oot and artillery into
Mecklenburg, soon did their function, with only some slight flourishes
of fighting on the part of the contumacious Duke,--in which his chief
Captain, one Schwerin, distinguishes himself: Kurt von Schwerin, whom
we shall know better by and by, for he went into the Prussian service
shortly after. Colonel von Schwerin did well what was in him; but could
not save a refractory Duke, against such odds. The contumacious Duke was
obliged to fly his country;--deposed, or, to begin with, suspended, a
Brother of his being put in as interim Duke:--and the Unique of Husbands
and paragon of Mismanaging Dukes lives about Dantzig ever since, on a
Pension allowed him by his interim Brother; contumacious to the last;
and still stirring up strife, though now with diminished means, Uncle
Peter being now dead, and Russian help much cut off.

The Hanover Sovereignties did their function soon enough: but their
"expenses for it," these they have in vain demanded ever since. No
money to be got from Mecklenburg; and Mecklenburg owes us "ten tons of
gold,"--that is to say, 1,000,000 thalers, "tou" being the tenth part
of a million in that coin. Hanover, therefore, holds possession--and
has held ever since, with competent small military force--of certain
Districts in Mecklenburg: Taxes of these will subsist our soldiery in
the interim, and yield interest; the principal once paid, we at once
give them up; principal, by these schedules, if you care to count them,
is one million thalers (ten TONNEN GOLDES, as above said), or about
150,000 pounds. And so it has stood for ten years past; Mecklenburg the
most anarchic of countries, owing to the kind of Ritters and kind of
Duke it has. Poor souls, it is evident they have all lost their beaten
road, and got among the IGNES FATUI and peat-pools: none knows the
necessities and sorrows of this poor idle Duke himself! In his young
years, before accession, he once tried soldiering; served one campaign
with Charles XII., but was glad to "return to Hamburg" again, to the
peaceable scenes of fashionable life there. [See _German Spy_ (London,
1725, by Lediard, Biographer of Marlborough) for a lively picture of the
then Hamburg,--resort of Northern Moneyed Idleness, as well as of better
things.] Then his Russian Unique of Wives:--his probable adventures,
prior and subsequent, in Uncle Peter's sphere, can these have been
pleasant to him? The angry Ritters, too, their country had got much
tramp