under his special protection, the face of affairs was now
changed in such a manner, that for the future he would consider it in no
other light than that of a conquered country. The Russians had seized in
Prussia all the estates and effects belonging to the king's officers:
a retaliation was now made upon the effects of the Saxon officers,
who served in the Russian army. Seals were put on all the cabinets
containing papers belonging to the privy-counsellors of his Polish
majesty, and they themselves ordered to depart for Warsaw at a
very short warning. Though the city had been impoverished by former
exactions, and very lately subjected to military execution, the king of
Prussia demanded fresh contributions, and even extorted them by dint
of severities that shock humanity. He surrounded the exchange
with soldiers, and confining the merchants to straw beds and naked
apartments, obliged them to draw bills for very large sums on their
foreign correspondents: a method of proceeding much more suitable to the
despotism of a Persian sophi towards a conquered people who professed
a different faith, than reconcileable to the character of a protestant
prince towards a peaceable nation of brethren, with whom he was
connected by the common ties of neighbourhood and religion. Even if
they had acted as declared enemies, and been subdued with arms in their
hands, the excesses of war on the side of the conqueror ought to have
ceased with the hostilities of the conquered, who, by submitting to his
sway, would have become his subjects, and in that capacity had a claim
to his protection. To retaliate upon the Saxons, who had espoused no
quarrel, the barbarities committed by the Russians, with whom he was
actually at war; and to treat as a conquered province a neutral country,
which his enemies had entered by violence, and been obliged to evacuate
by force of arms, was a species of conduct founded on pretences which
overturn all right, and confound all reason.

PROGRESS OF THE SWEDES IN POMERANIA.

Having recorded all the transactions of the campaign, except those
in which the Swedes were concerned, it now remains that we should
particularize the progress which was made in Pomerania by the troops
of that nation, under the command of count Hamilton. We have already
observed, that in the beginning of the year the Prussian general,
Lehwald, had compelled them to evacuate the whole province, except
Stralsund, which was likewise invested.