242 EUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



century a DucLy of Warsaw and a Eepublic of Cracow had doubtless a shadow 

 of independent life, but the illusion was soon dispelled before the bard realities. 

 Warsaw becomes a Russian stronghold, and Cracow sinks into an Austrian pro- 

 vincial town. The Yistula provinces, arbitrarily parcelled out, have henceforth a 

 purely administrative and military significance in the eyes of Russian bureaucracy. 

 The imperial treasury regards Poland as the most populous, industrious, wealthy, 

 and heavily taxed division of the empire, and the Russian staff sees nothing in it 

 except the most formidable quadrilateral of Central Europe. 



It is easy to detect the main causes that brought about the collapse of the Polish 

 state. Her fate is partly explained by the geographical conditions of the land. 

 Nature had denied her a well-defined frontier, or any compact upland tract where 

 she might have perhaps established a solid nucleus of power. Nevertheless the 

 outlines of the region occupied by the bulk of the Polish race proper are mostly 

 drawn with sufficient clearness. On the south the ridge of the Carpathians 

 forms a natural barrier, never at any time crossed by the Poles, as it has been by 

 the Little Russians. In the north the lacustrine table-land, whose northern 

 slopes are peopled by Germans or the Germanised Prussians, also presented a 

 limit which the Poles scarcely succeeded in overcoming. The Vistula also, 

 intersecting the land from north to south, and fed by affluents on both its banks, 

 converts the whole country into a fairly regular geographical basin possessed of 

 great resisting force. But eastwards and westwards the land is open, except 

 where masked by extensive swamps and almost impenetrable woodlands. The 

 vast depression whence the inhabitants of the Vistula basin take the name of 

 Poles, or " Lowlanders," is continued on either side into Germany and Russia. 

 But it was in this direction that the great migrations chiefly took place, the 

 pressure of each succeeding wave being felt most forcibly along the parallels of 

 latitude. Through these two broad openings the Polish frontier began to fluc- 

 tuate, as it were, on the side of Germany and Russia at once, wars and inroads 

 ceaselessly displacing the equilibrium of races here struggling for the supremacy. 



More than once Poland rose to the first rank amongst Slav states, and might 

 almost have claimed by right the name of Slavonia, Still two distinct periods of 

 expansion may be observed in her history, each followed by an epoch of weakness, 

 and ending in territorial loss. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries enlarge- 

 ment took place, chiefly westwards, Poland now representing the van of Slavdom 

 against Germany. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries the direction 

 of her growth was shifted to the east against the oriental Slavs. About the 

 time of the earliest national records the kingdom — comprising Polska proper, 

 that is, the Vistula and Warta " plains," the present Poland, and Poznania — was 

 engaged in the attempt to absorb the kindred tribes occupying the region stretch- 

 ing westwards to the Elbe. At one time foes of the Germanic emperors, at 

 others yielding to the fascination of the " Holy Roman Empire," and proud of 

 ranking among its vassals, the Polish kings succeeded in subduing nearly all 

 the western Slavs. In the beginning of the eleventh century Bolislas the Great 

 held Moravia, Slovak-land, Lusatia, and for a short time even Bohemia. His 



