Every thing respecting the recall of Grotius being settled, he embarked at Dieppe for Holland.  He was extremely well received at Amsterdam and Rotterdam:  the constituted authorities, of the former city fitted a vessel, which was to take him to Hamburgh:  there, after along and harassing journey, he arrived on the 16th of May.  From Hamburgh he proceeded to Luebec:  the magistrates of that city gave him an honourable reception.  He proceeded to Wismar; where Count Wismar, the admiral of the Swedish fleet, gave him a splendid entertainment, and afterwards sent him in a man-of-war to Colmar:  thence, he went by land to Stockholm.  When he arrived there, Queen Christina was at Upsal; but, hearing that Grotius was at Stockholm, she returned to that city to meet him.  On the day after her arrival, she favoured him with a long audience:  she expressed to him great satisfaction at his conduct, and made him large promises.  These audiences were often repeated; and once she permitted him to have the honour of dining with her.  She assured him, that if he would continue in her service, as Councillor of State, and bring his family into Sweden, he should have no reason to complain of her.  But Grotius was anxious to leave Sweden; and his passport being delayed, he resolved to quit it without one, and actually proceeded to a seaport about seven leagues distant from Stockholm.  The Queen, being informed of his departure, sent a gentleman to inform him, that she wished to see him once more.  On this invitation he returned to Stockholm, and was immediately admitted into the Queen’s presence; he then explained to her his reasons for wishing to quit Sweden.  The Queen appeared to be satisfied with them:  she made him a present in money of twelve or thirteen thousand Swedish imperials, of the value of about ten thousand French crowns; she added to the present, some plate, the finishing of which had, she told him, been the only cause of the delay of his passport.  She then put it into his hands, and a vessel was appointed to carry him to Luebec.  On the 12th August he embarked for that city.

[Sidenote:  The Death of Grotius.]

What were his real motives for refusing Christina’s offers, or in what place he ultimately intended to fix himself, is not known.

The vessel in which he embarked had scarcely sailed from Luebec, when it was overtaken by a violent storm, and obliged, on the 17th August, to take shelter in a port fourteen miles distant from Dantzic.  Grotius went from it in an open wagon to Luebec, and arrived very ill at Rostock[077] on the 26th August.  No one, there, knew him:  his great weakness determined him to call in the aid of a physician:  one accordingly attended him:  his name was Stochman.  On feeling Grotius’s pulse, he said his indisposition proceeded from weakness and fatigue, and that, with rest and some restoratives, he might recover; but, on the following day he changed his opinion.  Perceiving that the weakness of Grotius increased, and that it was accompanied with a cold sweat and other symptoms indicating an exhaustion of nature, the physician announced that the end of his patient was near.  Grotius then asked for a clergyman. John Quistorpius was brought to him.  Quistorpius, in a letter to Calovius, gives the following particulars of Grotius’s last moments: