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CHAP. much repugnance to having her troops employed in America. "And could not his majesty," asked Panin, "make use of Hanoverians?"

1775. Sept.

Oct.

Gunning replied at great length: "Would the refusal of troops be a suitable return for our conduct during the late war, for our having foregone the commercial advantages which the Porte would undoubtedly have granted us, could she only have obtained a real neutrality on our part, which our partiality for Russia prevented us from observing. Were not the king's harbors, his subjects, and the credit and influence of the nation at her service during the whole war? Did not her majesty, at the risk of a rupture with France and Spain, forbid those powers to molest the Russian fleet which they would otherwise have annihilated? And though these services were rendered from the most pure and disinterested motives, yet as it had pleased the empress so frequently to express her wishes for an occasion of showing her sense of their merit, it is with the utmost astonishment I see her decline the present occasion of evincing it. I conjure you, by regard for the honor of your sovereign, to reflect on the light in which such a refusal must be looked upon by us, as well as by all the powers in Europe, and on the effect it might have on the conduct of some of them." And as he was refused an audience, he desired Panin himself to deliver the autograph letter of George the Third.

At

The next morning, Gunning went to Panin before he was up, and to remove objections, offered to be content with a corps of fifteen thousand men. court, though it was the grand duke's birthday, he found that the empress would not appear. He re

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turned to the palace in the evening, but the empress, CHAP. feigning indisposition, excused herself from seeing him.

Oct.

Meantime the subject was debated in council, and 1775 objections without end rose up against the proposed traffic in troops, from the condition of the army wasted by wars, the divisions in Poland, the hostile attitude of Sweden, the dignity of the empress, the danger of disturbing her diplomatic relations with other European powers, the grievous discontents it would engender among her own subjects. She asked Panin whether granting the king such assistance would not disgust the British nation; and Ivan Ctzernichew, lately her ambassador at London, now minister of the marine, declared that it would give offence to the great body of the people of England, who were vehemently opposed to the policy of the king and his ministers.

Besides, what motive had the people of Russia to interfere against the armed husbandmen of New England? Why should the oldest monarchy of modern Europe, the connecting link between the world of antiquity and the modern world, assist to repress the development of the youngest power in the west? Catharine claimed to sit on the throne of the Byzantine Cæsars, as heir to their dignity and their religion; and how could she so far disregard her own glory, as to take part in the American dispute, by making a shambles of the mighty empire which assumed to be the successor of Constantine's? The requisition of England was marked by so much extravagance, that nothing but the wildest credulity of statesmanship could have anticipated success.

The first suggestion to Catharine that the king of

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Oct.

CHAP. England needed her aid, was flattering to her vanity, and, supposing it had reference only to entanglements 1775 in Europe, she was pleased with the idea of becoming the supreme arbiter of his affairs. But when the application came to be exhibited to her as a naked demand of twenty thousand men to be shipped to America, where they were to serve, under British command, not as auxiliaries but as mercenaries, with no liberty left to herself but to fix the price of her subjects in money and so plunge her hand as deeply as she pleased into the British exchequer, the offer was taken as an offence to her pride, and an insult to her honor. Using no palliatives she framed accordingly a sarcastic and unequivocal answer: "I am just beginning to enjoy peace, and your majesty knows that my empire has need of repose. It is also known what must be the condition of an army, though victorious, when it comes out of a long war in a murderous climate. There is an impropriety in employing so considerable a body in another hemisphere, under a power almost unknown to it, and almost deprived of all correspondence with its sovereign. My own confidence in my peace, which has cost me so great efforts to acquire, demands absolutely that I do not deprive myself so soon of so considerable a part of my forces. Affairs on the side of Sweden are but put to sleep, and those of Poland are not yet definitively terminated. Moreover, I should not be able to prevent myself from reflecting on the consequences which would result for our own dignity, for that of the two monarchies and the two nations, from this junction of our forces, simply to calm a rebellion which is not supported by any foreign power."

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Oct.

Every word of the letter of the king of England CHAP. to the empress of Russia was in his own hand; she purposely employed her private secretary to write 1775. her answer. The second English courier, with the project of a treaty, reached Gunning on the fourth of October; he seized the earliest opportunity to begin reading it to Panin, and was willing to come down in his demand to ten thousand men; but the chancellor, interrupting him, put into his hands Catharine's answer, and declined all further discussion.

The letter seemed to the British envoy in some passages exceptionable, and he was in doubt whether it was fit to be received; but suppressing his discontent, he forwarded it to his sovereign.

The conduct of this negotiation was watched with the intensest curiosity by every court from Moscow to Madrid, and its progress was well understood; but no foreign influence whatever, not even that of the king of Prussia, however desirous he might have been of rendering ill offices to England, had any share in determining the empress. The decision was founded on her own judgment and that of her ministers, on the necessities of her position and the state of her dominions. For a short time a report prevailed through western Europe, that the English request was to be granted; but Vergennes rejected it as incredible, and wrote to the French envoy at Moscow: “I cannot reconcile Catharine's elevation of soul with the dishonorable idea of trafficking in the blood of her subjects."

On the last day of October, the French minister asked Panin of the truth of the rumors, and Panin answered: "People have said so, but it is physically

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CHAP. impossible; besides, it is not consistent with the dignity of England to employ foreign troops against its own subjects."

1775. Oct.

The empress continued to be profuse of courtesies to Gunning; and when in December he took his leave, she renewed the assurances of affection and esteem for his king, whom she expressed her readiness to assist on all occasions, adding, however: "But one cannot go beyond one's means."