is to Stanislaus that Nanci owes those architectural pretensions which give

CHAP. XLIV.]

AUGUSTUS III. IN POLAND.

71

of Madrid and Naples in the following April. Thus terminated a war for which the question of the Polish Succession afforded only a pretence.

The Emperor was the chief loser by this treaty; yet, though Naples and Sicily were wrested from his dominion, he recovered, on the other hand, nearly all the possessions which had been conquered from him in Northern Italy, besides acquiring Parma, and, indirectly, through his son-in-law, Tuscany. The recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction by France was also no slight advantage to him. The loss of Lorraine did not concern him directly, but merely in its quality of an Imperial fief; whilst, on the other hand, it was a direct and very important acquisition for France, and a very unlooked-for, though important, consequence of the ill-assorted marriage between Louis XV. and Mary Lesczinska. It was finally united to the French Crown on the death of Stanislaus, in 1766. England and Holland looked quietly on. The Spanish Sovereigns were highly discontented with the Treaty, though two kingdoms like Naples and Sicily were hardly a bad exchange for the two duchies of Parma and Tuscany. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the last of the Medicis, died July 9th, 1737, worn out by debauchery; and thus, on the signature of the treaty, there was nothing to prevent the immediate execution of its provisions. Stanislaus had abdicated the Crown of Poland by an act signed at Königsberg, January 27th, 1736, and Russia signified her adherence to the provisions about Poland in May. The peace finally arranged at the Diet of Warsaw, July 10th, 1736, between Augustus III. and the Polish States, provided for the maintenance of the Roman Catholic religion, and the right of the Poles to elect their Sovereign. The Saxon troops were to leave the Kingdom in forty days, except the body-guard of the King, consisting of 1,200 men. The Russians were to evacuate the kingdom at the same time. Dissenters were to enjoy security of person and property; but they were not to be admissible into the public service, nor to the dignities of Palatines and Starosts; nor were the to be allowed to seek the protection of foreign Powers.1

One meive which had induced the Emperor to accede to the terms offered by France was the prospect of indemnifying himself for Is losses by a war with the Turks, which he had entered into, conformity with treaties, in conjunction with Russia.

Schma

itung zu der Staatswissenschaft, B. ii. S. 601 sq.

72

RUSSIA AND THE PORTE.

[CHAP. XLIV. But to explain this matter it will be necessary to revert to the history of these countries since the Peace of Passarowitz.

Peter the Great had never digested his humiliation at the Pruth, nor abandoned his favourite schemes for extending his Empire; but, so long as he was engaged in the Northern War, nothing could be done. In contemplation of an expedition into Persia, which rendered peace with the Porte indispensable, he had renewed, in 1720, the treaties of the Pruth and Adrianople; and, in spite of the opposition of the English resident, Stanyan, he obtained two important concessions, viz., the privilege of having a resident minister at Constantinople, and the abrogation of the yearly present or tribute made to the Tatar Chan of the Crimea. It is remarkable that on this occasion both the contracting parties guaranteed the Polish Constitution, and declared that none of its territories or towns should be severed from Poland.1 Hence, when the Russian troops entered that country in 1733 to support Augustus III., the Porte remonstrated against it as a breach of treaty; but being occupied with domestic dissensions, as well as with a Persian war, took no steps to prevent it.

It was the Czar's expedition into Persia, in 1722, which ultimately brought Russia into collision with the Turks. Persia was then in the throes of a revolution. The Throne of the Sefi Dynasty, which had reigned upwards of two centuries, was shaken by a revolt of the Afghans, and Hussein, the last of that Dynasty, was deposed by Mir Mahmood in 1722. Peter complained of wrongs done to Russian merchants, and not being able to obtain the redress he demanded, declared war. In the summer of 1722 Peter embarked at Astrachan, and traversed the Caspian Sea, which he had previously caused to be surveyed, with a fleet carrying 22,000 soldiers. His real object was to obtain possession of Daghestan, and he captured and garrisoned Derbent, the capital of that province. He renewed the war in the following year, in spite of the remonstrances of the Porte, and made himself master of Ghilan and Bachu, while, on the other side, the Pasha of Erzerum broke into Georgia and seized Tiflis, the capital. A treaty with Turkey for the partition of Persia, and the restoration of some part of it to Shah Thamasp, Hussein's son, was one of the Czar's last political acts. He died of a urinary disorder, the con

1 Bacmeister, Beiträge sur Gesch. Peter des G. B. iii. Beylage 21; Koch et Schöll, t. xiv. p. 298.

2 The best account of the Pe rsian Em

pire at this juncture, and of the character of Shah Hussein, will be found in Hanwa y's Revolutions of Persia, in his Travels, vol. ii.

CHAP. XLIV.]

DEATH OF PETER THE GREAT.

73

sequence of his debauches, February 10th, 1725, in the fiftysecond year of his age. of his age. A being of the wildest and most savage impulse, yet capable of deep reflection and indomitable perseverance; addicted to debauchery, and possessing unlimited means for its indulgence, yet submitting himself voluntarily, for the sake of his country, to all the hardships and privations of a common mechanic; bred up in what are perhaps the most obstinate of all prejudices, those of a half-civilized people, yet one of the most remarkable reformers of any age, and in the space of his short reign, the real founder of the Russian Empire.

Peter's son Alexis, by his first wife, Eudoxia, had died in 1718, in a mysterious manner. The conduct of Alexis had never been satisfactory to his father. He was averse to all military exercises, the slave of the priests, and the tool of the Old Russian Party, which hated and opposed all Peter's innovations and reforms. Hence, at an early period, the Czar had seriously meditated depriving him of the succession and shutting him up in a convent. Peter, during his absence in the war of 1711, had left his son nominal Regent; but was so little content with his conduct that, in a memorable letter addressed to the Senate, he directed them, in case of his own death, to elect "the worthiest" for his successor. His discontent with his heir went on increasing. During Peter's journey to Holland and France, in 1717, Alexis had fled for protection to the Court of Vienna. After a short stay in that capital, and afterwards in the fortress of Ehrenberg, in Tyrol, he proceeded under a false name to Naples, and found a refuge in the Castle of St. Elmo. His hiding-place was, however, discovered; the Viceroy gave him up on the demand of the Czar's envoys; and on February 3rd, 1718, he was brought back to Moscow. On the following morning he was arraigned before a great council of the clergy, nobles, and principal citizens of Moscow, in whose presence he was compelled to sign a solemn act of renunciation of the Crown. The confessions which Alexis made on this occasion led to the discovery of a plot which had been hatching seven years, and in which some of the leading Russian nobles were implicated. The objects of it were to massacre, after the accession of Alexis, all the chief Russians and Germans who had been employed in carrying out the reforms of Peter; to make peace with Sweden, and restore to that Power St. Petersburg and the other conquests which had been gained from it; to disband the standing army, and restore the soldiers to their original condition of peasants. On May 26th, 1718, a

74

CATHARINE I. OF RUSSIA.

[CHAP. XLIV. large assembly of the clergy, and of the highest civil and military officers, found the Czarewitsch guilty on these charges, and pronounced sentence of death. This verdict was read to Alexis; and, according to the account of the matter most favourable to Peter, the fright occasioned by it produced an apoplexy of which the young Prince died on the following day. According to another account, he was subjected to the knout, his father administering some of the first blows with his own hand; the punishment was twice renewed on the same day, and on the third application he expired.1

Alexis had left two children: a daughter, Natalia Alexejewna, born July 23rd, 1714, and a son, Peter Alexejewitsch, born October 22nd, 1715. These were his offspring by his consort, a Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, whom he hated because she was a Protestant, and is said to have treated so ill as to cause her death after her second lying-in. According to the laws of hereditary succession, the son of Alexis, now nine years old, was entitled to the Crown on the death of the Czar. But by a ukase, published in February, 1722, before proceeding on his expedition into Persia, Peter had asserted his privilege to settle the succession of the Crown; and, in May, 1724, he had caused his wife Catharine to be solemnly crowned in the cathedral at Moscowa ceremony which he intended as no vain and empty pageant, but as an indication and pledge that she was to succeed him in the Imperial dignity. He does not seem, however, to have made any formal nomination of her; and after her coronation he appears to have discovered that she had been unfaithful to him with the chamberlain, Mons. Catharine's elevation to the throne was effected, partly through corruption, partly by force, by her partizans, the New Russian Party, in opposition to the Old Russian faction. The only evidence produced in favour of her claim to the Crown was Peter's verbal declaration that he would make her his successor. Nothing of much importance occurred during the two years of Catharine's reign. She died May 6th, 1727. Soon after her accession she had married her eldest daughter, Anna Petrowna, then seventeen years of age, to the Duke of Holstein. When Catharine I. lay on her death-bed, an assembly of the

Le Fort's Relation, ap. Hermann, Gesch. Russlands, B. iv. S. 330.

2 There is a document called The Political Testament of Peter the Great, the authenticity of which has been much contested. It is, at all events, a remarkable

piece. One of the articles insists on the necessity of approaching Constantinople and India, on the ground that "he who commands them is the true ruler of the world." Zinkeisen, Gesch des osm. Reichs, B. v. S. 607 Anm.