But As The Treaty Was Going To Be Signed, The
Czar Sent An Army Of 20,000 Men To His Relief, Who Defeated General
Mayerfield, Whom The King Had Left To Guard That Kingdom; And The
Dethroned Monarch Once More Entered Warsaw, The Capital Of Poland,
In Triumph.
Charles XII.
Was so exasperated when he received this intelligence, that
he gave immediate orders to decamp, resolving he should not long enjoy
the benefit of his breach of faith; but the pusillanimity of Augustus
prevented him: that prince was afraid the czar should discover the peace
he had been secretly negotiating, and withdraw his troups; and as he had
neither any of his own, nor money to assist him, he sent the articles
demanded of him by the king of Sweden, signed with his own hand, and set
out to Alranstadt, hoping, by his presence and persuasions, to mollify
his indignation, and be permitted to enjoy his own Saxony in peace.
What more could the utmost ambition of man require than the king of
Sweden now received, to see a prince, so lately his equal and inveterate
enemy, come to solicite favour of him in his camp, almost at his feet;
but whatever were his sentiments on this occasion he concealed them, and
tho' he could not but despise such an act of meanness, he treated him
with the utmost politeness, tho' without making any abatement of the
demands he had exacted from him. On the contrary, he insisted on his
delivering up to him general Patkul, ambassador from the czar, who at
that time was a prisoner in Saxony, being determined to put him to death
as a traitor, having been born his subject, and now entered into the
service of his sworn enemy.
Augustus beseeched him in the most abject manner to relinquish this one
point, and remonstrated to him that the czar, his present master, would
look on it as the utmost indignity offered to himself in the person of
his ambassador: he assured him he hated Patkul, but feared the giving
him up would be resented by all the princes of Europe. All he could urge
on this head was to no effect; the king of Sweden was not to be moved
from any resolution he had once made; and the unfortunate Patkul was
sent to Alranstadt and chained to a stake for three whole months, and
afterwards conducted to Casimir, where he was to receive his sentence.
Horatio, who was an entire stranger to the motive of this behaviour in
the king, and had never seen any thing before in him that looked like a
cruel disposition, was one day mentioning his surprize at it to a young
officer with whom he had contracted a great intimacy, on which he gave
him the following account:
This Patkul, said he, is a Livonian born, which, tho' a free country, is
part of the dominions annexed to the crown of Sweden: Charles XI. began
to introduce a more absolute form of government than was consistent with
the humour of that people; his son has been far from receding in that
point, and Patkul being a person of great consideration among them,
stood up for their liberties in a manner which our king could not
forgive: - he ordered him to be seized, but he made his escape, and was
proscribed in Sweden; on which he entered into the service of king
Augustus, and was made his general; but on some misunderstanding;
between him and the chancellor, he quitted Poland and went to Russia,
where he got into great favour with the czar, was highly promoted, and
sent his residentiary ambassador in Saxony. Augustus, whose fate it has
been to disoblige every body, on some pretence clapp'd into prison the
representative of his only friend, and now, we see, has given him up to
death, to satiate the demands of his greatest enemy.
Horatio could not keep himself from falling into a deep musing at the
recital of this adventure: he thought Patkul worthy of compassion, yet
found reasons to justify the king's resentment; and as this officer had
often disburthened himself to him with the greatest freedom, he had no
reserve toward him, and this led them into a discourse on arbitrary
power. - Horatio said, that he could not help believing that nature never
intended millions to be subjected to the despotic will of one person,
and that a limited government was the most conformable to reason. The
officer agreed with him in that; except the person who ruled had really
more perfections than all those he ruled over and if so, said he, and
his commands are always calculated for the happiness of the subject,
they cannot be more happy than in an implicite obedience. True, replied
Horatio, I am confident that such a prince as ours knows how to chuse
for his people much better than they do for themselves; but how can they
be certain that his descendants will have the same virtues; and when
once an absolute power is granted to a good prince, it will be in vain
that the people will endeavour to wrest it from the hands of a bad
one. - Never can any point be redeemed from the crown without a vast
effusion of blood, and the endangering such calamities on the country,
that the relief would be as bad as the disease. Upon the whole,
therefore, I cannot think Patkul in the wrong for attempting to maintain
the liberty of his country, tho' I do for entering into the service of
the avowed enemy of his master.
It is that, I believe, resumed the other, that the king chiefly resents:
his majesty is too just to condemn a man for maintaining the principles
he was bred in, however they may disagree with his own; but to become
his enemy, to enlist himself in the service of those who aim at the
destruction of his lawful prince, is certainly a treason of the
blackest dye.
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