46. No sooner was the King of Prussia informed of the revolution at Warsaw, than he moved forward at the head of thirty thousand men to besiege that city; while Suwarroff, with forty thousand veterans, was preparing to enter the south-eastern parts of the kingdom. Aware of the necessity of striking a blow before the enemy's forces were united, Kosciusko advanced with twelve thousand men to attack the Russian general Denisoff; but, upon approach highly honourable to the patriotism | honourable a stand for their national of the Poles, was inconsiderable when independence. compared with the vast armies which Russia and Prussia could bring up for their subjugation. Small as the army was, its maintenance was too great an effort for the resources of the kingdom, which, torn by intestine faction, without commerce, harbours, or manufactures, having no national credit, and no industrious class of citizens but the Jews, now felt the fatal effects of its long career of democratic anarchy. The population of the country, composed entirely of unruly gentlemen and igno-ing his corps, he discovered that it had rant serfs, was totally unable at that time to furnish those numerous supplies of intelligent officers which are requisite for the formation of an efficient military force; while the nobility, however formidable on horseback in the Hungarian or Turkish wars, were less to be relied on in a contest with regular forces, where infantry and artillery constituted the great strength of the army, and courage was unavailing without the aid of science and military discipline. 45. The central position of Poland, in the midst of its enemies, would have afforded great military advantages, had its inhabitants possessed a force capable of turning it to account-that is, if they had had, like Frederick the Great in the Seven Years War, a hundred and fifty thousand regular troops, which the population of the country could easily have maintained, and a few well-fortified towns, to arrest the enemy in one quarter, while the bulk of the national force was precipitated upon them in another. The glorious stand made by the nation in 1831, with only thirty thousand regular soldiers at the commencement of the insurrection, and no fortifications but those of Warsaw and Modlin, proves what immense advantages this central position affords, and what opportunities it offers to military genius like that of SKRYNECKI, to inflict the most severe wounds even on a superior and well-conducted antagonist. But all these advantages were wanting to Kosciusko; and it augments our admiration of his talents, and of the heroism of his countrymen, that, with such inconsiderable means, they made so united to the army commanded by the king in person. Unable to face such superior forces, he immediately retired, but was attacked next morning at daybreak near Sekoczyre by the allies, and after a gallant resistance his army was routed, and Cracow fell into the hands of the conquerors. This check was the more severely felt, as, about the same time, General Zayonscheck was defeated at Chelne, and obliged to recross the Vistula, leaving the whole country on the right bank of that river in the hands of the Russians. These disasters produced a great impression at Warsaw: the people as usual ascribed them to treachery, and insisted that the leaders should be brought to punishment; and although the chiefs escaped, several persons in an inferior situation were arrested and thrown into prison. Apprehensive of some subterfuge, if the accused were regularly brought to trial, the burghers assembled in tumultuous bodies, forced the prisons, erected scaffolds in the streets, and, after the manner of the assassins of September 2d, put above twelve persons to death with their own hands. These excesses affected with the most profound grief the pure heart of Kosciusko; he flew to the capital, restored order, and delivered over to punishment the leaders of the revolt. But the resources of the country were evidently unequal to the struggle; the paper money, which had been issued in their extremity, was at a frightful discount; and the sacrifices required of the nation were the more severely felt, that hardly a hope of ultimate success remained. 47. The combined Russian and Prussian armies, about thirty-five thousand strong, now advanced against the capital, where Kosciusko occupied an intrenched camp with twenty-five thousand men. During the whole of July and August, the besiegers were engaged in fruitless attempts to drive the Poles into the city; and at length a great convoy, with artillery and stores for a regular siege, which was ascending the Vistula, having been captured by a gentleman named Minewsky, at the head of a body of peasants, the King of Prussia raised the siege, leaving a portion of his sick and stores in the hands of the patriots. After this success, the insurrection spread immensely, and the Poles mustered nearly eighty thousand men under arms. But they were scattered over too extensive a line of country in order to make head against their numerous enemies a policy tempting by the prospect it holds forth of exciting an extensive insurrection, but ruinous in the end, by exposing the patriotic forces to the risk of being beaten in detail. Scarcely had the Poles recovered from their intoxication at the raising of the siege of Warsaw, when intelligence was received of the defeat of Sizakowsky, who commanded a corps of ten thousand men beyond the Bug, by the Russian grand army under SUWARROFF. This celebrated general, to whom the principal conduct of the war was now committed, followed up his successes with the utmost vigour. The retreating column was again assailed on the 19th by the victorious Russians, and, after a glorious resistance, driven into the woods between Janoff and Biala, with the loss of four thousand men and twenty-eight pieces of cannon. Scarcely three thousand Poles, with Sizakowsky at their head, escaped into Siedlice. 48. Upon receiving the accounts of this disaster, Kosciusko resolved, by drawing together all his detachments, to fall upon Fersen before he joined Suwarroff, and the other corps which were advancing against the capital. With this view he ordered General Poninsky to join him, and marched with *See a Biography of SUWARROFF-Infra, chap. XXVII. § 55. all his disposable forces to attack the Russian general, who was stationed at Maccowice; but fortune on this occasion cruelly deceived the Poles. Arrived in presence of Fersen, he found that Poninsky had not yet arrived; and the Russian commander, overjoyed at this circumstance, resolved immediately to attack him. In vain Kosciusko despatched courier after courier to Poninsky to advance to his relief. The first was intercepted by the Cossacks, and the second did not reach that leader in time to enable him to take a decisive part in the approaching combat. Nevertheless the Polish commander, aware of the danger of retreating with inexperienced troops in presence of a disciplined and superior enemy, determined to give battle on the following day, and drew up his little army with as much skill as the circumstances would admit. The forces on the opposite sides in this action, which decided the fate of Poland, were nearly equal in point of numbers; but the advantages of discipline and equipment were decisively on the side of the Russians. Kosciusko commanded about ten thousand men, a great part of whom were recently raised, and imperfectly disciplined; while Fersen was at the head of twelve thousand veterans, including a most formidable body of cavalry. Nevertheless, the Poles in the centre and right wing made a glorious defence; but the left, which Poninsky should have supported, having been overwhelmed by the cavalry under Denisoff, the whole army was, after a severe struggle, thrown into confusion. Kosciusko, Sizakowsky, and other gallant chiefs, in vain made the most heroic efforts to rally the broken troops. They were wounded, struck down, and made prisoners by the Cossacks, who inundated the field of battle; while the remains of the army, now reduced to seven thousand five hundred men, fell back in confusion towards Warsaw. 49. After the fall of Kosciusko, who sustained in his single person the fortunes of the republic, nothing but a series of disasters overtook the Poles. The Austrians, taking advantage of the general confusion, entered Gallicia, and conquerors. Ten thousand soldiers fell on the spot, nine thousand were made prisoners, and above twelve thousand citizens, of every age and sex, were put to the sword-a dreadful instance of carnage, which has left a lasting stain on the name of Suwarroff, and which Russia expiated in the conflagration of Moscow. The tragedy was at an end. Warsaw capitulated two days afterwards; the detached parties of the patriots melted away, and Poland was no more. On the 6th November, Suwarroff made his triumphant entry into the bloodstained capital. King Stanislaus was sent into Russia, where he ended his days in captivity, and the final partition of the monarchy was effected. 51. Such was the termination of the oldest republic in existence-such the first instance of the destruction of a member of the European family by its ambitious rivals. As such, it excited a profound sensation in Europe. The folly of preceding ages, the long period of wasting anarchy, the madness of democratic ambition, the irretrievable defects of the Sarmatian constitution, were forgotten. Poland was remembered only as the bulwark of Christendom against the Ottomans; she appeared only as the succouring angel under John Sobieski. To behold a people so ancient, so gallant, whose deeds were as occupied the palatinates of Lublin and Sandomir; while Suwarroff, pressing forward towards the capital, defeated Mokronowsky, who, at the head of twelve thousand men, strove to retard the advance of that redoubtable commander. In vain the Poles made the utmost efforts; they were routed with the loss of four thousand men ; and the patriots, though now despairing of success, resolved to sell their lives dearly, and shut themselves up in Warsaw, to await the approach of the conqueror. Suwarroff was soon at the gates of Praga, the eastern suburb of that capital, where twenty-six thousand men, and one hundred pieces of cannon, defended the bridge of the Vistula and the approach to the capital. To assault such a position with forces hardly superior was evidently a hazardous enterprise; but, the approach of winter rendering it indispensable that if anything was done at all it should be immediately attempted, Suwarroff, who was habituated to successful assaults in the Turkish wars, resolved to storm the city. On the 2d November, the Russians made their appearance before the glacis of Praga, and Suwarroff, having in great haste completed three powerful batteries, and breached the defences with imposing celerity, made his dispositions for a general assault on the following day. 50. The conquerors of Ismail ad-sociated with such heart-stirring recolvanced to the attack in the same order which they had adopted on that memorable occasion. Seven columns at daybreak approached the ramparts, rapidly filled up the ditches with their fascines, broke down the defences, and, pouring into the intrenched camp, carried destruction into the ranks of the Poles. In vain the defenders did their utmost to resist the torrent. The wooden houses of Praga speedily took fire, and, amidst the shouts of the victors and the cries of the inhabitants, the Polish battalions were borne backward to the edge of the Vistula. The multitude of fugitives speedily broke down the bridges; and the citizens of Warsaw beheld, with unavailing anguish, their defenders on the other side perishing in the flames, or by the sword of the VOL. III, lections, fall a victim to Imperial ingratitude, Prussian cupidity, and Muscovite ambition, was a spectacle which naturally excited the utmost indignation. The bloody march of the French Revolution, the disasters consequent on domestic dissension, were forgotten, and the Christian world was penetrated with a grief akin to that felt by all civilised nations at the fall of Jerusalem. The poet has celebrated these events in the immortal lines "Oh! bloodiest picture in the book of time, Sarmatia fell, unwept, without a crime; Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe, Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe! Dropp'd from her nerveless grasp the shat tered spear, career; Closed her bright eye, and curb'd her high N 52. But the truth of history must dispel the illusion, and unfold in the fall of Poland the natural consequence of its national delinquencies. Sarmatia neither fell unwept nor without a crime; she fell the victim of her own dissensions of the chimera of equality insanely pursued, and the rigour of aristocracy unceasingly maintained; of extravagant jealousy of every superior, and merciless oppression of every inferior rank. The eldest-born of the European family was the first to perish, because she had thwarted all the ends of the social union; because she united the turbulence of democratic to the exclusiveness of aristocratic societies; because she exhibited the vacillation of a republic without its energy, and the oppression of a monarchy without its stability. Such a system neither could nor ought to be maintained. The internal feuds of Poland were more fatal to human happiness than the despotism of Russia, and the growth of improvement among its people was slower than among the ryots of Hindostan. 53. To any one who has either studied in history or experienced in real life the practical working of the principle of self-government among mankind, in situations where democratic equality is really established, the destruction of Poland will appear far from surprising. In truth, the only wonderful thing is, that her people so long succeeded in maintaining their independence. It is the fretting against control, the "ignorant impatience of taxation" in mankind, when practically intrusted with self-government, which was the real cause of the calamity. No lessons of experience however severe, no calls of patriotism however urgent, no warnings of wisdom however emphatic, could induce its plebeian noblesse to submit to any present burden to avert future disaster. Like the Americans at this time, who refuse in many States, at all hazards to their public credit, to tax themselves to defray the interest of their State's debt, they preferred "any load of infamy however great, to any burden of taxation however light." So strong is this disinclination to submit to present burdens to prevent future evil, among men in all ages and countries, that it may fairly be considered as insurmountable; and therefore any society in which supreme power is really vested in the people, bears in itself the seeds of early ruin. Democratic bodies often exhibit extraordinary energy, if they can derive their resources from foreign plunder or domestic confiscation; but they will never, except in the last extremity, burden themselves. Real self-taxation is in truth a delusive theory: where it is attempted to be put in practice it invariably fails; what was so long mistaken for it was the taxing of one class by another class-of the many by the few. These are unpalatable truths, but they are not the less truths; nor is it less on that account the duty of the historian to state them. If any one doubts their accuracy, let him contemplate the abandonment of the Sinking Fund, in consequence of the enormous and uncalled-for reduction of indirect taxation since popular influence began to predominate in Great Britain, and the recent repudiation of the States' debt by a large part of the American people. 54. In this respect the history of Muscovy presents a striking and instructive contrast to that of Poland. Commencing originally with a smaller territory, yet farther removed from the light of civilisation-cut off in a manner from the intelligence of the globe, decidedly inferior to its heroic rival in its earlier contests-the growth of Russia has been as steady as the decline of Poland. The Polish republic fell at length beneath a power which it had repeatedly vanquished, whose capital it had conquered; and its name was erased from the list of nations at the very time that its despotic rival had attained the zenith of power and glory. These facts throw a great and important light on the causes of early civilisation, and the form of government adapted to a barbarous age. There cannot in such a state be so great a misfortune as a weak, there cannot be so great a blessing as a powerful government. No oppression is so severe as that which is there inflicted by the members of the same state on each other; no anarchy so irremediable as that which originates in the violence of their own passions. To restrain the fury and coerce the dissensions of its subjects is the first duty of government in such periods; in its inability to discharge this duty is to be found the real cause of the weakness of a democratic -in the rude but effective performance of it, the true secret of the strength of a despotic state. 55. Such, however, are the ennobling effects of the spirit of freedom, even in its wildest form, that the remnant of the Polish nation, albeit bereft of a country by their own insanity, have by their deeds commanded the respect, and by their sorrows obtained the sympathy of the world. The remains of Kosciusko's bands, disdaining to live under Muscovite oppression, sought and found an asylum in the armies of France; they served with distinction both in Italy and Spain, and awakened by their bravery that sympathy which, with other and more selfish motives, brought the conqueror of Europe to the walls of the Kremlin. Like the remains of a noble mind borne down by suffering, they have exhibited flashes of greatness even in the extremity of disaster; and while wandering without a home, from which their own madness or that of their fathers had banished them, obtained a respect to which their conquerors were often strangers at the summit of their glory. Such is the effect even of the misdirected spirit of freedom; it dignifies and hallows all that it inspires, and, even amidst the ruins which it has occasioned, exalts the human soul! race unceasingly preserved. The first, in the school of early adversity, were taught the habits and learned the wisdom necessary for the guidance of maturer years; the second, like the spoiled child whose wishes had never been coerced, nor its passions restrained, at last acquired on the brink of the grave, prematurely induced by excessive indulgence, that experience which should have been gained in earlier years. It is through this terrible but necessary ordeal that Poland is now passing; and the experience of ages would indeed be lost, if we did not discern in its present suffering the discipline necessary for future happiness, and, in the extremity of temporary disaster, the severe training for ultimate improvement. 57. The partition of Poland, and scandalous conduct of the states who reaped the fruit of injustice in its fall, has been the frequent subject of just indignation and eloquent complaint from the European historians; but the connection between that calamitous event and the subsequent disasters of the partitioning powers, has not hitherto met with due attention. Yet nothing can be clearer than that it was this iniquitous measure which brought all the misfortunes that followed upon the European monarchies-that it was it which opened the gates of Germany to French ambition, and brought Napoleon with his terrible legions to Vienna, Berlin, and the Kremlin. The more the campaigns of 1793 and 1794 are studied, the more clearly does it appear that it was the prospect of obtaining a share in the partition of Poland which paralysed the allied arms, 56. The history of England has illus- which intercepted or turned aside the trated the beneficial effects which have legions which might have overthrown resulted to its character and institu- the Jacobin rule, and created that jealtions from the Norman Conquest. In ousy and division amongst their rulers, the severe suffering which followed that which, more even than the energy of the great event, in the anguish of genera- Republicans, contributed to the uniform tions, in the forcible intermixture of and astonishing success of the latter. the races of the victor and vanquished, Had the redoubtable bands of Catherine were laid the deep and firm foundations been added to the armies of Prussia in of English freedom. In the checkered the plains of Champagne in 1792, or to and disastrous history of Poland may those of Austria and Great Britain in be traced the consequences of an oppo- the fields of Flanders in 1793, not a site, and, at first sight, more fortunate doubt can remain that the revolutiondestiny-of national independence un-ary party would have been overcome, interruptedly maintained, and purity of and a constitutional monarchy estab |