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the interposition of the maritime powers and Prussia, checked the hopes of Joseph at the very moment when his projects of aggrandisement seemed hastening to their completion. Justly alarmed at the successes of the two imperial courts, the three combined powers incited Poland to throw off the yoke of Russia, delivered the king of Sweden from Danish invasion, and laid the foundation of a general alliance for reducing the overgrown power of Austria and Russia. The king of Prussia even encouraged the rising discontents in Hungary, fomented the troubles which the impolitic innovations of Joseph had excited in the Netherlands, and, in the beginning of 1790, opened a negotiation with the Porte for the conclusion of an offensive alliance, intended not only to effect the restoration of the dominions conquered during the existing war, but even of the Crimea, and the territories dismembered by the two imperial courts from Poland.

The only power to which Joseph might have turned as a counterpoise to this combination was France, from whose recent change of system he had flattered himself with hopes of a cordial support, and from which he had even received private largesses to a considerable amount. But now France was in the throes of her great revolution, and Joseph was left without a resource. Worn down by innumerable calamities and disease, he died in February, 1790; and his successor, Leopold, was fortunate enough to conclude a separate peace with the Porte.

Russia Prosecutes the War; the Storm of Ismail (1790 A.D.)

Russia continued to prosecute the war against the Turks without the aid of Austria. Ismail still held out, and Potemkin, who had been besieging it for seven months, began to grow impatient. Living in his camp like one of those satraps whom he even surpassed in luxury, he was surrounded by a crowd of courtiers and ladies, who exerted every effort to amuse him. Öne of these ladies, pretending to read the decrees of fate in the arrangement of a pack of cards, predicted that he would take the town at the end of three weeks. Potemkin answered, with a smile, that he had a method of divination far more infallible. He instantly sent orders to Suvarov to come from Galatz and take Ismail in three days. Suvarov arrived and took such measures as would seem to indicate that he designed a renewal of the regular siege; he drew together the scattered divisions of the troops, formed them into a large besieging army of about forty thousand men, and ordered the small Russian fleet to come into the neighbourhood of the city; but his real design was to follow the course he had successfully pursued before Otchakov, take advantage of the frost, and reduce the fortress by storm.

Had not Ismail, according to ancient usage, been built without advanced works, even a general like Suvarov would scarcely have ventured on such an attack, which in the actual condition of the defences was attended by such murderous consequences. On the 21st of September the city was twice summoned, and on both occasions the garrison and inhabitants were threatened with the fate of Otchakov. The Turks, however, did not suffer themselves to be terrified into submission, and the fearful storm was commenced on the 22nd, at four o'clock in the morning. The wall was not mounted till eight o'clock, after an unexampled slaughter; but still the hottest part of the struggle took place in the city itself. Every street was converted into a fortress, every house became a redoubt, and it was twelve o'clock before the Russians, advancing through scenes of carnage and desperate resistance, reached the market-place, where the Tatars of the Crimea were collected.

[1791 A.D.]

The Tatars fought for two hours with all the energy of despair, and after they had been all cut to pieces the struggle was still carried on by the Turks in the streets. Suvarov at length opened a passage for his cavalry through the gates into the devoted city; they charged through the streets, and continued to cut down and massacre the people till four o'clock in the afternoon. At the conclusion of this dreadful butchery the Russians received the reward which had been promised them when they were led to the storm and to certain death, the city was given up for three days to the mercy of the victorious troops.

Suvarov himself, in his official report of this murderous enterprise, states that in the course of four days 33,000 Turks were either slain or mortally wounded, and 10,000 taken prisoners. He rates the loss of the Russians at 2000 killed and 2500 wounded: a number which seems to us as improbably small as the usual accounts, which assign 15,000 as the Russian loss, seem exaggerated. There were two French émigrés present at this storm, one of whom afterwards became celebrated as a Russian governor-general and French minister, and the other as a Russian general in the war against his countrymen. The first was the duke de Richelieu, or as he was then called de Fronsac, and the second the count de Langeron. Kutusov also served in this affair under Suvarov and led the sixth line of attack.

European Intervention; the Treaty of Jassy (1792 A.D.)

About this time the whole diplomacy and aristocracy of Europe were busily employed in endeavouring to rescue the Turks, in order to check the dangerously rapid progress of the French and Polish revolutionists. There speedily grew up such a general desire as the English wished to promote-of two evils to choose the least to secure and uphold the empire of the Turks and to let the nationality of Poland perish. Russia, however, declined the proffered mediation of England in the war with the Turks, as she had resolved for this time to give up her conquests in Turkey in order to indemnify herself in Poland: she accepted merely the intervention of the friendly Danes.

Potemkin and the empress were not unthankful for Suvarov's servility, since he threw himself and all his services at their feet, and ascribed everything to them alone. Repnin, whom Potemkin left at the head of the army when he went to St. Petersburg in October, 1790, pursued a very different course, doing more in two months than Potemkin had done in three years. He crossed the Danube with his army, pushed forward into Bulgaria, and caused the whole Turkish army to be attacked and beaten near Badadagh by Kutusov, after Gudovitch, the brother of him who had been the faithful aide-decamp of Peter III, had completely put down the Tatars in the Kuban in January, 1791. At the head of forty thousand Russians, Repnin then advanced against one hundred thousand Turks, under the command of the same vizir, Yussuf, who had fought with such success against the emperor Joseph in the Bannat.

Potemkin eager to appropriate the impending victory, started with great expeditiousness from St. Petersburg when both armies were ready for battle (July, 1791). He took it for granted that Repnin would certainly await his arrival at the army; but he did no such thing. He offered battle before the arrival of Potemkin, whose custom it was to enjoy the fruits in the gathering of which he had no share. The victory which Repnin gained over the great Turkish army in July at Matchin led to a violent altercation between him and Potemkin, who came too late to have any participation in the honours

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of the day; Repnin, however, still remained in command of the army. Potemkin afterwards did everything in his power to prevent the peace for which Repnin was to negotiate, although he clearly saw that the course of events required the Russians to give up this wholesale conquest of Turkish provinces. Happily, his death left Repnin's hands free, and a treaty was concluded at Jassy on the 9th of January, 1792, between Russia and the Porte, by which the former acquired nothing more than the fortress of Otchakov, the surrounding territory from the Dniester to the Bug, and the protectorate of Georgia.

THE DEATH OF POTEMKIN (1792 a.d.); sÉgur'S CHARACTERISATION

Not long after Potemkin's arrival at Jassy, where his headquarters or, to speak more properly, his capital and his court were established, he was seized with a malignant fever, and presumed to treat it with the same haughty contempt with which he had long been used to treat his fellow men: he laughed at his physicians, and ate salt meat and raw turnips. His disease growing worse, he desired to be conveyed to Otchakov, his beloved conquest, but had not travelled more than a few miles before the air of his carriage seemed to stifle him. His cloak was spread by the road-side; he was laid on it, and there expired in the arms of his favourite niece Branicka. Catherine fainted three times when she heard of his death: it was necessary to bleed her; she was thought to be dying. She expressed almost as much grief as at the death of Lanskoi; but it was not the lover she regretted: it was the friend whose genius assimilated with her own, whom she considered as the support of her throne and the executor of her vast projects. Catherine, holding her usurped sceptre, was a woman and timid: she was accustomed to behold in Potemkin a protector whose fortune and glory were intimately connected with her own. The character of this Russian vizir has been thus sketched by Count Ségur, who, as ambassador to St. Petersburg, lived long in habits of intimacy with him:

"Prince Gregory Alexandrovitch Potemkin was one of the most extraordinary men of his times; but in order to have played so conspicuous a part, he must have been born in Russia and have lived in the reign of Catherine II. In any other country, in any other time, with any sovereign, he would have been misplaced; and it was a singular stroke of chance that created this man for the period that tallied with him, and brought together and combined all the circumstances with which he could tally.

"In his person were collected the most opposite defects and advantages of every kind. He was avaricious and ostentatious, despotic and popular, inflexible and beneficent, haughty and obliging, politic and confiding, licentious and superstitious, bold and timid, ambitious and indiscreet. Lavish of his bounties to his relations, his mistresses, and his favourites, yet frequently paying neither his household nor his creditors. His consequence always depended on a woman, and he was always unfaithful to her. Nothing could equal the activity of his mind or the indolence of his body. No dangers could appal his courage; no difficulties force him to abandon his projects. But the success of an enterprise always brought with it disgust. He wearied the empire by the number of his posts and the extent of his power. He was himself fatigued with the burden of his existence; envious of all that he did not do, and sick of all that he did. Rest was not grateful to him, nor occupation pleasing. Everything with him was desultory - business, pleasure, temper, carriage. In every company he had an embarrassed air,

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and his presence was a restraint on every company. He was morose to all that stood in awe of him, and caressed all such as accosted him with familiarity.

"Ever promising, seldom keeping his word, and never forgetting anything, none had read less than he few people were better informed. He had talked with the skilful in all professions, in all the sciences, in every art. None better knew how to draw forth and appropriate to himself the knowledge of others. In conversation he would have astonished a scholar, an artist, an artisan, or a divine. His information was not deep, but it was very extensive. He never dived into a subject, but he spoke well on all subjects.

"The inequality of his temper was productive of an inconceivable oddity in his desires, his conduct, and his manner of life. One while he formed the project of becoming duke of Courland; at another he thought of bestowing on himself the crown of Poland. He frequently gave intimations of an intention to make himself a bishop or even a simple monk. He built a superb palace, and wanted to sell it before it was finished. One day he would dream of nothing but war; and only officers, Tatars, and Cossacks were admitted to him: the next day he was busied only with politics; he would partition the Ottoman Empire, and put in agitation all the cabinets of Europe. At other times, with nothing in his head but the court, dressed in a magnificent suit, covered with ribbons presented to him by every potentate, displaying diamonds of extraordinary magnitude and brilliance, he was giving superb entertainments without any cause.

"He was sometimes known for a month, and in the face of all the town, to pass whole evenings at the apartments of a young woman, seeming to have alike forgotten all business and all decorum. Sometimes also, for several weeks successively, shut up in his room with his nieces and several men whom he honoured with his intimacy, he would lounge on a sofa, without speaking, playing at chess, or at cards, with his legs bare, his shirt collar unbuttoned, in a morning gown, with a thoughtful front, his eyebrows knit, and presenting to the view of strangers, who came to see him, the figure of a rough and squalid Cossack. These singularities often put the empress out of humour, but rendered him more interesting to her. In his youth he had pleased her by the ardour of his passion, his valour, and his masculine beauty. Being arrived at maturity, he charmed her still by flattering her pride, calming her apprehensions, confirming her power, and caressing her fancies of oriental empire, the expulsion of the barbarians, and the restoration of the Grecian republics.

"Potemkin began everything, completed nothing, disordered the finances, disorganised the army, depopulated his country, and enriched it with other deserts. The fame of the empress was increased by his conquests. The admiration they excited was for her; and the hatred they raised, for her minister. Posterity, more equitable, will perhaps divide between them both the glory of the successes and the severity of the reproaches. It will not bestow on Potemkin the title of a great man; but it will mention him as an extraordinary person; and, to draw his picture with accuracy, he might be represented as the real emblem, as the living image of the Russian Empire. For, in fact, he was colossal like Russia. In his mind, as in that country, were cultivated districts and desert plains. It also partook of the Asiatic, the European, the Tatar, and the Cossack; the rudeness of the eleventh century, and the corruption of the eighteenth; the surface of the arts, and the ignorance of the cloisters; an outside of civilisation, and many traces of barbarism.'i

[1792 A.D.]

THE QUESTION OF THE IMPERIAL SUCCESSION

Some time before the death of Potemkin, Catherine had begun proceedings intended to bar the czarevitch Paul from the imperial succession.a She was by no means the cruel, heartless mother that many writers are inclined to represent; but she knew her son thoroughly well, and foreseeing how destructive of all good his reign would be she could not think without fear of how the empire, which under her rule had made such rapid strides in the path of prosperity, glory, and civilisation, would after her remain without any guarantee for the stability and durability of its existence. With the intention of preserving the country from such a misfortune, Catherine wished to make over the throne to the grand duke Alexander Pavlovitch and therefore the setting aside of the czarevitch appeared in her eyes a state necessity. Meanwhile it is sufficiently well known that Catherine had long been accustomed to place the interests of the state above everything and to sacrifice to them all other considerations and feelings; therefore the difficulties with which so daring an administrative step was doubtless accompanied could not stop the creator of the changes of the year 1762. "Obstacles are created in this world," Catherine once wrote, "in order that persons of merit may set them aside and thus add to their reputation; that is the meaning of obstacles." Circumstances were also favourable to this new change contemplated by Catherine, for at that time no law existed that exactly established the order of succession to the throne. The statute of Peter the Great of the year 1722 was still maintained in full power, and by this statute the reigning Russian sovereigns had the right of naming anyone they liked as their successors to the throne according to their own judgment, without being restrained by any ancient right of primogeniture; and in cases where the heir already designated showed himself incapable, he could be removed from the throne.

The diary of Krapovitski can serve as a proof that in the year 1787, after Catherine's return from her travels in the south of Russia, the question as to the necessity of changing the succession to the throne had already matured in the mind of the empress; she entered upon the historical study of the matter and read "the right of will of monarchs." On the 20th of August, in connection with this same question, Catherine discussed with her secretary the extent to which the misfortunes of the czarevitch Paul Petrovitch had been caused by the false opinion that as eldest son the throne must belong to him. Further, on the 25th of August, Krapovitski writes: "Ukases as to the heirs to the throne, named since the time of Catherine I, have been asked for, and in the explanations a sort of displeasure was manifested." To what conclusions the historical study of the measures taken by Peter the Great led Catherine may be seen from the context of the following remarks, written by the empress' own hand:

"It must be acknowledged that the parent is unhappy who sees himself obliged for the safeguard of the public good to remove his offspring. This is a condition which accompanies or is joined to the autocratic and parental power. And thus I esteem that the most wise monarch Peter I had doubtlessly the strongest reasons for the removal of his ungrateful, disobedient, and incapable son, who was filled with hatred, malice, and viperous envy against him. He sought to find some particle of evil in his father's deeds and actions which were conceived in the spirit of good, he listened to flatterers, shut his ears to the truth, and nothing was so pleasing to him as to hear his most glorious father defamed and spoken evil of. He himself was a sluggard, a