George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[277] Russian flag and bound with corn to Malaga, had

Chap. XII.} 1780.

been brought into Cadiz, its cargo disposed of to the best bidder, and its crew treated with inhumanity. The empress felt this second aggression as a deliberate outrage on her flag, and following the impulses of her own mind she seized the opportunity to adopt, seemingly on the urgency of Great Britain, a general measure for the protection of the commerce of Russia as a neutral power against all the belligerents and on every sea. She preceded the measure by signing an order for arming fifteen ships of the line and five frigates for service early in the spring.

Loving always to be seen leading in great and bold undertakings, she further signed letters prepared by her private secretary to her envoys in Sweden, Denmark, and the Hague, before she informed her minister for foreign affairs of what had been done. A Russian courier was expedited to Stockholm, and thence to Copenhagen, the Hague, Paris, and Madrid.¹ On the twenty-second of February, Potemkin announced the measure to his protege, Harris, by the special command of the empress. ‘The ships,’ said the prince, ‘will be supposed to protect the Russian trade against every power, but they are meant to chastise the Spaniards, whose insolence the empress cannot brook.’ Harris ‘told him he was not so sanguine. In short, that it was no more than the system of giving protection to trade suggested last year by the three northern courts, now carried into execution.’² Potemkin, professing to be ‘almost out of humor with his objections and with his backwardness ’