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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 492: THE STATE OF POLAND.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

THE STATE OF POLAND.

During this year the fate of Poland was sealed. The Czarina having demanded that its army should be reduced to 16,000 men, the Poles resolved to resist her will, and to try once more the fate of arms. The celebrated Kosciusko was placed at their head; but their struggle was to no purpose; Kosciusko was defeated by the Russians, wounded, and taken prisoner. On the refusal of the king to give up Warsaw, the capital, it was stormed by Suwarrow, who brutally gave orders to allow no quarter. Poland was now partitioned between the plunderers—Russia, Austria, and Prussia—and ceased to be a kingdom; the patriots being proscribed, their property confiscated, and Stanislaus compelled to live in Russia, where he ended his days. “Poland fell,” says an eminent writer, “the victim of her own dissensions; of the chimera of equality insanely pursued, and the rigour of aristocracy unceasingly maintained; of extravagant jealousy of every superior, and merciless oppression of every inferior, rank. The eldest born of the European family was the first to perish, because she had thwarted all the ends of social union; because she had united the turbulence of democratic to the exclusiveness of aristocratical societies; because she had the vacillation of a republic without its energy, and the oppression of a monarchy without its stability. Such a system neither could nor ought to be maintained; the internal feuds of Poland were more fatal to human happiness than the despotism of Russia; and the growth of improvement among its people was as slow as among the ryots of Hindostan.” These are just remarks; but the causes of Poland’s overthrow do not extenuate the guilt of the spoliators: the dismemberment of the country is a foul blot upon the historic page of Russia, Austria, and Prussia—a blot which can never be wiped out.