their part, disliked George, complaining about his dullness, his coldness, his German ministers and his ugly mistresses. Only his religion appealed to them, and even here he was Lutheran, not Anglican.
In London, the King avoided ceremony whenever possible. He lived in two rooms, where he was looked after by two Turkish servants whom he had captured in his campaigns as an imperial general. His favorite companions were his two German mistresses, one tall, thin and bony, the other so corpulent that the London crowd dubbed them. 'The Elephant and Castle.' He was fond of cards and often went to the house of a friend where he could play in private with his few cronies. He loved music and was an enthusiastic admirer of George Frederick Handel, who emigrated from Germany to England largely at the urging of this royal patron.
He hated his son. The King's eyes blazed with fury and his face turned purple whenever the Prince of Wales appeared. By every possible means, he directed snubs toward his heir. Such treatment reduced the Prince to paroxysms of rage, but all he could do was to wait. Meanwhile, the King seized his son's children and forbade him to appear at court. The go-between for these two irreconcilable men was the King's daughter-in-law, Caroline of Anspach, Princess of Wales, a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired beauty with a superb and ample figure, great intelligence and earthy wit. She was the kind of woman whom the King most admired, and the fact that she was married to his hated son only deepened his antipathy toward the younger man.
Upon ascending the English throne, George I had every intention of using the great power of England to serve the purposes of Hanover. He had long looked with envy at the Swedish-held duchies of Bremen and Verden, which commanded the estuaries of the Elbe and Weser rivers and thus cut his Hanoverian dominions off from the North Sea. Now, with the Swedish empire seeming on the verge of collapse, he wanted to be present when the spoils were divided. Thus it was that in 1715, Hanover—but not England—entered the anti-Swedish alliance. As Vasily Dolgoruky, Peter's ambassador in Copenhagen, explained this confusing situation to the Tsar: 'Although the English King has declared war on Sweden, it is only as Elector of Hanover, and the English fleet has sailed [to the Baltic] only to protect its merchants. If the Swedish fleet attacks the Russian fleet of Your Majesty, it is not to be thought that the English will engage the Swedes.'
Despite this qualification, Peter, whose policy for years had been to bring both Hanover and England into the war against Sweden, was delighted. And when he heard that the British Admiral Sir John Norris had arrived in the Baltic commanding eighteen ships-of-the-line escorting 106 merchantment, the Tsar was overjoyed. On Norris' first call at Reval, the Tsar was at Kronstadt, but, hearing of the British visit and the Norris would be back, Peter hurried to Reval with a Russian squadron. When the British Admiral returned, he found Peter there with nineteen Russian ships-of-the-line. Norris remained for three weeks while the admirals and officers of the two fleets entertained each other with gala festivities. Catherine and most of Peter's court were also present and dined with Norris aboard his flagship. During the visit, Peter examined the British ships from keel to topmast and Norris was allowed to freely inspect the Russian vessels. He saw three new sixty-gun ships built in St. Petersburg which he described as 'in every way equal to the best of that rank in our country and more handsomely furnished.' At the end of the visit, Peter enthusiastically offered Norris command of the Russian navy, and although the Admiral declined, the Tsar gave his visitor his royal protrait set in diamonds.
Every summer thereafter until the death of Charles XII (in all, the summers of 1715, 1716, 1717 and 1718), Norris returned to the Baltic with a British squadron and the same orders: not to engage the Swedes unless British ships were attacked, in 1716, Norris' squadron was part of the combined allied fleet assembled to cover the invasion of Scania, and if the Swedish fleet had appeared, British cannon would have opened fire. But the Swedish fleet remained in port, and in September Peter postponed the invasion.
As seen from London, Charles' death in November 1718 created an entirely new situation in the Baltic. Until then, George I's interest had been permanent Hanoverian possession of Bremen and Verden, and the British Cabinet had been concerned about protection of British merchant trade and an assured flow of naval supplies from the Baltic. Both parties had also worried about the possibility of Charles XII offering support to a Jacobite uprising in England against the Hanoverian King. But Charles' death eliminate these fears and enabled the King and his ministers to reassess the underlying change which was taking place in the North: the decline of the Swedish empire and its replacement in the Baltic by the growing power of Russia.
King George I conceived a plan which, if successful, would profit both England and Hanover; the Baltic would be made safe for British trade and the continued, unmolested flow of naval stores and also the possession of Bremen and Verden would be guaranteed to Hanover not just by right of conquest but by formal cession from the Swedish crown. George's goal was the preservation of sufficient Swedish power 'so that the Tsar should not grow too powerful in the Baltic.' His means was to be a complete reversal of the alliance system in the Baltic. Sweden in 1718 stood alone against a powerful assembly of states: Russia, Poland, Denmark, Hanover and Prussia. This alignment would now be reversed. First, Sweden would be induced to make peace with all of her enemies in the lower Baltic, then a general league of Germanic powers would together march on the Tsar and drive them away from the northern sea. Initially, the peace would be expensive for Sweden: All of its German possessions would be divided among Hanover, Prussia, Denmark and Poland. In return, however, these states would become Sweden's allies, helping it to recover all it had lost to the Tsar. Sweden was to receive back Livonia, Estonia and Finland, giving up only St. Petersburg, Narva and Kronstadt. If Peter refused these terms, still harsher ones would be imposed: He would be deprived of all his conquests and, in addition, forced to cede Smolensk and Kiev to Poland. In sum, Russia, until then the apparent victor in the war, having gained the most territory, would now become the loser and would pay for the peace. Hanover and Prussia, which had entered the war late and done almost no fighting, would become the real victors.
In its initial stages, George I's plan was brilliantly successful. One by one, through skillful diplomacy, Peter's allies were stripped away, bribed or pressured into making a separate peace with Sweden. Fittingly, Hanover was the first in this parade. On November 20, 1719, George I, as Elector of Hanover, signed a formal treaty of peace with Sweden. By the treaty, Hanover obtained permanent cession of Bremen and Verden on payment of one million thalers. Two months later, as King of England, the same George I signed an alliance with Sweden by which England was to pay a subsidy of 300,000 thalers per year for as long as the war with Russia lasted, to assist Sweden with a British fleet in the battle, and to help Sweden reach a favorable peace with Russia.
King Frederick William of Prussia was highly uncomfortable about the English proposition, as he considered himself a friend of the Tsar and had only recently—in August 1718—signed a new alliance with Peter. But he was strongly, and in the end decisively, tempted by the promise of permanent cession of the port of Stettin, which gave his kingdom access to the sea, plus a piece of Swedish Pomerania. As a salve to his conscience, Frederick William kept the negotiations completely aboveboard. He informed the Russians of every detail of his discussions with the English, and endeavored to convince Golovkin and, later, Tolstoy, whom Peter sent especially to Berlin, that the new treaty would not be harmful to Russia. Even after a treaty of peace was finally signed between Prussia and Sweden on January 21, 1720, the King signed a declaration that he would never act against the interest or territory of his friend Peter.*
Denmark was cajoled into peace with Sweden by the combined influence of English money and the Royal Navy. An armistice was signed on October 19, 1719, and a Swedish-Danish peace treaty
*Frederick William's distress at the role he found himself playing is displayed in an emotional memorandum he wrote before the treaty was signed: 'Would to God that I had not promised to conclude the treaty. It is an evil spirit which has moved me. Now we shall be ruined, which is what my false friends wish. May God take me from this evil world before 1 sign it, for here on earth there is nothing but falsehood and deceit. I will explain to Golovkin that I must wear the cloak on both shoulders. To have the Tsar at my hand is my interest and if I give him money I can have as many troops as I wish. The Tsar will make just such a treaty with me. With the English everything is deceit, just as the most rascally way they deceive me in 1715. I pray God to stand by me if I must play an odd part, but I play it unwillingly for it is not one for an honest man.' The King concluded that his predicament should 'teach my successors to guard against accepting such friends, and not to follow my wicked. Godless maxims in this treaty, but to stick to friends that one once has, and to turn away from false friends. Therefore, I exhort my posterity to keep a still stronger army than I have; on this I shall live and die.'
on July 3, 1720. Sweden agreed henceforth to pay tolls for Swedish ships passing through the sound and to give up all support for the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Then, King Augustus, who had helped instigate the Great Northern War and whose persuasion had turned the Tsar against Sweden, signed a treaty of peace with Sweden on December 27, 1719. No territory changed hands, but by its terms Augustus was confirmed in his title of King of
