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THE REASON FOR Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams’s mission to Russia in 1755 was the political requirement that England defend the electorate of Hanover. In the middle of the eighteenth century, two constant factors dictated British diplomacy and military strategy: one was the permanent hostility of France, whether the two countries were actually at war or passing through an interlude of peace; the other was the need to defend the small, landlocked, north German electoral state. This obligation arose from the fact that the king of England was also the elector of Hanover. In 1714, the fifty-four-year-old elector, George Lewis, had been persuaded by Parliament to accept the British throne, thereby ensuring the supremacy of the Protestant religion in the British Isles. George had become King George I of Great Britain while keeping his German electorate and title. This personal union of the island kingdom and the continental electorate in the figure of the monarch continued until 1837, when, on the coronation of Queen Victoria, it was quietly laid aside.
It was never an easy fit. George I and later his son, George II, greatly preferred their little electorate with its smiling, obedient population of three-quarters of a million people, and no outspoken, interfering Parliament. George I never learned to speak English, and both he and his son frequently went home to Hanover and remained for long periods.
The electorate was always an easy prey for its continental neighbors. Defending Hanover from aggressive neighbors was almost impossible for England, a maritime power lacking a large army. Most Englishmen were convinced that Hanover was a millstone around England’s neck and that Great Britain’s larger interests were regularly sacrificed to those of the electorate. There was no escape, however; Hanover had to be protected. Since only the army of a continental ally could do this, England had entered into long-term alliances with Austria and Russia. For many decades, this arrangement had worked.
In 1755, fear of rising Prussian belligerence stirred King George II to worry that his brother-in-law, Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick’s wife, Sophia, was George’s sister), might be tempted to invade Hanover as he had already invaded Silesia. It was to deter such a Prussian adventure that England had proposed renewal of the treaty with Russia which Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams had come to St. Petersburg to negotiate. When Count Bestuzhev signed the treaty for Russia in September 1755, Sir Charles was exuberant.
Hanbury-Williams’s self-congratulation was premature. News that England and Russia were about to sign a new treaty had alarmed the king of Prussia, who, it was said, feared Russia more than he feared God. Appalled by the prospect of fifty-five thousand Russians poised to march against him from the north, he instructed his diplomats to come to terms immediately with Great Britain. They did so by reviving an agreement presumed defunct. Before negotiating with Russia, England had first attempted to ensure the integrity of Hanover by negotiating directly with Prussia. Frederick had rejected this proposal, but now he hastily resurrected and accepted it. On January 16, 1756, Great Britain and Prussia mutually pledged that neither would invade or threaten the other’s territories. Instead, should any aggressor disturb “the tranquillity of Germany”—a phrase vague enough to cover both Hanover and Prussia—they would unite to oppose the invader. The potential “invaders” were France and Russia.
This treaty led to a diplomatic earthquake. Allying herself with Prussia cost England her alliance with Austria, as well as implementation of her new treaty with Russia. And when word of the Anglo-Prussian treaty reached Versailles in February 1756, France repudiated her own alliance with Prussia, clearing the way for a French rapprochement with her historic antagonist, Austria. On May 1, Austrian and French diplomats signed the Convention of Versailles, by which France agreed to come to Austria’s aid should Austria be attacked.
Six months earlier, these reversals would have been unthinkable; now they were reality. Frederick had overturned his own alliances, forcing other powers to realign theirs; when they did, a new diplomatic structure rose up in Europe. Once these arrangements were made, Frederick was ready to act. On August 30, 1756, his superbly trained, well-equipped Prussian army marched into Saxony. The Prussians quickly overwhelmed their neighbor, and then incorporated the entire Saxon army into their own ranks. Saxony was an Austrian satellite, and the Franco-Austrian treaty, the ink scarcely dry on its pages, now inexorably brought Louis XV to Maria Theresa’s aid. And once Russia’s longtime ally Austria was involved, Empress Elizabeth joined Austria and France against Prussia. This maneuvering had not improved Hanover’s security, however. Freed from the threat of seizure by Prussia, the electorate now stood exposed to danger from both France and Austria.
When Count Bestuzhev sent a note to the British embassy informing Hanbury-Williams of Russia’s adherence to the new anti-Prussian alliance between France and Austria, the ambassador was stunned. The newly signed treaty with England, which he had just negotiated with Bestuzhev, had to be set aside, although it was never formally repudiated.* Hanbury-Williams found himself in the topsy-turvy position of being expected by London to further the interests of Britain’s new ally, Frederick of Prussia, whom he had originally been sent to Russia to undermine. In this way, the grand reversal of alliances among the European powers was mirrored in miniature by the reversal Hanbury-Williams was forced to make in his own objectives and efforts in St. Petersburg.
The Englishman did his best. He became a diplomatic acrobat. Frederick had no envoy in St. Petersburg; Hanbury-Williams secretly offered to take on the role himself. By using the diplomatic pouch destined for his colleague the British ambassador in Berlin, he would endeavor to keep the Prussian king informed of what was happening in the Russian capital. He would also attempt, through his St. Petersburg connections, to ensure that no serious Russian military effort would be made in the coming war. The most important of these connections, now that Bestuzhev was lost to him, was Catherine. He and the grand duchess had shared an intimate correspondence and many sparkling conversations; he had given her thousands of pounds; he boasted to the Prussians that she was his “dear friend”; he suggested that he could use her to delay any Russian advance.
The ambassador was betraying his confidante. Catherine knew that the Anglo-Russian treaty was moribund, but she did not know that her friend was secretly assisting Russia’s enemy, and that he had used her name as a potential ally in this intrigue. He was deluding everyone, including himself. In January 1757, Catherine expressed her true feelings in a letter to Bestuzhev: “I have heard with pleasure that our army will soon … [march]. I beg you to urge our mutual friend [Stepan Apraksin] when he has beaten the King of Prussia, to force him back to his old frontiers so that we may not have to be perpetually on guard.”
The truth was that, before his departure, Apraksin had frequently visited the grand duchess and had explained to her that the poor state of the Russian army made a winter campaign against Prussia inadvisable and that it would be better to delay his campaign. These conversations were not the stuff of treason; Apraksin had had similar conversations with the empress, with Bestuzhev, and even with foreign ambassadors. The difference was that Catherine had been commanded by the empress to avoid involvement in political and diplomatic affairs. Perhaps the grand duchess had ignored this command and discussed the matter with Hanbury-Williams, but, if so, she did it unaware that she was speaking not just to her intimate English friend but to someone who would pass along her words to the king of Prussia.