mind, she seized the opportunity to adopt, seemingly on the urgency of Great Britain, a general measure for the protection of the commerce of Russia as a neutral power against all the belligerents and on every sea. She preceded the measure by signing an order for arming fifteen ships of the line and five frigates for service early in the spring.

Loving always to be seen leading in great and bold undertakings, she further signed letters prepared by her private secretary to her envoys in Sweden, Denmark, and the Hague, before she informed her minister for foreign affairs of what had been done. A Russian courier was expedited to Stockholm, and thence to Copenhagen, the Hague, Paris, and Madrid. On the twenty-second of February, Potemkin announced the measure to his protégé, Harris, by the special command of the empress. "The ships," said the prince, "will be supposed to protect the Russian trade against every power, but they are meant to chastise the Spaniards, whose insolence the empress cannot brook." Harris "told him he was not so sanguine. In short, that it was no more than the system of giving protection to trade, suggested last year by the three northern courts, now carried into execution." Potemkin, professing to be "almost out of humor with his objections and with his backwardness to admit the great advantage England would derive from the step," rejoined: "I am just come from the empress; it is her particular order that I tell it to you. She commanded me to lose no time in finding you out. She said she knew it would give you pleasure; and, besides myself, you are at this moment the only person acquainted with her design." He ended by expressing his impatience that the event should be known, and urging Harris to despatch his messenger immediately with the news. So Harris was made the instrument of communicating to his own government what the other powers received directly from Russia; and the measure, so opposite to the policy of England, was reported to that power by its own envoy as a friendly act performed at its own request.

1780.

But, before the despatches of Harris were on the road, the conduct of the affair was intrusted to Panin,

1780.

Feb.

who, although suffering from the physical and moral depression consequent on the disease which was slowly bringing him to the grave, took the subject in hand. The last deed of the dying statesman was his best. Cast down as he was by illness, before the end of February he thus unbosomed himself to the Prussian minister: "In truth, the envoy of England has found means for a miserable trifle to excite my sovereign to a step of éclat, yet always combined with the principle of neutrality. The court of Spain will probably yield to just representations; the measure which he has occasioned will turn against himself, and he will have himself to reproach for every thing that he shall have brought upon his court. I had thought Sir James Harris understood his business; but he acts like a boy."

To Frederic, Goertz made his reports: "Every thing will now depend on the reply of the court of Spain. At so important a moment, your majesty has the right to March. speak to it with frankness." "There will result from

the intrigue a matter the execution of which no power has thus far been able to permit itself to think of. All have believed it necessary to establish and to fix a public law for neutral powers in a maritime war; the moment has come for attaining that end."

These letters reached Frederic by express; and on the fourteenth of March, by the swiftest messenger, he instructed his minister at Paris as follows: "Immediately on receiving the present order, you will demand a particular audience of the ministry at Versailles; and you will say that in my opinion every thing depends on procuring for Russia without the least loss of time the satisfaction she exacts, and which Spain can the less refuse, because it has plainly acted with too much precipitation. Make the ministry feel all the importance of this warning, and the absolute necessity of satisfying Russia without the slightest delay on an article where the honor of her flag is so greatly interested. In truth, it is necessary not to palter in a moment so pressing."

Vergennes read the letter of Frederic, and by a courier despatched a copy of it to the French ambassador at Madrid, with the instruction: "I should wrong your penetration and

the sagacity of the cabinet of Madrid, if I were to take pains to demonstrate the importance for the two crowns to spare nothing in order that the empress of Russia may not depart from the system of neutrality which she has embraced." The letter of Frederic was communicated to Florida Blanca, and it was impossible to resist its advice.

The distance between Madrid and Petersburg prolonged the violent crisis; but, before a letter could have reached even the nearest power, Count Panin laid before the empress his plan for deducing out of the passing negotiation a system of permanent protection to neutral flags in a maritime war. He advised her to present herself to Europe in an impartial attitude, as the defender of the rights of neutrals before all the world. She would thus gain a glorious name as the lawgiver of the seas, imparting to commerce in time of war a security such as it had never yet enjoyed. Thus she would gather around her all civilized states, and be honored through coming centuries as the benefactress of the human race, entitled to the veneration of the nations and of coming ages.1

1780. March.

The opinions of her minister coinciding exactly with her own, on the twenty-sixth of February, 1780, that is on the eighth of March, new style, Catharine and Panin set their names to the declaration, of which the fixed principles are: Neutral ships shall enjoy a free navigation even from port to port, and on the coasts of the bellige rent powers. Free ships free all goods except contraband. Contraband are arms and ammunitions of war, and nothing else. No port is blockaded, unless the enemy's ships, in adequate number, are near enough to make the entry dangerous. These principles shall rule decisions on the legality of prizes. "Her imperial majesty," so ran the state paper, "in manifesting these principles before all Europe, is firmly resolved to maintain them. She has therefore given an order to fit out a considerable portion of her naval forces, to act as her honor, her interest, and necessity may require."

1 Compare Goertz, Denkwürdigkeiten, i. 154; Dohm, Denkwürdigkeiten meiner Zeit, ii. 113.

Frederic received the news of the declaration in advance of others, and with all speed used his influence in its behalf at Versailles; so that for the maritime code, which came upon Great Britain as a surprise, a welcome was prepared in France and Madrid.

The empress made haste to invite Sweden, Den- 1780. mark, Portugal, and the Netherlands to unite with her in supporting the rules which she had proclaimed. The voice of the United States on the subject was uttered immediately by John Adams. He applauded the justice, the wisdom, and the humanity of an association of maritime powers against violences at sea, and added as his advice to congress: "The abolition of the whole doctrine of contraband would be for the peace and happiness of mankind; and I doubt not, as human reason advances and men come to be more sensible of the benefits of peace and less enthusiastic for the savage glories of war, all neutral nations will be allowed by universal consent to carry what goods they please in their own ships, provided they are not bound to places actually invested by an enemy."

For the moment, the attention of Europe was riveted on the Netherlands; but, before we can further trace their connections with the war, we must relate its events in the south and in the north of the United States.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE WAR IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.

1778-1779.

THE plan for the southern campaign of 1778 was prepared by Germain with great minuteness of detail. Pen

sacola was to be strengthened by a thousand men from 1778. New York. On the banks of the Mississippi, near the

channel of Iberville, a considerable post was to be established by the commander in West Florida, partly to protect property and trade, but more to preserve the communication with the Indian nations. From the army at New York, men were to be detached sufficient for the conquest and permanent occupation of Georgia and South. Carolina, where the American custom of calling out the militia for short periods of service was to be introduced. The Florida rangers and a party of Indians were to attack the southern frontier, while the British agent was to bring down a large body of savages towards Augusta. A line of communication was to be established across South and North Carolina, and the planters on the sea-coast were to be reduced to the necessity of abandoning or being abandoned by their slaves. Five thousand additional men were at a later date to be sent to take Charleston; and, on the landing of a small corps at Cape Fear, Germain believed that "large numbers of the inhabitants would doubtless flock to the standard of the king, whose government would be restored in North Carolina." Then, by proper diversions in Virginia and Maryland, he said it might not be too much to expect that all America to the south of the Susquehannah would return to its allegiance. Sir Henry Clinton was no favorite of the minister's; these brilliant achievements were designed for Cornwallis.