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of Beaumarchais. Vergennes continued to present CHAP. America to his mind in every possible aspect. He found it difficult to believe, that the mistakes, ab- 1775. Sept. surdity, and passion of the British ministers could be so great as they really were; otherwise he never erred in his judgment. He received hints of negotiations for Russian troops; but yet he held it impossible that the king of England should be willing to send foreign mercenaries against his own subjects. Henry the Fourth would not have accepted the aid of foreign troops to reduce Paris; their employment would render it in any event impossible to restore affectionate relations between the parent state and the colonies. But Vergennes had not penetrated the character of the British government of his day, which, in the management of domestic affairs, was tempered by a popular influence, but which, in its foreign policy, consulted only the interests or the pride of the oligarchy, and was less capable of a generous impulse than that of France. The ministry did not scruple to engage troops wherever they chanced to be in the market.

The hereditary prince of Hesse Cassel, who was already the ruler of the little principality of Hainau, had instinctively scented the wants of England, and written to George the Third: "I never cease to make the most ardent vows and prayers for the best of kings; I venture to offer, without the least condition, my regiment of five hundred men, all ready to sacrifice with me their life and their blood for your majesty's service. Deign to regard the motive and not the thing itself. Oh! that I could offer twenty thousand men to your majesty; it should be done with

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CHAP. the same zeal; my regiment is all ready at the first twinkle that shall be given me;" and like the beg gar that sends his goods as a present to a rich patron from whose charity he means to extort more than the market price, he demanded nothing, but was now in England to renew his solicitations.

The king wished leave to recruit in Holland, and also to obtain of that republic the loan of its so called Scottish brigade, which consisted no longer of Scots, but chiefly of Walloons and deserters. The consent of the house of Orange could easily have been gained; but the dignity, the principles, and the policy of the States General forbade. This is the first attempt of either party to induce Holland to take part in the American war; and its neutrality gave grievous of fence in England.

Sir Joseph Yorke, at the Hague, was further directed to gain information on "the practicability of using the good dispositions of the king's friends upon the continent, and the military force which its princes might be engaged to supply." For England to recruit in Germany was a defiance of the law of the empire; but Yorke reported that recruits might be raised there in any number, and at a tolerably easy rate; and that bodies of troops might be obtained of the princes of Hesse Cassel, Würtemberg, Saxe Gotha, Darmstadt, and Baden.

But for the moment England had in contemplation a larger scheme. Gunning's private and confidential despatch from Moscow was received in London on the first day of September, with elation and delight. That very day Suffolk prepared an answer to the minister. To Catharine, George himself, "with his own hand

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wrote a very polite epistle," requesting her friendly CHAP. assistance: "I accept the succor that your majesty offers me of a part of your troops, whom the acts of 1775. rebellion of my subjects in some of my colonies in America unhappily require; I shall provide my minister with the necessary full powers; nothing shall ever efface from my memory the offer your imperial majesty has made to me on this occasion." Armed with this letter, Gunning was ordered to ask an audience of the empress, and to request of her the assistance of twenty thousand disciplined infantry, completely equipped and prepared on the opening of the Baltic in spring, to embark by way of England for Canada, where they were to be under the supreme command of the British general. The journey from London to Moscow required about twenty three days; yet they were all so overweeningly confident, that they hoped to get the definitive promise by the twenty third of October, in season to announce it at the opening of parliament; and early in September Lord Dartmouth and his secretary hurried off messages to Howe and to Carleton, that the empress had given the most ample assurances of letting them have any number of infantry that might be wanted.

On the eighth, Suffolk despatched a second courier to Gunning, with a project of a treaty for taking a body of Russian troops into the pay and service of Great Britain. The treaty was to continue for two years, within which the king and his ministers were confident of crushing the insurrection. The levy money for the troops might be seven pounds sterling a man, payable one half in cash and the other half on embarkation. A subsidy was not to be refused. "I

CHAP. Will not conceal from you," wrote Suffolk to Gunning, L. "that this accession of force being very earnestly de1775. sired, expense is not so much an object as in ordinary Sept. cases."

Scarcely had the project of a treaty left England, when, on the tenth of September, Gunning at court poured out to the empress assurances of the most inviolable attachment on the part of England. "Has any progress been made," asked the empress with the utmost coolness, "towards settling your dispute in America?" and without waiting for an answer, she added: "For God's sake put an end to it as soon as possible, and do not confine yourselves to one method of accomplishing this desirable end; there are other means of doing it than force of arms, and they ought all to be tried. You know my situation has lately been full as embarrassing, and, believe me, I did not rest my certainty of success upon one mode of acting. There are moments when we must not be too rigorous. The interest I take in everything that concerns you, makes me speak thus freely upon this subject."

"The measures which are pursuing to suppress the rebellion," answered Gunning, who found himself most unexpectedly put upon the defensive, "are such as are consistent with his majesty's dignity and that of the nation, and I am persuaded that your majesty would neither advise nor approve of any that were not so; resentment has not yet found its way into his majesty's councils." But Catharine only repeated her wishes for a speedy and a peaceful end to the difference; thus reading the king of England a lesson in humanity, and citing her own example of lenity and

concession as the best mode of suppressing a re- CHAP. bellion.

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Late on the twenty fourth, the first British courier 1775 reached Moscow a few hours after Catharine's departure for some days of religious seclusion in the monastery at Voskresensk, for she was scrupulous in her observance of the forms and usages of the Greek church. As no time was to be lost, Gunning went to Panin, who received him cordially, heard his communication without any sign of emotion, and consented to forward to the empress in her retirement a copy of the king's letter. It was the policy of the empire to preserve amicable relations with George the Third; the vice chancellor Ostermann, therefore, calmly explained the impossibility of conceding his request; but the British envoy persisted in his urgency, and wilfully deluded by the tranquil self-possession and friendly manner of the Russian minister, left him with the belief that if the British requisition should come to be a matter of debate, it would be supported by his voice.

The empress having returned to Moscow, Gunning, at five in the afternoon of the thirtieth, waited on Panin, by appointment. The autograph letter, which he wished to deliver in person, said positively that she had made him an offer of troops; Panin denied that any offer of troops had been made, and after much expostulation, Gunning confessed: "It is true; in your answer to me no explicit mention was made of troops."

The message of the empress now was, that she was affected by the cordiality of the king, that in return, her friendship was equally warm, but that she had