He was succeeded, in 1696, by Frederic Augustus, Elector of Saxony, whose reign was a constant succession of disasters. During his reign, Poland was invaded and conquered by Charles XII. of Sweden. He was succeeded by his son, Frederic Augustus II., the most beautiful, extravagant, luxurious, and licentious monarch of his age. But he was a man of elegant tastes, and he filled Dresden with pictures and works of art, which are still the admiration of travellers. His reign, as king of Poland, was exceedingly disastrous. Muscovite and Prussian armies traversed the plains of Poland at pleasure, and extorted whatever they pleased. Faction was opposed by faction in the field and in the Diet. The national assembly was dissolved by the veto, the laws were disregarded, and brute force prevailed on every side. The miserable peasants in vain besought the protection of their brutal yet powerless lords. Bands of robbers infested the roads, and hunger invaded the cottages. The country rapidly declined in wealth, population, and public spirit.
Under the reign of Stanislaus II., who succeeded Frederic Augustus II., in 1764, the ambassadors of Prussia, Austria, and Russia, informed the miserable king that, in order to prevent further bloodshed, and restore peace to Poland, the three powers had determined to insist upon their claims to some of the provinces of the kingdom. This barefaced and iniquitous scheme for the dismemberment of Poland originated with Frederic the Great. So soon as the close of the Seven Years' War allowed him repose, he turned his eyes to Poland, with a view of seizing one of her richest provinces. Territories inhabited by four million eight hundred thousand people, were divided between Frederic, Maria Theresa, and Catharine II. There were no scruples of conscience in the breast of Frederic, or of Catharine, a woman of masculine energy, but disgraceful morals. The conscience of Maria Theresa, however, long resisted. "The fear of hell," said she, "restrains me from seizing another's possessions;" but sophistry was brought to bear upon her mind, and the lust of dominion asserted its powerful sway. This crime was regarded with detestation by the other powers of Europe; but they were too much occupied with their own troubles to interfere, except by expostulation. England was disturbed by difficulties in the colonies, and France was distracted by revolutionary tumults.
Stanislaus, robbed of one third of his dominions, now directed his attention to those reforms which had been so long imperatively needed. He intrusted to the celebrated Zamoyski the task of revising the constitution. The patriotic chancellor recommended the abolition of the The Liberum Veto. "liberum veto," a fatal privilege, by which any one of the armed equestrians, who assembled on the plain of Praga to elect a king, or deliberate on state affairs, had power to nullify the most important acts, and even to dissolve the assembly. A single word, pronounced in the vehemence of domestic strife, or by the influence of external corruption, could plunge the nation into a lethargic sleep. And faction went so far as often to lead to the dissolution of the assembly. The treasury, the army, the civil authority then fell into a state of anarchy. Zamoyski also recommended the emancipation of serfs, the encouragement of commerce, the elevation of the trading classes, and the abolition of the fatal custom of electing a king. But the Polish nobles, infatuated and doomed, opposed these wholesome reforms. They even had the madness to invoke the aid of the Empress Catharine to protect them in their ancient privileges. She sent an army into Poland, and great disturbances resulted.
Too late, at last, the nobles perceived their folly, and adopted some of the proposed reforms. But these reforms gave a new pretence to the allied powers for a second dismemberment. The Fall of Poland. An army of one hundred thousand men invaded Poland, to effect a new partition. The unhappy country, without fortified towns or mountains, abandoned by all the world, distracted by divisions, and destitute of fortresses and military stores, was crushed by the power of gigantic enemies. There were patriotism and bravery left, but no union or organized strength. The patriots made a desperate struggle under Kosciusko, a Lithuanian noble, but were forced to yield to inevitable necessity. Warsaw for a time held out against fifty thousand men; but the Polish hero was defeated in a decisive engagement, and unfortunately taken prisoner. His countrymen still rallied, and another bloody battle was fought at Praga, opposite Warsaw, on the other side of the Vistula, and ten thousand were slain; Praga was reduced to a heap of ruins; and twelve thousand citizens were slaughtered in cold blood. Warsaw soon after surrendered, Stanislaus was sent as a captive to Russia, and the final partition of the kingdom was made.
"Sarmatia fell," but not "unwept," or "without a crime." "She fell," says Alison, "a victim of her own dissensions, of the chimera of equality falsely pursued, and the rigor of aristocracy unceasingly maintained. The eldest born of the European family was the first to perish, because she had thwarted all the ends of the social union; because she united the turbulence of democratic to the exclusion of aristocratic societies; because she had the vacillation of a republic without its energy, and the oppression of a monarchy without its stability. The Poles obstinately refused to march with other nations in the only road to civilization; they had valor, but it could not enforce obedience to the laws; it could not preserve domestic tranquillity; it could not restrain the violence of petty feuds and intestine commotions; it could not preserve the proud nobles from unbounded dissipation and corruption; it could not prevent foreign powers from interfering in the affairs of the kingdom; it could not dissolve the union of these powers with discontented parties at home; it could not inspire the slowly-moving machine of government with vigor, when the humblest partisan, corrupted with foreign money, could arrest it with a word; it could not avert the entrance of foreign armies to support the factious and rebellious; it could not uphold, in a divided country, the national independence against the combined effects of foreign and domestic treason; finally, it could not effect impossibilities, nor turn aside the destroying sword which had so long impended over it."
But this great crime was attended with retribution. Prussia, in her efforts to destroy Poland, paralyzed her armies on the Rhine. Suwarrow entered Warsaw when its spires were reddened by the fires of Praga; but the sack of the fallen capital was forgotten in the conflagration of Moscow. The remains of the soldiers of Kosciusko sought a refuge in republican France, and served with distinction, in the armies of Napoleon, against the powers that had dismembered their country.
The ruin of Poland, as an independent state, was not fully accomplished until the year 1832, when it was incorporated into the great empire of Russia. But the history of the late revolution, with all its melancholy results, cannot be well presented in this connection.
References.—Fletcher's History of Poland. Rulhière's Histoire de l'Anarchie de Pologne. Coyer's Vie de Sobieski. Parthenay's History of Augustus II. Hordynski's History of the late Polish Revolution. Also see Lives of Frederic II., Maria Theresa, and Catharine II.; contemporaneous histories of Prussia, Russia, and Austria; Alison's History of Europe; Smyth's Lectures; Russell's Modern Europe; Heeren's Modern History.[(Back to Contents)]