' 3 1924 082 470 273 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924082470273 THE POLISH CAPTIVITY. lOHDON : FEINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDER, AMGEL COUET, SKINNEK STHEET. '/7^Z^^//yr/z/^/^l:y' ^//7y'/U/- Eninaved, hv LIJ Jrfnn Catherine Maria, ThereSfi, Joseph II. Frederic II. THK POLISH CAPTIVITY: AN ACCOUNT OF THE PEESENT POSITION OF THE POLES THE KINGDOM OF EOLAND, AND IN THE POLISH PROVINCES OF AUSTRIA, PRUSSIA, AND RUSSIA. BY SUTHERLAND EDWAEDS. " Poles, we appreciate and admire tlie gi-eatnesB of soul, the sensitiveness and the firmness which distinguish your national character, and which have heen displayed in your efforts to recover the political existence of your countiy, which you love above everything." — Amxakdee I., is 1815. " My grandmother and the King of Prussia, Frederick II., in partitioning Poland, committed a fault. . . The niling Powers will never be able to enjoy these strange acquisitions in peace. The existence of Poland is something natural and in- dispensable. It would be supei'fluous to discuss the means of re-establishing it, for when a thing is natural and indispensable it arrives of itself." — The Aeohduki Fbrbi- KANB 07 Adbtbia, ih 1848. IN TWO VOLUMES.— VOL. I. LONDON: WM H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W. 1863. T/ie RiylU of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved. A ^'D.Cx) ADVEETISEMENT. A PORTION of this work has already appeared in The Times, in the shape of Letters from Warsaw, Cracow, Lemberg, Posen, Kovno, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, and is now reprinted by permission of the Proprietors. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Finis Poloni^ j^ CHAPTER II. TowAEDS Warsaw g CHAPTER III. Whebe is Poland? 04 CHAPTER rV. Oedeb in Warsaw 32 CHAPTER V. Life and Death in Poland 45 CHAPTER VI. Manifestations and Signs g7 CHAPTER VII. The Monuments oe Warsaw 77 CHAPTER VIII. On the RussiFicATioN OF Poland 92 CHAPTER IX. On Dress and oihee Distinctions in Poland . . . 106 Vll CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. PAGK Pboprietors and Peasants l-^G CHAPTER XI. The Last Conquest of Poland 160 CHAPTER XII. FiBM Foundations ......... 18-3 CHAPTER XIII. Effect of Pebsecution on the Poles 207 CHAPTER XIV. Effect of Persecution (continued). — " The Mariyhs " . 218 CHAPTER XV. How Poland Fell 233 CHAPTER XVI. How Poland Fell (continued); — The Elective Sovereignty 258 CHAPTER XVII. The Restoration of Poland, according to Kosciuszko, 1815 ; General Chlopiski, 1830 ; and Count Andrew Zamoyski, 1802 299 APPENDIX I. ExTRiVCTS FROM " A STATEMENT OF FaCTS AND ARGUMENTS ON THE SUBJECT OF PoLAND " 329 APPENDIX II. ViStouNT Palmerston to Lord Heytesbury .... 341 APPENDIX III. Translation from Miskievicz, by Mrs. Eleanob Orlebar . 352 LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS. VOL. L Partition of Poland. Frontispiece. p^ok Obder in Warsaw 30-31 Scene in the Carpathians 38-39 Polish Mountaineers , 82-83 Peasants op Mazovia 106-107 UxiVEKSlTY OF CrACOW 140-141 Vaults of the Cathedral of Cracow .... 200-201 IjElbwel, the Polish Historian 270-271 Cathedral or Cracow 298-299 THE POLISH CAPTIVITY. CHAPTEE I. FINIS POLONIiE. This book is not written in order to prove that what Joseph Lemaistre, probably the greatest Conservative and supporter of order, and, at the same time, one of the greatest admirers of Eussia that ever existed, called "the execrable partition of Poland" was indeed execrable; or, to come to what concerns England in a more direct manner, that Eussia, Austria, and Prussia have all violated the treaties of 1815, first in the most perfidious, and latterly in the most open and cynical manner. Both these points must be touched upon, and espe- cially the latter, even at the risk of telling the reader what he already knows. The author's chief object, however, is to give a plain, matter-of-fact account, from his own personal observation, of VOL. I. B 3 FINIS POLONI.E. Poland as it actuaUy exists, and of the position of tlie Poles, considered both as subjects of the three partitioning Powers and as children of the country partitioned. It is now ninety years since the first dismem- berment of Poland was effected ; and in spite of this and of half-a-dozen subsequent divisions and subdivisions of Polish territory among foreign invaders ; in spite of massacres, confiscations, banishments, and tortures of all kiuds iufiicted on the Poles with the view of destroying their nation- ality, they are more united in feeling, and more thoroughly national at the present moment, than they were in 1772. Poland was believed to be dead, or, at least, reported dead, long since by its murderers, who even went so far as to put " Finis Folonice " into the mouth of the wounded and fainting Kosciuszko.* But dead countries have * Several French newspapers have lately reproduced a letter addressed by Kosciuszko to the Count de Segur (author of La Decade Historique, &c.) in which the following passages occur : — " Ignorance, or bad faith, persists in putting into my mouth the words ' Finis Polonies,' which I am said to have pronounced on that fatal day of Macieiovice. In the first place, before the end of the battle, I was all but mortally wounded ; and only recovered my senses two days afterwards, when I found myself in the hands of my enemies. Moreover, if such an expression would be foolish and criminal in the mouth of any Pole, it would be a great deal more so in mine. The Polish nation, in calling upon me to defend the country's integrity, independence, dignity, glory, and liberty, kne\y very POLONIA REDIVIVA. 3 no Hstory; and we all know whether that of Poland finished with the third partition. It is not too much to say, that many persons who take the warmest interest in the fete of the Poles know them only by their history during the last three- quarters of a century; under Kosciuszko, fighting for their independence; under Kniazevicz, Dom- browski, and Poniatowski, fighting for Napoleon, with a view to their independence — in Italy, in St, Domingo, in Spain, in the Duchy of Warsaw, and throughout the campaign against Russia, the fixst at Borodino, the last at Leipsic ; under the Generals of 1830, fighting against the armies of Nicholas, the violator of their Constitution ; then in Siberia, and scattered in exile all over Europe. For a time as well that I was not the last Pole, and that with my death, on the field of battle or otherwise, Poland could not and would not end. All the Poles have done since then in the glorious Polish legions, and all they will yet do in the future, to recover their country, must be regarded as proofs that though we, the devoted soldiers of this country, are mortal, Poland is immortal; and no one has a right to say or repeat the outrageous expression, 'Finis Folonice.' What would the French have said if, at the fatal battle of Eosbach in 1757, Marshal Charles de Eohan, Prince of Soubise, had cried out^- ' Finis OallicB,' or if such cruel words had been attributed to him by his biographers-? I shall be obliged to you, then, not to speak of this ' Finis Polonies ' in the new edition of your work ; and I hope that the authority of yom: name will silence all who in future may think of repeating that expres- sion, and of attributing to me a piece of blasphemy, against which I protest with all my soul." B 2 4 FINIS POLONliE. if their country was in the grave, and themselves plunged, certainly, in mortal sadness; but with their national bards, Mi^kiewicz, Bogdan Zaleski, and Krasinski, to give them such consolation as they could receive, and to encourage them with such hopes as have, indeed, never entirely deserted them. Poland has had a literary, quite as much as a military history, since the dismemberments of the eighteenth century; and it could easily be shown that, counting from its supposed death, it has produced more great poets and warriors than Bussia, Prussia, and Austria combined. Is it not remarkable, too, how many of the modern Polish chiefs, worthy successors of So- bieski, have beei; men of cultivated intellect, and often of high literary talent — not Bluchers and Plato ws, but Csesars and Xenophons? Dom- browski (who owed his life at the battle of the Trebbia to a volume of Schiller's History of the TIdrty Years War, which he carried in his breast) occupied himself in his retirement with writing the History of the Polish Legions. Morawski and Goregki, the former a general the latter a colonel in the army of 1830-31, are reckoned among the best poets and fabulists of their time. What have Kosciuszko and Poniatowski, fighting apart, in common with the ordinary run of modern generals ? In Poland, since the moral revival caused by the destruction of the country in a POLONIA EEDIVIVA. 5 political sense, we find poets, historians, politi- cians, men of distinction of all kinds, serving in the army, not because they had been bred soldier s, but because they were born patriots. In another sphere, modern Poland has produced a fair number of legists, economists, and other men of science and learning; indeed, an immense number, when we take into consideration the facts that the universities of Warsaw and Wilna were suppressed, and their libraries carried off to St. Petersburg, after the insurrection of 1830-31; that the university of Cracow, the most ancient in Poland, has long been converted into a Grerman academy ; and that no superior instruction of any kind, in the Polish language, has been open to the Poles of the present generation. Prance owes her system of credit-institutions to a Pole, M. Wolowski, of the French Institute ; and the best work on the resources of Russia is by a Pole, M. Tengoborski. For even when a Polish writer or professor is not driven into exile to avoid death, like Lelewel, the great Polish historian, he can find no use for his talent in his own country. There are no universities, and there is a most in- tolerant censorship. Indeed, in every part of Po- land newspapers and reviews are sometimes either directly suppressed, or mined and destroyed by rcr peated prosecutions, for no assignable reason than because they are published in the Polish language. 6 FINIS POLONI^. and because ttey take notice, no matter in how guarded a manner, of Polish events. It is sometimes said by thoughtless persons that the Pohsh leaders are fit only to head insurrections, and that they do not know how to act within the Hmits of legality. But look at the line of conduct pursued, and the real influence exercised by Dr. Smolka at Vienna, and by Messrs. Niegolewski and Bentkowski at Berlin, in the Austrian and Prussian assemblies. Think, above aU, of Count Zamoyski at Warsaw, and of what the short-lived Agricul- tural Society of the Kingdom of Poland was able, in the face of obstacles of all kinds, to effect — nothing less than the elaboration of a scheme for emancipating the peasant from task-labour, which, the Eussian Government, now that it finds its own plan next to impracticable, would do well to adopt for the Empire generally. No ! there is life in Poland, and a life that grows fuller each day. Everything has been tried that could possibly extinguish it. Perhaps, at last, the most formidable of the partitioning Powers will admit its indestructibility, and find it good policy to reckon with it. At present, however, the Poles are persecuted and beaten down everywhere. Heaven knows whether they suffer most in Eus- sian, Austrian, or Prussian Poland. I have seen POLONIA REDIVIVA. 7 them under torture in all three, and have heard their complaints. For the present, I will only say- that in Warsaw the Russian tyranny passes for the worst, in Cracow and Leopol the Austrian, and in Posen, the Prussian. CHAPTEE II. TOWARDS WARSAW. The first signs I saw of Poland were at Breslau, tlie capital of Silesia, which, before being an Austrian, was a Polish province, and which, as every one knows, was taken from. Austria by Frederic the Grreat. Breslau is now connected with Warsaw, by rail, and is the ordinary halting-place for Polish travellers to and from the Kingdom. The whole province is completely Grermanized, in so far that the immense majority of the population is Grerman; but no receipt has yet been discovered for turning a Pole into an Austrian or a Prussian, and those who were Poles, and whose fathers and grandfathers were Poles, are Poles still. "Wher- ever Grermans and Poles are found together, it is undeniable that there are infinitely more Poles who learn German, than there are Grermans who learn Polish ; and thus, far beyond Breslau, and beyond the Russo-Polish frontier, and half-way to Warsaw, and in Warsaw itself, we find plenty of Poles speak- ing German fluently, whereas scarcely any of the BRESLAU. 9 Grermans in Breslau speak Polisli at all. Indeed, Grerman being tlie invariable language of tbe Prus- sian administration — even in Posen, in spite of treaties wliicb bind Prussia to govern her Polish subjects as Poles — it follows that a man meaning to live in any part of Prussia must understand German, or be prepared to submit to many incon- veniences and disadvantages. On the other hand, there is no part of Poland in which it is not a positive recommendation, in the eyes of the govern- ing Power, to be ignorant of Polish. In Silesia there is no injustice, in the present day, in making Grerman the ofl&cial and educational language in all the towns. In many of the country districts, however, the case is very different. The Grerman peasants are prosperous and contented enough. But the Polish peasants of Lower Silesia, who are still Poles and speak the Polish language, and that only, are in a miserable position. Por them there are no schools. They have no inter- course with their superiors. They feel as much that they are subjected to a foreign Grovemment as the Poles of Posen, and with this additional disad- vantage — that they have to deal exclusively with Grerman proprietors. They form a class apart, and though nominally not serfs, are treated like slaves. The home of their hearts is still Poland, and in the annual pilgrimages to the Polish religious places, 10 TOWARDS WARSAW. such as Czenstochow and Calvarya, the peasants of Silesia may still be seen in company with those of Poland proper, Lithuania, and the Ukraine. Breslau, however, is a town of many tongues. The shopkeepers proclaim their trades in Grerman, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, French, and occasionally -English; and the day I took my departure for Warsaw, a professor at the University was to main- tain a thesis in the Latin language, and against all comers, de fistula. It is a town, too, of strange costumes and types ; of pike-bearing watchmen, of droschky-drivers in helmets, and of dandified sweeps, with black faces like other sweeps, but also with a romantic bearing, evident pretensions to elegance of attire, and waists Kke wasps or like Prussian officers. There, too, as in Poland, you may see the genuine Israelite dressed, not in cheap imitation of the Christian swell, but in his own Israelitish gaberdine — " His beard a foot before, his hair A. yard behind" — — or, if not behind, in two long ringlets, one on each side. Even in Breslau, there were reminders both of the brutal persecution of the Poles by the Eussians, and of the persecution of a more legal kind (at least as regards form) carried on against them by Prussia. In the shop-windows were engravings of the BRESLAU. 11 bloody scenes that bad. just been enacted in "Warsaw. At the table d'hote of tbe Hotel of tbe " Golden Goose," tbe Polisb gentlemen wore tbeir national costame, proscribed by tbe Eussians, and tbe brigbt-eyed, soft-complexioned Polisb ladies were dressed in tbe deepest mourning, and bad little crosses of black jet banging round tbeir necks, and portraits of Kosciuszko in tbeir broocbes. Polisb newspapers from Cracow, wbere everyone bas a rigbt to say as mucb as be pleases against tbe Russian Government, and indeed any Government except tbat of Austria, were banded about and eagerly caugbt up. Tben a Pole came in, wbo bad just arrived from Warsaw, and wbo brougbt witb bim tbe gbastly pbotograpbs of tbe first victims of tbe Eussian soldiery in tbe late disturbances ; tbe five men wbo were sbot in tbe massacre of tbe 27tb February, and wbo were balf-stripped, and pboto- grapbed witb tbeir wounds and tbeir borribly dis- torted faces, soon after tbey fell. Tbe day of tbe funeral, wben all Warsaw was bung witb black, and everyone in tbe city followed tbe procession, tbese terrible mementoes were distributed by thousands. Por a long time afterwards — ^perhaps even now, tbougb I bave read tbat tbe pbotograpber was afterwards imprisoned — they could be purchased almost publicly in Warsaw, and I found them in every bouse that I visited in Eussian, Austrian, and Prussian Poland. 12 TOWARDS WARSAW. At the confectioners' shops, the only news- rooms to be met with from Berlin to Moscow, I found the Poles complaining of the seizure of the last number of the Posen newspaper, the Djiennik Poznanski. Perfect liberty of the press exists everywhere in Prussia, and especially in the Grand Duchy of Posen. "But there are certain administrative difficulties in the way of publishing a newspaper in the Polish language ; and the one Polish newspaper which has contrived to force its way into existence at Posen is perpetually inter- fered with and checked by the police, on pretexts which are doubtless well-meant, but which some- how or other have invariably to be overruled when they come to be examined by the light of the law. Liberty of the press triumphs in the end, but in the meanwhile Polish editors get arrested rather often, and editions of their journals rather often get confiscated. This course of proceeding does not alter the fact that liberty of the press is recog- nized as a principle by the Prussian law ; only it is hoped that the law can be so applied as to have the effect of silencing and destroying the Djiennik Poznanski. From Breslau to Warsaw, by rail, is a good day's journey. But what a journey, if you divide it and stop the night at Sosnovicz, the first station beyond the Prussian frontier ! The Russians, for the sake of their Grovernment, and Ihe Poles for SOSNOVICZ. 13 the credit of their country, ought to unite for once and subscribe a few copecks and groszy, so as to enable the inn-keeper of the place to offer a decent room to the traveller, condemned by an iU-regulated time-table to remain there from nine in the evening until half-past six the nest morn- ing. It would be absurd to ask for a weU-fur- nished chamber, and unreasonable to expect such ordinary accommodation as may be met with in the cottage of many an English peasant; but there might be blinds to the windows, and there might be beds long enough for a man of moderate stature, and warranted not to break down if laid upon. On the beds there might be clean bed-clothes ; and in case the astronomical arrangements of the night should not allow the traveller to go to bed by the light of the moon, some waxen or stearine substitutes might be pro- vided for the feeble torches of ill-smelling tallow with which the savage host of Sosnovicz at present supplies his faint and weary guests. It is ridiculous for travellers who go out of beaten tracks to complain of want of accommoda- tion at hotels. But on the high road from Breslau to Warsaw, one cannot help fancying that the half- way house ought to be something better than a pig- stye, furnished in very bad imitation of a human dwelling-place. INever mind the food ; there are plenty of fowls running about the Sosnovicz cara- 14 TOWARDS WARSAW. vanserai, and you can get new-laid eggs. Besides, black bread alone, if it will not satisfy, will, at least, tire the appetite. And you can haye a glass of very weak tea at Sosnovicz for sixpence ; and after wasting out the glass with the first tea, you can get another supply stronger, and proportion- ately nastier, but which seems, at first, to have a better effect on the nerves, for sixpence, and some- thing extra. You cannot get milk at Sosnovicz, because there are no cows there, but they wiU give you some kind of rum to mix with your tea, which, if it does not greatly improve the taste, at least changes it. The great crime of the host of Sos- novicz consists in his giving, not too little, but too much. Why, for instance, put dirty bedclothes on a bedstead, when a bedstead alone would be so infinitely preferable ? Is it to deter people from going to bed, so as to save trouble to the chamber- maid ? The notion is ingenious ; but if " Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell," I wonder what Cleanliness does when a traveller in a Polish inn, after carefully covering the bed with railway wrappers and great coats, lies down in his clothes on the bedstead, dislocates it in every joint, and brings it down with him into the dirt, which covers the floor so thickly, that mustard and cress might grow in it ? " So this is Poland," one reflects, after rising from the floor and taking a seat at the window, which FIRST IMPRESSIONS NOT THE BEST. 15 commands a view of a magnificent wood. The Bed- less guest stares at the admirable moon-illuminated pine-trees, the shadows of which fall upon the outer walls of the caravanserai. The moon stares into the curtainless room, lights up the remains of the bedstead, and casts a melancholy gleam over a little heap of dirt (it might be larger were the housemaid more industrious) which has been swept into one of the corners, and left there, as much as to say, " There is an end at least of that job." The traveller wonders whether there are any wolves in the forest, and says to himself that if they are half as ferocious as certain smaller animals which infest the room, it would not be desirable to en- counter them. No : this is only a part of Poland. Still it is part of it, as a dirty finger-nail is part of a man's hand, a dirty hand part of a man's body. If first impressions were everything, what an idea one would have of Poland from Sosnovicz ! Unfortu- nately (as I afterwards found out) precisely the same idea that one would form of it from making its acquaintance at GrraniQa, the frontier village between the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish dominions of Austria; or at Kovno, the frontier town between Prussia and Lithuania. Poland is certainly not careful about her extremities. Eng- land, France, and Grermany, all keep their hands 16 TOWARDS WARSAW. and feet in a much more becoming state. Nor in a journey along the borders of Hungary, nor even in Eussia, did I ever see anything to equal in un- cleanhness the uncleanliness of Kovno, nor, above all, of Sosnovicz, The two Sosnovicz servants are worthy of the inn. The inn is " worthy of them both." The chambermaid is without shoes or stockings. She does not, can not change the sheets, but she is ready to bring clean towels if ordered to do so in Little Russian or Euthenian, and it is quite grati- fying to hear her abuse the proprietor in the lan- guage of the "Ukraine for his various short-comings and crimes of inhospitality. The " boots " is bootless. He kisses the travel- ler's hand at night, and in the morning proves his zeal by waking him from his chair, or from his tumble-down couch, at four o'clock, that he may catch the train at half-past six. He commences boot-cleaning in the bedroom, and, when ejected by force, commences the operation immediately outside the door. He uses no blacking, properly so-called, but what he does apply, he carries in his salivary glands. There is no trouble in getting the bill in the morning. It is not heavy, compared with the charges at the best hotels on the Continent. The use of the room with the broken bed is put FAREWELL TO SOSNOVICZ. 17 down at a sum equivalent to one thaler. The youthful boots embraces the traveller's knees by way of a hint that attendance is not included. The poor little chambermaid bows her head, seizes the traveller's hand, and bears it affectionately to her lips. The feet of these domestics are muddy, and, as there are no carpets, or rugs, or mats, or even scrapers about the place (though scrapers would certainly not be nice things for persons without shoes or stockings to use), they bring a great deal of wet mould with them out of the court-yard into the rooms. But they are not wdthout heart, and they respond to a small gra- tuity by reviling the proprietor in the most obHging manner. The proprietor appears in person, at the last moment, to receive the ironical thanks of the guest for the inattention that has been shown him. He is disposed of, however, by his own servants, who tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself, and so on, and who have so little fear of him, that it is evident he gives them no wages. Can the general civilization of a country be judged of by its inns ? I hope not, for the sake of Poland. But, in any case, it must be remembered that Polish civilization has been in some respects checked, in others greatly thrown back (especially among the poorer classes) by the Partitions and by the wars, confiscations, and educational and com- VOL. I. c 18 TOWARDS WARSAW. mercial restrictions wliicli were their natural con- sequences. By the accounts of aU travellers, the lower orders in Poland were in a miserable position at the period of the first dismemberment, but the Constitution of 1791 provided for the gradual emancipation of the peasantry, and, by conferring representative rights on citizens and traders, en- couraged the formation of a respectable middle class. The Poland of 1791 was, in a political sense, at least half a century before either of the States which united to invade and destroy it ; and since the ruin of their country the Poles have had to go back and wait for the very slow development of Prussia, Austria, and Eussia. Even now, in Prussia and Austria, they can only profit by the advantages of constitutional government by forsaking their ancient national culture and becoming Grermans. Of the efiect of political institutions, and espe- cially of such an institution as serfdom, on the condition of a population, some notion may be formed by comparing the Polish peasants of Prussia and Austria, where serfdom no longer exists, with those of Eussia, where, in the kingdom, the task- work system is only now being discontinued ; and where, in the Polish provinces forjning part of the Eussian Empire, the position of the pea- sant, until the recent edict of emancipation appeared, was almost that of a slave. The Polish peasant of Prussia is decidedly the highest, as POLISH PEASANTS, 19 the Polish peasant of Eussia is decidedly the lowest, in the scale of civilization. The country between Sosnovicz and Warsaw is as dull as it is flat. It is less woody than the immense tract of wilderness between Moscow and St. Petersburg, along which it used to be said that a squirrel could leap from tree to tree without once touching the ground. But the forests one passes are far more interesting than the fields, cultivated by peasants so miserable that it is impossible to wonder at their laziness, and so lazy that they could not well be otherwise than wretched. I am not going to generalize on the subject of agri- culture in Poland from what I saw of it during a day's railway travelling through the country, but I affirm that from half-past six in the morning to five in the afternoon all the labourers I passed were ragged and dirty ; that at least four-fifths of them were lying down on the ground ; that not one in ten was doing any work ; and that the few who seemed to be seriously occupied were employed on the railway. The contrast between the appearance of the Prussian and that of the Polish peasant is most striking. Glradually, as you proceed eastward, the labourer seems to sink lower and lower, and in Poland Proper he appears, indeed, in a most pitiable condition. Afterwards, in the immediate neighbourhood of "Warsaw, I saw plenty of well-clad, prosperous- c 2 20 TOWARDS WARSAW. looking peasants, and I was assured that those whose appearance and attitude on the ground had struck me as expressing the last degree of wretch- edness and laziness were abstaining from labour on high political grounds and by reason of the new law which changed their system of tenures and required them to substitute money payments for task-work. All the Polish proprietors had de- clared that it would be impossible to make them pay rent for their land in hard cash, and the Agri- cultural Society had recommended that their farms should be made over to them in freehold, the pro- prietors receiving an indemnification from the Grovernment in biUs bearing interest, for the pay- ment of which it was proposed to levy a land-tax. The Grovernment, however, through a committee of bureaucrats, had prepared its own measure, which dissatisfied peasants and proprietors alike, and which will yet have to be modified. Could the Government possibly have been jealous of the Agricultural Association, which, in pre- paring a simple and perfectly satisfactory solution of the peasant question, proved that it was fit for the exercise of legislative functions, and gave the lie to those who maintain that the Poles are a frivolous and thoughtless race, because they do not display the patience of the ass under gross ill-usage? It is probable enough that such was the case. POIilSH LEVITY. 21 The ordinary Prussian is a reasonable being. He treats with a species of reverence every one ■who wears a Government uniform. He wiU allow himself to be run through the body by an ofl&cer whom he has or has not provoked, and other Prussians wOl look on with wonder at the Prussian who has presumed to place himself in such a position that it was necessary for an ofi&cer to take the trouble to run him through. If a bill is proposed in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies for placing soldiers and civilians on an equality before the law, the bill is forthwith rejected. In a word, the Prussians are quiet and reasonable, and know the obedience they owe to the corporals and sergeants who govern them. Look at the Russians again. In the early part of the last century, a Pussiau nobleman would take a beating from his Emperor (the great Frederick William, too, occasionally caned his courtiers). Eussian noblemen, even under the most liberal sovereign that Eussia has ever known, have been arrested without accusation, and tem- porarily exiled without trial, though it is fair to add that there have been but few such instances during the reign of Alexander II. The Poles, however, have never shown that sort of reasonableness which consists in accepting any amount of tyranny and injustice, against which it may be inconvenient and dangerous to protest. 22 TOWARDS WAUSAW. Before condemmng them for their folly in tliis respect, some allowances ought to be made for their position, their education, their traditions, and their descent. It is not given to every one to bear blows and insults meekly, and, to do so, one must have been brought up specially for it, as for other things. Now, the Prussians have been accustomed more or less to stick-law, ever since the estabhshment of the HohenzoUerns in Bran- denburgh. The Eussians owe that powerful in- strument of government, the knout, to the Tartars, and have brought up generation after generation under its kindly shadow. But the Poles have never yet for thirty years consecutively put up with the regime of the knout and the stick without pro- testing against it and sealing their protest with their blood. It is difficult to accustom them to it ; for these Poles, of whom some hundred thousand have been sent to Siberia since the first partition of their native land, and of whom upwards of fifteen thousand — a tenth part of the entire population — were imprisoned in Warsaw during the first six months of the present year;* these Poles are the sons of the men who voted for the Con- stitution of the 3rd of May, and who fought under Kosciuszko; they are the great-grandsons of the men who fought, not as conscripts, but as * See the report of the municipal officers of "Warsaw, pub- lished in the London newspapers early in August, 1863. POLISH LEVITY. 23 volunteers, under Sobieski, and saved Vienna and the west of Europe from a Turkish invasion. If the Poles are not reasonable, it will at least appear to Englishmen that there is something na- tural in their conduct. Dr. Johnson told Boswell one day that he had just- passed a fishmonger who was skinning eels, and who " cursed them because they would not lie still ; " and he men- tioned this as a " remarkable instance of heartless brutality." If we cannot assist Poland in her dis- tress, let us at least admit her right to complain and protest as best she can ; and let us not sympa- thize for one moment with her tormentors, who curse her because she will not lie still. CHAPTEE III. WHERE IS POLAND ? " Ou done est la Polagne ? " said poor Madame Dubarry, hearing lier royal lover and his ministers speak of the first partition as something not quite to be approved of. I ask the same question now, with a strong impression that many of my country- men cannot answer me precisely, and with the knowledge that Eassians, Prussians, and Austrians wiU all give different replies. Diplomatically speaking, and by the treaties of 1815, through which the partition received for the first time the sanction of Europe, " Poland " is sim- ply the little " kingdom " of that name, which the Congress of Vienna placed under Russian sove- reignty on the express condition that it shotdd be governed constitutionally. This " kingdom," con- taining nearly five millions* of inhabitants, is a diminution of the Duchy of Warsaw, formed by Napoleon out of the Polish provinces wrested from * See the report addressed by Col. Staunton, Consul-General at Warsaw, to the Foreign OflSce (1862). DISJECTA MEMBEA. 25 Prussia after the battle of Friedland, in 1807, and from Austria after tlie successful campaign of Prince Poniatowski in 1809. Eussia, with the consent of Napoleon, had gained an additional portion of Pohsh territory, in 1807, at the expense of Prussia, and, in 1809, at the expense of Austria : in the former instance the district of Bialystock, in Lithuania ; in the latter a portion of Eastern Gralicia. In 1815, when the sixth division of Polish terri- tory took place, the Duchy of Warsaw was dis- membered, as the ancient kingdom of Poland had been dismembered before. Posen was given back to Prussia ; Western Gralicia, with the exception of Cracow, was given back to Austria ; Cracow was proclaimed a free city; while Eussia, besides retaining all the provinces of which she had obtained possession at the first, second, and third partitions — besides Bialystock, which she had acquired from Prussia at what may be called the fourth partition — was allowed to unite to her Empire the, whole of the remaining portion of the Duchy of Warsaw. All that Eussia lost by the arrange- ment of 1815 was the little district in Eastern Galicia, which Austria had been forced to cede in 1809 (the fifth partition), and which was now given back to her. What she gained was nearly the whole of that portion of Polish territory, with Warsaw for its capital, which, from the three par- 26 WHERE IS POLAND ? titions of the eighteenth century, nntil 1807 had belonged, by right of theft, to Prussia. For fifteen years, the " Kingdom of Poland " (as the remnant of the Duchy of Warsaw placed under Eussian sovereignty was and is entitled,) was go- verned more or less in accordance with constitutional forms, though the constitution by which it was declared, in the language of the treaties of the 3rd of May and of the 9th June, 1815, to be "linked to Eussia," was often violated. After the insur- rection of 1830, the Emperor Nicholas abohshed the constitution, and pretended to replace it by an "Organic Statute," which was pub- lished, but never put in action. The Eingdom of Poland was made a Eussian province, in which the rights of the Polish inhabitants were less respected than the treaties of Vienna intended they should be, even in those Polish provinces which formed no part of the Kingdom, but which had been seized upon by Eussia at the first, second, third, and fourth partitions.* But though the Kingdom of Poland is the only portion of Polish territory which stiU preserves its ancient name, the European Powers who signed the treaties of Vienna have a right, if they choose * The i-eader will remember that the fourth partition took place when Napoleon formed the Duchy of Warsaw out of Prussian-Polish territoi7, and gave the district of Bialystockto Russia. RUSSIAN SYMPATHY EOE POLAND. 27 to exercise it, to demand that the inhabitants of those Polish provinces which have been in- corporated with the dominions of Eussia, Austria, and Prussia be governed as Poles, and be allowed to enjoy representative and national institutions. The country inhabited by the Poles so cared-for in these treaties is Polish, just as much as Venetia is Italian. A few months ago, I met with a paragraph in several English newspapers, which, under the head of " Russian Sympathy for Poland," set forth that the population of the " Eussian " province of Wi- tepsk had taken to wearing Polish colours and emblems, and that they had been ordered by the Grovernment to discontinue the practice under severe penalties. It seems less astonishing that the people of Witepsk should proclaim themselves Poles when one remembers that that province formed part of ancient Poland, and was only annexed to the Eussian Empire by force at the first partition. But the Eussians speak now of all Polish territory belonging to Eussia and not included in the little Kingdom of Poland as absolutely Eussian ; that is to say, not merely Eussian by its political mis- fortunes, but also by its population, its traditions, and its national sentiment. History apart, facts are every day presenting themselves which prove this view to be false and absurd (as when, quite re- cently, it was found necessary to declare all the 28 -WHERE IS POLAND ? Polisli provinces incorporated with. Eussia in a state of siege) ; but the Eussian G-overnment en- deavours, in its own peculiar way, to persuade itself and its Polish subjects in the incorporated territory that they are Eussians nevertheless. It forbids them to use their own language, and punishes them for wearing Polish dresses and even for calling themselves Poles. If you ask a Eussian where Poland is, he will say, " In the Kingdom, in Posen, in Cracow and the surrounding territory, but not in the provinces detached from Poland and united to the Eussian Empire prior to 1815." The Prussian G-overnment maintains, on its side, through speakers in the Chamber of Deputies and through pamphleteers, that there are no Poles in the Duchy of Posen, but only Prussians who happen to speak the Polish language. This lan- guage, by the way, is not spoken in the public offices of Posen ; and in the public schools it is only tolerated in the lower classes. Thus, Prussian Poles have no " national institutions," though they have a representation in the Prussian Chamber, where the debates are of course carried on in German. If you ask a Prussian where Poland is, he will say, "In the Kingdom, in Gralicia, in the Polish provinces incorporated with Eussia, but not in Posen, which is part of Prussia." AUSTRIAN CANDOUR. 29 The Austrian Grovernment appears to have no false theories on the subject of Poland. It con- tents itself with wronging its Polish subjects practically, but without hypocrisy. It does not pretend that Cracow belongs naturally to Austria, as the Eussian Grovernment pretends that Wilna belongs naturally to Russia. It does not maintain that the birth-place of Sobieski is and always has been Austrian, as the Prussians do that the birth- place of Copernicus is Prussian, and the Russians that the native province of Kosciuszko is, and from time immemorial has been, Russian. Austria has endeavoured, by all possible means, to Grermanize her Polish subjects, but she has never denied the fact of their being Poles. She turned the ancient academy of Cracow into a Grerman university, but did not seek to justify the act. She provoked and organized a massacre of Polish proprietors, but it was precisely because they were Poles that she caused them to be murdered. There has been very little deception about Austria's treatment of her Polish subjects. In addition to persecution of the most sanguinary kind, she has systematically defrauded them, but she has defrauded them openly, without pretending in semi-of&cial news- papers and pamphlets that she was acting honestly by them all the time. Austria acknowledges that the country par- titioned by Russia, Prussia, and herself in 1773, 30 VVHHRE IS POLAND? was and is Poland. In the travelling maps of Poland sold in the Austrian dominions, the limits of 1772 are preserved; and though in the ethno- logical charts of the Austrian Empire, the purely Polish and the Polish and Euthenian portions of Gralicia are differently coloured, and though Polish towns in which there is scarcely a German inhabitant are sometimes coloured with the German hue, yet no serious attempt is made to show that any portion of Austrian Poland is Austrian other- wise than in a political sense. In fine, according to Eussia, Warsaw, Cracow, and Posen are Polish ; but not Wilna. According to Prussia, Warsaw, Cracow, and Wilna, are Polish ; but not Posen. According to Austria, Warsaw, Cracow, WUna, and Posen are all Polish, Eussia, Prussia, and Austria are all agreed as to Warsaw being Polish, though, when Warsaw was in the hands of the Prussians (from 1795 until 1806) it was governed as a German city. Let us begin, then, with Warsaw, which happens to have been the first Polish town in which I set foot : Warsaw, the capital both of the old and of the new Kingdom of Poland. Here, at least, we are among Poles. Let us see what sort of life they lead. CHAPTER IV. OEDER IN WARSAW. I ARRIVED in Warsaw about a month, after tLe massacre of April. It was not necessary to have read the newspapers, or to ask the meaning of the buUet-marks wMch might still be seen on the walls of the Sigismund Place, in order to understand that some terrific calamity had fallen upon the city, and that war was going on between the rulers and the ruled. Nevertheless, I had not much trouble with my passport, which simply set forth that I was travel- ling towards Moscow. Every road leads to the Eussian Eome, and I reached my destination four months after leaving Warsaw, via, Cracow, Leo- pol, th.e Carpathian Mountains, Posen, Kovno, and St. Petersburg. Englishmen are notorious for not being conspirators, and after answering a few questions as to how long I was going to stay (a week or two), why I had come to Warsaw at all (to see it), and where I was going to put up (at the Hotel de I'Europe), I was allowed to escape from the crowd of greasy Jews who blocked up all 32 ORDER IN WARSAW. the approaclies to the little passport-office attached to the railway station. I had aheady been in- formed that tickets of residence were not' granted for a longer period than a fortnight, but that they were renewable on personal application, which I found to be a matter very easily arranged, though the formalities to be gone through were a little tedious. Warsaw was now comparatively quiet, though it abounded in signs of the recent agitation. Soldiers were encamped in the open space around the Sigismund monument, and in the large square opposite the Saxony Gardens. Patrols of Cossacks passed continually down the streets ; and at the corners of all the principal thoroughfares poHce- soldiers were stationed. All the barracks seemed crowded, and there was no street or passage with- out some sort of military guard. At the same time, this display of force was rendered as little offensive as possible. The soldiers doing street duty were without wieapons of any kind, and their behaviour, as far as I could judge from my own observation, was perfectly good. Certainly, there was no reason why their demeanour should have been otherwise than peaceable, for they met with no sort of provocation from the inhabitants, who, indeed, for the most part, seemed to make a point of ignoring their existence. Still, as I had seen it stated that acts of brutality were still con- AKMY OF OCCUPATION. 33 stantly committed by the Eussian troops quartered n Warsaw, I may as well mention that, during the few weeks I spent there in May and June, I was in the habit of walking and driving about the city in all directions, and was only struck by the ex- cellent discipline in which the soldiers were kept, and by their generally inoffensive attitude. It was thought, perhaps, that Warsaw had already been suflB.ciently terrorized ; or, perhaps, this was the natural reaction after the violent and sanguinary outburst of the 8th of April, which had excited the indignation of all Europe. Be that as it may, the military occupation of the Polish capital, though doubtless effective enough, looked to me far more like a measure of precaution than of intimidation. It is not much, perhaps, to say in favour of soldiers holding a defenceless city, that they do not insult the townspeople, but, as far as it goes, it is to their credit. Unfortunately, the restraint under which the Eussian soldiers were kept for a time, was not maintained very long; and we know that in the autumn, when the state of siege had been declared, they behaved with the greatest brutality in the churches and in the streets.* * See Lord Carnarvon's speech in the House of Lords, April, 1862 ; and Mr. Mitchell's Letter to Lord John Bussell, giving an account of the attack made upon Mr. Mitchell by a party of Cossacks in Warsaw. VOL. I. I> 34 ORDER IN WARSAW. From what I had heard of the Eussianizing system pursued in the Kingdom of Poland, I was surprised to find that Polish was the language of the puhlic offices in Warsaw almost as much as of every-day life ; and that in more than one ofl&ce it was difiELcult to find a clerk who understood Eus- sian. My ticket of residence, given by the pass- port authorities, was in the national tongue ; so also was the visa obtained at the head- quarters of the police; so also was a paper, acknowledging the receipt of some books which, before being de- livered up to me, had to be submitted to the censor. At the post-office, Eussian seemed to be an unknown language. The inscriptions on the Grovernment buildings are usually in Eussian and Polish ; sometimes in Polish alone, but never in Eussian alone. In the official journal, Eussian and Polish are used side by side as a rule ; but, occasionally, notifications and advertisements are printed in Polish only. I believe that, in theory, the Eussian currency was substituted for the Polish long ago by the Em- peror Nicholas; but, in practice, Polish coin and notes circulate everywhere, and the shopkeepers all state their charges in the ancient money of the country — though they willingly accept, at a just equivalent, Eussian, Prussian, Austrian, or any other ready cash. AH the ladies were in the deepest mourning. POLISH LADIES. 35 Even when the sun was scorchingly hot, if, by the rarest chance, any white or light-coloured dress was ieen, all eyes were turned upon the wearer. As For the Eussian ladies, the wives and sisters of the officers quartered in Warsaw, they had, for the most part, left the city, having either gone on to [Cracow, or some of the German watering-places, 3r gone back to what the Poles call " Muscovy." I occasionally meet with exaggerations in con- aection with Polish afiairs (exaggerations most injurious to the Poles, for all that they require in order to insure sympathy is to have their case fairly stated), but certainly no one has ever exag- gerated the grace and beauty of the Polish women. They have given numberless proofs of patriotism j and many of them, with aU their delicacy of organization, have not shrunk from encountering great personal dangers for the sake of their country. But whatever noble qualities they may possess, they would probably not have the in- fluence which they actually exercise over their countrymen, if Providence had not also bestowed on them, in a remarkable degree, the gift of beauty. Many of the Polish women are very like our English women of the slender, delicate type, but with paler complexions, and brighter, and generally darker, eyes. I thought it was impossible :o see finer and more varied expression than their D 2 36 ORDEE IN WARSAW. faces exhibited ; for I saw them at a time when their enthusiasm, their indignation, their sorrow, and all their religious feeling were awakened. I had read, in some book, that they were frivolous and changeable; but they have been constant enough to Poland, and dull persons will always mistake animation, quickness of perception, and a light manner of treating light subjects, for frivohty. In every civilized country, women give the tone to society, and this is particularly the case ia Poland, where social gatherings are far more fre- quent than with us, and where there are no enter- tainments, no pleasure-parties of any kind, at which women are not present. If, however, the Polish ladies cared only for pleasure, instead of placing patriotism above aU other considerations; if the balls and bribes ojEered to them and to their husbands, could make them forget their suffering country ; then the Eussians would certainly by this time have made some progress in the way of gain- ing adherents among the Polish families of the Kingdom, whereas, as it is, they have not ad- vanced a step. The Polish mothers bring up the young Poles as patriots, and the Polish wives ex- clude from society all whose patriotism is even doubtful. That is to say, the women in Poland do their duty like the men, and nurture the Polish spirit, POLISH LADIES. 87 and keep up the Polish, traditions, which the men, according to their opportunities, have to iefend. "In the Middle Ages," says Mi^tievicz, "the vrife prayed in her oratory for her husband while fighting on the field of battle : she was sure that ber prayers bore succour to her husband This is still the case in Poland, where the wife joins conspiracies, accompanies her husband to Siberia, and sometimes mounts on horseback to defend the country." * The tacit agreement by which the women of Poland undertook, a year and a-half ago, not to dance, and kept, and still keep, that promise in all parts of the ancient kingdom, may appear to some persons not to have been a very important resolve. In itself, however, it was, at least, as great a sacrifice as total abstention from wine would be on the part of many Englishmen. The Polish women have a passion for danciag, and no women dance so well. The Poles have invented, or rather, let us say, the rhythmical genius of the Polish people has produced, three dances and three forms of dance-music (the Mazurka, the Polonaise, and" the Cracovienne), which have been adopted or imitated by every modem composer ; but a great calamity having fallen upon them, they sat down and wept, put on sackcloth and ashes, and refused * Corns de Ldtterature Slave, vol. v. p. 250. 38 ORDEE. IN WARSAW. to dance their national dances " in a strange land." There were other Polish inventions, such as Lancers and Hussars, to which many of the Poles would willingly have had recourse, but that was impossible and not to be dreamt of. Of course, the Poles never thought that giving up dancing would " lead to anything," as the phrase is ; nor did the Hebrews think that by hanging up their harps they would free themselves from the Babylonians. Nor do sons and daughters who go into mourning imagine that wearing crape will bring back a dead parent. These testimonies of sorrow on the part of the inhabitants of all Poland proceeded from emotion, not from calcula- tion. The effect was not thought of. A spon- taneous expression of grief and pain was called forth throughout the length and breadth of the land, by the blow which had been struck at Warsaw. The Poles had no thought of impressing either foreign nations or their own foreign Grovernment, though their unanimity of feeling did impress all Europe. I am convinced that even the singing of the na- tional prayer was not intended, in the first instance, as a " demonstration." I have often heard it sung in places where it might be thought there was no one to hear it but the Poles themselves and the Heavenly Protector to whom it is addressed; at night, in a deserted bye-street of Cracow ; in front of a convent ; in a distant THE POLISH HYMN. 39 village ; in a dmrch. almost too small to be taken notice of by the administrative autborities ; and, far away from eitber cbnrcb or convent, in the solitudes of tbe Carpathian mountains. But tbe Eussians heard tbe hymn in Warsaw, Wibia, and elsewhere, and knew its ultimate meaning. So, also, did tbe Austrians and Prussians when it reached their ears, and it is not astonishing that none of them liked it, and that they all forbade it. If, beyond doubt, Poland were lost for ever, then the Poles might be allowed to sing their songs in peace. But tbe Polish Hymn contains a prayer that may be granted, and therefore it irritates and maddens the oppressors of Poland. Not only en- thusiasts, but our oldest and most experienced politicians are convinced that Poland will live again, and the visionaries now are those who believe in the contiuuance of the present order of things in that unhappy country. After the occur- rences of 1830-1, of 1846, and of 1848, the Polish eause did indeed appear to be irrevocably lost ; but those who know what Poland has been doing of late years, and how thoroughly Polish all Poland remains, and that not one Pole has yet been con- verted into a Eussian, an Austrian, or a Prussian, seem to be chiefly struck by the fact that all the appression and persecution which this devoted aation has undergone, have only served to fortify its national spirit. If tbe Polish question was not 40 ORDER IN WARSAW. settled in 1795, when all Poland was divided into three; if it was not settled in 1815, when it was divided into five ; * or in 1846, when the annexation of Cracow by Austria left it divided into four; still less is it settled now, when there are such increased facilities of intercourse between the four parts, and when, as a natural consequence, so many more direct expressions of sympathy are con- stantly interchanged. An eminent Eussian journalist, M. AksakoJff, in a newspaper published at Moscow (of which I shall have to speak again in the second volume of this work) has remarked that, but for the forcible par- tition, Poland might have died out through the insufficiency of her own institutions, through the development of one class to the exclusion of all others, and through the ultimate corruption of this class. But the touch of the foreign sword revived the spirit of the nation, and in destroying its political existence gave it a fresh moral life, which has never siuce deserted it. Of two plans — both difficult, almost to impossibility — for obtaining the submission of the Poles, the least impossible, though seemingly, at first sight, the longest, was that of conciliation. But the partitioning Powers evidently thought that if they governed their * The Kingdom of Poland, Eussian Poland, Austrian Po- land, Prussian Poland, and the " Free City " of Cracow. THE POLES AND THEIR RULERS. 41 Polish subjects as Poles, they would only encourage their hopes of a future reunion and revival. They preferred to drive them at once to despair. Many of the oldest inhabitants of Warsaw at this moment must have lived under four entirely dif- ferent rules, and have acknowledged by turns Stanislaus Poniatowski, Frederick WilHam of Prussia, the King of Saxony, and the Emperor of Eussia, as their sovereign. Being Poles, they had, in 1795, to become Prussians, and after being governed for a dozen years as Prussians, and then being once more allowed to call themselves Poles, they found themselves suddenly called upon by the Emperor Nicholas, after 1831, to turn into Eussians. They are expected now to be " loyal " to the Eussian crown, as they were expected at the beginning of the century to be "loyal" to Prussia ! The partitioning Powers have really cultivated the enmity of the Poles, and by doing so equally on all sides have brought about that unanimity of feeling which shows itself in an impartial hatred of aU three. The three sovereigns who detest the sound of the Polish Hymn have reason to do so, for they suspect that its music may be " the music of the future." They know something of Poland, and are aware that they cannot keep it in its pre- sent position. As I said before, our most expe- rienced statesmen, men who have followed the 42 ORDER IN WARSAW. fortunes of Poland for half a century, witli a fuU knowledge of all that was befalling it, of its hopes, its disappointments, and its firm faith under the darkest misfortunes, tell us now that they believe this faith was not misplaced, and that Poland will some day live again. "Looking to a distant period," said Earl (then Lord John) Eussell, in the House of Commons ia 1861, "one cannot but think that, for a people endowed with so much courage, and which has so long kept alive the holy flame of national existence, a time is reserved when it may recover its ancient glory, and take its place among the nations of Europe." "I concuj: with my noble friend," added Lord Palmerston, "in thinking that a nation which, under such a long course of oppression, has resisted all attempts to destroy its national spirit, must be destined, some day or other, for a better fate." And what says the calm, prudent M. Gruizot ? The second volume of his Memoirs, published in 1861, contains the following remarkable passage in reference to the Polish insurrection of 1830 : — "Soon a century will have passed away since the first partition of that unhappy country. In- numerable diplomatic acts have acknowledged its new masters. Events of immense importance have changed the destinies and absorbed the interest of Europe. In the midst of so many iniquities and M. GUIZOT ON POLAND. 43 misfortunes, tlie fate of Poland h.as never ceased to be regarded and felt as a European crime and calamity. It was the murder of a whole nation, as her friends have said with terrible truth. In vain have their adversaries replied that Poland herself, her detestable institutions, her bhnd quarrels, her execrable anarchy, led to her over- throw, and that national suicide provoked foreign assassination. The explanations of history are not judicial decision, and argument avails nothing against the strong sentiment of universal con- viction. For more than sixty years Poland has ceased to figure among nations, and as often as the nations of Europe rise in agitation, Poland also begins to move. Is it a phantom, or is it a people ? I cannot say. Poland may be dead, but she is not to be forgotten. By the side of this striking fact, I have remarked another no less extraordinary. Since the conscience of Europe has been disturbed by the fate of Poland, important changes have been accomplished. Various powerful authorities have disposed of nations. Neither monarchy nor republic, neither conqueror nor congress, has ever seriously attempted to call back Poland from her grave, or to heal this European wound. At the time when this murder was committed, neither old France nor old England raised an arm to pre- vent it: new France and new England have not acted with more eflicacy. The re-establishment 44 ORDER IN WARSAW. of Poland never entered into tlie real or sincere designs of tlie French Revolution, or of the Em- peror. Words have been uttered, prospects have been opened, devoted patriotism has been called into brilliant display by hopes being excited ; but that is all. Extreme misfortune alone has made them find passing illusions in aU these falsehoods. The whole world has made use of Poland, but no one has ever assisted her." CHAPTEE V. LIFE AND DEATH IN POLAND. The Hotel de rEiirope is a magnificent hotel, but it was built by an Italian arcbitect, M. Mar- coni, and the manager is a German. Still, it was designed for Poles, and it is infinitely superior to the caravanserais, more or less furnished, more or less clean, of St. Petersburg and Moscow. I men- tion this little fact by way of compensation for what I have been obliged to say about the not merely uncomfortable but really disgraceful con- dition of the village inns in all parts of Poland. In Warsaw, Cracow, Leopol, and Posen, the principal hotel-keepers are Frenchmen or Germans, generally the latter. It is aU very well for the Poles to sneer at the Germans for their pursuit of material welfare, for their worship of Brodsinn, for their calm acceptance of the maxim " TJhi bene ihi patria ; " but they must allow that if the- Germans introduce nothing else worth having into Poland, they at least bring cleanliness with them. It seemed to me that cleanliness among the Poles 46 LIFE AND DEATH IN POLAND. was confined to the few, and that it had scarcely penetrated at all into the lower ranks of society. To be sure, all the inferior inn-keepers are Jews, but that is no reason why the people who stay for however short a time in. their miserable hostel- ries, should not insist upon being treated like Christians. The Hotel de I'Europe, however, is a hotel in which a Christian may reside, though, of course, like everything else in Poland, it has one of mor6 Jews connected with it. I found them civil and obliging, and ought to have spoken of them, in modern Polish phrase, as "persons of the Mosaic confession" instead of calling them by a name which from a name of glory has become one of reproach. Prom " ChUd of Judah " to " Jew," there is as great a fall as from " Slavonian " to " slave." The waiters are, for the most part, Poles, and I thought them equally remarkable for their gentle- manly demeanour and their gross inattention. It is impossible to be not waited upon with more affa- bility and courteousness than at a Polish hotel. There are German waiters, to be sure, who do what they are told " right away," as the Americans say. In that, however, there is nothing new. There is some originality about the Poles, who show the most delicate foresight in anticipating your wants, and in suggesting what you, otherwise, might never THE HOTEL DE l'eUROPE. 47 have thought of, and then disappear, apparently never to return. But the Hotel de I'Europe is chiefly remarkable, among all the hotels I ever saw, for the ad- mirable decorations of the principal suites of apartments. The ceilings are painted in a style worthy of any palace, and in some of the rooms the woodwork of the walls and the panels of the doors are also ornamented with the mtost fanciful and graceful designs. The rich hangings and the luxurious furniture harmonize perfectly with the colours employed in the paintings, and it is evident that architects, artists, decorators, and upholsterers have all worked together, or rather that one architect and artist has superintended everything. I asked who was in the habit of coming to hotels and taking such apartments as these, which included a reception-room, a dining-room, a draw- ing-room, and a magnificent ball-room. They were only just finished, but they were intended for wedding parties given by country families who had no town-house, and who, expecting guests from various parts of Poland, made Warsaw the common rendezvous. But they had had a sad inauguration, and the first guests who were brought into them were not dressed in wedding garments, but in bloody clothes, and with Eussian bullets in their bodies. 48 LIFE AND DEATH IN POLAND. The Agricultural Society had just held its cele- brated meeting, at which the scheme for liberating the peasants from task- work, and giving them their land in freehold was adopted. The hotel was ftiU, and when the bodies of the five men who fell beneath the first fire of the troops were carried there, they were placed in these private apartments, and the next day, the photographs were taken of which the prints have since been spread in countless numbers over all parts of the politically dismembered, but morally united, kingdom. One had been shot through the heart, another through the head, a third had had his jaw shattered, and his face was distorted in a frightful manner. Among the five one was a workman, one a student, and one a landed proprietor. The rich and the poor, the old and the young, had their representar tives among the victims, and all classes in War- saw, indeed, all Warsaw in a mass, attended the funeral. I saw the graves of these unfortunate men two months after they had been buried. They lay side by side, and their tomb, which, as yet, bore no inscription, was covered with wreaths, flowers, and funeral ofierings of every kind, which the people of Warsaw stUl brought at all hours of the day. The Hotel de I'Europe was pretty well guarded when I was there. There were sentinels at all the A soldier's toilet. 49 entrances, and in the Saxon Square, whicli the hotel overlooks, was a camp of about two hundred infan- try. I had therefore abundant opportunities of stu- dying the manners and customs of Eussian soldiers under canvas. Thus, twice a-day I have seen them stand, spoon in hand, in circles of half-a-dozen, round their soup-pots, and attack the contents one by one, in strict order, and with military precision. I have even, thanks to early rising, and to the sleep-murdering effect of their morning drums, been able to watch them at their daily ablutions and devotions. Every man was his own washhand-stand, jug, and basin, and, after filling his mouth with water, ejected it in a graceful stream into his hands, and applied them to his face. The canvas of the tent served as a towel. Then, still standing up and turning to the east, with many bows and gesticulations and with much solemnity, the soldier said his prayers — after which he was ready to be kicked by his officers at parade. I have seen hundreds of Eussian soldiers at their prayers, and never saw one prepare himself for the day without saying them. "And afterwards," some readers wiU exclaim, " they break into Polish churches, and shoot defenceless Poles 1 " They simply obey orders, like other soldiers. That does not alter the fact that they have a strong religious feeling, and the fact is an important one to consider VOL. I. E 50 LIFE AND DEATH IN POLAND. in estimating tlie fighting power of a Eussian army, to take no other view of it. On each side of the Saxon Square are harracks for cavalry and artillery; at the further end are the Saxon Grardens, the great promenading ground of the Varsovians ; in the centre stands what the Poles call " the Eussian Somovar ; " * a hideous bronze monument, commemorating the fidelity of seven Poles who were unfaithful to Poland, when the insurrection of 1830-31 broke out. Twice a-day troops of lancers go in and out of the barracks, and every morning an artillery train comes from some other quarter of the town to be relieved. Besides an immense artillery camp immediately outside the city, various encamp- ments of infantry in the very heart of it, and several more towards the barriers ; besides soldiers of all arms in barracks, in huts, and under canvas on the plains around Warsaw, the castle is itself fiUed with troops, as are also its stables, its court- yard, and its large garden. "Warsaw, then, ought really to be considered safe from the attacks of an unarmed population. We certainly had not such a force at the Alma, not a third of such a force at Inkerman, as the Eussians have collected here in order to keep down some hundred and fifty thou- sand defenceless townspeople — men, women, and * Tea-urn — literally, " self-boiler." BENEl'ACTORS OF THE POLES. 51 children ; that is to say, from thirty to forty thousand men of all classes, without organization, without weapons, and without any intention of fighting. Cossacks and dragoons ride up and down the streets, as though to guard against the possibility of surprise. But if the defenceless, unarmed ones were to go mad and attack the castle; and if, the garrison having suddenly be- come paralyzed, they were actually to take it by storm, there would stiU be enough artillery and ammunition in the citadel to lay Warsaw in the dust — which the Emperor Nicholas threatened to do if the city gave the sHghtest sign of a second insurrection. The citadel, with its bright- red walls and buttresses, which form such a vivid contrast with the rich verdure of the earthworks, and the banks of the broad moat is in many respects a remarkable edifice. But its picturesque- ness is less striking than its position, which gives it the command of the entire city, at a range of about half a mile from the outer buildiags. In the open space in the interior stands a statue of Alexander I., " the Benefactor of the Poles," placed there by Nicholas, who was certainly not their bene- factor. Close to the statue of the Benefactor is a small field of iron hayricks — an acre or so of cannon balls, piled in rows of pyramids, with which the Benefactor's successor meant to destroy Warsaw, if Warsaw ever gave him the least trouble. E 2 52 LIFE AND DEATH IN POIiAND. I have said that at the Government offices in Warsaw all the inscriptions are in Eussian and in Polish. Above the gates of the citadel this for- mality has not been observed. There, Eussian alone is employed, and on seeing the date of the struc- ture, 1835, one feels that it would be superfluous and quite out of place to offer any words on the subject to the Poles, to whom the citadel is itself an address, and a very intelligible one. Indeed, that there might be no doubt about the meaniag of it, the Emperor Nicholas, as I have already men- tioned, explained it himself. On the 16th October, 1835, the Czar, who now appeared in "Warsaw for the first time since the insurrection, received the municipal officers of the city, and knowing that they were about to present a conciliatory address, suddenly stopped them, and broke out into the following characteristic speech, preserved in the archives of Eussia, and printed by D'Angeberg in his Becueil des Traites, 8fc., con- cernant la Pologne (p. 972) : — " I know, gentlemen, that you have something to say to me, I even know the contents of your address, and, to spare you a falsehood, I do not wish to hear it. Yes, gentlemen, to spare you a falsehood, for I know that your sentiments are not what you would have me believe them to be. "How could I put any faith in your words, when you used the same language to me on the A PATERNAL MONARCH. 53 eve of the Eevolution? Did not you yourselves speak to me, five years, eight years ago, of fidelity and devotion ? Did you not make aU kinds of fine protestations? Not many days afterwards you violated your oaths, you committed horrors. " The Emperor Alexander, who did more for you than an Emperor of Russia ought to have done, who loaded you with kindness, who favoured you beyond his own subjects, and rendered you the most flourishing and the happiest of nations — ^the Emperor Alexander was repaid with the blackest ingratitude. " Tou never could be contented with the most advantageous position, and you ended by destroying your own happiness. I tell you the truth now, in order to place our mutual position in a proper light, and in order that you may know what to expect ; for I now see and speak to you for the first time since the disturbances. " Gentlemen, I want deeds, not words J Your repentance must come from the heart. I speak to you without losing my temper ; you see that I am calm. I have no feeling of rancour, and I will do you good in spite of yourselves. The Marshal, whom you see at my side, fulfils my intentions, seconds me in my views, and thinks also of your welfare. {At these words, the members of the deputa- tion low to Marshal PasJcievitch.) " "Well, gentlemen, what do these bows mean ? 54 LIFE AND DEATH IN POLAND. The most important tMng for you is to do your duty, to behave like honest men. You have to choose, gentlemen, between two courses : either to persist in your illusion of an independent Poland, or to live tranquilly, and as faithful subjects, under my government. If you persist in cherishing your dreams of distinct nationality, of Polish in- dependence, and aU such chimeras, you can only draw down great misfortunes upon yourselves. I have erected the citadel here, and I declare to you that at the slightest disturbance I will reduce the town to ashes, I will destroy Warsaw, and am not likely to build it up again. " It is very painful for me to speak to you in this way ; it is very painful for a sovereign to treat his subjects in this way; but what I teU you is for your own good. It is for you, gentlemen, to deserve that I should forget the past ; it is only by good conduct, and by devotion to my Govern- ment, that you can do so. "I know that you have correspondents abroad, that ill-intentioned writings are introduced here, and that endeavours are made to pervert your minds. But the best police in the world, with a frontier like yours, cannot prevent clandestine communications; you should be your own police, and should keep the evil away. " Bring up your children properly, and inculcate to them principles of religion and fidelity to their RUSSIAN MASSACRE IN WARSAW. 55 sovereign, if you wisli to remain in the good path. " In the midst of all the troubles which agitate Europe, of all the doctrines which shake the political edifice, Eussia alone remains firm and inassailable. " Believe me, gentlemen, it is really a happiness to belong to such a country, and to enjoy its pi-o- tection. If you conduct yourselves well, if you fulfil aU your duties, my paternal solicitude wUl be extended to all of you, and in spite of what has passed, my Government will think of your welfare. "Mind you remember what I have said to you." Alexander II. has not yet made use of the citadel, to destroy the city of Warsaw ; but it was from the citadel that the cannon answered the signal-rockets of the castle, when the troops, on the 8th of April, 1861, entered the town, and took up their position in all the public places, preparatory to the slaughter of the defenceless people. Was this a massacre or not, in the exact sense of the word? Can it be compared, for instance, as it has been more than once, by Polish, and also by French writers, to the massacre of the Chris- tians in Syria ? Most certainly not ; nor even to the massacre of the French in Paris, after the 2nd of December. I was present at the latter, and. 56 LI1?E AND DEATH IN POLAND. without any notice to disperse having been given, saw crowds of well-conducted persons fired upon by the drunken soldiers. I did not see any ar- tillery fired, but I saw the guns at the corner of the Eue Faubourg Montmartre, heard the reports, and saw Sallandrouze's carpet-warehouse imme- diately afterwards with the windows and walls shattered. I also saw bodies, not singly, but in heaps, lying at the partes cocheres, on the Boule- vard Montmartre ; and, walking along this boule- vard the same evening, found it, in places, almost impassable from pools of blood. An Eng- lish druggist was shot, standing at his own door (this was worse than what happened to Mr. Mitchell, in Warsaw) ; an American gentleman was bayoneted in a wine-shop, where he had taken refuge J the house of M. Brandus, the music- publisher, in the Eue Eichelieu, was broken into, and one of his servants murdered. The infantry in the street below had previously fired into the balcony, where several of M. Brandus's friends were smoking. As bullets cannot be guided when they have once left the gun, women and children were, in many places, shot ; and I know one in- stance, in which two young girls were fired upon by a sentinel. I speak only of what I witnessed myself, or of what happened in the Paris mas- sacre of December, 1851, to persons known to me more or less intimately. FRENCH MASSACRE IN PARIS. 57 Now, if the conduct of Prince Grortcliakoft, at Warsaw, be viewed side by side with that of the idol of Poland at Paris, it wiU be seen that the " Muscovite," the " Tartar," the " Mongol " Gene- ral behaved with comparative moderation, and that the crusader in the cause of liberty, the promoter of the new law in Europe, the champion of the right of oppressed nationalities, acted like a bar- barian. The difference, I admit, is only that which exists between assassination with, and assas- sination without, extenuating circumstances — ^be- tween black with a brown shade, and black of the deepest dye; but the distinction is, nevertheless, worth noting — ^though it would never have oc- curred to me at all to weigh the guilt of two such crimes, were it not that the worst of the two offenders is looked upon, by a number of tormented, bewildered Poles, as impelled, by the nobiUty of his nature, to rescue them from persecution, and, indeed, as only prevented from doing so by the backwardness of the English Grovernment, which, notoriously, does not go to war (and which also does not commit massacres) " for an idea." The worst point about the butchery of Warsaw undoubtedly was, that it had been deliberately arranged the day before. I do not say that the soldiers were brought into the city for the express purpose, whatever might occur, of murdering the 58 LIFE AND DEATH IN POLAND. inliabitarLts ; but it liad been decided at a council of war (in spite of some honourable protests on tbe part of General Liiders and others), that in case of a large crowd again assembling it should be dispersed by force. The gathering of the crowd might have been prevented, but, once formed, to disperse it except with bloodshed was impossible. The people who had collected in front of the Lieutenant's house, were not there to create a disturbance, but to " demonstrate " their unanimity and earnestness in demanding certain rights which it may have been absurd and out of place to demand in the streets, but which it seemed necessary, nevertheless, to claim in a very public manner ; especially as the Emperor had already characterized a petition signed by the President of the Agricultural Association, the Catholic Archbishop of Warsaw, and all the chief representative men, acknowledged as such by the entire population of Poland, as proceeding only from " some individuals." It was not likely that a crowd of enthusiasts assembled to assert their devotion to their country, would disperse at the voice of Prince Gortchakoff, threatening them with such terrors as they have almost ceased to care for, but which do not, for that reason, reflect the less discredit on those who have recourse to them. Morally speaking, they could not retire POLISH MARTYRDOM. 59 before the threats or even the entreaties of the Eussian commander. They were there to bear testimony to their principles and their patriotism. Undoubtedly, they had the option of saving their lives, but they were in a state of great excitement > or rather "exaltation." They were full of the emotion caused by the recollection of the sufferings and degradation which they had undergone, during the last thirty years, and thought the moment had come for them to stand up, unarmed as they were, and without quoting treaties or referring to guarantees, simply teU their oppressors in the face of Europe, that their life was intolerable. Here, again, as in the matter of mourning and of the national prayer, I do not believe that the Poles acted with any -settled intention, and that they said to themselves, " "We will stand up to be shot, so that all Europe may know that our country still lives, and that we are still ready to die for it," though that was really the effect produced by their attitude. They sacrificed them- selves from a noble impulse, though with an in- tuitive perception, perhaps, that the sacrifice would not be in vain. If the Eussians did not commit a massacre, at least the Poles suffered martyrdom. That is to say, the Poles died to attest their devotion to a cause, while the Eussians fired upon them not because they desired their death, but because, with 60 Lira AND DEATH IN POLAND. tlieir despotic habits, they knew no other mode of dispersing a crowd. I fully believe, from the accoTint given to me by a person who was close to Prince Grortchakoff when he ordered the troops to act and for some time previously, and from another who saw him frequently afterwards and during his last illness, that he would most thankfully have escaped the bloody work in which he found him- self engaged, and which he did not know how to avoid. Why should anyone believe the contrary of a soldier like Prince Grortchakoff? Unfortunately, anyone who fills such a post as he occupied, may feel compelled at a given moment to act in a similar manner. It is no use protesting against " massacres " as isolated facts, when the Poles are subjected to a tyrannical and exasperating system calculated to keep them in a continual state of excitement, such as is sure, from time to time, to take the form of that " material disorder " which the Eussian Grovernment declares itself de- termined not to tolerate, but of which it takes care not to remove the natural causes. I have tried, by comparing a great many dif- ferent accounts, verbal, manuscript, and printed, of the horrible afiair of the 8th of April, to arrive at something like the truth as to the magnitude of the crowd, and the possibility of dispersing it with- POLISH MARTYRDOM. 61 out employing force ; the number of persons killed ; tlie duration of the firing, &c. It seems difficult to decide with precision at what hour the Prussians arrived on the field of Waterloo, and it is known to be impossible, owing to the conflicting entries in the logs of the vessels engaged, to fix the time at which the battle of Trafalgar was com- menced. Nor can I, with the many different versions of the Warsaw massacre given to me by eye-witnesses, and by persons possessing written narratives which eye-witnesses had furnished, tell, with accuracy, what took place on that dreadful day, from the firing of the first shot until the Sigismund Square had been cleared by the Eussian soldiers of every living being and every dead body. To begin with, however, it is quite untrue that the troops rushed into the town from the citadel and the various camps, and, taking up their positions, began the attack without warning, and without the people being repeatedly summoned to retire. In spite of a few assertions to the contrary, I am convinced, from abundant and most reliable testimony, that the crowd in the Sigismund Place, in front of the castle, was so numerous and com- pact, and the persons composing it, though per- fectly peaceable, so excited, that threats alone, or the employment of force against a few, could never have broken it up. It might have been prevented from forming, or have been left unmo- 62 LIFE AND DEATH IN POLAND. lested until night, and the proper precautions taken against its re-assembling the next day, which was not, like the day of the " massacre," a holyday ; but military pedantry and love of authority seem to have been shocked by the aspect of defiance presented by the Poles, and the " demoralizing " consequences which, if not resented in a severe manner, it might have on the troops. Indeed, it is said that the Poles laughed at the soldiers, spoke to them in a bantering tone, and threw cigars to them with a generosity which the Russian generals apparently thought could not fail to shake disci- pline. These contempt-breeding familiarities were checked by the wanton slaughter of some forty men. Many Polish accounts say eighty and more ; but a writer in Frasers Magazine, who was well ac- quainted with the history of recent occurrences ia Warsaw, and had certainly not the least inclination to under-estimate the ferocity of the Eussians, puts down the number of killed at forty.* I forget whether the public ofl&cial report stated that eight were killed or ten. The Warsaw correspondent of the Posen Journal {Djennik Poznanski) declared that the firing lasted three hours. This appeared, to me, utterly incre- dible ; for say that the soldiers were made drunk, * See Frasers Magazine for June, 1868. POLISH MARTYRDOM. 63 as I believe was the case, even then such wholesale butchery, committed in cold blood, without any provocation or any resistance being offered, must have sobered and sickened the veriest savages. The killed and wounded, too, would have been counted not in tens or even hundreds, but in thousands. The time, however, occupied in clearing the Square and the adjoining streets (for when the crowd began to move, the troops, as could be seen from the bullet-marks on the walls, followed it, and still fired) may really have amounted to some- thing like three hours ; only the discharges of mus- ketry were not kept up with anything like con- tinuity. The first rank fired. The second rank ad- vanced and collected the killed and woTinded. Then there was a pause until, after a certain interval, the crowd, not dispersing, the order to fire again was given. Persons who witnessed this bloody scene declare that instead of producing terror and dis- may, the volleys of the Eussians at first only excited the indignation of the Poles, and roused in them a species of enthusiasm which may be called the enthusiasm of martyrdom. Many went down on their knees, but not to their enemies. In some parts of the crowd the more timid were entreated in the name of their country to remain firm, and these appeals were not without effect. Afterwards, when numbers had been shot down and brute force was beginning to triumph, the 64 MFE AND DEATH IN POLAND. most determined and desperate among the crowd still cried out that there must be no retreating, and some were seen to join hands so as to prevent those before them from falling back. The pre- concerted plan for capturing the bodies shows plainly that the Eussian commanders anticipated a resort to arms ; but that Prince Gortchakoff courted the opportunity and deliberately allowed the crowd to assemble, that he might (according to an expres- sion attributed to one of his officers) " queU the Polish fever by drawing a pint of Polish blood," I see no ground for believing. The reason assigned for the Russians having taken up the bodies at all is, that they feared they would be carried about the city to inflame the population, and that they would be photographed and the photographs circulated throughout Poland, as doubtless would have been the case had it been possible. It may appear strange that people should be more affected by the counterfeit presentment of a mangled corpse than by the simple statement in writing that such a one has been murdered ; but the Eussians certainly dreaded the effect of the bodies of their victims being brought before the eyes of their indignant countrymen in all parts of the dismembered kingdom. Besides, what an answer the photographs of the forty dead men or more, with their wounds upon them, would have been to the lying report published in the official journal ! AN ENGLISH TORT ON POLISH INSUREECTIONS. 65 After what took place on the 8th of April at Warsaw, does it not seem a superfluous task to show that the Poles are cruelly oppressed ? Can anything be said on the subject that has not been already proclaimed by their attitude that day under the fire of the Eussian troops ? If that will not con- vince, what can be expected from the most weighty documents, the most logical arguments on their behalf ? Until justice is done to Poland, we must expect such scenes to be of periodical occurrence. It was an old story fifty years ago, but it may be repeated now, that it is impossible to beat and bayonet the Poles into tranquillity ; that permanent order can- not be established in Warsaw by sweeping the streets of the city with musketry, however often the process be repeated ; and that there wiU be no end to insurrections in Poland until the causes of insurrection are removed. Four months before the signing of the Treaty of Vienna, Lord Castle- reagh addressed a circular diplomatic note* to the plenipotentiaries of the various Powers, in favour of the re-establishment of Poland as an independ- ent State, in which the following passage (trans- lated) occurs : — "Experience has proved that by seeking to de- stroy the usages and customs of the Poles, there can * Kluber, ix. 40 ; D'Angeberg (Pologne, Becueil des Traites, 'DATIONS. form or in real substance, gives to its people the character of a separate nation. " The abolition of the Polish colours ; the intro- duction of the Russian language into public Acts j the removal to Russia of the National Library and public collections containing bequests made by in^ dividuals upon specific condition that they never should be taken out of the Kingdom of Poland; the suppression of schools and other establishments for public iastruction ; the removal of a great number of children to Russia on the pretence of educating them at the public expense 5 the trans- portation of whole families to the interior of Russia; the extent and severity of the military conscription ; the large introduction of Russians into the public employments in Poland; the in- terference with the National Church; — all these appear to be symptoms of a deliberate intention to obliterate the political nationality of Poland, and gradually to convert it into a Russian province. " It is evident, upon the sUghtest reflection, that such a project could not be accomplished. To change 4,000,000* of Poles so entirely as to im- part to them the character of Russians is an attempt for the success of which it would be difficult to assign a limit, either of time or perseverance. But * Or rather, 12,000,000, for these measures were not taken against the Poles of the Kingdom alone, but against those of the Polish provinces also. INDIGNATION OF COUNT NESSELKODE. 191 the endeavour would lead to a severe and continued exertion of arbitrary power wMcli would create a strong and general feeling against Eussia, and must be regarded as a decided violation of the en- gagements contracted by Eussia at Vienna in 1815. " Tour Lordship will endeavour to obtain accurate information as to what is true on these points, and if you should find that the reports which have reached His Majesty's Grovernment are well founded, you will take every favourable opportunity of urging the Eussian Grovernment, on the part of His Majesty, with the earnestness, and at the same time with the freedom, of a sincere friend, to adopt a milder and juster system ; founding yourself upon the treaty of Vienna, as the basis upon which rests the right of His Majesty to interpose this expression of his feelings on the affairs of Poland." To this Lord Durham replied that he had informed Count Nesselrode how completely the English Grovernment adhered to its first opinion as to the right claimed by Eussia to abrogate the Polish constitution. " I also told him,"* continues Lord Durham, " that the accounts which had reached England of the severities which had been practised towards the Poles had produced the most unfavourable impression on the public mind, of * Despatch dated St. Petersburg, 22nd of August, 1833. 192 FIRM FOUNDATIONS. which acts no contradiction had ever appeared; that when I mentioned this to Prince Lieven, he denied the truth of the statements in the strongest terms, but said it was beneath the dignity of the Emperor to notice such calumnies." Count Nessel- rode "used the same expressions nearly as Prince Lieven, with reference to the charges brought against them in the public papers, denied their truth, and told me that, before my departure, I should be put in possession of such details as would convince me how much the Russian Grovernment had been calumniated." I wiU. now continue my extracts from Eussian official documents, and wiU, first of aU, print an order signed by the Eussian Minister of the Interior, issued four days after Lord Durham's despatch was written, and which does not, pre- cisely, confirm Prince Lieven's and Count Nessel- rode's statement that the Eussian Grovernment had been " calumniated " in the reports communi- cated to Lord Palmerston. August \4ith {2&th). Order from Bhudoff, Bmsian Minister of the Interior, to Loubianoffsky, Civil Governor of Podolia, as to the transportation of Polish noblemen to the Caucasm* " Tn your report of the 27th July, you desire * Archives of Russia. D'Angeherg (Becveil des Trail h), p 9t7. EXILE OF A QUARTER OF A MILLION POLES. 193 that your doubts may be cleared up as to tbe transportation to the Caucasus of tbe Polish gentlemen, formerly so-caUed, now citizens and ireedmen. As all your steps to induce these people to give their consent to the measure have been in vain, you wish to know whether, with- out reference to their unwillingness, you are to cause them to be transported, in accordance with the oukaz of the Senate of the 3rd of May, 1832, and according to the rules confirmed by His Majesty on the 25th of May, 1832. The com- mittee has decided that only those gentlemen who are landed proprietors, and who belong to the first two classes* are to be transported ....... If the Pohsh gentlemen do not wish to be trans- ported, you are authorized to take them by force." September, 1832. — Circular to the Russian police authorities from the Civil Governor of Podolia, stat- ing hoio many families are to he transported from each district in the province. \ "Take from KamienieQ one hundred and fifty families; from Proskurow fifty; from Latychew * That is, 1. Insurgents who had received the Emperor's pardon, and, 8. Persons whose mode of life was "not such as to merit the confidence of the Government." t Archives of Bussia. B'Angeberg (Hecueil des Traites), p. 947. VOL. I. O 194 FIKM rOUNDATIONS. one hundred ; " and so on for eleven districts. " Choose those gentlemen who have families, and who are proprietors, farmers, or in- liabitants of towns ; commencing with those who iook part in the revolt, or whose mode of life is suspicious." September 1th (l^th), 1832. — Address from the Assembly of the Nobility of Podolia to the Emperor Nicholas, begging him to preserve the Polish language and the Catholic religion in the Polish provinces, and not to transport Poles to the Caucasus* (Extract.) — "We, like other Slavonian nations, have our own language, rich in memories, and which we have used for many centuries. Common to mil- lions of your subjects, it was left to us by your prede- 'Cessors, and we cannot dispense with it in our social Telations, all our contracts, agreements and other documents being drawn up in this language. . . . -Leave us this language. Sire, that we may be able to pray to God for you and your family in it . . . :Sire, you have thought proper to suppress the con- vents and confiscate their property : but from those >convents came priests and preachers, the want of "whom is now keenly felt. Deprived of the succour .of religion, the morality of our people, with every- * Augsburg Gazette, May 32, 1833. Kuhalsld {Memoirs of), ij). 1S5. D'Angeberg {Becueil des Traites, do.), p. 948. GENERAL SCHIPOFF ON DKESS. 195 thing overturned, would "be exposed to great dangers. "We beg, then, that you will be pleased to renaedy the evil which threatens us. "We also beg, Sire, that you will be pleased to order that no one be transported to distant regions. The poorest man that exists loves that corner of the earth where he has first seen the light. The universality of this attachment, attested by the tears of numerous families, encourages us to make an appeal to the feelings of His Majesty himself," — {Signed hy the marshals of districts.) Let us allow a period of six years to elapse. The following ludicrously tyrannical order then appears : — August, 1838. — Order signed ly General Schipoff, Director of the Interior in the Kingdom of Poland, as to the alolition of the Polish costume.* "1. The inhabitants of Polish villages and towns are not in fature to wear the national cos- tumes of "Warsaw and Cracow. In consequence, it is forbidden to wear square crimson caps, peacock's feathers, belts studded with metal ornaments, or to dress in blue, crimson, or white; this last colour, however, may be used for shirts, handkerchiefs, and drawers. 2. The Eussian costume, brown in colour, is to be adopted in future ; women, however, can * Archives of Russia. Lescceur {L'Eglise CatJiolique sous la Fiussie), p. 120. D'Angeberg [Reeueil des Traites, Sc.}, p. 998. o 2 196 FIRM FOUNDATIONS. wear green or red. 3. The Russian costume being much more economical, the central administration will cause shops to be opened in stated towns and villages in which Eussian dresses wiU be sold to indigent persons at reduced prices. 4. A reward of one rouble wiU be given to those who hasten to obey this order ; those who delay will be flogged, and their punishment doubled in case of persist- ence." This last order would have a comic effect in a pantomime or a burlesque, but can scarcely have been a laughing matter to the poor Polish peasants, who no more like to be dressed up as Russians than our peasants would like to be dressed up as French- men or Chinese. Whether it was found impos- sible to execute the order I cannot say ; but even if every Eussian ofl&cial had been made an inspector of costume, it would have been diflicult to carry it out, and certainly, at the present time, the peasants in the Kingdom of Poland wear the dress which they have been accustomed to for centuries. I saw, however, last year, on the walls of Kovno, a procla- mation quite in the style of General Schipoff's, and which expressly forbade the Lithuanian peasants to wear Polish costumes. The notion that a Lithuanian or Pole has only to put on Eussian clothes in order to become a Eussian seems to be deeply rooted in the Eussian official mind. AUSTRIA IN ITALY AND IN POLAND. 197 The history of conquered countries must always he more or less the same. There are certain recog- nized forms of oppression which have heen known for centuries, and which are still practised. But the Poles have suffered more in this respect than other vanquished nations, because they have never ac- cepted their fallen position, and still persist in proclaiming themselves unconquerable, which, in a moral sense, they certainly are. No subjugated people, in modern times, has ever risen against the yoke in so resolute a manner as the Poles, and in the exact proportion to the heroic and indomitable spirit which they have shown has been the severity of the three Powers in beating them down. The German University of Strasburg, the univer- sity where Groethe studied, was allowed to continue its existence, and the German language contiuued to be used in public proceedings throughout Alsace untU. the French revolution came and swept away provincial distinctions of all kinds. Austria never destroyed the important municipal institutions of her Italian subjects in Lombardy and Venetia. She never abolished their universities, or merely tolerated them on condition that all the lectures should be delivered in the German language. She never ordered that at the Scala and Fenice theatres only German companies should be engaged, and that all Italian operas should be played ia the German language. Yet, in the province of Galicia, 198 riUM FOUNDATIONS. with a Polish, popiilation of only four millions,* Austria endeavoured to destroy all traces of na- tional institutions, made Grerman the language of the law courts, t public offices, gymnasiums, and universities, and even committed the absurdity of establishing in Polish towns Grerman newspapers, which no one reads, and Grerman theatres which no one enters. Prussia has been more systematic still in her plan for denationalizing the Poles of Posen, a plan which she pursues now as rigorously as ever. Eussia does the same in the Polish provinces incorporated with the Empire, which she affects to regard as having nothing whatever to do with Poland. But I was saying that the history of conquered countries must always be more or less the same, and some curious points of analogy may be shown between the position of the Poles in the present day in Russian Poland, and that of the Saxons in Norman England eight centuries ago. The con- quest of Poland by Eussia is generally looked upon only as a political conquest, and therefore as something quite different from that of England by • Even now, by the last census, the population of Galicia is only five millions, out of -which 3,800,000 are returned as Russians or Ruthenians. f The custom of pleading in Latin was maintained in the law-courts of Galicia until the Austrian Eevolution of 1848. The Polish advocates and judges preferred any language to the German. A EUSSIAN AB-ISTOCBACY IN POLAND. IQQ' the Normans, which was also a territorial conquest,, and from that of Eussia by the Tartars, or of Hungary by the Turks, which last were conquests with a view to tribute. The Tartars, however^ with all their cruelties, never did the harm to. Eussia that the Eussians would have done to- Poland, had they succeeded in their endeavours to disorganize it, and to set up class against class so as to render the whole country powerless. The Tartars did not meddle with the internal afiairs of Eussia, but left the people to govern them- selves much as they plea,sed. They never sys- tematically interfered with them in the exercise of their religion, nor endeavoured to force upon them an alien creed. On the other hand, the Eussians have made no systematic attempt to dispossess the Polish pro- prietors, though after the insurrection of 1830-1 the Emperor Nicholas confiscated a mass of estates in the Eusso-Polish provinces, and even in the kingdom made a faint endeavour to some extent to replace the ancient Polish by a newly- created Eussian aristocracy. The reader is aware that,, in a political sense, there was no aristocracy in. ancient Poland; but, though all nobles possessed equal political rights, of course a major influence was exercised by the chiefs of certain wealthy and- illustrious families. The Emperor thought this influence could be 200 FIEM FOUNDATIONS. secured for Ruseians, and that he had only to endow some of his generals with vast landed pos- sessions, entailed after the English mode, in order to lay the basis of a powerful Russian hereditary aristocracy in Poland. The lands on which the experiment was tried were for the most part crown lands (the ancient starosties), and it was made a condition that the proprietors should reside on their estates. The peasants, instead of performing task- work, were to pay rent, which the Russian generals preferred to spend in Paris, or at the Grerman watering-places, instead of remaining in Poland to play the part of territorial aristocrats. These half- measures are of no use. The Russian Grovernment should either have dispossessed the whole of the Polish proprietors, and made them farmers or cul- tivators on their own estates in the old style; or it should have governed them justly and given them such liberties as they were entitled to demand. Besides the seizure of the crown lands, the Russian Government confiscated* a few private estates in the Kin'gdom, from which the income now derived amounts to about 36,000 roubles per * A special clause in the Constitution of 1815 declares the punishment of confiscation illegal in Poland. Another declares that no Pole shall be sent to Siberia. It is rather remarkable that it should have been thought necessary to insert these clauses at all. to UJ o to < a SAINT KOSCIUSZKO. 201 anmm. The country was charged with 22,000,000 roubles for the expenses of the war, and with the cost of erecting fortresses at "Warsaw, Modlin, Zamosc, Demblin, and Brest. The Polish army having been suppressed, the annual sum of 3,150,000 roubles which had been paid for its maintenance, was fixed as the Polish contribution towards the support of the army of the Empire. Thirty years afterwards I found the inhabitants of "Warsaw obliged, not to put their lights out at eight o'clock, but to carry lanterns if they appeared in the streets after nine. I found them praying in the churches for Kosciuszko, and wearing his portrait in rings and brooches, as though he were a saint, which, in the eyes of the Poles, he is, just as Waltheof was one in the eyes of the Anglo-Saxons. I found them looking back to their Constitution of the 3rd of May as the English looked back to the laws of Edward the Confessor. I found their conquerors forbidding them to wear their national dress, and forcing the Lithuano-Polish peasants to disguise themselves as Eussians, as the Normans ordered the English when they were expecting assistance from the Danes to assume Norman attire, Norman weapons, and to shave their beards in the Norman fashion. Historians express their surprise at the singularity of this order. They would scarcely do so if they had examined the history of the Eussian rule in Poland for the last thirty years. 302 FIRM FOUNDATIONS. Finally, I found the Poles singing their national hymn and their patriotic litanies in spite of peremp- tory commands to abstain from doing so, just as the Anglo-Saxons persisted, through hatred of the Normans, in singing the Grregorian chant. I will here quote a passage from Thierry, and the reader ■will see whether it reminds him of anything that occurred in Warsaw, not eight centuries ago, but only last year, on the anniversary of Kosciuszko's death. " They received repeated injunctions to renounce it (the chant), as well as many other ancient usages ; but they resisted, and at length declared, in fuU chapter, their resolution not to change it. The Normans arose in a fury, went out, and immediately returned at the head of a body of soldiers, fully armed. At this sight the monks fled towards the church, and took refuge in the choir, the door of wliich they had time to shut. The soldiers attempted to force it, and meanwhile some of them climbed the pillars, and, placing themselves on the rafters at the top of the choir, assailed the monks below with discharges of arrows. The latter, retreating to the high altar, glided behind the shrines or reliquaries, which, serving them as ramparts, received the arrows charged against them. The great crucifix of the altar soon bristled with these missiles. By-and- THE POLES AND THE ENGLISH. 203 by, the door of the choir yielded to the efforts of the soldiers, and the Saxons, forced in their retreat, were attacked with swords and lances; they de- fended themselves as best they conld with the wooden benches and the metal candlesticks ; they even wounded some of the soldiers, but the arms were too unequal ; eighteen monks were killed, or mortally wounded," &c. Of course, nothing like an exact parallel can be established between the conquest of Poland by Eussia, and that of England by the Normans. But the Poles, like the Saxons, had to resist a combined invasion. Like them, they were always ready to fight, and often fought quite recklessly, and without the least chance of success. Harold attacked an army four times as great as his own at Hastings ; Kosciuszko never did battle at such odds as these. The Poles have not struggled with more energy for their national existence than did the Anglo-Saxons in their hopeless insurrections against the Normans during the first three-quarters of a century after the conquest of England. But the Saxons had been deprived of everything at one blow, and the Normans were among them, living in their houses, on their lands, and making those whom they had dispossessed, labour as their slaves. It is no use asking whether Poland had done any- thing to deserve the partition. What had the 204 FIRM FOUNDATIONS. English done to deserve a simultaneous invasion on the one side from the Danes, on the other from the Normans? At least, they had not invited the Normans to England, as the Poles invited the Russians to Poland, allowing them to remain in their country for eight years before the first par- tition, and twenty years after it, without once rising as a nation to attack them. Neither would it be to the point here to consider the relative merits of Saxon and Norman civilization. But the Saxons, at the time of the invasion, possessed some of the virtues (such as love of liberty and patriotism) for which the Poles have been cele- brated throughout their history, and also some of the faults (such as turbulence and excessive love of conviviality) for which the Poles were notorious during the reigns of their Saxon kings. It is quite certain, too, that the English regarded the Normans as unmitigated barbarians, or rather as degraded savages ; treacherous, cruel, and abomin- ably vicious. The Poles of Warsaw give the Russians no better character in the present day; and, indeed, much of the scum of the Russian Empire finds its way to Poland, as much of the scum of aU the continent of Europe was brought over by the Norman chiefs to England. The Russians in Poland have not acted quite so barbarously as either our Normans, or their own, but on the whole, it may be said that DIFFICULTIES OF CONQUEST. 205 they have behaved like the modem representa- tives of Normans who never went to the Crusades. And it is just because they are modern, and because there is a . kind of conquest which in modem times is impossible, that they will never conquer Poland. They cannot hold the land without entirely subjugatiag those to whom it now belongs and depriving them of the means of resistance in the future as well as in the present. With aU their confiscations they have not gained possession of so many estates (in proportion to the amount of territory held in a political sense) as the Prussians have in Posen by their system of forced sales, followed by loans without interest, to Grerman purchasers. Moreover, the very Eussians to whom estates have been given in Poland have either absented themselves systematically from the country, or, if they have remained, have, as a rule, acquired Polish sympathies. It is a hopeless case for Eussia : she must either do justice to the Poles, or adopt measures of confiscation as extensive and as cruel as that measure of conscription which has just roused the indignation of all Europe, to such an extent that the Eussian Grovemment has found itself compelled to make an attempt to explain it away. A middle course between justice and the most terrible fear-inspiring injustice is not at all safe. Poland has had two periods of profound peace during the last half-century. The first was 206 FIRM FOUNDATIONS. immediately after the promulgation of the Consti- tution of 1815, the coronation of Alexander I., and the announcement of his intention to extend the Constitution, already given to the Kingdom, to the Polish provinces incorporated with the Russian Empire. The second was a few years after the suppression of the insurrection of 1830, when the Emperor Nicholas, having caused the citadel to be erected outside Warsaw, informed the municipality of the city that he would not listen to a word they had to say, but that at the first sign of tumult he would lay the place in ashes. Experience, then, has shown that there are two ways of maintaining order in Warsaw. Alexander II. has hitherto endeavoured to steer between the two— with what success need not be said. If he does not like to try the mode which the Emperor Nicholas favoured, a^d which, to be .permanently effective, ought to be carried out further than even the Emperor Nicholas ever dreamed of, why not try the system introduced by Alexander I., and gradually give it the develop- ment which that monarch certainly intended it should receive ? CHAPTEE XIII. EFFECT OF PERSECUTION ON THE POLES. Lord Heytesbuby appears to liave been misin- formed as to the effect of the representations made to the Eussian Grovernment on behalf of the Poles of the Kingdom. Instead of only twenty persons in the Kingdom of Poland being proceeded against, upwards of two hundred were actually sentenced to death, though their punishment was afterwards com- muted by the Emperor to perpetual exile to Siberia. Then it must be remembered that thousands of insurgents, including most of the members of the Diet, many of the soldiers, and nearly all the oflicers of the army, had left the country, and were not to be enticed back by promises of a pardon, which some did not choose to solicit, and which others knew, if they did solicit, they would only obtain in form. Lord Heytesbury justly remarked that "in the Eusso-Polish provinces incorporated with the Em- pire, confiscation of property, exile, or deportation to Siberia were the general lot. ISTot an individual has been suffered to escape who took any active 208 EFFECT OF PERSECUTION. part in the Eevolution." He was convinced, too, that the merciless severity practised towards the Poles, after their entire submission, was chiefly- due to the anger and indignation of the Russian nation, the Emperor himself being inclined, by his naturally soft heart, to deal tenderly with his erring Polish subjects now that they had returned once more to the right path. "If" (Lord Heytesbury wrote to Lord Palmer- ston) " after all the blood that has been spilt, and the treasure that has been expended, in the recovery of Poland, everything is placed again upon the ancient footing, and if no punishment is inflicted on the authors of the cold-blooded assassinations* which took place in Warsaw on the first breaking-out of the insurrection, I do not believe that, irritated and exasperated as this nation is, the exercise of such magnanimity wiU be unattended with danger. The cry of the nation may become too powerful for even the sovereign to resist, and, in despite of him- self he may, perhaps, be forced into measures which his own nobler feelings, his own unbiassed judg- ment, would probably induce him, under other cir- cumstances, to reject." * What were these " cold-blooded assassinations " ? People who have suffered insults|]and persecution for years do not suddenly rise in cold blood. The generals who were killed in Warsaw on the night of the 29th November were struck down because they were endeavouring to prevent their troops from joining the national movement. MAGNANIMITY OF NICHOLAS. 209 It is now known, however, that the Emperor IsTicholas hated the Poles with a hatred sufficient for his whole Empire ; that he added cruelty to cruelty, and with his own hand wrote directions for aggravating the punishments already decreed against them by his not too lenient ministers and judges. The reader has abeady seen * that when the order for transporting five thousand families from Podolia to the Caucasus was submitted to the Emperor by the Minister of the Interior he " deigned to add," with his own hand — " These rules are to serve, not only for the province of Podolia, but also for all the other western provinces ; Wilna, Grrodno, Witebsk, Mohilew, ^Bialystok, Minsk, Volhynia, and KiefF; lohich will make altogether forty-five thousand families!' The officials hesitated to carry out this inhuman order, asked for further instructions, and interposed various delays. Ulti- mately they removed a certain number of families by force from Podolia ; but this first step caused so much indignation that it was thought advisable not to repeat it.f The Eussians were either ashamed or afraid to drive some two hundred thousand Poles to the last pitch of despair, and this gigantic scheme of expatriation was abandoned. Frederic the Glreat had transported whole colonies from Saxony into his Prussian dominions, and * See page 1S5. t Forster, ha Pologne. VOL. I. P 210 EFFECT OF PERSECUTION. after the Hussite war thirty thousand Bohemians were driven from their native land by Austria, But, as the immense Frederic remarks in one of his letters, " These vain and intriguing Poles cry out about everything." * They are, indeed, very like the inhabitants of certain isles who have been described as "so ferocious that when they are attacked they defend themselves." But perhaps the blackest and most cowardly action committed by Nicholas in his persecution ©f the Poles, and certainly one of the most cruel actions ever committed by a ruler in the history of Europe, was his condemnation of the young Prince Sanguszko as a felon. I have seen Eussians and Poles who had been confined in fortresses, sent to the east of Eussia, exiled even to Siberia (one cannot know many subjects of the Eussian Empire without being acquainted with a few who have felt individually the hand of despotism pressing upon them), and have always heard them say that what they had to complain of was, that they had been imprisoned or exiled, and not of any positive iU- ti'eatment beyond that. These, however, must have been fortunate men who had not seriously provoked the Grovernment. Very different was the fate of Prince Eoman Sanguszko. Until I went to Poland, I * Correspondence of Frederick II. in FredhicII., Catherine^ et le Partake de la Pologne. AN INFLEXIBLE MONARCH, - 211 could scarcely believe the story of his having been sent to Siberia on foot with a gang of robbers and assassins; I thought there must be some exagge- ration (a fault from which Polish writers are, of course, not entirely free), or perhaps some mistake. Since then, however, I have met near relations and intimate friends of this unhappy man, and there can be no doubt as to his having been subjected to the vilest punishment, and that by the express order of the Emperor. The crime committed by the Prince was that of having fought for his country. He was well acquainted with some of the members of the Imperial family, had been in the habit of meet- ing the Empress at Berlin when he was a student and when she was still a Prussian Princess, and had often danced with her at her father's court. She was horrified, as any woman of the least heart must naturally have been, at the thought of this young man of twenty-four being sent for life to Siberia to work in the mines, and entreated the Emperor to pardon him, or, at least, to mitigate his punish- ment. The Empress herself and all the sisters of the young Prince went down on their knees and begged the Emperor to spare him. These prayers were not without their effect on the tyrant. He sent for the order condemning the Prince to hard labour in the mines, and " deigned to add " with his owa. hand, " To he conducted ta his destination on foot." p 2 212 , EFFECT Of PERSECUTION. Did the Emperor Nicholas really feel touched by the prayers addressed to him? Was he afraid of showing that he was not absolutely inflexible, and was it to prove the contrary that, with the ob- stinacy of a savage, he increased a punishment already atrociously severe, simply because he had been implored to diminish it ? Or was he enraged that any member of his family should dare to take an interest in the fate of a Polish insurgent and determined to punish such audacity by making that fate still worse? However this may have been, Prince Eoman Sanguszko, dressed as a felon, and chained, wrist by wrist, to a murderer, was compelled to make his terrible march to Siberia in the convict gang. A picture has been painted of Prince Sanguszko working in the mines ; but this, however truthful, is still the offspring of an artist's imagination. I was much more impressed by seeing a little black cross in Siberian wood, which he had cut out himself, and marked with his initials in Siberian stones, picked up in his own mine. He had sent this memento, this palpable cry de profundis, to a friend in Galicia, at whose house I also saw a model he had made of his half-subterranean hut, and a portrait he had painted of himself, in the loose grey coat of a Eussian soldier — for after a certain period of pro- bation under ground, he had been promoted to be a private in some regiment of the line, where his RETURNED EXILES. 213 great misfortunes did not save Mm from being struck on those numerous occasions when a recruit who is being drilled is tolerably sure to come in for hard blows. It is to be hoped, arid I think, may he supposed, that his officers were igriorant as to who and what he was. Formerly, when a Pole took leave of his friends, to go to Siberia, his parting salutation was " Grood- bye, may we never meet again ! " for there was no chance of his returning. Prince Eoman Sanguszko, however, has come back totally deaf, but not dumb. Indeed, the present Emperor, soon after his acces- sion, recalled all the Polish exiles who were suffer- ing for political offences in Siberia. The worst of the Poles is, that they come back from exile, if possible, greater patriots than when they went there; calmer, perhaps, and more re- signed, but certainly not less determined. There are many of these returned exiles in Warsaw now, and they even form an important element in the population of that unhappy city. They are the living witnesses of the indestructibility of the Polish national spirit ; and the sight of these brave, indomitable men, who have come back from the mines with the loss, perhaps, of their health, and their gaiety, but with no loss of faith in the future of their country, is an encouragement to those who have yet to make that terrible jour- 214 EFFECT OF PERSECUTION. ney, the recognized " grand tour " of the Polish patriot. The anguish caused in the mind of a Pole by the thought of the fate that awaits the noblest children of Poland, unless the history of their country and of its former glory, is kept from them like a forbidden book, has found vent in an ad- mirable poem by Mifkievicz, addressed " To a Polish mother." I give the best translation of it that I can make, and am sorry that it is not more worthy of the original :* — 1. O Polish mother ! when thy son's bright eyes Flash with the light of genius ; when he flies The games of his young playmates, and aspires To hear the story of his noble sires, 2. Whose glories cast a halo round his brow ; — Polish mother, pray for mercy now ! Down on thy knees, before the Virgin kneel : The sword which pierced her heart thy heart shall feel! * A very beautiful translation of another of Mifkievicz's poems, in quite a different style, will be found in the Appendix ,(No. 8). THE POLISH MOTHER. 215 3. ThoTigli peace may smile benignant o'er the world. The cannons silent and the banners furled ; No peace for him, nor e'en a glorious strife : A martyr without hope he ends his life. Send him to breathe the air of some damp cave, To ponder o'er his fate, his early grave ; There on a little straw thy son should crouch, Sharing with reptiles his uncleanly couch. There let him learn to check all manly pride, All natural joys, all natural rage to hide ; There let him seek his vengeance to control ; There let its poison eat into his soul. Teach him to clothe his thoughts in mean dis- guise. To speak each word as though the walls were spies ; Until by dint of study he can make Himself as cold and crawling as a snake. 21 G EFFECT OF PERSECUTION. 7. The Infant Jesus, as tlie legends say. Played with the cross at ISTazareth, on^ day : O Polish mother ! this thy lesson be : Thy child must learn to feel his destiny. Before the tumbril he must not grow pale, Nor redden at the hangman's rope, nor quail Before the axe, nor dread a felon's brand : To manacles accustom his young hand. 9. Think not because his ancestors could boast Of having routed many a Moslem host, Of having fought in freedom's glorious name. That he can ever earn a warrior's fame. 10. His fate is not in open field to die ; His one acknowledged foe will be — a spy ! Vanquished, his only monument will be The warning figure of the gallows-tree ; THE POLISH MOTHER. 217 11. His immortality a passing tear Shed by some foolish girl Tipon his bier ; While other youths — a sympathetic crowd- Whisper the fate they dare not tell aloud. CHAPTER XIV. EFFECT OF PERSECUTION (CONTINUED). — "THE MARTYRS." The sort of impression which, the tyranny of the Eussians makes upon a numher of innocent, -enthusiastic young men is set forth in a drama by Miykievicz; a drama in which every scene, every personage is real, and in which the author himself played a part. A portion of the action takes place in the prison, of Wilna, where the poet was confined with Soholewski, Joseph Kavalewski, FeHx Kolakowski, the Abbe Lwowicz, Preiend, Jegota, and others, for the most part members of the Wilna University, on a charge of belonging to an association having for its object " the maintenance and propagation of the insane Polish nationality." * Sobolewski has just returned from the police-office, where he has been undergoing an examination. On the principal * By Article I. of the Treaty of Vienna it is stipulated that the Poles, subjects respectively of Eussia, Austria, and Prussia, shall obtain " a national representation and institutions ! " " THE MARTYRS." 219 square, between the Town Hall and the Church of St. Kasimir, he has seen twenty kibitkas, — {" A cursed sort of c^xriage without springs, Which on rough roads leaves scarcely a whole bone," is Byron's description of a kibitka in JDon Juan,) full of young men and even children, about to be sent into exile. The square is filled with a dense crowd, and the congregation rushes out of the church to see what fresh horror is being enacted, leaving the priest at the altar to continue the mass by himself. Sobolewski and the corporal who has him in charge, stop for a moment under the church porch. " The kibitkas advanced," says SobolewsH in narrating what he has seen to his companions, " and the prisoners were thrown into them one by one. I looked at the compact crowd of spectators and soldiers. All their faces were as pale as death, and in this immense assemblage there reigned such a silence that I conld hear every footstep and the rattling of every chain. The people, the army, were all moved, but all were silent, for all dreaded the Tsar. At length, the last prisoner was brought out. He seemed to resist; but the fact was he could scarcely drag himself along, poor boy, and tottered as he moved. They made him walk slowly down the steps j but he had hardly put his foot on the second when he rolled over, and fell to the groimd. It was Wassilewski, our neighbour 320 EFFECT OF PERSECTJTibN. in captivity. He had received so many blows at the interrogatory two days before that His face was as pale as death. A soldier came and raised the motionless body. With one arm he carried it to the kihitJca, while with the other he wiped away the tears he could not restrain. It was an awful sight. Wassilewski had not fainted, but he had become stiff with the fall : he was as straight as a beam, and his arms were stretched out above the soldier's neck as if he had died on the cross. His eyes were staring lifeless and wide open ; and the crowd also opened its eyes and its lips ; and from a thousand breasts an immense sigh burst forth, a deep hollow sigh, as though ah the tombs in the vaults beneath the church had given out one general groan. The commander stifled it beneath the rolling of his drums, and the order " To arms, quick march!" put the column in motion. All the kibitkas went off like lightning down the street. One only seemed to be empty. It contained a prisoner whose body could not be seen, but whose hand, all numb and dead, hung out stretched towards the people, and trembled and shook as if to say farewell. This Mbitka disap- peared with the rest. Before the driver could whip his way through the crowd, he was obliged to stop before the church, and just as the corpse was pass- ing, I heard the altar beU. The nave was now deserted. I saw the hand of the priest raising to "the martyrs." 22.1 heaven the body and blood of the Saviour, and exclaimed, "Lord, Thou who didst shed Thy innocent blood for the salvation of the world, Thou who wast condemned by Pilate, receive this young victim condemned by the Tsar ! He is less holy, for he is not divine, like Thou, but he is not less innocent ! ' " {A long silence.) Joseph. I have read the histories of certain wars in primitive and barbarous ages. It is written that in those days the enemy did not spare the trees of the forest, and that he set woods and harvests on fire. But the Tsar is more ingenious ; the bloody wounds he inflicts on Poland are deeper and more cruel. He carries away and buries even the seeds ; and Satan himself has taught him the secret of destruction. Felix. And Satan himself will give his pupil a prize. {Silence.) » » « * Jegota. Joseph was speaking just now of seeds . If the Tsar wishes to carry away and bury all the seeds of our garden in his own land, wheat may become dear, but there need be no fear of famine. Anthony has already given us a treatise on this kind of rural economy. 223 EFFECT OF PERSECUTION. A Prisoner. "What Anthony ? Jegota. Do you know the fable of Gorefki,* or rather do you know the truth ? Several Prisoners. Let us hear it. Jegota. When Grod banished the first sinner from the garden of Paradise, He did not wish the man to die of hunger, and caused the angels to spread along the road all the seeds of the earth. Adam came by, and, not knowing the use of them, went on. But the Devil, being a savant, came at dusk, looked at them, and said to himself, " It cannot be without reason that Grod has strewed these handfuls of wheat about : there must be some secret virtue in the grains ; let me put them out of sight before the man knows their value." He then dug a furrow in the ground with his horns, filled it with wheat, inundated it with saliva, covered it up, and beat * Colonel Antony Gore9ki, one of the heroes of the national ■war of 1880. Amongst his comrades was another great fabulist. General Theodore Morawski. " We are ^Yaiting for you with open arms," said a Eussian general to the latter during a conference. " Yes, that you may stifle us," replied Morawski. A POLISH FABLE. 229' down the earth with his feet and nails. Proud and joyful at having frustrated the designs of God, he burst into a roar of laughter, and disappeared. But He lost nothing by waiting. The spring brought forth the corn, grass ear, and grain, to the utter stupefaction of the Devil. you who rule the world by favour of night, who call craft genius and atrocity power ; know that those who find faith and liberty, and, thinking to deceive God, bury them in the earth, make no dupes but themselves ! Jankowski. But look at Lwowicz. I declare he is praying. Stop ; I will sing him a Litany.* N'attendez pas que je m'ecrie, Jesus-Marie ! Pour que je croie et que je prie, Jesus-Marie ! II faut avant qu'elle chatie, Jesus-Marie ! Le Tsar qui souille ma patrie, Jesus-Marie ! Tant que le Tsar est plein de vie, Jesus-Marie ! Que Novosiltzoff communie, Jesus-Marie ! Tant que je crains la Siberie, Jesus-Marie ! N'attendez pas que je m'ecrie, Jesus-Marie ! * This translation is by M. Cbrlstian Ostrowski^ 224 EFFECT OF PERSECUTION. The above scene (wliich. the reader must re- member is simply a fine poetical painting of a scene in real life) shows perfectly how persecution will affect persons of different temperaments, dis- positions, and power of resistance. It fortifies some minds, perverts others, and others again destroys altogether. Some of the Poles issue from the Bussian fur- nace stronger and purer than ever, with the ori- ginal iron of their nature tempered into the finest steel. Others are rendered more or less malleable, and it is sad to think that those of baser metal must sometimes be reduced by the trial to the merest dross. It is a trial that any man, however confident in himself, may well pray to be spared ; but, as a rule, the baser Poles can contrive to avoid it, and it is only the best and bravest among them who have to suffer. Accordingly, persecution, on the whole, has had a really elevating and en- nobling effect on the character of the Poles ; and if in former times they were too gay, too careless and thoughtless in the midst of their liberty, God knows that the shade of seriousness, said to have been wanting, has now been added in sufiiciently deep tints ! But does not persecution turn soiiie of them into assassins? Here I may give another fragment from A BALL AT WILNA. 225 Migkievicz's drama. To quote instances, to re- peat anecdotes in a case like this, would be of no avail. But Miykievicz has felt everything that a Pole can feel, and he writes out of his own heart as if out of the heart of Poland. He can sympathize with the ardent, impulsive Pole who, maddened by repeated acts of oppression, would strike a fatal, hopeless blow in a moment of despair ; with the calmer Pole (or Eussian) who is ready to strike but at the proper moment and not in vain ; and, finally and above all, with the religious Pole who would not strike at all, but leave the punishment of his country's oppressors to Heaven. The scene has changed to a baU-room in the Grovernor's palace. NovosiltzoflF, the instigator of the prosecutions directed against the students, is passing to and fro. The mother of a dying prisoner has forced her way into the room, followed by a priest who seeks permission to attend the victim in his last moments. Among the functionaries, military and civil, who crowd the room, are one or two officers, members of the secret society for the liberation of Eussia and Poland, directed by Eyleieff and Pestel. Bestoujeff * is speaking to Justin Pol, one * Bestoujeff was the plenipotentiary in Poland of the Eus- sian Revolutionists of 1825. " He used to reproach our patriots," says M. Ostrowski, in one of the notes to his translation of Mi^kievicz, " with their attachment to the monarchical form, and their repugnance to shedding the VOL. I. Q 326 EFFECT OF PERSECUTION. of the associates of Mipkievicz, Sobolewski, and the other inmates of the prison of "Wikia. The dia- logue is supposed to be recited to music — that of the minuet in the hall-scene of Bon Juan. At the end, the orchestra make a mistake, and pass on to the trombone music of the Commendatore. Justin Pol. {as Novosiltzoff approaches). Oh, let me stab him to the heart ! If not, I slap the villain's face. Bestoujeff. Be pleased to play no foolish part : You do not understand the case. Put up your dagger 1 what's the use Of this one miscreant to dispose ? Tou'U only give them an excuse The University to close. Just. But will he not in torments die, Both in thy country's name and mine ? Best. Not yet : the day is drawing nigh ; And then my arm shall foUow thine ! Just. My hand is itching for the blow. Best. In Poland's name, your vengeance stay ! blood of, sovereigns. Let the Eussians proceed. When they once begin their revolution, they -will go further than the Poles. Their despotism is after the Tartar model, and their liberty will be of the Scandinavian pattern." (The Poles affect a great contempt for Scandinavians, probably because the principal men in Eussian history have been of Scandinavian descent.) POLITICAL ETHNOLOGY. 227 Just. I do but strike my country's foe. Best. And all your countrymen betray. Just. Tyrants, oppressors, filthy spies ! Best, {leading him towards the door) — As well our homeward path we trod. Just. Unless to-night this monster dies, Who shall avenge my country? The Priesti Grod ! {Music changes.) Several G-uests. What means this music ? {A clap of thunder is heard, 8fc., 8fc.)* In spite, however, of the hatred of the Eussians nurtured in every Polish breast, and which is kept up not only by the recollection but by the constant repetition of acts of cruel persecution, the fate of all Poland seems to be linked indissolubly (at least for a time) with that of Eussia. Putting aside the question of community of race (which a Pole wiU assert or deny, according to his political feelings, without any reference to strict ethnology), the Poles certainly feel that the Eussians have a greater respect for them than the Grermans, and * Early one morning, in the finest possible weather (accord- ing to the tradition), Dr. Becu, Novosiltzofif's confidential friend and agent, was struck by lightning. General Baikoff, another of Novosiltzoff's agents, died of apoplexy after a night's debauch. The Mozart-like termination to Mi9kievicz's drama is quite in accordance with facts. Q 2 238 EFFECT OF PEKSECUTION. that they do not, cannot, like the Grermans, affect to look upon the civilization of the Poles as inferior to their own. " I do not pretend to like either Eussians, Austrians, or Prussians," a Pole said to me one day who had lived upwards of twenty years in Eussia. But at least the Eussians do not despise us ; they take an interest in our ideas, they study our literature, they respect the heroism of our soldiers, though it has been exhibited against themselves^ Then, they are not pedants ; they are a young people, and there is more to be hoped from them than from any of the Grermans, so strong in their own conceit. If the Eussians find a Pole among them, they will often show him an amount of attention which he never could expect or in any way desire from Prussians or Austrians." Any Polish reader will guess that this gentle- man was a native of Posen. But I have heard Poles from all parts of Poland say the same thing in other words, though, as a rule, one must not expect the Poles of the Kingdom to be so well in- clined towards the Eussians as those who have suf- fered for some time under a German Government. Doubtless, it is only out of despair that the Poles turn to the Eussians at all ; but, nevertheless, and in spite of occasional massacres at Warsaw, they A DIFFICULT CHOICE. 229 do turn to them, as a nation, more and more every day ; and you may often hear Poseners and Gali- cians say, " Why, even the Eussians, with all their ferocity, are better than these mean, pettily-perse- cuting Grermans ! " On the other hand, did anyone ever know a Pole of Eussian Poland who thought his country- men could under any circumstances form an alhance with Prussia or Austria ? I think not. I could mention several instances of Poles leaving Posen to live in the Kingdom of Poland, or in Eussia Proper, but not one of a Pole leaving the Kingdom of Poland (unless driven out) to live in Posen or Galicia. This does not, of course, prove that the Grermans rule the Poles more harshly than the Eussians. It only shows that the Poles do not dislike the Eussians, as a nation, so much as they dislike the Grermans. One thing which quite convinces me that the Poles will ultimately form a union with the Eussians (whether for a long time or not is another question) is that, attack them as they may, they attack the Grermans quite as much; while they often attribute a superiority to the Eussians over the Grermans and over other nations, which it is certain that the Eussians do not possess; admire them for qualities in which, as a nation, they are deficient ; and see in them virtues which one would 230 EFFECT OF PERSECUTION. like to see, but wHch are really far more visible to tbe Slavo-PoHsb than to any other foreign eye. With the Grermans they will have nothing whatever to do, but they have already a nee sine te nee cum te sort of feeling towards Russia ; and in the same volume you may find a Polish author representing the Russians as a nation of sanguinary, degraded, superstitious savages, and as a strong, truthful, simple-minded, religious people, with a glorious future before them. He wiU perhaps establish a distinction between the Slavonian Mongolized and the Slavonian pure and uncorrupted as he has been, and as he may be again; he will say that the bad qualities of the Russians are attributable to the manner in which they have been governed, and that their good quaUties are natural to them ; finally, he will separate the Grovernment from the people, and wUl tell us that the de- moralization caused by the action of the Govern- ment is all on the surface of society, and that beneath this crust there is a mass of goodness, which will either throw off the crust or absorb it and transmute it. This, it may be said, is very like revolution. It certainly has that disadvantage ; and, no doubt, many of the Poles look to a revolution in Russia as a necessary step towards their liberation; though there are others who think the Russian Government will, before long, find it to its POLES AND RUSSIANS. 231 interest to carry out the programme of Alex- ander I. in 1815, and unite all the Polish pro- vinces under the Eussian sceptre into one consti- tutional kingdom; and others again (namely, the Marquis Wielopolski, with a few friends and agents) who would have the Poles at once cease all agitation, trust implicitly to the generosity of the Emperor, and sacrifice for the present all legiti- mate demands, so that they may gain in time even more than they are entitled by treaties to ask for ; so that by the aid of Eussia they may recon- quer Posen and Gralicia from the Germans. There is, however, one revolutionary party among the Eussians who, at this moment, would gladly join the Poles in an attempt to subvert the existing Imperial Grovernment, with the view of forming a free Slavonian confederation, in which Poland would be one of the principal States. I do not say that at present there exists much sympathy between Poles and Eussians. The Poles have had and still have a far greater sympathy for other nations ; but other nations do not respond to it, or respond to it by diplomatic despatches, speeches, and newspaper articles, whereas the Eussians, it is thought, would, at the proper mo- ment, be ready to fight on behalf of a united Poland under the Eussian Crown — which, for the Poles, is the next best thing possible to a Poland 232 EFFECT or PERSECUTION. united and independent. France and England have been appealed to, over and over again, to assist Poland against the partitioning Powers. Who is to complain if, having no other course open to her, she shall some day, in her despair, accept the aid of the strongest and most enter- prising of those Powers against the two weaker ones? CHAPTEE XV. HOW POLAND FELL. From the first to the third partition of Poland, scarcely a word was said ahout Polish affairs in the British House of Commons, though, shortly before the second partition, there were numerous debates on the war between Eussia and Turkey. England viewed the partition of Poland with complete in- difference. The King made a vague allusion to the first partition in a speech from the throne of the same year, but only spoke of it as a political change which did not endanger the peace of Europe. The seizure of the fortress of Oczakow was considered a far more alarming event, and it was formally proposed to declare war against Eussia unless the Empress Catherine surrendered it. In one of the debates on the Oczakow question,* Burke defended Eussia very vigorously, saying that Eussia was a barrier against the Turks and against the Tartars of the Crimea, who, but for it, might easily penetrate through Poland into the heart of * 1791. See Parliammitary History. 234 HOW POLAND FELL. Europe, "carrying with, them devastation and plague." Poland, therefore, must have been re- garded, some years after the first partition, as a lost country, unable to defend its own frontiers : and, doubtless, this opinion was entertained of it before the partition took place. We are often told in the present day that Poland was " the natural barrier against Russian aggression " ; but in the early part of the eighteenth century it had already ceased to be a barrier against aggression of any kind, more especially against that of Russia. Prussians, Austrians, and Russians violated Polish territory just as they pleased, and the Russians marched through the Ukraine to attack the Turks, as though the Ukraine were already one of their possessions. Prussia, in the Seven Years' War, had been able to resist with success the arms of Sweden, Saxony, Russia, Austria, and France; and Poland would not have succumbed beneath the threats of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, had not the country been thoroughly disorganized at the time. The parti- tion really brought the country to life again by reviving the national spirit of the Poles, and stimu- lating them to make enormous sacrifices, which some day will bear their fruit. Pox said nothing about Poland during the de- bates on the Russo -Turkish war ; but he compli- mented the Empress Catherine on her great abUi- CATHERINE THE MAGNANIMOUS. 235 ties, upon which Pitt remarked that the bust of Fox figured at the Hermitage, between those of Cicero and Demosthenes. Fox replied that if great potentates liked to do him honour, it was not for him to complain. In 1791, two years before the second partition, there were several debates on the subject of the Prussian alliance, in the course of which Prussia was represented as being greatly alarmed at the progress of Bussia. She was justly taunted by Lord Pitzwilliam (debate of April 1) with having been a party to the very act by which Russia had rendered herself formidable to her ; but the par- tition seems still to have been reprobated more as a political than as a moral iniquity. It is remarkable, too, that in Bos well' s Johnson there is not a word about Poland, though the first partition took place within the period over which the conversations extend. Catherine, however, is mentioned, and we are told that one of Johnson's reasons for wishing to make his projected Baltic tour was that he might see an Empress "whose abilities, information, and magnanimity astonish the world ;" and that when he heard the Rambler was to be translated into Bussian he was much de- lighted, and exclaimed, " I shall now be read on the banks of the Volga. Horace was only read on the banks of the Ehine," &c. Thanks to the Eussian reviews, all our best his- 236 HOW POLAND FELL. torians, novelists, and essayists of the present day are read on tlie banks of tlie Amoor, and wherever the Russian language penetrates. The bust of Fox was, no doubt, placed between those of Cicero and Demosthenes that Fox might feel disposed to speak favourably of the Empress in the House of Commons. The Bambler may have been translated into Russian for similar reasons, the Empress being well aware that Johnson was the greatest talker and one of the greatest writers of his day. So Catherine invited the French encyclo- psedists to continue their work in Russia after it had been stopped in France, that she might win the good opinion of them and aU their friends, a design in which she fully succeeded. But I was remarking, that whereas now scarcely a session passes without a debate on the afiairs of Poland, not a word was said in Parliament when the first partition was taking place — ^in spite of a direct appeal from Stanislas Augustus to (xeorge III., which must have passed through the hands of the Ministry. " That is no honour to the English Parliament," said a Pole, a member of the Galician Diet, to whom I was speaking one day of this remarkable sUence. Such is also my opinion, but I also think it was no honour to Poland that her misfortunes should have excited so little sympathy in an assembly where Pitt, Burke, and Fox were sitting, and which, on other subjects. POLAND AND THE HOUSE 01" COMMONS. 237 siiowed itself ready to listen to every generous call. How energetically the natives of India were defended against tlie oppression of our own admini- stration ! Even the Turks had their champions at a time when it was even more difficult than it is now to say anything in their favour. But at least the Turks were a living people, whereas Poland seemed to have fallen into a state of atrophy. There was a much stronger anti-Eussian party in the House of Commons then than there is at present — if any such party now exists at all. Burke, opposed as he was to the destruction of Poland, was almost the only man who was not alarmed by the success of the Eussian arms in Turkey, and said, ninety years ago, what is now be- ginning to be generally understood — that if Eussia extends her territory much further to the south, the Eussian Empire must break up, and that St. Peters- burg and Constantinople can never belong to the same Power. The " House of Brandenburg " had also numerous enemies in the English Parliament, where the swindling policy of Frederic, the great utterer of false money in Poland, kidnapper of men, women, and children in Saxony, and violator of his word everywhere, was often appreciated at its just value. We may be sure that Poland would have had her friends had she deserved them, and she did have them when she reformed her insti- tutions and went into the field to fight for them ; 238 HOW POLAND FELL. but it was then too late to save her. We know that Kosciuszko, before marching against the enemy, took an oath at Cracow, in presence of his troops, to drive the three invaders from his native land, or perish in the attempt ; but Lelewel has told us that Kosciuszko's companions knew the insurrection to be hopeless, and that they fought from a sense of duty and from despair.* In 1773, it was from her own sons that Poland would have had to be rescued. Some were traitors in the pay of Eussia. Many were blindly attached to the ancient state of things, and violently opposed to the most necessary reforms. The Czartoryskis, who knew well the defects of the Polish Consti- tution and were earnestly bent on remedying them, relied on Catherine to enable them to introduce the necessary changes. The King was not by any means a willing tool in Eussian hands ; but, after being told by the King of England that " God alone could help him," and receiving no answer to his prayer for assistance from the King of France, to whom was he to appeal ? Without money, with- out troops, without allies, he had no choice but to submit. Had he resisted — ^had he, for instance, joined the Confederates of Bar (which, as Migkie- vicz tells us, he was often in moments of despair on the point of doing), it may be considered certain * Lelewel's speech on the first anniversary of the insurrec- tion of 1830. Poland's will, 239 that the existence of Poland as an independent State would have been terminated in 1773. As it was, Poland had time to make her political will before the last blow was struck. The Constitution of 1791 is an admirable memo- riaL It tells us what Poland died for, and by what right she claims to live again. It was put in action, too, at the proper moment, though human foresight had nothing to do with this. The Poles, when the Great Diet met for the pur- pose of reforming the laws of the State in 1788, could not teU that the French Revolution was at hand. But it was precisely this Revolution, and the war to which it led, that enabled them to take an active part in the affairs of Europe immediately after the third partition of their country,* and so to distinguish themselves in their national legions as to encourage Napoleon to form the Duchy of Warsaw. Why, however, it may be asked, were the neces- sary reforms delayed so long? Why, above all, were they not introduced long before the fatal year of 1772? — for the partition ought certainly to have taken no one by surprise. Sobieski, on his death-bed (1695), spoke of the state of Poland as hopeless, and refused to make * 1795. 240 HOW POLAND FELL. his will, on the ground that such a proceeding was ridiculous in a country where corruption univer- sally prevailed, and where any legal decision could be obtained for money. " medici medium contun- dite venam ! " he exclaimed to Bishop Zaluski, and asked him whether he was delirious, to talk of will- making in Poland, and whether he imagined that a king, whose orders had not been executed during his hfetime, would be obeyed when dead ? * Twenty-seven years before, John Casimir, in his speech to the Diet on the occasion of his abdica- tion, had foretold the xdtimate fate of the Republic, in precise terms, mentioning the very portions of territory which would be seized, and which, a cen- tury afterwards, were seized by the surrounding Powers, t Augustus II. did more than this. He himself arranged a plan of dismemberment — ^keeping, of course, for himself a considerable share. Eussia was to have taken Lithuania and the Ukraine ; Austria, the province of Zips ; Prussia, the pro- vince now called West Preussen ; whUe the " Man of Sin," the " Physically Strong," was to have become real hereditary King of a Poland, not * ZalmU, Epistola, vol. iii. pp. 5 — 14. f ZalmU, Epiitola, vol. i. p. 57— quoted in every history of Poland. SKARGA's PKOPHECr. 241 much larger tlian the Kingdom of Poland of 1815, and of the present day, with Gralicia and Posen added. This plan was about to be put into exe- cution when Augustus died.* But the most striking prediction of the downfall of the country was uttered in the beginning of the seventeenth century, during the reign of Sigismund III., by the priest Skarga, in a sermon which breathes such lofty indignation against the tyranny of the Polish nobles, and such sublime tenderness for Poland, that, in reading it, one is reminded of the love of the Hebrew pro- phets for Jerusalem, and of their terrible denun- ciations against their own countrymen. Skarga is full of the most exalted patriotism, and it can be seen that he loves the men on whom he is pro- nouncing a kind of malediction. Even the worst of them could not have been thoroughly bad, or they would not have listened to him. He is preaching before the Diet. " Trustees of the governing power, guardians of the pubhc liberties," he commences, " do not for- get that you are here in presence of God, accom- panied and mysteriously surrounded by the souls of the nations you represent. The people of Lithuania, Eussia,t Samogitia, Prussia, and Samo- * Carlyle, History of Friedrich II., book ix. chap. 6. I i. e. the Polish Province of that name, known also as VOL. I. E 24:2 HOW POLAND FELL. 'gitia, watch you, and adjure you by my moutli. Our safety is in your hands ; save us from interna] discord and from foreign invasion. This Diet is •our mother and our nurse : we hunger, we thirst ; it is for you to feed us with justice and with mercy. In the Diet resides the wisdom of the nation. We need your enlightenment ; you are our chiefs, ovir fathers; we are your soldiers, your children. Brought up in honour and dignity, you are those mountains spoken of by the prophet which the Lord commanded to receive from heaven the dew of peace, and to shower upon the plains the rain 'Of justice. Have pity on us. May God inspire you with the love of your country, with love as vast as the country itself Let us love this country, my brethren, this Jerusalem. Let us say with the prophet, ' If I forget thee, may my right ihand forget its cunning ! May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I forget thee, my • country ! ' " The men he was addressing often interrupted him with murmurs.* "With one exception aU the -senators were Protestants. They stood before the raltar, lifting up their heads, and moving them about ■so as to make the diamond clasps in their caps •" Eed Eussia," or " Ruthenia," and which, since the parti- iiions, has been included in the Austrian Empire under the tname of Eastern Galicia. * Migkievicg, Cours de LittSrature Slave, vol. ii. p. 264. SKARGA S PROPHECY. 243 glisten tlie more. Wlien the host was elevated, the King alone went down on his knees. Skarga had not much sympathy to expect from his congregation. He was addressing the most powerful men in Poland. Their soldiers were encamped in thousands round the church, and their lawlessness was precisely one of the things he had to reproach them with. " When I see you all here before me, I can tell what your habits and general conduct are," he continues ; " I perceive the great evil of the country in all its fulness." After speaking of the ambition of political parties, the power usurped by the nobility, the little respect paid to the authority of the King, he bursts into the following indignant appeal on behalf of the peasants : — "And the sweat, the blood of our peasants, which flow incessantly, and moisten and redden the whole earth — what a terrible future they are preparing for this kingdom ! I know of no country in Christendom where the peasants are so treated. And you cry out against abso- lute power, which no one either wishes or is able to impose upon you. Hypocrites and declaimers ! ' You have destroyed my vine,' saith the Lord ; 'why crush ye thus my people, crushing it as the millstone crusheth the corn ? ' By what right do you obstinately refuse to change this infamous law ? These peasants are your neighbours. They R 2 244 HOW POLAND FELL. are Poles like you. They speak tlie same language and are children of the same country. Formerly the Christians gave liberty to their slaves when they baptized them, and they became their brothers in Jesus Christ ; but you, you dare to keep Chris- tians, who are your fellow-countrymen, in bondage. I know that you do not all act in this manner ; but those who commit such crimes, how do they not blush in the face of Christendom, which beholds them, and of which they call themselves mem- bers ? " " Skarga plunges his dagger," says Mifkievicz, " into the heart of the national conscience, and turns it round and round." He then predicts all the terrible calamities which a century and a half afterwards fell upon the Polish nation ; not in symbols or metaphors, but in the clearest and most precise manner. There were no external signs of Poland's breaking- up, nor signs of any kind that would have been visible to a man of less insight than Skarga. The Poles, during the reign of Sigismund III., gained numerous victories over the Swedes, the Musco- vites, and the Tartars. A Polish army took Moscow, and Ladislas, Sigismund's son, had the throne of Muscovy offered to him by the boyards, and, but for the refusal of Sigismund to give guarantees for the maintenance of the Eus- sian national religion, would have been crowned skarga's prophecy. 245 king. ^Nevertheless, Skarga addressed tlie principal nobles of Sigismnnd's reign as follows : — " The foreign enemy who is seeking to crush you will advance towards you, and, seizing you by your weak side, laying his hand on your dissensions, will cry out, ' Now that their hearts are no longer of one accord they are lost.' And he will profit by this moment so fatal to you, and so favourable to his tyranny. ..... On the traces of your discords foreign despotism will advance and swallow up all your liberties. These liberties, of which you are so proud, will become the fable of posterity, and the laughing-stock of the world. For your children will perish, with their families and all that] belongs to them. They will die in misery in the hands of their enemies. . . . . , "Your language, the only one among the Slavonian tongues chosen and adopted by liberty, you will see destroyed. You will see your race degenerate, and what remains of it will be dispersed through the world. And you will be condemned to undergo a horrible metamorphosis; to assume the manners and habits of a people who hate and despise you. " You will no longer have a King of your nation, you will no longer be permitted to choose any King. Poor, miserable, vagabond exiles, you will be driven out of those very countries which now court your alliance." 246 HOW POLAND FELL. In the midst of his sermon Skarga was inter- rupted by the arrival of a courier, who brought the news of a great victory gained by Chodkiewicz over the Swedes. All the members of the Diet, sena- tors and nuncios together, fell on their knees, the Te Deum was sung, and Skarga then continued as follows : — " How can this unhappy nation be saved ? I ought to go, like Isaiah, barefooted, and covered with rags, crying out, 'Hardhearted sinners, rebels against the law of Grod, thus shall you be stripped, thus shall you be seen in your misery.' Your wickedness, like a high waU, in which the cracks can even now be seen, will fall upon you when you least expect it, and crush you. I ought, like Jere- miah, to appear before you with my feet in irons, and with a chain round my neck, and cry out, ' Thus will your chiefs be bound and carried into slavery !' " I ought to come before you with my coat in tatters and eaten by worms, and shaking it, show you, when it falls into dust, how your glory and grandeur will also pass away. Finally, taking a vessel of clay, and throwing it with all my force against the wall, I ought to cry out with the pro- phet, ' Thus will I break you, saith the Lord, like this vessel, that cannot be made whole again.' " .... Then stopping suddenly, and as if struck by a vision, he exclaimed : — ■_ skarga's prophecy. 247 " Who will give me" enough, tears to weep rlajr and night, the misfortunes of the children of my country? So thou art bereft, beautiful land!' mother of so many children. I see thee in cap- tivity, proud kingdom ! and thou bewailest thy sons, and there is no one to console thee. Thy former friends betray thee, and drive thee out.. Thy leaders, thy warriors, are driven like a flock ; they traverse the earth without stopping, and without finding a refuge. Our churches and our altars are given up to the enemy. A drawn sword is before us ; misery awaits us abroad : and still the Lord says unto us, ' Gro on ! go on ! ' " But whither shall we go, Lord ? " ' Go and die, those that are to die ; go and suffer, those that are to suffer.' " Afterwards Skarga, quoting the prophet Hosea,. says : — ■ " Grod himself, after two days, wiU revive you; and in the third He will raise you up." " The first day," says Migkievicz, in his Book of the Polish Pilgrims, thinking, perhaps, of this last prophecy of Skarga' s, — " the first day ended when> Souvaroff took Warsaw, and the second when Paskievitch took Warsaw ; and the third has not yet risen, and it will have no end." Skarga's prophetic sermon (published under the- title of A Call to Bepentance) was, as I have men- tioned, preached in the reign of Sigismund III. ;. 248 HOW POIiAND FELL. and as so much has been said of tlxe bigotry and intolerance of that reign, we must not forget that Skarga, a Catholic priest, was addressing a congre- gation in which all the principal men were Protest- ants. Indeed, the Protestants were at that time in such force in Poland that, probably, if there had been any persecution at all, not they, but the Catholics, would have been the victims. Never- theless, when Henri de Valois arrived in Cracow to be crowned, two years after the Massacre of St. Bartholemew, Catholics and Protestants united in compelling him to swear an oath to respect religious freedom in Poland ; and in Skarga's time, though the King was a Catholic, his subjects, in virtue of their general liberties, were free to adopt or reject Protestantism as they pleased. The Poles, as a nation, have never been given to persecution ; and when, towards the close of their history as a republic, the quarrels about the " dissidents " began, the " dissidents' " demands were chiefly resisted because Eussia and Prussia supported them; just as we should have objected, more than ever, to grant equal political rights to the Catholics, had we, at any time, been recommended to do so in a threatening tone by France and Austria. The influence of the Jesuits increased greatly under Sigismund III., but until their power became supreme, persecution in Poland Proper was simply out of the question. A gentle- THE COSSACK REVOLT. 249 man was a gentleman, and Lad a right to believe what he liked. Unfortunately, the Cossacks were not looked upon as gentlemen ; they were not al- lowed to vote at the election of the King, their Eusso-Grreek bishops were not treated with respect, and their religion was despised. In the country of the Cossacks the Jesuits established in Poland really became persecutors ; and although Poles and Eussians do not at all agree as to the extent to which persecution was carried, it had the effect, in the middle of the seventeenth century, of forcing the Cossacks of the Ukraine to take refuge under the protection (soon converted into dominion) of Eussia. When the Cossacks found that they had only exchanged Polish whips for Eussian scorpions, they endeavoured to liberate themselves ; but Poland had neither the political sagacity nor the power to help them, and they were ultimately sub- dued at Pultava — the Poles fighting some on one side, some on the other ! The Eussians do not seem to have shown any remarkable ability in gaining possession of the Ukraine and the line of the Dnieper; but the Poles showed an utter absence of wisdom, pru- dence, and, in a certain sense, of patriotism, in laying their eastern frontier, almost of their own free-wiU, at the mercy of Eussia. In ceding Kieff to Peter the Great's father, in time of peace, Sobieski deliberately placed the keys of his house 250 HOW POLAND FELL. in the hands of his most determined enemy. The battle of Vienna was, no doubt, a magnificent fight, and Sobieski an admirable warrior. He certainly saved the House of Austria; and all Christendom, if all Christendom was really in danger — which is less certain. But he did his best to ruin Poland. The modern Eussian historians say calmly that the Polish game was irrecoverably lost when the Poles drove the Cossacks to seek Eussian protection; the ultimate efiect of which was to establish Eussia firmly on the Dnieper. One more fatal false step, however, was taken when Poland gave up the city of KiefF, and thus brought Eussia across the river. The faU of Poland, and the triumph of Eussia, were fiiUy prepared, from the outside, before the end of the seventeenth century. The internal causes of its destruction had already shown themselves, in germ, at the end of the sixteenth ; the two principal ones being the veto and the right of every Polish gentleman to vote at the election of the Sovereign. But although the principle of the veto was asserted as a right by John Zamoyski at the end of the six- teenth century — probably with the view of enabling the Poles to defy, if necessary, the power of the rich magnates of Lithuania, then just united to Poland — the right was never exercised until the middle of the seventeenth; when in the year THE VETO. 251 1652, while the Diet of Warsaw was delibe- rating on a matter of the greatest importance, Sicinski, the nuncio of Upita, in Lithuania, sud- denly forbad the continuance of the proceedings, and broke up the assembly. At first sight it seems absurd that the right of veto should ever have been tolerated at all. The veto, however, was not a Polish invention, and the principle was recognized in the early communal life of all the Slavonian nations. It existed in Russia and Bohemia, where, in the deliberations of the village communes, unanimity was necessary for every decision. Up to a certain point, this secured individual liberty ; beyond that point, any peasant who held out too obstinately was forced into ac- quiescence by the clamour of the majority, by threats, and, if necessary, by blows. At present the Eussian peasants in their communal meetings take the opinion of the majority; and even in trial by jury, which it is now proposed to intro- duce into Eussia, the verdict of the majority is to be binding. Our English jury system still re- cognizes the veto, for if one juryman disagrees permanently with all his fellows the jury must be dismissed. In Poland, as long as every member of the Diet was animated by a patriotic spirit, there was at least the appearance of unanimity in all its reso- 252 HOW POLAND TELL. lutions. Those who differed from the majority yielded at last ; as in our House of Commons, on questions of great national moment, such as a de- claration of war, members who do not altogether agree with the majority will, nevertheless, either vote with it or abstain from voting, so that if the country is to speak at all to the foreigner, it may speak with one voice. The Eeform Bill is known to have been passed in the House of Lords by a similar sacrifice. It was passed by a minority, a sufficient number of peers stopping away on the night of the division, to ensure the adoption of a measure believed by the House of Commons and the King, but not by themselves personally, to be for the good of the country. When, therefore, it is said that among other causes which led to the ruin of Poland was the Liberum Veto, it would be really more correct to assert that the country was destroyed by the im- morality of men who were prevailed upon to exer- cise, for a base purpose, a privilege which, until the corruption of the Eepublic, had always been beld in reserve. What is far more extraordinary than that the veto should have existed as a principle is the fact that when it had been put into practice, and when all the best men in the country were scandalized at seeing such a right abused, it should yet have THE VETO. 253' Iseen found impossible to abolish it. Tbe bad effects of the veto were so soon felt by the nation that eighteen years after its first exercise, when it had already broken up several Diets, all the members of the Diet of 1670 bound themselves by an oath not to make use of it, and even proceeded to pass a resolution declaring the utterance of the fatal word to be without effect as regarded that As- sembly. This very resolution, however, was nega- tived by the single vote of one Zabokrziski, the nuncio of Bratlau. Under the reign of John Sobieski, seven Diets, and under Augustus II. and Augustus III. as- many as thirty, were dissolved by the operation of the veto. For half a century it may be said that there were no Diets at all ; they were broken up as soon as they met. Finally, when Stanislaus Augustus, the last King of Poland, came to the throne, the ^Diet, by a general agreement, resolved itself into a " confederation," a form of assembly in which questions were decided by majorities, but which the Diet had no legal right to assume except during an interregnum, or upon foreign invasion, or in defence of the King's person. But for the partitioning Powers the Poles would now have formally abolished the veto; instead of which it was formally imposed upon them, as a burden they must bear, by one of the articles of the Constitution of 1768. The publication of this. 254 HOW POLAND FELL. Constitution, whicli perpetuated tlie right of veto and the elective sovereignty, was understood by the Poles to be little less than a declaration of war. The Empress Catherine was the author of the two fatal clauses, the provisions of which both she and Frederic had bound themselves mutually to en- force. Of course the right of veto availed nothing in the Diet summoned by the partitioning Powers for the purpose of giving its formal sanction to the ruin of the country. This Diet, called the " Burial Diet," deliberated in the midst of foreign troops, and with cannons pointed at the doors. It was not until nineteen years afterwards that the veto was finally abolished by the celebrated Con- stitution of the 3rd of May. But this was the signal for the destruction of Poland. In 1793 came the second invasion of the partitioning Powers; in 1793, the second partition; in 1794. the great insurrection of Kosciuszko ; in 1795, the division of all Polish territory between Eussia, Prussia, and Austria. The memory of Sicinski, the nuncio of Upita, who first pronounced the veto at the Diet of 1652, is accursed throughout Poland. When he uttered the fatal word the Diet broke up in consternation, and on going home he was struck by lightning. His house was burned to the ground, his family THE INN OF UPITA. 255 was destroyed, but he himself is said to have Been preserved in a sort of parched-up, mummified con- dition. On the anniversary of the ill-omened day, and on other days as well, the thunder-blasted frame of Sicinski used to be carried round the town of TJpita in the style of our Gruy Fawkes. He, indeed, deserves his shameful celebrity far more than Gruy Fawkes, who only intended to blow up the members of one particular English Parliament. Sicinski did really blow xip the Polish Diet as an institution, and with it the whole of Poland. Under the title of The Inn of JJpita, a Travelling Sketch, Migkievicz has written a poem on the sub- ject of Sicinski, his Ufe, his death, his durabihty, and the impossibility of burying him. For the earth vomits him forth whenever he is placed under ground, and the worms have always known better than to touch so venomous a carcase. Va- rious persons are sitting in the inn, and various legends are told of Sicinski, and his unpardonable crime. One man says that, under pretence of in- viting the electors of Upita to dinner, he gave them a kind of wine which drove them all mad ; another, that on some important occasion he tied the King's hands, and left him at the mercy of his enemies; a third, that he caused an inundation which brought ruin upon the whole country. 256 HOW POLAND FELL. While the conversation is going on the dried-up skeleton of Sicinski is brought in. " The squalid smoke of death," says Migkievicz, " has dried up his cheeks. Here and there a tooth may be seen glistening in his withered mouth. Otherwise all his body has preserved very much the appearance of life. His head has kept its strange expression; and as an old pfcture, through the coating of centuries, still leaves the features of the original model perceptible, so, although the light of life has departed, the figure would enable anyone who had known Sicinski living to recog- nize Sicinski dead. One sees, at the first glance, that there is something in it which cannot be ex- pressed by words. The savage contortions of a face over which crime has passed seem stiU to give a look of menace to the features of the carcase. A perfidious delight contracts them into a frightful smile. There is the fury of an assassin on the forehead, the pride of a devil in the curve of the eyebrow. The head is stuck into a pah' of shoul- ders which are bent, as though the weight of his ignominy was crushing him to the ground, or as if, dragged up by force from hell, he wished to force his way back again. "If a cavern which has been the abode of crime, when men have demolished it, or the thun- derbolt has struck it, enables us to guess, from its wild situation and its horrid aspect, that brigands sicixsKi. 257 have dwelt there ; if the serpent can be recognized by his skin ; then the life of Sicinski may be told from his carcase ! "'My friends!' I exclaimed, 'I can make your stories agree. He was not guilty of one crime alone, but of all possible crimes. It was through him that Poland, intoxicated by the poison he had prepai-ed, went mad ; it was through him that the King's hands were tied; it was through him that the country was inundated with calamities.' " I then reflected and said to myself, ' What are popular legends? Ashes concealing just a spark of truth; hieroglyphics engraved on a stone eaten over with moss ; an inscription in a lost lan- guage ; an echo borne across the ocean of time, which breaks upon new facts, and strikes and re- sounds again upon fictions worthy only of the smile of a sage. But before he smiles let tlie sage tell us what all other histories are worth.' " VOL. I. CHAPTER XVI. HOW POLAND FELL (CONTINUED). THE ELECTIVE SOVEREIGNTY. "When I meet witli an autlior who speaks of Po- land as of a cliaste Susanna betrayed and ruined by three political elders, I conclude, if be is a foreigner, that be lias not studied bis subject. If be is a Pole I excuse bim and perhaps like him for bis patriotism, but do not agree with him on this particular point. The atrocious perfidy of the elders cannot be denied, and we must admit the beauty and original virtue of Susanna, but not her unimpeachable purity in 1772. Besides much perfidy and half- a-million bayonets, there were Prince Eepnia's drafts on the house of CHfibrd and Co., Amster- dam.* It was a shameful thing, no doubt, * " Make use of all the money you have in your hands, and the 100,000 roubles besides, for which you have an order on Clifford and Co., Amsterdam, so as to increase the number of the chiefs and adherents of our party," &c. {Letter from Catherine to lier Amlassadors at Warsaw, found in the archives of the Eussian Embassy during the insurrection of 1794 ; quoted by D'Angeberg, page S.) THE THREE GAROTTERS. 359- to buy from Poland lier honour and independ- ence, but "if tbey were purcbased it was because they were for sale." * Sievers used also to draw on CliflFord and Co., and, in his Memoirs, teUs what he gave to this noble and what to the other, and how they took it. Nor can I look upon Poland as a thoroughly- honest, simple-minded man defrauded by three swindlers, or knocked down by three robbers — though the swindling and the robbery certainly took place. When the partitioning Powers seek to justify their conduct, I think of three garotters who were brought a few months ago before a London magistrate, accused of assaulting- a gentleman in the streets. " He had no business to be out so late," said garotter ISTo. 1. "What was he doing in the streets till three in the morning ? " " He was drunk," said garotter No. 2 ; " he could scarcely stand, and we had to hold him up." " Besides, we didn't hurt him, after all," said garotter No. 3 ; " and he has lost nothing." * The words of a Polish Bishop, accused of purchasing ecclesiastical honours, to Queen Bona, of -whom it was written — " Ut Parcse parcent, ut luoi lumine lucent ; Ut helium bellum, sic bona Bona fuit." s 2 260 HOW POLAND FELL. All kinds of false charges are brought against Poland, which, even if they were true, would not lessen the guilt of those who attacked her — for at least Poland was not injuring them. Compared with what she ought to have been, and had been, Poland, at the end of the eighteenth century, was very corrupt. The society of Warsaw was dissolute ,• but not more so than that of most other capitals at the end of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, a certain number of the Poles, including those who were seeking earnestly to save the country by means of political reforms, and some of the leaders of the Confederates of Bar, were superior, as men, to any ministers or generals to be found in Eussia, Prussia, or Austria.* Nevertheless, the Poles, as a nation, were far less estimable and far less national in 1772 than they are now. Curiously enough, just after the first partition, the dress of the West of Europe was in high fashion among the Poles, and at that time ten thousand Russian soldiers held Poland in subjection, though she had still twenty thousand soldiers of her own. Now the national costume is the rage in Poland. Warsaw and the whole country are crowded with Eussian soldiers (there were a hundred thousand in * See Cox, Travels, dc. ; and Wraxall, Memoirs, dc. THE RUSSIAN EMBASSY AT WAESAW. 261 the " Kingdom " alone during the Crimean war), and not a Pole is allowed to carry arms. At the period of the first partition, and for some years afterwards, the Poles gave themselves up in the most reckless and shameful manner to luxury and dissipation of every kind. "Neither St. Petersburg nor Naples can surpass Warsaw in these respects," we are told by Wraxall.* " It is not, in fact, gallantry, but licentiousness that here reigns without control." ..." The Eussian Ambassador's Hotel resembles at noon-day, as I Jiave seen, rather a club of gamesters than the residence of a great public minister charged with the administration and Government of Poland. Similar scenes are enacted in the houses of the first nobility, who, after having sold their country, often lose in an evening the fruit of their venality or their dishonour." At present, and for the last two years, there has been an end to all kinds of entertainment in Po- land ; mourning is worn everywhere ; the hatred of Eussia, Austria, and Prussia, is universal ; and the Poles, chastened and purified by long suffering, love their country with one accord. However, there was a strong Eussian party in "Warsaw just before the fatal year of 1772; and * Memoirs of tie Courts of Berlin, dc, vol. ii. p. 168. '2Q2 HOW POLAND TELL. Poles of higli position -were not ashamed to de- clare tliat they had Russian, Austrian, or Prus- sian sympathies. Some were in the pay of the partitioning Powers ; others inclined to Pussia from motives of policy, thinking to defeat her ultimately with her own weapons, and to haffle her schemes by a superior power of intrigue ; others, again, had already risen in the name of their country's independence, and been defeated. There were three great parties : the party of scoundrels sold to Russia, Austria, or Prussia, or to aU three ; the political patriotic party, directed by the Czartoryskis, Oginskis, and Zamoyskis, which prepared the mind of the country for the admirable reforms of 1791 ; and the brave, head- long, non-reforming, patriotic party of the Con- federates, which, in opposition to the King and to the political party, attacked the Russians in the field, and sought, before everything else, to clear Poland from the disgrace of a foreign occupation. Prince Radziwill, at the head of liis own private troops, and those of a few confederates, engaged a greatly superior Russian force as early as 1764. On this occasion his sister and his wife, a girl of seventeen, fought by his side. The Princess rode xip and down the line, pistol in hand, encouraging the soldiers ; and, when they were defeated, effected >her escape by swimming across the Niemen. The THE POLISH LADIES. 263 Polish ladies, tten, were not all given up to frivolity in tlie hour of Poland's danger. "In Poland," says Frederic the Grreat, in one of his letters, " the women attend to politics while the men are drunk." " An accusation," remarks Pro- fessor Eaumer, in his Fall of Poland* " which in itself disproves a great deal that has been said against the Poles." Indeed, if there were so many women in Poland who interested themselves in matters which inferior women always despise, the country could not, after aU, have been in such a hopeless state of corruption as its enemies pretend. After the first partition had been consummated the brave and beautiful Princess Eadziwill lost her senses, and was confined for many years in a castle in Lithuania. The Marchioness Wielopolska, in a fit of despair, committed suicide. The present representative of the Wielopolski family seems anxious to imitate this action, ia a political sense, and to make the whole country do the same. It is difficult to decide whether the temporizing policy represented by the Czartoryskis, or the policy of direct resistance represented first by Prince Eadziwill and afterwards by Krasinski, Pulaski, and the Confederates of Bar, was the best. The former appears to have been the wisest, and without it one can scarcely believe that Poland would have lived to proclaim the Constitution of * Eaumer's Untergang des P ilen. 264 now POL.vxi) pell. 1791, and to light the great battles of 1794 under Kosciuszko. Had there been a general resistance — ^had there been enough unity of feeling at the- last moment to render such a resistance pos- sible — it may still be assumed that Poland would have been destroyed by the overpowering forces marshalled against her in 1772, and had she perished then she would have left a questionabler reputation behind. On the other hand, the policy of the Eadziwills and Pulaskis, if policy it can be called, seems at first sight to have been the noblest. The Czar- toryskis, in bringing the Eussian troops into Poland and leaning upon Eussia to enable them to intro- duce reforms of the most vital necessitj'', did evisl that good might come ; and good did come of it, though it was immediately afterwards destroyed. They looked to Eussia much as Piedmont looked for a time to France, hoping that their powerful friend and enemy would at least keep all other enemies ofi" while they were occupied in reform- ing the institutions of their country and strength- ening their Government in every possible manner. But if the Czartoryskis acted in the spirit of Victor Emanuel and Cavour, the leaders of the Confederates had more of Graribaldi's spirit. They took no note of obstacles, and would hear of no policy which was based on the expediency of allowing foreign troops to remain on Polish soil. THE CZARTORYSKIS AND THE CONFEDERATES. 2G5 The Czartorysld party, who had been working with indefatigable earnestness at their reforms ever since, and even before, the accession of Stanislaus Augustus, their own candidate, complained that but for the commotion and tumult caused by the Confederates, they would have been able to intro- duce these reforms without trouble. The Confe- derates were also accused " of having caused the ruin of the Eepublic, by using and consuming the forces whicli Poland needed to resist a Power of superior force." " We ask, in our turn," says the admirable mani- festo in which this charge was taken up,*" "why these same forces were not employed befoi'e we employed them, and at the first infringement of the rights of the Eepublic? We have been only too patient, and we should now have nothing to fear it what we have attempted in vain — in spite of all our efforts and all our sacrifices — had been done at once . . . If the weakness and cupidity of some had not fettered the valour of others ; if the entire nation had displayed its force ; if it had shown that warlike spirit which has so often rendered it vic- torious, we should now be on the eve of recovering our Hberty and of terminating our period of mis- fortune." The Confederates apparently did not know that * Last protest of the Confederates of Bar, dated November 16, 1773. Loyko Felix, vol. ii. p. 369. D'Anrjeberg, p. 149. 266 HOW POLAND FELL. their ruin had been deliberately planned in 1762, when Frederic II. of Prussia and Peter III. signed a secret treaty (renewed in 1764 by Frederic II. and Catherine II.) binding them mutually to maintain " freedom of election " in Poland, and not, under any circumstances, to allow the Crown to be made hereditary ;* and that in 1763 Catherine had given secret instructions to her ambassadors, Count Keyserling and Prince Eepnin, to take care " that the actual form of the Polish Grovernment be maintained in its integrity, that the law of unanimity in the Diets be not changed, and that the army be not augmented."! It has been said that the Czartoryskis had not faith enough in the ancient Constitution of their country. But the worst of it was the great faith Catherine and Frederic reposed in it ! The Czartoryskis were seeking to introduce the very changes which Catherine had secretly declared she would not permit, and we may be sure that Frederic, Catherine, and the Czartoryskis all knew what they were about. The history of this struggle between the Polish * D''Angeberg, p. 1. •(• D'Angeherg, p. 6.— These instructions were found in the archi\es of the Russian Embassy at Warsaw during Kos- ciuszko's insurrection in 1794. "the family." 267 reformers, who had sworn to save their country and the Eussian and Prussian Conservatives, who had sworn to keep it in a state of fever and exhaustion until it perished, is as exciting as the history of any life and death struggle must be, and it derives a peculiar dramatic interest from the fact that it was carried on as if in the dark, each side feigning ignorance as to the intentions of the other. " The Czartoryski family," says Mi9kievicz, "which, during the last days of Poland, was known simply as the ' family,' is the only private family in Europe which has its own political history." Its history is also intimately connected with that of modern Polish literature, as all the most remarkable works published in Poland from the accession of Stanislaus Augustus in 1764 until the insurrection of 1830, were either dedicated to them, or brought out under their patronage and printed at their ex- pense. Since the last emigration, the Czartoryskis have been at the head of what is called the aristocratic party of the emigration. Many members of this party, however, are only aristocrats in the style of M. Jules Pavre, who lately offended the democrats of Imperial Prance by maintaining that people, before they are allowed to vote, ought to be able to read and write. As far as I have been able to discover, every one is looked upon as an " aristocrat " by the democrats of Poland and 268 HOW POLAND FELL. Ivussia, who does not believe in universal suffrage, and the absolute wisdom of the most numerous and ignorant class of the community. In Poland itself it never occurred to me that there were two parties among the Poles. Perhaps it is that there they feel themselves in face of the enemy. The Russian bullets did not look out for aristocratic or democratic Poles in the crowd of tlie 8th of April, and workmen and princes wore sent to Siberia, without distinction of rank, b}^ the Emperor Nicholas. The impossibility of getting up any discussion in the journals as to whether the fature Poland is to be governed on aristocratic or democratic principles, may also have something to do with this seeming absence of party spirit — so that, for some things, even the censorship is good. In the grandest days of modern Poland, in 1794, when the national troops were fighting against the armies of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, and the Poleswere distinguishing them- selves as they had not distinguished themselves be- fore since the davs of Sobieski, there were no aris- tocrats and democrats. The generalissimo, the immortal Kosciuszko, was a noble or freeman, but of no aristocratic means or position. He was a man of the simplest tastes and habits, and a true friend of the suffering people. His first proclamation in the name of the Polish nation prescribed a considerable diminution in the peasant's task-work, while hi& POLITICAL SNOBBISM. 269 last letter to the Emperor Alexander (1814), con- tained a prayer that lie would abolish it altogether.* Prince Poniatowski did not ask whether Kosciuszko was an aristocrat or a democrat, and, though superior to him in military rank as well as in social position, was proud to serve under him in 1794 as a volunteer. Again : even Kilinski, the shoemaker, who sat in the council at Warsaw with the heads of the most influential families in Poland, and who led the insurrection inside the city — certainly neither he nor those who were glad to have him for a colleague can be styled " aristocrats," in the odious sense in which the word is used by the Polish and Eussiau democratic party. The Marquis Wielopolski, who perhaps is an aristocrat, but who does not appear to have any followers out of his own chancelleries, has called modern Polish democracy " the corruption en- gendered by the festering of the Polish wound "; and he is right in so far, that the notion of saving Poland by swamping the best class of Poles was first conceived by a few unhappy men in the torments of exile, and among foreign revolution- ists. The democratic party first showed itself in Poland during the insurrection of 1830-31, under the leadership of Lelewel, the historian. Had this * See page 331. 270 HOW POLAND FELL. party, however, been really numerous and well- organized, it could not have accepted Lelewel as its chief, for he was by no means a democrat in the ordinary acceptation of the word. " Lelewel," said a friend of his to me, one day, " was a regular democrat. He wore a blouse when he was in Paris, and looked like a workman." Kosciuszko, however, wore the dress of the Polish peasant, and lived in the most simple and austere style, and certainly was not a democrat in the uni- versal suffrage sense of the v/ord. Kosciuszko had the greatest admiration for Prince Adam Czar- toryski, and, as the reader will afterwards see, enter- tained the same political views as the Prince. Lele- wel, on the other hand, after the failure of the insur- rection of 1830, as if determined to blame some one for a result wliich was simply inevitable, persuaded himself that but for the " aristocratic " policy of the Czartoryskis and their adherents, the great majority of the representatives of the Polish nation, it might have been successful. In his preface to his pamphlet on the Three ConsHtuiioHS of Poland, which was written abroad — and not in the work itself, which was printed in Warsaw during the Eevolution — Lelewel accuses the Czartoryskis of having caused the ruin of Poland by introducing aristocratic ideas into the country ; and by seeking to make the crown hereditary, and to strengthen the central power. He also charges them with L EL El W EL, THE POLISH HISTORIAN. Haixhart lith LELEWEL. 271 liaviDg brought uniforms and court-dresses into fashion ; an innovation which, however undesirable, could scarcely, in itself, have led to the dissolution of a great republic. And we must not forget that Frederic the Grreat and Catherine the Grreat both objected, in the most violent manner, to the abo- lition of the elective sovereignty and the formation of a powerful government in Poland. In short, Lelewel was a thorough republican, and he main- tained — what was, no doubt, true, and is true, of the fall of all countries — that Poland perished, not because her system of government was bad, but because all sorts of abuses had crept into it. The fact, however, remains the same, that the arch- enemies of Poland approved of the system, as one into which abuses could be more easily introduced than into any other. Lelewel, however, republican as he was, was far _from being a democrat of the extreme modern Continental type. He was a republican, because, looking back through the history of his country, he saw that as a republic, it had done many glorious things ; that the elective sovereignty for centuries, was no source of weakness to the country, and that even after the right of choosing the King had been taken from the Diet and placed in the hands of the entire body of nobles or freemen, it gave Poland many excellent monarchs, and that it was no more a cause of civil war than the disputes which, from 272 HOAV POLAND FELL. time to time arise for succession under a here- ditary system. It is an article of popular historical belief in most countries, that a regal election in Poland was usually followed by a civil war, and that the election itself was a frightful scene of tur- bulence and riot. It is also too frequently asserted that bribery played an important part at these elections, whereas the fact is, taking the accusations altogether, they can only be proved as regards the elections of the last sixty- nine j'^ears of the Republic, after an existence of more than four centuries. The last King of Poland was imposed by Eussia in conjunction with Prussia, and accepted, it is true, without immediate resistance. The last King but one was placed on the throne by a Russian army after the rival and national candidate, Stanislas IJesczinski, had been chosen by an overwhelming majority. There were plenty of intrigues, no doubt, at the election of Augustus II., and ifc is the description of this one election which is usually quoted by writers who wish to give as unfavour- able an idea as possible of Polish historj;^ in general. What, however, can any one say against the choice of the Poles having fallen on Sobieski in 1673, or on any one of his predecessors? The reader is aware that until the extinction of the JageUon line in 1574, the Diet elected the King, the crown was kept in the same family, and POLISH ELECTIONS. 273 practically was hereditary. When Stephen Batory was elected by the whole body of freemen, he was chosen on condition of marrying Anne, the daughter of Sigismund I., just as William III. was chosen King of England, on condition of marrying into the Stuart family. Poland never had a greater king. The frontiers of Lithuania were at that time within a hundred and fifty English miles of Moscow, and the termination of the Polish ques- tion of that day would, had Batory met with more support from his nobles, have been the annexation of Muscovy to the Polish crown. Afterwards, when Sigismund Wasa of Sweden became king (1587), he was chosen chiefly on the ground that he was a grandson of Sigismund I., through his daughter Catherine, sister of the late queen, so that the Jagellon family was still re- presented on the Polish throne. Sigismund Wasa (known as Sigismund III.), was succeeded by his son Ladislas, and Ladislas by his half-brother John Kasimir, who abdicated. The next king, Michael Wisnowieyki, was a Polish gentleman of small means, elected simply because the Poles beheved, with justice, in his patriotism. The election of John Sobieski, on the death of Michael, surely needs no justification : this event took place in 1672. With Sobieski ended all the glory of ancient Poland, and from 1695, when Augustus II., Mr. Carlyle's "Man of Sin," ascended the VOL. I. T 374 HOW POLAND FELL. throne, until 1764, tlie date of Stanislas Augusti Poniatowski's nomination by the Empress Cath rine, the Polish elections were discreditable at disgraceful to the country. The surroundir Powers would not, it is true, allow the Poles \ choose a candidate after their own heart ; but was the Poles themselves who in the first instan invited foreigners to the election field, and wl suffered them to bring their troops on to Pohi territory under pretence of watching their interesi maintaining " freedom of election," and so o The Poles, moreover, must have fallen very loi not only in a moral and political, but also in a mi] tary point of view, when, after having once mo elected their own candidate, Stanislas Lesczinsl they allowed a Eussian general, at the head 7000 Eussian troops, to enter Warsaw, and, wi1 an utter contempt for the will of the natio give the crown to Augustus III. From th moment, what had Poland to hope as long as maintained the elective sovereignty? "Whs indeed, had it to hope under any circumstances If, as its writers say, the mission of Poland was keep ofi" Eussia, it failed strangely in that missi( when it allowed an insignificant Eussian force enter its capital, and dispose of its crown — n simply without consulting, but in the most c rect opposition to, the wishes of the whole natio Abuses had crept not only into the political syste POLISH REPUBLICANISM. 275 of Poland, but into the moral system of the Poles as a people ; and it is not to be wondered at that the most intelligent men in the country saw, as weU as the surrounding despots, that the Con- stitution must be changed, or that it would fall to the ground and bring Poland down with it. There is not , one instance of a Polish election having disturbed the tranquillity of neighbouring States ; though it is quite true that during a period of sixty-nine years the elective sovereignty was a fruitful source of trouble and disgrace to Poland herself* It is easy to understand, then, that an historian of a republican turn of mind should have refused to reject republicanism because it had broken down in Poland during a corrupt period ; for, as Lelewel himself has said, republicanism is a government for * "In lamentable truth," says Mr. Cobden (Bussia, by a Manchester Manufacturer), " almost every election became a signal for war, which usually lasted during the greater portion of the next reign; and thus, during the whole period from 1573 down to 1772, when the first partition was perpetrated by the three neighbouring Powers, Poland was the constant scene of anarchy and its attendant miseries — fire, bloodshed, and famine." The fact is, that during these two centuries only two elections out of eleven led to an appeal to arms, — that of Sigismund III., which led to an attack from Maximilian of Austria, his unsuccessful competitor, which lasted a few weeks, and that of Augustus III., after which the national candidate, Stanislas Lesczinski, was besieged for a few weeks in Dantzig by an army of Russians and Saxons. There is some difference between two months and two centuries. T 2 276 HOW POLAND I'EIili. brave and virtuous raen ; while despotism is a go- vernment for slaves and cowards. The modern democrat, as a rule, would scorn to base bis views on tbe results of historical inquiry. Grive him a pen and a sheet of paper, and he wiU improvise a perfect government, without any reference to the past and without much to the future. Lelew^, on the other hand, was a Conservative though a Eepublican ; and in examining the three Polish Constitutions, with the view of devising a fourth, he asks himself at every step what is nationally and historically Polish in each. Poland, be says, grew up as a republican country, and it fell because the State machinery got out of order, and above all, because its repub- lican liberties were not sufficiently extended — be- cause a larger body of the population was not called upon to share them. He does not start from any assumption of his own that aU men are equal, or that every man of twenty, twenty-one, or twenty- two years of age is by nature intended to vote, by ballot or otherwise, as he is evidently intended to eat and drink. But he finds that, by the Constitu- tion of 1791, which having been accepted by the nation, he accepts himself, some thousands of non- noble Poles would have been ennobled or enfran- chised from year to year, and that the peasants, with their landed possessions, would long before now have become free. He also observes that the Constitution of 1791 was to have been revised, or LELEWEL, 277 at least brought before the Diet for revision, every twenty-five years, and consequently, that to adopt that Constitution now in its original form would be to ignore the real intentions of its founders. Lelewel seldom loses an opportunity of expressing his contempt for the hereditary as compared with the elective principle ; but his republicanism has always an historical basis, and he objects to the CzartorysMs, with their reform policy of 1764, not only because they were " aristocrats," but also, and above all, because they were innovators and wished to subvert a Constitution which he as an historian respected and admired. At a French democratic and socialist club, the learned Lelewel, the chief of the (so-called) Polish democratic party, among an essentially anti-democratic people, would soon have been regarded as a species of aristocrat. After the capitulation of Warsaw, Lelewel, who had been a member of the Provisional Government, left with the Diet and the army, and went to Paris. Driven away from Paris, he proceeded to Arras, and driven from Arras, went on to Brussels, where he lived for many years, surrounded by his books and visited by numbers of his countrymen, who often in their travels made long circuits, to have the opportunity of seeing and conversing with him. These visits were not always received in the spirit in which they were meant. Lelewel is said to have cared more for study than for communicating the results of his studies, and often became so absorbed 378 HOW POLAND FELL. in contemplation that it was painful to him to be interrupted. He seldom left his room, lived chiefly on his books, and wore the same green coat for a quarter of a century, until at last, thanks to con- stant patching, it exhibited as great a variety of greens as a forest which autumn is just beginning to turn yellow. Lelewel's writings * are chiefly remarkable for the research and the analytical power that they exhibit. He is said, when printed and written testimony failed him, to have lighted up many obscure points in Polish history by the superior knowledge and dis- cernment he brought to bear in the examination of antiquities of all kinds. A coin, a coat-of-arms, a monument, or a monumental inscription, the archi- tecture of a church porch, the symbolical or charac- teristic decoration of a tomb, would serve to guide him in his difficult investigations. When he was appointed Professor of History at the Uni- versity of Wilna, during the reign of Alexander I., he exercised an influence over the students which has been compared to that exercised by Abailard, * History of Poland, History of the Polish Kings, History of the Eeign of Stanislaus Augustus, History of Lithuania and Euthenia, Analysis and Parallel of the Three Polish Constitu- tions, History of Poland told by a Grandfather to his Grand- children, Geography of the Middle Ages, various works on Numismatics, A Treatise on the Studies Serviceable and Necessary to the Writer of History, A Short Account of the Persecution of LELEWEL. 279 over the students of Paris. It is difficult for a foreigner to understand how this effect was pro- duced — unless it was the subject itself, the history of their native land, that fascinated the youth- ful audience — for Lelewel seldom exhibits any of the warmth of enthusiasm ; and there is wisdom, no doubt, in his occupying himself less with the glories and misfortunes of the Poles than with the facts of their history and their historical rights, which their enemies, now that they have violated them, seek to deny. While he still occupied the historical chair at "WHna, he was elected Eector of the University by the Council of Professors, but the Government re- fused to sanction the appointment. After the failure of the insurrection of 1830, the Eussian Gro- vernment gave Lelewel a further proof of ill-will by sentencing him to death, while the French Grovern- ment really injured him by separating him from his friends in Paris, and forcing him to take refage in Belgium. There is one truly pathetic passage in Lelewel's preface, written in French, to the French translation of his pamphlet on the Three Polish Constitutions, dated from Arras. "I ought," he says, " to have looked over the translation, and to have recopied this preface. But time fails me. Pursued by an implacable enemy, I have only twenty-four hours given me to leave Arras, and forty-eight to leave France." 280 HOW POLAND FELL. How this recalls the prophetic words of Skarga ! " But whither shall we go ? ' Go and die, those that are to die ; go and sujBFer, those that are to suffer.'" To return now to the " aristocratic " party. I repeat that, in Poland itself, I do not believe there are any political parties in the present day. But there were only too many in 1764 ; and it is of the reform party, the party headed by the Czartoryskis, which aimed at establishing an hereditary monarchy, supported by a powerful executive, that I have now to say a few words. The Eussians saw through the Czartoryski policy from the beginning, or nearly so. Catherine, in her instructions to the Eussian ambassadors at Warsaw, Count Keyserling and Prince Eepnin, when the election of Stanislas Augustus was being prepared, speaks of the Princes Czartoryski and their partizans as devoted to her interests. The Empress was for once in error. The Czartoryskis knew they could not attack Eussia with success, and wished, in the first instance, to gain possession of all the principal offices in the State under Eussian auspices. They then proposed to strengthen the executive, either by means of skilfully-prepared legislative enactments, which they hoped to pass through the Diet without raising any needless dis- cussions upon them, or to do without any enact- ments at all, and simply trust to their own personal A RUSSIAN DIPLOMATIST. 281 energy and ability. The army was to have been increased quietly, its organization reformed, and its direction confided to a minister of war. As Cathe- rine had sufficient power to appoint her own candi- date, whoever he might be, they determined to find one who would be acceptable to her. The Czar- toryskis, Oginski, and Stanislas Poniatowski, were relations, and it seemed for some time uncertain which of them would be elevated to the throne. The position of Poland at this moment has been compared to that of Eussia under the Tartars. The Grrand Dukes of Moscow, though they more than once rose against the Tartars, found it impossible to throw off their yoke by force of arms. They were obliged to make use of them, to receive their in- vestiture at their hands, and in the meanwhile to gather force so as to be able to attack them with success at the first favourable moment. The Czar- toryskis felt keenly the position of their country — which, under Augustus III., was governed by a nominee of Eussia, just as much as Muscovy, under the Grand Dukes, was ruled by a vassal of the Khan. Indeed, the position of Poland was worse than that of Muscovy, for the Grand Dukes were at least Muscovites, and accepted by the people, whereas Augustus III. had been imposed upon the Poles in spite of themselves. The Czartoryskis had for some time to deal with a diplomatic fox, who succeeded in making himself 282 HOW POLAND FELL. pass for a diplomatic goose. The Chancellor Be- stoujefT spoke and wrote French very imperfectly; his handwriting even was illegible ; and when his diplomatic notes were sent back to him to be elucidated, it often suited his purpose to change the words he had originally written, or at least to give a new meaning to them. He was, moreover, deaf, and had a frightful impediment in his speech. The Czartoryskis thought the man was imbecile ; but he was profoundly cunning. When, meeting with the usual fate of Eussian ministers, he fell iato disgrace, he all at once contrived to hear, speak, and write perfectly well. However, Stanislas Augustus being on the throne, the Czartoryski family, after fifty years' vain endeavours to get into power, had obtained the direction of affairs in Poland. An immense code of laws, which they took care not to call laws, but regulations and administrative articles, were voted in one session of the Diet. " When each of these articles is examined separately," says Migkie- vicz, "it can be seen that they are the result of long meditation and great labour. They are all con- nected together, and all lead to the same point — kingly power." * For instance, a clause relating to the finances, empowered a commission to decide difficult questions connected with the treasury ; and it is so worded, that the same commission can ad- * Migkievicz, Cours de LUterature Slave, vol. iii. p. 66. THE CZARTOETSKIS. 283 minister tlie army, the post-office, and all the branches of the Grovernment. AH the proposed regulations were equally elastic and obscure, and the Diet voted the whole mass without under- standing their real significance. At the last moment — or rather just as the Czar- torysHs were about to put their long-meditated projects in Ml action, they were found out. They could no longer conceal that they were working against Eussia. The opposition was very slight at first ; " but," says Miytievicz, " there was some- thing hard and harsh about it, and it became more terrible from having been so long suppressed." First of aU, they refused to sign an offensive alliance proposed to them by Eussia, and soon afterwards they proposed formally the abolition of the veto and the decision of questions in the Diet by majorities. Then Frederic the Great saw the whole mean- ing of the Czartoryski's reforms ; and from that moment vowed an implacable hatred to them, and to the King of Poland, who had hitherto been re- garded as merely a Eussian and Prussian agent, and who afterwards, from pusillanimity, but not from treachery or want of patriotism, was really not much better. The republican party — the republican Con- servatives, who would have it that the old Constitu- tion was perfect in spite of everything — also took alarm when they understood that the great object of the Czartoryskis was to strengthen the crown, and 284 HOW POLAND Fl/LL. to abolish anar.chy in the Diets. Eussia and Prussia published a number of manifestoes, in which they attacked the despotic principle, explained the ad- vantages of republicanism and the excellence of the veto, and took a solemn engagement to maintain Polish liberty in. spite of the Poles themselves. The King was at the same time urged by the Czarto- ryskis to defend his position, and persist in carrying out the indispensable reforms, while, on the other hand, he was threatened by Eussia and Prussia un- less he abandoned the Czartoryskis altogether. He ended by throwing himself into the arms of Eussia, and the Czartoryskis, after their fifty years' labours, found themselves deserted by their allies, and their country in a more dangerous position than ever. The general opinion in England as regards Stanislas Poniatowski is, I believe, that he was always a willing instrument in the hands of Eussia, and that he basely accepted the throne of Poland from Catherine with the intention of carrying out all her desires, and sacrificing his countrymen for the sake of his former mistress. For my part, I confess I was somewhat surprised to see his por- trait in the print-shops of Warsaw at the end of the long line of Polish kings. He was undoubt- edly a weak man, and held an undignified position ; but it is not so certain that he could have saved the country had he possessed more vigour and energy. He resisted every concession which he made to STANISLAS AUGUSTUS. 285 Eussia for a time, and then justified his making it on the ground that it was indispensable not to pro- voke the wrath of the three Powers who had sworn to destroy Poland ; that it was better to yield a little so as not to have to give up all. This is what his own countryman, Migkievicz, says about him: — "More than once, he was seen to astonish the Court by the sallies of his wit, by the elegance of his conversation, by lively and joyous remarks ; and after everyone had gone the unhappy King fell on the ground and rolled in the dust. Sometimes he was surprised kneeling at the side of his bed, with his hands stretched to heaven, and his eyes haggard, but he had not courage enough to avow to the nation his profound misery, to stretch his hands to heaven in the face of the Diet, to lay the national danger before them, and to seek a remedy for it in the enthusiasm of his people." In another chapter we shall see what part the Czartoryskis played after their country had been partitioned, and their native province of Lithuania had passed under the Russian sceptre. The ser- vices which Prince Adam Czartoryski rendered to his country, even after it had ceased to be a country, were well summed up by a Eussian Minister, Novosiltzoff", who, some years after the signing of the Treaty of Vienna, complained that Prince Adam had delayed the Eussification of Lithuania by at least fifty years ! 286 HOW POLAND FEliL. The Czartoryskis were defeated, routed ; but not discouraged. Poland had been invaded by 100,000 Prussians and 10,000 Austrians, while 40,000 Russians were already in possession of all the strong- holds of the country. England and France had been appealed to in vain, and much to the amuse- ment of the magnanimous Frederic and his flat- terer (when he was not his calumniator) Voltaire, who enjoyed immensely the hopeless struggles of the Poles for their liberty and national life. The first partition having been accomplished, there was nothing for the Poles to do but to remain quiet and prepare themselves, by concentrating their forces, to recover some day what they had lost. It was evident they had nothing to hope from foreign aid. I fancy they might have received some assistance had there been more unity in Poland, and had the Poles shown themselves resolved, as a nation, to defend their rights against any odds. If any one says that this was impossible, my reply is, that the Poles did not stop to count possibilities in 1794 or in 1830. France did make an attempt to help Poland by sending officers and arms to the Confederates of Bar, who, however, were not the representatives of Poland, but only of the Pohsh republican party. Dumouriez found the Confederates without any organization,* and his account of their want of dis- * " He found the Polish aristocrats corrupted hy luxury, enervated by pleasures, employing in intrigues and fervent BURKE ON THE FIRST PARTITION. 287 cipline, of the readiness of everyone to command and no one to obey, corresponds closely enough with that given by Frederic the Great. I have said that in the British Parliament the partition of Poland was not even made the subject of a question. It was alluded to vaguely in a speech from the throne as a territorial change without im- portance. That was not the opinion of the greatest statesman of the time ; but Burke evidently con- sidered the position of Poland quite hopeless, or he at least would have offered a protest in his place in the House of Commons against an act which he regarded as cruel, criminal, and dangerous in the highest degree to the fature peace of all Europe. This is what Burke wrote about the partition of Poland in 1772 in the Annual Register : — " The present violent dismemberment and parti- tion of Poland, without the pretence of war, or even the colour of right, is to be considered as the first very great breach in the modern political system of Europe. It is not (say the politicians of the Con- tinent) sapping by degrees the constitution of our language the warmth of their patriotism. Sapieha, the principal leader, was massacred by his nobles. Pulaski and Micksenski were delivered up, wounded, to the Eussians. Zaremba betrayed his country. He (Dumouriez) broke his sword, despairing for ever of this aristocracy without a people; calling it, as he quitted it, tJie Asiatic nation of Europe." — Lamartine's History of the Girondists, vol. i. p. -^04. 288 HOW POLAND FELL. great Western Eepublic ; it is laying the axe at once to tte root in such, a manner as threatens the total overthrow of the whole. . . . We now be- hold the destruction of a great kingdom, with the consequent disarrangement of power, and union, and commerce, with as total indifference and unconcern as we would read an account of the exterminating of one horde of Tartars by another in the days of Grenghizan or Tamerlane. . . . " The free states and cities of Grermany seem to be more immediately affected by the present extra- ordinary transaction than any other part of Europe. Indeed, if the partition of Poland takes place in its utmost extent, the existence of the Germanic body in its present form for any length of time will be a matter rather to be wished than expected. The extraordinary power to which the houses of Austria and Brandenburg have risen within a few years, was already sufficiently alarming to the other parts of that body. Their natural jealousy and acquired animosity seemed, however, to counteract their ambition, and to afford a tolerable security that they would not join in any scheme de- structive of other States, at the same time that their near equality made it impossible for one to be dan- gerous while opposed by the other. . . . Poland was the natural barrier of Grermany as well as of the Northern Crowns, against the overwhelming power and ambition of Eussia. Some small altera- BURKE ON THE FIRST PARTITION. 289 tions in the system of Grovernment, which might have been accomplished with little violence and infinite benefit to the Poles, wonld have made this barrier inexpugnable. ... A great writer of a former age afl&rmed that if ever the Turks con- quered Germany it must be through Poland ; it may be with greater justice afl&rmed, that it is the road by which the Eussians will enter Germany." Five years afterwards, the Annual Register says of Poland : " Distracted and torn as this unhappy country continues, it has not, during this year, presented those shocking scenes of calamity which had long made it a spectacle as much of horror as of compassion. The vast armies with which it was covered having rendered aU opposition impractic- able, the pretences for cruelty were taken away, and the multitude of spectators, composed of differ- ent nations and under different commands, being a mutual check upon the enormities of each other, the rage for blood dwindles into regular oppression. Upon the whole, the condition of Poland is not worse than it has been." Gradually, however, aU except the Eussian troops retired from the country, and when "Wraxall and Coxe were at Warsaw, some fifteen years after the first partition, the Eussian army in Poland num- bered only ten thousand men, and there was a pretended understanding on both sides that the VOL. 1. ^ 290 HOW POLAND FELL. occupation was of a friendly character. Both. Coxe and Wraxall had good sources of information open to them, but neither of them understood what was going on beneath the surface of society. Coxe understood that the Zamoyskis, CzartorysMs, and Chreptowiczs were emancipating their peasants; that a Ministry of Public Instruction — the first estabhshed in Europe — ^had been formed; that the national literature was being cultivated with great ardour ; that the King was a great patron of art and science ; but he had no idea that the great families of Poland were still fighting for the life of theii' country. He saw in the Palace a map of Poland as the first partition had left it, and a portrait of the Empress Catherine hanging side by side with that of John Sobieski ! The king's nephew gave him letters of introduction to great people in Moscow and St. Petersburg ; and there seemed to him no reason to believe that the partition had not been at length acquiesced in. He little knew that the Poles who invited him to their houses, showed him over their estates, and talked pleasantly and learnedly about painting, poetry, and politics, were secretly preparing the Constitution of 1791. Every one who takes an interest in Pohsh aifairs remembers Burke's eulogy on this Constitution,* * Appeal from the Old Whigs to the New. CONSTITUTION OF MAY 3. 291 which has excited the admiration of honest politicians of all countries and of all shades of opinion, from Joseph Lemaistre, the Absolutist, to Lelewel, the Eepublican. In laying it before the Diet, its authors re- marked that, while retaining all the most essential principles of the ancient Polish Constitution, they had profited by a study of the Constitutions of England and the United States. The late Prince Adam Czartoryski appears to have been sent by his parents to England for the express purpose of studying our institutions. "The principal object of your visit," wrote Prince Adam, the Greneral of PodoHa, to the young Prince Adam in England, "must be to collect materials which you will be able to turn to account when the hour comes for you to pay to your country the tribute we all owe to it." * The Constitution of the 3rd of May was in- troduced and voted with that scrupulous regard for legality which has always distinguished the Poles, and, before being adopted, it was submitted to the consideration not only of the deputies in the Diet, but to the electors at every Dietine or electoral coUege. The Czartoryskis and their adherents, together with Kollontay and Ignatius Potogki, took an important part in preparing this * Le Prince Adam Czartoryski, par le K. P. Felix, p. 35. u 2 293 HOW POLAND FELL. most important Act. This time tlie abolition not only of the veto, but of the elective sovereignty itself was formally decreed by the voice of the whole nation. Thirteen traitors alone protested against the measure, and on their behalf and once more in the interest of true republican liberty, the neighbouring despots interfered, and, with two blows — not this time unresisted — destroyed Poland. CHAPTEE XVII. THE E.ESTORATION OF POLAND, ACCORDING TO KOS- CIUSZKO, 1815; GENERAL CHLOPI9KI, 1830; AND COUNT ANDREW ZAMOTSKI, 1863. The usual mode of ending an article or book on Poland is witli a vague prophecy that the day of retribution must, sooner or later, arrive, and the cause of liberty and justice triumph. That is all very well ; but I want to know who is to have the Polish provinces now incorporated with the Eus- sian Empire. There can be no new Poland without them, the Poles will never renounce their claim to them, and, on the other hand, the Eussians will never willingly give them up. They might be " cut away with the sword," as Mr. Carlyle says, but the sword would have to be a strong one, for the Eussians will no more part with them than they would part with Smolensk or the city of Kieff. All other Polish territory has changed hands more than once since the partitions of the eighteenth century ; but Eussia alone, among the three Powers, has never surrendered the least corner of 294 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. the provinces seized by her in 1772, 1793, and 1795. For a moment, when Napoleon passed through on his road to Moscow, these provinces became free, but as the French retreated, the Eussians re-occupied them. Russia lost them as she lost her ancient capital ; and she would almost as soon lose her ancient capital as lose them again. But is it not very unjust for Eussia to keep them, or rather, is it not very unjust and tyran- nical for her to govern the inhabitants as Eussians when she is bound by treaties to govern them as Poles, and to grant them a "national representa- tion," which, under her government, they have never yet obtained? This is no doubt most unjust, and we have seen that a representation (a very mild one) was addressed to Eussia on the subject by the British Grovernment in 1831. The point, however, to consider is, that Eussia will never give these provinces up of her own accord ; that, unless the Eussian Empire faUs to pieces, the Poles cannot recover them; and that even in the improbable case of England and Trance uniting to require Eussia, Austria, and Prussia to observe the treaties of- 1815, we should not have the smallest right to demand a separation of these provinces from the Eussian Empire. Of the manner in which the Eusso-Polish pro- vinces are now governed I shall afterwards have POLAND AFTER THE FIRST PARTITION. 295 to speak. For the present, I will only remark that, barbarously as Eussia has treated her Polish subjects during the greater part of the present century, and especially since the reign of !N^icholas, yet, for a period of twenty years after the first partition (and it must not be for- gotten that aU the Eusso-PoHsh provinces, as dis- tinguished from the " Kingdom," were acquired by the partitions of the eighteenth century), the Poles who had passed xmder Eussian dominion were treated with anything but severity. " The laws, language, property, and the religion of the inhabitants were respected," says a Polish author of great literary merit and remarkable impartiality,* "the administration of justice was maintained in Polish, and the principal local magistrates were elective. The taxes were moderate, and the new provinces remained free from military conscription during twenty years. The abuses of the Eussian Administration were then less intolerable, the police of the districts as well as the local courts of justice being administered by magistrates elected by the landowners themselves Poland being unable to make any attempt at regaining her lost provinces, no agitation for that purpose, and conse- quently no persecution on that score, took place. There was some religious persecution of the * Panslavism and Germanism, by Count Valerian Krasinski. London, 1848. 296 THE EESTORATION OT POLAND. peasantry belonging to the Grreek Church, united with Eome, but it was insignificant, and produced more by the bigotry of the local Grreek bishops than by any regular system of the Government, and nothing at all in comparison to the persecu- tion which the same Church has recently suffered." Catherine had too much sense not to endeavour to conciliate the Poles when she had nothing to fear from them, and consequently nothing to gain by ill-treating them. When, however, Poland gave an alarming proof of vitality by adopting the Con- stitution of 1791, which rendered the cro^wn here- ditary, abolished the veto, liberated the peasants from serfdom, and placed the franchise within the reach of all classes — then the Allies feU with ferocity upon the re-invigorated State, which, if not at once destroyed, they knew would never rest until it had regained its former frontiers. But in 1796, a year after the third partition, Catherine died ; and Paul, as soon as he became Emperor, visited Kosciuszko in his prison, liberated him, offered him a command in his army, which the Polish patriot of course could not accept, and assured him that if he had been on the throne at the time, the partition should never have taken place. He recalled from Siberia the Poles who had been exiled thither by Cathe- rine, and gave them back their estates which she had confiscated. The reader knows that in the Kingdom of Poland everything Eussian is ab- ALEXANDER AND THE DUCHY OF WARSAW. 297 horred; but in Austrian and Prussian Poland, where, if the Eussians are not at all liked, Ger- mans are very much hated, you may see in the shop windows engravings and photographs of a picture representing the interview of Paul with Kosciuszko in the St. Petersburg fortress. Paul only persecuted the Eussians, especially the Eus- sian nobUity; and we know how this persecution was resented. Only six years had elapsed since the third par- tition, when the Emperor Alexander ascended the throne, and spoke of the dismemberment of Poland as a crime, for which reparation must be made. Throughout his reign Alexander represented him- self to the Poles as the future regenerator of their country. When ISTapoleon, in 1807, formed the Duchy of Warsaw out of the provinces recovered from Prussia, Alexander sought to negative the attraction exercised by this thoroughly Polish little State, by granting liberties and holding out hopes to the inhabitants of Lithuania and the other Polish provinces under his dominion. Alexander, when his troops had taken possession of the Duchy of Warsaw in 1814, sincerely de- sired to be King of aU Poland — an ambition which has never been entertained by a King of Prussia or, in modern times, by an Emperor of Austria. Only a few years before the first partition, the crown of Poland was offered to Frederic the Great 298 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. for his brother Prince Henry.* Frederic at once refused it. He did not wish to revive Poland, but to build up Prussia at Poland's expense. The Tsars of Eussia, on the other hand, have desired to rule over Poland ever since the begin- ning of the sixteenth century, when (in 1506) the Tsar Vassili sent an ambassador to his sister, the Dowager Queen of Poland, begging her to induce the States of Poland and Lithuania to elect him for their monarch. Ivan the Terrible (son of Vassili), had he consented to be crowned in Cracow instead of Moscow, and to place the Polish before the Eussian title in his designation, would pro- bably have been elected Kiag of Poland (1572). At least, he had a very strong party in his favour, who thought that in the event of Ivan ascending the throne, Polish institutions would be adopted by Muscovy, as they had been already adopted under similar circumstances by Lithuania. Immediately afterwards, Stephen Batory sought to carry out the converse of Ivan's programme, and to unite, by force of arms, all Eussia (or " Mus- covy ") to Poland. In 1611, Ladislas, the son of Sigismund III. of Poland, was offered the Tsarate of Muscovy • FredSric II., Catherine, et le Partage de la Pologne, par Frederic de Smitt. Paris and Berlin. THE CATHEDRAL OF CRACOW, THE COUESE OP POLISH HISTOEY. 299 by the Council of Boyars, and would have reigned at Moscow as a constitutional monarch, but for the bigotry of his father, who would not give his consent to the guarantees demanded by the Boyars for their National Church. Michael, the first of the Eomanofis, had enough to do to defend his own territory against the Poles ; but Alexis, his son, was a candidate for the crown of Poland at the same time as SobiesH. Peter the Grreat, son of Alexis, imposed two Kings on Poland, Augustus II. and Augustus III. ; and the object of Russian policy, even at the be- ginning of Catherine's reign, was not to dismember Poland, but to gain the whole of it for the Eussian Crown, or for a line of sovereigns to be nominated by Eussia. In short, the Poles know that they have nothing to hope from Prussia, and next to nothing from Austria; whereas from Eussia they may expect almost anything short of complete independence, because Eussia desires earnestly to govern all Poland, and to attain that end must, sooner or later, make terms with the Poles. Count Skorupka, one of the representatives of Cracow in the Gralician Diet, pubhshed a work last 300 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. year,* in whicli he pointed out to the Austrian Grovernment the advantage it would find in granting to Gralicia a perfect system of self- government under the viceroyalty of an Austrian Grrand Duke, so as to make it, and not the King- dom, the centre of attraction for the Poles. Of course the Austrian Grovernment has neither the foresight nor the energy to adopt this scheme. Domhrowski, in 1794, when the Prussians were already in possession of Warsaw, hegged Frederick William to declare himself King of all Poland ; f promising him, if he would accept the throne, the support of the entire Polish nation, which then, as now, desired ahove all to he reunited, under no matter what sovereign. This, however, was far too dangerous a policy for Russia's jackal to emhark upon. We have seen, however, that it is a policy to which Eussia has always been inclined; and she alone of the three partitioning Powers can hope to carry it out with success. The Eussians are quite right in saying that Catherine II. never wished to dismember Poland. She wished to take it aU ; and when Frederic the Grreat forced the project of * Opocha (The Comer- stone), by Count Leon Skorupka. Cracow and Leopol. t Forster, La Pologne. ALEXANDER AND THE POLES. 301 the first partition upon her, she had nothing to gain by accepting it, for a prince of her own choos- ing already occupied the Polish throne, the Eussian ambassadors were all-powerful at Warsaw, and the whole of Poland was held in subjection by a force of not more than forty thousand Eussian troops. Since the third partition, Eussia has, on three occasions (in 1807, 1809, and 1815), gained fresh provinces at the expense of the Grerman Powers ; untn now she finds herself in possession of at least four-fifths of the Poland of 1772, and has under her dominion about three-fourths of the entire population of the dismembered country. Eussia may act with all possible good faith towards her neighbours, but the Emperor of Eussia need only unite the whole of his Polish provinces into one constitutional kingdom, and declare himself londfide King of Poland, to have the Gralicians and the Poseners quite as much at his service as his own subjects. This was quite understood by Alexander I., who, when his Polish provinces ap- peared to be gravitating towards the little State formed by Napoleon out of the provinces recon- quered from Prussia, was on the point of proclaim- ing himself* King of Poland with a Constitution moulded on that of 1791. He appears to have had a good heart, but it is quite certain that he wished to attract the Duchy of Warsaw to his Crown, and defeat the plans of Napoleon. In 302 THE EESTORATION OF POLAND. tliis project the Emperor Alexander was en- couraged by Prince Czartoryski* and by M. C, Oginski, who presented several valuable memoirs on the subject, whicbi were approved of by His Majesty. " The re-establishment of Poland as you propose it," said the Emperor to Oginski on the 15th December, 1811, "is in no way contrary to the interests of Eussia "..,." The Poles would be happy and contented if they had a Constitution. As for the title, why should I not call myself King of Poland if that will give pleasure to all the Poles ? " After the sudden invasion of Eussia, when Napoleon was in full retreat, the Emperor said again to Oginski, on the 19th October, 1813 : "As soon as I see him on his last legs, and unable to do any harm to the Poles, I wiU re-establish Poland. I will do it because it accords with my conviction, with the feelings of my heart, and even with the interests of my Empire I know I shall meet with many difficulties and obstacles in carry- ing out my design ; but, unless I die, I will realize it. Not only did Prince Adam Czartoryski and M. C. Oginski look to the Emperor Alexander and * See L'Odyssee Polonaise, par E. Eegnault, Les Memoires d' Oginski, and several extracts from the latter work in D'Ange- berg's Recueil des Traith, dc, for the years 1811 and 1813. KOSCIUSZKO ANl) NAPOLEON. 303 to him alone for the re- establishment of Poland ; Kosciuszko did the same ; and even PoniatowsM, Napoleon's most devoted follower, appears to have hesitated one terrible night between his duty as a soldier to the French Emperor, and as a Pole to his native land. Alexander, during the French re- treat, made a formal promise to restore Poland if Poniatowski would only remain neutral with his troops in the Duchy of Warsaw untU. the conclu- sion of the war. The temptation was so great that, in his distress of mind, Poniatowski was on the point of committing suicide, but idtimately he sacrificed all other considerations to a feeliag of personal honour.* As for Kosciuszko, he never believed in Na- poleon's intention to re-establish Poland, and refused to assist him in forming the Duchy of "Warsaw, from a just conviction that he would attack and make peace with Eussia and Austria exactly as it might suit his own pohcy, and without any reference to the interests of the Poles. This did, not prevent Napoleon from making a fraudu- lent use of Kosciuszko's name in his proclamationsf * L'Odyss&e Polonaise, par E. Eegnault. t By a strange omission, no documents bearing on this important fact are published in D'Angeberg's vahiable collec- tion. On the contrary, a proclamation, signed by Dombrow- ski and Wybi9ki, is published, announcing the speedy arrival of Kosciuszko in Poland, though Kosciuszko had refused all countenance to Napoleon's intrigues in the name of Polish 304 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. — a piece of baseness against which the Polish hero lost no time in protesting. Kosciuszko had only one idea of a revived Poland : the country as it existed before the partitions, under a Constitu- tional Government. For less than this he would not move; to obtain this he was ready, at any time, to lay down his life. Under a constitutional system, as long as the sovereign faithfully observes the Constitution, it matters comparatively but little who reigns. But in the peculiar case of Poland, it was evidently desirable that the crown should be given to a sovereign who would be able to defend it against all comers ; and, as in 1814, Alexander had nearly the whole of ancient Poland in his possession, nothing seemed simpler than to beg him to re-estabhsh the ancient limits and liberties of the country, and declare himself king. Twenty years had elapsed since the battle of Macieiovice, at which Kosciuszko, as he fell, did not exclaim, " Finis Folonice ! " and now, for the first time, the undaunted patriot saw that there was an opportunity for his beloved country to recover its national existence. " Everyone," says M. Gruizot, speaking of the independence. " If he will not allow us the use of his name, we must take it in spite of him," Napoleon had said. See, among other accounts of the formation of the Duchy of Warsaw, the one contained in Thiers' History of the Consulate and the Empire, and L'Odyssee Polonaise. FREDERIC II. AND PETER III. 305 European Powers, " has made use of Poland. No one has ever assisted her." Accordingly, in seek- ing to regain her national unity, Poland would do well to consider, not which Power has persecuted her the most, or which has been the most ready to betray her, but simply which is the most interested, at the present moment, in, to some extent, further- ing her views, and the most capable of carrying them out. Let us go back once more : this time to the very beginning of the trials of Poland. They have now lasted a hundred years. Ten years before the first partition, Frederic the Great and Peter III. signed a secret treaty binding them to maintain that curse of Poland, the elective sovereignty, and to oppose all attempts to make the crown hereditary. This treaty was renewed on behalf of Eussia by Catherine II. in 1764 ; and the same year Prussia, Eussia, and Austria made ofl&cial declarations, through their ambassadors, in which they pledged themselves to maintain the integrity of Poland, and deprecated vigorously the guilty in- tentions already attributed to them. His Majesty of Prussia had heard of a shameful rumour to the effect that his court and that of Eussia meditated the dismemberment of Poland, and he felt "justly indignant at these reports," more especially, as, " far from thinking of increasing his own dominions, VOL. I. X 306 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. he had always laboured, and always should labour, to maintain those of the Republic in their in- tegrity/' * " If ever the spirit of lying invented a complete falsehood," wrote Catherine at the same time,! " it was when the report was audaciously spread " — that Catherine, in supporting the election of Stanislas Augustus, wished to prepare the way for the subjugation of Poland. Until the very eve of the partition these protes- tations were renewed. After the first partition, when Poland was re- forming her Constitution, abohshing the veto and the elective sovereignty, enlarging the elec- toral body and liberating the peasants from serf- dom, Prussia, under these circumstances, assured Poland of her sympathy and support, and a treaty of alliance between the two countries was signed at Warsaw on the 29th March, 1790. The year afterwards, when the Constitution of the 3rd of May had been adopted, Frederic "William wrote to congratulate Stanislas Augustus, and to assure him of his continued friendship. Another year, and he was in league with Catherine II. to dis- * D'Jngeberg, p. 15. f Chodzko, La Pologne, Pilteresque et Ilhistree, t. iii. p. 142. VAngebery, p. 1-t. NAPOLEON AND POLAND. 307 member the territory of his ally, and pleading "posteriora ligant " as an excuse for his treachery. So much for the Prussian alliance. As for Napoleon, he was always ready to abandon the Poles ; at one time, to conciliate the Emperor Paul, to whom he actually proposed to forward Kos- ciuszko and a host of illustrious exiles in bran-new uniforms, as a sort of peace-offering ;* at another for the sake of the friendship and co-operation of the Emperor Alexander, to whom he on two occa- sions ceded Polish territory,! and to whom he made a formal promise never to revive the name of Poland ; J at another in order to retain Austria as an ally. The Emperor Alexander, on his side, whUe he * L'Odyssee Polonaise, par E. Eegnault. f Bialystock in 1807, and Tarnapol in 1809. I M. Thiers denies that this promise was given, and so did Napoleon himself at St. Helena. It would he more correct to say that he was ashamed of having given it. See L'Odyssee Polonaise, par E. Eegnault, who quotes the promise in writing. Napoleon was soliciting at the time the hand of a Eus- sian Grand-duchess, and, as M. Eegnault well says, " The sacrifice of Poland was to he his wedding-gift." Napoleon was always ready to give up the nation he had already betrayed for the sake of an advantageous legitimate union. That Napo- leon really admired, perhaps even loved, Poland, is also certain ; and the Poles apparently think that (to vary Tenny- son) — " 'Tis better to be loved and lost, Than never to be loved at all." V 9, 308 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. was leading Prince CzartorysM, Ms Minister of Foreign Affairs, and all the principal men of Lith- uania, to believe that he was bent on the restora- tion of Poland in its integrity, was, during a portion of the time, carrying on a negotiation with Prussia ; and, to do him justice, he did not conceal, in the year 1811, that, if he could make terms with Napoleon, he should not be in any hurry to carry out his Polish project at all. " We must wait for events," he said to Ogrnski in December, 1811. "To-day I have received more satisfactory news, which gives me some hope that we shall not come to an open rupture with Napoleon." Nevertheless, although Alexander may not have wished to engage in a gigantic struggle for the sake of Poland, it is quite certain that when the retreat of the French left all the Polish provinces in his hands, he desired ardently to be proclaimed King of a united Poland, and that with the crown he was ready to accept a Constitu- tion. Here, however, the interests of the Western Powers were brought into play. Kosciuszko, after twenty years' retirement, during which his beliei in the restoration of his native land never for a moment deserted him, begged Alexander to declare himself King of Poland, and to give the Poles a Constitution resembling that of England. Here KOSCIUSZKO. 309 is his letter ; a most valuable document for persons who wish not merely to have their' interest and emotion excited by the history of the struggles of the Poles to regain their national existence, but who wish also to understand how that exist- ence may be regained : — Kosciuszko to tJie Emperor Alexander. "Berville, Wi of April, 1814. " SiBE, " If from my obscure retreat I venture to ad- dress a prayer to a great monarch, a great captain, and, above all, a protector of humanity, it is because his generosity and magnanimity are well known to me. " I ask three favours. "The first is, that you will grant a general amnesty to the Poles W-ithout any restriction, and that the peasants who are dispersed in foreign countries may be regarded as free when they return home. " The second is, that your Majesty will proclaim yourself King of Poland, with a free Constitution, like that of England [literally, " approaching that of England "], and establish schools, to be supported at the expense of the Grovernment for the education of the peasants ; that the servitude of the peasants be abolished at the end of ten years ; and that their possessions be made over to them as absolute pro- 310 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. perty. If my prayers are granted, I will go per- sonally, though I am an invalid, and throw myself at the feet of your Majesty to thank you, and to be the first to render homage to you as my Sove- reign. If you can make any use of my abilities, such as they are, I \vill leave here instantly to rejoin my countrymen, to serve my country and my Sovereign with honour and fidelity. " My third prayer. Sire, though of a private cha- racter, is of heartfelt interest to me. I have been living for the last fourteen years with the family of the estimable M. ZeUtner, a Swiss by birth, and formerly the ambassador of his country in France. I am under a thousand obligations to him, but we are both of us poor, and he has a numerous family. I solicit for him some place of honour, either in the new French Grovernment or iu Poland. He is a man of abUity, and I answer for his unbounded fidelity. I am, with the highest respect, " Tour Majesty's, &c." This letter is very important, not only because it shows on what terms the Poles would gladly form a union with Eussia, but also because Kosciuszko distinctly recognizes in it the right of the Polish peasants to the land held by them at that time as serfs, and which they now hold, not as free pos- sessors, but as farmers. Whether the proprietors ought not to be compensated by the State, or KOSCIUSZKO. 311 what the amount of compensation ought to be, are different questions. It is useful to know that Kosciuszko, who certainly was not the enemy of the Polish nobility, thought the peasants ought to be Hberated with their land. That was also the opinion of Migkievicz, than whom no one had a higher respect for the great men of his country, and who lies buried at a village near Paris, side by side with Prince Adam Czartoryski and Niemcevicz. Indeed, Prince. Adam Czartoryski, when he hbe- rated the peasants on the one unconfiscated estate remaining to him in Glalicia, gave up the whole of the peasants' land. This was an act of generosity no doubt, but it cannot be regarded as a concession to the spirit of communism. Indeed, the com- munists cry out for property which they know does not by any law, whether obsolete or in force, belong to them. Migkievicz maintained that the land cultivated by the Polish serf for his own use did belong to him, in virtue of ancient contracts, which it was now necessary to modify, but not so as to weaken the absolute title of the peasant to his land. Kosciuszko, naturally, did not go into any arguments in his letter to the Emperor Alex- ander, but we may be sure that he, better than anyone, understood the true position of the Polish peasant, and knew the Polish traditions on the subject. 312 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. The Emperor Alexander's reply to Kosciuszko'i letter was as follows : — "Paris, 2>rdof May, 1814. " It is with, great satisfaction, General; that '. reply to your letter. Your dearest wishes wiU b( accomplished. With the aid of the All-powerfu I hope to bring about the regeneration of the bravi and estimable nation to which you belong. I havi taken a solemn engagement to do so ; and iti welfare has always occupied my thoughts. Pohti cal circumstances have alone raised obstacles whicl have prevented the execution of my designs. Thes( obstacles no longer exist. Two years of a terribL but glorious struggle have removed them. " A little time, and with prudence the Poles wil recover their country and their name, and I shal have the happiness of convincing them that, for getting the past, he whom they considered then enemy wiU realize all their wishes. "What a satisfaction it will be to me to havi you as my assistant in these salutary labours Your name, your character, your talent, wiU be th( best support I could have." Now, if Kosciuszko's proposition had not onlj been accepted, but acted upon; if the Empero: Alexander could have proclaimed himself King o KOSCIUSZKO. 313 all Poland — of the Poland of 1772 — the now- insoluble PoHsh. question would have been solved. It was not solved by the treaty of 1815, signed precisely a year after the date of Kosciuszko's letter ; its solution was only postponed. The only settlement of the Polish difficulty which can en- sure the happiness of the Poles, give peace to Eussia, and relieve Europe of the disgi'ace which the present state of Poland reflects on all the European Powers, is the one proposed by Kos- ciuszko, accepted by Alexander I., and which the West of Europe alone prevented from being put into execution. If, the opportunity again present- ing itself, England and France should stUl object to all Poland being annexed to Eussia, on condi- tion that the government be national and consti- tutional, then England and Prance must either <5ease to proclaim their sympathy for the Poles, or make some movement on behalf of Polish inde- pendence; which everyone, including every Pole of the least knowledge or experience, knows they wiU not and cannot do ; which, during the Crimean war, when, according to aU the rules of inter- national law, they had the clearest right to raise up Poland, they carefully abstained from doing. The objection to Kosciuszko's and Alexander's plan for restoring to Poland its national existence was reasonable enough, but not very noble. Eng- 314 THIi RESTORATION OF POLAND. land and France felt a certain sympathy for Poland, but were very jealous indeed of Eussia, and pre- ferred, by far, that Poland should be cut up into five pieces, and, with the exception of the little " Kingdom " of Poland and the Free City of Cracow, left at the mercy of three despots, rather than that the Sovereign who ruled Bussia abso- lutely should wear the crown of all Poland as Constitutional King. Since 1830 it has often been said that it was impossible for the Eussian Emperor to govern absolutely in Eussia and constitutionally in Poland. The Poles were the first to make this observation in explaining and justifying the in- surrection of 1830,* and the Eussians, with their usual ingenuity, took it up, and founded on it an argument for withdrawing the Polish Constitution. It would be easy to show, from the history of Hungary, that the observation is untrue ; and that if a sovereign can only be honest (for that, after all, appears to be the great difficulty), he can govern an absolute monarchy according to law, and a constitutional monarchy according to law, at the same time. Austria was never so strong as when the rights of Hungary were fully respected. * Manifesto of the Polish People, written and saiictioned by the Diet of Poland, Warsaw, Dec. 20th, 1830. {B'Angeberg, p. 770.) CONSTITUTIONALISM IN RUSSIA. 315 And Austria was rewarded for this by the un- shakeable fidelity of Hungary during her wars against Napoleon. Is it certain that Hungary, with all her rights trampled upon, would be equally faithful if Austria should be attacked to- morrow by Napoleon III. ? Of course, if a sovereign placed in the position which Alexander I. held in Poland after 1815, tries to mix the two systems, he finds his position untenable. It was also untenable from a cause which would not have existed had France, England, and Austria not opposed the project arranged between Kosciuszko and Alexander; it was untenable not because Poland was ruled con- stitutionally and Eussia despotically (for at that time the Eussians pretended to like despotism), but because, under the same Crown, one part of Poland was endowed with free institutions, while another and a greater portion of the same country was subjected to absolute government. At the present moment, too, it might be difficult to re-introduce constitutionalism into any part of Eussian Poland, without publishing some sort of a Constitution for the whole of the Eussian Empire. The Poles say, of course, that this is not their afiair; that the treaties of 1815 did not bind them to wait for a representative govern- ment untU the Emperor was ready to give one to 316 THE RESTORATION OE POLAND. all his Russian subjects. But, taking things as they are, and considering the legitimate aspirations of the educated classes in Russia* towards a con- stitutional system — I call them legitimate in the fullest sense of the word, because they have been encouraged and fostered by the Emperor — it might be inconvenient to give to the Poles only what Poles and Russians now demand alike. This may be a very good reason for raising the Russians to the lawful position of the Poles, but not for withholding from the Poles rights which the Russian Government is bound by treaty to grant them. And, as a question of expediency, it is becoming, more evident every day that if the Russian Emperor finds it impossible to reconcile the parts of constitutional and despotic sovereign, it will be more than ever advantageous for him to abandon the latter character altogether. Numbers of Poles would object, no doubt, to any arrangement that would leave them under the Russian Crown. But, in the absence of earth- quakes, revolutions, and all sorts of stupendous occurrences not easily to be foreseen, what hope can they have of regaining their national existence by any other means, if they have nothing to support them but a strong internal conviction that their country wiU, some day, in some manner, re- cover its independent position? The Welsh had * As to the constitutional movement in Russia, see vol. ii. KOSCIUSZKO, CHLOPI5KI, AND ZAMOISKI. 317 tHs conviction also ; so also had the Irish ; but we never hear now of a rational Irishman wishing for an independent Ireland, and it is centuries since any "Welshman has thought of an inde- pendent Wales. Nevertheless, no one can blame the Poles, and indeed, every one must applaud them, for refusing to accept a union with Eussia, which would place them in the position held so long by Ireland with respect to England ; but no one who has examined the difficulties of their situation will pity them for having to hold in the Russian Empire the high position that belongs to Scotland in the Empire of Grreat Britaia. The most able and influential men among the Poles would rejoice to find themselves so circumstanced ; and Kosciuszko in 1814, General Chlopi9ki in 1830, and Count Andrew Zamoyski in 1862, asked for nothing more. Many readers wiU remember that, only last autumn, the principal landed proprietors of the Kingdom of Poland promised their loyal support to the Grand Duke Constantiae, on condition that all Polish provinces in the possession of Eussia were united into one constitutional kingdom. The address was not presented, but would have been had not Count Zamoyski been arrested and exiled for entertaining the intention of presenting it. I am quite certain, for my part, that the above 318 THE RESTORATION OF POLAND. solution of the Polish difficulty is the only om that the Poles wiU ever agree to, though, hy firi and sword, the Eussians may, of course, force then (at least, for a time) to submit unconditionally The reader knows what Poland has demanded, oi three important occasions, during the last fift] years, speaking in each case through a man whosi right to represent the wishes of his country wa undeniable. There is no difference between thes^ demands, except that after 1815 it was impossibl to ask the Russian Emperor to grant national an( representative rights to provinces which were n( longer in his power. If, however, Eussia ha( granted the request contained in General Ohio pigki's letter of 1830, or in Count Zamoyski' address of 1862, it was the hope of the Poles tha negotiations would, sooner or later, be entered int( with the Prussian and Austrian Grovernments fo the cession of Posen and Galicia, subject to indem nification in territory (say, for Prussia in Germany for Austria on the Danube). It may now be interesting to consider wha probability there is of conciliating the leadiuj men of Poland, if the Eusso-Polish provinces am the Kingdom are not reunited. Since the scornful and tyrannical rejection c the demands contained in the address confided t KOSCIUSZKO, CHLOPI9KI, AND ZAMOYSKI. 319 Count Zamoyski, the P9les of all Eussian Poland have been governed more than ever Hke a con- quered, or rather a half-conquered, people. The rejection of Ohlopigki's propositions was followed by the war of 1831. As for Kosciuszko's project, we have seen that Alexander, in the first instance, agreed to it with joy. When, through the natural objections of the Western Powers, who feared the increase of power it would give to Eussia, it became impossible to carry it out, Kosciuszko, who was not a wild en- thusiast, but, like other great heroes and patriots, a man of a very practical turn of mind, suggested that if the Emperor Alexander could not do aU that he had originally intended for Poland, he might yet do as much as still lay within his power. He wrote a letter to the Emperor, asking this time precisely what Count Zamoyski asked the other day from Alexander II. The reader knows under what conditions all the best men in Poland, and, thanks to their influence and example, the whole of the Polish nation, would become the faithful subjects of the Russian Emperor ruling in Poland as Constitutional King. I wUl end this chapter by showing, from two letters of Kos- ciuszko, under what circumstances those who adopt him as their model must refase to give the Russian Grovernment in Poland their countenance and support. 320 THE UESTOBATION OF POLAND. KosciuszJco to the Emperor Alexander* " Vienna, \Qth June, 1815. " Sire, " Prince Czartoryski lias made me ac- quainted with aU the benefits whicli your Imperial and Eoyal Majesty is preparing for the Polish na- tion ; I cannot find words to express the gratitude and admiration with which your conduct inspires me. One consideration alone troubles my mind and prevents my joy from being complete. I am a Lithuanian by birth, Sire, and I have only a few years to live ; nevertheless, the veil of the future still covers the destinies of my native land, and of so many other of my country's provinces, f I do not forget the magnanimous promises in reference to them which Your Majesty deigned to make to me personally as well to many of my fellow-country- men. My heart will never allow me to doubt the effect of those sacred words ; but my soul, intimi- dated by such prolonged misfortunes, is in need of re-assurance. Listening only to the prompting of my own feelings, I now place the remainder of my * Hoffman, Alex. Ch., Coup d'CEil sur la Pologne de 18] 5. •f- At present, the Russians, by a chain of false historical and ethnological reasoning, prove the country of Kosciuszko, the Czartoryskis, Niemcevicz, Mi^kievicz, and Sobieski— that is to say, all Lithuania and Ruthenia — to be Russian. KOSCIUSZKO AND CZARTORYSKI. 321 existence at the service of youi Majesty, Be my judge, Sire, in this juncture, so decisive for my conscience, and by one kind word deign to tell me that you approve of my determination. This word will be the fulfilment of the only wish that remains to me, that of descending to the tomb with the consoling conviction that all your Polish subjects will be called to bless you for your benefits. This conviction would, I confess, increase to an infinite degree my efforts and the energy of my zeal. I should never venture, Sire, to hurry you in the execution of your great projects. I will keep the secret of your intentions as a sacred trust reposed in me for the satisfaction of my own conscience, and will never make use of it without your express authorization. I shall wait here for your com- mands in reply to my humble prayer. It is my last, and I venture to lay it at your Majesty's feet with a feeling of confidence as firm as is, I am sure, your own magnanimity and your incomparable kindness." 2. Letter from Kosciuszko to Prince Adam Czartoryski* " Vienna, June 13tk, 1815. "My deae. Prince, " I attach great value to your friend- ship, your manner of thinking being in conformity * Hoffmann D'Angeberg, p. 700. VOL. I. Y 322 THE RESTORATION OP POLAND. with mme. You are, without doubt, convinced that the first of my desires is to serve my country efficaciously. The refusal of the Emperor to reply to my last letter from Vienna, of which I send you a copy, takes from me all possibility of attaiaing this aim. / will not act without having some gua- rantee for my country ^ nor will I allow myself to be enticed by mere hope. I have put in the same balance the interests of my country and those of the Emperor. I am incapable of separating them. Being unable to do anything more, I offered to give myself up to the service of my country, but not to see it restricted to that little piece of territory em- phatically decorated with the name of the Kingdom of "We have to thank the Emperor for having resuscitated the name of Poland ; but a name alone does not constitute a nation. The extent of terri- tory and the number of the population are also something. I do not know on what ground, unless it be our own desires, we are now to put faith in the guarantee he gave to us — to me, and so many others of our countrymen — that the frontiers of Poland should extend to the Dzwina and the Dnieper ; which, in re-establishing a certain pro- portion of power and numbers, would have con- tributed to maintain between the Eussians and ourselves mutual consideration and a stable friend- ship. KOSCIUSZKO AND CZARTORYSKl. 323 " With a liberal and quite separate Constitution, such, as they have been led to expect, the Poles would have thought themselves happy to live with the Eussians under the sceptre of so great a monarch. But at the very beginning I see quite a different order of things. The Eussians are to fill concurrently with us the first places in the Grovernment. This certainly cannot inspire the Poles with much confidence. They foresee, not without alarm, that in time the name of Pole will fall into contempt, and that the Eussians will treat us soon as their subjects. And, indeed, how could a population so limited escape their prepon- derance ? And those of our brothers who are kept under the Eussian sceptre, can we forget them ? " Our hearts suffer at their not being reunited to us, and the Emperor gave us his 'sacred word that this union should be accomplished. Thus, a popu- lation of from fifteen to sixteen million souls would have been formed, which would have constituted the Kingdom of Poland ; a kingdom which, having, Hke that of Hungary, its own constitution and laws, would have formed, under the same sceptre, one Empire with Eussia. " Here I must separate the generous and humane intentions of the Emperor from the policy of his Cabinet. I shall preserve till death a feeling of gratitude towards this prince for having resus- citated the name of Poland, though he has re- Y 2 4 THE RESTORATION OE POLAND. icted the country to such narrow limits. May ovidence direct you ! As for me, as I can no iger serve my country usefully, I return to dtzerland. You know whether I have co- erated as much as lay in my power for the neral good." In preparing the treaties of 1816, an endeavour d been made — since Eussia would not consent the independence of Poland, and Trance, Eng- id, and Austria would not agree to the formation all Poland into one constitutional kingdom ider the Russian Crown — an endeavour had been ide, as if out of pity for the Poles, to secure, at ist, some sort of national existence for them. was expressly stipulated, both in the treaties tween Bussia, Austria, and Prussia, and in the neral treaty signed by all the great Powers, at all the Polish subjects of Eussia, Austria, and •ussia should enjoy a "national representation d institutions." The Constitution given to the ■called " Kingdom of Poland " was a thing apart, d Russian politicians now maintain that the nperor Alexander granted it of his own free 11. This is not precisely true. The Treaty of enna sets forth that the Kingdom of Poland is oined to Eussia by its constitution." No con- tution is specified, but every one knew that 3 constitution meant was the one which the Alexander's " favourite project." 325 Emperor Alexander, assisted by Prince Czar- toryski, had drawn up. Not to have seen this document at Vienna in 1815 was to have seen nothing, and its very exhibition, in a sort of private-public manner, gained for the Eussian Emperor that reputation for " liberalism " which he retained for a long time afterwards, and which, but for the men who surrounded him, he no doubt would have justified. Soon after the promulga- tion of this constitution, the Emperor gave the Poles to understand that it was his intention to extend it to all the Polish provinces under his sceptre ; and he continued to assure those who were in his confidence of this intention, and spoke of it as his " favourite project " until the last day of his reign. It was not until after the accession of the Emperor Nicholas that the Poles despaired of seeing their monarch's "favourite project" put into execution ; and the certainty that it had been abandoned did more than anything else to bring about the insurrection of 1830. At the present moment, it is looked upon as a crime on the part of the Poles to petition in the most respectful manner, and through perfectly legal channels, for the execution of the design known to have been entertained by Alexander I., and for the sake of which he had even caused a clause to be inserted in the Treaty of Vienna, empowering him 326 THE BESTOUATION OF POLAND. to give the little Kingdom " tlie interior extension he might think fit." That is to say, the Emperor reserved to himself the right of extending the Polish Constitution to all the Polish provinces under the Russian sceptre not included in the Kingdom created by the Congress. A few months ago, the nobles, or landed pro- prietors, of the Polish province of Podolia, adopted unanimously, at their triennial assembly, a peti- tion, praying the Emperor not to grant a consti- tution, not to profit by the right which the Emperor Alexander had so significantly reserved — but simply to unite Podolia to the Kingdom, so that it might at least have a Polish administration, and that Polish might be the language of the Grovernment offices, tribunals, and schools. The proprietors set forth plainly but respectfully the miserable effect which the forced substitution of Russian for • Polish had had upon the civilization of the pro- vince ; and the Grovernment replied to the address by arresting the " marshals of the nobility," who had ventured to present it ! * The marshals were accused of " attempting to destroy the integrity of the Empire," and, what is stOl more extraordinary, have been found guilty and condemned each to * The Eusso-Polish provinces are divided, like the pro- vinces of Russia Proper, into districts, and the nobility of each district elect a " marshal " to represent them in their dealings with the Government. Alexander's "favourite project." 327 fourteen months' imprisonment. The news of their condemnation is published in the English journals of February 16th. Whatever the crime of these Polish noblemen may be in the eyes of the Eussian Grovernment, in the eyes of Europe their sole offence has been to solicit the observance of one of the clauses of a treaty sanctioned by all the European Powers. Lord Palmerston, as we have seen, reminded the Eussian Grovernment, in 1831, that this very stipu- lation had never been observed. The Eussian Gro- vernment now reminds all Europe that it not only does not mean to observe it, but that it is prepared to punish with severity any of its Polish subjects who, without citing the obnoxious clause itself, presume to ask, even in the humblest manner, for the natural rights which it was the object of that clause to secure for them. In a few words, then, the great immediate object of the Kingdom of Poland and of the Polish provinces incorporated with the Eussian Empire, is to become united so as to form one Polish kingdom. If this kingdom were endowed with a Constitution, the leading men of Poland are already pledged to serve the Emperor faithfully as his loyal subjects. But any arrangement which would enable the inhabitants of the Eusso-Polish pro- 328 THE BESTOKATION OF POLAND. vinces to live and bring up their children as Poles, would be a blessing to tbem, and a consolation to the Poles of the existing "Kingdom." In the Polish provinces, incorporated with Eussia, the inhabitants are reprimanded if they venture to speak of themselves as Poles, and thrown into prison if they dare to ask permission to use their native language. In respect to their nationality, they are as badly off as the Polish subjects of Prussia. As regards political rights, they are much in the same position as the Poles of the Kingdom: no position can be worse. They are far more unfortunately situated than any Russians, for they are not only the subjects of a despotism, but, what is infinitely worse, of a foreign despot- ism ; not only of a foreign despotism, but of one which wUl not listen to them, nor in any way recognize their existence, unless they first of all reject all their past civilization, and make a vain, humiliating, reaUy impossible attempt to transform themselves into foreigners. APPENDIX. No. I. EXTEACT FEOM "A STATEMENT OF FACTS AND AEGUMENTS ON THE SUBJECT OF POLAND." Treaty of Vienna, When, in 1815, the representatives of 1815. ^]jQ great European Powers assembled at Vienna, to determine by a Treaty tbe future international relations of Europe, the first question to which they addressed themselves, was that of Poland. This question was at that time considered so important, that Prince Talleyrand, in the note forwarded by the French Grovernment to the Con- gress, wrote in the following terms respecting it:— Opinion of Prince " ^f aU the questious which wiU TaUeyrand. goxne Under the consideration of the Congress, the King would have looked upon that of Poland as the first, the greatest, the most emi- nently European, and beyond all comparison that which has the greatest claims to attention, were there any grounds for hoping that a people so 330 APPENDIX. deserving of the interest of all other nations hy its antiquity, its valour, its misfortunes, and the services it rendered in past ages to Europe, could be restored to the full possession of her former independence. The partition which blotted her name from the list of nations was the prelude, and in part the cause, of the disorders which convulsed Europe, and perhaps io a certain extent excused tJiem." * These last words convey a remarkable admission on the part of the Government of the Eestoration. The partition of Poland must indeed have appeared in its eyes a hideous crime, to lead it to regard the revolutionary excesses which had overturned monarchy in France, and brought the head of Louis XVI. to the scaffold, as excusable. The truth is, that in these words the cry of the conscience of Europe found a vent. The injustice done to Poland was too crying a fact to be denied or looked over. On the other hand, the three great Powers which had perpetrated this injustice were all-powerfal in the Congress, and the respect which the Polish question inspired was not backed by power. Under these circumstances, it was thought necessary to compromise matters, by giving the partition of the Polish provinces the stamp of legality, on certain conditions, which guaranteed to all the Poles, under each of their * Kluber, Actes du Congres de Vienne, t. vii. p. 48. APPENDIX. 331 'ulers, a certaia degree of autonomy. With tHs The fourteen view the fourteen first Articles of the irst Articles of t • ^ i -r« -i ihe Treaty. ireaty, which relate to Poland, were framed. The first of these, which is also the first of the Treaty, runs thus : — " The Duchy of Warsaw, with the exception of the provinces and districts which are otherwise dis- posed of by the following Articles, is united to the Eussian Empire, to which it shall be irrevocably attached ii/ its Constitution, and be possessed by His Majesty the Emperor of All the Eussias, his heirs and successors, in perpetuity. His Imperial Ma- jesty reserves to himself to give to this State, en- joying a distinct Administration, the exterior exten- sion which he shall judge proper. He shall assume with his other titles that of Czar, King of Poland, agreeably to the form established for the titles attached to his other possessions. " The Poles, who are respective subjects of Ens- sia, Austria, and Prussia, shall obtain a representation and national institutions, regulated according to the degree of political existence that each of the Gro- vemments to which they belong shall judge expe- dient and proper to grant them." * The chief Ob- Thesc words show clearly that it was ttionVX the intention of the Congress to pre- e^rience of Po- ^^^^^ ^^ existence of the Polish nation. Poland was still to be one nation, though divided, * Neumann, Recueil des Traites, t. ii. p. 673. 332 APPENDIX. and is placed under separate States. This is even more stringently laid down in Art. 3 of the Treaty between Eussia and Prussia, which, by Art. 118 of the general Treaty, is to be considered " part of the general enactments of the Congress, and is to have the same weight and value as if it had been inserted, word for word, in the general Treaty." The Article in question is as foUows : — " The Poles, subjects respectively of the high contracting parties, shall obtain institutions which shall insure the preservation of their nationality, in such form of political existence as each of the Governments to which they belong may think it useful and proper to grant them." Again, in the 2nd Art. of the general Treaty, the boundary of the Grand Duchy of Posen is fixed, not only on the side of Eussia, but also on that of Prussia, thus proving that although an appanage of Prussia, it was to be kept quite sepa- rate from it as a distinct State. In other Articles of the Treaties of Yienna, liberty of navigation, circulation, and transit, was given to "Poland in her limits of 1772;" and certain advantages in commercial transactions were granted to Poles exclusively, Austrians, Prussians, and Russians being spoken of as "foreigners." This clearly establishes the intention of the Congress to recognize Poland as a distinct and separate nationality. Art. 14 of the general APPENDIX. 333 Treaty tlius summarizes tlie privileges here al- luded to : — Free trade aU " The principles established for the over Poland (Art. . . „ 14.) free navigation of rivers and canals in the whole extent of ancient Poland (1772), as also the use of harbours, the circulation of products of the soil, and manufactures between the various PoHsh provinces, and commercial transit, as defined in Arts. 24, 25, 26, 28, and 29 of the Treaty between Austria and Eussia, and Arts. 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, and 29 of the Treaty between Eussia and Prussia, shall be invariably maintained." The following, then, are the stipulations of the Treaty of Yienna relative to Poland : — 1st. Notwithstanding the political separation of the provinces, the national, civil, and commercial unity of the Poland of 1772 shall be preserved as an essential element of order and security in Europe. 2nd. The portions of Poland attached to the countries of Eussia, Austria, and Prussia shall form distinct provinces, entirely separated from the Grovemments of those countries. 3rd. The Poles have not only a right to national representation and national institutions, but such institutions are to have for their object the main- tenance and preservation of their nationality. 4th. Their rights are given the sanction, if not the guarantee, of Europe. 334 APPENDIX. That the above is the interpretation that was given by the European Powers to the Articles of the Treaty which relate to Poland, is proved by the evidence of witnesses whose testimony is in- Prociamationof disputable. The Emperor Alexander I. Alexander !■ *<> f -^^ . . . the Poles, 1815. of Eussia, in his proclamation to the Poles, granting them the Constitution of the 13th May, 1815, said,— " A Constitution appropriated to your wants and your character ; the preservation, in public enact- ments, of your language ; the restriction of public appointments to Poles ; freedom of commerce and navigation ; facility of communication with those parts of ancient Poland which are subject to other Powers ; a national army ; a guarantee that every means will be taken to perfect your laws ; the free circulation of enlightenment in your country ; such are the advantages you will enjoy under our" rule and that of our successors, and which you will transmit as a patriotic legacy to your descend- ants." * His Bpeech at "^^^ further, three years afterwards, the Diet ini 818. ^^ ^j^g opening of the first Polish Diet at Warsaw, the Emperor Alexander held the same language : — " Your restoration is defined hy solemn treaties" he said; "it is sanctioned by the constitutional * Archives Viplotnatiques — Pologne, par D'Angeberg, p. 693. Paris, Arayot, 1762-1862. APPENDIX. 335 chart. The invialahility of these exteknal engage- ments and of that fundamental law insures for Poland henceforth an honourable place among European nations." * Indeed, so little did he doubt the guarantee of Europe for the preservation of the nationality of Poland, that, bent as he was on making the restora- tion of that country under his sceptre a means of furthering his own ambition, he boasted that he had obtained it by carrying all before him. "I have created this Kingdom," he said, " and I have established it on a very solid basis, for I have European guar forced the European Powers to gua- rantee, rantee its existence by treaties." Address of the The King of Prussia addressed the f;\f ^^|! inhabitants of Posen to the same antsofPosen. ^g.^^^ -^ ^ proclamation published twelve days after the treaty : — " Tou, too," he said, " have a fatherland, and I esteem you for having known how to defend it. You will be my subjects, without being compelled to deny your nationality on that account. Tour religion shall be respected; your personal rights and your property regulated by laws which you will yourselves make. Your language shall be used on all public occasions, side by side with the G-erman. You shall fill all the Government ap- pointments in the Grand Duchy of Posen. My * Archives Diplomatiques—Pologne, par D'Angeberg, p. 735. Paris, Amyot, 1762-1863. 336 APPENDIX. viceroy, born in your coimtry, shall reside among you. * ance' taken Ty The Oath of Allegiance taken by phy^^^oseT' ^^ functionaries was as follows : — "I recognize His Majesty the King of Prussia as the only legitimate sovereign of this country, and that part of Poland which, in consequence of the Treaty of Vienna, has become a possession of the Eoyal House of Prussia, as my fatherland, which I am ready to defend against all invaders, under any circumstances, with my blood." Frederic wii- And tweutv-fivc vcars later, on dis- liamlV. ofPrns- _ _ J J ' ^ sia quotes the missing the House of Eepresentatives stipulations of the Treaty of of 1841, Prcderic William IV. quoted to Poland, 1841. the Same stipulations, though ia less forcible terms, as being conscious of having vio- lated them : — "In conformity with the stipulations of the Treaty of Vienna, we engage to respect in the Poles the love which every noble nation has for its lan- guage, its history, and its customs." Such were the stipulations of the Treaty with regard to Poland, as they have been, and are, uni- if the Poles versally understood ; and if the Poles ?hT(tTrlt^tave since risen against the Govem- hy'ae Treat^™ mcuts which wcre forced upon them is because those ^ ^^)^ Treaty, it was because those Governments J •> ' have violated it. Grovemments violated the conditions * Archives Biplomatigues — Pologne, par D'Angeberg, p. 688. Paris, Amyot, 176S-1863. APPENDIX. 837 on which it permitted them to retain their unjustly- acquired possessions. It is not the Poles, but the Grovernments which drive them to insurrection, that are revolutionists. All their efforts The Systematic violation of the SiS':' Treaty by the three great Powers is oSon ''"to matter of history, and has been ac Setter of ae ^nowledged by our greatest statesmen. Treaty. g^ fg^j, from " iusuriug the preservation of the nationality " of Poland, aU the efforts of those Powers have tended to extinguish that nationality, by forbidding the use of the national language in public affairs, by filling all the posts of the State with foreigners, by suppressing the universities, and persecuting the national religion. Nor can the last paragraph of the first Article of the Treaty be pleaded as a justification of these proceedings. That paragraph, which grants to the Poles " a representation and national institutions, regulated according to the degree of political con- sideration that each of the Grovernments to which they belong shall judge expedient and proper to grant them," does not surely relieve those Grovern- ments of the obligation of preserving such repre- sentation and such national institutions. But the Power which chiefly signalized itself by the most flagrant violations of the Treaty was Eussia. The Russia in par- Constitution alluded to in the first Sdi/'oiat^d Article of the Treaty was that granted the Treaty. ^^ Poland in 1815 by the Emperoi VOL. I. ^ 338 APPENDIX. Alexander. Among its ctief Articles were guaran- tees for tlie liberty of tlie subject and of the press, tbe Convocation of the Diet at least once in two years, and the submission of a Budget to the Diet once in four years. Each of these stipulations, during the fifteen years which preceded the insur- rection of 1830, was violated. Many of the most eminent of the inhabitants of Warsaw were con- demned, without even the form of a trial, to sweep the streets ; the press was fettered ; the Diet did not assemble for five years, and fifteen years elapsed without a Budget having been submitted to it. These illegal measures of the Grovernment, combined with the well-known brutalities of the Grrand Duke Constantine, produced the insurrec- tion of 1830, which Eussia endeavoured to make its excuse for the abolition, by the Organic Statute of the 26th February, 1832, of the Pohsh Consti- tution, the substitution of Provincial Councils for the National Diet, the confiscations, the transpor- tations to Siberia, and the forced expatriation of thousands of families and children that followed it. The British Go- ^^^ ^^^® cxcusc was not admitted by jemment has re- jt^^q British ^Grovernment. The history fused to admit •' the Polish insur- of the Correspondence that then took rection of 1830 ^ as an excuse for place between the two Governments further violations ^ of the Treaty by was given by Lord Palmerston in Russia. n ri i-i f\n the House of Commons on the 9th of July, 1833, in these terms : — " The contracting parties to the Treaty of Vienna APPENDIX. 339 have a right to require that the Constitution of Poland should not be touched — and this is an opinion which I have not concealed from the Rus- sian Government previous to the taking of Warsaw — and when Warsaw fell, that opinion was again conveyed to the Eussian Grovernment. The Eus- sian Grovernment, however, took a diflferent view of the question. They contended that, by the re-con- quest of Poland, the Emperor was placed in the same situation in which he stood after the Treaty of Vienna, and before the granting of a Consti- tution to Poland, and that he was at hberty, the previously-existing institutions having ,been swept away, as they contended, by the Eevolution, to de- termine by what sort of institutions they should be replaced. The reply of the English Grovern- ment was to the following effect: — That having taken into full consideration all that the Eussian G-overnment had stated in support of their view of the case, they still adhered to the opinion pre- viously expressed, that the true and fair interpre- tation of the Treaty of Vienna required that the Polish Constitution should remain as before the Eevolution, and that Eussia had no right to abolish it." In the same debate. Lord John Eussell expressed the same sentiments ; and the Earl of Derby (then Lord Stanley) said : — " If I am asked my own opinion as to the inter- z 2 340 APPENDIX. pretation to be put upon the Treaty of Vienna, I am ready to say tliat it is that stated to be the opinion of the Grovernment, and that I consider it has been violated by Eussia." In 1842 Poland The Organic Statute, proclaimed in vefned and treat- place of the Constitution, remained a ^/"a^KSdead letter. But the Kingdom of province. Poland still preserved some vestiges of a distinct Administration. In 1842, even these were removed by the abolition of the Council of State and Supreme Court of Justice in Poland, and the transfer of their functions to the Senate of St. Petersburg, which was followed by the organi- zation of an elaborate system of denationalization. The Catholic clergy were dispossessed of a great part of their landed property, the Eussian language was adopted in all pubhc documents, and a Eussian superintendent appointed to watch over the public education of Poland. In a word, Poland was governed in all respects like a Eussian province, and the most strenuous efforts were made to com- plete the Kkeness by depriving the inhabitants of every special right, both personal and political. No. II. VISCOUNT PALMEESTON TO LORD HEYTESBUEY. Foreign Office, November 23, 1831, My Lord, I have received your Excellency's despatclies reporting tlie opinion wHch prevails in St. Peters- burg that some considerable cbange is intended to be made in tbe Constitution of tbe Kingdom of Poland, explaining the arguments by which that supposed intention is defended, and asking for further instructions as to the course which your Excellency is to pursue with respect to the affairs of Poland in general. His Majesty's Grovernment have watched with unceasing interest and anxiety the progress of the contest in Poland. These feelings have been made known to your Excellency by the several com- munications which you have received from me, while they have not been concealed from the Eepre- sentative of His Majesty the Emperor of Eussia 342 APPENDIX. at the Court of London. You have also been apprized of the grounds upon which His Majesty's Grovernment considered it not to be advisable to interfere directly in the contest between the Emperor of Eussia and his Polish subjects. The war being now over, and the authority of the Emperor as King being completely re-esta- blished in Poland, the time is come when His Majesty feels himself justified, both by his friend- ship for the Emperor of Eussia and by the duty resulting from the obligations which he has con- tracted under the Treaty of Vienna, in addressing to His Imperial Majesty, in the most amicable tone, and with the deference which is due to his rights as an independent Sovereign, some observa- tions as to the best mode of resettling the Eangdom of Poland under the dominion of the Eniperor, on principles accordant with those on which its union with the Imperial Crown of Eussia was originally formed, and in such a manner as may be most con- ducive to its future good government and tran- quillity. Your Excellency has already been instructed, by my despatch of the 22nd of March last, to express the confidence of His Majesty's G-overnment that His Imperial Majesty would use his victory, when it should be obtained, with the moderation and mercy congenial with the high-minded and generous sentiments which are well known to animate the APPENDIX. 343 mind of his Imperial Majesty. It is, therefore, without any the slightest doubt of His Imperial Majesty's benevolent and merciful disposition, that I am commanded to instruct you to urge, when- ever you may find a fit opportunity to do so, those considerations both of humanity and policy, which cannot fail to find advocates in His Imperial Majesty's own feelings, and which would recommend the greatest forbearance and lenity in the treatment of his Polish subjects who, by the success of His Majesty's arms, have been again reduced to obe- dience. Above all, your Excellency is instructed to repre- sent to the Russian Grovernment how much severities of any kind, not authorized by the laws and Con- stitution of Poland, are to be avoided. If it should appear, therefore, that there is any intention of proceeding to measures of proscription and confis- cation, as has been reported, you are instructed to represent to His Imperial Majesty's Grovernment, the impolicy and injustice of proceedings that would violate the Constitution, which, according to the stipulation of the Treaty of Vienna, was granted by the Emperor Alexander to Poland, and by which it is provided that no man shall be punished except by virtue of existing laws, and no criminal banished except by process of law, and by which the penalty of confiscation is for ever abolished. 344 APPENDIX. His Majesty's Grovernment, indeed, under all the circumstances of the case, would earnestly recom- mend a full and complete amnesty, from which those persons only should he excepted who have heen guilty of the crime of assassination, and whose punishment would he effected hy the ordinary course of justice. This measure would appear to he one of the soundest policy. It could not in any degree weaken His Imperial Majesty's authority, nor de- tract from his honour, heing adopted at a moment when his power could no longer he resisted, and when such a measure could appear to he dictated only hy the purest motives of benevolence and mercy. It could not fail to soothe the irritated feelings of the Poles, and to give them confidence in the Grovernment, by preventing them from heing exposed individually to vengeance ; and it would do infinitely more than any harsh display of seve- rity to reproduce among them those feelings of obedience to the Government which are necessary to its security and peace, and which cannot be expected under a system which might keep them in a state of continued insecurity and apprehen- sion. In this case, therefore, generosity and sound policy appear to go hand in hand, in suggesting that in order to make the possession of Poland conducive to the strength and prosperity of Eussia, APPENDIX. 345 it is necessary for tlie Eussian Government to con- ciliate the affections of tlie Poles, and to obliterate instead of perpetuating, the traces of the recent contest. The Poles have displayed, during the late war, qualities both of intellect and courage which prove them capable of being either usefid or dangerous subjects, according to the manner in which they may be governed. It is needless to point out the resources which maybe drawn from 4,000,000 of people, fall of activity, enterprise, and intelligence, provided they are attfiched to their sovereign, and contented with their political condition. But such a people must necessarily become a source of em- barrassment and weakness if they are kept in a state of exasperation and discontent, which will only be controlled so long as no favourable oppor- tunity shall occur to excite them into action. Is it on the very frontier of an Empire, and in contact with military neighbours, that a wise Gro- vernment would wish to place such elements of danger? Is it in the very outworks of defence that a prudent Administration would incur the risk of having a population disaffected to its Grovern- ment, and ready to join any invader who might promise them a milder rule and a better fate ? It is, then, not more upon principles of humanity than upon a friendly regard for the interests and the honour of Eussia that His Majesty's Grovem- 346 APPENDIX. ment instruct you earnestly to press upon the Eussian Grovernment a general and complete amnesty ; an act wHch. is understood to have been spontaneously offered by tbe Emperor on more than one occasion during tbe war, and wbicli His Majesty's Grovernment have reason to believe is also recommended by other allies of His Imperial Majesty. Your Excellency was instructed in a former despatch to state that His Majesty's Grovernment could not see with indifference the Poles deprived of the advantages which had,been secured to them by the Treaty of Vienna. These advantages con- sisted in a stipulation that a Constitution should be granted to them, and in the Constitution which, in consequence of that stipulation, they afterwards received from the Emperor Alexander. His Majesty's Grovernment is not unmindful of the arguments which you state to have been adduced to prove that the Polish Constitution is in no degree identified with the Treaty of Yienna ; but the validity of this reasoniug cannot, as it appears to them, be maintained. The Treaty of Yienna declared that the King- dom of Poland should be attached to Eussia by its Constitution. A Constitution the Emperor of Eussia accordingly gave ; and it surely is no forced construction of the meaning of that Treaty to con- sider the Constitution so given as existing thence- APPENDIX. 347 fortli under the sanction of the Treaty. But it is argued that the same Power which gave may modify or take away. This, however, is an assertion for which no proof is afforded. The Constitution, once given, became the link which, under the Treaty, binds the Kingdom of Poland to the Empire of Eussia ; and can that link remain unim- paired if the Constitution should not be main- tained ? Had the Constitution reserved to the Sovereign a right to change or modify, no objection could then have been made, to the exercise of a power which would legally have been his. But the Con- stitution carefully guards against any such acts of executive authority. It declares (Article 31) that the Polish nation shall for ever possess a national Representation, consisting of a Diet, composed of a King and two Chambers ; it declares (Article 163) that the Organic Statutes and the Codes of Laws cannot be modified or changed, except by the King and two Chambers ; it requires (Article 45) that every King of Poland shall swear before Grod and upon the Scriptures, to maintain the Con- stitution and cause it to be executed to the best of his power ; and the Emperor Alexander, on the 27th ISTovember, 1815, formally gave this Consti- tution, and declared that he adopted it for himself and for his successors. Such are the provisions of the Constitution, 348 APPENDIX. whicli points out tlie authority by which any change or modification is to be made ; and changes arbitrarily effected by the executive authority alone would obviously be violations of the Con- stitution. It appears that some persons suppose the in- tention of the Russian Grovernment to be to abolish the present form of government in Poland, consisting of a Diet compoaed'of a King and two Chambers, and to substitute for the Chambers Provincial States such as those which have been established in Gralicia and in some of the provinces of Prussia ; and it is argued that such a change would still leave to Poland a Constitution suffi- cient to satisfy the stipulations of the Treaty of Vienna. But could such a form of government, fairly, and according either to the letter or the spirit of the Treaty of Vienna, be considered as placing Poland in the situation which was thereby contemplated ? That Treaty clearly appears to draw a marked distinction between the system of govern- ment to be established in those parts of Poland which had been annexed as provinces to Austria, Prussia, and Eussia, and had been incorporated in their respective dominions, and that part which was to form the separate Kingdom of Poland, and which was to be placed, as such, under the same Sovereign as Eussia, and secured in the enjoyment of its distinct rights and privileges. APPENDIX. 349 In the former provinces, accordingly, the grant of Provincial States was perfectly in accordance with the rights to be exercised by the Sovereign over provinces that were incorporated with his other dominions ; while the Constitution given to the Kingdom of Poland was suited to the separate and distinct position in which it was placed in its relation to the Eussian Empire. But in the separate Kingdom of Poland, united according to the Treaty of Vienna by its Con- stitution with the Crown of Eussia, to abrogate that Constitution, and to substitute Provincial States, expressly modelled after those which had been granted to the incorporated provinces of Austria and Prussia, would be, in effect, to reduce that Kingdom, though stUl nominally possessing a separate existence, to the state and condition of a province, deprived of all the rights and excluded from aU the advantages which had been secured to it. It cannot be admitted that the revolt of the Poles, and their violation of the Constitution by yoting the separation of Poland from the Crown of Eussia, can absolve the Emperor, after his authority has been re-established, from his obliga- tion to adhere to that Constitution. Wrongs committed by one side are not to be punished by the commission of wrongs on the other. Erom 350 APPENDIX. the submission of the Poles to the arms of His Imperial Majesty, Europe looks for the re- establishment of law and justice, and not for acts of retaliation and vengeance; since, whatever excuse such acts may find in the troubles of an intestine war, they could not be palliated if re- sorted to by a Power which has subdued all oppo- sition, and which cannot plead for its measures the necessity of any pressing emergency. It has often been stated in the proclamations which have been issued by the Eussian Grovern- ment from time to time during the war, that only a part of the Poles had joined in the revolt, and that the majority of the nation remained faithful. If that be so, it affords a strong argument for not punishing the innocent for the offences of the guilty, by depriving aU of the advantages which the Constitution confers upon them. If, on the contrary, the whole of the nation should appear to have partaken in the revolt, such a general insurrection could only have proceeded from deeply-seated discontent, and such a feeling is not likely to be removed by a sweeping abroga- tion of the Constitution. In pressing these considerations upon the Eussian Grovernment, your Excellency will be careful that while, on the one hand, you urge, as far as possible, the arguments which have been APPENDIX. 351 suggested, you do not, on the other, depart from that tone of friendly representation which is suited to the amicable relations existing between Grreat Britain and Eussia. I am, &c. (Signed) Palmerston. No. III. TEANSLATION FEOM MIQKIEVICZ, BY MES. ELEANOE OELEBAE. Draw nigh : upon the bed of death Smiling, she falls asleep ; Like the pale Dawn, when opal clouds Around her wheel and weep. An aged priest is at the door, Her friends in mourning near ; Her mother yet more sad, I see ; And a smother'd wail I hear. He dares not on the dying gaze — Her lover kneels apart, and prays. The transient brightness of her eyes By turns revives, and shines, and dies. The rose is fading from her mouth ; Now for evermore 'tis flown, And the repose of joy is there, And the violet there has blown. She lifts her colourless brow, and gives To us, a loving smile ; Then sees the weeping circle round. And sadly falls the while — APPENUIX. 353 As white as is the sacred bread The holy priest brings near her bed. Her arms are stiff, her trembling breast More slowly quivers — is at rest ! Mary ! thou art dead ! Look at this latest pledge of love, A diamond bathed in flame ; Thus to her sapphire eyes, a ray Of her parting spirit came. 'Twas like the insect's silver wing That charms our summer shade. Or the dew-drops by the tempest dimm'd. Upon the long grass laid. No more resistance unto Death She made, than makes the flower Unto the hand that gathers it — 'Twas thus she met his power. It fell on her like snow in spring On the first pale blossoms shed ; But we are left to weep alone : Mary ! thou art dead ! END OF VOL. I. WooJfall and Kinder, Printers, Angel Court, Skinner Street, Londun. In the press, (One Volumei 8vo, Illustrated.) GORALIA; OR, EXCUESIONS IN THE POLISH MOUNTAINS. BY SUTHEELAND EDWAEDS.