Catherine the Great

Catherine knew that accepting money from the English ambassador entailed risks, but she also knew that this game was played by everyone at the Russian court. If she allowed herself to be bribed in order to please others, she was only part of a universal corruptibility that was a feature of politics and government in every state in Europe. Money bought friendships, loyalties, and treaties. Everyone in St. Petersburg was corruptible, including the empress herself. When Hanbury-Williams was beginning his effort to persuade the empress to agree to a new Anglo-Russian treaty, he had informed London that Elizabeth had begun to build two palaces but lacked enough money to finish them. The treaty would guarantee Russia an annual payment of one hundred thousand pounds, but Sir Charles thought that an additional contribution to Elizabeth’s private purse would bind her even more securely to England. “In a word, all that has been given so far has served to buy Russian troops,” he said. “Whatever may be further given will serve to buy the empress.” London approved the additional sum, and Sir Charles was able to report that the treaty negotiations were progressing smoothly. He believed that the same approach would confirm the goodwill and anti-Prussian sentiments of the charming grand duchess.

31

A Diplomatic Earthquake

THE REASON FOR Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams’s mission to Russia in 1755 was the political requirement that England defend the electorate of Hanover. In the middle of the eighteenth century, two constant factors dictated British diplomacy and military strategy: one was the permanent hostility of France, whether the two countries were actually at war or passing through an interlude of peace; the other was the need to defend the small, landlocked, north German electoral state. This obligation arose from the fact that the king of England was also the elector of Hanover. In 1714, the fifty-four-year-old elector, George Lewis, had been persuaded by Parliament to accept the British throne, thereby ensuring the supremacy of the Protestant religion in the British Isles. George had become King George I of Great Britain while keeping his German electorate and title. This personal union of the island kingdom and the continental electorate in the figure of the monarch continued until 1837, when, on the coronation of Queen Victoria, it was quietly laid aside.

It was never an easy fit. George I and later his son, George II, greatly preferred their little electorate with its smiling, obedient population of three-quarters of a million people, and no outspoken, interfering Parliament. George I never learned to speak English, and both he and his son frequently went home to Hanover and remained for long periods.

The electorate was always an easy prey for its continental neighbors. Defending Hanover from aggressive neighbors was almost impossible for England, a maritime power lacking a large army. Most Englishmen were convinced that Hanover was a millstone around England’s neck and that Great Britain’s larger interests were regularly sacrificed to those of the electorate. There was no escape, however; Hanover had to be protected. Since only the army of a continental ally could do this, England had entered into long-term alliances with Austria and Russia. For many decades, this arrangement had worked.

In 1755, fear of rising Prussian belligerence stirred King George II to worry that his brother-in-law, Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick’s wife, Sophia, was George’s sister), might be tempted to invade Hanover as he had already invaded Silesia. It was to deter such a Prussian adventure that England had proposed renewal of the treaty with Russia which Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams had come to St. Petersburg to negotiate. When Count Bestuzhev signed the treaty for Russia in September 1755, Sir Charles was exuberant.

Hanbury-Williams’s self-congratulation was premature. News that England and Russia were about to sign a new treaty had alarmed the king of Prussia, who, it was said, feared Russia more than he feared God. Appalled by the prospect of fifty-five thousand Russians poised to march against him from the north, he instructed his diplomats to come to terms immediately with Great Britain. They did so by reviving an agreement presumed defunct. Before negotiating with Russia, England had first attempted to ensure the integrity of Hanover by negotiating directly with Prussia. Frederick had rejected this proposal, but now he hastily resurrected and accepted it. On January 16, 1756, Great Britain and Prussia mutually pledged that neither would invade or threaten the other’s territories. Instead, should any aggressor disturb “the tranquillity of Germany”—a phrase vague enough to cover both Hanover and Prussia—they would unite to oppose the invader. The potential “invaders” were France and Russia.