rrupted
by Russian encroachments and violences. Not at all well disposed to him,
these new Peters, new Catharines. They have recalled their Bieren from
Siberia; declare that old Bieren is again Duke, or at least that young
Bieren is, and not Saxon Karl at all; and have proceeded, Czarina
Catharine has, to install him forcibly with Russian soldiers. Karl
declares, "You shall kill ME before you or he get into this Palace of
Mietau!"--and by Domestics merely, and armed private Gentlemen, he does
maintain himself in said Palatial Mansion; valiantly indignant, for
about six months; the Russian Battalions girdling him on all sides,
minatory more and more, but loath to begin actual bloodshed. [Rulhiere,
ii. (livre v.) 81 et antea; Hermann, v. 348 et seq.] A transaction very
famed in those parts, and still giving loud voice in the Polish Books,
which indeed get ever noisier from this point onward, till they end in
inarticulate shrieks, as we shall too well hear.

Empress Catharine, after the lapse of six months, sends an Ambassador
to Warsaw (Kayserling by name), who declares, in tone altogether
imperative, that Czarish Majesty feels herself weary of such contumacy,
weary generally of Polish Majesty's and Polish Republic's multifarious
contumacies; and, in fine, cruelest of all, that she has troops on the
frontier; that Courland is not the only place where she has troops.
What a stab to the poor old man! "Contumacies?" Has not he been Russia's
patient stepping-stone, all along; his anarchic Poland and he accordant
in that, if in nothing else? "Let us to Saxony," decides he passionately,
"and leave all this." In Saxony his poor old Queen is dead long since;
much is dead: Saxony and Life generally, what a Golgotha! He immediately
sends word to Karl, "Give up Courland; I am going home!"--and did
hastily make his packages, and bid adieu to Warsaw, and, in a few weeks
after to this anarchic world altogether. Died at Dresden, 5th October,
1763.

Polish Majesty had been elected 5th October, 1733; died, you observe,
5th October, 1763;--was King of Poland ("King," save the mark!) for 30
years to a day. Was elected--do readers still remember how? Leaves a
ruined Saxony lying round him; a ruined life mutely asking him, "Couldst
thou have done no better, then?" Wretched Bruhl followed him in four or
five weeks. Nay, in about two months, his Son and Successor, "Friedrich
Christian" (with whom we dined at Moritzburg), had followed him; [Pri