they not been
the dupes of the plots and views of the Cabinets of Versailles and St.
Petersburg, their country might have been as powerful in the nineteenth
century as it was in the seventeenth.

That Gustavus IV. both knew the danger of Europe, and indicated the
remedy, His Majesty's notes, as soon as he came of age, presented by the
able and loyal Minister Bildt to the Diet of Ratisbon, evince. Had they
been more attended to during 1798 and 1799, Bonaparte would not, perhaps,
have now been so great, but the Continent would have remained more free
and more independent. They were the first causes of our Emperor's
official anger against the Cabinet of Stockholm.

When, however, His Swedish Majesty entered into the Northern league, his
Ambassador, Baron Ehrensward, was for some time treated with no insults
distinct or different from those to which all foreign diplomatic agents
have been accustomed during the present reign; but when he demanded
reparation for the piracies committed during the last war by our
privateers on the commerce of his nation, the tone was changed; and when
his Sovereign, in 1803, was on a visit to his father-in-law, the Elector
of Baden, and there preferred the agreeable company of the unfortunate
Duc d'Enghien to the society of our Minister, Baron Ehrensward never
entered Napoleon's diplomatic circle or Madame Napoleon's drawing-room
without hearing rebukes and experiencing disgusts. One day, when more
than usually attacked, he said, on leaving the apartment, to another
Ambassador, and in the hearing of Duroc, "that it required more real
courage to encounter with dignity and self-command unbecoming
provocations, which the person who gave them knew could not be resented,
than to brave a death which the mouths of cannon vomit or the points of
bayonets inflict." Duroc reported to his master what he heard, and but
for Talleyrand's interference, the Swedish Ambassador would, on the same
night, have been lodged in the Temple. Orders were already given to that
purpose, but were revoked.

This Baron Ehrensward, who is also a general in the service of his
country, has almost from his youth passed his time at Courts; first in
his own country, and afterwards in Spain, where he resided twelve years
as our Ambassador. Frank as a soldier, but also polite as a courtier, he
was not a little surprised at the new etiquette of our new court, and at
the endurance of all the members of the diplomatic corps, of