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Russian foreign policy, 1725–1815

hugh r agsdale

In Russian foreign policy in the era, certain basic generalisations apply: Peter I had dealt remarkably successfully with the Swedish challenge; he had devised a novel and rather satisfactory solution for the Polish problem; but he had failed to resolve satisfactorily the issue of the Ottoman Empire, a challenge for the future. Moreover, these three sensitive areas were so inextricably interdependent in Russian foreign policy that St Petersburg could not isolate them from each other and deal with them separately. A crisis in any one of the three states almost invariably involved complications with the others. The coming of the French Revolution magnified these problems, and the coming of Napoleon Bonaparte to some extent supplanted them by grander geostrategic challenges.

Era of palace revolutions

The first period following Peter’s reign was most conspicuous for the instability of the throne and the resultant inconsequence that it inflicted on Russian foreign policy. The diplomatic chancery of the time was not by any means in incompetent hands; it simply lacked the constancy of government support to give it proper effect.

The early post-Petrine era exhibited clear elements of the continuity of Peter’s policy in foreign affairs.1 The most significant such element was the continuation of Russian policy in the experienced hands of Vice-Chancellor

For critical readings and comments I am grateful to Paul Bushkovitch, Claudine Cowen, Anatoly Venediktovich Ignat’ev, Dominic Lieven, Roderick McGrew, Valery Nikolaevich Ponomarev, David Schimmelpenninck and Vladlen Nikolaevich Vinogradov.

1Considerations of space prohibit entering into all of the issues of the period, in particular the complex marriage alliances that Peter I made in northern Germany. For a clear and authoritative account, see Hans Bagger, ‘The Role of the Baltic in Russian Foreign Policy, 1721–1773’, in Hugh Ragsdale and Valery N. Ponomarev (eds.), Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Washington and New York: Wilson Center and Cambridge Univerity Presses,

1993), pp. 36–72.

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Andrei Ostermann. From the days of the Habsburg-Valois – subsequently Habsburg-Bourbon (1589) – rivalry, France had cultivated the favour of the East European border states hostile to Habsburg Austria, and the rise of Russia naturally threatened these border states and therefore French interests in Eastern Europe. In the circumstances, Ostermann defined Russian policy naturally by forming an Austrian alliance hostile to France.

It was thus natural enough upon the death of King Augustus II of Poland in 1733 that the Russians and the French fielded different candidates for the Polish throne. St Petersburg and Vienna supported the son of Augustus II (Saxon dynasty), while Paris supported former King Stanislaus Leszczynski (1704–9). In the War of Polish Succession (1733–6), Russia and Austria prevailed, and Augustus III became King of Poland (1734–63).

It was equally natural that the Turks perceived in this development a shift of the balance of power against their interests in south-eastern Europe. Border clashes and raiding parties aggravated tension, but the decisive precipitant of conflict was undoubtedly Russian success in the disputed Polish succession. In the Russo-Turkish War (1735–9), Russia and Austria fought a lacklustre campaign, and while Russia re-annexed (Treaty of Belgrade) the territories of Azov and Taganrog (previously annexed in 1700, relinquished in 1711), it surrendered the right to fortify these areas and accepted the humiliating principle of trading on the Black Sea exclusively in Turkish ships.

As the name of the period suggests, discontinuity and volatility were as conspicuous features of the time as was continuity. Ostermann, having served as foreign minister during four transient reigns since 1725, was unseated by a web of intrigues culminating in the palace coup of Elizabeth Petrovna in November 1741. Elizabeth brought a semblance of stability to the throne (1741–62), and she appointed Alexis P. Bestuzhev-Riumin to the office of vice-chancellor and the duties of foreign minister. Bestuzhev was to guide Russian foreign policy during the turbulent and fateful period of the two great European wars of mid-century.

The first challenge to the European order of the time came from the youthful new king of Prussia, Frederick II, who seized the opportunity of the death of Emperor Charles VI in May 1740 to invade and conquer the rich Habsburg province of Silesia, thus precipitating the War of Austrian Succession (1740– 8). Europe at once divided into its two traditional warring camps, Prussia and France against Austria and Britain, and Bestuzhev continued the spirit of Ostermann’s policy in the form of the Austrian alliance. Thus he naturally listed Prussia among Russia’s enemies and Austrian ally Britain among Russia’s friends. The bulk of Bestuzhev’s activity during this war consisted not of

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genuine foreign policy, however, but rather of combating the plethora of intrigues mounted by the foreign powers in St Petersburg for the favours of Russian diplomatic and military assistance. In particular, a strong and well-financed French party appealed with some success to the sentiments of Empress Elizabeth, who had as a child entertained romantic illusions, fostered by Peter I, of marrying Louis XV of France. Bestuzhev succeeded in maintaining an independent Russian policy, but the intrigue and counter-intrigue confined that policy largely to an awkward neutrality such that Russia took little part in the war and none in the peace settlement. The only power to profit by the war was Prussia, which maintained its conquest of Silesia (Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle).

Two new factors weighed heavily in the political calculations that followed. The simpler was the conviction of Empress Elizabeth that the newly expanded power of Prussia was dangerous primarily to Russia and hence must be radically diminished or preferably eliminated. The second was the dissatisfaction of all of the major combatants of the previous war with their allies. The British and the French had pursued chiefly their own maritime interests, leaving their continental allies unsupported. What followed, then, was that celebrated reshuffling of the alliance system known as the Diplomatic Revolution. Hence in the wake of the war, the allies changed sides, and the next war found an Anglo-Prussian alliance against a Franco-Austrian alliance. As Russia was already the ally of Austria, and France had now become the antagonist of Prussia, it seemed logical enough for the court of Elizabeth to pursue its own vendetta against Prussia by extending its alliance system to France, which it did in January 1756 (Treaty of Versailles). The consummation of this series of realignments left Prussia as the smallest of the continental great powers – and supported only by maritime Britain – facing the three large continental powers, France, Austria and Russia together. It was a mortal threat, to say the least.

Frederick fought with characteristic genius, exploiting the opportunities that ramshackle coalitions always provide their enemies, but it was an awesome and daunting challenge that he confronted. The Russian army in particular administered him damaging defeats at Gross-Jagersdorf¨ in 1757 and at Zorndorf in 1758, and an Austro-Russian army dealt him another serious blow at Kunersdorf in 1759. The Russians occupied Konigsberg¨ and East Prussia in 1758 and Berlin in 1760. Frederick despaired of victory and actually sought an honourable death fighting in the front lines of battle. He was saved, however, by fortunes beyond his influence.

The heir to the Russian throne was Elizabeth’s nephew, Grand Duke Peter, Duke of Holstein, an enthusiastic admirer of Frederick. The commanders of

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the Russian armies all dreaded the consequences of dealing to Frederick’s armies a death-blow only to discover on the morrow the demise of Elizabeth, who was well known to be aged and ailing, and the accession to the Russian throne of Frederick’s protector, Peter III. Hence they refused to press their campaign with the customary vigour and opportunism. Bestuzhev himself was not above the suspicion of being caught in this net of intrigue, as he was on close terms with some of the Russian field commanders and was necessarily sensitive to opinion at the ‘young court’. He was consequently relieved of his duties in 1758. In these circumstances, the war dragged on until Elizabeth’s death obliged her enemies in January 1762, and what had been anticipated materialised: Peter III left the coalition and offered Frederick both peace and an alliance. Peter was himself, however, one of those royal transients of the era of palace revolutions. He ruled a mere half year before being overturned and murdered. In the Peace of Hubertusburg, Frederick retained Silesia, and Russia acquired nothing.

Russian foreign policy of the era of palace revolutions, then, had cost the country a good deal and gained it little but unrealised potential influence.

Catherine II

In the eighteenth century, the real sport of kings – of despots enlightened or not – was the aggrandisement of power. Enlightened despotism as a paradigm of modernisation conceived and driven by the state was as unpopular in eighteenth-century Russia as it was imperative. According to a celebrated European witticism of the age, the government of Russia in the era was a despotism tempered by assassination. No idle joke, assassination and the threat of it were a persistent means of intimidating progressive governments all over Europe in the eighteenth century – the age of the nobles’ revolt.2 Catherine II discovered early the force of conservative reaction – it spoiled her Legislative Assembly and her plans to improve the lot of the serfs. Her successor Paul paid for it with his life, and his successor Alexander was made to fear for his own. In the words of Catherine’s most ambitious historian, V. A. Bil’basov: ‘It is a big mistake to think that there is no public opinion in Russia. Because there are no proper forms of the expression of public opinion,

2The nobles’ revolt took an impressive toll of progressive statesmen of the age. Catherine was merely intimidated. Joseph II was ruined. Frederick II took refuge in cynicism and realpolitik. Friedrich Struensee´ was brutally executed. Gustav III was assassinated. Gustav Adolf IV was persuaded with a knife at his throat to abdicate. The Marquis de Pombal was tried for treason and banished. Carlos III of Spain sacrificed the Marques´ de Esquilache to the demands of the angry crowds; and Louis XVI surrendered Chancellor Maupeou.

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it is manifested in improper ways, by fits and starts, solely at crucial historical junctures, with a force that is all the greater and in forms that are all the more peculiar.’3 The nobles’ revolt weighed especially heavily on politics at home, but, as we shall see, foreign policy was not utterly immune to its influence either.

Catherine soon emerged as one of the master diplomats of the time and perhaps, in terms of material achievements, the grand champion of the competition for aggrandisement in her era. Proceeding evidently neither by a blueprint nor without some distinct conception of Russian interests, she was a consummate opportunist, not always without mistakes certainly. All politics, she famously observed, were reduced to three words, ‘circumstance, conjecture, and conjuncture’,4 and her diplomacy would be a monument to the principle, if principle is what it was.

If Peter I’s achievements in Sweden and Poland had been considerable, there had been some backsliding, some lost ground, in both areas during the era of palace revolutions, and Catherine was to address herself to articulation and repair. In both Poland and Sweden, she would meddle in constitutional questions, as different as they were in the two environments, bribing and supporting political parties in Sweden with money, in Poland supporting or suppressing them with arms. The Turkish challenge she left for the presentation of opportunity.

In the meantime, Catherine evidently appreciated what her neighbouring great powers demonstrably did also, that the geographical position of Russia in Europe enabled it to combine effectively with or against both the weak border states and the more imposing great powers beyond them, while it was difficult for the other powers to bring their strength to bear effectively against Russia. She exploited these advantages artfully.

The first serious issue to arise was Polish. The Polish constitution was notorious for the vulnerability of its vagaries: elective monarchy, liberum veto and the armed confederacies that nourished seemingly perpetual civil war. In this instance, August II was growing old and ill, suggesting a succession crisis. Austria would support a Saxon candidate, because he would be hostile to Prussia. Catherine had her own favourite, a genuine Piast, her own former lover, Stanislaus Poniatowski, acceptable also to Frederick II. Catherine then chose to arrange an alliance with Prussia addressed chiefly to the Polish

3V. A. Bil’basov, Istoriia Ekateriny Vtoroi, 3 vols. (1, 2, 12) (Berlin: Gottgeiner, 1896–1900), vol. I, pp. 473–4.

4A. V. Khrapovitskii, Dnevnik (St Petersburg: Tip. M. M. Stasiulevicha, 1874), p. 4. My thanks to John Alexander for this reference.

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issue. When Augustus died in October 1763, Catherine and Frederick signed a treaty to support Poniatowski and to maintain unchanged the anarchical Polish constitutional arrangements (April 1764).

There were gains and losses here. If the gains were obvious, this was the first time that Russia had shared power with a German state in Poland, an area formerly a nearly exclusive Russian sphere of influence. Catherine’s chief adviser in foreign policy, Nikita Panin, regarded the arrangement as the foundation of his ‘Northern System’, a series of alliances in which he intended to include Britain, Sweden and Denmark, a system dedicated to keeping the peace of the North and preventing the intrusion of disturbing influences from the most conspicuous south European system of Austria, France and Spain. The Northern System gave Russia little leverage against the Turks, but so long as Austria was allied with France and France continued to support the Turks, Russian alliance with Austria made little sense. On the other hand, an alliance with Denmark in March 1765 and the manipulation of the triumph of the pro-Russian Cap Party in the Swedish Riksdag at the same time enhanced the Northern System.

Catherine then turned her attention in good Enlightenment fashion to the rights of the religious dissidents in Poland, and in this question she overplayed her hand. She and Panin were willing to countenance limited constitutional reforms in Poland – though Frederick was not – but only in exchange for rights of toleration for religious minorities, while the Poles were largely adamant on the issue of Catholic supremacy, and so the prospects of reform on both issues soon foundered. Orthodox and Catholic confederacies formed, the former supported by Russian military intervention, and the conflict dragged on for years, opening up just such nefarious prospects as the conflict with the Turks that soon ensued.

It was perhaps predictable that a protracted Russian military engagement in Poland would draw into the maelstrom of East European politics a conflict with the other two border states, Turkey and Sweden, as well. The Turks reacted first. Alarmed at the portended shift of the balance of power in their part of the world and encouraged by the powers that shared their fears, the French and the Austrians, they responded to a cross-border raid of Cossack irregulars in summer 1768 and declared war.

The Russian military campaign may be characterised as distinguished and difficult at once. A variety of able commanders, Petr Rumiantsev, Aleksandr Suvorov, Grigorii Potemkin, dealt the Turks serious blows. Meantime, however, the situation grew immensely complicated as a variety of new factors intruded.

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The first was Catherine’s astonishingly stubborn and ambitious pretentions. She was determined to pursue the campaign to a glorious conclusion, to diminish the Turks if not ruin them and drive them out of Europe. These aspirations could only raise apprehensions elsewhere. The French were naturally committed to the Turks. The Austrians were threatened by Russian successes. The alliance of small and indigent Prussia with St Petersburg required Frederick to pay throughout the war subsidies that he could ill afford. The Swedes naturally found in Russian involvement in two fronts already an opportunity that they could scarcely overlook. In August 1772, the young Gustav III executed a coup d’etat´ to scrap the constitution of 1720, which had placed power in the hands of the four estates of the Riksdag (the Age of Freedom), enabling Russia (and other powers) to manipulate Swedish party politics advantageously. Gustav thus restored constitutional absolutism while Catherine was too engaged elsewhere to do anything about it. In fact, this development portended a new war on yet another front, and Catherine apprehensively deployed troops to deal with it, though it did not actually happen. At the same time, the plague broke out in Moscow (1771), and the stresses and strains of the war in the form of tax and recruitment burdens on the population provoked the infamous Pugachev rebellion (September 1773). This accumulation of liabilities would have undermined the resolve of a pantheon of heroes, but it did not move Catherine, and the longer she persisted, the more the powers of Europe moved to persuade her.

The resolution of what appeared to be an adamantine stalemate of Catherine against Europe was one that had long been bruited about the chanceries of the continent, and it was recommended in this instance by the imaginative covetousness of Frederick: the partition of Poland. The Poles were helpless to resist, their territory would substitute for at least some of the sacrifices that Catherine might demand of the Turks, and the acquisitions that Austria and Prussia would share would reconcile them to Catherine’s gains in the south. And so in August 1772 the deal was struck. Meantime, the Russo-Turkish War continued until the Turks, finally exhausted, conceded the essence of defeat and signed with St Petersburg the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardzhi ( July 1774), one of the most signal Russian military and diplomatic achievements of the era. It stipulated – ominously – the independence of the Crimea; the right of free commercial navigation on the Black Sea and through the straits; a large Turkish indemnity; the right to fortify Azov and Taganrog; annexation of the Black Sea coast between the Dnieper and the Bug; and ill-defined, controversial rights to some kind of protection of Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

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The turning of the 1770s to the 1780s marks a watershed in the nature and aspirations of Catherine’s foreign policy. The new orientation is explained by several factors; in fact, by several developments of simple good fortune that came Catherine’s way quite without any effort on her part.

The first of these was the by-product of the constant rivalry between Austria and Prussia. Joseph II, relentlessly restless, had long harboured the scheme of the so-called Bavarian Exchange. He wished to acquire large parts of Bavaria for Austria, compensating the Bavarian dynasty by the cession of the Austrian Netherlands. Opportunity arose in December 1777, when the Bavarian branch of the Wittelsbach family died without heirs, leaving a complicated and disputed succession. Joseph struck an agreement with the legitimate heir in a cadet branch of the family, the Elector Palatine, and thereupon decided to execute his claims to Bavarian dominions. Naturally, Frederick II objected to uncompensated Austrian aggrandisement, and he called upon his ally Catherine for support and for mediation of the conflict. In the meantime, Joseph similarly called upon his ally in Paris. Catherine was most reluctant to be involved in a war in Germany, as tension with the Turks threatened to renew the conflict in the south of Russia. At the same time, the French, on the verge of entering the American War of Independence, were similarly determined not to be encumbered by a war in Germany. As the crisis played out, the French and the Russians agreed to mediate jointly between the two German powers. The result was the signature of the Treaty of Teschen (May 1779), whereby Joseph acquired modest portions of Bavaria while promising to support comparable Prussian acquisitions elsewhere in Germany. For St Petersburg, the most significant feature of the problem was the acquisition by Russia of the status as guarantor of the German constitution, a serious gain in prestige as well as an instrument for legitimate participation in German politics.

The second such opportunity to come Catherine’s way was the American War of Independence. In February 1778, France entered the war in alliance with the rebellious colonies. Virtually simultaneously, then, the two great land powers of Central Europe and the two great maritime powers of Western Europe had entered traditional conflicts with each other such as to divert all their attention away from that increasingly Russian sphere of influence, Eastern Europe. Catherine did not hesitate to see her opportunity or to exploit it.

A British war always entailed the issue of neutral trade, in particular the neutrals’ doctrine of ‘free ships, free goods’. The British maintained that if trade in neutral ships between a mother country and its colonies was illegal in peacetime – the rules of mercantilism – then it was illegal in wartime. To put the matter another way, London insisted that neutral shipping had no right to

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deliver a combatant country from the pressure of its enemy’s hostilities. The neutrals, on the other hand, invariably attempted to step into the breach that the British navy inflicted on trade between French colonies and the mother country. The American war simply revived an ancient issue.

In these circumstances, the British brought pressure against the Scandinavian neutrals and the Dutch. In this instance, the northern neutrals appealed to Catherine to support their cause. Catherine saw her opportunity and announced first her principles and subsequently the treaties of the League of Armed Neutrality (August–September 1780): no paper blockades; freedom of neutrals to trade along the coasts of belligerents; free ships, free goods; and a narrow definition of contraband. Eventually supported by Prussia and Austria as well, the league brought considerable pressure against British maritime practice. Wherein lay Catherine’s advantage? It helped to free Russia from excessive dependence on British shipping. It enabled the neutrals to carry Russian trade formerly carried by British shipping. The force of the League of Armed Neutrality persuaded the British to make serious adjustments for a time in their cherished maritime practices. It won Catherine considerable diplomatic favour all over northern Europe, and in the wake of the lustre of her triumph at Teschen, it enhanced yet more Catherine’s and Russia’s prestige. It was a victory of considerable significance for Catherine.

These developments enabled Catherine to reorient her foreign policy from the formerly northern European impetus of Panin’s system onto the increasingly promising direction of the south. The turn towards the south made a good deal of sense from the viewpoint of the economic development of the empire. Peter I’s incorporation of the Baltic coast had paid off in handsome commercial opportunities. In the south, moreover, the land was richer, it was sparsely settled, the growing season was longer, and the ancient Greek ports in the area illustrated clearly enough the commercial possibilities of the region.

In the meantime, a struggle for influence at the Russian court climaxed such as to serve the new orientation of Russian policy. Nikita Panin lost the struggle to Prince Grigorii Potemkin and his associate in Catherine’s foreign chancery, A. A. Bezborodko. What the change portended was the abandonment of the Prussian alliance and Panin’s favoured Northern System, its emphasis on peace and the status quo, and a turn towards the grander ambitions of Potemkin in south Russia at the expense of the Turks. The project of driving the Turks out of the Balkans was the kind of affair that appealed to Catherine’s vanity.

The new outlook was soon embodied in an exchange of notes between Catherine and Joseph II, an exchange that stipulated the notorious grand design known as the ‘Greek Project’. It envisioned a partitioning of the Ottoman

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dominions of the Balkans between Russia and Austria; the establishment of an independent kingdom of Dacia in Romania, presumably for Prince Potemkin; and, in the event of sufficient military success, the complete destruction of Turkey and the restoration of the ancient Byzantine Empire under Catherine’s grandson, appropriately named Constantine.

In the wake of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardzhi, the Crimea had degenerated into civil war between the Russian and the Turkish parties. In April 1783, the last native puppet ruler of the territory abdicated in favour of the Russian crown, and the annexation of the territory to Russia was proclaimed. It is possible that Catherine was thus trying to provoke a renewal of the Turkish war, but the Turks prudently held their fire.

The war was nevertheless not long in coming. Catherine’s new ally, Joseph II, paid her a visit, and together they took a spectacular and provocative trip to New Russia in the south in summer 1787. By this time a Russian Black Sea fleet graced the harbour of Sebastopol. The visit itself was a tangible symbol of the widely rumoured Greek Project, and it sufficed to provoke a Turkish declaration of war. Swedish and Polish responses to the opportunity were not long in coming. Gustav III of Sweden declared war on Russia in July 1788. Fortunately for Russia, his campaign was handicapped by the revolt of some of his officers, and he was forced to conclude the Treaty of Verela¨ (August 1790) on the basis of the territorial status quo ante bellum.

The campaign against the Turks was hampered by a revolt in the Austrian Netherlands, the death of Joseph II and the diversion of Austrian attention to the challenge of the French Revolution. Catherine thus had to content herself with much less than her dreams of the Greek Project. The Treaty of Jassy ( January 1792) enabled Russia to annex Ochakov and the territory between the Dniester and the Bug and recognised the annexation of the Crimea. Catherine did not, however, surrender the Greek Project, which was written explicitly into the Austro-Russian treaty of January 1795.

Neither had the Poles neglected the opportunity provided by Russian war with both the Turks and the Swedes. Unfortunately for them, they were engaged by the intrigues of King Frederick William II of Prussia in a series of illusions both foreign and domestic. Counting on the support of a new alliance with Prussia, the Poles devoted themselves belatedly to constitutional reform, scrapping elective monarchy, the liberum veto and the practice of confederations alike (the constitution of 3 May 1791). Succession to the throne was settled on a hereditary basis in the House of Saxony. These noble efforts soon fell victim to characteristically Polish ill fortune, however, as the Russians made peace with Sweden and Turkey, and the coming of the French Revolution

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turned the attention of Prussia and Austria westwards. Catherine had in these circumstances no trouble sponsoring a party of her own in Poland and sent an army to support it. In the face of this challenge, Frederick William shamelessly deserted his new Polish ally and consummated an alliance with Russia for a new partition of Poland ( January 1793). The second partition provoked a patriotic revolt led by the hero of the American Revolution, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, but the combined actions of the armies of Russia, Prussia and Austria condemned it to fail, and the third partition consummated the oblivion of Poland (several treaties of 1795–7).

By reference to the standards prevailing in the age, the foreign policy of Catherine was a great success. She conquered 200,000 square miles of new territory and expanded the Russian population from 19,000,000 to 36,000,000.

Yet there is here another element of this story, one taken too little into account. If the opposition of the Russian nobility to the reforming aspirations of the monarchy is well known, its opposition to Russian foreign policy is less familiar.

The Greek Project, for example, provoked dissent even in the inner circle of Catherine’s government. As the French ambassador reported in 1786, ‘the Russian ministers’ loathed the plans of Potemkin.

Their secret wishes are for peace; war and conquests do not offer them any personal advantage; each of them sees in [war and conquests] . . . complications for their departments [of government] and fatal possibilities for the empire. [Alexander] Vorontsov fears the stagnation of commerce; Bezborodko, numerous obstacles in the course of diplomacy; all of them [fear] the growth of the power of Prince Potemkin, [but] everyone dissimulates his opinions for fear of losing the favor of the empress.5

The Austrian ambassador, Louis de Cobenzl, reported the same attitudes in 1795: ‘The entire Russian ministry, without exception, disapproves this project of the empress.’6 The second partition of Poland exhibits the same conflict. The opposition gathered around Alexander Vorontsov, but it was the expansionist party around Potemkin and the Zubovs that triumphed.

In fact, the phenomenon was far older and broader than we have appreciated. We may recall the division of Russian society over Ivan IV’s Livonian War or the Dolgorukiis and Golitsyns who transferred the capital briefly back to Moscow in 1727. An English diplomat characterised the nobility’s attitude typically in the 1740s:

5Louis-Philippe de Segur,´ Memoires´, 3 vols. (Paris: Eymery, 1827), vol. II, pp. 293–4.

6Cobenzl to Thugut, 5 January 1795; Alfred von Arneth (ed.), ‘Thugut und sein politisches System’, Archiv fur¨ osterreichische¨ Geschichte, 42 (1870): 442.

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