"They agreed to be patient, to be silent; to watch warily till Winterfeld got home to Prussia, till the Fraulein Malzahn could also contrive to get home. Winterfeld once home, and the King's consent had, the Fraulein applied to Princess Elizabeth for leave of absence: 'A few months, to see my friends in Deutschland, your Highness!' Princess Elizabeth looked hard at her; answered evasively this and that. At last, being often importuned, she answered plainly, 'I almost feel convinced thou wilt never come back!' Protestations from the Fraulein were not wanting:--'Well then,' said Elizabeth, 'if thou art so sure of it, leave me thy jewels in pledge. Why not?' The poor Fraulein could not say why; had to leave her jewels, which were her whole fine fortune, 'worth 100,000 rubles' (20,000 pounds); and is now the brave Wife of Winterfeld;--but could never, by direct entreaty or circuitous interest and negotiation, get back the least item of her jewels.
Elizabeth, as Princess and as Czarina, was alike deaf on that subject. Now or henceforth that proved an impossible private enterprise for Winterfeld, though he had so easily succeeded in the public one." [Retzow, Charakteristik des siebenjahrigen Krieges (Berlin, 1802), i. 45 n.]
The new Czarina was not unmerciful. Munnich and Company were tried for life; were condemned to die, and did appear on the scaffold (29th January, 1742), ready for that extreme penalty; but were there, on the sudden, pardoned or half-pardoned by a merciful new Czarina, and sent to Siberia and outer darkness. Whither Bieren had preceded them. To outer darkness also, though a milder destiny had been intended them at first, went Anton Ulrich and his Household.
Towards native Germany at first; they had got as far as Riga on the way to Germany, but were detained there, for a long while (owing to suspicions, to Botta Plots, or I know not what), till finally they were recalled into Russian exile. Strict enough exile, seclusion about Archangel and elsewhere; in convents, in obscure uncomfortable places:--little Iwan, after vicissitudes, even went underground; grew to manhood, and got killed (partly by accident, not quite by murder), some twenty-three years hence, in his dungeon in the Fortress of Schlusselburg, below the level of the Ladoga waters there. Unluckier Household, which once seemed the luckiest of the world, was never known. Canted suddenly, in this way, from the very top of Fortune's wheel to the very bottom; never to rise more;--and did not even die, at least not all die, for thirty or forty years after. [Anton Ulrich, not till 15th May, 1775 (two Daughters of his went, after this, to "Horstens, a poor Country-House in Jutland," whither Catherine II. had manumitted them, with pension;--she had wished Anton Ulrich to go home, many years before; but he would not, from shame).--Iwan had perished 5th August, 1764 (Catherine II. blamed for his death, but without cause); Iwan's Mother, Princess Anne, (mercifully) 18th March, 1746. See Russian Histories, TOOKE, CASTERA, &c.,--none of which, except MANNSTEIN, is good for much, or to be trusted without scrutiny.]
This is the Chetardie-L'Estoc conspiracy, of 5th December, 1741;the pitching up of Princess Elizabeth, and the pitching down of Anton Ulrich and his Munnichs, who had before pitched Bieren down.
After which, matters remained more stationary at Petersburg:
Czarina Elizabeth, fat indolent soul, floated with a certain native buoyancy, with something of bulky steadiness, in the turbid plunge of things, and did not sink. On the contrary, her reign, so called, was prosperous, though stupid; her big dark Countries, kindled already into growth, went on growing rather. And, for certain, she herself went on growing, in orthodox devotions of spiritual type (and in strangely heterodox ditto of NONspiritual!); in indolent mansuetudes (fell rages, if you cut on the RAWS at all!);in perpetual incongruity; and, alas, at last, in brandy-and-water, --till, as "INFAME CATIN DU NORD," she became terribly important to some persons!
At her accession, and for two years following, Czarina Elizabeth, in spite of real disinclination that way, had a War on her hands:
the Swedish War (August, 1741-August, 1743), which, after long threatening on the Swedish side, had broken out into unwelcome actuality, in Anton Ulrich's time; and which could not, with all the Czarina's industry, be got rid of or staved off; Sweden being bent upon the thing, reason or no reason. War not to be spoken of, except on compulsion, in the most voluminous History! It was the unwisest of wars, we should say, and in practice probably the contemptiblest; if there were not one other Swedish War coming, which vies with it in these particulars, of which we shall be obliged to speak, more or less, at a future stage. Of this present Russian-Swedish war, having happily almost nothing to do with it, we can, except in the way of transient chronology, refrain altogether from speaking or thinking.
