THE DIET OF POLAND.
Those winter months which before this year had been at Villanow the
season for cheerfulness and festivity, now rolled away in the sad
pomp of national debates and military assemblies.
Prussia usurped the best part of Pomerelia, and garrisoned it with
troops; Catharine declared her dominion over the vast tract of land
which lies between the Dwina and Borysthenes; and Frederick William
marked down another sweep of Poland. to follow the fate of Dantzic
and of Thorn, while watching the dark policy of Austria regarding its
selecting portions of the dismembering state.
Calamities and insults were heaped day after day on the defenceless
Poles. The deputies of the provinces were put into prison, and the
provisions intended for the king's table interrupted and appropriated
by the depredators to their own use. Sobieski remonstrated on this
last outrage; but incensed at reproof, and irritated at the sway
which the palatine still held, an order was issued for all the
Sobieski estates in Lithuania and Podolia to be sequestrated and
divided between four of the invading generals.
In vain the Villanow confederation endeavored to remonstrate with the
empress. Her ambassador not only refused to forward the dispatches,
but threatened the nobles "if they did not comply with every one of
his demands, he would lay all the estates, possessions, and
habitations of the members of the Diet under an immediate military
execution. Nay, punishment should not stop there; for if the king
joined the Sobieski party (to which he now appeared inclined), the
royal domains should not only meet the same fate, but harsher
treatment should follow, until both the people and their proud
sovereign were brought into due subjection."
These menaces were too arrogant to have any other effect upon the
Poles than that of giving a new spur to their resolution. With the
same firmness they repulsed similar fulminations from the Prussian
ambassador, and, with a coolness which was only equalled by their
intrepidity, they prepared to resume their arms.
Hearing by private information that their threats were despised, next
morning, before daybreak, these despotic envoys surrounded the
building where the confederation was sitting with two battalions of
grenadiers and four pieces of cannon, and then issued orders that no
Pole should pass the gates without being fired on. General
Rautenfeld, who was set over the person of the king, declared that
not even his majesty might stir until the Diet had given an unanimous
and full consent to the imperial commands.
The Diet set forth the unlawfulness of signing any treaty whilst thus
withheld from the freedom of will and debate. They urged that it was
not legal to enter into deliberation when violence had recently been
exerted against any individual of their body; and how could they do
it now, deprived as they were of five of their principal members,
whom the ambassadors well knew they had arrested on their way to the
Senate? Sobieski and four of his friends being the members most
inimical to the oppression going on, were these five. In vain their
liberation was required; and enraged at the pertinacity of this
opposition, Rautenfeld repeated the former threats, with the addition
of more, swearing that they should take place without appeal if the
Diet did not directly and unconditionally sign the pretensions both
of his court and that of Prussia.
After a hard contention of many hours, the members at last agreed
amongst themselves to make a solemn public protest against the
present tyrannous measures of the two ambassadors; and seeing that
any attempt to inspire them even with decency was useless, they
determined to cease all debate, and kept a profound silence when the
marshal should propose the project in demand.
This sorrowful silence was commenced in resentment and retained
through despair; this sorrowful silence was called by their usurpers
a consent; this sorrowful silence is held up to the world and to
posterity as a free cession by the Poles of all those rights which
they had received from nature, ratified by laws, and defended with
their blood. [Footnote: Thus, like the curule fathers of Rome, they
sat unyielding, awaiting the threatened stroke. But the dignity of
virtue held her shield over them; and with an answering silence on
the part of the confederated ambassadors, the Diet-chamber was
vacated.]
The morning after this dreadful day, the Senate met at one of the
private palaces; and, indignant and broken-hearted, they delivered
the following declaration to the people:--
"The Diet of Poland, hemmed in by foreign troops, menaced with an
influx of the enemy, which would be attended by universal ruin, and
finally insulted by a thousand outrages, have been forced to witness
the signing of a submissive treaty with their enemies.
"The Diet had strenuously endeavored to have added to that treaty
some conditions to which they supposed the lamentable state of the
country would have extorted an acquiescence, even from the heart of a
conqueror's power. But the Diet were deceived: they found such power
was unaccompanied by humanity; they found that the foe, having thrown
his victim to the ground, would not refrain from exulting in the
barbarous triumph of trampling upon her neck.
"The Diet rely on the justice of Poland--rely on her belief that they
would not betray the citadel she confided to their keeping. Her
preservation is dearer to them than their lives; but fate seems to be
on the side of their destroyer. Fresh insults have been heaped upon
their heads and new hardships have been imposed upon them. To prevent
all deliberations on this debasing treaty, they are not only
surrounded by foreign troops, and dared with hostile messages, but
they have been violated by the arrest of their prime members, whilst
those who are still suffered to possess a personal freedom have the
most galling shackles laid upon their minds.
"Therefore, I, the King of Poland, enervated by age, and sinking
under the accumulated weight of my kingdom's afflictions, and also
we, the members of the Diet, declare that, being unable, even by the
sacrifice of our lives, to relieve our country from the yoke of its
oppressors, we consign it to our children and the justice of Heaven.
"In another age, means may be found to rescue it from chains and
misery; but such means are not put in our power. Other countries
neglect us. Whilst they reprobate the violations which a neighboring
nation is alleged to have committed against rational liberty, they
behold, not only with apathy but with approbation, the ravages which
are now desolating Poland. Posterity must avenge it. We have done. We
accede in silence, for the reasons above mentioned, to the treaty
laid before us, though we declare that it is contrary to our wishes,
to our sentiments, and to our rights."
Thus, in November, 1793, compressed to one fourth of her dimensions
by the lines of demarcation drawn by her invaders, Poland was
stripped of her rank in Europe; her "power delivered up to strangers,
and her beauty into the hands of her enemies!" Ill-fated people!
Nations will weep over your wrongs; whilst the burning blush of
shame, that their fathers witnessed such wrongs unmoved, shall cause
the tears to blister as they fall.
During these transactions, the Countess Sobieski continued in
solitude at Villanow, awaiting with awful anxiety the termination of
those portentous events which so deeply involved her own comforts
with those of her country. Her father was in prison, her son at a
distance with the army. Sick at heart, she saw the opening of that
spring which might be the commencement only of a new season of
injuries; and her fears were prophetic.
It being discovered that some Masovian regiments in the neighborhood
of Warsaw yet retained their arms, they were ordered by the foreign
envoys to lay them down. A few, thinking denial vain, obeyed; but
bolder spirits followed Thaddeus Sobieski towards South Prussia,
whither he had directed his steps on the arrest of his grandfather,
and where he had gathered and kept together a handful of brave men,
still faithful to their liberties. His name alone collected numbers
in every district through which he marched. Persecution from their
adversary as well as admiration of Thaddeus had given a resistless
power to his appearance, look, and voice, all of which had such an
effect on the peasantry, that they eagerly crowded to his standard,
whilst their young lords committed themselves without reserve to his
sole judgment and command. The Prussian ambassador, hearing of this,
sent to Stanislaus to command the grandson of Sobieski to disband his
troops. The king refusing, and his answer being communicated to the
Russian envoy also, war was renewed with redoubled fury.
The palatine remained in confinement, hopeless of obtaining release
without the aid of stratagem. His country's enemies were too well
aware of their interest to give freedom to so active an opponent.
They sought to vex his spirit with every mental torture; but he
rather received consolation than despair in the reports daily brought
to him by his jailers. They told him "that his grandson continued to
carry himself with such insolent opposition in the south, it would be
well if the empress, at the termination of the war, allowed him to
escape with banishment to Siberia." But every reproach thus levelled
at the palatine he found had been bought by some new success of
Thaddeus; and instead of permitting their malignity to intimidate his
age or alarm his affection, he told the officer (who kept guard in
his chambers) that if his grandson were to lose his head for fidelity
to Poland, he should behold him with as proud an eye mounting the
scaffold as entering the streets of Warsaw with her freedom in his
hand. "The only difference would be," continued Sobieski, "that as
the first cannot happen until all virtue be dead in this land, I
should regard his last gasp as the expiring sigh of that virtue
which, by him, had found a triumph even under the axe. But for the
second, it would be joy unutterable to behold the victory of justice
over rapine and violence! But, either way, Thaddeus Sobieski is still
the same--ready to die or ready to live for his country, and equally
worthy of the sacred halo with which posterity would encircle his
name forever."
Indeed, the accounts which arrived from this young soldier, who had
formed a junction with General Kosciusko, were in the highest degree
formidable to the coalesced powers. Having gained several advantages
over the Prussians, the two victorious battalions were advancing
towards Inowlotz, when a large and fresh body of the enemy appeared
suddenly on their rear. The enemy on the opposite bank of the river,
(whom the Poles were driving before them,) at sight of this
reinforcement, rallied; and not only to retard the approach of the
pursuers, but to ensure their defeat from the army in view, they
broke down the wooden bridge by which they had escaped themselves.
The Poles were at a stand. Kosciusko proposed swimming across, but
owing to the recent heavy rains, the river was so swollen and rapid
that the young captains to whom he mentioned the project, terrified
by the blackness and dashing of the water, drew back. The general,
perceiving their panic, called Thaddeus to him, and both plunged into
the stream. Ashamed of hesitation, the others now tried who could
first follow their example; and, after hard buffeting with its tide,
the whole army gained the opposite shore. The Prussians who were in
the rear, incapable of the like intrepidity, halted; and those who
had crossed on their former defeat, now again intimidated at the
daring courage of their adversaries, concealed themselves amidst the
thickets of an adjoining valley.
The two friends proceeded towards Cracow, [Footnote: Cracow is
considered the oldest regal city in Poland; the tombs of her earliest
and noblest kings are there, John Sobieski's being one of the most
renowned. It stands in a province of the same name, about 130 miles
south-west of Warsaw, the more modern capital of the kingdom, and
also the centre of its own province.] carrying redress and protection
to the provinces through which they marched. But they had hardly
rested a day in that city before dispatches were received that Warsaw
was lying at the mercy of General Brinicki. No time could be lost;
officers and men had set their lives on the cause, and they
recommenced their toil of a new march with a perseverance which
brought them before the capital on the 16th of April.
Things were in a worse state than even was expected. The three
ambassadors had not only demanded the surrender of the national
arsenal, but subscribed their orders with a threat that whoever of
the nobles presumed to dispute their authority should be arrested and
closely imprisoned there; and if the people should dare to murmur,
they would immediately order General Brinicki to lay the city in
ashes. The king remonstrated against such oppression, and to "punish
his presumption," his excellency ordered that his majesty's garrison
and guards should instantly be broken up and dispersed. At the first
attempt to execute this mandate, the people flew in crowds to the
palace, and, falling on their knees, implored Stanislaus for
permission to avenge the insult offered to his troops. The king
looked at them with pity, gratitude, and anguish. For some time his
emotions were too strong to allow him to speak; at last, in a voice
of agony, wrung from his tortured heart, he answered, "Go, and defend
your honor!"
The army of Kosciusko marched into the town at this critical moment;
they joined the armed people; and that day, after a dreadful
conflict, Warsaw was rescued from the immediate grasp of the hovering
Black Eagle. During the fight, the king, who was alone in one of the
rooms of his palace, sank in despair on the floor; he heard the
mingling clash of arms, the roar of musketry, and the cries and
groans of the combatants; ruin seemed no longer to threaten his
kingdom, but to have pounced at once upon her prey. At every renewed
volley which followed each pause in the firing, he expected to see
his palace gates burst open, and himself, then indeed made a willing
sacrifice, immolated to the vengeance of his enemies.
While he was yet upon his knees petitioning the God of battles for a
little longer respite from that doom which was to overwhelm devoted
Poland, Thaddeus Sobieski, panting with heat and toil, flew into the
room, and before he could speak a word, was clasped in the arms of
the agitated Stanislaus.
"What of my people?" asked the king.
"They are victorious!" returned Thaddeus. "The foreign guards are
beaten from the palace; your own have resumed their station at the
gates."
At this assurance, tears of joy ran over the venerable cheeks of his
majesty, and again embracing his young deliverer, he exclaimed, "I
thank Heaven, my unhappy country is not bereft of all hope! Whilst a
Kosciusko and a Sobieski live, she need not quite despair. They are
thy ministers, O Jehovah, of a yet longer respite!"
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