When the new plan and the appointment of Wallenstein to the command of a

large army--larger than any other in the field--became known, the world,

and especially Germany, was struck with amazement, and there were but

few who believed that it could be carried out. But those who doubted did

not know the tremendous energy, the boundless resources, and the

towering ambition of the man. The plan was carried out to its fullest

extent: within a few months a large and well-equipped army was ready to

take the field, and Wallenstein, whose name was comparatively unknown in

the history of war, suddenly assumed an importance which eclipsed that

of the renowned generals of the Catholic League and of the Protestant

Union. The suddenness of his elevation, the apparent mystery surrounding

him, and the rumors of the royal rewards in store for him, made the

imperialistic generals very jealous. It may be truthfully said that from

the very moment Wallenstein took command of his army, he had not only to

face the Protestant armies in the field, but also to guard against his

Catholic rivals, who used their high connections at the imperial court

to undermine his position and blacken his character in a most

unscrupulous manner. The achievements of Wallenstein fully realized the

high expectations of the Emperor. He displayed consummate generalship in

the field, and had a magnetic power of attraction which caused his whole

army, both officers and men, to idolize him. At the same time his army

increased rapidly and wonderfully. It soon reached the one hundred

thousand mark and still they were coming, while the armies of the League

were decreasing at a fearful rate from camp diseases and the ravages of

war. The Emperor made him Duke of Friedland, and “the Friedlanders”

became soon a terror to friend and foe. In his march of victory, which

extended from Hungary and Transylvania to the Baltic Sea, he swept the

Protestant armies from the face of the earth. Where the Friedlanders had

passed, no human dwelling, no human being remained to tell of the

cruelty and devastation which had struck the country, and which fell

with the same crushing weight on Catholics and Protestants. The army was

to be self-sustaining and was therefore given full liberty of pillage

and marauding wherever it went. Coming to the extreme north of Germany,

he invaded Mecklenburg, whose dukes had furnished men and money to the

King of Denmark in his campaign against the imperialists. The King of

Denmark had after a decisive defeat left Germany and returned to his own

kingdom, and on Wallenstein’s approach the Duke of Mecklenburg also

hastily decamped and left his country to the mercy of the conqueror.

Wallenstein took possession of it and was rewarded with the title of

Duke of Mecklenburg and the rank of a sovereign prince of the Empire.

The royal crown of Bohemia, which rumor and secret whisperings

designated as the reward in store for him after the conclusion of peace,

was now not so far off as on the day he took the command of his army.

But the higher he rose, the greater became the envy and hatred of his

rivals, especially of the sovereign princes whose countries and cities

had suffered from the passing of his army.

From Mecklenburg Wallenstein turned to Pomerania, where Stralsund, one

of the greatest fortresses of the Empire, impeded his further progress.

Wallenstein invested it with his army, and made several assaults, which

were successfully repulsed. The brave inhabitants had sworn to hold out

to the last and rather perish in the defence of their hearths and homes

and families than surrender their city to a conqueror who showed no

mercy to the vanquished. Wallenstein, on the other hand, was determined

to enter the city as a conqueror. Hearing that the inhabitants would

defend the city unto death, he swore that he would take it, even if it

were bound with chains to Heaven, and he laid a regular siege to it.

But all his efforts were in vain. The Swedes succeeded in giving succor

to the beleaguered city from the seaward side, reinforcing it with

troops, ammunition, and provisions. Finally, after a delay of two months

and a loss of twelve thousand men, Wallenstein abandoned the project of

taking the city, raised the siege, and returned to Mecklenburg. There

the conquest of the strongly fortified city of Rostock consoled him to a

certain extent for his failure at Stralsund.

Emboldened by the great successes of Wallenstein and the almost complete

overthrow of the Protestant armies, the Emperor rather rashly undertook

to reinstate the Catholic Church in all its former privileges and to

compel the Protestant states to restore all the property and real estate

which had been confiscated and estranged from that church during the

preceding eighty years. To carry out this imperial plan the so-called

Restitution Edict was promulgated,--a very unwise measure, which spread

consternation and alarm throughout the Empire, and fanned the dying

embers of the religious war into a new flame. Not only Protestants, but

many Catholics protested against the edict, and Wallenstein himself

criticised it sharply. But the Emperor would not recede from the

resolution he had taken.

Wallenstein’s influence was already rapidly declining; his overthrow was

near at hand. In 1630 the imperial diet of Regensburg was held. All the

sovereign princes of Germany, and especially all the Electors of the

Empire were present, and they made jointly a terrible onslaught on

Wallenstein, whom they all hated or envied. They united their complaints

against him and demanded his immediate and peremptory dismissal from

the service, as a punishment for the outrages committed by his army and

for the extortions and exorbitant levies which he had made from friend

and foe for his own self-aggrandizement. For a long time the Emperor

resisted these demands and stood up for the great general to whom he

owed so much; but he was anxious to secure the votes of the Electors for

his son, the King of Hungary, as heir to the imperial crown, and the

dismissal of Wallenstein was to be the price for these votes. He

therefore issued the decree, deposing Wallenstein from his office of

generalissimo of the army. It is said that he trembled in affixing his

signature to the document, and that for weeks afterwards he lived in

extreme fear of the wrath of the powerful chieftain. But Wallenstein

took his disgrace very coolly. The news came to him at a moment when he

was with Seni, a famous astrologer, in whom he placed implicit

confidence. Seni had just predicted to him, from a configuration of the

stars, that he would experience a tremendous disappointment, but that

this disappointment would be followed soon by his complete reinstatement

in all the honors which he might be deprived of. Wallenstein took the

decree of deposition as the confirmation of Seni’s prediction. Without

showing much irritation, and only with an expression of regret that the

Emperor had been ill-advised and had yielded to bad counsels, he left

the army and withdrew to Prague, the capital of Bohemia, to live there

in royal splendor and luxury.

When Wallenstein’s soldiers were informed of the dismissal of their

chief, whom they idolized and regarded with an affection mingled with

awe and terror, there was danger of an open revolt against the

Emperor’s decree; but Wallenstein himself and some of his generals

quieted their rage and suppressed all manifestations of rebellion.

Thousands of soldiers and a great number of officers refused to remain

in the Emperor’s service, declaring that they had enlisted only in order

to serve under Wallenstein and under no other commander. More than one

half of the entire army left the service, and most of the officers, at

their own request, accompanied the deposed general to his new place of

residence, Prague. The disgrace of the general, or rather the act of

removal which, in the eyes of the German princes, was intended to

disgrace him, turned out to be a triumph, greater than a victory in the

field, and made his position in Germany even more conspicuous. Moreover,

everybody seemed to feel that the hour of his reinstatement would soon

come. And Wallenstein, on his part, neglected nothing to confirm this

opinion, which flattered his vanity, and which he firmly believed would

be realized, because “it was written in the stars.”

It was perhaps as a challenge to his princely enemies at the imperial

court and in defiance of the Emperor himself that he established his

household on a footing more becoming a reigning monarch than a private

citizen. He had a secret desire to accustom the people of Bohemia to

look upon him as the man who might, within a short time, be called upon

to rule over them as king. Otherwise it is hardly reasonable to suppose

that he would have paraded such wealth and magnificence as could not but

confirm the charges preferred against him by his influential

enemies,--namely, gigantic extortions and robberies of public and

private moneys, and plans to satisfy an insatiable ambition. His palace

had six public entrances, and he caused a hundred houses to be torn down

to enlarge the vacant place surrounding it. By day and by night it was

guarded by sentinels, and during the night the public streets leading to

it were barred with chains, that the rest of the Duke might not be

disturbed. In the hall leading to the antechamber of his private

apartments fifty halberdiers were constantly on guard, while sixty

pages, all from the best families of Germany, four chamberlains, six

barons, and a master of ceremonies belonging to one of the most

illustrious houses of the Empire, were always ready to receive the

orders of the great man. Whenever he travelled, his own carriage was

drawn by eight full-blooded horses; his attendants followed in fifty

carriages, each drawn by six horses, while as many baggage wagons, each

drawn by four horses, transported the baggage for the ducal procession,

and sixty richly mounted cavaliers formed the regular escort of “His

Highness.”

As if Providence wished to advance the pretensions of Wallenstein, the

Emperor’s affairs took a turn for the worse soon after his removal from

the command of the army. Incensed at the intolerance of the German

Emperor and his Restitution Edict, which was to be enforced in its full

severity, Gustavus Adolphus, the great and high-minded King of Sweden,

came to the assistance of the Protestant princes of northern Germany. He

came not unsupported; behind him, and as his secret ally, stood the King

of France, or rather Richelieu. This great French statesman, although a

cardinal of the Catholic Church, saw the time had come to curtail the

power of Austria, and therefore utilized the military genius of

Gustavus Adolphus to effectually cripple the Emperor’s power, and to

raise France to a predominant position in Europe. Richelieu equipped and

subsidized the Swedish armies and, by doing so, enabled the Swedish

King, whose country was comparatively poor and whose resources were

consequently limited, to take the field in Germany with a strong force.

On the twenty-fourth of June, 1630, Gustavus Adolphus landed his army in

Pomerania. That date marks the turning-point in the fortunes of the

Thirty Years’ War. The Swedish King’s piety, and the strict discipline

which he maintained in his army, stood in such glaring contrast to the

excesses and outrages committed by the armies of Tilly and Wallenstein

that the King was welcomed by the sovereigns of northern Germany as a

savior and liberator. It is not our purpose to describe the glorious and

victorious career of Gustavus Adolphus in the Empire. Suffice it to say

that the conditions of victory and defeat, of triumph and despondency,

were entirely reversed, that the imperial armies were unable to stem the

tide of victory which had set in for the Protestant cause since the

Swedish King’s appearance on German soil, that his progress southward

was rapid and incessant, that the Catholic princes were either

vanquished or fugitives from their states, and that the Emperor himself

was trembling in his palace at Vienna, as report after report informed

him of the uninterrupted onward march of the royal hero. Who can help?

Who can oppose and prevent this steady march of conquest? To the

terrified mind of the Emperor only one man presents himself. It is

Wallenstein. But Wallenstein has been mortally offended by him. How can

the Emperor humiliate himself before a subject and assuage his wrath?

The danger is increasing.

Gustavus is still on the Rhine, but he prepares an invasion of

Würtemberg, many of whose inhabitants will gladly welcome him. The

advance of his army, under General Horn, is in Franconia and driving the

Imperialists before him. No time is to be lost. The Emperor sends a

friendly message to Wallenstein; but the message is haughtily rejected,

and the messengers are treated with arrogance, not to say contempt. He

sends back word to the Emperor that he does not care to repair the

faults of others; that he is not on friendly terms with the allies of

the Emperor; that he is tired and sick of war; that he is in need of

rest, etc. The Emperor sends new messengers, holds out new rewards. He

insists and appeals. At last, in December, 1631, Wallenstein promises to

raise a new army, equip it and place it in the field by the first of

March, 1632; but he positively refuses to command it. The magic power of

his name renews the prodigy of six years before. On the first of March

the hereditary states of Austria--Bohemia, Silesia, and Moravia--had

furnished him a splendid army of forty thousand men. But it was a body

without a soul; it lacked a leader able to command it and lead it to

victory. The most urgent demands, prayers, supplications of the Emperor

at last decide Wallenstein to take the command of this army, which is

crazed with enthusiasm when he finally accepts. But he accepts only on

conditions most humiliating to the Emperor. He will be generalissimo of

the armies of Austria and Spain; he will appoint all his subordinate

officers; the Emperor will not be permitted to join the army, and will

in no way interfere with its direction or movements; Wallenstein will

receive one of the hereditary states of Austria as a reward; he will be

war-governor of all the territory occupied by his army; he will have the

right to levy contributions, and all confiscated property will belong to

him; he alone can grant amnesty; he will remain Duke of Mecklenburg,

even if another crown be given to him; all his expenditures will be paid

back to him at the conclusion of peace; and in case of defeat, he will

have the right to retire upon Vienna, and remain there. These

conditions, readily granted by the Emperor, made Wallenstein practically

the Dictator of the Empire.

It was at Nuremberg, one of the most ancient and prosperous cities of

Bavaria, that the two great captains met face to face for the first

time. Gustavus Adolphus had many friends in the city, which he wanted to

protect against the Imperialists and from which he had received many

reinforcements and supplies. His army had taken quarters in the

immediate neighborhood. When Wallenstein approached, the King expected

an immediate attack, but in this expectation he was disappointed.

Whether he was afraid to endanger his party and his own reputation by

the chances of a battle, or whether he thought that to check the

victorious progress of the King was equivalent to a victory and would

dishearten his allies, or whether the hope of starving the army of the

King by cutting off his communications and supplies prompted his action,

Wallenstein massed his army in front of Nuremberg, erected breastworks

and strongly fortified them, and observed every movement of his great

antagonist. It was evident that he wished to avoid giving battle. In

this way they remained for eleven weeks opposed to one another, neither

daring to become the aggressor or to leave his fortified position. It

was the King who moved first. Provisions both in his camp and in the

city were getting very scarce, and a contagious camp disease had broken

out among his troops and spread to the city, decimating the ranks of his

army. He therefore resolved to attack the position of Wallenstein and

take it by storm. A terrible battle ensued. The Swedes and the

Protestant army showed wonderful bravery, but the heavy artillery of

Wallenstein mowed them down in long lines, and they were unable to stand

the incessant volleys of shot and shell which poured into their ranks

all day long. The assault was repulsed with terrible loss to the Swedish

army, and Wallenstein had the glory of having inflicted the first defeat

on Gustavus Adolphus. This defeat was the more painful to the King

because he had lost from ten to twelve thousand of his best soldiers and

some of his ablest commanders in the vain attempt to take Wallenstein’s

position. But the defeat had no other bad results for Gustavus Adolphus,

for Wallenstein permitted him to retreat from Nuremberg without

molesting, attacking or pursuing him, although his army was greatly

superior in numbers to the King’s army, and although his loss during the

battle of the preceding day was much smaller; in fact Wallenstein’s loss

in killed and wounded was estimated at no more than one thousand.

This neglect of Wallenstein to annihilate the King’s army, when

everything seemed to favor such an attempt, is among the strongest

evidences of his treacherous sentiments. It caused consternation at

Vienna, and his enemies charged him openly with treason. But the

Emperor had no right to interfere! Finally Wallenstein also left his

fortified camp, but instead of following Gustavus Adolphus to Thuringia,

he went in an easterly direction and invaded Saxony, where he captured a

detachment of two thousand five hundred Swedes and with them Count

Thurn, a German nobleman, who for some reason or other had left the

Emperor’s service and had entered the Swedish King’s. This Count Thurn

was especially odious to the Emperor, and when the news of his capture

reached Vienna, there was general rejoicing. The Count would

unquestionably have been executed, but to the utter dismay of the court

Wallenstein set him free and permitted him to return to the King,--as

his enemies asserted, with secret overtures from the Imperialist

commander. It is possible, although by no means certain, that

Wallenstein, remembering how ungratefully he had been treated before,

and thinking that the same ingratitude might be shown to him again as

soon as his services were no longer needed, may have tried to open

negotiations with the Swedish King to secure from him personal

recognition and advantages which he was afraid would be withheld from

him after the King’s final overthrow. His fears were certainly not

unreasonable, for the Emperor was surrounded by, and lent a willing ear

to, the bitter enemies of Wallenstein, and to the very men who had

brought about his first disgrace and dismissal. The King, on the other

hand, if he received such overtures from Wallenstein, either distrusted

him or did not see fit to act upon them favorably, possibly because

Wallenstein’s terms were too extravagant.

As soon as Gustavus Adolphus had learned of Wallenstein’s invasion of

Saxony he turned round, and in forced marches hurried also to Saxony in

order to protect that unfortunate country from the ravages of the

Friedlanders. The Elector of Saxony, while secretly favoring the German

Emperor, had appealed to the King of Sweden for protection, and Gustavus

Adolphus had granted his request. He marched so rapidly that

Wallenstein, when informed of his approach, at first refused to believe

the truth of the report, but nevertheless prepared to give him a warm

reception. Having sent, a few days before, his most renowned cavalry

general, Pappenheim, in another direction, he now sent messengers after

him to recall him. The two great captains met at Lützen on the sixth of

November. A terrible battle ensued, in which Gustavus Adolphus was

killed. But Wallenstein was defeated; at least he left the battle-field

in the possession of the enemy and retreated to Bohemia.

This retrograde movement and his retreat from the battle-field were

unfavorably commented on at Vienna and declared unnecessary.

Insinuations of treason were again whispered into the Emperor’s ear, and

his suspicion was aroused to such a degree that Wallenstein’s removal

from the army was resolved upon, although this intention was kept secret

for a while. The Emperor surrounded himself with Spanish soldiers to be

safe from an attack of the Friedlanders. He also succeeded by bribes and

promises in estranging a number of Wallenstein’s prominent lieutenants

from him and in securing them for his own service. To some extent

Wallenstein was kept informed of these secret steps of the Emperor, and

he tried to counteract them and to protect himself. He renewed his

negotiations with the Swedes and the Protestant princes, who had found

in Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, a worthy successor of King Gustavus

Adolphus as a military leader; and it is said that an agreement had been

made by the two leaders of the opposing armies that Wallenstein’s forces

should join the Protestant army, and that they jointly should impose

conditions of peace upon the Emperor. It goes without saying that a

sovereignty for Wallenstein--most likely that of Bohemia--was included

in the terms of peace.

Before this agreement could be carried out, events occurred which not

only precipitated the downfall, but cut short the life of the

over-ambitious military chieftain. It was of the greatest importance to

Wallenstein to find out how far he would be able to rely on his army

commanders and on their regiments in carrying out his treasonable

projects. He first revealed these to three of them,--Terzky, Kinsky, and

Illo,--the first two related to him by marriage, and the last an avowed

and bitter enemy of the Emperor, who had refused to raise him to the

rank of count. It was Illo who undertook to find out how the generals

and colonels would feel and act; he called them together one evening and

very cautiously proceeded to inflame their minds against the Emperor and

glorify the services of Wallenstein, who, he said, was the only one who

could have saved the Emperor from ruin, and who was now to be sacrificed

again to the envy and jealousy of his enemies. This announcement caused

loud protests and great indignation among those present. “But,”

concluded Illo, “the Duke is not willing to undergo this new

humiliation, which is a shameful reward for his long and glorious

services; no, he will not wait until it pleases the Emperor to kick him

out, but he will go voluntarily and resign his command; but what pains

him deeply is the thought that, in doing so, he must leave his devoted

friends and comrades, and cannot reward them as he intended.” It may

well be thought that these remarks kindled revolt in the hearts of the

soldiers, and that they swore they would not let the Duke

leave the army. The next morning they sent a delegation to their

commander-in-chief, imploring him to desist from his intention of

leaving the army, and assuring him that they would stand by him, no

matter what might happen. It was only when a second delegation of the

highest and most popular officers waited upon him, that the Duke gave

way to their entreaties and promised to remain at the head of the army.

But he attached one condition to this promise: he exacted from all the

commanders a written pledge that they would all, jointly and singly,

stand by him as their chief, and would consider his removal from the

command of the army a public calamity. They all agreed to this

condition, and a paper embodying this declaration was gotten up to be

signed by all of them.

Illo took it upon himself to secure all the signatures, and in order to

make short work of it, invited the commanders to an evening party at his

headquarters, where he read the paper to them; but, in order to preclude

all suspicion in the minds of the signers, Wallenstein had inserted a

clause which bound the signers to the agreement only as long as

Wallenstein used the army in the service of the Emperor. After Illo had

read the paper containing the saving clause, he dexterously withdrew it

and substituted for it another copy without the clause, and unknowingly

the commanders signed it. Moreover, most of them were half or entirely

intoxicated and could not have discovered the deception; but one or two

had remained sober, and when they read the paper again before signing

it, they found that it was different from the one which had been read to

them. They indignantly charged Illo with having practised a fraud on

them, and the company broke up in confusion and anger. This half-failure

seems to have opened Wallenstein’s eyes to the real situation in which

he found himself. Many of his commanders were too devoted Catholics to

make common cause with the enemies of their Church, and while they were

willing to stand by Wallenstein to the last as the defender of their

faith, they refused to follow him into the Protestant camp and as a

deserter from the Emperor’s service. It also opened the Emperor’s eyes

to the necessity of prompt action, unless he would permit Wallenstein to

concoct some plan by which he might lead the whole army into the camp of

the Protestants. He therefore secretly commissioned General Gallas, one

of Wallenstein’s subordinates, to take command of the army as soon as

the time had come for openly deposing the Duke of Friedland. It was a

game of duplicity and deception on both sides. The Emperor tried to

cheat Wallenstein out of his command and reward, and Wallenstein tried

to cheat the Emperor out of the army.

Until then Wallenstein had been at Pilsen; but after the demonstration

of the commanders, he deemed it advisable for his own plans and

interests to transfer his headquarters to the strongly fortified city of

Eger, which was commanded by Gordon, whom he considered one of his most

reliable friends. The larger part of the army remained at Pilsen, while

Wallenstein himself, escorted by a number of picked regiments under the

command of his most trusted lieutenants, went to Eger. But there he was

to meet his doom. The thunderclouds of imperial wrath had been gathering

more and more threateningly above his head. Wallenstein saw them not and

feared them not. Had not the stars prophesied his coming elevation? Even

when the Emperor published a proclamation, which was secretly

distributed in the army, declaring him a rebel and offering a reward for

his surrender, dead or alive, he would not believe it; he laughed at it

when it was shown him. Under ordinary circumstances he would have had

the courage to treat any imperial edict with contempt, for with his army

his name was a much greater power and authority than that of the

Emperor; but a complication had arisen which in the minds of his

soldiers paralyzed his efforts and reëstablished the Emperor’s

supremacy. This complication was the increasing strength of the

Protestant armies. The Duke’s army, lawless, cruel, and violating every

rule of morality, was nevertheless composed of men who stood in slavish

fear of the Church and of the priest, and as soon as Wallenstein turned

against these two, the soldiers turned against him. They were willing to

follow him to death in a Catholic cause, when death would open to them

the gates of Paradise, but they refused to follow him to death when

death would deliver them to the everlasting torments of hell.

With this invisible moral power the great commander had not reckoned.

Among the very men whom he had picked out as his escort to Eger were his

murderers. And they did not wait long, for fear that others might

anticipate them in their bloody work, and capture not only the imperial

reward, but also the benedictions of the Church. These men were Gordon,

the commander of the Eger garrison, and Leslie (both Scotchmen),

Deveroux and Butler (both Irishmen). They had always been enthusiastic

friends and admirers of Wallenstein, but they were also fanatical

Catholics, and when they had to choose between their commander and the

Church, their devotion to the latter prevailed. Deveroux was the leading

spirit in the plot. He had received private instructions from Gallas and

Piccolomini and won over the others. They also secured the assistance of

a number of soldiers in their regiments, and solemnly pledged themselves

to surrender Wallenstein’s person, dead or alive, to Gallas, who was to

take command of the imperial army. But in order to prevent interference

with their dark design, Gordon, the commander of the garrison, invited

them all to the citadel for an evening entertainment. At this

entertainment, while eating supper, Illo, Terzky, Kinsky and Newman,

were murdered. It was on a Saturday evening, February 25, 1634, the day

after they had arrived with Wallenstein at Eger. Wallenstein himself was

not present. He had retired early that night, after having once more

consulted the stars with his Italian astrologer, who discovered

unfavorable signs in the constellations. But it seems Wallenstein paid

no attention to these warnings, and fell soundly asleep soon afterwards.

Toward midnight, or perhaps shortly after midnight, he was aroused from

his sleep by a loud noise. Coming from the citadel, where Wallenstein’s

lieutenants had been slain, Butler, with a number of his dragoons, and

Deveroux, with a number of his halberdiers, marched up to Wallenstein’s

residence. Since both Butler and Deveroux were well known to the guards

in the hall, they were immediately admitted, but when they reached the

anteroom to the Duke’s apartments, the sentinel wanted to stop them. He

was cut down, not, however, before he had called for help, and cried

out: “Murderers! Rebels!” It was this tumult that aroused Wallenstein.

He jumped out of bed and hurried to the window to ask the sentinel

posted at the entrance what was the matter. At that moment the door

leading to the anteroom was burst open, and Deveroux, a halberd in his

hands, and followed by half a dozen of his men, entered the bedroom,

where he found himself face to face with Wallenstein. “Are you the

scoundrel,” said he, “who wants to rob his Imperial Majesty of his

crown? You must die now!” And without having given any answer,

Wallenstein received a stab of the halberd which lacerated the

intestines and caused almost immediate death. Like Cæsar, he might have

exclaimed, “Et tu, Brute!” for he had always especially befriended and

distinguished this man Deveroux, who had come to him poor and

friendless, and who owed to him everything. One of the halberdiers

wished to throw Wallenstein’s corpse out of the window, but Deveroux

would not permit it; he rolled the body up in a table cover and had it

transported to the citadel, where the Duke’s murdered friends were lying

in the yard, waiting for their burial. Wallenstein’s body was placed by

their side. It was then resolved to send the bodies of the dead generals

to one of Illo’s country-seats, which was in the neighborhood. In

placing them in their coffins, it was found that Wallenstein’s coffin

was too small, and in order to force him into it his legs had to be

broken.

Thus died one of the most remarkable men of the seventeenth

century,--the greatest of the German generals of the terrible Thirty

Years’ War. As a strategist, he may not have been fully the equal of

Gustavus Adolphus, but he had a magnetic power over his men which even

that great commander did not possess, and which would have made him

invincible, had not superstition and religious awe counteracted it. The

German Emperor, hearing of his assassination, appeared to be overwhelmed

with grief, and ordered three thousand masses to be read for the

salvation of his soul; but he tried in vain to deceive the world by this

hypocritical sorrow for a murder which he had planned and for which he

rewarded the assassins. To this very day the treason of Wallenstein

remains shrouded in doubt; and very likely it will remain forever an

unsolved problem.

CHAPTER XIV

JOHN AND CORNELIUS DE WITT

[Illustration: JOHN DE WITT]

CHAPTER XIV

ASSASSINATION OF THE BROTHERS JOHN AND CORNELIUS DE WITT

(August 20, 1672)

Never, perhaps, was the old saying, “Republics are ungrateful,” more

strikingly verified than in the case of the two brothers De Witt, who,

after having rendered many great services to the Dutch Republic, were

foully murdered by an infuriated mob in the streets of the Hague, August

20, 1672. John and Cornelius de Witt were the sons of a distinguished

citizen of the city of Dordrecht, who had represented that city in the

general assemblies of Holland and Friesland and was known as an eloquent

and incorruptible defender of popular rights. He had placed himself at

the head of the anti-Orange party because he considered the ambition and

power of the princes of Orange a standing danger to the Republic. Grown

up under the direction of such a father, the two sons had naturally

imbibed his strong democratic principles, and their undoubted patriotism

was strongly tinged with hostility to the house of Orange. The two De

Witts have often been compared to the Gracchi, and, like those

illustrious Romans, they worked and died for their democratic

principles. Both were highly talented and, while quite young, rose to

the highest honors and dignities among their countrymen,--Cornelius, the

elder of the two, by his eminent legal ability and his skill as a

military and naval director and commissary, and John, by his eminence as

an administrator and statesman. It is difficult to decide which of the

two was intellectually the superior. A medal struck in their honor bore

the inscription, “Hic armis maximus, ille toga.” It should not be

inferred, however, from this inscription, that Cornelius, to whom the

word “armis” applied, was at any time commander-in-chief of the Dutch

army and navy, since he held only the office of government inspector of

the navy, in which capacity he greatly distinguished himself.

John was, at the age of twenty-five, elected pensionary of the city of

Dordrecht, and two years later, in 1652, Grand Pensionary of Holland,

one of the highest offices in the United Provinces. His political

influence was very great, and he used it to the best of his ability

against the house of Orange. William the Second, Prince of Orange, had

died on the second of October, 1650, leaving only a widow and a

posthumous son as his heirs. On these circumstances, so unfavorable to

the illustrious house which had played for so many years a conspicuous

part in the history of the Netherlands, John de Witt built his hopes of

dealing a deathblow to its political pretensions and of abolishing

forever the office of stadtholder. It was, however, no easy task to

accomplish this object. The province of Zealand was full of friends and

partisans of the late stadtholder, who vigorously opposed any attempt in

the direction contemplated by De Witt; and the other provinces, either

from loyalty to the house of Orange, or from a secret jealousy of the

supremacy of the states of Holland, which always wanted to control the

policy of the Republic, either openly rejected the plans of De Witt or

modified and attenuated them as exaggerated.

At the moment when John de Witt took the reins of government, the states

were at war with England, and the war had taken a very unfavorable turn

for them. The Dutch admirals had suffered several terrible defeats.

Tromp, one of their most celebrated naval heroes, had been killed in

battle, and an English fleet was cruising along the coast of Holland,

blockading its ports, and paralyzing its commerce. But De Witt repaired

these disasters with such rapidity, and restored to the Dutch navy such

a formidable strength by his administrative genius, that Cromwell was

willing to enter into negotiations for peace, which he had haughtily

rejected before. A treaty of peace, submitted by the Grand Pensionary of

Holland and signed at Westminster on the fifteenth of April, 1654,

reëstablished virtually the conditions which had existed between the two

nations before the war. However, the Dutch Republic was compelled to

recognize the superiority of the English flag in the channel, and bound

itself to give the Stuart dynasty no support, and that no Prince of

Orange should be elected again either Stadtholder or Captain-General.

This last section of the treaty was signed, at first by the province of

Holland only, and was kept secret for a long time. In getting this

provision of exclusion of the house of Orange passed (which, by the way,

was as welcome to De Witt as to Cromwell) by the other provinces also,

the Grand Pensionary practised a good deal of duplicity, and laid

himself open to serious charges of official deception which later on

contributed to his downfall.

In the meantime another complication had arisen and taxed the

statesmanship of the Dutch government and the patriotism of the

Netherlanders to the utmost. In France Louis the Fourteenth had taken

the reins of government into his own hands, and manifested an ambition

for conquest which endangered the security of all his neighbors.

Although the wife of Louis, at the time of her marriage, had solemnly

renounced all her rights of succession to the Spanish throne and any

Spanish provinces, the King nevertheless after the death of his wife’s

father, Philip the Fourth, claimed the Spanish Netherlands as justly

belonging to his wife, and defended this claim not so much by argument

as by an invasion and armed occupation of the disputed territory. No

state was more deeply interested in the outcome of this dispute than the

Netherlands. With growing fear they beheld the rapid progress which the

armies of the French King under the command of great generals were

making, and they thought that their own independence might suffer from

the immediate neighborhood of so powerful and aggressive a monarch. With

great skill the Dutch government secretly formed an alliance with Sweden

and England by which these three powers agreed that the Spanish

Netherlands should remain under Spanish dominion and that Louis the

Fourteenth should be prevented from annexing them to the French

monarchy. This Triple Alliance was too powerful to be defied by the

French King, and he made peace with Spain, evacuating Franche-Comté,

which he had already conquered, but retaining possession of a number of

important cities in the Netherlands,--such as Charleroi, Douai, Lille,

Tournay and Oudenarde, which by the genius of Vauban were converted

into almost impregnable fortresses. Dutch statesmanship was the obstacle

which had placed itself in the King’s way and frustrated his ambitious

designs. Personal irritation and offended vanity were added to his

chagrin at the failure of his plans.

A boastful medal was struck in the Netherlands commemorating the

diplomatic victory which their government had achieved over the power of

France. On this medal a Dutch statesman was represented as Joshua

bidding the sun (the symbol of Louis the Fourteenth) to stand still. For

this arrogance the Republic was to be punished, and with matchless skill

and cunning the French government went to work to prepare for its

overthrow. The general political situation of Europe was highly

favorable to the consummation of the French designs. The Emperor of

Germany, a weak and pusillanimous sovereign, had his hands full in the

eastern provinces of the Empire, in which the Turks had advanced

victorious up to the very gates of Vienna; he was therefore powerless to

oppose French aggression in the Netherlands. Moreover special

negotiations had been opened with some of the sovereign princes of

northern Germany by which the French monarch secured the right to march

his armies through their territory on their way to the United

Netherlands without touching Spanish territory. With equal success the

French diplomats dissolved the Triple Alliance, and made both Sweden and

England, former allies of the Dutch Republic, subservient to the French

monarch. Sweden received an annual subsidy of 600,000 dollars from the

French treasury, and England a subsidy of 350,000 pounds sterling and

also the promise of the province of Zealand as its share of the

dismemberment of the United Netherlands. Princess Henrietta of France,

wife of the Duke of Orleans and sister of Charles the Second of England,

was sent by the wily French King to England to negotiate this infamous

treaty. She succeeded in accomplishing her object mainly through the

influence which one of the ladies of her suite, Mademoiselle de

Querouet, gained over the mind of the English King, who made her his

mistress and bestowed on her the title of Duchess of Portsmouth.

Having thus fortified himself on all sides and deprived the United

Netherlands of the possibility of taking the field against him with any

chance of success, Louis declared war upon them. The result could not be

doubtful. Moreover the domestic discord and the active struggle between

the political factions added much to the gravity of the situation, and

partly paralyzed the efforts of the government to arouse the provinces

to a full comprehension of the danger. John de Witt was the chief

executive of the government, and upon him rested largely the

responsibility of the situation. The Orangist party turned its main

attacks against him, and spared neither criticism nor calumny to

undermine his standing and authority. It charged him directly with

having, either through incompetency or something worse, neglected to

place the country in a suitable state of defence, and then having

provoked a war with a powerful enemy. These charges against De Witt were

largely unjust, and were preferred only to punish him for his opposition

to reinstating the house of Orange in the stadtholdership and in the

chief command of all the military forces of the Republic.

John de Witt had made two radical errors in his estimate of the

political situation. He knew that Louis the Fourteenth felt irritated at

the Dutch Republic’s action in preventing his acquisition of the Spanish

Netherlands; but he did not know that the French King would resent that

action, and make gigantic preparations for crushing the Dutch Republic.

Never before had such tremendous efforts been made by a great nation to

destroy a weak neighbor. The war was to be short and decisive, and the

insolent “traders”--that was the name the haughty French King gave to

the citizens of the Netherlands--were to be punished radically. The

second error which De Witt committed was his underestimation of the

venality and corruption existing in the government circles of his former

allies, England and Sweden. He learned at an early day that French

diplomacy had induced them to recede from the Triple Alliance; but he

did not realize at the time that French gold and French promises had

persuaded these two powers to make common cause with him for the

dismemberment of the Republic, and to furnish troops for that purpose.

When finally the full reality of the King’s revengeful plan was revealed

to him, he not only aroused the people of the Netherlands to a

realization of the terrible danger which threatened them, but he also,

with his usual energy, went to work to find assistance against the

overwhelming odds among the other European powers, and his experienced

statesmanship served him well in bringing into play all the different

motives, both personal and political, by which he could hope to

influence their decisions.

Unfortunately the allies he could enlist in his cause were too weak to

constitute an adequate counterpoise to the enormous power of his

opponent. In stating the general political situation of Europe

preceding the attack of Louis the Fourteenth on the Dutch Republic, we

have already mentioned the causes which prevented the other powers from

active interference in behalf of the Netherlands. The aggressive Turk,

also influenced by French money, kept the Emperor of Germany busy in his

eastern provinces, and left him little time to care for other things

than his own protection. Moreover Louis the Fourteenth had, by

munificent presents and liberal payments, won the secret support of the

Emperor’s prime minister, Lobkowitz, who did all in his power to

overcome his master’s fears concerning the intentions of the French

King, and frustrated the efforts of the King’s enemies to draw him over

to their side. De Witt had to contend with these difficulties in

securing little more than the moral support of the Emperor; but when the

rapid progress of the French arms had revealed to him the danger which

threatened the Empire, he consented reluctantly and hesitatingly to a

sort of active intervention for the protection of the German territory.

One ally of the Dutch Republic should not be forgotten here--Frederick

William, the great Elector of Brandenburg, whose political genius

enabled him to see the disastrous consequences which the growing power

of the King of France would have not only for the German Empire, but

also for his own possessions on the Rhine. He, therefore, concluded an

alliance with the Dutch Republic, promising an army of twenty thousand

men in defence of German soil against the aggression of the French King,

and used besides his influence over the German Emperor in persuading him

to join the alliance. The Elector of Brandenburg was for one reason a

particularly valuable ally, because his army was needed to keep in

check the Swedes, who were to take the field in northern Germany as soon

as the German Emperor would show a disposition to coöperate with the

Dutch Republic. The decisive victory of Fehrbellin, in which the great

Elector routed a Swedish army much superior in numbers to his own,

showed how gloriously he performed his part of the programme.

It was at this time that the Prince of Orange, although only twenty

years old, appeared to the Dutch people as a savior from these

threatened calamities. The young Prince, after the death of his mother,

in 1661, passed under the guardianship of John de Witt, who had him

instructed in political science and in the study of modern languages. It

would seem that, with the foresight of genius, he foresaw the prominent

part which Prince William would sooner or later play in the history of

the Republic, and that, in spite of his personal antipathy to the house

of Orange, he was patriotic enough to educate him well for his coming

career. The precarious condition of his health, which seemed to

disqualify the Prince for the hardships and exposures of military life,

had no influence whatever on his ambition to equal the great

achievements of his ancestors. An opportunity for reaching the goal of

his ambition was given him when the States-General, in obedience to the

urgent demand of the people, appointed him Captain-General of the

Republic. Although the powers of the new commander-in-chief were limited

by several provisions, yet the Republican party, under the leadership of

De Witt, demanded more and better guarantees for curbing the ambition of

the Prince. It demanded and obtained from the States-General an order

that the Captain-General should be obliged to swear to maintain the

Perpetual Edict suppressing the stadtholdership and prohibiting its

reëstablishment. John de Witt also strongly opposed the life-appointment

of the Prince of Orange until he should have completed his twenty-second

year, while the Orangists and the Prince himself made his

life-appointment a condition for his acceptance. A compromise was

finally reached, and Prince William of Orange, known in history as

William the Third, was solemnly inaugurated in his new office of

commander-in-chief. On him was imposed the difficult task to oppose the

armies of Louis the Fourteenth, commanded by Condé, Turenne, Luxembourg

and Vauban. Entire harmony and good-will seemed to exist between the

Grand Pensionary and the Prince after the latter’s appointment to the

command of the army. They corresponded in a very cordial tone, and De

Witt showed the greatest eagerness to satisfy the wishes of the Prince

for the thorough defence of the country. It is not our purpose to

mention in detail the indefatigable exertions of John de Witt to place

the country in a suitable state of defence. But these exertions and the

measures they resulted in were not sufficient to avert the calamities of

the war and to prevent a conquest which everybody had foreseen. The

Netherlanders had enjoyed peace for twenty-four years, and this long

rest had unaccustomed the country to war. The constant quarrels between

the different parties had weakened the unity of the Republic, and when

the time for united and patriotic action came, the nation was but ill

prepared for it.

On the sixth of April, 1672, France issued a declaration of war which

had been long expected. Louis the Fourteenth celebrated beforehand the

conquest he was about to undertake, although some of his most

experienced generals, Condé for instance, did not share his confidence.

However, the rapidity with which the French, after having crossed the

Yssel, took cities and fortresses almost without firing a gun, seemed

fully to justify Louis the Fourteenth in his anticipation of an easy and

brilliant victory. One short month had sufficed to place at the mercy of

the French monarch the flourishing and prosperous Republic, which four

years before had interrupted him in his march of victory. No man

suffered more both as a patriot and as a public official, from the

disastrous turn in public affairs than John de Witt. He had done all

that a sagacious statesman and a noble-minded patriot could do to

prevent, and failing in this attempt, sought to repair the disasters

which overwhelmed the Republic. But the ungrateful people failed to

stand by him and reward his exertions for the public welfare. And not

only the honor of having saved the independence of his country in this

unequal conflict was denied to him, but his life itself was lost, as a

sacrifice to popular hatred and fanaticism.

Under these exasperating circumstances--each new day bringing

information of a new calamity, of the surrender of a fortress, of the

capitulation of a garrison, of the precipitate retreat of the army--it

was not only natural, it was a matter of duty and patriotism for John de

Witt, the head of the government, to enter into negotiations with the

conqueror in order to check his rapid advance and get from him better

terms of peace than might be expected after he had captured the last

bulwarks of Dutch independence. It was by no means De Witt’s plan to

open negotiations for the surrender of Dutch independence; but he hoped

that the French King would consent to suspend hostilities during the

progress of the negotiations, and that this intermission would give the

Republic time to strengthen its bulwarks. In case of an unfavorable

result, he would resume armed resistance with greater chances of success

than before. John de Witt had frequently, during the months preceding

the outbreak of the war, insisted on making adequate preparations to

meet an attack of the French King, whose restless ambition for military

glory and territorial expansion was well known. He had also pointed out

(if all other means should fail) the necessity of again, as in the war

with Spain, resorting to those means of defence which nature had placed

in the possession of the Dutch, by opening the sluices and cutting the

dykes, in order to let the sea overflow the bottom lands of the country,

and thus protecting Holland, and above all Amsterdam, from foreign

occupation. This last measure of defence, terrible and destructive as it

was necessarily, was really the anchor of hope upon which the minds of

Dutch patriots rested their expectations of final triumph.

The Dutch navy was in excellent condition. It was still mistress of the

seas, and it had lately, under the able command of De Ruyter one of the

greatest naval heroes that ever lived, won two great victories over the

fleets of France and England, which secured the Republic against the

landing of foreign troops from the sea side. The Republic had spared no

efforts to keep the navy in splendid condition, and more than any other

man Cornelius de Witt had contributed to its efficiency. He was an

intimate friend of Admiral de Ruyter, and during the naval battle of

Solbay, although seriously ill, he sat by his side, as the official

delegate of the States-General, assisting him with his counsels, and by

his very presence inspiring sailors and commanders with patriotic

devotion. The greatness of his services to the Republic had been

formally recognized after that battle by a unanimous vote of thanks of

the States-General.

It would seem almost a matter of impossibility that with such a record

of patriotism, integrity and devotion to the public welfare, the voice

of calumny should have been successfully raised against the two

illustrious brothers; but it was done nevertheless by the Orange party,

which did not forgive their opposition to the elevation of Prince

William. The young Prince had, during the short campaign, won no martial

laurels by victories in battles or by the capture of fortresses; but he

had shown eminent qualities which promised glorious results if an

opportunity were given for unfolding them. He was wise and circumspect

beyond his years, self-collected and cool amid the most pressing

dangers, inexhaustible in resources, and while thoroughly loyal to the

Republic, yet proud of his ancestors and the preëminent part they had

played in the history of their country.

As soon as the report became public that the Grand Pensionary had taken

steps for negotiations with the French King, the Orange party denounced

them as acts of treason, and loudly demanded that Prince William should

be placed in supreme authority. It also asserted that the failure of the

campaign so far was due to the restrictions foolishly and criminally

imposed on the Prince, who might have saved the Republic if he had been

permitted to follow the inspirations of his own genius and had not been

fettered by instructions from men that had been his life-long enemies

and who preferred the rule of a foreign monarch to the stadtholdership

of a Prince of Orange. In this manner the public mind was filled with

hatred toward the De Witts, while gradually the young Prince of Orange

became the idol of the nation. Recollections of the glorious

achievements of his forefathers, of their perseverance and patience, of

their intrepidity and resoluteness, and of their final triumphs in

situations as perilous as theirs, were awakened in the hearts of the

burghers, and made them inclined to a restoration of the stadtholdership

in behalf of the Prince. It was to be expected that sooner or later

public excitement, aggravated from hour to hour by the unfavorable

reports from the seat of war, would manifest itself in a violent

explosion and fall with destructive force upon the very heads which were

most entitled to public gratitude and veneration.

Two attempts on the lives of the two brothers in the summer of 1672--an

attack on John de Witt which came very near killing him and prostrated

him for weeks on a sick bed, and the other on Cornelius, who escaped

from it almost unhurt--were the first serious manifestations of the

public ill-will. It was only too evident that the Orange party was at

the bottom of these outbursts of hostility, and that Prince William

himself was not a stranger to the intrigues. On the second of July,

1672, the Prince of Orange was elected Stadtholder of Holland and

Zealand for life. These were the only two provinces not occupied by the

French armies, and the Prince’s

[Illustration: CORNELIUS DE WITT]

election was therefore equivalent to his appointment as Stadtholder of

the Republic. In effect it placed the De Witts at his mercy.

In vain the Grand Pensionary handed in his resignation on the fourth of

August. The Orange party was not satisfied with permitting him to retire

from the public service; it formed a sinister conspiracy which engulfed

the two illustrious men in ruin and death. A worthless scoundrel, a

certain Tichelaar who on several occasions had been accused of felonies,

openly charged Cornelius de Witt with having tried to bribe him to

assassinate the Prince Stadtholder,--a proposition which he had

indignantly rejected in spite of the tempting rewards offered to him.

Incredible as it may appear, the accusation, contradicted both by the

noble character of Cornelius de Witt and by the bad reputation of the

informer, was eagerly acted upon by the authorities of Holland.

Cornelius was arrested and imprisoned at the Hague, where for four days

he was subjected to the infamy of the torture. It was hoped that in his

agony he would make a confession of guilt which, true or not, would

justify his partisan judges in passing a sentence of death on him. But

Cornelius remained firm in his disdainful denial of the odious

accusation, and the repetition of the torture on four different days did

not change his testimony. Under these circumstances his base judges,

instruments of the Stadtholder and his party, did not dare to pronounce

the death sentence against him; but they found him guilty nevertheless,

deprived him of all his public dignities, and exiled him for life from

the territory of the Republic.

It may appear strange that the Orange party persecuted Cornelius de

Witt, who was the brother of the Grand Pensionary, with such venomous

hatred; but an occurrence which had shortly preceded his arrest will

explain the ill-will of the leaders of the Orange party. Like the other

cities of Holland, the city of Dordrecht had, by a vote of its Common

Council, revoked the Perpetual Edict. Cornelius de Witt had but a few

weeks before returned from the battle of Solbay, where he had so greatly

distinguished himself, and was confined to his bed by serious illness.

Being one of the highest city officials, his signature was required on

the act of revocation, and the Orange leaders demanded that the document

should be forthwith presented to him. City officials, followed by an

excited and hostile mob, took it to his residence and requested him to

sign it. He refused. In vain his family, his friends, and his servants

implored him to affix his signature, telling him that a mob of thousands

of excited people surrounded the house and threatened to demolish it and

kill the inhabitants if his name should not appear on the paper. Finally

the supplications and tears of his wife and children, imploring him not

to sacrifice their lives by his obstinacy, induced him to affix his

signature, but he added the two initials V. C. to it; and when the

officials asked him what those two letters meant, he answered, “They

stand for the words ‘Vi coactus’” (yielding to violence). This

declaration caused an outburst of indignation in the crowd, and but for

the speedy erasure of the obnoxious initials by his wife, and the

energetic efforts of his friends to protect him, Cornelius de Witt would

very likely on that day have paid for his boldness with his life. It was

ascertained that Tichelaar, who shortly afterwards accused him of

having planned the assassination of the Prince of Orange, had been one

of the mob surrounding the house and vociferously demanding the

punishment of the rebellious magistrate. The infamous charge of

Tichelaar against the great patriot had unquestionably sprung from the

scene at Cornelius de Witt’s residence. The Orange leaders saw that it

would not be safe for them or their master to let republicans like the

two De Witts remain among them, and their death was resolved upon.

The twentieth of August, 1672, was the fatal day which was to seal the

doom of the two illustrious brothers. Cornelius, crushed by the sentence

of perpetual banishment pronounced against him, remained in his cell at

the Buitenhof, the terrible prison of the Hague. On the morning of that

day John de Witt was called to the Buitenhof, where his brother wished

to see him. Although warned by his friends not to go, the brave

ex-Pensionary did not hesitate to comply with the summons. It was a

false message. Reaching the prison, he found himself entrapped and at

the mercy of the mob, which had assembled before the prison howling and

shouting, “Hurrah for Orange! Death to the traitors!” It was but a short

time after his arrival, and after a hurried and pathetic interview with

his brother, that the rabble, instigated by the calumnies of the Orange

men, burst open the doors of the prison, and with axes and

sledge-hammers and clubs forced their way up to the cell where Cornelius

was imprisoned. At the sight of the two brothers the fury of the mob

knew no bounds. Like tigers they jumped upon them, threw them down,

clubbed and slew them amid cries of beastly exultation. “There goes the

Perpetual Edict!” one of the butchers is said to have exclaimed as a

powerful blow with the butt-end of his musket prostrated John de Witt

senseless at his feet. Another murderer came up, and noticing symptoms

of returning consciousness in the countenance of the Pensionary, he

fired his pistol at him, blowing out his brains. Cornelius was killed by

a tremendous blow with an iron bar which fractured his skull; he died

instantly. But death alone did not satisfy the slayers. With unheard-of

brutality they kicked, beat and abused, in every possible manner, the

lifeless bodies, and finally, after having stripped off their clothes,

dragged the mangled and disfigured remains from the jail to a gibbet

which had been erected by volunteer executioners, and hung them by the

feet. The popular frenzy went so far that the murderers cut and tore the

flesh in pieces from the bodies of “the great traitors, John and

Cornelius de Witt,” and sold them in the streets of the city for a few

cents each.

Thus suffered and died, on the twentieth of August, 1672, two of the

purest and most high-minded patriots that any nation has

produced,--murdered by their own people, whom they had served faithfully

and successfully for many years. Their death is a dark blot on the

annals of the Dutch Republic: and it is an indelible stain on the

otherwise great and fair name of William the Third of Orange,

Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and afterwards King of England.

History has forgotten many crimes, but it will not forget the

assassination of the brothers De Witt.

CHAPTER XV

ALEXIS, SON OF PETER THE GREAT

[Illustration: ALEXIS]

CHAPTER XV

ASSASSINATION OF ALEXIS, SON OF PETER THE GREAT

(June 26, 1718)

The sudden death of Alexis, son of Peter the Great by his first wife

Eudoxia, has always been and is still shrouded in mystery; but the

prevailing opinion of historians is that the unfortunate young man was

assassinated by direct order of his father, and all the surrounding

circumstances point to this conclusion. We think we are therefore

justified in placing it here among the famous assassinations in history.

It is the darkest chapter in the history of Peter the Great, a monarch

whose achievements as a civil administrator, reformer, and general

entitle him to a high rank among the really great rulers of Europe; but

these achievements should not be made a cloak or excuse for a crime from

which not only modern civilization, but human nature itself, shrinks

back in horror.

It is not necessary here to go into the details of the marvellous

activity and energy of Peter’s life. More than any other ruler of

ancient or modern times he stands before the world as a model national

reformer, introducing, by the force of an indomitable will, the most

sweeping changes and reforms into the social, economical, political,

industrial, and commercial life of the nation over which he rules,

breaking with all the traditions of the past, and lifting his nation by

a supreme effort from comparative barbarism into semi-culture, and

starting it on the road to political greatness and commercial

importance, on which it has made such astounding progress during the

last two hundred years. The personal genius and initiative of Peter the

Great have contributed more to the development of Russia’s resources,

and he has done more to raise her to her present position in Europe than

all other causes combined. It is sad for the philanthropist and

historian to admit that these great qualities were obscured by vices and

habits that were, perhaps, the tribute which even the greatest of

mortals has to pay to his age and to his nation.

As a very young man Peter had married Eudoxia Laputkin, the daughter of

a powerful and influential family. It was not a love marriage, but he

had hoped to gain from this alliance a strengthening of his pretensions

to the throne. Eudoxia was very handsome, but, while she pleased Peter,

she had not the power to win his exclusive affection. She bore him a

son, Alexis, but even the birth of an heir--generally so anxiously

expected by autocrats--could not firmly establish intimate relations

between Peter and Eudoxia while he permitted the boy to remain entirely

under the care of the mother and her relatives. Unfortunately the

Laputkin family was strongly attached to ancient Russian traditions and

usages. It was entirely under the influence of the priests and clung to

the prejudices and prerogatives of the Russian aristocracy. Alexis was

brought up in these opinions and absorbed them from his infancy. In

fact no two minds, and no two temperaments could have been more at

variance than those of the father and of the son; and, as the boy grew

up, the antagonism between Peter and Alexis became greater and more

pronounced.

Whether from incompatibility of temper or some other cause, Peter

discarded Eudoxia and had her shut up in a convent in 1698; he then took

the boy out of her hands and entrusted his education to teachers in

sympathy with his own ideas. But they found it impossible--and even

Peter himself, in spite of rigorous measures and cruelty--to eradicate

from the mind of the boy the conservative and old-Russian principles

which his mother and the Laputkins had, as it would seem, planted deep

within it. When Peter divorced Eudoxia and shut her up in a convent, the

antipathy of the boy turned into hatred, and he clung only the more

stubbornly to his mother and her family. As he grew older, he became

intemperate and dissipated; but, more than these vices, the sluggishness

of his mind and the open hostility with which he looked upon the great

reforms in which Peter was engaged and in which he took great pride,

irritated his father to such a degree that the Czar formed the plan of

excluding him from the succession.

In order to break his bad habits and possibly to bring about a salutary

change in his rude and uncouth conduct, Alexis was married quite young

to a Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a lovely and refined young

woman of great personal beauty; but Alexis treated her very coldly and

cruelly. The fact that his father had selected his bride was sufficient

cause for him to treat her with contempt and aversion. She bore her

misfortune with great resignation; but died of a broken heart, after

having given her husband two children, a daughter and a son. The latter

afterwards ascended the throne as Peter the Second.

The death of his wife made but little impression on Alexis, who had been

living for a long time in open adultery with his mistress, an illiterate

serf from Finland. When this matrimonial attempt to reform Alexis had

failed, the Czar, more than ever incensed at his obstinacy, gave him the

choice between changing his ways and being sent to a convent. The Czar

was the more inclined to shut him up in a solitary place of confinement

because Catherine, his second wife, had just given birth to a son, and

Peter might hope to have a male heir, even with Alexis out of the way.

The birth of this half-brother filled the mind of Alexis with vague

fears. But being assured by his friends, and especially by the Laputkins

and the priests, that he might easily, at the proper time, get out of

the convent, since the cowl would not be nailed to his head, he

hypocritically declared in favor of the convent, and told his father

that he had a greater vocation for spiritual things than for the

government of an empire. The confinement was, however, not so very

solitary as it might have appeared to the Czar; on the contrary, both

Alexis and Eudoxia were the chief personages around whom the malcontents

and all the opponents of reform clustered with hopeful expectation.

Alexis treated his imprisonment so lightly that he imprudently spoke of

what he was going to do as soon as he had ascended the throne. “I shall

be the Czar,” said he; “they cannot keep me out of the succession. Let

his foreigners intrigue against me; I shall beat them all, for the

people are for me, and I’ll set all things right again. We shall then be

Russians once more!”

In the meantime Peter the Great had started on a new European tour.

Catherine, his wife, accompanied him. He went to Prussia, Denmark,

Holland, England and France, and was received everywhere with the

greatest honors and distinctions. At Amsterdam the unwelcome news

reached him that Alexis had left his convent under a false pretence,

saying that he would join the Czar on his travels; but he had proceeded

to Vienna and placed himself under the protection of the German Emperor.

The Czar immediately despatched two of his most intimate friends with

instructions to bring him back, alive or dead. But when the two

messengers reached Vienna, the Czarowitz had left that city already, and

his whereabouts was unknown. But after a diligent search, it was

discovered that he had gone to Naples and had found an asylum at the

Castle of St. Angelo. The messengers hurried to Naples and succeeded in

getting an interview with the Prince, in which they exhausted their

eloquence to induce him to return with them to Russia. They read to him

also a letter written by his father, who promised him that, upon his

immediate return, his escapade would be forgiven and forgotten. The

Prince was not willing to go, and consented only when the Viceroy of

Naples joined his own request with the entreaties of the messengers. The

Czar had returned already to St. Petersburg when Alexis arrived.

The Prince hoped to be kindly received and to be treated like a

repentant son; but in this expectation he found himself badly deceived.

He was immediately arrested and subjected to a very severe

interrogatory, in the course of which he implicated a number of

prominent persons in having planned and assisted him in his flight from

Russia. And then a mock trial of the most infamous character was

enacted. The young Prince had already renounced all his rights to the

crown; but this renunciation did not assuage the vindictive spirit of

his father. Those whom Alexis, in his confusion and in the agony of the

torture, had implicated in the crime of which he was accused, were tried

for high treason, convicted, and beheaded or broken on the wheel. The

ex-Empress Eudoxia was transferred to a dungeon in another prison, after

having been cruelly chastised by two nuns. Alexis himself, from whom the

cruel application of the torture (during which the Czar was present) had

extorted the confession of crimes which he had never committed, was

convicted of high treason and sentenced to be beheaded. The Czar

insisted on a verdict of capital punishment, and the one hundred and

eighty-one judges composing the court obeyed the imperial brute; they

rendered a unanimous verdict. Peter hypocritically said that he would

pardon him. When the decision of the judges and his father’s promise of

clemency were communicated to Alexis, he was overcome with terror and

excitement, and led back to prison. The next day it was reported that he

had died of apoplexy, but that in his last moments an affectionate

interview had taken place between him and his father. Another report

stated that the Czar had withdrawn his pardon and ordered his son to be

beheaded without delay. And still another report, almost too horrid to

be true, says that Peter, with his own hands, cut off the head of his

son. There is no doubt that the young man was foully murdered. The story

of his death by apoplexy was merely invented to whitewash the memory of

one of the greatest, but also of one of the most brutal and cruel rulers

that ever lived.

CHAPTER XVI

PETER THE THIRD OF RUSSIA

[Illustration: PETER III.]

CHAPTER XVI

ASSASSINATION OF PETER THE THIRD OF RUSSIA

(July 17, 1762)

In a previous chapter we have told the story, full of horror and crime,

of the life of Ivan the Terrible of Russia. It was not one famous

assassination which placed that life-story in this series of historical

murders; it was an uninterrupted, long-continued succession of

butcheries and assassinations which entitled it to this place. In the

long line of historical characters extending through the ages there is

not one who so fully deserves the designation of a wholesale assassin as

Ivan the Terrible, the demon of the North. But strange to say, the

Russians, who during his lifetime execrated him and fled from him as

from contagion, to-day seem to have forgotten his iniquities, and place

him among their great rulers. Let Karamsin, one of the few great

historians Russia has produced, explain this seeming anomaly: “Such was

the Czar! Such were his subjects! Their patience was boundless, for they

regarded the commands of the Czar as the commands of God, and they

considered every act of disobedience to the Czar’s will as a rebellion

against the will of God. They perished, but they saved for us, the

Russians of the nineteenth century, the greatness and the power of

Russia, for the strength of an empire rests in the willingness of an

empire to obey.” Words like these make us comprehend--what otherwise

would be utterly incomprehensible to us--that a monster like Ivan the

Terrible was permitted to continue his career of crime and murder until

it was terminated by death brought on by disease and not by violence.

The history of Russia, after the death of Ivan the Terrible, is full of

crimes and assassinations. Czars and heirs to the crown were ruthlessly

murdered in order to make way for usurpers and pretenders, until these

again fell victims to conspiracies. The most famous of these

assassinations is that of Peter the Third, not only because it was

carried out in the interest of his own wife, the Empress Catherine, but

mainly perhaps because Russia, at that time,--1762--had already entered

the list of great European powers. Peter the Third was the son of

Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and of the Grand-Duchess

Anna of Russia, oldest daughter of Peter the Great. As such, young Peter

had even a better right to the crown of Russia than the Empress

Elizabeth, who was a younger daughter of Peter the Great; and it was

Elizabeth herself who, in 1742, sent for Peter--then a boy at school in

Germany--and declared him her heir and successor to the crown.

Peter was then only fifteen years of age. His education until then had

been designed to fit him for the throne of Denmark and Sweden, upon

which his father had a just claim; but preferring the prospect of

sitting on the throne of the Czars, he went to St. Petersburg. The

Empress spared no pains to educate her nephew for the high and difficult

task which was in store for him as the future ruler of Russia. But it

was in vain that she tried to make a Russian of him; he remained not

only at heart, but also in his tastes, his manners, his conduct, his

amusements and occupations a German; and what was worse, he liked to

show publicly and privately how strongly attached he was to the land of

his birth, and how profoundly he despised the people of Russia, over

whom he was to rule. In a foreign-born crown-prince such a disposition

would have been a serious political mistake under all circumstances, but

it was especially so in this case, since Russia had been engaged, for

years, in war with Frederick the Great of Prussia, and had made great

sacrifices in men and treasures to conquer him and to cripple his

growing power and influence in Europe.

Elizabeth hated Frederick the Great with the passion of a woman offended

in her vanity. He had said of her: “She is as ugly as a cat and as

treacherous; the very thought of her makes me sick.” The hatred of the

Empress did not prevent the Crown Prince from openly expressing his

unbounded admiration for the Prussian King. True, Peter was mentally too

insignificant to comprehend the real greatness and genius of Frederick;

but he admired the strict discipline, the rigid training, the incessant

military exercises, the severe punishments for the slightest infraction

of the rules and the least symptom of insubordination,--in short, all

the outward and visible work in the preparation of a model army; and the

Prussian army had become the model of Europe since the days of King

Frederick William the First. He was anxious to introduce these Prussian

features into the Russian army, expecting very likely that such

externals would be the principal means of making an army invincible.

That it took the genius and the untiring energy of a Frederick to bring

about this invincibility he failed to see. When Peter had grown up to

manhood his military zeal increased and became a perfect passion. But he

felt no desire to join the Russian army in the field and earn military

distinction and honors; no, he preferred to stay at home and act the

drillmaster of a regiment of Holsteiners, which the Empress had

organized for his especial pleasure, and to whose equipment, drill and

exercises the young Grand Duke devoted most of his leisure hours. The

men were uniformed and armed exactly like Prussian grenadiers, and all

the officers belonged to prominent German families. The organization of

this regiment made the Grand Duke very unpopular among the members of

the Russian nobility, and they lost no opportunity in blackening his

character and belittling his mental qualifications.

In 1745 Peter married the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the daughter of a

Prussian field-marshal. She was distinguished by great beauty and high

mental attainments, and afterwards won world-wide renown under the name

of Catherine the Second. She was originally named Sophia Augusta, but

when the Empress Elizabeth selected her for the wife of her successor,

she adopted the name of Catherine. Before his marriage, Peter had led a

rather dissolute life, but for a couple of years after the wedding the

young couple seemed to be quite happy. Peter himself was very

good-looking and, although not a man of brilliant mind, was of average

intelligence and culture. An attack of small-pox destroyed his good

looks; and this circumstance combined with the volatile character of

his wife caused an estrangement, which seemed to grow from year to year,

and finally degenerated into absolute hatred. From that time on husband

and wife, although not formally divorced or even separated, lived each a

life of unrestrained vice.

No sooner had the courtiers noticed the growing coldness between them

than they tried to ingratiate themselves with the young and beautiful

but profligate Catherine, and some of them succeeded only too well. The

first of her lovers was Count Soltikoff, one of the handsomest men of

the Russian court, and first chamberlain of the Grand Duke. In his

privileged position in the service of the Grand Duke he had so many

opportunities of meeting the Grand Duchess, that soon the closest

intimacy was established between them. But somehow or other a report of

the liaison reached the ears of the Empress, and she sent Soltikoff on a

diplomatic mission to Turkey in the hope of putting a stop to it. But

the Grand Duchess easily consoled herself. No sooner had Soltikoff left

the capital than Catherine formed a new liaison. Her next lover was the

beautiful and chivalrous Prince Poniatowski, of the renowned Polish

family; the scandal became so notorious and excited so much envy and

jealousy among the Russian courtiers that it reached the ears of the

Grand Duke, who applied to the Empress and demanded that his wife be

punished for her shameful conduct. The Empress, who was guilty herself

of many scandalous love affairs, did not reprimand the Grand Duchess,

but sent Poniatowski back to Poland. A short time afterwards he

returned, however, having been appointed Polish Ambassador at the court

of St. Petersburg. The Grand Duke was indignant at his unlooked-for

return, and having one day surprised him in a very intimate

_tête-à-tête_ with Catherine, upbraided him and her in the presence of

the whole court, threatening at the time to drive him like a dog from

the palace, and to imprison her in a convent. At the same time the Grand

Duke himself was very far from leading an exemplary life. He had picked

out among the ladies of the court a young and beautiful girl, Countess

Woronzow, and made her his mistress.

The time came when the Empress Elizabeth was on her deathbed. She made

then a last attempt to reconcile the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess,

in order to secure peace for Russia; but the estrangement and repugnance

which they felt for each other was so great that this attempt failed

utterly. In fact, the chasm widened immensely after the death of

Elizabeth, and neither the husband nor the wife took care to conceal it.

Moreover, immediately after Peter’s accession to the throne, a radical

change occurred in the policy of the government,--a change that was

warmly approved by some, but most bitterly opposed by others. Two great

political parties were formed, and although the opponents of the

government were compelled to practise their agitation in secret, they

nevertheless counted a number of the most influential men among their

leaders. The new Emperor broke loose entirely from the traditional

policy of Russia; he not only withdrew from the Franco-Austrian

alliance, but he sent orders to the Russian generals in the field

against Frederick the Great of Prussia to coöperate with him. Peter

himself donned the uniform of a Prussian general, which grade Frederick

the Great had conferred upon him at his special request; all exercises

and manœuvres of the Russian army were, by direction of the Czar,

fashioned after those of the Prussian army, and Russian traditions and

customs were disregarded.

The indignation and discontent among the high nobility of Russia at

these “reforms”--which they ridiculed and despised--knew no bounds. In

these sentiments they were encouraged by the Czar’s wife, who both from

personal hostility and from the intuition of her far-sighted political

genius, opposed them as anti-Russian and as the manifestations of a

Teuto-maniac unfit to rule over the great Russian nation. Her husband

became more and more aggressive in his threats. He spoke openly, among

his intimates, of his intention to imprison Catherine in a convent and

to marry his mistress, Elizabeth Woronzow, and branded the son whom

Catherine had borne to him, as a bastard, who would be excluded from the

succession. It was therefore in self-defence that Catherine surrounded

herself with men of power and influence. She entered into close

relations with high officers of the Russian army, who still adhered with

loyal devotion to the traditions of Peter the Great and Elizabeth; and

although far from being pious and religious herself, she surrounded

herself with the high dignitaries of the Russian Church, whom Peter

insulted by neglect. Catherine, on the other hand, manifested a great

interest in religious ceremonies and a strict observance of the Greek

Church service; and at all times prominent clergymen were guests at

Peterhof, her residence.

Peter the Third wished to realize on the throne of Russia the ideal of

enlightened despotism, of which his idol, King Frederick the Second of

Prussia, was so illustrious a model. One of his first acts was to recall

the political exiles from Siberia--among them the two fieldmarshals

Münnich and Biron, who had been exiled by Elizabeth. It is assuredly one

of the most lamentable spectacles to behold on the throne of a great

Empire an ignorant, narrow-minded, whimsical, and fanatical ruler,

introducing, under the name of “reforms,” vital and extraordinary

changes in the administration and government, utterly unsuited to the

character and culture of his nation. Even with the best intentions he

will fail and pass for a fool.

Many of Peter’s measures were humane and just, and might have been

considered judicious if he had not, by the manner in which he introduced

them, provoked a resistance which proved fatal to them. He had no

knowledge of Russian character, and looked down upon public sentiment.

Even as Czar he gave public expression of his contempt for Russia, and

placed it in every respect below Germany. With incredible

self-sufficiency he disregarded all counsels to be more prudent in his

public utterances and to proceed more slowly in his efforts to

Prussianize Russia’s methods of administration and her system of civil

and criminal jurisprudence. He abolished time-honored institutions; he

attacked the privileges of the Church and the clergy; he ordered the

churches and chapels to be deprived of their wealth and golden ornaments

and images; he confiscated real estate belonging to the government, but

occupied and taken possession of by the clergy; he reduced the

exorbitant salaries of great noblemen in the provinces. By such acts he

engendered protests, dissatisfaction, and threats in the very classes

upon which the throne has to lean in despotic countries. To cap the

climax, he dismissed the Russian body-guards and surrounded himself

exclusively with German troops. The Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, his own

cousin, was placed in command of these German regiments, under whose

protection the Emperor considered himself absolutely safe. The King of

Prussia, who was well informed on all matters going on at the Russian

court, and who more than anybody else in Europe had an interest at stake

to prolong the reign of his admirer, warned him again and again against

the intrigues of his wife and the “old-Russian party,” but Peter was

blinded by his prejudices and paid no attention to the warnings. He

underrated his wife’s talent for political combinations and intrigue,

and was far from suspecting that from the very first day of his reign

his fate was sealed and his days numbered.

A great historian has called Catherine of Russia “the

Messalina-Richelieu” of history, indicating by that combination that she

was a monster of voluptuousness, insatiable in lust, and a prodigy of

statecraft and political shrewdness. The name is wonderfully

appropriate, for hardly ever has any female ruler, with the exception of

the infamous Roman Empress, so shamelessly prostituted herself as

Catherine the Second of Russia, and never has any woman, not even

Elizabeth of England, possessed political genius to a higher degree. It

was Peter the Great who introduced Russia into the list of European

states, but it was Catherine the Second whose genius breathed into the

gigantic empire its policy of grasping and ambitious expansion, which

has placed her standards as tutelary guards already over the northern

half of Asia, and which is yet far from being satisfied.

While the Czar was amusing himself with new reforms which were at best

dead letters and created new enemies for him, his wife was untiring in

her efforts to win new friends and new supporters for the great _coup

d’état_ which she was preparing as the crowning act of her ambition. She

wanted to be Empress in her own name, in order that she might make

Russia great and not be molested and embarrassed by a husband whom she

hated and despised. Her own personal memoirs, written in French and

published in London in 1858, whose authenticity has never been seriously

doubted, shows that when only fifteen years old, she was possessed by

this ambition, which she afterwards so fully realized. Among the

influential persons whose active coöperation Catherine had secured for

her ambitious plans was Princess Dashkow, a young woman of excellent

education and great ability, and sister of Elizabeth Woronzow. Princess

Dashkow, who, on account of the superiority of her mind had great

influence over her sister, proved a powerful auxiliary to Catherine in

this most critical period of her married life. Through her, Catherine

gained Count Panin, one of the ablest men of Russia and governor of the

young Grand-Duke Paul, Catherine’s son, as her ally. She told Panin that

she knew from her sister (the Czar’s mistress) that Peter the Third was

on the point of repudiating his wife, that he denied the legitimacy of

the young Grand Duke, that he intended to exclude him from the

succession, and to declare Ivan the Sixth his successor. This Prince had

been dethroned by Elizabeth and was retained as a prisoner in the

fortress of Schlüsselburg, but had fallen into idiocy. These

confidential communications induced Panin, who trembled for his own

position and possibly for his head, secretly to join the army of

malcontents, whose programme it was to dethrone Peter the Third,

proclaim his son, Paul, Emperor, and Catherine Regent of the Empire

during Paul’s minority. This programme was not exactly that of

Catherine, who aspired to be the sovereign Empress of Russia, and not

merely the Regent during her son’s minority, but with consummate ability

she welcomed Panin’s overtures as steps leading to her own elevation.

Whether Catherine had fully weighed and approved all the possibilities

which might result from the revolution which she had planned and for

which she had found so many instruments willing to help her, will very

likely remain forever an unsolved problem. Was she willing to sanction

the murder of her husband in order to step over his corpse to the

throne? This has been an open question with native and foreign

historians. Perhaps she honestly believed with Panin that she might get

rid of Peter in some way without either killing him or imprisoning him

for life. But it is absolutely certain that Catherine, in the summer of

1762, came to the conclusion that the time had come for striking a

decisive blow; and it is equally certain that, although not cruel by

nature, she never shrank back from any means to remove obstacles

standing in the way of her ambition. By the agency of her generals,

Suwarow, Potemkin, and Repnin, she sacrificed whole nations to her

ambition, and swept them off the face of the earth without feeling any

compunction at the barbarities committed. Does it look improbable

therefore that she may have consented to the assassination of her

husband, whom she detested, when all other means of silencing his claims

to the throne appeared unsafe?

A very important part, in fact the most important of all, in the

conspiracy against the Czar, was taken by the Orloffs, and especially by

Count Gregor Orloff, the favored lover of Catherine, who had the

reputation of being the handsomest officer of the Russian army. The

Empress was passionately in love with him, although pretty well founded

rumors asserted that she bestowed her secret favors also on Gregor’s

brother, Alexis, a perfect giant in stature and of herculean strength.

All the Orloffs--Gregor, Alexis, Ivan, and Feodor--held positions as

officers in the imperial guards or in the artillery, and were among the

warmest adherents of Catherine, whose elevation would raise them, as

they well knew, to the highest position in the Empire, immediately by

the side of the throne. They became active agitators for her in the

army, and were really the principal actors in the terrible drama of

Peter’s assassination. Quite a bloody tradition attached to the Orloff

family, and the part which they were to play in the revolution against

Peter the Third lent new confirmation to it and recalled it to the minds

of the Russian people. At the time when Peter the Great abolished the

strelitzi, attended their horrid executions, even helped in them, one

day the block of the executioner was so crowded with the heads of the

victims that there was no room for others. Then one of the condemned

coolly stepped forward and pushed several of the heads off the bench, as

if it had been his business to do so. The Czar looked on in astonishment

and turning to the man, who had already attracted his attention by his

herculean frame and the classic beauty of his features, asked him: “What

are you doing that for?” “To make room for my own head!” was the cool

reply. Peter the Great, who admired personal courage above everything

else, was so well pleased with the reply, that he immediately pardoned

the condemned and set him free. This pardoned officer was a young

nobleman, named Orloff--the grandfather of the five Orloffs who played

such a conspicuous part in the revolution of 1762, and one of whom

murdered Peter the Third with his own hands.

The outbreak of the revolution, as is usual in such cases, was caused by

an unexpected and trifling occurrence. A young officer of the imperial

guards, who had been won over to the party of Catherine, one evening

while under the influence of liquor, talked about the impending

revolution and was arrested by other officers who were not in the

conspiracy. Gregor Orloff heard of the arrest and immediately hurried to

Catherine, who was at Peterhof and had already retired for the night.

But Orloff went directly to her bedroom, aroused her from sleep and told

her that immediate action on her part was necessary, unless she wanted

to imperil and very likely lose the game for whose success they had been

working so patiently.

Catherine’s resolution was quickly taken. She immediately got up,

dressed rapidly, and half an hour afterwards the carriage which had

carried Orloff from St. Petersburg, returned thither with the Empress

and her attendant. It was five o’clock in the morning of the

twenty-ninth of June when they arrived at the capital. Two hours later

Catherine was on horseback, dressed in the uniform of a general of the

imperial guards, which Count Buturlin had furnished, on her way to the

armory of the Preobrajenski guards, accompanied by Gregor and Alexis

Orloff, and an escort of high officers who were in the conspiracy.

Princess Dashkow, also in an officer’s uniform, had preceded her, and

had announced to the officers of the guards that the Emperor, Peter the

Third, had died suddenly, that the Empress would shortly appear among

them in order to receive their homage and their oath of obedience as

heiress to the throne and Regent of the Empire during the minority of

her son. The officers consented immediately and influenced their

soldiers without difficulty when they were reminded of the late Czar’s

unjust partiality for the German regiments, and of Catherine’s

unwavering kindness to them. Both officers and soldiers greeted

Catherine, therefore, very enthusiastically when she arrived an hour

later, and both swore allegiance and devotion to her. Catherine’s

bearing on this trying occasion, was full of courage and dash. She had

never looked more beautiful, and the three regiments were perfectly

charmed with their new ruler. She then proceeded with her escort to the

Casan Church, where, in the meantime, the Archbishop of Novgorod and the

entire clergy of the capital had been assembled and were waiting for

her. The Archbishop administered the oath of office to her, and

Catherine swore to respect the laws and institutions of the Empire and

to protect the religion of the people, whereupon the entire clergy swore

allegiance to her. A solemn Te Deum, sung by thousands of voices,

terminated the grand ceremony, while the roar of artillery announced to

the inhabitants of St. Petersburg the accession of a new ruler.

Catherine had reached the goal of her ambition; she was now the

sovereign ruler of Russia, not merely in name, but in fact. She returned

to the imperial palace, where an immense multitude greeted her with

enthusiastic cheers. Many thousand roubles were scattered among the

populace, which was moreover treated liberally with whiskey and other

intoxicants, and cheered vociferously, until Catherine, who looked

charmingly beautiful in her gaudy uniform, showed herself again and

again on the balcony. Count Galitzin, vice-admiral of the Russian fleet,

was on a visit at St. Petersburg on that day. Catherine sent for him,

won him over to her side by amiability and promises, and sent him back

to Kronstadt, the Russian naval port, to inspire the garrison and

sailors of that stronghold with enthusiasm for the Empress,--so that the

capital was protected on the seaward side against a possible attack by

Peter the Third.

But even after having acted so promptly and so energetically, and after

having got possession of the capital and the principal part of the army

and the navy, Catherine had still a great deal to do, and her

penetrating genius did not underrate the danger of the situation in

which she found herself. All her successes in the capital among officers

had been secured by the fraudulent assertion that the Czar had died

suddenly, and there was no certainty whether Peter’s sudden appearance

at the capital, or a well-authenticated report that he was still among

the living and was hastening toward the capital, might cause a sudden

change in public sentiment. Undaunted by these secret apprehensions, and

impelled by the restless energy of her devouring ambition, she never

wavered in her resolution, but pressed onward toward the consummation of

her dangerous but tempting project, which seemed to be almost within her

grasp. Through the active agitation of her friends, and the strong and

widespread hostility of the people and the army against Peter’s

ill-advised measures of “reform,” she could, almost from the first

announcement of her accession to the throne, command an army of fifteen

thousand well-equipped men, who were ready to die for her against any

pretender, Peter the Third included.

The outbreak of the revolution was so sudden that Peter was taken

entirely by surprise, and would not listen to the first reports when

they reached him. He had gone on that very day to Oranienbaum, an

imperial summer resort, about twenty miles from St. Petersburg, where he

enjoyed himself with his Holstein guards, his favorites, and his

mistress, Elizabeth Woronzow. There were altogether about two thousand

soldiers with him; but there was also Field-marshal Münnich, Russia’s

most renowned soldier, and a man of great authority in the army.

Moreover Münnich was a man of great personal courage, and if Peter had

followed his counsels, he might have saved his crown and his life.

Münnich’s advice was to take immediate and bold measures, to meet

aggression by aggression, and to oppose the immense prestige of the

legitimate ruler to the revolutionary usurpation of an ambitious and

adulterous wife. But neither Peter’s personal character, nor his

immediate surroundings would admit of the acceptance of such bold and

aggressive action. He was like a helpless child, hesitating and

vacillating, sending out orders, and revoking them the next hour; asking

everybody’s advice, and following nobody’s. His mistress was bewailing

his misfortune, cursing Catherine and her treachery, and falling into

hysterics at the mere thought of a bloody struggle for supremacy

between Peter and his wife. It was easy to foresee the outcome of so

much indecision, vacillation and cowardice on one side, and of so much

determination, firmness and courage on the other.

After nearly the whole day had been spent in fruitless attempts to come

to a decision, Münnich finally, at about eight o’clock in the evening,

succeeded in persuading Peter to go on board of a yacht and proceed to

Kronstadt, where, he expected, the Emperor would be warmly welcomed. If

this step had been taken earlier in the day, it would very likely have

been successful. But it will be remembered that Catherine, after her

return from the Casan church, had an interview with Count Galitzin,

commander-in-chief of the naval forces at Kronstadt, and had secured his

coöperation. The Emperor was therefore not permitted to enter the

harbor, and when he himself appeared in the fore-part of the yacht and

proclaimed his identity, he was simply told to return to where he came

from, and that Russia had no longer an emperor, but an empress. Münnich

then appealed to Peter not to be deterred by such words, but to get into

one of the boats, in which he would accompany him, and to effect a

landing. “They will not shoot you,” the old field-marshal said, “this

whole affair is a bold game some of the high officers are playing, but

the soldiers are kept in ignorance, and when they meet their Emperor

face to face they will throw down their arms.” But when the women heard

from Peter that he would undertake to effect a landing on the coast,

they burst into tears and filled the ship with loud lamentations and

cries, and the Czar’s mistress threw herself at his feet imploring him

not to expose his precious life to the bullets of the rebels, and not

to abandon her, helpless and heartbroken, to the revenge of his enemies.

Peter was only too glad to take her despair as a pretext to recede from

Münnich’s proposition.

Münnich was disgusted and wished the women were a thousand miles off;

but he made still another proposition. He wanted to turn the imperial

yacht toward Reval, where quite a number of Russian warships were

assembled. Peter was to take command of this fleet, sail to Pomerania,

land on Prussian soil, proceed as rapidly as possible to the large

Russian army concentrated there, and return at the head of that army to

St. Petersburg, which, as the old and bold field-marshal believed, would

not even attempt to make resistance. “Within sixty days,” said he to

Peter, “your Empire will be at your feet again, your wife will be at

your mercy, and your whole people will hail you as a conqueror and

savior!” The plan was good and would very likely have succeeded if it

had been promptly acted upon. There were nearly eighty thousand Russian

soldiers--and they were the _élite_ of the Russian army--in Pomerania,

and if Peter had been supported by them, he could easily have quelled

the rebellion and recovered the throne.

But Peter was not the master of his own decisions. He obediently bowed

to the will of his mistress and her lady friends, and they strongly

protested against this new plan of the old fighter and “war-horse,” who,

they declared, had no heart and did not know what love meant. Countess

Woronzow persuaded Peter that the proper thing for him to do was to

return to Oranienbaum or Peterhof and make his peace with the Empress,

who would be only too glad to make an arrangement with him satisfactory

to both. This suggestion corresponded too well with the pusillanimous

and vacillating character of Peter to be rejected by him. So the whole

party returned to Peterhof, and negotiations were at once opened with

Catherine tending towards a reconciliation of the husband and wife.

Peter addressed a letter to his wife in which he offered her the

co-regency of the Empire, assuring her at the same time that the

occurrences of the past week should be entirely forgotten and that love

and harmony should in the future prevail in the imperial household. The

letter was haughtily rejected by the Empress; no answer came to it but a

verbal message that it was too late, and that no further communication

from him would be received except an act of entire abdication. Peter

thereupon surrendered unconditionally. He wrote a second letter to his

wife, in which he very humbly asked permission both for himself and his

mistress, Countess Woronzow, and a number of his attendants to return to

Holstein, where they would live quietly in retirement from all public

affairs. In order to carry out this wish, he asked for a pension

enabling him to live in becoming style, and in exchange for these favors

he recognized Catherine as Regent of the Empire during his son’s

minority.

Major-General Michael Ismailoff, one of Peter’s most intimate and most

trusted friends, was the bearer of this valuable document, which seemed

to satisfy Catherine, but was not equally satisfactory to Count Gregor

Orloff, who hoped to secure the hand of the Empress when Peter had been

put out of the way. Orloff’s secret design was to assassinate Peter and

then take his place by Catherine’s side. The Orloffs therefore took hold

of General Ismailoff, after he had handed the Czar’s letter to the

Empress, and induced him by supplications and brilliant promises to come

over to their side, and to assist them in making Peter a prisoner as the

only means of restoring peace and avoiding civil war. At first Ismailoff

resisted their offers, but at last he yielded. He returned to Peterhof

and played the part of a traitor to perfection. He told Peter that he

had delivered his letter to the Empress, and that she would, as a matter

of course, grant the request he had made, but that she was overcome with

sorrow at the turn things had taken, that she was perfectly willing to

admit him to a co-regency and to be reconciled to him, and that she was

anxious to meet him in a private interview at Oranienbaum in order to

arrange matters to their mutual satisfaction.

Peter fell easily into the trap. He immediately accepted the invitation

and got ready to go to Oranienbaum. At first he proposed to go there

under the escort of his Holsteiners, but Ismailoff persuaded him to let

them stay at Peterhof, because it might look as though he distrusted the

Empress and might offend her. Peter therefore went to Oranienbaum,

accompanied only by Ismailoff, who encouraged him in his most

extravagant expectations of a brilliant career still in store for him.

But there was a sad and sudden awakening from this dream of greatness.

On his arrival at Oranienbaum he found the courtyard filled with forty

or fifty kibitkas; and Ismailoff, changing his conduct and tone

suddenly, told him that he was a prisoner. Peter, without arms and

without friends, resigned himself to his fate almost without a word of

protest. He was led to one of the kibitkas, already occupied by two

strong officers armed to the teeth, and then all the kibitkas started

at once in as many different directions as there were roads leading to

Oranienbaum. This was done in order to deceive the spectators as to the

direction which Peter’s kibitka had taken. He was conveyed to Robzak, a

country villa near the village of Kraskazelo, a short distance from

Petersburg, but rather isolated and out of the way of the regular

traffic. Moreover precautions were taken to surround the villa with

soldiers. Peter was treated almost with cruelty in his solitary

confinement. He was not permitted to communicate with anybody, and his

friends were kept in profound ignorance as to his whereabouts. Many of

them believed that he was either at Peterhof or at Petersburg. He

addressed a pitiable letter to the Empress in which he humbly petitioned

her to send him his negro servant, with whom he liked to play, his

favorite dog, his violin, his Bible and a few novels. But the letter

remained unanswered, and none of the things asked for were sent.

In the forenoon of July seventeenth, Alexis Orloff, accompanied by

several officers, arrived at Robzak. They had an order from the Empress

admitting them to Peter’s presence. Orloff and an officer named

Tepelof--both men of herculean strength--entered the deposed Emperor’s

room, and found him in a despondent mood. They carried some

delicacies,--among them bottles of old Burgundy wine, which was

poisoned. They announced to Peter that his term of imprisonment would

soon be ended, and that he would then be permitted to return to

Holstein, his native country. Peter was overjoyed at this announcement,

and invited the officers, whom he treated as his guests, to take dinner

with him; they readily consented and produced the delicacies and the

wine they had brought. At the dinner-table Orloff presented a glass of

Burgundy to Peter, who swallowed it rapidly; but the wine was so

strongly poisoned that he felt the effect almost instantly. He jumped

from his chair, screaming and howling with pain. “I am poisoned! I am

poisoned!” he cried, “give me milk, give me oil!” The two assassins

terrified with what they had done sent for milk and oil, which he

swallowed eagerly. But after a few minutes they took courage again and

resolved to complete their murderous work. Peter’s cries had attracted

two or three officers, who entered the room; but instead of protecting

him, they assisted the conspirators. All at once Alexis Orloff rushed

upon Peter, who had thrown himself upon his bed, writhing in pain, and

tried to choke him. Peter himself was a man of herculean strength, and

defended himself with the courage of despair. The iron grasp of Orloff’s

fingers did not release his throat, and the Czar’s face became as black

as a negro’s. At last, by a terrible blow, he freed himself from Orloff,

but while he tried to take breath, the four or five assassins rushed

upon him all at the same time; they dragged him from the bed, and when

he fell into an arm-chair, they threw a large napkin round his neck and

strangled him until he was dead. He fell from the chair to the floor and

expired in a few minutes. A number of officers had witnessed the

terrible scene from a terrace which afforded a full view of the

prisoner’s room.

The admirers of Catherine have often denied her active participation in

the crime of Peter’s assassination; but they have never succeeded in

making the world believe in her innocence. In fact, how could she be

innocent, since the assassins were admitted to Peter’s presence upon a

direct order issued by her, with no other business for them to do than

to kill him? And then her conduct after the horrible crime had been

perpetrated is sufficient evidence of her guilt. She did not regret the

murder, and she rewarded the murderers. Even in the announcement of

Peter’s sudden death she manifested a brutality which defied decency and

common-sense. In a few words, without adding one word of sorrow at the

death of one who, as she asserted, was the father of her son, she

announced to the Russian people and to the foreign ambassadors at St.

Petersburg that the dethroned Czar Peter the Third, had suddenly died

from the effects of a hæmorrhoidal colic, to which he was subject, and

which had caused a stroke of apoplexy. This cool declaration was to

account for the horrible appearance of Peter’s countenance, which looked

almost black even in death, and which could not be concealed from the

people. It had always been customary to exhibit to the public the corpse

of a deceased Czar and to place him on a catafalque where the people

could see him and pay their respect to him. This public exhibition could

not be avoided without immensely strengthening the suspicion of foul

play; and Catherine boldly underwent the ordeal. The black hue of the

countenance could not be changed, but Peter’s neck was entirely covered

up with a very high and stiff stock, which concealed the finger-marks of

his assassins. Among the spectators was the old field-marshal, Prince

Trubetzkoi, well known for his rudeness and sincerity. He rapidly

stepped up to the bier, where Peter lay in state, and exclaimed in a

loud tone of voice: “Why, why, Peter Fedorowitch, what ridiculous kind

of necktie have they bundled around your neck? You never wore such a

thing in your life; why should you wear it now when you are dead?” And

he began to open the stock, and would have exposed Peter’s throat to

public view, if the guards, in spite of the high rank of the Prince, had

not forcibly dragged him away.

Unfortunately for the memory of Catherine the Second the assassination

of her husband was not the only assassination caused by her usurpation

of the Russian throne. It will be remembered that Peter had repeatedly

threatened to disown, and consequently to exclude from the succession,

Paul, the son whom Catherine had borne to him, and whom he openly

branded as a bastard, and to this threat he added the declaration that

he would name as his successor the young ex-Emperor Ivan the Sixth, who

had been dethroned by the Empress Elizabeth, and who was still

imprisoned at Schlüsselburg. This threat was fatal to the poor young

Prince, who during his long seclusion had become half-idiotic and had

lost the knowledge of his identity. But nevertheless the fear that he

might be used by her enemies as a legitimate pretender, with better

rights to the crown than her own, haunted Catherine’s mind, and she did

not rest until he had fallen a victim to the assassin’s dagger.

Strict orders had been issued to the commandant of the fortress of

Schlüsselburg that on the first attempt to liberate Ivan he should be

immediately put to death. And then a new infamy was committed which very

likely sprang from Catherine’s own diabolical genius. There was a young

and poor lieutenant named Mirowitch, in the garrison of Schlüsselburg

who was infatuated with admiration for the Empress and anxious to render

her a service. He was approached by one of his superior officers

(probably an Orloff) and his attention was directed to Ivan. “If he were

out of the way,” he was told, “the Empress would never forget it, and

would reward the service in an imperial manner.” Mirowitch took the hint

and resolved to merit the Empress’s gratitude by assassinating Ivan.

Under some pretext he really came to the door of the room in which Ivan

was kept a prisoner. Two officers were on guard there, but when they

heard Mirowitch’s voice demanding admittance and threatening to break

open the door, they rushed upon Ivan and put him to death. Then they

opened the door, and finding Mirowitch before them, they showed him

Ivan’s corpse and arrested him. Mirowitch was put on trial. The crime he

was charged with was an attempt to abduct the imprisoned Ivan and to

proclaim him Emperor of Russia. Mirowitch did not defend himself. He

only smiled. He knew who stood behind him and would protect him from

injury. He was found guilty and sentenced to be beheaded. He laughed at

the sentence and never lost courage. With a smile he ascended the

scaffold and looked around, wondering why the imperial messenger with

the pardon and the reward was not coming. The priest approached him and

prayed for him. He listened with little attention, and still a smile

hovered on his features. But suddenly the executioner took hold of him,

held him in his iron grasp, and threw him down. It was the last moment

and no messenger appeared yet; and then only Mirowitch realized his

terrible fate. With a scream of mad rage he commenced wrestling with the

executioner, and while uttering a cry of execration against Catherine,

his severed head rolled upon the scaffold. The assassination of two

czars--one of them her own husband--was the bloody price which Catherine

paid for the throne which she was to make great and renowned by a long

and glorious reign. How easily great crimes are forgotten if committed

by sovereigns of genius!

CHAPTER XVII

GUSTAVUS THE THIRD OF SWEDEN

[Illustration: GUSTAVUS III.]

CHAPTER XVII

ASSASSINATION OF GUSTAVUS THE THIRD OF SWEDEN

(March 17, 1792)

On the seventeenth of March, 1792, Gustavus the Third, King of Sweden,

was assassinated by Ankarström, a Swedish nobleman, and this crime

caused a sensation throughout Europe, although the horrors of the French

Revolution and the wholesale executions by the guillotine had made the

world familiar with murder and bloodshed. This assassination was of a

political character, and private revenge or other considerations had

nothing whatever to do with it. But in order to understand fully the

causes leading up to the tragedy, it will be necessary to refer to the

condition of public affairs in Sweden during the period preceding the

reign of Gustavus.

The continuous and costly wars of Charles the Twelfth had left Sweden in

a terrible state of exhaustion and misery. A number of her most valuable

provinces had been taken by Russia, and the domestic affairs of the

country, its finances, industry and commerce were utterly ruined.

Charles died during his invasion of Norway; it would really be more

proper to say “was assassinated”; for, on the evening of the eleventh of

December, 1718, while leaning against a parapet and looking at the

soldiers throwing up the breastworks, he was struck down by a bullet,

which could not have come from the enemy, in front of the fortress of

Frederickshall. In spite of the very severe winter weather, Charles had

insisted on laying siege to the strong fortress, and he paid for his

obstinacy with his life.

When the news of his death reached Sweden, the nobility took advantage

of it and of the unsettled question of the succession to the throne in

order to recover those privileges and rights which it had lost through

the genius and statesmanship of Charles the Eleventh, and which had not

been restored to it during the reign of Charles the Twelfth. The

Reichsrath was immediately reinstated in its old rights, and arrogated

to itself the power of deciding the succession according to its own will

and advantage. It coolly passed by the lawful heir, Charles Frederick of

Holstein-Gottorp, the son of Charles the Twelfth’s elder sister, and

elected Frederick of Hesse-Cassel, who had married Charles the Twelfth’s

younger sister; not, however, without having compelled the royal couple

to renounce, both for themselves and for their heirs, all absolute

power, and also to make a solemn promise that the Reichsrath should be

reinstated in all its former rights and prerogatives, which made that

Assembly actually co-regent of the kingdom. The Reichsrath was declared

sovereign; it had seventeen members, and each member had, in the

decision of public questions, one vote, and the King only two. It

decided all questions of domestic and foreign policy arbitrarily, and

controlled not only the legislative, but also the executive action of

the government. The King was a mere figure-head, poorly salaried and of

little influence. But this degradation of the crown was only one feature

of the oligarchy established by the Reichsrath. It restored to the

nobility all the domains and landed estates which had been appropriated

by the crown during the preceding century, exempted them from taxation,

conferred upon them the exclusive right of holding all the higher

offices in the army, navy and civil service, and heaped all public

burdens upon the lower classes of the people. The King, shorn of all

power, was utterly helpless to prevent these wrongs. His timid protests

were always met with a reminder that he had been elected to the throne

only after having promised to reinstate and not to disturb the nobility

in the enjoyment of their ancient rights. The Reichsrath also concluded

treaties of peace with the powers upon which Charles the Twelfth had

made war, and as the members negotiating these treaties looked out much

more for their own advantage than for that of their country, Sweden was

so badly crippled that it ceased being a great European power. That

honor passed from Sweden to two other countries which up to that time

had been considered Sweden’s inferiors in power and influence,--Russia

and Prussia.

It was not long before the Reichsrath, whose members sold themselves to

foreign rulers, was split up into different factions which fought

bitterly for supremacy. One of these factions favored France and was

regularly subsidized with French money, while the other faction was

equally well subsidized with Russian money and followed blindly the

dictates of the Czar and Czarina of Russia. The French faction was

called “the party of the hats,” and the Russian faction was known as

“the party of the caps.” These two factions fought each other most

bitterly, each charging the other with almost any crime committed

against divine and human law; and both were right in the charge, because

both were equally guilty. At the beginning of the war of the Austrian

succession, France wanted to prevent Russia from siding with Austria,

and thought a war between Sweden and Russia would be the right thing to

accomplish that object. The French Ambassador at Stockholm therefore

ordered the “party of the hats” in the Reichsrath to declare war upon

Russia, and a resolution to that effect prevailed against the violent

and menacing protests of the “party of the caps.” In great haste a

Swedish army was recruited to take the field against the Russians in

Finland; but since all the money sent by the French government for the

proper equipment of that army had disappeared in the pockets of the

members of the Reichsrath, the army was so poorly equipped and its

war-material was of such inferior quality that it could not hold the

field against the well-armed and well-equipped Russians, and suffered

defeat after defeat at their hands. The “caps” were jubilant over this

discomfiture and humiliation of the “hats” and forced them into a treaty

of peace with Russia, which was disgraceful to Sweden, but which would

have been even more hurtful if the Russian Empress had not for personal

reasons offered very mild terms of peace. But one of these terms was

that Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, whose father had been so

shamefully cheated out of the Swedish succession in 1718, should be

declared heir to the Swedish throne. The Reichsrath cheerfully accepted

this condition, made all other concessions which the Russian Empress

demanded, and ceded a part of Finland to the Russian crown. Peace

between the two countries was restored by the treaty of Abo in 1743.