Two new factors weighed heavily in the political calculations that followed. The simpler was the conviction of Empress Elizabeth that the newly expanded power of Prussia was dangerous primarily to Russia and hence must be radically diminished or preferably eliminated. The second was the dissatisfaction of all of the major combatants of the previous war with their allies. The British and the French had pursued chiefly their own maritime interests, leaving their continental allies unsupported. What followed, then, was that celebrated reshuffling of the alliance system known as the Diplomatic Revolution. Hence in the wake of the war, the allies changed sides, and the next war found an Anglo-Prussian alliance against a Franco-Austrian alliance. As Russia was already the ally of Austria, and France had now become the antagonist of Prussia, it seemed logical enough for the court of Elizabeth to pursue its own vendetta against Prussia by extending its alliance system to France, which it did in January 1756 (Treaty of Versailles). The consummation of this series of realignments left Prussia as the smallest of the continental great powers - and supported only by maritime Britain - facing the three large continental powers, France, Austria and Russia together. It was a mortal threat, to say the least.
Frederick fought with characteristic genius, exploiting the opportunities that ramshackle coalitions always provide their enemies, but it was an awesome and daunting challenge that he confronted. The Russian army in particular administered him damaging defeats at Gross-Jagersdorf in 1757 and at Zorndorf in 1758, and an Austro-Russian army dealt him another serious blow at Kunersdorf in 1759. The Russians occupied Konigsberg and East Prussia in 1758 and Berlin in 1760. Frederick despaired of victory and actually sought an honourable death fighting in the front lines of battle. He was saved, however, by fortunes beyond his influence.
The heir to the Russian throne was Elizabeth's nephew, Grand Duke Peter, Duke of Holstein, an enthusiastic admirer of Frederick. The commanders of the Russian armies all dreaded the consequences of dealing to Frederick's armies a death-blow only to discover on the morrow the demise of Elizabeth, who was well known to be aged and ailing, and the accession to the Russian throne of Frederick's protector, Peter III. Hence they refused to press their campaign with the customary vigour and opportunism. Bestuzhev himself was not above the suspicion of being caught in this net of intrigue, as he was on close terms with some of the Russian field commanders and was necessarily sensitive to opinion at the 'young court'. He was consequently relieved of his duties in 1758. In these circumstances, the war dragged on until Elizabeth's death obliged her enemies in January 1762, and what had been anticipated materialised: Peter III left the coalition and offered Frederick both peace and an alliance. Peter was himself, however, one of those royal transients of the era of palace revolutions. He ruled a mere half year before being overturned and murdered. In the Peace of Hubertusburg, Frederick retained Silesia, and Russia acquired nothing.
Russian foreign policy of the era of palace revolutions, then, had cost the country a good deal and gained it little but unrealised potential influence.
Catherine II
In the eighteenth century, the real sport of kings - of despots enlightened or not - was the aggrandisement of power. Enlightened despotism as a paradigm of modernisation conceived and driven by the state was as unpopular in eighteenth-century Russia as it was imperative. According to a celebrated European witticism of the age, the government of Russia in the era was a despotism tempered by assassination. No idle joke, assassination and the threat of it were a persistent means of intimidating progressive governments all over Europe in the eighteenth century - the age of the nobles' revolt.[101]Catherine II discovered early the force of conservative reaction - it spoiled her Legislative Assembly and her plans to improve the lot of the serfs. Her successor Paul paid for it with his life, and his successor Alexander was made to fear for his own. In the words of Catherine's most ambitious historian, V A. Bil'basov: 'It is a big mistake to think that there is no public opinion in Russia. Because there are no proper forms ofthe expression of public opinion, it is manifested in improper ways, by fits and starts, solely at crucial historical junctures, with a force that is all the greater and in forms that are all the more peculiar.'[102] The nobles' revolt weighed especially heavily on politics at home, but, as we shall see, foreign policy was not utterly immune to its influence either.
Catherine soon emerged as one of the master diplomats of the time and perhaps, in terms of material achievements, the grand champion of the competition for aggrandisement in her era. Proceeding evidently neither by a blueprint nor without some distinct conception ofRussian interests, she was a consummate opportunist, not always without mistakes certainly. All politics, she famously observed, were reduced to three words, 'circumstance, conjecture, and conjuncture',[103] and her diplomacy would be a monument to the principle, if principle is what it was.
If Peter I's achievements in Sweden and Poland had been considerable, there had been some backsliding, some lost ground, in both areas during the era of palace revolutions, and Catherine was to address herself to articulation and repair. In both Poland and Sweden, she would meddle in constitutional questions, as different as they were in the two environments, bribing and supporting political parties in Sweden with money, in Poland supporting or suppressing them with arms. The Turkish challenge she left for the presentation of opportunity.
In the meantime, Catherine evidently appreciated what her neighbouring great powers demonstrably did also, that the geographical position of Russia in Europe enabled it to combine effectively with or against both the weak border states and the more imposing great powers beyond them, while it was difficult for the other powers to bring their strength to bear effectively against Russia. She exploited these advantages artfully.
The first serious issue to arise was Polish. The Polish constitution was notorious for the vulnerability of its vagaries: elective monarchy, liberum veto and the armed confederacies that nourished seemingly perpetual civil war. In this instance, August II was growing old and ill, suggesting a succession crisis. Austria would support a Saxon candidate, because he would be hostile to Prussia. Catherine had her own favourite, a genuine Piast, her own former lover, Stanislaus Poniatowski, acceptable also to Frederick II. Catherine then chose to arrange an alliance with Prussia addressed chiefly to the Polish issue. When Augustus died in October 1763, Catherine and Frederick signed a treaty to support Poniatowski and to maintain unchanged the anarchical Polish constitutional arrangements (April 1764).
There were gains and losses here. If the gains were obvious, this was the first time that Russia had shared power with a German state in Poland, an area formerly a nearly exclusive Russian sphere of influence. Catherine's chief adviser in foreign policy, Nikita Panin, regarded the arrangement as the foundation of his 'Northern System', a series of alliances in which he intended to include Britain, Sweden and Denmark, a system dedicated to keeping the peace of the North and preventing the intrusion of disturbing influences from the most conspicuous south European system of Austria, France and Spain. The Northern System gave Russia little leverage against the Turks, but so long as Austria was allied with France and France continued to support the Turks, Russian alliance with Austria made little sense. On the other hand, an alliance with Denmark in March 1765 and the manipulation of the triumph of the pro-Russian Cap Party in the Swedish Riksdag at the same time enhanced the Northern System.
101
The nobles' revolt took an impressive toll of progressive statesmen of the age. Catherine was merely intimidated. Joseph II was ruined. Frederick II took refuge in cynicism and realpolitik. Friedrich Struensee was brutally executed. GustavIII was assassinated. Gustav Adolf IV was persuaded with a knife at his throat to abdicate. The Marquis de Pombal was tried for treason and banished. Carlos III of Spain sacrificed the Marques de Esquilache to the demands of the angry crowds; and Louis XVI surrendered Chancellor Maupeou.
102
V A. Bil'basov,
103
A. V Khrapovitskii,