CHAPTER XVII. WAR IN POLAND. XVII. 1794. 1. extent of former times. PROVIDENCE has so interwoven human affairs, that, CHAP. when we wish to retrace the revolutions of a people, and to investigate the causes of their grandeur or misfortunes, we are insensibly conducted, step by step, to their cradle. Immense The slightest consideration of the history of Poland must Poland in be sufficient to prove that that great nation, always com- me bating, often victorious, but never securing its conquests, never obtaining the blessings of a stable government, has from the earliest times been on the decline. It emerged from the shock which overthrew the Roman empire, valiant, powerful, and extensive; from that hour it has invariably drooped, until at length it became the victim of its ancient provinces. The kingdom of Poland formerly extended from the Borysthenes to the Danube, and from the Euxine to the Baltic. The Sarmatia of the ancients, it embraced within its bosom the original seat of those nations which subverted the Roman empire: Prussia, Moravia, Bohemia, Hungary, the Ukraine, Courland, Livonia, are all fragments of its mighty dominion. The Goths, who appeared as suppliants on the Danube, and were ferried across by Roman hands, never to recede; the Huns, who under Attila spread desolation through the empire; the Sclavonians, who overran the greater part of Europe,-emerged from its vast and uncultivated plains. But its subsequent progress has but ill corresponded to such a commencement. While, in all other states, liberty, riches, power, and glory, XVII. 1794. CHAP. have advanced with equal steps, and the victories of one age have contributed to the advancement of that which succeeded it; in Poland alone the greatest triumphs have been immediately succeeded by the greatest reverses; the establishment of internal freedom has led to nothing but external disaster, and the deliverer of Europe in one age was in the next swept from the book of nations.1 1 Salvandy, i. 18. 2. Physical of Poland. The name of Poland, derived from the word signifying a plain, (pole,) expresses its real geographical character. description It consists almost entirely of an immense level surface, which extends with the exception only of a range of low hills that, to the south of Volhynia, branch out from the Carpathian mountains-from the shores of the Baltic to those of the Euxine. Part of this vast expanse is composed of rich alluvial soil, but the greater part of it is a sandy plain, of a dark red colour on the shores of the sea, but white in the interior of the country. Pomerania, part of Denmark, and nearly the whole of Prussia, formerly provinces of Poland, consist of the same sandy flat. The waves of the ocean, or of floods which, in former revolutions of the globe, have rolled over this wide extent of level ground, have strewed its surface with huge blocks of granite and other rocks foreign to the Polish territory, which have evidently been brought from a great distance; and in many places vast collections of bones of the elephant, the rhinoceros, and other tropical animals, as well as the mammoth, the mastodon, and other monsters, the race of which is now extinct upon the earth, are found, and attract the wonder alike of the illiterate peasant and learned observer of nature. This immense plain nowhere rises more than a few hundred feet above the level of the sea, and the ascent to the most elevated part is so gradual as Geschichte to be imperceptible, save from the direction of the rivers, which are very numerous, and form a remarkable feature in the country.2 2 Malte Brun, vi. 474, 476. Roepell, Polens, i. 3, 5. Notwithstanding this general flat surface, the summitlevel of the country is very distinctly marked, from the XVII. 1794. 3. one side of which the waters flow to the Euxine, from the CHAP. other to the Baltic Sea. This summit-level itself, however, is not in general a ridge, or range of hills, but a swampy expanse, in the marshes of which the principal streams Its great of the country take their rise; and, as with the rivers rivers. Amazons and Orinoco in the pampas of South America, the surface between their sources is so flat that in floods they communicate with each other. This is particularly the case with the Pripecz, a tributary of the Dnieper, which in spring is connected with the feeders of the Bug and the Niemen. The principal rivers which descend from the southern declivity of this marshy plateau are the Dniester and the Dnieper, with the great tributary of the latter, the Bug; to the north flows the Vistula, which, taking its rise in the Carpathian mountains, after being swelled by fifty tributary streams, such as the San, the Pilica, and the Narew, rolls its ample waves to the Baltic. One of these, the San, rises under the shade of a huge oak, which overhangs on the other side the fountains of the Theisse and of the Stry, which are among the principal sources of the Dniester. The Vartha and the Niemen traverse also the northern plains of Poland; and their waters, flowing in a bed but little depressed below the general surface of the adjacent country, frequently overflow, and convert the whole plain, to a considerable distance on either side, into a great lake. the other hand, the Dniester and the Dnieper, and the other rivers which descend towards the Euxine, meander Malte in deep beds, having steep banks of rock or gravel, which 475, 479. restrain their ample currents even in the greatest floods, 7.11. Diaand render the general surface of the adjacent country. p. 18. comparatively dry and salubrious. 1 On 1 Brun, vii. Roepell, i. gossi, lib. Poland has few minerals in its bosom, a peculiarity 4. which frees it equally from the wealth consequent on the Great ferworking of mines, and the social depravity which such tility of its operations seldom fail, in the end, to induce in their train. For this defect, however, it has received more than a soil. XVII. 1794. CHAP compensation in the broad expanse of its level surface, and the general fertility of its soil. The plains of the Ukraine, or of Poland south of the ridge which divides the flowing of its waters, have long been celebrated for their extraordinary and surpassing fertility, and, like the Delta of Egypt, or the plain of Mesopotamia, yield the richest crops with very little care from the husbandman. Podolia, also, on the southern declivity of Poland, hardly less rich, exhibits more varied and agreeable features. Pleasant hills, often crowned by beautiful groves, fill the whole province, which extends from the Dniester to the Boh, and is bounded on the north by the plains of Volhynia, on the south-east by the steppes of the Ukraine. These hills, which almost become mountains in the neighbourhood of Medryz Zee, exhibit alternately fertile valleys and healthful pastures. The soil, where it is arable, yields noble crops with hardly any cultivation; and so far back as the middle of the fifteenth century, Greece and the islands of the Archipelago were supplied by Podolian wheat, transported to their shores in Venetian vessels. The climate of this favoured province is less severe than that of the other parts of Poland. While they are still clothed with the garb of winter, the verdure of spring has already appeared on its sunny slopes. Melons, mulberries, and other southern fruits, ripen without care in 1 Roepell, the open air; and as summer is free from the malaria Polens, i. 11. which infests the plains of the Ukraine, so winter is from its icy cold.1 Geschichte 5. Face of the To the north of the summit-level, in the plains watered by the Vistula and its tributary streams, the soil is less the rich, and stands more in need of the artificial aid of drainprovinces. ing and manure. But a very slight application of these country in advantages is sufficient to make it produce the finest crops of wheat, barley, oats, and rye; and if cultivated in a superior manner, and opened up by canals, railroads, and common roads, for which the level surface offers the greatest possible advantages, it is capable of being made CHAP. XVII. 1794. to rival the plain of Lombardy or the fields of Flanders in variety and riches of agricultural produce. Already it is considered as the granary of Europe; the banks of the Vistula are to the British empire, in seasons of domestic scarcity, what those of the Nile were to the ancient Romans. Wretched, however, is the cultivation, deplorable the condition of the serfs, by whose labours these noble crops are reared. Ploughs and harrows of the rudest construction turn up the soil; scarcely any manure enriches the fields; frequent and long-continued fallows alone restore the exhausted fertility of nature. Raising the finest crops of red wheat, the indigent husbandman lives only on black rye bread; water is his sole drink, though his hands reap extensive crops of barley; and the luxuries of animal food Repell, and comfortable dwellings are unknown to the peasantry Surowreck inhabiting a country where the hand of nature has covered cadence de the earth with rich and boundless pastures, and a profusion 154. Malte of fine forests has furnished the most ample materials for 484, 486. the construction of houses.1 1 i. 9, 12. la Pologne, Brun, vii. 6. of the Car mountains. To the general flat and uniform character of Polish scenery, an exception must be made in regard to that part Romantic of the country where the Vistula takes its rise. Numerous scenery in rocky eminences, interspersed with limpid streams, there bourhood ascend with a uniform slope towards the Carpathian pathian mountains, and their summits are often crowned with venerable castles and monasteries, which throw an air of antiquity and grandeur over the scenery. It is there that Wawell, the once magnificent castle of the royal race of the Jagellons, looks down on the ancient capital of the mighty Polish empire, where its kings, so long taken from their race, were crowned; it is there that, adorned with numerous steeples, and splendid churches, and ancient edifices, Cracow lies stretched at the foot of the mountains in the valley of the Vistula. Every thing in that romantic region bespeaks the former grandeur and present decay of Poland. Beyond it, on a high mountain, stands the monastery of Tyniec, one of the richest and |