26: Russian Ascendancy
<< 25: The Cossacks || 27: Prussian Intervention >>
THE "truce" of Andrussowo
proved to be one of the most permanent peaces in history, and Kiev, though only pledged
for two years, was never again to be separated from the Orthodox Slavonic state to which
it rightly belonged. But for the terrible and persistent ill-luck of Poland it is doubtful
whether the "truce" of Andrussowo would ever have been signed. The war which it
concluded was to be the last open struggle between the two powers. Henceforth the
influence of Russia over Poland was steadily to increase, without any struggle at all, the
Republic being already stricken with that creeping paralysis which ultimately left her a
prey to her neighbours. Muscovy had done with Poland as an adversary, and had no longer
any reason to fear her ancient enemy.
Poland had, in fact, emerged from the cataclysm of 1648-1667 a
moribund state, though her not unskilful diplomacy had enabled her for a time to save
appearances. Her territorial losses, though considerable, were, in the circumstances, not
excessive, and she was still a considerable power in the opinion of Europe. But a fatal
change had come over the country during the age of the Vasas. We have already seen how the
ambition of the oligarchs and the lawlessness of the szlachta had reduced the
executive to impotence, and rendered anything like rational government impossible. But
these demoralizing and disintegrating influences had been suspended by the religious
revival due to the Catholic reaction and the Jesuit propaganda, a revival which reached
its height towards the end of the 16th century. This, on the whole, salutary and edifying
movement permeated public life, and produced a series of great captains who cheerfully
sacrificed themselves for their country, and would have been saints if they had not been
heroes. But this extraordinary religious revival had well-nigh spent itself by the middle
of the 17th century. Its last manifestation was the successful defence of the monastery of
Czenstochowa by Prior Kordecki against the finest troops in Europe, its last
representative was Stephen Czarniecki, who brought the fugitive John Casimir back from
exile and reinstalled him on his tottering throne. The succeeding age was an age of
unmitigated egoism, in which the old ideals were abandoned and the old examples were
forgotten. It synchronized with, and was partly determined by, the new political system
which was spreading all over Europe, the system of dynastic diplomatic competition and the
unscrupulous employment of unlimited secret service funds. This system, which dates from
Richelieu and culminated in the reign of Louis XIV., was based on the secular rivalry of
the houses of Bourbon and Habsburg, and presently divided all Europe into two hostile
camps. Louis XI. is said to have expended 50,000,000 livres a year for bribing purposes,
the court of Vienna was scarcely less liberal, and very soon nearly all the monarchs of
the Continent and their ministers were in the pay of one or other of the antagonists.
Poland was no exception to the general rule. Her magnates, having already got all they
could out of their own country, looked eagerly abroad for fresh El Dorados. Before long
most of them had become the hirelings of France or Austria, and the value demanded for
their wages was, not infrequently, the betrayal of their own country. To do them justice,
the szlachta at first were not only free from the taint of official corruption, but
endeavoured to fight against it. Thus, at the election diet of 1669, one of the deputies,
Pieniaszek, moved that a new and hitherto unheard-of clause should be inserted in the
agenda of the general confederation, to the effect that every senator and deputy should
solemnly swear not to take bribes, while another szlacic proposed that the
ambassadors of foreign Powers should be excluded permanently from the Polish elective
assemblies. But the flighty and ignorant szlachta not only were incapable of any
sustained political action, but they themselves unconsciously played into the hands of the
enemies of their country by making the so-called liberum veto an integral part of
the Polish constitution. The liberum veto was based on the assumption of the
absolute political equality of every Polish gentleman, with the inevitable corollary that
every measure introduced into the Polish diet must be adopted unanimously. Consequently,
if any single deputy believed that a measure already approved of by the rest of the house
might be injurious to his constituency, he had the right to rise and exclaim nie
pozwalam, "I disapprove," when the measure in question fell at once to the
ground. Subsequently this vicious principle was extended still further. A deputy, by
interposing his individual veto, could at any time dissolve the diet, when all measures
previously passed had to be re-submitted to the consideration of the following diet. The liberum
veto seems to have been originally devised to cut short interminable debates in times
of acute crisis, but it was generally used either by highly placed criminals, anxious to
avoid an inquiry into their misdeeds,¹ or by malcontents, desirous of embarrassing
the executive. The origin of the liberum veto is obscure but it was first employed
by the deputy Wladislaus Sicinski, who dissolved the diet of 1652 by means of it, and
before the end of the 17th century it was used so frequently and recklessly that all
business was frequently brought to a standstill. In later days it became the chief
instrument of foreign ambassadors for dissolving inconvenient diets, as a deputy could
always be bribed to exercise his veto for a handsome consideration.
The Polish crown first became an object of universal competition in
1573, when Henry of Valois was elected. In 1575, and again in 1587, it was put up for
public auction, when the Hungarian Báthory and the Swede Sigismund respectively gained
the prize. But at all three elections, though money and intrigue were freely employed,
they were not the determining factors of the contest. The Polish gentry were still the
umpires as well as the stake- holders; the best candidates generally won the day; and the
defeated competitors were driven out of the country by force of arms if they did not take
their discomfiture, after a fair fight, like sportsmen. But with the election of Michael
Wisniowiecki in 1669 a new era began. In this case a native Pole was freely elected by the
unanimous vote of his countrymen, Yet a few weeks later the Polish commander-in-chief
formed a whole series of conspiracies for the purpose of dethroning his lawful sovereign,
and openly placed himself beneath the protection of Louis XIV. of France, just as the
rebels of the 18th century placed themselves under the protection of Catherine II. of
Russia. And this rebel was none other than John Sobieski, at a later day the heroic
deliverer of Vienna ! If heroes could so debase themselves, can we wonder if men who were
not heroes lent themselves to every sort of villainy ? We have come, in fact, to the age
of utter shamelessness, when disappointed place-hunters openly invoked foreign aid against
their own country. Sobieski himself, as John III. (he succeeded Michael in 1674), was to
pay the penalty of his past lawlessness, to the uttermost farthing. Despite his brilliant
military achievements, his reign of twenty- two years was a failure. His victories over
the Turks were fruitless so far as Poland was concerned, His belated attempts to reform
the constitution only led to conspiracies against his life and crown, in which the French
faction, which he had been the first to encourage, took an active part. In his later years
Lithuania was in a state of chronic revolt, while Poland was bankrupt both morally and
materially. He died a broken-hearted man, prophesying the inevitable ruin of a nation
which he himself had done so much to demoralize.
It scarcely seemed possible for Poland to sink lower than she had
sunk already. Yet an era was now to follow, compared with which even the age of Sobieski
seemed to be an age of gold. This was the Saxon period which, with occasional violent
interruptions, was to drag on for nearly seventy years. By the time it was over Poland was
irretrievably doomed. It only remained to be seen how that doom would be accomplished.
On the death of John III. no fewer than eighteen candidates for the
vacant Polish throne presented themselves. Austria supported James Sobieski, the eldest
son of the late king, France Francis Louis Prince of Conti (1664-1709), but the successful
competitor was Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, who cheerfully renounced Lutheranism
for the coveted crown, and won the day because he happened to arrive last of all, with
fresh funds, when the agents of his rivals had spent all their money. He was crowned, as
Augustus II., on the 1sth of September 1697, and his first act was to expel from the
country the prince of Conti, the elect of a respectable minority, directed by the cardinal
primate Michal Radziejowski (1645-1705), whom Augustus II. subsequently bought over for
75,000 thalers. Good luck attended the opening years of the new reign. In 1699 the long
Turkish War, which had been going on ever since 1683, was concluded by the peace of
Karlowitz, whereby Podolia, the Ukraine and the fortress of Kamenets Podolskiy were
retroceded to the Republic by the Ottoman Porte. Immediately afterwards Augustus was
persuaded by the plausible Livonian exile, Johan Reinhold Patkul, to form a nefarious
league with Frederick of Denmark and Peter of Russia, for the purpose of despoiling
¹ Thus the Sapiehas, who had been living on rapine for
years, dissolved the diet of 1688 by means of the veto of one of their hirelings, for fear
of an investigation into their conduct.
the youthful king of Sweden, Charles XII. This he did as elector of
Saxony, but it was the unfortunate Polish republic which paid for the hazardous
speculation of its newly elected king. Throughout the Great Northern War, which wasted
northern and central Europe for twenty years (1700-1720), all the belligerents treated
Poland as if she had no political existence. Swedes. Saxons and Russians not only lived
upon the country, but plundered it systematically. The diet was the humble servant of the
conqueror of the moment, and the leading magnates chose their own sides without the
slightest regard for the interests of their country, the Lithuanians for the most part
supporting Charles Xll., while the Poles divided their allegiance between Augustus and
Stanislaus Leszczynski, whom Charles placed upon the throne in 1704 and kept there till
1709. At the end of the war Poland was ruined materially as well as politically. Augustus
attempted to indemnify himself for his failure to obtain Livonia, his covenanted share of
the Swedish plunder, by offering Frederick William of Prussia Courland, Polish Prussia and
even part of Great Poland, provided that he were allowed a free hand in the disposal of
the rest of the country. When Prussia declined this tempting offer for fear of Russia,
Augustus went a step farther and actually suggested that "the four¹
eagles" should divide the banquet between them. He died, however (Feb. 1, 1733),
before he could give effect to this shameless design.
On the death of Augustus II., Stanislaus Leszczynski, who had, in
the meantime, become the father-in-law of Louis XV., attempted to regain his throne with
the aid of a small French army corps and 4,000,000 livres from Versailles. Some of the
best men in Poland, including the Czartoryscy, were also in his favour, and on the 26th of
August 1733 he was elected king for the second time. But there were many malcontents,
principally among the Lithuanians, who solicited the intervention of Russia m favour of
the elector of Saxony, son of the late king, and in October 1733 a Russian army appeared
before Warsaw and compelled a phantom diet (it consisted of but 15 senators and 500 of the
szlachta) to proclaim Augustus III. From the end of 1733 till the 30th of June 1734
Stanislaus and his partisans were besieged by the Russians in Danzig, their last refuge,
and with the surrender of that fortress the cause of Stanislaus was lost. He retired once
more to his little court in Lorraine, with the title of king, leaving Augustus III. in
possession of the kingdom.
Augustus III. was disqualified by constitutional indolence from
taking any active part in affairs. He left everything to his omnipotent minister, Count
Heinrich Brühl, and Brühl entrusted the government of Poland to the Czartoryscy, who had
intimate relations of long standing with the court of Dresden.
The Czartoryscy, who were to dominate Polish politics for the next
half-century, came of an ancient Ruthenian stock which had intermarried with the Jagiellos
at an early date, and had always been remarkable for their civic virtues and political
sagacity. They had powerfully contributed to the adoption of the Union of Lublin; were
subsequently received into the Roman Catholic Church; and dated the beginning of their
influence in Poland proper from the time (1674) when Florian Czartoryski became primate
there. Florian's nephews, Fryderyk Michal and Augustus, were now the principal
representatives of "the Family," as their opponents sarcastically called them.
The former, through the influence of Augustus's minister and favourite Brühl, had become,
in his twenty-eighth year, vice- chancellor and subsequently grand chancellor of
Lithuania, and was always the political head of the family. His brother Augustus, after
fighting with great distinction against the Turks both by land and sea (Prince Eugene
decorated him with a sword of honour for his valour at the siege of Belgrade), had
returned home to marry Sophia Sieniawska whose fabulous dowry won for her husband the
sobriquet of "the Family Croesus." Their sister Constantia had already married
Stanislaus Poniatowski, the father of the future king. Thus wealth, position, court
influence and ability combined gave the Czartoryssy a commanding position in Poland, and,
to their honour be it said, they had determined from the first to save the Republic, whose
impending ruin in existing circumstances they clearly foresaw, by a radical constitutional
reconstruction which was to include the abolition of the liberum veto and the
formation of a standing army.
Unfortunately the other great families of Poland were obstinately
opposed to any reform or, as they called it, any "violation" of the existing
constitution. The Potoccy whose possessions in south Poland and the Ukraine covered
thousands of square miles the Radziwillowie, who were omnipotent in Lithuania and included
half a dozen million- aires² amongst them, the Lubomirscy and their fellows, hated
the Czartoryscy because they were too eminent, and successfully obstructed all their
well-meant efforts. The castles of these great lords were the foci of the social and
political life of their respective provinces. Here they lived like little princes,
surrounded by thousands of retainers, whom they kept for show alone, making no attempt to
organize and discipline this excellent military material for the defence of their
defenceless country. Here congregated hundreds of the younger szlachta, fresh from
their school benches, whence they brought nothing but a smattering of Latin and a
determination to make their way by absolute subservience to their "elder
brethren," the pans. These were the men who, a little later, at the bidding of
their "benefactors,"
¹ The fourth eagle was the White Eagle, i.e., Poland.
² Michal Kazimierz Radziwill alone was worth thirty
millions.
dissolved one inconvenient diet after another for it is a
significant fact that during the reigns of the two Augustuses every diet was dissolved in
this way by the hirelings of some great lord or, still worse, of some foreign potentate.
In a word constitutional government had practically ceased, and Poland had become an arena
in which contesting clans strove together for the mastery.
It was against this primitive state of things that the Czartoryscy
struggled, and struggled in vain. First they attempted to abolish the liberum veto
with the assistance of the Saxon court where they were supreme, but fear of foreign
complications and the opposition of the Potoccy prevented anything being done. Then they
broke with their old friend Brühl and turned to Russia. Their chief intermediary was
their nephew Stanislaus Poniatowski, whom they sent, as Saxon minister, to the Russian
court in the suite of the English minister Hanbury Williams, in 1755. The handsome and
insinuating Poniatowski speedily won the susceptible heart of the grand duchess Catherine,
but he won nothing else and returned to Poland in 1759 somewhat discredited. Disappointed
in their hopes of Russia the Czartoryscy next attempted to form a confederation for the
deposition of Augustus III., but while the strife of factions was still at its height the
absentee monarch put an end to the struggle by expiring, conveniently, on the 5th of
October 1763.
The interregnum occurring on the death of Augustus III. befell at a
time when all the European powers, exhausted by the Seven Years' War, earnestly desired
peace. The position of Poland was, consequently, much more advantageous than it had been
on every other similar occasion, and if only the contending factions had been able to
agree and unite the final catastrophe might, perhaps, even now, have been averted. The
Czartoryscy, of all men, were bound by their principles and professions to set their
fellow-citizens an example of fraternal concord. Yet they rejected with scorn and derision
the pacific overtures of their political opponents, the Potoccy, the Radziwillowie, and
the Braniscy, Prince Michal openly declaring that of two tyrannies he preferred the
tyranny of the Muscovite to the tyranny of his equals. He had in fact already summoned a
Russian army corps to assist him to reform his country, which sufficiently explains his
own haughtiness and the unwonted compliancy of the rival magnates.
The simplicity of the Czartoryscy was even more mischievous than
their haughtiness. When the most enlightened statesmen of the Republic could seriously
believe in the benevolent intentions of Russia the end was not far off. Their naive
expectations were very speedily disappointed. Catherine II. and Frederick II. had already
determined (Treaty of Petrograd, April 22, 1764) that the existing state of things in
Poland must be maintained and as early as the 18th of October 1763 Catherine had
recommended the election of Stanislaus Poniatowski as "the individual most convenient
for our common interests." The personal question did not interest Frederick: so long
as Poland was kept in an anarchical condition he cared not who was called king. Moreover,
the opponents of the Czartoryscy made no serious attempt to oppose the entry of the
Russian troops. At least 40,000 men were necessary for the purpose, and these could have
been obtained for 200,000 ducats; but a congress of magnates, whose collective fortunes
amounted to hundreds of millions having decided that it was impossible to raise this sum,
there was nothing for it but to fight a few skirmishes and then take refuge abroad. The
Czartoryscy now fancied themselves the masters of the situation. They at once proceeded to
pass through the convocation diet a whole series of salutary measures. Four special
commissions were appointed to superintend the administration of justice, the police and
the finances. The extravagant powers of the grand hetmans and the grand marshals were
reduced. AU financial and economical questions before the diet were henceforth to be
decided by a majority of votes. Shortly afterwards Stanislaus Poniatowski was elected king
(Sept. 7, 1764) and crowned (Nov. 25). But at the beginning of 1766 Prince Nicholas Repnin
was sent as Russian minister to Warsaw with instructions which can only be described as a
carefully elaborated plan for destroying the Republic. The first weapon employed was the
dissident question. At that time the population of Poland was, in round numbers,
11,500,000, of whom about 1,000,000 were dissidents or dissenters. Half of these were the
Protestants of the towns of Polish Prussia and Great Poland, the other half was composed
of the Orthodox population of Lithuania. The dissidents had no political rights, and their
religious liberties had also been unjustly restricted; but two-thirds of them being
agricultural labourers, and most of the rest artisans or petty tradesmen. they had no
desire to enter public life, and were so ignorant and illiterate that their new
protectors, on a closer acquaintance, became heartily ashamed of them. Yet it was for
these persons that Repnin, in the name of the empress, now demanded absolute equality,
political and religious, with the gentlemen of Poland. He was well aware that an
aristocratic and Catholic assembly like the sejm would never concede so
preposterous a demand. He also calculated that the demand itself would make the szlachta
suspicious of all reform, including the Czartoryscian reforms, especially as both the king
and his uncles were generally unpopular, as being innovators under foreign influence. His
calculations were correct. The sejm of 1766 not only rejected the dissident bill
but repealed all the Czartoryscian reforms and insisted on the retention of the liberum
veto as the foundation of the national liberties. The discredit into which Stanislaus
had now fallen encouraged the Sacon party, led by Gabriel Podoski (1719-1777), to form a
combination for the purpose of dethroning the king. Repnin knew that the allied courts
would never consent to such a measure; but he secretly encouraged the plot for his own
purposes, with signal success. Early in t767 the malcontents, fortified by the adhesion of
the leading political refugees, formed a confederation at Radom, whose first act was to
send a deputation to Petrograd, petitioning Catherine to guarantee the liberties of the
Republic and allow the form of the Polish constitution to be settled by the Russian
ambassador at Warsaw. With this carte blanche in his pocket, Repnin proceeded to
treat the diet as if it were already the slave of the Russian empress. But despite
threats, wholesale corruption and the presence of Russian troops outside and even inside
the izba, or chamber of deputies, the patriots, headed by four bishops, Woclaw
Hieronim Sierakowski (1699-1784) of Lemberg, Feliks Pawel Turski of Chelm (1729-1800),
Kajetan Ignaty Soltyk of Cracow (1715-1788), and Józef Jendrzej Zaluski of Kiev
(1702-1774), offered a determined resistance to Repnin's demands. Only when brute force in
its extremest form had been ruthlessly employed only when three senators and some deputies
had been arrested in full session by Russian grenadiers and sent as prisoners to Kaluga,
did the opposition collapse. The liberum veto and all the other ancient abuses were
now declared unalterable parts of the Polish constitution, which was placed under the
guarantee of Russia. All the edicts against the dissidents were, at the same time,
repealed.
This shameful surrender led to a Catholic patriotic uprising, known
as the Confederation of Bar, which was formed on the 29th of February 1768, at Bar in the
Ukraine, by a handful of small squires. It never had a chance of permanent success,
though, feebly fed by French subsidies and French volunteers, it lingered on for four
years, till finally suppressed in 1772. But, insignificant itself, it was the cause of
great events. Some of the Bar confederates, scattered by the Russian regulars, fled over
the Turkish border, pursued by their victors. The Turks, already alarmed by the progress
of the Russians in Poland, and stimulated by Vergennes, at that time French ambassador at
Constantinople, at once declared war against Russia. Seriously disturbed at the prospect
of Russian aggrandizement, the idea occurred, almost simultaneously, to the courts of
Berlin and Vienna that the best mode of preserving the equilibrium of Europe was for all
three powers to readjust their territories at the expense of Poland. The idea of a
partition of Poland was nothing new but the vastness of the country, and the absence of
sufficiently powerful and united enemies had hitherto saved the Republic from spoliation.
But now that Poland lay utterly helpless and surrounded by the three great military
monarchies of Europe nothing could save her. In February 1769 Frederick sent Count Rochus
Friedrich Lynar (1708-1783) to Petrograd to sound the empress as to the expediency of a
partition, in August Joseph II. solicited an interview with Frederick, and in the course
of the summer the two monarchs met, first at Neisse in Silesia and again at Neustadt in
Moravia. Nothing definite as to Poland seems to have been arranged, but Prince Kaunitz,
the Austrian chancellor, was now encouraged to take the first step by occupying, in 1770,
the county of Zips, which had been hypothecated by Hungary to Poland in 1442 and never
redeemed. This act decided the other confederates. In June 1770 Frederick surrounded those
of the Polish provinces he coveted with a military cordon, ostensibly to keep out the
cattle plague. Catherine's consent had been previously obtained by a special mission of
Prince Henry of Prussia to the Russian capital. The first treaty of partition was signed
at Petrograd between Prussia and Russia on the 6-17th of February 1772; the second treaty,
which admitted Austria also to a share of the spoil, on the 5-6th of August the same year.
It islunnecessary to recapitulate the unheard-of atrocities by which the consent of the sejm
to this act of brigandage was at last extorted (Aug. 18, 1773) . Russia obtained the
palatinates of Vitebsk, Polotsk Mscislaw: 1586 sq. m. Of territory, with a population of
550,000 and an annual revenue of 920,000 Polish gulden. Austria got the greater part of
Galicia, minus Cracow: 1710 sq. m., with a population of 806,000 and an annual revenue of
1,408,000 gulden. Prussia received the maritime palatinate minus Danzig, the palatinate of
Kulm minus Thorn, Great Poland as far as the Nitza and the palatinates of Marienburg and
Ermeland: 629 sq. m., with a population of 378,000 and an annual revenue of 534,000
thalers. In fine, Poland lost about one-fifth of her population and one-fourth of her
territory.
In return for these enormous concessions the partitioning powers
presented the Poles with a constitution superior to anything they had ever been able to
devise for themselves. The most mischievous of the ancient abuses, the elective monarchy
and the liberum veto were of course retained. Poland was to be dependent on her
despoilers, but they evidently meant to make her a serviceable dependant. The government
was henceforth to be in the hands of a rada nieustajaca, or permanent council of
thirty-six members, eighteen senators and eighteen deputies, elected biennially by the sejm
in secret ballot, subdivided into the five departments of foreign affairs, police, war,
justice and the exchequer, whose principal members and assistants, as well as all other
public functionaries, were to have fixed salaries. The royal prerogative was still further
reduced. The king was indeed the president of the permanent council, but he could not
summon the Diet without its consent, and in all cases of preferment was bound to select
one out of three of the council's nominees The annual budget was fixed at 30,000,000
Polish gulden,¹ out of which a regular army of
¹ Pol. gulden = 5 silber groschen.
30,000¹ men was to be maintained. Sentiment apart, the
constitution of 1775 was of distinct benefit to Poland. It made for internal stability,
order and economy, and enabled her to develop and husband her resources, and devote
herself uninterruptedly to the now burning question of national education. For the shock
of the first partition was so far salutary that it awoke the public conscience to a sense
of the national inferiority; stimulated the younger generation to extraordinary patriotic
efforts; and thus went far to produce the native reformers who were to do such wonders
during the great quadrennial Diet.
It was the second Turkish War of Catherine II. which gave patriotic
Poland her last opportunity of re-establishing her independence. The death of Frederick
the Great (Aug. 17, 1786) completely deranged the balance of power in Europe. The
long-standing accord between Prussia and Russia came to an end, and while the latter drew
nearer to Austria, the former began to look to the Western powers. In August 1787 Russia
and Austria provoked the Porte to declare war against them both, and two months later a
defensive alliance was concluded between Prussia, England and Holland, as a counterpoise
to the alarming preponderance of Russia. In June 1788 Gustavus III. of Sweden also
attacked Russia, with 50,000 men, while in the south the Turks held the Muscovites at bay
beneath the walls of Ochakov, and drove back the Austrian invaders into Transylvania.
Prussia, emboldened by Russia's difficulties, now went so far as to invite Poland also to
forsake the Russian alliance, and placed an army corps of 40,000 men at her disposal.
¹ At the very next Diet, 1776, the Poles themselves reduced
the army to 18,000 men.
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