1777 on him the execrations of every man of common humanity.* For, even Donna Maria distributed his offices among several of the nobility who enjoyed her confidence; appointing viscount de Villeneuve de Cerveira, a man of talents, to the station of premier." 1777 ECCLESIASTICAL STATE. ONE of the first measures of this pontiff was his scheme for draining the pontine marshes. He may be said to have immortalized his pontificate by so meritorious and noble an enterprise as that of reclaiming many thousand acres from a marshy and putrid state, and rendering the adjoining country habitable. For that end he established a bank, called monte dei marecagi, to receive subscriptions which should form a fund to defray the expence. His holiness, in some of the first acts of his pontificate, discovered an attention to the public good, and an acquaintance with those true maxims of policy on which the prosperity of a community is founded, which is not often seen among men of monastic or sequestered habits of life.-As a proof of this, he, this year, issued an edict to remove the shackles with which The writer of the marquis de Pombal's Memoirs informs us, "That the number of these "miserable victims of tyranny amounted to 9640; of which number scarce 800 survived their "imprisonment. And among the former," he says, "there were 3970 against whom no charge "could be established."-Mem. de M. de Pombal. 4. 113. b Memoires de Pombal. 4. 87. 113. which commerce was burthened by the vast duties which the lords in the ecclesiastical state raised on merchandise passing through their territories, which often made the necessaries of life very dear. 1777 GERMANY. To gratify a rational curiosity and improve his mind by an observation of the manners, customs, civil, military, commercial, and literary institutions and establishments of other countries, the emperor, this year, visited France, in the character of a private gentleman, with the appellation of count Falkenstein. Whether politics had their share in leading this prince to visit a court, where his royal sister was known to have an ascendency in affairs of state, whilst, in a different character, she displayed those captivating graces in which she has been portrayed, does not appear to have been ascertained. He, however, did honour to his taste and his intellectual talents by preferring the gratifications of a philosopher and a statesman to the frivolous amusements of the court; and by sacrificing all pomp and parade to the pursuits which he proposed to himself in his journey, and the popularity which his affable manner gave him.-When he had attended to whatever was deserving of notice in the capital, he passed into the provinces, and extended his tour to the Pyranees." In these not only the richness of the soil engaged his regard, but the valuable manufactures established in several of the provincial cities and towns. And he is said to have expressed himself with some regret on comparing the circumstances of the French monarchy, united under one head, with the German empire, in which were sovereign princes who were able to contend with himself in power.b The emperor's attention, mean-while, was directed to the affairs of Russia and the Porte. When he perceived the empress's enterprising disposition, and her desire to enlarge her dominion at the sultan's expence, he dispatched baron Thugut to France, to propose a new defensive alliance with the court of Versailles, to secure Turkey from further invasion and the lawless Memoires de Frederic II. 5. 202. a Ann. Reg. 182. chron. aa Idem, 187. 1777 1777 66 lawless ambition of Catharine. To this de Vergennes, who appears on every occasion to have avoided whatever might involve the French crown in war, answered, that he was apprehensive lest the proposed alliance "should alarm the other powers of Europe; that it was probable that Russia, exhausted by a long war, and satisfied both with the glory and aggrandizement she had obtained by the peace of Kainardgi, would not think, for a long time, of molesting the Turks; that it would, therefore, be sufficient to keep a watch over the empress; against whom it "would be time enough to unite when her disposition to attack the "Ottoman empire should be known."-This answer is supposed to have convinced the emperor that France would never join him with spirit in opposing the designs of Catharine, and to have determined him to make his arrangements with that princess, by which he might avail himself of the alliance of a power which he could not resist with effect. In the mean-time a domestic event occurred in which all the German states were deeply interested-that was the death of Maximilian, electoral duke of Bavaria, in his fifty-first year, a prince whose character was distinguished chiefly by mildness and beneficence, and who was, perhaps, indisposed to war as well by his natural temper as a reflection on the events of his father's life, the unfortunate Charles the Seventh. This prince having no issue, the male Guilielmine, generally called Ludovician, line of Bavaria, became extinct; and Charles Theodore, elector Palatine, claimed his dignity and dominions at large, as descendant from their common ancestor, Otto count Palatine. 1777 DENMARK. THE attention of the state was employed more consistently with the maxims of good policy in encouraging the digging of a canal from Kiel, a town situated on an inlet of the Baltic, to Rensburgh on the river Eyder, which falls into the German Ocean at Tonningen, near the mouth of the Elbe Elbe, This canal, which is twenty-seven miles in extent, and large enough for the navigation of vessels of one hundred and twenty tons burthen,' was intended to form a more commodious communication between Copenhagen and other parts of the Danish states and Hamburgh, Altona, and other trading towns on the Elbe; the smallest vessels having been before obliged to make the circuit of Jutland; in doing which, besides the tediousness and uncertainty of such a voyage, they were exposed to much danger. 1777 SWEDEN. To obviate the ill consequences that might ensue from the empress's warlike preparations, and enable himself to form a better judgment of her intentions towards him, Gustavus embarked, this year, for Petersburg, under the name of the count of Gothland.-On his arrival at the palace of Tzarsko-selo, where Catharine then resided,† he was received with all possible demonstrations of respect. Their interviews were conducted with that external shew of friendship which such as are practised in the arts of a court know how to assume, to impose on those whom they wish to deceive. His majesty was honoured with those sumptuous entertainments in which the empress was fond of displaying her magnificence; and he was loaded with rich presents at his departure. Yet it was supposed that, whatever influence it might have in preventing an immediate rupture, his visit did not serve to increase their esteem for each other. Gustavus, having a personal knowledge of the empress's grandeur, had greater occasion to dread her power: and Catharine, from her acquaintance and conversation with her royal guest, was more convinced of the expediency of keeping a watchful eye on a prince of so enterprising and turbulent a disposition." 1777 +June 16. aa Tooke. 2. 357. a Coxe. 5. 303. RUSSIA. 1777 RUSSIA AND TURKEY. FROM Occurrences which relate to domestic affairs and court intrigues we are now called on to carry our attention again to the empress's foreign politics. The courts of Stockholm and Constantinople were those which especially demanded her regard and exercised her vigilance; the former, because the reigning monarch, a prince of an enterprising temper, was influenced in his councils by France, whose interests had ever been opposed to those of Catharine in her transactions with the northern states; the latter, because the terms of the late treaty of peace, so humiliating to the Sublime Porte, had increased its enmity towards Russia, and could be expected to be adhered to no longer than while the sultan's weakness and his want of allies disabled him from depriving the empress of the acquisitions which she had made by it.-Conformably with these sentiments, we have seen her strengthening her navy in the Baltic; that she might avail herself of any favourable opportunity to bring about another revolution in Sweden, or to reduce the power of the sovereign within his former boundaries, and to regain the influence which Russia had formerly possessed in that kingdom by means of a strong party among the nobles. In the mean-time, a dispute had already arisen with the Porte respecting the free passage of the Dardanelles, which was one article of the treaty, but was with much reluctance complied with.—The independency of the Crimea was another stipulation very galling to the sultan, as it afforded an accession of weight to his rival by the influence which the empress must, from the circumstances of her adjoining territories, acquire in that country. The consequence was that, instead of adhering to that article by leaving the Tartars freely to elect their own khan, each power endeavoured to establish its ascendency among them by procuring the election of one who should be subservient to his protector.-Dewlet Gueray was elected by the partisans of the Porte; and Sahib Gueray by those of the empress.-The Crimea, in consequence, became a scene of civil war. The former was overpowered by the Russians and driven from the country. But this did not |