During the siege of Stralsund, Charles received another mortification, which would have been still more severe, if his heart had been as sensible to the emotions of friendship, as it was to those of fame and honour. His prime minister, count Piper, a man famous throughout all Europe, and of unshaken fidelity to his prince (notwithstanding the assertions of certain rash persons, or the authority of a mistaken writer): this Piper, I say, had been the victim of his master's ambition ever since the battle of Pultowa. As there was as that time no cartel for the exchange of prisoners subsisting between the Russians and Swedes, he had remained in confinement at Moscow; and though he had not been sent into Siberia, as the other prisoners were, yet his situation was greatly to be pitied. The czar's finances at that time were not managed with so much fidelity as they ought to be, and his many new establishments required an expense which he could with difficulty answer. In particular, he owed a considerable sum of money to the Dutch, on account of two of their merchant-ships which had been burnt on the coast of Finland, in the descent the czar had made on that country. Peter pretended that the Swedes were to make good the damage, and wanted to engage count Piper to charge himself with this debt: accordingly he was sent for from Moscow to Petersburg, and his liberty was offered him, in case he could draw upon Sweden letters of exchange to the amount of sixty thousand crowns. It is said he actually did draw bills for this sum upon his wife at Stockholm, but that she being unable or unwilling to take them up, they were returned, and the king of Sweden never gave himself the least concern about paying the money. Be this as it may, count Piper was closely confined in the castle of Schlusselburg, where he died the year after, at the age of seventy. His remains were sent to the king of Sweden, who gave them a magnificent burial; a vain and melancholy return to an old servant, for a life of suffering, and so deplorable an end! Peter was satisfied with having got possession of Livonia, Esthonia, Carelia, and Ingria, which he looked upon as his own provinces, and to which he had, moreover, added almost all Finland, which served as a kind of pledge, in case his enemies should conclude a peace. He had married one of his nieces to Charles Leopold, duke of Mecklenburg, in the month of April of the same year, (1715.) so that all the sovereigns of the north were now either his allies or his creatures. In Poland, he kept the enemies of king Augustus in awe; one of his armies, consisting of about eight thousand men, having, without any loss, quelled several of those confederacies, which are so frequent in that country of liberty and anarchy: on the other hand, the Turks, by strictly observing their treaties, left him at full liberty to exert his power, and execute his schemes in their utmost extent.