-always through the
Brandenburg Territory, as they needs must. Which latter circumstance
Friedrich Wilhelm, while yet only Crown-Prince, had seen with natural
displeasure, could that have helped it. But Charles XII. would not yield
a whit; sent orders peremptorily, from his bed at Bender or Demotica,
that there must be no surrender. Neither could the sluggish enemy compel
surrender.

So that, at length, it had grown a feeble wearisome welter of
inextricable strifes, with worn-out combatants, exhausted of all
but their animosity; and seemed as if it would never end. Inveterate
ineffective war; ruinous to all good interests in those parts. What
miseries had Holstein from it, which last to our own day! Mecklenburg
also it involved in sore troubles, which lasted long enough, as we shall
see. But Brandenburg, above all, may be impatient; Brandenburg, which
has no business with it except that of unlucky neighborhood. One of
Friedrich Wilhelm's very first operations, as King, was to end this ugly
state of matters, which he had witnessed with impatience, as Prince, for
a long while.

He had hailed even the Treaty of Utrecht with welcome, in hopes it might
at least end these Northern brabbles. This the Treaty of Utrecht tried
to do, but could not: however, it gave him back his Prussian Fighting
Men; which he has already increased by six regiments, raised, we
may perceive, on the ruins of his late court-flunkies and dismissed
goldsticks;--with these Friedrich Wilhelm will try to end it himself.
These he at once ordered to form a Camp on his frontier, close to that
theatre of contest; and signified now with emphasis, in the beginning
of 1713, that he decidedly wished there were peace in those Pommern
regions. Negotiations in consequence; [10th June, 1713: Buchholz, i.
21.] very wide negotiations, Louis XIV. and the Kaiser lending hand,
to pacify these fighting Northern Kings and their Czar: at length the
Holstein Government, representing their sworn ally, Charles XII., on
the occasion, made an offer which seemed promising. They proposed that,
Stettin and its dependencies, the strong frontier Town, and, as it
were, key of Swedish Pommern, should be evacuated by the Swedes, and be
garrisoned by neutral troops, Prussians and Holsteiners in equal number;
which neutral troops shall prohibit any hostile attack of Pommern from
without, Sweden engaging not to make any attack through Pommern from
within. That will be as good as peace in