He opened the year 1710 with this solemnity, so necessary to his subjects, whom it inspired with notions of grandeur, and was highly pleasing to every one who had been fearful of seeing those enter their walls as conquerors, over whom they now triumphed. Seven magnificent arches were erected, under which passed in triumph, the artillery, standards, and colours, taken from the enemy, with their officers, generals, and ministers, who had been taken prisoners, all on foot, amidst the ringing of bells, the sound of trumpets, the discharge of a hundred pieces of cannon, and the acclamations of an innumerable concourse of people, whose voices rent the air as soon as the cannon ceased firing. The procession was closed by the victorious army, with the generals at its head; and Peter, who marched in his rank of major-general. At each triumphal arch stood the deputies of the several orders of the state; and at the last was a chosen band of young gentlemen, the sons of boyards, clad in Roman habits, who presented a crown of laurels to their victorious monarch. This public festival was followed by another ceremony, which proved no less satisfactory than the former. In the year 1708 happened an accident the more disagreeable to Peter, as his arms were at that time unsuccessful. Mattheof, his ambassador to the court of London, having had his audience of leave of queen Anne, was arrested for debt, at the suit of some English merchants, and carried before a justice of peace to give security for the monies he owed there. The merchants insisted that the laws of commerce ought to prevail before the privileges of foreign ministers; the czar's ambassador, and with him all the public ministers, protested against this proceeding, alleging, that their persons ought to be always inviolable. The czar wrote to queen Anne, demanding satisfaction for the insult offered him in the person of his ambassador. But the queen had it not in her power to gratify him; because, by the laws of England, tradesmen were allowed to prosecute their debtors, and there was no law that excepted public ministers from such prosecution.[81] The murder of Patkul, the czar's ambassador, who had been executed the year before by the order of Charles XII. had encouraged the English to shew so little regard to a character which had been so cruelly profaned. The other public ministers who were then at the court of London, were obliged to be bound for the czar's ambassador; and at length all the queen could do in his favour, was to prevail on her parliament to pass an act, by which no one for the future could arrest an ambassador for debt; but after the battle of Pultowa, the English court thought proper to give satisfaction to the czar.