1831.] Poland, Past and Present. , 13 



Protestants, or dissidents, as they were called, from the exercise of their 

 religion, and from all situations and offices under government. The 

 dissidents, fearful of still more violent measures, appealed to foreign 

 governments. Russia, eager to interfere, immediately marched in a 

 body of troops to support their claims. A popish Confederacy, long 

 celebrated after wards in the unhappy history of the kingdom, was formed 

 in 1767> and from that hour Poland had scarcely an hour's respite from 

 civil war. 



Poland was now ripe for ruin. In 1769, on pretence of a plague, 

 the King of Prussia advanced a body of troops into Polish Prussia. The 

 possession of this province had long been coveted by the wily monarch. 

 Its position between his German dominions and Eastern Prussia, ren- 

 dered it important. He now found the kingdom in confusion, and he 

 determined to seize his prize. To make it secure, he proposed a par- 

 tition to Austria and Russia ; to the Austrian emperor, at an interview 

 at Niess, in Silesia, in 1769, or in the following year at Newstadt ; to 

 the Empress of Russia, by an embassy of his brother Henry to St. 

 Petersburg. This infamous treaty was signed at St. Petersburg in 1772. 

 Stanislas had no power to resist this tyranny, but he attempted to remove 

 its chief evils by giving his people a free constitution in 1791. The 

 neighbourhood of freedom again brought down the wrath of Russia. 

 A Russian army of 70 ; 000 men were instantly under orders. The 

 Empress's brief commands were, " that the constitution should be 

 abolished.'' The King of Prussia, Frederic William, provisionally 

 seized Dantzic, Thorn, and a part of Great Poland. The Russian 

 ambassador entered the diet with troops, and forced the assembly to 

 comply with his requisitions. The "nation was indignant. Kosciusko, 

 who with the nobles had fled, now returned from Leipsic, put himself at 

 the head of a multitude rather than an army, defeated several bodies of 

 Russians with great slaughter, reinstated the king, and was soon at the 

 head of 70,000 men : with those he also repulsed the Prussian army. But 

 he was suddenly attacked by Suwarrow, and after a long conflict was 

 utterly defeated and taken prisoner. Suwarrow then marched against 

 Warsaw, which he took by storm, murdering in the suburb of Praga 

 upwards of 30,000 human beings of all ages. In 1 795 the third Par- 

 tition of Poland was effected. Stanislas was sent to St. Petersburg, 

 where in 1798 he died. The heroic Kosciusko was subsequently libe- 

 rated by the Emperor Paul, and after residing in France up to the 

 period of the allied invasion, died at Soleure, Oct. 15, 1817, in his 65th 

 year; a name consecrated to eternal memory. 



For this hideous conspiracy of ambition and blood, Poland was sternly 

 avenged by the French armies. Her oppressors were broken to the dust. 

 From this period she began to recover. Napoleon raised her to a partial 

 degree of independence. The congress of Vienna made her a kingdom 

 once more, but still a Russian kingdom. The time may be at hand, 

 when she shall have a really independent existence. It will depend on 

 her own virtues, whether the opportunity of this great hour of change 

 shall be thrown away. 



The narrative of the late insurrection is still confined to a few scat- 

 tered events. On the 1st of December the Russian superintendant of the 

 school for military engineers in Warsaw, where some hundreds of the 

 Polish youth were educated, had the insolence to order two of the young 

 officers to be corporally punished. The students instantly rose against 



