POLISH HISTORY. 87 



and their adherents slow in making preparations. The 

 Confederation of the Barr, the hope and bulwark of their 

 party, took up arms. The cries of liberty and religion 

 became every where the signal of a war, the true object 

 of which, with the Catholics, was, not only to disperse or 

 destroy their opponents, but to dethrone Stanislaus, whom 

 they regarded as friendly to the dissidents, and to rescue 

 Poland from the influence of Russia. The confed. rates, 

 as the Catholics were now termed, feebly support d by 

 Saxony and France, were vanquished in almost every 

 battle ; and the dissidents would have been secured in the 

 open and unshackled profession of their faith, had the 

 sovereigns to whom, in no mean degree, they owed their 

 success, been actuated by any regard to their cause, or had 

 not trampled under foot every principle, which the law of 

 nations, which the law of nature, should have taught 

 them to cherish and reverence. 



' These sovereigns, however, instead of being animated 

 in the cause of civil and religious liberty, were, under the 

 false pretences, labouring solely to extend the boundaries of 

 their respective dominions, and to promote the aggrandise- 

 ment of their power. Nothing less than the dismember- 

 ment of Poland, and the partition of it among themselves, 

 was their object in the assistance they afforded the 

 dissidents, an object which could only be attained, or at 

 least more easily attained, by fomenting internal divisions, 

 and thus undermining the resources and unanimity of the 

 kingdom. This plan, it is thought, was first contemplated 

 by Prussia ; but Russia and Austria readily enough em- 

 braced it, though all these kingdoms at different periods 

 owed much of their glory, and even their very existence, 

 to the country which they thus resolved to destroy. A 



freat proportion of Poland was thus seized upon by these 

 ingdoms, and a treaty to this effect was signed by their 

 plenipotentiaries at St, Petersburg in February 1772. The 

 partitioning powers having forced the Poles to call a 

 meeting of the diet, threatened, if the treaty of dismem- 

 berment was not unanimously sanctioned, that the whole 



