DIPLOMACY IN POLAND-LITHUANIA 307232 439 548 955 612 17 1047, for if 548 569
23 562 195 351 241 & 548 807 294 870 172 32 18
184 52 724 59 should follow 548 704 985 814 548 219
After this compliment, Your Lordship may be sure
241 4979 25 40 26407508 814862
552 813 hearing that 548 865 911 98 997 488
295 699 782 323 724 and at the Prussian Minister's...
But I managed 54 707 138 7 330 118 195&
782 179 419 8 349 488 8 488 844
I sent Your Lordship an abstract last Post, but
984 25 548 6 298 15 525 375 for fear they should
914 47 782 326...^25As translated by the cipher clerk in London, the passage read as follows:
... The same minister added that he should be on his guard/and not tamper with the
Protestant Ministers here./for if/they caught him at that/he and the present President of
Thorn/should follow/the example of the last ./After this compliment, Your Lordship may
be sure/he has not been very fond of coming right now,/hearing that/they have a constant
Guard at my door/and at the Prussian Minister's ... But I managed/an interview between
him and my secretary in a third place.. ./'I sent Your Lordship an abstract last Post,
but/dared not send the piece itself/for fear they should/open my letter.. .'^26
Even in Hyde's time, the only foreign powers which had permanent influence
in the Republic were her immediate neighbours - Muscovy and Prussia. The
rapid decline of Sweden and Austria, as well as that of the Republic, provided a
happy hunting-ground for Muscovite and Prussian ambitions. The reluctance of
diplomats to adjust to changed conditions could not alter the profound shift in
the balance of power which was then taking place.
From the formal point of view, for example, the embassy in 1686 of Boris
Petrovich Sheremetiev was undoubtedly a failure. He was sent to the Republic by
Peter I to receive ratification of the 'eternal peace' recently agreed by
Grzymultowski in Moscow. Young and confident, aged 35, and destined to a bril-
liant career as manager of Peter's reforms, he arrived in Lwow surrounded by
sixty boyars and a thousand-strong retinue. Yet the Poles refused to be impressed.
Sheremetiev was politely, but pointedly snubbed. Although Sobieski had already
ceded the Muscovite claim to the title of 'Tsar', at least in conversational
exchanges, Sheremetiev was not permitted to dine at the King's table. It was a
clear sign that Muscovy whatever her military prowess, was still not counted
among the civilized nations. What was worse, the Sejm declined to ratify the
Treaty. It was hard for the Poles to believe that the loss of the Dnieper lands was
other than temporary or that the Muscovites' imperial pretensions were serious.
From the Russian point of view, it looked very much like an act of bad faith - an
early instance of the folie de grandeur which has entered so firmly into the Russian
stereotype of the Polish character. In 1710, when the Grzymultowski Treaty was
finally ratified by the Sejm, the Russians had learned to obtain recognition of their
demands not by polite request but by brutal commands.^27