The country chiefly consists of a sandy plain situated at the northern foot of the lofty mountains which separate it from Hungary, Transylvania and the Bukowina by one of their secondary ramifications. The soil of the plains of Galicia is nevertheless more irregular than that of Hungary. It is infinitely diversified by hills of no great elevation, but in some parts of extreme fertility.
Much as it has been the fashion to deplore the “fatal partition” of Poland, and to execrate the powers concerned in it, we have now the satisfaction to know that to the Poles themselves this measure has proved one of the greatest blessings. Every individual has gained by it, excepting a few selfish, pampered magnates, who abused their overgrown power, and inflicted perpetual misery on the serfs whom Providence had subjected to their rule.
If ever there was a country where “might constituted right,” that country was Poland. The most dreadful oppression, the most execrable tyranny, and the most wanton cruelties, were daily exercised by the nobles on their unfortunate peasants. Dr. Neale in his Travels adduces a few facts which prove but too clearly their miserable condition.
The life of a peasant was held of no greater value than that of one of his horned cattle; and if his lord killed him he was merely fined a hundred Polish florins, or two pounds sixteen shillings of our money. If, on the contrary, a man of low birth presumed to raise his hand against a nobleman, death was the inevitable punishment. If any one dared to question the nobility of a magnat, he was required to prove his assertion, or doomed to die: nay, if a powerful man took a fancy to the field of his humbler neighbour and erected a land-mark upon it, and if that land-mark remained three days, the poor man lost his possession.
The atrocious cruelties habitually exercised almost exceed credibility. A Masalki caused his hounds to devour a peasant who chanced to fright his horse; a Radzivil had the belly of one of his serfs ripped open, that he might thrust his feet into it, in the hope of being cured of a malady with which he was afflicted. Still there were laws in Poland, but how were they executed? A peasant, going to the market at Warsaw, met a man who had just assassinated another: he seized the murderer, bound him, and having placed him in his wagon together with the body of his victim, he went to deliver him up to the nearest Starost. On his arrival, he was asked if he had ten ducats to pay for his interference, and on his answering in the negative, he was sent back with his dead and living lumber. After this fact, the reader will not be surprised to learn, that it cost a merchant of Warsaw fourteen hundred dollars to prosecute to conviction and execution two robbers who had plundered him.
To this injustice were joined the most barbarous ignorance and superstition. In 1781, the Starost Potocki, in passing through a village, learned that on the following day, a person accused of sorcery was to be burned alive. He examined the accused, inquired the hour at which the execution was to take place, and returned home to make preparation for preventing this legal murder, by carrying off the prisoner when on his way to the stake. The magistrates of the village received intimation of his design, and hastened the execution, so that when Potocki arrived, he had the mortification to find that the man had already been sacrificed.
Nor were this ignorance and this superstition confined to any particular class or order: in these respects people of the highest rank were perfectly on a level with the meanest serfs. A Polish baroness who had gained notoriety both at home and in France by her spirit of intrigue and the wit of her correspondence, was in the habit of burning frankincense and sprinkling her apartments with holy water whenever a thunder storm approached her castle.—One day, when in spite of these pious precautions the lightning struck and threw down her chimneys, she had recourse to an expedient which she regarded as infallible, namely, the burying round her house thirty copies of the Gospel of St. John; a custom still piously practised on Christmas-day in all the churches in Poland.
The morals of the people, were then, as they still continue to be, nearly at the lowest point of debasement. Female chastity is a virtue unknown in Poland. Among persons of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, with very few exceptions, the most dreadful licentiousness prevails. The men are equally profligate; and debauchery of every kind prevails among them to a degree unknown in other countries of Europe. Education is in general much neglected, the lower classes being unable to obtain the means of instruction: and among the higher, where no man is assured of the legitimacy of his offspring, a total indifference prevails as to the training of the doubtful brood. They are therefore neglected from their cradles, and left to the indulgence of every passion, undisciplined, untutored and uncontrolled. Endowed by nature with great personal beauty, the young Polish noble makes the tour of France and Germany, engrafts the vices of every capital that he visits on his own native stock; and after dilapidating his revenues returns to his paternal estate with a train of French cooks, valets, parasites and all the paraphernalia of modern luxury, to wallow in sensuality, and to die prematurely of acquired disease.
Such is the picture of the Poles drawn by Dr. Neale, who adds two facts tending to show the superior degree of security enjoyed by the humbler classes under the Austrian government to that afforded them while under the Polish sceptre.
During the reign of Stanislaus Poniatowsky, a petty noble having refused to resign his small estate to Count Thisenhaus, the latter invited him to dinner as if desirous of adjusting the affair in an amicable manner. While the knight, elated at such an unexpected honour, was assiduously plying the bottle, the count despatched some hundreds of peasants with axes, ploughs and wagons, ordering the village, which consisted only of a few small wooden buildings, to be pulled down, the materials carried away, and the plough passed over the ground which the village had occupied. This was accordingly done. The nobleman, on his return home in the evening, could not find either road, house or village. The master and his servant were alike bewildered, and knew not whether they were dreaming or had lost the power of discrimination: but their surprise and agony were deemed so truly humourous, that the whole court was delighted with the joke.