No adequate reason has yet been given for that blind delusion which prevented the powerful allies, in 1855, or Napoleon I., in 1812, from using against Russia the only power which she could not control, to recall Poland to that national existence which was her sacred right; and which, at the same time, was the only efficient guarantee for the independence and security of Europe.
Made desperate by this thwarted expectation, Poland suffered herself, in 1863, to be drawn into that strenuous but unfortunate effort whose miserable consequences are in the memories of all. Count Zamoyski, now suffering with age and infirmities, made one last attempt to prevail on England to unite in some kind of action with France, and not to stand by in silence at those massacres and outrages which Russia perpetrated with such impunity, a mockery to the civilization of the nineteenth century. He failed, and this was his last attempt.
He died, leaving Europe more than ever exposed to perils he had warned her against, more than ever recklessly serving the Muscovite power.
He died, seeing Russia supremely powerful in the East, and free to put the seal on all the bloody hypocrisies of her history: here, making the world resound with her solicitude for the civil and religious liberty of the Cretans, while she crushed out with her unholy foot the last palpitations of Polish freedom, and extirpated, with infernal perfidy, the last vestiges of Polish Catholic faith: there, instigating against regenerated Austria a formidable conspiracy of her Sclavic subjects, while the highways and mines of Siberia are strewn with the skeletons of heroic Poles, whose only crime was to spurn the yoke of those Russians who are a hundred-fold less truly Sclavic than their victims.
The history of Count Ladislas Zamoyski is, then, a sad one; it is the story of a life-long shipwreck.
All his designs were frustrated, all his hopes deceived. Always hastening from disappointment to disappointment, from defeat to defeat, he wearied never, paused never, was successful never.
Deeming no sacrifice too great, and no detail too minute for the service of his country, he was prompt to avail himself of any circumstance or encounter any new risk which might gain for her a friend, remove an error, or stimulate in her behalf the indifferent. Self-armed against disasters, he raised himself from each defeat with the tenacity of an old Roman on the battle-field, where he had been once overthrown, to fall again, wounded and crushed down by an implacable adversity.
It would seem as if so many trials, mental and material, public and private, might suffice to fill that measure of suffering which is the lot of all below. But no! he had still to endure those which would appear more fittingly the portion of the idle and prosperous.
Crippled with wounds and infirmities, the last ten years of his life were passed in physical sufferings which made them one prolonged torture. He endured, during all this time, the prolonged weariness, the distastes, the feebleness of failing health; and he supported them with the same imperturbable patience, the same tranquil and unconquerable courage, which had sustained him through the sad vicissitudes of his public life.