GALLICIA AND LODOMERIA. 477 



In the year 1772, it appeared that the king of Prussia, the emperor 

 and empress-queen, and empress of Russia, had entered into an al- 

 liance to divide and dismember the kingdom of Poland ; though Prus- 

 sia was formerly in a state of vassalage to Poland, and the title of king 

 of Prussia was never acknowledged by the Poles till 1764. Russia al- 

 so in the beginning of the 17th century, saw its capital and throne pos- 

 sessed by the Poles; while Austria, in 1683, was indebted to a king 

 of Poland for the preservation of its metropolis, and almost for its very 

 existence. These three allied powers, acting in concert, set up their 

 formal pretensions to the respective districts which they had alloited 

 for and guaranteed to each other; Polish or Western Prussia, and some 

 districts bordering upon Brandenburg, for the king of Prussia; almost 

 all the south-east parts of the kingdom bordering upon Hungary, toge- 

 ther with the rich salt-works of the crown, for the empress-queen of 

 Hungary and Bohemia; and a large district of country about Mohilow 

 upon the bunks of the Dnieper, for the empress of Russia. But though 

 each of these powers pretended to have a legal title to the territories 

 which were allotted them respectively, and published manifestoes in 

 justification of the measures which they had taken, yet as they were 

 conscious that the fallacies by which they supported their pretensions 

 were too gross to impose upon mankind, they forced the Poles to call 

 a new diet, and threatened them, that iithey did not consent unanimous- 

 ly to sign a treaty for the ceding of those provinces to them respect- 

 ively, the whole kingdom should be laid under a military execution, 

 and treated as a conquered state. In this extremity of distress, sever- 

 al of the Polish nobility protested against this violant act of tyranny, 

 and retired into foreign states, choosing rather to live in exile, and to 

 have all their landed property confiscated, than to be instruments of 

 bringing their country to utter ruin: but the king, under the threaten- 

 ing of deposition and imprisonment, was prevailed upon to sign this 

 act, and his example was followed by many of his subjects. 



The conduct of the king of Prussia in Poland was the most tyranni- 

 cal that can be conceived .n the year 1771, his troops entered into 

 Great Poland, and carried off from that province and its neighbourhood, 

 at a moderate computation, 12,000 families. On the 29th of October, 

 in the same year, he published an edict, commanding every person, un- 

 der the severest penalties, and even corporal punishment, to take in 

 payment, for forage, provisions, corn, horses, Sec. the money offered by 

 his troops and commissaries. This money was either silver, bearing 

 the impression of Poland, and exactly worth one-third of its nominal 

 value, or ducats struck in imitation of Dutch ducats, seventeen per cent, 

 inferior to the real ducats of Holland. With this base money he bought 

 up corn and forage enough, not only to supply his army for two whole 

 years, but to stock magazines in the country itself, where the inhabi- 

 tants were forced to come and re-purchase corn for their daily subsis- 

 tence, at an advanced price, and with good money, his commissaries 

 refusing to take the same coin they had paid. At the lowest calcula- 

 tion, he gained, by this honest manoeuvre, seven millions of dollars. 

 Having stripped the country of money and provisions, his next attempt 

 was to thin it still more of its inhabitants. To people his own domin- 

 ions at the expense of Poland had been his great aim : for this purpose, 

 he devised a new contribution; every town and village was obliged to 

 furnish a certain number of marriageable girls; the parents to give, 

 as a portion, a feather-bed, four pillows, a cow, two hogs, and three 

 ducats in gold. Some were bound hand and foot, and carried off a's 



