So it was with Poland. The beaten factions did what fighting aristocracies always do when fearful of defeat, or embittered by it,—the vilest thing they can do, and the most dangerous—they intrigued for foreign intervention.
Of all things, this is most fatal to nationality. Going openly over to the enemy is bad; but intrigues with foreign powers, hostile by interest and tradition, are unutterably vile.
Yet there is not a nation where a class pursuing separate and distinct rights is tolerated, where such intrigues have not been frequent. More than this, such intrigues have generally been timed with diabolic sagacity.
The time chosen is generally some national emergency—when the nation is writhing in domestic misfortunes, or battling desperately against foreign foes. The Spanish nobles chose their time for intriguing with the Moors for their intervention, when the Spanish nation were in the most desperate struggle—not merely for temporal power, but even for the existence of their religion.
In France, the nobles chose such periods as those when Richelieu was leading the nation against all Europe and a large part of France. In Poland, the nobles chose the times when the nation was struggling against absolute annihilation.[35]
History, to one not blinded by Polish bravery, is clear here. The real authors of the partition of Poland were not Frederick of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria, and Catherine of Prussia, but those proud nobles who drew surrounding nations to intervene in Polish politics.
The Social condition was also affected naturally. Poland went into the inevitable narcotic phase. Her court during the reigns of its later Kings was a brothel, and her nobles its worthy tenants.
What followed was natural. When the light of the last century streamed in upon this corrupt mass, Zamoiski and men like him tried to purify it,—to enfranchise the subordinate caste,—to work reforms. The Polish Republic refused. Then Providence began a work radical and terrible.
It is sad to see those brave citizen-nobles crushed beneath brute force of Russians, and Austrians, and Prussians. But it was well. One Alexander the First would have done, one Alexander the Second has done more good for Poland than ages of citizen serf-masters flourishing on the Plains of Volo.
The next nation to which I direct you is France.