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CHRISTOPHER SPRINGER. 707
Swedish servants of the ambassador, and the next night was forcibly
dragged away, and in January 1748 taken to the Swedish state
prison, Marstrand, near Gottenburg. In 1752, he made his escape
in the disguise of an old woman, leaving the fortress about noon
with a small whiskey cask under his arm . He left the Swedish coast
in a boat, in the bottom of which he had bored a large hole, with a
stopper, which he intended to pull out in case he should be in danger
of capture ; for he preferred death by drowning to life in a prison.
He was accompanied by three persons, but they had only four loaves
of bread, and three pounds of meat. On the third day they reached
the coast of Jutland, which was about thirty-five miles distant, and
from Jutland Springer embarked for Russia. Upon his arrival in
St. Petersburg he assumed the name of Christopher Sperat, and
received from the Empress Elisabeth an appointment as assessor in
the Department of Commerce. Under her orders he made a long
journey for the promotion of commerce, and then settled down at
Archangel; whence he was summoned to St. Petersburg in 1754.
As the Swedish government had meanwhile heard of Springer’s
whereabouts and demanded his surrender from the Russian government,
he resolved to take up his residence in London, refusing an offer
of the Austrian ambassador to become councillor of Commerce at
Trieste. He travelled incognito through the Russian province of
Ukraine to Poland, where he was presented to King Augustus at
Warsaw, and related to him the events of his life. From Poland
he went through Hungary and Germany to Rotterdam; and thence
to London, where he arrived in 1754. Here he was presented to
King George by the Duke of Newcastle, who was prime minister, was
invited to sit down, and asked to relate to the King his history.
In London he soon came to be a person of consequence; for,
there was no Swedish minister at the Court of St. James’s at that
time (from 1748 to 1763), he watched over the interests of his
country. In 1757, he was requested by the High Chancellor to
preside in his stead as an arbitrator in an important lawsuit; and
in 1762 he was employed by the English government to conclude
peace between Sweden and Frederic the Great, who was the ally of
England against the Russians, Austrians, French, and Swedes, in
the Seven Years’ War. A proper time for negotiations seemed to
have arrived upon the withdrawal of the Russians from the seat of
war in 1762, when Peter III, a personal admirer of Frederic, ascended
the Russian throne. The circumstances under which Sweden joined
the enemies of Frederic are related in Document 196, page 543,
where it appears that King Adolphus Frederic and his Queen, Louisa
Ulrica ,11 were opposed to Sweden’s participation in the war, while
as
45*
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