A CHANGE OF DYNASTY.
From 1608 to 1680.
Conquests by Poland.--Sweden in Alliance with Russia.--Grandeur of
Poland.--Ladislaus Elected King of Russia.--Commotions and
Insurrections.--Rejection of Ladislaus and Election of Michael Feodor
Romanow.--Sorrow of His Mother.--Pacific Character of Romanow.--Choice
of a Bride.--Eudochia Streschnew.--The Archbishop Feodor.--Death of
Michael and Accession of Alexis.--Love in the Palace.--Successful
Intrigue.--Mobs in Moscow.--Change in the Character of the
Tzar.--Turkish Invasions.--Alliance Between Russia and Poland.
This public testimonial of conjugal love led men, who had before
doubted the pretender, to repose confidence in his claims. The King of
Poland took advantage of the confusion now reigning in Russia to
extend his dominions by wresting still more border territory from his
great rival. In this exigence, Zuski purchased the loan of an army of
five thousand men from Sweden by surrendering Livonia to the Swedes.
With these succors united to his own troops, he marched to meet the
pretended Dmitri. There was now universal confusion in Russia. The two
hostile armies, avoiding a decisive engagement, were maneuvering and
engaging in incessant petty skirmishes, which resulted only in
bloodshed and misery. Thus five years of national woe lingered away.
The people became weary of both the claimants for the crown, and the
nobles boldly met, regardless of the rival combatants, and resolved to
choose a new sovereign.
Poland had then attained the summit of its greatness. As an energetic
military power, it was superior to Russia. To conciliate Poland, whose
aggressions were greatly feared, the Russian nobles chose, for their
sovereign, Ladislaus, son of Sigismond, the King of Poland. They
hoped thus to withdraw the Polish armies from the banners of the
pretended Dmitri, and also to secure peace for their war-blasted
kingdom.
Ladislaus accepted the crown. Zuski was seized, deposed, shaved,
dressed in a friar's robe and shut up in a convent to count his beads.
He soon died of that malignant poison, grief. Dmitri made a show of
opposition, but he was soon assassinated by his own men, who were
convinced of the hopelessness of his cause. His party, however, lasted
for many years, bringing forward a young man who was called his son.
At one time there was quite an enthusiasm in his favor, crowds flocked
to his camp, and he even sent embassadors to Gustavus IX., King of
Sweden, proposing an alliance. At last he was betrayed by some of his
own party, and was sent to Moscow, where he was hanged.
Sigismond was much perplexed in deciding whether to consent to his
son's accepting the crown of Russia. That kingdom was now in such a
state of confusion and weakness that he was quite sanguine that he
would be able to conquer it by force of arms and bring the whole
empire under the dominion of his own scepter. His armies were already
besieging Smolensk, and the city was hourly expected to fall into
their hands. This would open to them almost an unobstructed march to
Moscow. The Poles, generally warlike and ambitious of conquest,
represented to Sigismond that it would be far more glorious for him to
be the conqueror of Russia than to be merely the father of its tzar.
Sigismond, with trivial excuses, detained his son in Poland, while,
under various pretexts, he continued to pour his troops into Russia.
Ten thousand armed Poles were sent to Moscow to be in readiness to
receive the newly-elected monarch upon his arrival. Their general,
Stanislaus, artfully contrived even to place a thousand of these
Polish troops in garrison in the citadel of Moscow. These foreign
soldiers at last became so insolent that there was a general rising
of the populace, and they were threatened with utter extermination.
The storm of passion thus raised, no earthly power could quell. The
awful slaughter was commenced, and the Poles, conscious of their
danger, resorted to the horrible but only measure which could save
them from destruction. They immediately set fire to the city in many
different places. The city then consisted of one hundred and eighty
thousand houses, most of them being of wood. As the flames rose,
sweeping from house to house and from street to street, the
inhabitants, distracted by the endeavor to save their wives, their
children and their property, threw down their arms and dispersed. When
thus helpless, the Poles fell upon them, and one of the most awful
massacres ensued of which history gives any record. A hundred thousand
of the wretched people of Moscow perished beneath the Polish cimeters.
For fifteen days the depopulated and smouldering capital was
surrendered to pillage. The royal treasury, the churches, the convents
were all plundered. The Poles, then, laden with booty, but leaving a
garrison in the citadel, evacuated the ruined city and commenced their
march to Poland.
These horrors roused the Russians. An army under a heroic general,
Zachary Lippenow, besieged the Polish garrison, starved them into a
surrender, and put them all to death. The nobles then met, declared
the election of Ladislaus void, on account of his not coming to Moscow
to accept it, and again proceeded to the choice of a sovereign. After
long deliberation, one man ventured to propose a candidate very
different from any who had before been thought of. It was Michael
Feodor Romanow. He was a studious, philosophic young man, seventeen
years of age. His father was archbishop of Rostow, a man of exalted
reputation, both for genius and piety. Michael, with his mother, was
in a convent at Castroma. It was modestly urged that in this young man
there were centered all the qualifications essential for the
promotion of the tranquillity of the State. There were but three
males of his family living, and thus the State would avoid the evil of
having numerous relatives of the prince to be cared for. He was
entirely free from embroilments in the late troubles. As his father
was a clergyman of known piety and virtue, he would counsel his son to
peace, and would conscientiously seek the best good of the empire.
The proposition, sustained by such views, was accepted with general
acclaim. There were several nobles from Castroma who testified that
though they were not personally acquainted with young Romanow, they
believed him to be a youth of unusual intelligence, discretion and
moral worth. As the nobles were anxious not to act hastily in a matter
of such great importance, they dispatched two of their number to
Castroma with a letter to the mother of Michael, urging her to repair
immediately with her son to Moscow.
The affectionate, judicious mother, upon the reception of this letter,
burst into tears of anguish, lamenting the calamity which was
impending.
"My son," she said, "my only son is to be taken from me to be placed
upon the throne, only to be miserably slaughtered like so many of the
tzars who have preceded him."
She wrote to the electors entreating them that her son might be
excused, saying that he was altogether too young to reign, that his
father was a prisoner in Poland, and that her son had no relations
capable of assisting him with their advice. This letter, on the whole,
did but confirm the assembly of nobles in their conviction that they
could not make a better choice than that of the young Romanow. They
accordingly, with great unanimity, elected Michael Feodor Romanow,
sovereign of all the Russias; then, repairing in a body to the
cathedral, they proclaimed him to the people as their sovereign. The
announcement was received with rapturous applause. It was thus that
the house of Romanow was placed upon the throne of Russia. It retains
the throne to the present day.
Michael, incited by singular sagacity and by true Christian
philanthropy, commenced his reign by the most efficient measures to
secure the peace of the empire. As soon as he had notified his
election to the King of Poland, his father, archbishop of Rostow, was
set at liberty and sent home. He was immediately created by his son
patriarch of all Russia, an office in the Greek church almost
equivalent to that of the pope in the Romish hierarchy. While these
scenes were transpiring, Charles IX. died, and Gustavus Adolphus
succeeded to the throne of Sweden. Gustavus and Michael both desired
peace, the preliminaries were soon settled, and peace was established
upon a basis far more advantageous to the Swedes than to the Russians.
By this treaty, Russia ceded to Sweden territory, which deprived
Russia of all access to the Baltic Sea. Thus the only point now upon
which Russia touched the ocean, was on the North Sea. No enemies
remained to Russia but the Poles. Here there was trouble enough.
Ladislaus still demanded the throne, and invaded the empire with an
immense army. He advanced, ravaging the country, even to the gates of
Moscow. But, finding that he had no partisans in the kingdom, and that
powerful armies were combining against him, he consented to a truce
for fourteen years.
Russia was now at peace with all the world. The young tzar, aided by
the counsels of his excellent father, devoted himself with untiring
energy to the promotion of the prosperity of his subjects. It was
deemed a matter of much political importance that the tzar should be
immediately married. According to the custom of the empire, all the
most beautiful girls were collected for the monarch to make his
choice. They were received in the palace, and were lodged separately
though they all dined together. The tzar saw them, either incognito or
without disguise, as suited his pleasure. The day for the nuptials
was appointed, and the bridal robes prepared when no one knew upon
whom the monarch's choice had been fixed. On the morning of the
nuptial day the robes were presented to the empress elect, who then,
for the first time, learned that she had proved the successful
candidate. The rejected maidens were returned to their homes laden
with rich presents.
The young lady selected, was Eudocia Streschnew, who chanced to be the
daughter of a very worthy gentleman, in quite straitened
circumstances, residing nearly two hundred miles from Moscow. The
messenger who was sent to inform him that his daughter was Empress of
Russia, found him in the field at work with his domestics. The good
old man was conducted to Moscow; but he soon grew weary of the
splendors of the court, and entreated permission to return again to
his humble rural home. Eudocia, reared in virtuous retirement, proved
as lovely in character as she was beautiful in person, and she soon
won the love of the nation. The first year of her marriage, she gave
birth to a daughter. The three next children proved also daughters, to
the great disappointment of their parents. But in the year 1630, a son
was born, and not only the court, but all Russia, was filled with
rejoicing. In the year 1634, the tzar met with one of the greatest of
afflictions in the loss of his father by death. His reverence for the
venerable patriarch Feodor, had been such that he was ever his
principal counselor, and all his public acts were proclaimed in the
name of the tzar and his majesty's father, the most holy patriarch.
"As he had joined," writes an ancient historian, "the miter to the
sword, having been a general in the army before he was an
ecclesiastic, the affable and modest behaviour, so becoming the
ministers of the altar, had tempered and corrected the fire of the
warrior, and rendered his manners amiable to all that came near him."
The reign of Michael proved almost a constant success. His wisdom and
probity caused him to be respected by the neighboring States, while
the empire, in the enjoyment of peace, was rapidly developing all its
resources, and increasing in wealth, population and power. His court
was constantly filled with embassadors from all the monarchies of
Europe and even of Asia. The tzar, rightly considering peace as almost
the choicest of all earthly blessings, resisted all temptations to
draw the sword. There were a few trivial interruptions of peace during
his reign; but the dark clouds of war, by his energies, were soon
dispelled. This pacific prince, one of the most worthy who ever sat
upon any throne, died revered by his subjects on the 12th of July,
1645, in the forty-ninth year of his age and the thirty-third of his
reign. He left but two children--a son, Alexis, who succeeded him, and
a daughter, Irene, who a few years after died unmarried.
Alexis was but sixteen years of age when he succeeded to the throne.
To prevent the possibility of any cabals being formed, in consequence
of his youth, he was crowned the day after his father's death. In one
week from that time Eudocia also died, her death being hastened by
grief for the loss of her husband. An ambitious noble, Moroson,
supremely selfish, but cool, calculating and persevering, attained the
post of prime minister or counselor of the young tzar. The great
object of his aim was to make himself the first subject in the empire.
In the accomplishment of this object there were two leading measures
to which he resorted. The first was to keep the young tzar as much as
possible from taking any part in the transactions of state, by
involving him in an incessant round of pleasures. The next step was to
secure for the tzar a wife who would be under his own influence. The
love of pleasure incident to youth rendered the first measure not
difficult of accomplishment. Peculiar circumstances seemed remarkably
to favor the second measure. There was a nobleman of high rank but of
small fortune, strongly attached to Moroson, who had two daughters of
marvelous beauty. Moroson doubted not that he could lead his ardent
young monarch to marry one of these lovely sisters, and he resolved
himself to marry the other. He would thus become the brother-in-law of
the emperor. Through his wife he would be able to influence her
sister, the empress. The family would also all feel that they were
indebted to him for their elevation. The plan was triumphantly
successful.
The two young ladies were invited to court, and were decorated to make
the most impressive display of their loveliness. With the young tzar,
a boy of sixteen, it was love at first sight, and that very day he
told Moroson that he wished to marry Maria, the eldest of the
beauties. Rich presents were immediately lavished upon the whole
family, so that they could make their appearance at court with
suitable splendor. The tzar and Maria were immediately betrothed, and
in just eight days the ardent lover led his bride from the altar. At
the end of another week Moroson married the other sister. Moroson and
Miloslouski, the father of the two brides, now ruled Russia, while the
tzar surrendered himself to amusements.
The people soon became exasperated by the haughtiness and insolence of
the duumvirate, and murmurs growing deeper and louder, ere long led to
an insurrection. On the 6th of July, 1648, the tzar, engaged in some
civic celebration, was escorted in a procession to one of the
monasteries of Moscow. The populace assembled in immense numbers to
see him pass. On his return the crowd broke through the attendant
guards, seized the bridle of his horse, and entreated him to listen to
their complaints concerning the outrages perpetrated by his ministers.
The tzar, much alarmed by their violence, listened impatiently to
their complaints and promised to render them satisfaction. The people
were appeased, and were quietly retiring when the partisans of the
ministers rode among them, assailing them with abusive language,
crowding them with their horses, and even striking at them with their
whips. The populace, incensed, began to pelt them with stones, and
though the guard of the tzar came to their rescue, they escaped with
difficulty to the palace. The mob was now thoroughly aroused. They
rushed to the palace of Moroson, burst down the doors, and sacked
every apartment. They even tore from the person of his wife her
jewels, throwing them into the street, but in other respects treating
her with civility. They then passed to the palace of Miloslauski,
treating it in the same manner. The mob had now possession of Moscow.
Palace after palace of the partisans of the ministers was sacked, and
several of the most distinguished members of the court were massacred.
The tzar, entirely deficient in energy, remained trembling in the
Kremlin during the whole of the night of the 6th of July, only
entreating his friends to strengthen the guards and to secure the
palace from the outrages of the populace. Afraid to trust the Russian
troops, who might be found in sympathy with the people, Alexis sent
for a regiment of German troops who were in his employ, and stationed
them around the palace. He then sent out an officer to disperse the
crowd, assuring them that the disorders of which they complained
should be redressed. They demanded that the offending ministers should
be delivered to them, to be punished for the injuries they had
inflicted upon the empire. Alexis assured them, through his messenger,
upon his oath, that Moroson and Miloslauski had escaped, but promised
that the third minister whom they demanded, a noble by the name of
Plesseon, who was judge of the supreme court of judicature of Moscow,
should be brought out directly, and that those who had escaped should
be delivered up as soon as they could be arrested. The guilty,
wretched man, thus doomed to be the victim to appease the rage of the
mob, in a quarter of an hour was led out bareheaded by the servants of
the tzar to the market-place. The mob fell upon him with clubs, beat
him to the earth, dragged him over the pavements, and finally cut off
his head. Thus satiated, about eleven o'clock in the morning they
dispersed and returned to their homes.
In the afternoon, however, the reign of violence was resumed. The city
was set on fire in several places, and the mob collected for plunder,
making no effort to extinguish the flames. The fire spread with such
alarming rapidity that the whole city was endangered. At length,
however, after terrible destruction of property and the loss of many
lives, the fury of the conflagration was arrested. The affrighted tzar
now filled the important posts of the ministry with men who had a
reputation for justice, and the clergy immediately espousing the cause
of order, exhorted the populace to that respect and obedience to the
higher powers which their religion enjoined. Alexis personally
appeared before the people and addressed them in a speech, in which he
made no apology for the outrages which had been committed by the
government, but, assuming that the people were right in their demands,
promised to repeal the onerous duties, to abolish the obnoxious
monopolies, and even to increase the privileges which they had
formerly enjoyed. The people received this announcement with great
applause. The tzar, taking advantage of this return to friendliness,
remarked,
"I have promised to deliver up to you Moroson and his confederates in
the government. Their acts I admit to have been very unjust, but their
personal relations to me renders it peculiarly trying for me to
condemn them. I hope the people will not deny the first request I have
ever made to them, which is, that these men, whom I have displaced,
may be pardoned. I will answer for them for the future, and assure you
that their conduct shall be such as to give you cause to rejoice at
your lenity."
The people were so moved by this address, which the tzar pronounced
with tears, that, as with one accord, they shouted, "God grant his
majesty a long and happy life. The will of God and of the tzar be
done." Peace was thus restored between the government and the people,
and great good accrued to Russia from this successful insurrection.
During the early reign of Alexis, there were no foreign wars of any
note. The Poles were all the time busy in endeavors to beat back the
Turks, who, in wave after wave of invasion, were crossing the Danube.
Upon the death of Ladislaus, King of Poland, Alexis, who had then a
fine army at his command, offered to march to repel the Turks, if the
Poles would choose him King of Poland. But at the same time France
made a still more alluring offer, in case they would choose John
Casimir, a prince in the interests of France, as their sovereign. The
choice fell upon John Casimir. The provinces of Smolensk, Kiof and
Tchernigov were then in possession of the Poles, having been, in
former wars, wrested from Russia. The Poles had conquered them by
taking advantage of internal troubles in Russia, which enabled them
with success to invade the empire.
Alexis now thought it right, in his turn, to take advantage of the
weakness of Poland, harassed by the Turks, to recover these lost
provinces. He accordingly marched to the city of Smolensk, and
encamped before it with an army of three hundred thousand men.
Smolensk was one of the strongest places which military art had then
been able to rear. The Poles had received sufficient warning of the
attack to enable them to garrison the fortifications to their utmost
capacity and to supply the town abundantly with all the materials of
war. The siege was continued for a full year, with all the usual
accompaniments of carnage and misery which attend a beleaguered
fortress. At last the city, battered into ruins, surrendered, and the
victorious Russians immediately swept over Lithuanian Poland, meeting
no force to obstruct its march. Another army, equally resistless,
swept the banks of the Dnieper, and recovered Tchernigov and Kiof.
Misfortunes seemed now to be falling like an avalanche upon Poland.
While the Turks were assailing them on the south, and the Russians
were wresting from them opulent and populous provinces on the north,
Charles Gustavus of Sweden, was crossing her eastern frontiers with
invading hosts. The impetuous Swedish king, in three months, overran
nearly the whole of Poland, threatening the utter extinction of the
kingdom. This alarmed the surrounding kingdoms, lest Sweden should
become too powerful for their safety. Alexis immediately entered into
a truce with Poland, which guaranteed to him the peaceable possession
of the provinces he had regained, and then united his armies with
those of his humiliated rival, to arrest the strides of the Swedish
conqueror.
Sieges, cannonades and battles innumerable ensued, over hundreds of
leagues of territory, bordering the shores of the Baltic. For several
years the maddened strife continued, producing its usual fruits of
gory fields, smouldering cities, desolated homes, with orphanage,
widowhood, starvation, pestilence, and every conceivable form of human
misery. At length, all parties being exhausted, peace was concluded on
the 2d of June, 1661.
The great insurrection in Moscow had taught the tzar Alexis a good
lesson, and he profited by it wisely. He was led to devote himself
earnestly to the welfare of his people. His recovery of the lost
provinces of Russia was considered just, and added immeasurably to his
renown. Conscious of the imperfection of his education, he engaged
earnestly in study, causing many important scientific treatises to be
translated into the Russian language, and perusing them with diligence
and delight. He had the laws of the several provinces collected and
published together. Many new manufactures were introduced,
particularly those of silk and linen. Though rigidly economical in his
expenses, he maintained a magnificent court and a numerous army. He
took great interest in the promotion of agriculture, bringing many
desert wastes into cultivation, and peopling them with the prisoners
taken in the Polish and Swedish wars. It was the custom in those
barbaric times to drive, as captives of war, the men, women and
children of whole provinces, to be slaves in the territory of the
conqueror. Often they occupied the position of a vassal peasantry,
tilling the soil for the benefit of their lords. With singular
foresight, Alexis planned for the construction of a fleet both on the
Caspian and the Black Sea. With this object in view, he sent for ship
carpenters from Holland and other places.
All Europe was now trembling in view of the encroachments of the
Turks. Several very angry messages had passed between the sultan and
the tzar, and the Turks had proved themselves ever eager to combine
with the Tartars in bloody raids into the southern regions of the
empire. Alexis resolved to combine Christian Europe, if possible, in a
war of extermination against the Turks. To this end he sent
embassadors to every court in Christendom. As his embassador was
presented to Pope Clement X., the pope extended his foot for the
customary kiss. The proud Russian drew back, exclaiming,
"So ignoble an act of homage is beneath the dignity of the prince whom
I have the honor to serve."
He then informed the pope that the Emperor of Russia had resolved to
make war against the Turks, that he wished to see all Christian
princes unite against those enemies of humanity and religion, that for
that purpose he had sent embassadors to all the potentates of Europe,
and that he exhorted his holiness to place himself at the head of a
league so powerful, so necessary for the protection of the church, and
from which every Christian State might derive the greatest advantages.
Foolish punctilios of etiquette interfered with any efficient
arrangements with the court of Rome, and though the embassadors of
other powers were received with the most marked respect, these powers
were all too much engrossed with their own internal affairs to enlist
in this enterprise for the public good. The Turks were, however,
alarmed by these formidable movements, and, fearing such an alliance,
were somewhat checked in their career of conquest.
On the 10th of November, 1674, the King of Poland died, and again
there was an attempt on the part of Russia to unite Poland and the
empire under the same crown. All the monarchies in Europe were
involved in intrigues for the Polish crown. The electors, however,
chose John Sobieski, a renowned Polish general, for their sovereign.
The tzar was very apprehensive that the Poles would make peace with
the Turks, and thus leave the sultan at liberty to concentrate all his
tremendous resources upon Russia. Alexis raised three large armies,
amounting in all to one hundred and fifty thousand men, which he sent
into the Ukraine, as the frontier country, watered by the lower
Dnieper, was then called.
The Turkish army, which was spread over the country between the Danube
and the Dniester, now crossed this latter stream, and, in solid
battalions, four hundred thousand strong, penetrated the Ukraine. They
immediately commenced the fiend-like work of reducing the whole
province to a desert. The process of destruction is swift. Flames, in
a few hours, will consume a city which centuries alone have reared. A
squadron of cavalry will, in a few moments, trample fields of grain
which have been slowly growing and ripening for months. In less than a
fortnight nearly the whole of the Ukraine was a depopulated waste, the
troops of the tzar being shut up in narrow fortresses. The King of
Poland, apprehensive that this vast Turkish army would soon turn with
all their energies of destruction upon his own territories, resolved
to march, with all the forces of his kingdom, to the aid of the
Russians. One hundred thousand Polish troops immediately besieged the
great city of Humau, which the Turks had taken, midway between the
Dnieper and the Dniester.
John Sobieski, the newly-elected King of Poland, was a veteran soldier
of great military renown. He placed himself at the head of other
divisions of the army, and endeavored to distract the enemy and to
divide their forces. At the same time, Alexis himself hastened to the
theater of war that he might animate his troops by his presence. The
Turks, finding themselves unable to advance any further, sullenly
returned to their own country by the way of the Danube. Upon the
retirement of the Turks, the Russians and the Poles began to quarrel
respecting the possession of the Ukraine. Affairs were in this
condition when the tzar Alexis, in all the vigor of manhood, was taken
sick and died. He was then in the forty-sixth year of his age. His
first wife, Maria Miloslouski, had died several years before him,
leaving two sons and four daughters. His second wife, Natalia
Nariskin, to whom he was married in the year 1671, still lived with
her two children, a son, Peter, who was subsequently entitled the
Great, as being the most illustrious monarch Russia has known, and a
daughter Natalia.
Alexis, notwithstanding the unpropitious promise of his youth, proved
one of the wisest and best princes Russia had known for years. He was
a lover of peace, and yet prosecuted war with energy when it was
forced upon him. His oldest surviving son, Feodor, who was but
eighteen years of age at the time of his father's death, succeeded to
the crown. Feodor, following the counsel which his father gave him on
his dying bed, soon took military possession of nearly all of the
Ukraine. The Turks entered the country again, but were repulsed with
severe loss. Apprehensive that they would speedily return, the tzar
made great efforts to secure a friendly alliance with Poland, in which
he succeeded by paying a large sum of money in requital for the
provinces of Smolensk and Kiof which his arms had recovered.
In the spring of 1678, the Turks again entered the Ukraine with a
still more formidable army than the year before. The campaign was
opened by laying siege to the city Czeherin, which was encompassed by
nearly four hundred thousand men, and, after a destructive cannonade,
was carried by storm. The garrison, consisting of thirty thousand
men, were put to the sword. The Russian troops were so panic-stricken
by this defeat, that they speedily retreated. The Turks pursued them a
long distance, constantly harassing their rear. But the Turks, in
their turn, were compelled to retire, being driven back by famine, a
foe against whom their weapons could make no impression.
The Ottoman Porte soon found that little was gained by waging war with
an empire so vast and sparsely settled as Russia, and that their
conquest of the desolated and depopulated lands of the Ukraine, was by
no means worth the expenses of the war. The Porte was therefore
inclined to make peace with Russia, that the Turkish armies might fall
upon Poland again, which presented a much more inviting field of
conquest. The Poles were informed of this through their embassador at
Constantinople, and earnestly appealed to the tzar of Russia, and to
all the princes in Christendom to come to their aid. The selfishness
which every court manifested is humiliating to human nature. Each
court seemed only to think of its own aggrandizement. Feodor consented
to aid them only on condition that the Poles should renounce all
pretension to any places then in possession of Russia. To this the
Polish king assented, and the armies of Russia and Poland were again
combined to repel the Turks.