care, John III sank into his grave on the 17th of June, 1696 (for his daughter Theresia Kunigunde, mother of Emperor Charles VII Albert, see Vol. VII, p. 525).

B. THE AGE OF THE SAXON ELECTORS.

THE reign of Sobieski was the last flickering gleam in the life of the Polish republic. The terrible times of John Casimir now seemed to have come back; party feuds began afresh and with redoubled fury. Hitherto individuals or parties had betrayed and sold their country, but now kings did the same; foreign countries had hitherto made their influence felt in Poland only by residents and money, but now they did so directly by troops, which never left the borders of the realm and enforced the orders of their sovereigns by the sword. The Slachta formerly, loving freedom beyond all else, had refused to make any sacrifices to the dictates of sound policy or to listen to any reform, but now foreign countries were eagerly desirous of maintaining the existing conditions and admitted no reforms. Foreign mercenaries took up their quarters in Poland, established arsenals, fought each other, and traversed the territory of the republic in every direction without asking any leave. Even before this time the neighbouring powers had entertained no great respect for the sovereignty of the Polish state. In 1670 the Great Elector had ordered a Prussian nobleman, Chr. Ludw. von Kalkstein, to be forcibly seized from the very side of King Michael Wisnioviecki and led away to Königsberg. John Casimir himself, even in the reign of his brother Wladislaus, while travelling in the west of Europe and being driven by a storm on the French coast, was kept two years in imprisonment without any special feeling being caused in his country at the incident. Poland was now treated with undisguised contempt. In the old days when, according to the ancient custom at a coronation, money was scattered among the crowd, no Pole ever stooped to pick up a coin; now they all clutched with both hands at doles from whatever side they came. Formerly the Slachta had imposed harsh conditions on foreign candidates for the throne, and had stipulated for the recovery of lost provinces, but now no king could be elected without the consent of foreign powers, obtained by humiliating promises. National and religious intolerance grew in consequence stronger. Rome and the Jesuits had great influence, and indefatigably carried out their task of forcible conversion and merciless oppression of all who were not of their creed.

The Elector Frederick Augustus (the Strong) of Saxony, or as king of Poland Augustus II (1697-1733), owed his election partly to the money which he distributed, but mostly to the circumstance that he had adopted the Catholic faith on June 1, 1697. In the year 1733 the Reichstag had declared heterodox persons to have forfeited all political rights and offices, and by this action had given a new pretext to foreign powers for interference in the affairs of the empire. The sudden dissolution of the diets was now the ordinary course of things. Under Augustus II, out of eighteen diets between the years 1717 and 1733 only five brought their deliberations to a close; under Augustus III, only one. Even the law courts were often hindered in their duties by party contests and were compelled to suspend their sittings. And since the state machinery was stopped recourse was had to alliances and armed combinations which led more certainly to the goal. But it was not difficult even for a foreign power to call into life, to

suit their own purposes, some such "confederation." They grew up like mushrooms, fought against each other, and increased the confusion. Together with political disorganisation, the impoverishment of the Slachta made alarming progress. Destitute nobles, who now lived only on the patronage and favour of the high nobility, crowded in masses round the rich magnates, whose numbers also steadily decreased. As a natural consequence, the peasants were inhumanly oppressed. The towns, more and more burdened by the national needs, were equally impoverished, especially since they never enjoyed the favour of the crown. The Jesuit schools now only fostered a specious learning, and only educated soldiers of Christ, who were intended to set up in Poland the Society of Jesus rather than the kingdom of God. Even the Piarists, an order established in 1607, who founded schools in rivalry with the Jesuits, were more solicitous for their own popularity than for the diffusion of true knowledge. The morality and culture of the Slachta were on a disgracefully low level; and their condition was the more repellent since it bore no proportion to their ambition, their pretensions, or position in the realm. The empire had thus been engaged in a deadly struggle for a century. If its neighbours allowed it to last so long, the only reason was that they were not themselves ready and strong enough to swallow Poland up. They jealously watched and counterbalanced each other. It was with good reason that the saying "Polska nierządem stoi" (Poland stands by disorder) now became a current proverb.

Frederick Augustus of Saxony and Poland, physically so strong that he could bend a thaler between his fingers and a thorough man of the world, seemed, as a Polish writer aptly puts it, to have been chosen by Providence to punish the nation for its sins. Frivolous in private and often also in public life, he introduced immorality and political corruption into his surroundings. In 1699 he had just reaped the fruits of the campaigns of his great predecessor by the treaty of Karlovitz (p. 166), through which Poland recovered from Turkey Podolia and Kamieniec, when in the very next year he plunged Poland into a fatal war, which almost cost him the throne. He made friendly overtures to Peter the Great of Russia and planned with him a campaign against Sweden; Livonia was to be the prize of victory. The Danish king Frederick IV was then drawn into the alliance, and the Saxon troops, which Augustus always kept in Poland, began the war. But the allies had grievously deluded themselves in the person of the youthful king of Sweden. Charles XII struck blow after blow with crushing effect (Vol. VII, p. 501). While Russia by her natural weight and not by her warlike skill was finally able to conquer the little country of Sweden, Augustus II and Denmark could not make any stand against it. Charles XII demanded from the Slachta the deposition of the king, and ordered the election of Stanislaus Leszczynski as king on the 12th of June, 1704. Augustus II tried in vain to win over Charles XII. He repeatedly offered him, through secret emissaries, a partition of Poland, but was obliged, on the 24th of September, 1706, when Charles had also conquered Saxony, to renounce the crown of Poland by the treaty of Altranstadt, and did not recover it until Charles XII had been decisively defeated by Peter the Great at Poltava on the 8th of July, 1709. The only power to benefit from this second Northern War was Russia, which finally acquired Livonia Esthonia, and Ingria, and so set foot on the Baltic.

From the beginning of his reign Augustus II entertained the idea of strengthening the monarchical power; he kept Saxon troops in Poland and did not consult

the Reichstag. But although he possessed considerable talents as a ruler, the various schemes which he evolved all turned out disastrously for Poland. The opposition against him daily grew stronger, and the followers of Leszczynski, who was deposed on August 8, 1709, increased in numbers; confederations were formed on both sides. Russia brought matters to a head. Rapidly and with astonishing astuteness Peter the Great found his way in the Polish difficulty, and knew how to act. He came between the parties as a mediator, but took the side of Augustus as the least dangerous; he sent, as the "Protector of Poland," eighteen thousand men into the country, and negotiated an agreement between the rival parties in Warsaw. Augustus II promised to withdraw his Saxons from the country within twentyfive days; all confederations were broken up and prohibited for the future, and the constitution was safeguarded. In a secret clause the number of troops in Poland was limited; Poland was not to keep more than seventeen thousand, Lithuania not more than six thousand men. The Reichstag of 1717 was forced to approve of all these points without discussion, for which reason it was called the "Dumb Diet." This was a master move of Peter's, and all the more so since he succeeded in inducing Turkey to recognise this agreement. Since that date Russian troops never left the soil of Poland, a policy which was observed up to the last partition.

Another neighbour had to be considered during the dispute for the Polish succession, in the person of the Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg. He retorted to the promotion of the Elector of Saxony to the throne of Poland by crowning himself as King of Prussia on the 18th of January, 1701. This action of his meant that he withdrew from the federation of the German Empire with one part of his territory, and shifted the centre of gravity of power as a sovereign to Prussia, which was not indeed subject to the suzerainty of the emperor; attention was at the same time called to the fact that he claimed the other part of Prussia, which still was subject to Poland. The far-sighted policy of the Prussian king and his successors is shown by their unwearying solicitude for the organisation and strengthening of their army. The numerical superiority of the Russian and other troops was intended to be balanced by the efficiency of the Prussians. Frederick I was also approached by Augustus II with the plan of partitioning Poland. Thus he, the king of Poland, was the first to suggest to his neighbours the idea of its partition. The third occasion was in the year 1732, when he hoped by this offer to win over the Prussian king for the election of his son Frederick Augustus as king of Poland.

The Reichstag, it is true, after the death of Augustus II (February 1, 1733), elected with unusual unanimity Stanislaus Leszczynski on September 11, for the second time. But the Slachta forgot that their resolutions were meaningless against the will of a stronger power. Forty thousand Russians entered Poland, and Russia's protégé, Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, was elected king on the 17th of January, 1734, with the title of Augustus III. France was obliged to acquiesce in the defeat of her candidate, Leszczynski. He received Lorraine and Bar as a solatium (1735-1738). He was occupied to the day of his death (February 23, 1766) with the thought of his unhappy native land, and ultimately collected round him at Nancy and Lunéville the youth of Poland, in order to educate them as reformers.

It was now perceived, even in Poland, that the catastrophe could not be long

It is a tragic

delayed. The voices that demanded reform grew more numerous. spectacle to see how the nobler minds in the nation exerted themselves vainly in carrying reforms and saving their country. Two great parties (at the head of the one was the Czartoryski family, at the head of the other the Potocki) were bitter antagonists. The former wished to redeem Poland with the help of Russia; the latter, with the support of France. Both were wrong in their calculation; for the salvation of Poland was not to be expected from any foreign power, but it depended solely on the unanimity and self-devotion of the nation itself, and this was unattainable. The whole reign of Augustus III (he died on the 5th of October, 1763) is filled with these party feuds.

C. THE END OF POLISH INDEPENDENCE

THE evil star of Poland willed that in the second half of the eighteenth century Prussia and Russia should possess, in the persons of Frederick the Great and Catherine II, rulers who are reckoned among the greatest in history, while Poland herself was being ruined by disunion. In 1764, soon after the death of Augustus II, both the adjoining states came to an agreement as to an occupation of parts of Poland's territory. Stanislaus II Poniatovski, a relation of the Czartoryski family, who had been elected king on the 7th of October, 1764, had lived hitherto in St. Petersburg and had been, as a favourite of Catherine, intended for the throne of Poland. This circumstance in itself gave grounds for supposing that this king, in spite of his amiable nature, would be a tool of the Russian policy. The Czartoryskis indeed wished to use the opportunity and introduce useful reforms, and took up a strong position against Russia; but confederations were soon formed for the protection of the old liberties, and these received the support of Russia, whose interest it was to keep up the lack of central authority in Poland. All the European powers then showed a singular eagerness for expansion; the idea of partition seemed to be in the air. The Emperor Charles VI and Frederick William I of Prussia had already inquired, through their representatives in Russia, what attitude the Czar would adopt on the fall of the Polish Empire. Later, as is well known, the plan of a partition of Prussia cropped up; Austria, Russia, Sweden, and France gave it their consent. But when Frederick showed his loving neighbours how hard he could strike, they left him and immediately devoted their attention to the weaker Poland, which was not in a condition to keep off her enemies. Poland is alone to blame. On the 17th of February, 1772, at the beginning of 1793, and on October 24, 1795, Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and the Polish Empire disappeared from the map of Europe (see the map at page 564). The people of Poland had also to endure the mortification of seeing their own diet concur in these outrages of the great powers.

Thus the Polish state, after lasting eight hundred years, ceased to be. The cause was the morbus nimiae libertatis (the disease of unbridled liberty). Poland, in the search for the solution of the main constitutional question, went to excess and was choked by the exuberance of individual license. We therefore learn an unusual amount from the history of Poland; it is of great importance for the world's history, since it offers us something new. Apart from this, Poland did

much for culture and progress. Civilization, indeed, if we leave out of account Copernicus, who after all enjoyed a West European training, was never higher there than in the West; but Poland carried the culture of the West to the East.

After this date there were frequent rumours of efforts to be made by Polish patriots, especially by those who had emigrated to France, to recover political independence; European diplomacy has often been occupied with the Polish question. But beyond friendly encouragement the Poles found no friend who with powerful hand could and would have reversed the momentous events of the last decades of the eighteenth century. The Polish emigrants threw in their fortunes with France, and formed legions which fought under the eagles of Napoleon I, in the hope that he would help them to set up their kingdom once more. Such sentiments were foreign to the Corsican tyrant; the Poles, like other nations, were to him mere pawns on his chessboard. It is true, that after the peace of Tilsit on the 21st of July, 1807, he created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw under the Saxon king Frederick Augustus I, which comprised Warsaw and Cracow, but he only did that to weaken Prussia and Austria. The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) "regulated " the Polish question so far that Prussia recovered Posen, and Austria, East Galicia.

The noble-minded emperor Alexander I consented that a constitutional kingdom, under a Russian Grand Duke as governor, should be created out of the Warsaw district ("Congress Poland "), and a republic out of Cracow, under the protection of Russia, Austria, and Prussia (1815). But the Poles once again failed to champion their cause. In the Cracow district a new revolt was planned against Russia, and, in the event of success, naturally against Prussia also. The revolt broke out on November 29, 1830, in Warsaw. The moment selected was unfavourable. Russia, just after her victory over Turkey, was in a better position. The Polish troops were defeated (cf. Vol. VIII), the constitution repealed, and the Polish territory henceforward was incorporated with Russia. When a new rising, in the spring of 1846, caused disturbances, the free state of Cracow was occupied in November by Austria. The insurrection of 1863 had from the first still less prospects (Ibid.). The Polish question thus temporarily disappeared from the chessboard of European diplomacy.

12. RUSSIA AS A EUROPEAN POWER

A. THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN PROGRESS AND REACTION DOWN TO 1680

THE Tartar dominion was the greatest calamity that befell the Russian state in its entire historical development, not merely because it lost political independence for nearly three hundred years, and was treated with barbarity and became impoverished, but in a still higher degree because the people were nearly five hundred years behind Western Europe in the progress of civilization. A despotic government, which treated its subjects like Asiatics, a taxation which emptied the pockets of the people, a brutalisation of habits, a growth of servility among the population, and, as a consequence, a disparagement and even a contempt for culture, an Asiatic arrogance, and a tendency to aloofness from the West European world, all this was the fruit of the long Tartar thraldom. And can any one assert that even now Russia has entirely outgrown these characteristics?