Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/371

A.D. 1716.] war with our late ally, and to join one of the most rapacious and thievish confederations with the northern princes which ever existed. Under the pretence that the possession of Hanover of these towns on the Elbe and the Weser was important to British commerce, we were to encourage the gigantic aggressions of Peter the Muscovite in the Baltic, which infinitely more menaced our future commerce in those waters. Such were the immediate fruits of placing on the throne a small German prince—fruits to be followed by far greater indignities, debts, wars, and embarrassments from the same source—an alliance which has led the little protestant states of Germany to look on this country as a sort of promised land of rich and well-pensioned wives, subsidies, and honours, and which made Englishmen rejoice when circumstances at length cut loose the little barge of Hanover once more from the wake of the great British vessel.

At the same time that we were thus dragged into hostilities with Sweden, and made to favour the encroachments of the czar, we were brought into hostilities with the czar too in defence of this troublesome state of Hanover. The czar had married his niece to the duke of Mecklenburg, who was on bad terms with his subjects, and the czar was only too glad to get a footing in Germany by sending a large body of troops into the duchy. Denmark became immediately alarmed at such a dangerous and unscrupulous neighbour, and remonstrated; whereupon the czar informed the Danish king that if he murmured he would enter Denmark with his army too. Of course the king of Denmark called on his ally, George of Hanover, for the stipulated aid; and George, who hated the czar mortally, and was hated by the czar as intensely in return, at once sent his favourite, Bernsdorff, to Stanhope, with a demand that "the czar should be instantly crushed, his ships secured, his person seized, and kept till he should have caused his troops to evacuate both Denmark and Germany." These were the little matters which England was immediately to do for the honour of having the elector of that important little spot, Hanover, for its king. Stanhope was confounded by these peremptory demands. He went to the king, and found him resolved to have them carried out. Orders were to be sent forthwith to Sir John Norris to that effect. But Stanhope replied that he could not take upon himself measures of such moment. He could only refer them to the other ministers in England; and he wrote to Townshend in a manner which showed his embarrassment, but with no more than a minister's average principle. "I shall check my own nature, which was ever inclined to bold strokes, till I can hear from you. But you will easily imagine how I shall be daily pressed to send orders to Sir John Norris. The truth is, I see no daylight through these affairs. We night easily master the czar if we go briskly to work, and this be thought a right measure; but how far Sweden may be thereby enabled to disturb as in Britain you may judge. If the czar be let alone, he will not only be master of Denmark, but with the body of troops which he has still behind on the frontiers of Poland, may take quarters where he pleases in Germany. How far the king of Prussia is concerned with him we do not know, nor will that prince explain himself. The king now wishes, and so does your humble servant, very heartily, that we had secured the king of France."

Such were the disgraceful and impolitic affairs into which England was dragged by Hanover. Her clear and honest course was to have maintained her alliance with Sweden. By this means the designs of the czar, so far as our prospects of trade were concerned in the Baltic, would have been kept in check. But now to do the dirty work of Hanover, we had let loose the czar by mortally offending Sweden. George of Hanover had not only secured Bremen and Verden which Denmark had robbed Sweden of, but had marched a large body of troops into Pomerania, to unite with the Danes and Prussians, who had reduced the islands of Rugen and Uledon, and attacked Charles at Stralsund. Enraged at this conduct of George and of the English cabinet in sending Norris to the Baltic, Charles XII. immediately entered into alliance with the pretender, and engaged to invade Scotland with twelve thousand veteran Swedes. Thus this kingdom was menaced with an attack in its least defencible quarter by one of the most skilful generals of Europe, converted from our ally into an implacable enemy, simply by our being dragged into the aggressions of Hanover, swelling itself like the frog in the fable, and presuming in the most unprincipled manner, in reliance on the power of poor, humiliated, degraded England.

The receipt of such proposals in England produced the utmost consternation in the cabinet. The least reflective member of it could not avoid perceiving the undignified entanglements in which we were involved by this long-cherished protestant succession. Townshend, in an "absolutely secret" answer to Stanhope, expressed the concern both of himself and the prince of Wales at the prospect of a rupture with the czar, who would seize the British ships and subjects in Russia, and prohibit the supply of naval stores from his kingdom, and that especially at a crisis when England was threatened with an invasion from Sweden and a rising of the Jacobites. He did not deny that there was a great danger of both these kingdoms and the German empire being exposed to imminent danger by the designs of the czar on the whole coast of the Baltic, a danger which he might, had he dared, truly have attributed to George's own deeds by offending Sweden, instead of uniting with it to counterbalance the czar's plan of aggrandisement. But Townshend, not being able to say so much, ended by offering very crooked advice, which was that, although he could not openly at first sanction the king of Denmark in attacking the czar, he might do it secretly, and openly when once the blow was struck. It is impossible to contemplate the predicament, and the dishonourable policy to which these pitiful Hanoverian involvements reduced British statesmen, without blushing and indignation.

But king George, who did not think the English crown of any value unless it enabled him to play the despot and aggressor all around him in Germany, would listen to no such half measures. Sir John Norris was to remain all the winter in the Baltic, the czar was to be crushed. This lordly and obstinate temper of the king made Townshend forget the subtlety of the statesman, and he caused his secretary Poyntz to write the following uncourtier-like note