in the north in a state of assured tranquillity.

The king of Denmark, though threatened by so formidable a power engaged in pursuit of a favourite object, was not terrified into any mean concessions. He recruited his army, repaired his fortifications, and prepared for his defence with temper and magnanimity. As money must be much wanting for the services of so important a war, as his country could furnish no great supplies, and the borrowings in every part of Europe, together with the sudden invasion of his dominions, could enable him to form no sanguine hopes of public credit, he turned his hopes towards the city of Hamburgh, which had enriched itself by its industry and neutrality during the whole war, and by the number of wealthy persons who had fled there for refuge from the calamities which all the neighbouring countries had suffered.

His Danish majesty had always kept alive a claim of sovereignty over that city, which (however founded) he exercised whenever he found himself able. He thought the present one of those conjunctures. Therefore without any previous notice he appears with a strong June 18. army before Hamburgh, seizes the suburbs, threatens the city with an immediate siege, if they did not immediately submit to a loan of 1,000,000 of rixdollars. The magistrates of this trading city, little prepared for or accustomed to war, having no ally at hand, and who would be equally endangered by the strength of any ally able to protect them, prudently submitted and furnished the king with such a supply as his affairs required.

The king of Prussia lost no time to profit of this great and unexpected revolution in his favour. The neutrality of the Russians still left the Austrians much superior to him. Their alliance brought him to act on the offensive: the Austrian armies in Silesia, and one in Saxony, were prepared to act, and it was not clear which side would begin to act on the offensive: the Austrian armies threatened Glogau and Breslaw with a siege; and the king of Prussia's threatened Schweidnitz.

The active character of the king of Prussia, and the caution of marshal Daun, soon determined the part which the several armies were to take, and the spirit of the several operations. Very early in May 12. the campaign prince Henry made a vigorous push on the imperial posts towards the frontiers of Saxony. The imperialists were obliged to evacuate Dippolswalda with some loss in killed. About four thousand men were taken prisoners; 365 waggons were also taken, and severai trophies.

By this signal advantage, all the part of Saxony possessed by the Prussians were effectually secured: and any attempt which might hereafter be thought proper for the recovery of Dresden, was much facilitated. Although the Austrians, sensible of the consequences of this loss, and largely reinforced from the armies in Silesia, attempted to recover these posts by several lively efforts, they were repulsed with no small slaughter on both sides; and prince Henry remained so much master of Saxony, that it was necessary to keep a large army from the war in Silesia, to prevent, if possible, his making irruptions-into

the heart of Bohemia.

His

His Prussian majesty derived advantages from the conduct of his brother, which he did not neglect to improve. It was not until the latter end of June that he was joined by his new Russian allies. As soon as this junction was formed, he resolved to make a trial of what those men could do in his favour, who had acted so strenuously against him. Marshal Daun's army occupied several strong but detached eminences, which enabled him to communicate with and protect Schweidnitz from all attempts of the enemy. The king of July 12. Prussia undertook to dislodge him from those advantageous posts. In some of his attempts he succeeded, in others he was baffled, with some loss.

This was no regular battle; but the king of Prussia, though he did not succeed immediately in his attack, yet by his judicious mancuvres he attained all the advantages he proposed from his enterprize. For marshal Daun, apprehensive, from the motions of his army, that the king of Prussia intended to seize upon his principal magazine, and even to cut off his communication with Bohemia, abandoned those important posts which he had hitherto maintained with success, fell back to the extremities of Silesia, and left Schweidnitz entirely uncovered.

The king of Prussia immediately prepared to invest that city, whilst different detachments of Prussians, some on the side of Saxony, others on the side of Silesia, penetrated deep into Bohemia, laid many parts of the country under contribution, and spread an universal alarm. It was about five years since they had been driven from thence by the victorious arms of marshal Daun, who now found himself unable to protect that kingdom from their ravages. A considerable body of Rus. sian irregulars also made an irruption into Bohemia, and began there to retaliate on the Austrians those excesses which they had themselves so often before committed on the Prussian dominions.

Whilst the King of Prussia was thus playing with spirit the great game which fortune had put into his hands, he was all at once threatened with a sudden reverse, by another revolution in Russia, which bore all the appearance of being as unfavourable to him as the former had been beyond all hopes beneficial. That variable political climate of Russia, under whose influence all his fortune decayed or flourished, was covered with a sudden cloud by the deposition, followed close by the death of his fast friend and faithful ally, the czar of Muscovy.

С НАР.

FROM the moment of the late

czar's accession to the throne of the Russias, something extraordinary was expected. His disposition seemed to lead him to make alterations in every thing; and having set before himself two great examples, that of the king of Prussia and of his predecessor Peter I. it was expected that this vast empire was going once more, almost within the life of a man, to assume a new face: a circumstance which could not fail of having a serious influence on the affairs of Europe. Peter III. made more new regulations in Russia in a few weeks, than wise and cautious princes undertake in a long reign. It was to be feared that his actions were rather guided by a rash and irregular turn of mind, and the spirit of innovation, than by any regular and well digested plan, for the improvement of his extensive dominions.

His first actions on coming to the throne, it is true, were laudable, and seemed well calculated to acquire him the affections of his people. But if in some instances he consulted their interests, in many he shocked their prejudices; and he lost thereby that opinion, which is on all occasions necessary, but is particularly so for carrying such uncommon designs as his into execution.

The power of the czars, though absolute and uncontroulable in its VOL. V.

exercise, is extremely weak in its foundation. There is not, perhaps in Europe, a government which depends so much on the good-will and affection of those that are governed, and which requires a greater degree of vigilance and a steadier hand. The regular succession which has been so often broken, and the great change of manners, which in less than a century has been introduced, have left in Russia a weakness amidst all the appearance of strength, and a great facility to sudden and dangerous revolutions.

Peter III. paid little attention to those difficulties, which to him were the greater, as he was a foreigner born. They were augmented by the superior and invidious regard he seemed to pay to foreign interests and foreign persons. The preference he so manifestly gave to the uncertain hope of an inconsiderable conquest in Holstein over the solid and valuable possessions which the fortune of his predecessor had left him, must have disgusted all the politicians of his country. His intimate connections with,and boundless admiration of that prince, with whom Russia had been so lately, and so long, in a state of the most violent hostility, could not add to the opinion of his prudence. They did not think he sufficiently consulted his dignity in soliciting [C]

with

with great anxiety a command in the Prussian service. When he received it, he dressed himself in the Prussian uniform, made a grand festival, and displayed all the marks of an immoderate and puerile satisfaction. He pushed his extravagance in this point so far, that he made preparations in this immature state of his government to quit Russia, and to go into Germany, for the sake of an interview with that great monarch, whose genius, principles, and fortune he so greatly admired. Although this proceeding was, almost in every respect, extremely impolitic, it did not threaten so dangerous consequences as the other steps which he took about the same time. Nothing requires so much judgment, and so nice a hand, as to effect a change in the settled establishments of any country. Above all, there must be something favour able in the conjuncture; or something so uncommon and over-ruling in the genius of the conductor of those changes, as will render him superior to all difficulties. This latter was the case of Peter I. who had indeed very little favourable in the conjuncture; but he did every thing by his capacity, courage, and perseverence. The soldiery and the ecclesiastics are the great supports of all absolute rule, and they are certainly the last bodies upon which a prince of this kind would chuse to exert an invidious act of authority. But the czar was indiscreet enough, very early in his reign, highly to provoke both these bodies; the soldiery, by the manifest preference he gave to his Holstein guards, and to all officers of that nation; and by the change he made in favour of the Prussian uniform, to the exclusion of that in which the Russians believed

they had so often asserted the honour of their country, and gained many signal advantages over the troops distinguished by those regimentals which were now preferred.

These trifles had very important consequences. But what he did in matters of religion, was still more dangerous. This prince had been educated a Lutheran; and though he conformed to the Greek church, in order to qualify himself for the succession, he never shewed much respect to that mode of religion, to the rights and doctrines of which his subjects had been always extremely attached. He seized upon the reve nues of the clergy, whether monks or seculars, whether bishops or inferiors; and for compensation allowed them some mean pensions, in such a proportion as his fancy suggested. His capricious order, that the clergy should be no longer distinguished by beards, was in itself of less moment, but it was hardly less offensive. He made also some regulations concerning the images and pictures in their churches, which gave them reason to apprehend his intention of accomplishing a total change in the religion of the empire, and introducing Lutheranism.

Whilst he was taking these measures to alienate the minds of his people in general, and especially of those bodies, with whom it was the most his interest to be well, he had not the good fortune to live in union with his own family. He had long slighted his consort, a prin cess of the house of Anhalt Zerst, a woman of a masculine understanding, and by whose counsels he might have profited. He lived in a very public manner with the countess of Woronzoff, niece to the chancellor