him even to mention the name of St Petersburg. The conduct of affairs was left almost entirely to Osterman. Fortunately, the reforms of the last two reigns were now beginning to bear good fruit. Trade was reviving, money was beginning to flow steadily, if slowly, into the Treasury; the people were happier, and the land was much more prosperous than it had been for many years. Abroad, too, such political changes as had taken place were, on the whole, favourable to Russia. On the death of George I, the English Government had politely hinted (through Horace Walpole at Paris to the Russian Minister there, Prince Kurakin) that the new King desired nothing so much as the re-establishment of friendly relations; and, shortly afterwards, an unofficial political agent, Claudius Rondeau, came to Russia to find out how the land lay. The chief political event of this period was the attraction of Spain to the Hanoverian Alliance by the Treaty of Seville (1729), whereby her Italian possessions were guaranteed to her by England and France; and England received some important commercial concessions. But the only result of this defection was to draw Austria and Russia still more closely together; and their growing influence in the east of Europe counterpoised the influence in the west of "the Allies of Seville," as the Hanoverian Alliance now began to be called. The two Powers maintained the integrity of Polish territory against Prussia, frustrated the dynastic schemes of Augustus II, by dissipating the Diet of Grodno, and succeeded in keeping Maurice of Saxony out of Courland. England was, as usual, suspected at Moscow of intriguing at Stockholm to bring about a war with Russia; but a violent quarrel between the Swedish King Frederick and his premier, Count Arvid Horn, told rather in favour of Russia, and was skilfully taken advantage of by her ambassador Golovkin.

The chief domestic event of the period was the death of the Grand Duchess Natalia on December 7, 1728. The influence of the Dolgorukis over Peter II was, henceforth, uncontested; and they now bent all their efforts to bring about Peter's marriage with Catharine, daughter of Alexis Dolgoruki. They were actually betrothed, with the greatest solemnity, on December 11, 1729, and the wedding was fixed for January 30, 1730, when the whole design was frustrated by the death of Peter II from small-pox on the morning of what was to have been his wedding-day.

From midnight on January 30 till five o'clock the next morning, the members of the Supreme Privy Council had been in anxious consultation behind closed doors. Death, or misadventure, had reduced their number to five persons; and the most sagacious, but also the least courageous, of the five, Vice-Chancellor Osterman, was prostrated by an attack of gout. Of the four remaining Councillors, the aged Grand Chancellor, Count Golovkin, was practically a nonentity; while the two Dolgorukis were too diffident of themselves and of each other, to propose

556 Demetrius Galitsin.

Anne elected Empress [1730

anything definite. All the more readily, therefore, did they listen to the one man of character among them. Prince Demetrius Galitsin, after patiently awaiting his opportunity for more than thirty years, was now to rule Russia for something less than thirty days. His theory was that all the ills of Russia were due to that odious system of low favouritism which had enabled stable-boys, flunkeys, pie-vendors, and the dregs of the German settlement to monopolise all the offices and dignities of the State, while the Russian aristocracy was kept at arm's length. His remedy was the abolition of autocracy. Let the monarchy be limited, and favouritism must disappear. Only thus could the national nobility takes its proper place round the throne. In the second daughter of Ivan V, Anne, the widowed Duchess of Courland, Galitsin fancied that he had discovered the candidate he wanted for the throne. He easily brought round his colleagues, as well as a general assembly of the Synod, the Senate, the Guard and the nobility, to his opinion; whereupon the election of Anne was announced to the troops and a deputation was sent to Mittau (January 31) to offer the Crown to Anne, conditionally upon her subscribing in their presence nine articles which the Supreme Privy Council had drawn up for her signature. By these articles she was solemnly to engage to govern solely through the Council; not to marry, or appoint her successor, without its consent; to relinquish the rights of declaring war and concluding peace, with that of conferring any military appointment above the rank of a colonel, and that of bestowing gifts of land or money; to surrender the command of the army and the guards to the Council; not to degrade any member of the nobility without legitimate cause; not to impose fresh taxes, and finally to agree to everything which should be for the good of her subjects. In a word, she was to sign away her whole authority, in exchange for a high-sounding title.

On February 21 the Council was relieved of much anxiety by the arrival of a courier from Mittau, with the articles signed by the new Empress, who had further added beneath her signature the words, "I hereby promise to observe everything herein contained unreservedly." Her obsequious alacrity on this occasion was due to the fact that she had been warned by Paul Yaguzhinsky of the secret machinations of the Council, and had resolved to take back her word on the first oppor tunity. Meanwhile, Galitsin's public announcement of his audacious political innovation had been received with chilling silence, and only by the use of the most extreme measures were "the Republican gentlemen," as Rondeau called the Galitsin faction, able to keep the capital quiet till the arrival of the Empress.

From February 26, when she made her public entry into Moscow, till March 8, Anne was kept under the strictest surveillance by the Council. But Osterman, whose keen political instincts told him that a limited monarchy in eighteenth century Russia was impossible, was secretly

1730]

Articles of Mittau" cancelled by Anne 557

working against them; while Prince Alexis Cherkasky, the richest nobleman in the empire, was entrusted with the practical management of the impending coup d'état, which was fixed for March 8. Early in the morning of that day, 800 noblemen and 150 of the officers of the Guard boldly ascended the staircase of the Palace in the Kremlin, and demanded an audience of her Majesty, whom they found seated on her throne surrounded by her Court. General Usupoff of the Guards, on behalf of the deputation, thereupon presented a petition to the Empress, begging her to cancel the "Articles of Mittau"; and, after some hesitation, and despite the respectful protests of the Council, she cancelled the Articles accordingly. At four o'clock after noon, the nobility returned with a fresh petition, imploring Anne to accept the absolute authority as possessed, from time immemorial, by her ancestors of glorious memory. On the same evening, the accession of the new autocrat, amidst the roll of drums and the firing of salvos, was proclaimed; a new oath of allegiance was duly administered to everyone in the capital; and couriers were dispatched to the provinces, to announce the glad tidings. Nowhere was there the slightest symptom of opposition.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SCANDINAVIAN KINGDOMS

I

THE struggle between Denmark and Sweden under Charles X left abiding marks upon the national life of both adversaries. While in Sweden, as has been shown in an earlier chapter, the Regents were negotiating a general peace of the north, the Danish Estates assembled at Copenhagen to repair the ruin wrought by war (September, 1660). So terrible had been its disasters that a great part of Denmark lay waste, and the Crown was compelled to repudiate part of its debt and to sell one-half of its vast estates to pay the remainder. The clergy and burghers, uniting in a new feeling of enthusiasm for the King who had heroically defended his capital, were more bitter than ever against the nobles, to whose selfishness they might well ascribe the devastated and defenceless state of the country, the triumphant establishment of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and the loss of many provinces by both Denmark and Norway beyond the Sound. That some five or six hundred families should monopolise the chief places in Church and State, own half the soil of Denmark, enjoy freedom from taxation, and evade the burden of national defence, was a political situation which, after the heroism of the King and of the capital, men could not but regard as anomalous. It remained to be seen whether there existed in Denmark any force capable of effecting a reform.

Frederick III had already manifested his consciousness of augmented influence. He had ruled with the aid of secret advisers, kept great offices vacant, left seats in the Council unfilled, departed from its recommendations, and, in defiance of the nobles and of the Peace of Roeskilde, laid hands upon his treacherous former Minister and favourite, Count Korfits Ulfeld. Oligarchical rule, however, still appeared to flourish; and in Denmark, as in Sweden, the Rigsraad, or permanent Council, was an organ of the nobility. The monarchy and the people, alike enfeebled by the long ascendancy of the nobles, had not learned to act in concert. Of the lower Estates, moreover, some enjoyed privileges

1660]

The monarchical coup d'état in Denmark

559 of their own which formed a bar to common action. As to freedom from taxation, the Bishops, the capital, and Kristianshavn ranked as nobles. It is therefore probable that, although the King's power had been increased by the War, although he was ready to strike, and although popular leaders were not wanting who would support him against the nobles, some patriotic self-sacrifice on the part of the First Estate might yet have averted revolution.

At the Diet, however, which had been summoned to sanction a complete change in the national system of taxation, the members of this Estate showed that they had learned nothing. In place of the old direct taxes, the Government proposed a wide system of indirect taxes on commodities in daily use, together with duties on certain movables and contracts. The nobles at once claimed exemption for themselves and their villeins; and to the former demand they clung firmly during heated negotiations between the several Estates. It therefore became possible for the leaders of the clergy and burghers, Hans Svane, the Bishop of Zealand, and Hans Nansen, the Burgomaster of Copenhagen, to strike a great blow for the monarchy and for the nation. By inducing the Bishops and citizens to lay down their privileges, on condition that the nobles and university did the same, they confronted the Rigsraad and nobles as a solid Opposition, which advanced a farreaching claim of equality before the law. At the end of September the oligarchical party capitulated. The struggle had, however, demonstrated afresh both the selfishness and the weakness of the caste lampooned as "hares and wasters of the realm." With an ambitious Queen by his side, and Hans Svane and Hans Nansen as his allies, Frederick determined to follow up his advantage with a coup d'état.

A bloodless campaign of six days, October 8-13, 1660, sufficed to give to the feeble monarchy the prospect of becoming the most absolute in Europe. On October 8, after much secret preparation, the clergy and burghers resolved to offer Denmark to Frederick III as a hereditary kingdom, and called upon the nobles to concur in a joint resolution of the Rigsraad. On the 10th, after some stormy scenes, the First Estate refused and prepared to quit the Diet. Thereupon, the Opposition turned to the King. Frederick was a student and an alchemist rather than a leader of men, and at this crisis many conflicting influences were at work upon his mind. At last, relying on the army and on the citizens of Copenhagen, which was placed in a state of siege, he resolved to break the resistance of the aristocracy by armed force. The threat sufficed; and, on October 13, Denmark became in due form of law a monarchy hereditary in both the male and the female line of the reigning House.

The establishment of hereditary monarchy was neither in letter nor in spirit the establishment of absolutism. Both the instrument which was signed by the priests and burghers and the formal letter in which the Rigsraad declared its unanimous agreement with them provided that