[1795 A.D.] Kosciuszko exerted himself to the utmost to augment his army. He got recruits among the peasants; and to inspire them with more emulation he wore their dress, ate with them, and distributed encouragements among them; but those men too long degraded in Poland were not yet deserving of the liberty that was offered them. They distrusted the intentions of the nobles, who, on their side, for the most part lamented the loss of their absurd prerogatives. Stanislaus Augustus and his partisans augmented still further the ill-will of the nobles, by representing to them the intentions of Kosciuszko as disastrous to their order, and by caballing continually in favour of Russia. In the mean time, the empress, not satisfied with augmenting the number of her troops in Poland, had sent her best generals thither. After several battles, in one of which Frederick William, who had advanced to support the Russians, fought at the head of his troops against Kosciuszko, who was striving to prevent the junction of the Russian generals, Suvarov and Fersen, the Polish commander was attacked by the latter at Macziewice on the 4th of October. His talents, his valour, and his desperation were unable to prevent the Poles from yielding to numbers. Almost the whole of his army were cut to pieces or obliged to lay down their arms. He himself, covered with wounds, was taken prisoner, ejaculating, "Finis Polonia!" All who were able to escape from the conquerors went and shut themselves up in Praga, the eastern suburb of Warsaw, where 26,000 Poles and 104 heavy cannon and mortars defended the bridges over the Vistula and the approach to the capital. Suvarov was soon before the gates with an effective force of but 22,000 men and 86 field pieces; but even with such odds against him he resolved to do as he had done at Ismail, and carry the Polish lines at the point of the bayonet. After cannonading the defences for two days he gave the order for the assault at daybreak on the 4th of November. The trenches were carried after a desperate fight of five hours; the Russians swept into the town, murdering all before them, old men, women, and children; the wooden houses were speedily on fire; the bridges were broken down, so that the helpless crowds who attempted to escape into the city were remorselessly driven into the Vistula. Besides 10,000 Polish soldiers, 12,000 citizens of every age and sex perished in this wanton butchery. Warsaw itself capitulated on the 5th of November, and was delivered up to the Russians on the 6th. Poland was now annihilated. One division of its troops after another was disarmed, and all the generals and officers who could be seized were carried off. The king, however, who could be induced to do anything if his comforts were spared, was used as an instrument to give to power the impress of right. He was again set nominally at the head of the kingdom till the robbers had agreed upon the division of the spoil, and had no longer need of him. Suvarov held a splendid military court for a year in Warsaw, far eclipsing the king, till at length the city was given up to the Prussians. The whole of the year 1795 was spent in negotiations with Prussia, and the last treaty for the partition of Poland was not signed till the 24th of October, 1795. In December, Suvarov travelled from Warsaw to St. Petersburg, where the empress appropriated the Taurian palace for his residence, and nominated a special household for his service. On the 1st of January, 1796, Warsaw was first given up to the Prussians, and negotiations were carried on till the 21st of October, 1796, respecting the boundaries of the palatinates of Warsaw and Cracow. By virtue of this partition, first finally arranged in October, 1796, Austria obtained the chief parts of the waiwodeship of Cracow, the palatinates of Sendomir and Lublin, together with a portion of the [1795 A.D.] district of Chelm and portions of the waiwodeships of Brzesc, Podalachia, and Massovia, which lie along the left bank of the Bug. All these districts contain about 834 German square miles. Prussia received those portions of Massovia and Podalachia which touch upon the right bank of that river, in Lithuania those parts of the palatinates of Troki and Samogitia which lie to the left of the Niemen, and, finally, a district in Little Poland which belonged to the waiwodeship of Cracow, making in all about one thousand German square miles. Russia received the whole of what had hitherto been Polish Lithuania as far as the Niemen, and to the frontiers of the waiwodeships of Brzesc and Novogrodek, and thence to the Bug, together with the greater part of Samogitia. In Little Poland she obtained that part of Chelm which lies on the right bank of the Bug and the remainder of Volhinia, in all about two thousand German square miles. During the negotiations for the partition, Russia caused Stanislaus Augustus to lay down the crown. The three partitioning powers ensured him a yearly income of 200,000 ducats, and promised to pay his debts. THE ANNEXATION OF COURLAND (1795 A.D.) Catherine had now conquered, either by her arms or by her intrigues, almost one-half of Poland, the Crimea, the Kuban, and a part of the frontiers of Turkey. But she had no need of armaments and battles for usurping another rich and well-peopled country. Courland and Semigallia, where still reigned Duke Peter, the feeble son of the famous Biren, had long been prepared for that annexation, which was now effected almost without an effort. The flattering reception given to the Courish nobles in St. Petersburg by the empress, distinctions, honours, posts, and pleasures, rendering their abode in the imperial residence far preferable to continuing in Mittau, and made them desirous of being under the sway of the sovereign of a vast empire, rather than live in obedience to a duke the obscurity of whose origin they could not forget, and whom they regarded as their inferior. To bring the people to the same way of thinking as the nobles, Catherine artfully embroiled them with their neighbours, and created for them reasons of alarm. She began by instigating the inhabitants of Livonia to insist upon the fulfilment of an ancient convention, by which the Courlanders were obliged to bring all their merchandises to Riga: certainly a very strange and hard condition, by which a nation, that had on its coasts excellent harbours happily situated, should be obliged to go, at a great expense, to embark the products of its soil in a foreign city. The quarrel between the Livonians and the Courlanders was not yet terminated, when the empress sent engineers into Courland, to mark out a canal, to facilitate the transport of the merchandises of that country into Livonia. The Courlanders seeing this, and fearing lest they should be soon forced to make use of this canal, thought it better for them to be protected than oppressed by the empress, and to be her subjects rather than her neighbours. Catherine, being informed of these dispositions, called the duke of Courland to her, under the pretence of conferring with him on matters of importance. No sooner was that prince at the foot of the throne of the autocratrix of the north, than the states of Courland held an assembly, wherein it was proposed to put the country under the supremacy of Russia. The principal members of the grand council faintly opposed this motion, observing, that before they proceeded to a resolution it would be expedient to wait the return of the duke. The oberburgraf Hoven rose up, and spoke a long time [1795 A.D.] in favour of Russia. Some councillors expressed themselves of his opinion; others reproached him with treason. The dispute grew warm on both sides; challenges were reciprocally given and swords were about to be drawn, when the Russian general Pahlen appeared in the assembly. His presence restored tranquillity. No one presumed to raise his voice against Russia; and the proposal of the nobles was adopted. The next day, March 18th, 1795, the act was drawn up, by which Courland, Semigallia, and the circle of Pilten made a formal surrender of themselves to the empress of Russia; and it was carried to St. Petersburg, where the duke of Courland learned, from the mouth of his own subjects, that they themselves had deprived him of his dominions. The empress immediately sent a governor thither. Some dis content, however, remained in Courland; discontent brought on proscription, and the possessions of the proscribed were given to the courtiers of Catherine. The favourite, Plato Zubov, and his brother Valerian obtained a great part of those rich and shameful spoils.j LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF CATHERINE II Before the breaking out of the French Revolution the governments of Louis XVI and Catherine II had entered into active negotiations for the formation of a quadruple alliance that should include Austria, Russia, and the two houses of Bourbon, and should have for its object the checking of England's maritime pretensions and the encroachments of Prussia. After the taking of the Bastille Catherine realised that she could no longer count upon the support of France, since that country was exclusively occupied with its own interior transformation. She kept anxious watch, however, upon the course of events in Paris, and manifested the liveliest antipathy to the new principles, falling ill at the news of the king's execution on the 21st of January. Led by fear into a violent reaction, the correspondent of Voltaire and Diderot set a close watch upon all Russians suspected of liberalism. She destroyed a tragedy of Kniaznin and exiled to Siberia Radichtchev, the author of a curious book entitled Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, in which were many sharp reflections on serfdom; Novikov was confined at Schlüsselburg, his printing houses were closed and all his enterprises ruined. She dismissed Genêt, the French ambassador, refused to recognise either the constitution of 1791 or the French Republic, issued an ukase announcing the rupture of diplomatic relations with France, refused to the tri-colour admission [1796 A.D.] to Russian parts, expelled all French subjects who refused to swear allegiance to the monarchical principle, extended a warm welcome to French refugees, and lost no time in acknowledging Louis XVIII. In 1792 she published her famous note on the restoration of royal power and aristocratic privileges in France, asserting that only ten thousand men would be necessary to effect a counter-revolution. She encouraged Gustavus III, who was assassinated by his nobles at a masked ball (March 16th, 1792), to place himself at the head of a crusade against democracy. She further urged England to assist the count d'Artois in a descent he had planned upon the French coast, and stimulated the zeal of Austria and Prussia. Notwithstanding this, though she had repeatedly negotiated treaties for subsidies and promised troops, she took care never to become involved in a war with the west. "My position is taken," she said, "my part assigned; I shall watch the movements of Turkey, Poland, and Sweden." The latter country became reconciled to France after the death of Gustavus III. The punishment of the Jacobins of Warsaw and Turkey was an easier and more lucrative piece of work. We should also take into account an admission that she made to her vice-chancellor Ostermann in 1791: "Am I wrong? I cannot avow all to the courts of Berlin and Vienna, but I wish to keep them engaged in these affairs so that I may have freedom to carry on my unfinished enterprises." She excused herself for not taking part in the anti-revolutionary crusade by alleging the war with Turkey; then when in consequence of the revolution of the 3rd of May she was obliged to hasten the Peace of Jassy, she made the Polish war her excuse; and when this was ended she affected to excite Suvarov and his soldiers against the atheists of the west, but in reality thought only of gaining her own ends in the east. Muhammed, the new king of Persia, had recently invaded Georgia and burned Tiflis, the capital of Heraclius, a protégé of the empress. Catherine summoned to her court an exiled brother of Muhammed's and charged Valerian Zubov with the conquest of Persia. [His armies were actually under way when the death of Catherine led to the abandonment of the enterprise.] Without being aware of it Catherine II really performed greater service to France than to the coalition. By her intervention in Poland and her projects against the east she had excited the jealousy and suspicion of Prussia and Austria. She took care to pit them against each other; made the second partition with Frederick William in spite of Austria, and effected the third with Francis II to the extreme dissatisfaction of Prussia. She contributed indirectly to weaken and dissolve the coalition, being herself prevented from joining it by the Polish insurrection that received so much encouragement from France. She died on the 17th of November, 1796, at the age of sixty-seven. Since Ivan the Terrible no monarch had extended the limits of the empire by such vast conquests. Catherine made the Niemen, the Dniester, and the Black Sea the boundaries of Russia.d A RUSSIAN ESTIMATE OF CATHERINE The personality of the empress was as though created for a throne. We do not meet in history with any other woman so fitted to rule. On all and each she produced a profound impression. No one has spoken more harshly and disadvantageously of the empress' qualities than Masson, yet this pamphleteer-writer observes that during the space of ten years, having had occasion to see Catherine once or twice a week, he was always struck by her [1796 A.D.] unusually attractive personality, by the dignity with which she held herself, and by the amiability of her behaviour to everyone. In her Memoirs 9 Catherine herself has left a detailed narrative of the course of her development, of her aspirations after power, and of her unscrupulousness in the means she used to attain her aims. The empress' frankness in this respect amounts almost to cynicism. In maturity she at last became an autocratic sovereign. After the terrible humiliations, the bitter trials she had endured in her youth, her delight when she found herself in the enjoyment of unbounded power was all the greater. The fact that the fundamental change in her surroundings, the rapid passage from entire dependency to entire potency, did not in any wise awaken in her any despotic inclinations testifies to the goodness inherent in her nature; when her son was subjected in his turn to a like change in outward circumstances his despotism knew no bounds. We have see that the unfavourable circumstances in which Catherine found herself until the year 1762 exercised a baneful influence upon her character; whereas the power and preponderance which she later acquired had an ennobling effect upon her nature. Until then she had been necessarily obliged often to have resource to mean and trifling measures to better her position and to revenge herself on her opponents; when she was able to exert full power, to enjoy the advantages of her position, the respect of her contemporaries, the adoration of the persons that surrounded her, she no longer needed to employ those means which are generally made use of by the weak in their struggle against the strong. At the time when a sharp watch was kept over her, when she was not trusted by either Elizabeth or Peter, she understood how to dissemble, to play the hypocrite, to feign humility and modesty, whilst in her soul she was filled with arrogance and contempt for mankind. Now that she had surrounded herself entirely with persons devoted to her she could act openly and nobly. The grand duchess in her isolation had been remarkable for her coldness, her mistrust of mankind, her suspiciousness; the empress on the contrary gave full scope to the development of feelings of benevolence, condescension, indulgence, and sincere attention to the interests of the persons that surrounded her. It was not without reason that Peter and Elizabeth had mistrusted Catherine and been suspicious of her character; it was not without reason, either, that in after times many people highly esteemed Catherine's kindheartedness. The history of the court under Peter I, under the empress Anna, and under Elizabeth is full of examples of tyranny, cruelty, and arbitrariness; all Catherine's contemporaries were astonished at the mildness of her behaviour to those around her and rejoiced at the absence of stiff formalities and hard measures in her intercourse with her subordinates. In spite of her quick temper and impulsiveness, Catherine had complete control over herself, and in her intercourse with her fellow creatures she was governed by principles of humanity. "I like to praise and reward loudly, to blame quietly," she once justly remarked in conversation with Ségur; she sought to avoid occasions of offending anyone, and was particularly careful in her intercourse with servants; "I will live to make myself not feared," she once said, observing that the stove-heater, who had deserved reproof for some neglect, avoided meeting her. Often when Catherine had given an order she would make excuses for the trouble and labour it occasioned. Krapovitski gives instances of such solicitude on her part; more than once the empress, when impatient or irritated, having expressed herself somewhat sharply, afterwards acknowledged her hastiness and endeavoured to repair her fault. |