1830.] Poland, Past and Present. 9 



ferocity and folly, pledging the king to reimburse out of his personal 

 means all the public losses produced by hostilities with his neighbours. 

 The Act was signed by Lewis for himself and his successors, and was 

 solemnly declared to be a fundamental law of the realm. No Act had 

 ever made nearer approaches to laying the foundations of a rational 

 liberty ; yet none was ever more calamitous. It wanted but a degree of 

 property and civilization in the lower orders capable of applying and 

 preserving it. But the nobility were still the only NATION. They 

 seized all the benefits of the law, established an oligarchy, made the 

 king a puppet, the people doubly slaves, the crown totally elective, and 

 the nation poor and barbarous, without the virtues of poverty, or the 

 redeeming boldness of barbarism. 



Lewis ascended the throne ; broke his promises ; was forced to fly from 

 the kingdom ; entered into a new conciliation, for which he paid by new 

 concessions, confirming the power of the noble oligarchy ; was again 

 driven to Hungary, where he attempted to take his revenge, by dismem- 

 bering the kingdom ; and after giving Silesia to the Marquis of Bran- 

 denburgh, the fatal foundation of the subsequent claim of Prussia, gave 

 some of the Polish frontier provinces bordering on Hungary, to the 

 Empress Queen, the foundation of another subsequent claim. This 

 guilty transaction was the ground of one of those acts of wild justice 

 which are so conspicuous in the Polish history. 



At the diet held in Buda, where the grant to the empress was made, 

 only fourteen Polish senators could be found to attend ; and of those but 

 one, the bishop of Wadislaw, had the manliness to protest against the 

 treason. He communicated the act to Granowski, the Great General of 

 the kingdom, who convoked an assembly of the states, to which the 

 monarch was invited. The thirteen senators had been seized in the mean 

 time, were instantly beheaded, and their bodies placed round the throne, 

 covered with the tapestry. 



The monarch, unacquainted with their seizure, was led to his seat in 

 full solemnity. The Great General advanced, and in the name of the 

 states of Poland sternly charged him with the whole catalogue of his 

 offences against the constitution ; declared the compact of the diet of 

 Buda null and void, and then, flinging off the tapestry, pointed to the 

 ghastly circle of monitors there. " Behold/' exclaimed he to the 

 startled king, " the fate of all who shall prefer slavery to freedom ! 

 There lie the traitors who gave up their country to ^terve the caprices of 

 their king \" 



The lesson was expressive. Lewis resolved to abandon a country in 

 which right was so loud-tongued, and justice so rapid. Naming his son- 

 in-law Sigismond, of Brandenburg, governor in his absence, a heir, he set 

 out for Hungary once more. But, dying on his way, the nobles annulled 

 the choice, and gave the throne to the Princess Hedwige, a daughter of 

 the late king, on condition of her marrying according to the national 

 will. 



Her marriage commenced the second famous dynasty of Poland, the 

 Jagellons. Jagellon, Duke of Lithuania, was still unconverted to 

 Christianity, but he had been distinguished for the intrepidity and justice 

 which form the grand virtues in the eyes of early nations. The prin- 

 cess selected him, and he soon distinguished himself among the princes 

 of the north. With a magnanimity which seems almost incredible in 

 his age, he refused the sovereignty of Bohemia, from which the people 



M.M. New Series. VOL. XL No. 61. C 



