So that, at length, it had grown a feeble wearisome welter of inextricable strifes, with worn-out combatants, exhausted of all but their animosity; and seemed as if it would never end. Inveterate ineffective war; ruinous to all good interests in those parts. What miseries had Holstein from it, which last to our own day! Mecklenburg also it involved in sore troubles, which lasted long enough, as we shall see. But Brandenburg, above all, may be impatient; Brandenburg, which has no business with it except that of unlucky neighborhood. One of Friedrich Wilhelm's very first operations, as King, was to end this ugly state of matters, which he had witnessed with impatience, as Prince, for a long while. He had hailed even the Treaty of Utrecht with welcome, in hopes it might at least end these Northern brabbles. This the Treaty of Utrecht tried to do, but could not: however, it gave him back his Prussian Fighting Men; which he has already increased by six regiments, raised, we may perceive, on the ruins of his late court-flunkies and dismissed goldsticks;--with these Friedrich Wilhelm will try to end it himself. These he at once ordered to form a Camp on his frontier, close to that theatre of contest; and signified now with emphasis, in the beginning of 1713, that he decidedly wished there were peace in those Pommern regions. Negotiations in consequence; [10th June, 1713: Buchholz, i. 21.] very wide negotiations, Louis XIV. and the Kaiser lending hand, to pacify these fighting Northern Kings and their Czar: at length the Holstein Government, representing their sworn ally, Charles XII., on the occasion, made an offer which seemed promising. They proposed that, Stettin and its dependencies, the strong frontier Town, and, as it were, key of Swedish Pommern, should be evacuated by the Swedes, and be garrisoned by neutral troops, Prussians and Holsteiners in equal number; which neutral troops shall prohibit any hostile attack of Pommern from without, Sweden engaging not to make any attack through Pommern from within. That will be as good as peace in Pommern, till we get a general Swedish Peace. With which Friedrich Wilhelm gladly complies. [22d June, 1713: Buchholz, i. 21.] Unhappily, however, the Swedish Commandant in Stettin would not give up the place, on any representative or secondary authority; not without an express order in his King's own hand. Which, as his King was far away, in abstruse Turkish circumstances and localities, could not be had at the moment; and involved new difficulties and uncertainties, new delay which might itself be fatal. The end was, the Russians and Saxons had to cannonade the man out by regular siege: they then gave up the Town to Prussia and Holstein; but required first to be paid their expenses incurred in sieging it,--400,000 thalers, as they computed and demonstrated, or some where about 60,000 pounds of our money.