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XVII.

1794.

31.

ness early

the idea of

CHAP. eighteenth century, the distracted state and experienced weakness of the Polish republic had suggested to the neighbouring powers the project of dividing its territory. Their weak- Authentic documents demonstrate that this design was suggested seriously entertained in the time of Louis XIV., and postdismember- poned only in consequence of the vast reputation and ment to the heroic character of John Sobieski, which prolonged the existence of the republic for a hundred years, and threw a ray of glory over its declining fortunes. Of the powers whose unworthy alliance effected the destruction of the oldest republic in the world, all had arisen out of its ruins, or been spared by its arms. Prussia, once a province of 1 Salv.i.136, Poland, had grown out of the spoils of its ancient ruler ;1 and ii. 236. Austria owed to the intervention of a Polish hero its

adjoining

states.

Rulh. 259,

260.

2 Karamsin, Hist. de Russie, v. 101.

32.

Noble ex

ploits of

eski.

deliverance from the sword of the Mussulman; and long before the French eagles approached the Kremlin, a Polish army had conquered Moscow; and the Sarmatians had placed a son of their own king on the throne of Russia.2

Nothing can so strongly demonstrate the wonderful power of democracy as a spring, and its desolating effects John Sobi- when not compressed by a firm regulator, as the history of John Sobieski. The force which this illustrious champion of Christendom could bring into the field to defend his country from Mahommedan invasion, seldom amounted to fifteen thousand men; and when, previous to the battle of Kotzim, he found himself, by an extraordinary effort, at the head of forty thousand, of whom hardly one-half were well disciplined, the unusual spectacle inspired him with such confidence, that he hesitated not to attack eighty thousand Turkish veterans, strongly intrenched, and gained the greatest victory which had been achieved by the Christian arms since the battle of Ascalon. The troops which he led to the deliverance of Vienna were no more than eighteen thousand native Poles, and the combined Christian army only numbered seventy thousand combatants; yet with this force he

XVII.

1794.

routed three hundred thousand Turkish soldiers; and CHAP. broke the Mussulman power so effectually, that, for the first time for three hundred years, the crescent of Mahomet permanently receded, and from that period historians date the decline of the Ottoman empire. Yet, after these glorious triumphs, the ancient divisions of the republic paralysed its strength, and rendered unavailing its marvellous achievements. No efforts on the part of the sagacious hero could induce the impatient nobility to submit to any burdens, in order to establish a permanent force for the public safety. The defence of the frontiers was again intrusted to a few thousand undisciplined horsemen ; and the Polish nation incurred the disgrace of allowing its heroic king, the deliverer of Christendom, to be besieged for months, with fifteen thousand men, by innumerable hordes of barbarians, before the tardy pospolite advanced to his relief.1

1

Salv. iii. 137, 141,

61, and ii.

372, 454.

Rulh. i. 56.

33.

phetic an

of Poland

democratic

Sobieski, worn out with his ineffectual endeavours to create a regular government, or establish a permanent His proforce for the protection of Poland, clearly foresaw the ticipation of future fate of the republic. Before his accession to the the partition throne, he had united with the primate and sixteen hun- from its dred of its principal citizens to overturn the phantom of divisions. equality with which they were perpetually opposed, and, to use his own words, "Rescue the republic from the insane tyranny of a plebeian noblesse." His reign was one incessant struggle with the principles of anarchy which were implanted in his dominions: and he at length sank under the experienced impossibility of remedying them. The aged hero, when drawing near the grave, the approach to which was accelerated by the ingratitude and dissensions of his subjects during his later years, expressed himself to the senate in these memorable and prophetic terms : — "He was well acquainted with the griefs of the soul who declared, that small distresses love to declare themselves, but great are silent. The world will be mute with amazement at the contemplation of us and our councils.

XVII.

1794.

1 Letter,

Louis XIV.
July 14,

CHAP. Nature herself will be astonished! That beneficent parent has gifted every living creature with the instinct of selfpreservation, and given the most inconsiderable animals arms for their defence: we alone in the universe turn ours against ourselves. That instinct is taken from us, not by any resistless force, not by any inevitable destiny, but by a voluntary insanity, by our own passions, by the desire of mutual destruction. Alas! what will one day be the mournful surprise of posterity to find, that from the summit of glory, from the period when the Polish name filled the universe, our country has fallen into ruins, and fallen, alas, for ever! I have been able to gain for you victories; but I feel myself unable to save you from yourselves. Nothing remains to be done but to place in the hands, not of destiny, for I am a Christian, but of a powerful and beneficent Deity, the fate of my beloved country. Believe me, the eloquence of your Sobieski to tribunes, instead of being turned against the throne, would be better directed against those who, by their disorders, Rulh. i. 53. are bringing down upon our country the cry of the prophet, which I, alas! hear too clearly rolling over our heads yet forty years, and Nineveh will be no more.""1 The anticipation of the hero was not exactly accomWith him plished; his own glorious deeds, despite the insanity of his subjects, prolonged the existence of Poland for nearly extinguish- a hundred years. But succeeding events proved every day more clearly the truth of his prediction. The conquest of the frontier town of Kaminieck from the Turks, achieved by the terror of his name after he was no more, was the last triumph of the republic. He was also its last national sovereign, and the last who possessed any estimation in the world. With him disappeared both its power and its ascendency among other nations. From that period, successive foreign armies invaded its provinces, and invaded it never to recede. The different factions in the state, steeped in the bitterness of party strife, and exhausted by their efforts for mutual destruc

1672.

Salv.iii.375,

377.

34.

the Polish

power was

ed.

XVII.

1794.

tion, sought in the support of strangers the means of CHAP. wreaking their vengeance on each other. Foreign ambition gladly responded to the call; and, under the pretence of terminating its distractions, armed one half of the country against the other. The adjoining powers soon became omnipotent in so divided a community: all hastened to place themselves under the banners of some neighbouring sovereign. By turns the Saxons, Swedes, Muscovites, Imperialists, and Prussians, ruled its destinies: 1 Salv. iii. Poland was no more; according to his own prophecy, it 455. descended into the tomb with the greatest of its sons.1

democratic

his death.

Never did a people exhibit a more extraordinary spec- 35. tacle than the Poles after this period. Two factions Excessive were for ever at war; both had, to espouse and defend strife after their interests, an army; but it was a foreign army, a conquering army, an army conquering without a combat. The inferior noblesse introduced the Saxons; the greater called in the Swedes. From the day in which Sobieski closed his eyes, strangers never ceased to reign in Poland; its national forces were continually diminishing, and at length totally disappeared. The reason is, that a nation. without subjects is speedily exhausted; the republic, composed only of two hundred thousand citizens, at length had no more blood to shed, even in civil war. No encounters thereafter took place but between the Swedish, German, or Russian forces; their struggles resembled more the judicial combat of the feudal ages than the contests of powerful nations. The factions of the republic, united round these foreign banners, exchanged notes and summonses like belligerent powers. By degrees blood ceased to flow; in these internal divisions gold was found more effectual than the sword; and, to the disgrace Salv. iii. of Poland, its later years sank under the debasement of i. 62, 63. foreign corruption.2

Pursued to the grave by the phantom of equality, the dissensions of Poland became more violent as as it approached its dissolution. The liberum veto was more

VOL. III.

2 K

2

479. Rulh.

XVII.

1794. 36.

weakness and anarchy of the republic.

CHAP. frequently exercised every year; it was no longer produced by the vehemence of domestic strife, but by the influence of external corruption. That single word Increasing plunged the republic, as if by enchantment, into a lethargic sleep, and every time it was pronounced, it fell for two years into a state of absolute inanition. Faction even went so far as to dissolve the 'diets in their first sittings, and render their convocation a mere vain formality. All the branches of the government immediately ceased to be under any control; the treasury, the army, the civil authority, released from all superintendence, fell into a state of anarchy. Nothing similar to this ever occurred with any other people. The legislative power succeeded in destroying itself; and no other power ever ventured to supply its place. The executive, parcelled out into many independent and hostile divisions, was incapable of effecting such a usurpation; and if it had, the right of the nation to assemble in open confederation would immediately have rendered it nugatory. The prophecy of Montesquieu, as to the future destruction of the British constitution, has been accomplished in Poland; 1 Rulb. i. 63. it fell when the legislative became more corrupt than the executive. 1

37.

its partition

When the adjoining states of Russia and Austria, Which made therefore, effected the first partition of Poland in 1792, in 1772 easy. they did not require to conquer a kingdom, but only to take each a share of a state which had fallen to pieces. The election of Stanislaus Poniatowski, in 1764, to the throne of Poland, took place literally under the buckler; but it was not under the buckler of its own nobles, but of the Muscovite, the Cossack, and the Tartar, who overshadowed the plain of Volo with their arms-last and fatal consequence of centuries of anarchy! In vain did the Poles, taught at length by woful experience, attempt, by the advice of Czartoriski, to abandon the fatal privilege of the liberum veto; the despots of Russia and Prussia declared that they took the liberties of Poland,

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