A third body of insurgents was at the same time wreaking a similar vengeance upon the Jews of Little Russia, where many thousands perished, and the havoc spread as widely as the rebellion, until the whole country, from South Ukraine to Lemberg, was marked with traces of massacre—here in pools of Jewish and Polish blood, there in heaps of Jewish and Polish bodies. ♦1649 Aug.♦ At last peace was concluded on condition that no Papist or Jew should reside in the Cossack provinces.
Meanwhile thousands of Jewish fugitives who had saved their lives by baptism, of women who had been violated by the Cossacks, and of children whose parents had been slaughtered, swarmed into Poland, where King John Casimir allowed them to return to Judaism, for, being a Roman Catholic himself, he naturally regarded the Greek baptism as worse than valueless.
After a few months’ pause the war between the Cossacks and the Poles broke out anew, and it was now transferred to Polish territory. Again the first victims were Jews, but the slaughter was necessarily limited by the comparatively small number of people left to slay. ♦1651 Nov.♦ This second rebellion ended in the defeat of the Cossacks, and one of the terms of peace was that the Jews should be allowed to settle again, and resume their financial oppression, in the Ukraine. However, the Cossacks felt bound by the treaty only so long as they felt unable to break it. As soon as the opportunity offered, they once more raised the standard of revolt, and Chmielnicki, aided by the Russians, carried victory and devastation far and wide. ♦1654–1655♦ The Jews who were beyond the reach of the Cossacks succumbed to the fury of their Russian allies, and thus the community of Wilna was completely wiped out.
Then to the enemies of Poland was added Charles X. of Sweden, Charles XII.’s grandfather; “a great and mighty man, lion of the North in his time.” ♦1656♦ The battle of Warsaw, which lasted three days, resulted in a splendid victory for this “imperious, stern-browed, swift-striking man, who had dreamed of a new Goth empire.” In that battle the chivalry of Poland was broken, and John Casimir, the most brilliant cavalier of all, was nearly ruined. The Jewish communities which had been spared by Cossack and Russian were impoverished by the Swede. But even this fresh calamity did not exhaust the measure of their woes. Those who had escaped slaughter at the hands of Cossacks, Russians, and Swedes were now exposed to the hatred of the Polish general, Czarnicki, who attacked them on the ground that they had acted in collusion with the Swedish invaders. And while Poland was turned into a vast battlefield, whereon the nations cut each other’s throat, the Jews were treated as common foes by all. During these ten years of international manslaughter, no fewer than a quarter of a million of Polish Jews were massacred.
The humiliation of Poland brought lasting ruin to the Jews. Fugitives, reduced to the verge of starvation, were scattered over Europe seeking shelter—from Amsterdam and the Rhine in the north and west, to Italy, Hungary, and Turkey in the south and east. Everywhere they were welcomed by their brethren, who fed and clothed them, and many of the funds intended for the maintenance of the Jews in Palestine were diverted to the relief of these helpless wanderers.
In the midst of their sufferings the Polish Jews heard of the Messiah of Smyrna. One of Sabbataï Zebi’s apostles, Jacob Leibovicz Frank by name, founded a curious sect, which, among other things, believed in a kind of Trinity, abolished the Law, and carried on a fierce warfare against the orthodox Rabbis. In the middle of the eighteenth century these Frankist dissenters revived one of the ancient denunciations of the Talmud, and tried to induce the Polish Government to confiscate all the Rabbinical writings. But finally, as Sabbataï and his immediate followers in Turkey were absorbed by Islam, so Frank’s disciples were absorbed by Catholicism.
While the Jews of Poland were sinking into destitution or flying into exile, their brethren of Austria also were experiencing the hatred of the Jesuits. At the instigation of the latter the Empress Margaret demanded their banishment from Vienna. ♦1669♦ The Emperor Leopold I. was at first averse from the measure, because he derived an annual revenue of 50,000 florins from the Austrian Jews. But the Empress insisted, her fanaticism receiving fresh impulse from a narrow escape which she had experienced at a ball accident. Attributing her preservation to a miraculous intervention of the Deity, she was anxious to show her gratitude by a sacrifice of the Jews, whom her father confessor had taught her to regard as the enemies of Heaven. The piety of the Empress proved too powerful for her consort’s avarice. Leopold yielded at last, and the Jews were ordered to leave Vienna. In vain did they try prayers and presents. In vain did they turn every stone both at home and abroad. Their gifts were accepted by the Emperor and Empress, but the decree remained unrevoked, for the influence of the Jesuits was invincible. ♦1670♦ The Jews had to go and seek new homes in Moravia, Bohemia, and Poland. Their quarter was bought by the magistrates of Vienna for the Emperor, and was christened Leopoldstadt. Their synagogue was levelled to the ground. On its site was built a church dedicated to the Emperor’s patron saint; and the glorious event was commemorated by a golden tablet whereon the Jewish house for prayer was described as a “charnel-house.”
The degradation of Israel was now complete. Persecution, cruel and, through all changes, consistent beyond a parallel in history, had at last achieved its demoralising work. The Jews, treated as pariahs throughout Southern and Central Europe, lost all feeling of self-respect. Spurned and dishonoured everywhere, they became day after day more and more worthy of contempt: slovenly in dress and dialect, dead to all sense of beauty or honesty, treacherous, and utterly broken in spirit. “Zeus takes away the half of his manhood from a man, when the day of slavery overtakes him,” says the wise old poet. The Jews now furnished a melancholy proof of the truth of the saying. Among the other gifts of servitude they acquired that of cringing cowardice. So little manliness was left in them that they, who had once astonished Rome with their dogged valour, dared not defend themselves even against the attacks of a street urchin; and the prophet’s terrible prediction was fulfilled: “You shall speak humbly from the ground, and from the dust shall proceed your word.”
The dispersion of the Polish refugees over Europe resulted in the subjugation of Judaism in all countries to the sophistical and soulless teaching of Polish Talmudism. The long-ringleted Rabbis of Poland carried into every country their narrow subtlety and hatred of secular studies, so that at a time when the Middle Age was passing away from Christendom they restored it to Israel.
From the sixteenth century the Jews fell completely under the domination of the Synagogue. Having abandoned all hope of being allowed to participate in the life of the Gentiles, they withdrew more and more severely behind the old moat by which their ancestors had surrounded themselves. Tribalism was their only alternative to utter extinction; and they seized upon it, nothing loth. They grew fanatical, entrusted the education of their children to none but the Polish Rabbis, clung to their bastard Germano-Hebrew jargon (Jüdisch-Deutsch or “Yiddish”), and even in writing a European language they employed the Hebrew characters. The Jewish literature of the period reflects the social and intellectual condition of the race. When it deals not with subjects of Biblical exegesis, it consists of rude popular songs and stories drawn from Talmudic and Cabbalistic sources or from German and Oriental folk-lore. But this Cimmerian darkness contained in it the promise of a dawn. The light of the eighteenth century was sooner or later to penetrate the mists of bigotry and to bring the Jewish Middle Age to an end. For while the Jew shares the general effects which persecution long drawn out inflicts, yet there is in him a power of resiliency which is his own peculiar possession and which saves him from falling permanently into the slough of degradation and disgrace. This power he derives in part from his religion, in part from his history. His religion gives him steadfastness; his history teaches him to hope.