The 1768 war with the Ottomans went well for the Russians, and vast swathes of Turkish territory fell into Catherine’s hands. Though still war weary after the cataclysmic Seven Years’ War, Britain, France, and Prussia were becoming alarmed by Russian success by the 1770s, fearing that a victorious Russia would destabilize the delicate balance of power established by the Peace of Paris in 1763. Neither Russia nor the Ottomans wished for peace—Catherine still wanted to consolidate her gains, while the sultan still hoped to recover some of his lost territories—but in 1772 Prussia, Austria, and Britain forced a ceasefire and brought the belligerents to the negotiating table. The mediated peace did not entirely satisfy either party, and fighting continued sporadically for nearly two years. Russia gained its bridgehead on the Black Sea when it took control of the port cities of Azov and Kerch and became the recognized guardian of all Christians in the Ottoman Empire (a status that would be used as a pretext for war in the future), but the Ottomans retained most of the territory conquered by the Russians during the war. Crimea, the focal point of the war, was granted its independence from Ottoman control, though its khan came to be increasingly under the Russian thumb, especially after the succession of Sahin Giray in 1777. Russian gains had been important, but due to the meddling of the great powers of Europe, Catherine had been prevented from achieving her true objective of a warm-water port for her navy. With so much at stake, the rebellion of Crimea against Sahin Giray in 1781 offered a tempting opportunity to make up for the unachieved ambitions of the 1768 war.
The key to Russia’s plans was the American War and the formation of a League of Armed Neutrality. Catherine and her most trusted minister and former lover, Prince Grigory Potemkin, had been setting the stage for their Crimean drama for years when the rebellion against Sahin Giray provided the long-desired opportunity to act. During the previous Turkish war, Britain had intervened to scupper Catherine’s conquest of Crimea, while France had long acted as the Ottoman Empire’s European protector. With both distracted by war in the Americas and around the globe, there was little chance that they would have the desire or resources to intervene again. As long as Russia remained threateningly neutral, she might well have a free hand in the east while Europe’s great powers were occupied in the west. All that remained was to ensure that the rest of Europe stayed out of Russia’s way.
The powers of central and eastern Europe—Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia—had been at each other’s throats for generations, with intervals of peace seemingly the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, in the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century alone, there had been at least three major wars and many minor skirmishes. Because of these age-old animosities, the eastern powers had largely remained aloof as Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands went to war. Even as Europe was being slowly but surely drawn further and further into the conflict, the eastern states—wishing neither to draw the enmity of France or Britain nor to expose themselves to the machinations of their neighbors, did their best to remain neutral. Despite outward posturing, neutrality did not mean disinterest, and as each of the neutral states waited for the opportunity to seize an advantage, the combatants looked on warily for signs of which way the wind might blow. The rumors that began to trickle in to Britain and America from their European agents in 1780, of an alliance between all of the powers of central and eastern Europe, offered tantalizing possibilities and potential dangers for both sides of the conflict. Such an alliance, if it could be brought to throw its support behind one side or the other, would certainly shift the balance of power irrevocably. The very fate of the war, the destiny of the American colonies, might well rest on the nature and interests of this eastern alliance.
In March 1780, Catherine II had formally declared the creation of a League of Armed Neutrality. Comprising the Baltic maritime powers of Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, the league was designed to protect neutral shipping and commerce from the predations of the warring nations. In doing so the league ran directly against British interests. Britain had long considered itself to be the supreme arbiter of the sea, and, especially after the entrance of France into the war in 1778, reserved the right to board and inspect any and all neutral ships for arms or other contraband. Britain’s declared “right of search” combined with its declaration of a blockade of the entire French coastline quickly alienated the northern maritime powers whose economies depended on Baltic and North Sea trade.
Catherine’s announcement in March 1780 presented the league as a triumph of Russian power and diplomacy. In reality, however, such an alliance was long in the making. The Russian empress may have taken on the mantle of league leadership in 1780, but the driving force behind its creation was the wily French foreign minister Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes. As the principal target of British naval depredations both before and after the formal declaration or war, France suffered greatly from the disruption of neutral shipping. Vergennes was quick to recognize that a league of armed neutrality had the potential both to undermine British “tyranny of the seas” and to isolate Britain from the rest of Europe. Indeed, the treaty signed between the United States and France in February 1778 included a number of agreed policies relating to neutral shipping—the free movement of neutral ships and neutral goods, a narrower redefinition of what constituted contraband, and a refusal to recognize the blockade of a port unless naval ships were physically present to prevent entry—that would later appear in nearly identical form in the League of Armed Neutrality.
The first inklings of a concerted effort among neutral powers to influence British, and to a lesser extent American, naval policy began to coalesce in Copenhagen in the summer of 1778. In Stockholm and Copenhagen, as in the rest of Europe, the American War was the leading topic of the day. Newspapers were full of stories of the colonial struggle for independence, and in the salons and coffee-houses there was talk of little else. The poet Carl Michael Bellman remembered his friends “constantly arguing . . . about the English colonies, [George] Washington,” and the revolution. Opinions were divided on the merits of the American cause, with some admiring the libertarian ideas of the revolutionaries, or at least the romantic character of their revolt, and others concerned that republican revolt set a dangerous precedent. Sweden’s King Gustav III was less ambivalent about the events across the Atlantic. Like many he worried that one day America might become a new Rome and “place Europe under tribute,” but more immediately he worried that the spread of such ideas might threaten the fragile stability of his new constitution. In 1778 he confided to Creutz, Sweden’s ambassador in Paris, “I cannot admit that it is right to support rebels against their king. The example will only find too many imitators in an age when it is the fashion to overthrow every bulwark of authority.” As George Washington later explained: “Considering how recently the King of Sweden has changed the form of the constitution of that Country, it is not much to be wondered at that his fears should get the better of his liberality at anything which might have the semblance of republicanism.”4
Open support for the American cause was thus limited, but anger at the British for their high-handed control of maritime trade was rife. Few were displeased to see Britain receive its just desserts, and war, especially when it engulfed much of Europe, presented countries like Sweden and Denmark with an opportunity to make inroads in overseas commerce and stake a claim to its lucrative rewards while their traditional competitors were otherwise occupied. After a series of disastrous wars earlier in the century, Gustav III had no desire to commit himself to either side of the conflict, and even when the American conflagration began to ignite the rest of the world, he would keep his own country well out of the fray, joining the League of Armed Neutrality in 1780. Still, formal neutrality did not mean that Sweden had nothing to gain in the conflict. The smaller nations of Scandinavia had been largely squeezed out of expanding international trade by their larger European neighbors. Gustav had a keen sense of history and a strong desire to replicate the international success of
his royal forebears in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like Catherine of Russia, he thus jumped at armed neutrality as a means of enriching his country through trade, and gaining disputed territories from his enemies while no one was looking.
Gustav’s aims were to expand Sweden’s overseas trade, to gain a foothold in the lucrative West Indies as a base for trade with North America, and to use the money gained to fund a bid to take Norway back from Denmark. In his commercial ambitions, Gustav was largely successful, if only temporarily. Between 1777 and 1783, Sweden’s annual exports to the Americans increased in value from a mere 6,107 to 153,005 riksdaler, not counting the value of the growing amount of smuggled goods pouring into Britain and America. Through their French allies, Sweden gained the Caribbean island of St. Bartholomew after the war, which was to serve as the entrepôt for Sweden’s newly established West Indies Company to sell iron to America. In Asia, not normally a Swedish market, the Swedish East India Company recorded annual gains of up to 300 per cent throughout the years of the war. At home, Swedish ports became trade hubs, transit points for the transport of foreign goods at a time when merchants from the combatants feared transporting products on their own ships lest they be seized by the enemy. Overall, the value of Swedish exports rose by nearly 2 million riksdaler during the war, creating a favorable trade balance that was used to support the cultural and artistic flowering of Gustav’s reign, as well as his lofty foreign ambitions.5
Denmark was similarly well placed to benefit from the war, and Danish West Indies trade, through the island of St. Thomas, and its Indian trade grew exponentially as British trade was disrupted and Dutch and French rivals were displaced. Indeed, the period of the League of Armed Neutrality saw the pinnacle of Scandinavia’s maritime trade. Even the tiny and remote Faroe Islands were fundamentally transformed by the American War. Niels Ryberg, a Copenhagen merchant, had established a trading depot at Tórshavn in 1767. During the war Tórshavn became a smuggling hub, bringing contraband, much of it from American vessels shut out of British ports, into Britain and Ireland. Until this moment, the Faroe Islands had been largely cut off from the rest of the world, locked in ancient patterns and rhythms. With the wartime contraband trade, contact with the outside world grew rapidly, spurring a radical change in the nature of life in the islands.6
However, as Scandinavian commerce expanded to fill the void left by the belligerent powers, Danish and Swedish ships became the prime target of British searches and seizures. While neither country had a desire to confront Britain directly, they agreed that something must be done to protect their booming commerce. As such, a conference was held at Copenhagen in June, which resulted in the first formal declaration of armed neutrality by Sweden and Denmark. Here too the fingerprints of the French foreign minister were to be found. Vergennes was an enthusiastic supporter of a neutral league, and in an attempt to influence its formation, sent a familiar face to act as his agent, Stephen Sayre. Though the charges never stuck, Sayre had fled London after being accused of treason, offering his services as a sort of freelance mercenary diplomat in France and Prussia before traveling to Copenhagen for the conference of 1778. According to his own, admittedly self-serving, account, Sayre recognized the importance to American independence of undermining British “tyranny of the seas.” He had therefore arranged personal meetings with the kings of Denmark and Sweden, which had done much to convince them to join together to create a neutral league. At the same time, Sayre also claimed to have sent a message to Catherine II urging her to join Russia to the neutral league, thus sowing the first seeds of the 1780 League of Armed Neutrality.7
Vergennes’ goal in pushing for the creation of a neutral league was to undermine British naval dominance and relieve France from the strain of the British blockade. Catherine’s actions, however, would not be dictated by French interests. From Russia’s perspective, Britain was not the lone culprit in the attacks on Russian commerce. John Paul Jones’s raids on Baltic shipping had included Russian ships among their victims, much to Catherine’s displeasure. Spain, who had entered the war against Britain in June 1779 with an eye toward recapturing Gibraltar, attacked neutral ships—Russian vessels among them—heading for the besieged British outpost. In August, an American privateer attacked a convoy of eight Russian ships in the North Sea, capturing three and damaging the rest. This repeated predation of Russian shipping by those on both sides of the conflict drew Catherine’s considerable ire, convincing her of the need for a league of neutral states that could use the threat of armed intervention as a means of protecting free commerce on the sea.
But Catherine’s desires for a league were not motivated by trade considerations alone. Russia’s share of the shipping trade was small compared with other European countries, and while the attacks on Russia vessels were an affront to Catherine’s imperial dignity, her commerce suffered less than that of Sweden, Denmark, or the Netherlands. As important as the freedom of the seas, however, was Russia’s place among the powers of Europe. The tsars claimed to have inherited the mantle of the Roman emperors and, for Catherine, the league could be used as a tool to increase Russian influence over the balance of power in Europe. The empress hoped to use the league as a means of forcing Britain and France to negotiate peace under Russian mediation, thereby augmenting Russian prestige and freeing Catherine to focus on imperial expansion on her eastern borders.
For the belligerent nations, the announcement of a League of Armed Neutrality was greeted with mixed sentiments. For France, and for Vergennes in particular, the league was welcomed as a means of undermining British sea power and the British blockade that was slowly choking France. France was also open to the idea of Russian-mediated peace negotiations, as long as certain conditions were met. For Britain, the league was a blow, but not a disaster. The combined fleets of all the neutral powers were dwarfed by the British navy, a fact that led Britain to continue to maintain its right to search any and all ships for contraband, a practice that would soon drive the Netherlands into the arms of the league and eventually outright war with Britain. Nonetheless, a huge proportion of Britain’s naval supplies, especially wood for masts, were acquired from the Baltic, so some new caution was required. The idea of Russian mediation was in some senses more worrisome, given the fear that such negotiations might allow the rebellious colonies a place at the table, reinforcing their status as an independent power. For the United States, the advent of the league was even more ambiguous. On the one hand, many Americans hoped that the neutral powers would eventually be drawn into the war against Britain, or at the very least isolate Britain from potential allies or trade partners. On the other hand, there were grave concerns that a Russian-mediated peace would result in a separate peace between France, Spain, and Britain, leaving the United States bereft of allies and without a formal recognition of independence. With so much at stake between the contending powers, the creation of the league instantly turned St. Petersburg into a crucial center of diplomacy.
On December 15, 1780, the Congress of the United States acknowledged Russia’s newfound importance by resolving to send a minister to reside at Catherine’s court. Four days later, Congress officially appointed Francis Dana to the post. Dana had been born in Charlestown, Massachusetts in June 1745. His lineage on both sides was of prosperous puritan stock, well-established families who could trace their ancestors back to the earliest days of the colony. Dana’s family had close connections to the colonial establishment, and his grandfather maintained his Tory worldview to the last, but both Francis and his father became conspicuously active in the agitations surrounding the passage of the Stamp Act. Francis was active in a number of Patriot clubs and debating societies, including one with his Harvard classmates John Lovell and Josiah Quincy. As a well-known magistrate, Richard Dana was even more visible, becoming a founding member of the Sons of Liberty and playing a prominent role in the ritual humiliation of the detested commissioner of the offending tax, Andrew Oliver. The whole affair, in which a mob forced Oliver to
sign an oath promising not to enforce the Stamp Act, took place in front of Judge Dana’s home, with the judge himself presenting Oliver with the oath and signing his own name as a witness. When British troops fired on a crowd of angry protesters in 1770, an event that was quickly christened the Boston Massacre, Richard Dana was once more in the thick of things, taking a very public stand as the committing magistrate in the subsequent trial of Captain Preston for manslaughter. Richard Dana would not live to see the Patriot movement bear fruit, dying in 1772, but his role in the lead-up to the revolution was not forgotten by his peers. Looking back on those days, John Adams would later declare that Richard Dana was one who, “had he not been cut off by death, would have furnished one of the immortal names of the Revolution.”8
The Danas’ principled political opposition gained Francis a wide range of important connections with Whig politicians in America and Britain—including John Adams, Rufus King, and William Ellery of New Hampshire, whose daughter Elizabeth he married in 1773—but they also stymied his still embryonic legal career. Faced with constrained prospects in Boston, Francis volunteered to travel to London as the agent of the Massachusetts Patriots. It was believed that many, if not most, in London were sympathetic to the American cause, especially the famous John Wilkes and his allies. Though he outwardly traveled to visit his brother Rev. Edmund Dana, who had long resided in England, Francis’s real mission was to establish contact with Wilkite politicians in the capital with the aim of combining efforts to influence British policies toward the colonies.
To Begin the World Over Again Page 24
