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already quitted the apartment. A pistol and dagger, how- Petersburg, inviting her to assist them in restoring the old ever, were found on the floor, and these the maker, whose constitution. Catherine gave them a ready promise, and, name was on them, identified as the same that he had on the 14th of May, Felix Potocki, Branicki, Rzewinski, recently sold to Ankerström. He was arrested and sub- and eleven other nobles, met at Targowica, and entered into jected to torture, when he declared himself the perpetrator a confederacy for this purpose. This confederacy was of the deed; that he had been most unjustly treated, and followed, only four days after its signing, by a protest was weary of his life; that, at first, he had no accomplices, issued by Bulgakoff, the Russian minister, at Warsaw, but that afterwards he had, and that they had made several against the whole of the new institutions and decrees. In attempts besides the one which succeeded. In consequence this lengthy document, the minister claimed, in the name of Ankerström's revelations, or from other causes, counts of the empress, the right conferred on her by former treaties Horn and Ribbing, barons Pechlin, Ehrensvard, Hartsman- and benefactions to watch over the rights and liberties of dorf, Von Engerström, and others, were arrested. Anker- the Polish nation; she expressed the most magnanimous ström had an open trial, and then he denied that he had anxiety for the preservation of these rights and liberties; had any active accomplices, but merely that a number of and she complained that they had, by their new constitupersons knew of his design. He was condemned to a most tion, overthrown the whole ancient and salutary fabric of the barbarous death: to be publicly flogged on three successive laws; that the new decrees left not a shadow of freedom days; to be exposed, in front of the senate house, to the people, to the Poles! She complained of their making the throne with an iron chain about his neck; to have his right hand hereditary-a singular complaint for a despotic sovereign ; cut off, then his head, and these three sections of his body to that they had put down the legitimate constitution by be distributed in various parts of the city. Ankerström, treachery and armed force; that they had made encroachwho was but thirty-three years of age, suffered the sentence ments on the Greek religion, the church of Russia; and had with the utmost stoicism. Two of those accused as accom- treated her own character with offensive rudeness. The plices destroyed themselves in prison. The anonymous democratic Poles had indeed made very free with the stories letter was traced to count Liljihorn, who was arrested, and of her scandalous amours. She then announced that she confessed that he belonged to the conspiracy. He and was not only called on, by her sense of what was due from counts Horn and Ribbing were banished for life; and her to Polish liberty and national integrity, but by the voice others suffered imprisonment and confiscation of property. of the most distinguished Poles themselves; and that she These severities belonged to the laws rather than to the had ordered her troops to march into the country to restore chivalrous Gustavus. Though he continued to linger eleven its former "liberty and independence." She promised, days in great agony, he expressed no desire for vengeance on however, to pass over all this list of offences, if the Poles his assassins, but summoned around his dying bed not only his consented to revoke the new constitution and faithfully refamily and friends, but all his court, without distinction of store the old. friend or foe, and reconciled himself to the most violent opponents of his measures, counts Fersen and Braké. Gustavus was in his forty-sixth year, and died on the 26th of March, 1792.

Catherine of Russia, thus rid of the only two monarchs who were likely to trouble her with scruples, hastened her grand design of absorbing Poland. She professed to be greatly scandalised and alarmed at the proceedings of the king, who had attended a great dinner given by the municipality of Warsaw on the anniversary of the passing of their new constitution, at which he had not only responded to the toast of his health by drinking to the nation and the municipality, thus sanctioning them as great powers, as the French had done, but had sate complacently amid the loud cries of "Long live liberty! Long live the nation, and our citizen king, the friend of the Rights of Man!" The Poles had certainly become enthusiastic imitators of the French; they had established clubs in imitation of the clubs of Paris, had sent a deputation to congratulate the French on their revolution, and had passed various decrees of a jacobin character. Whilst Catherine professed to be terrified at these proceedings, nothing could give her greater satisfaction; for they furnished her with the very pretexts that she wanted for marching into the country. Neither did she lack a sanction from the Poles themselves. There had always been violent parties in that kingdom; and, at this time, a number of nobles, who opposed the new constitution, sent a deputation with a memorial to the empress, at St.

Never, perhaps, were the most nefarious designs covered by more shockingly hypocritical language. On the 18th of May, the same day that this proclamation was issued at Warsaw, a hundred thousand Russian troops marched over the Polish frontiers, attended by some of the Polish confederates of Targowica, and others of that party.

The diet issued a counter-proclamation rebutting Catherine's long catalogue of charges seriatim, and denying the right of any nation, under any pretence whatever, to interfere with the internal changes of another nation executed by the proper authorities and representatives of the people. Stanislaus Augustus issued an address to the Polish army, calling upon it to defend the national rights from the domination of Russia, and bidding them call to mind the curses which the pretended protection of Russia had already brought upon the nation; the forcible seizure of men of ail classes, from the prince to the peasant, who dared to resist Russian insolence; whole tribes of peasants having been carried off to found new Russian colonies. He bade them remember that Poland had already suffered one dismember ment at the hands of Russia; and he warned them that, if they did not now unite as one man to resist the Russian arms, notwithstanding the fine sentiments put forth by the empress, she would not only again dismember the country, but would utterly extinguish the Polish name!

No one could better understand the sinister policy of Catherine than the king who had formerly been her favourite and confidant, and who had been placed on the

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A.D. 1792.]

INVASION OF POLAND BY RUSSIA.

603 But, unfortunately, the Russian empress as one of the greatest, ablest, and most innocent of monarchs, simply in opposition to Pitt and his endeavours to repress her schemes of aggrandisement. Fox had even sent Mr. Adair as his emissary to St. Petersburg, to congratulate Catherine on her successes, and to assure her of the admiration of Englishmen. Such are the fatal perversities into which men are driven by party spirit! At this very moment Fox and the whigs were flattering and patting Catherine on the back, when her bandit armies had already their feet on the doomed soil of Poland, and they were still applauding the revolutionists of France, when they were already beyond the Rhine, on that crusade of

throne of Poland by her power. Poland was in no condition to cope with the might of Russia. No pains had been taken to organise the army in years past on any scale capable of defending the nation; the new rights conferred on the people were too new to have given them yet any interest in them. Poland, therefore, in all haste, made solicitations for help to Prussia, Austria, England, Sweden; and Denmark; but all in vain. Sweden and Denmark had, now that Gustavus was dead, determined to have no concern in wars resulting in any way from the French revolution. Frederick William of Prussia, who had so warmly congratulated the Poles on their new constitution, now made it a direct ground of complaint. He pre-conquest which plunged all Europe into more than twenty tended to have predicted all this offence to Russia, by the alarming measures of the diet, and protested that had it not been for these, Russia would never have taken the decided step which she had now done. He, however, coldly professed himself ready to unite with Russia and Austria to restore the former state of things in Poland. As for Austria, she lay cold and neutral in appearance; but, though Poland was not aware of it, both Prussia and Austria were in the secret league for the dismemberment of this unfortunate country.

years of the most horrible bloodshed. They saw all this when too late. For the present, all that was done for Poland was to call a meeting at the Mansion House, and open a subscription for the suffering Poles.

Poland, abandoned to her own resources, made a brave but ineffectual resistance. She had neither an army, nor money, nor mountains into which her patriots might retreat, and thus cope, in some degree, with the heavy legions of Muscovy. Her troops did not exceed ten thousand men; her bankers had lent their money to the very powers that England was anxiously sought for aid; but Pitt, who had were now combined to crush them, and they had to contend, raised so powerful an armament to check the attacks of on wide, defenceless plains, with the overwhelming hordes Russia on Turkey, showed no disposition even to denounce of Russia. They conferred, however, on the king unthe attempts of Russia on Poland. If England, and if limited powers for conducting the war; they voted thirty Pitt, in particular, both before and after this time, had millions of crowns and one hundred thousand men, but the maintained a proper non-intervention system, as it regarded money could not be raised, nor, consequently, the army. continental nations, little blame could have attached to him They were in want of both artillery and ammunition, and, for his apathy regarding the fate of Poland. He might be before these could be obtained from distant countries, their blamed for refraining from exerting the moral power of fate was decided. Stanislaus Augustus was in earnest, for England in condemnation of the unprincipled aggression of he was sick of the yoke of Russia, but he was never a man Russia, but he could not be expected to take arms in of extraordinary powers, and he was now growing old and defence of Poland, so far removed from the influence of a inactive. He made his nephew, prince Joseph Poniatowski, maritime nation. But Pitt showed the utmost indifference commander-in-chief, but he controlled his actions through a to the destruction of Poland, though he afterwards involved council of war which he had formed, and which was as this country in one of the most gigantic wars which the timid and hesitating as himself. Joseph Poniatowski had world had ever seen, merely to reinstate a fallen dynasty on mustered fifty-six thousand men by great exertions; the a throne, in opposition to the wishes of the nation con- bulk of them were ill disciplined and ill armed - serfs called cerned. Colonel Gardiner, our minister at Warsaw, was from their fields to withstand the well-drilled and seasoned instructed by our secretary for foreign affairs, lord Gren- soldiers of Catherine. But they were full of spirit, and, ville, Pitt's cousin, to express a friendly interest towards on all occasions, when they came in contact with the enemy, Poland, but to take care to avoid giving any expectations of acted with great bravery, and gained many advantages over assistance. The Poles, repelled by Prussia and Austria, and the invaders. But, instead of leaving prince Joseph to finding no warmth of sympathy in the agent of England, fight, step by step, with the foe, and to lay waste the dispatched count Bukaty, in June, to London, to make a country as he advanced, thus cutting off the provisions of zealous pleading for aid. But Pitt was cold and immovable, the Russians, Augustus ordered the prince to fall back as if the absorption of this large country, in the centre of behind the river Bug, so as to concentrate the troops for the Europe, would not formidably increase that preponderance of defence of Warsaw. In was in vain that prince Joseph Russia, which he had lately professed so greatly to dread, when represented the disastrous consequences of such a retreat; there was a question of the absorption of Turkey. No aid, not that it would discourage his raw levies; that it would even of money, was promised. No motion, condemnatory of enable the Russians to advance unmolested into the very Russia's grasping schemes, was made in parliament; it heart of the country; and that the line of the Bug was seemed to England a matter of no moment that one of the perfectly indefensible. Joseph was compelled to retreat, and chief nations of Europe should be torn in pieces by rapacious everything fell out as he foretold. Notwithstanding, the powers, contrary to all moral and all international law. Russians received several severe checks in their advance. The whigs, those great advocates of revolution and of At Zielence, at Palorma, and, finally, at Dulienska, the of At popular freedom, were dumb. In fact, what could they Poles fought them gallantly. At the latter battle, on the say? for Fox and his admirers had all along been lauding 17th of July, the gallant patriot, Kosciusko, made a terrible

havoc of the Russian lines, and was only prevented utterly routing them by his flank being turned by another arrival of Russians, whom the emperor Francis, of Austria, had allowed to march through Gallicia.

This was a most discouraging fact, for it showed that Francis, who pretended neutrality, was also in league with Catherine. The Russians, thus pouring in from all sides, well supplied with everything, whilst the brave Poles were destitute of everything, continued to advance, in spite of all resistance. The timid and the calculating began to flock to the confederacy of Taragowica, and the numerous Jews, who monopolised nearly all the trade of Poland, contrived to conceal their supplies from the Poles, who had no money, and passed them to the Russians, who paid liberally. The division of the army in Lithuania, originally commanded by prince Louis of Wurtemberg, but afterwards successively by Judycki and Michel Zabiello, was also in retreat before the heavy masses of the Russian Kreczetnikoff. In that province another confederacy had arisen on the same principle as that of Taragowica, who acted in union with the Russians, and called on all Poles to join them for the support of liberty, which they boldly asserted the diet had destroyed.

Stanislaus Augustus, totally disheartened, had, so early as the 22nd of June, written to Catherine, offering to have her grandson, Constantine, nominated as successor to the throne of Poland, on condition of her withdrawing her troops; but she only replied by upbraiding him with the violation of the Compacta Conventa, and demanding that he should at once accede to the Confederacy of Taragowica, and hasten to restore the constitution to its ancient condition, as it existed down to the 3rd of May, 1791. Stanislaus was compelled to comply, and to publish a humiliating declaration of his sincere approval of the old constitution and of the court, the most despotic and most degrading to the people at large that the world had ever seen. He was compelled to congratulate his unfortunate country on the generous and disinterested protection of the empress of Russia, who, he declared, had restored tranquillity to the republic, guaranteed its sacred rights, and promised to open up new sources of happiness and prosperity to the people. This declaration was published in the beginning of August throughout Poland. Those who could escape from the promised happiness did, by expatriating themselves; those who could not leave their estates without utter ruin, hastened to join the confederacies of Taragowica and Lithuania, as insuring them protection from Russian vengeance.

leading reformers, and who had been complimented by the king of Prussia on his discretion and moderation, found himself stripped of his estates for what he had thus been applauded. He therefore had the boldness to hasten to Petersburg and to solicit the restoration of his property from the empress herself. He was received with courtesy, so far as words went, and Catherine assured him that she was the best friend of Poland, and was only protecting the Poles from being swallowed up by Austria and Prussia. Both she and her ministers treated the idea of any partition of Poland as the most groundless and ridiculous of notions. They pointed to the invasion of Germany already by Custine, the French revolutionary general, and justified the temporary occupation of Poland as necessary to the security of both Poland and the neighbouring states.

We must leave the three robber-powers, Russia, Prussia, and Austria, therefore, gloating over their prey, and ready to rend it asunder, in order to continue the narrative of the wild explosion of France. The Girondists were, at the opening of the year 1792, vehemently urging on war against the emigrants and the emperor of Germany. On the very 1st of January, Gensonné, a leading orator of that party, declared that war was inevitable, and he moved that Monsieur, the king's brother, the prince of Condé, count d'Artois, Calonne, Mirabeau the younger, and some others, should be accused of conspiracy and high treason, for being in arms against France, and that they be put upon their trial. As the decree of accusation, which was passed, was not submitted to the king, no veto could be apprehended. Another decree pronounced them condemned, and their revenues appropriated to the state. To this the king offered no opposition. The assembly took possession as an indemnity for the war, and Monsieur was deprived of the regency.

On the 14th of January Gensonné presented a report on the last dispatch of the emperor. He declared that the treaty of alliance with Austria of 1756 was destroyed by the declaration of Pilnitz, which had raised an armed conspiracy of sovereigns against France; that the refractory emigrants were still encouraged, notwithstanding the assertions of the elector of Treves to the contrary; the white cockade was still worn beyond the Rhine, and the national one insulted. Guadet followed, and proposed that every Frenchman who should take part in a congress for the purpose of modifying the constitution should be declared a traitor. It was resolved that the king should demand a final explanation from the emperor before the 1st of March, and that no answer should be held tantamount to a declaration of war. A few days afterwards, the assembly decreed that there were The Russians advanced to Warsaw, took regular pos- reasons for believing that the king of Spain contemplated an session of it, and of all the towns and military forts through attack on France, and orders were issued to increase the the whole country. They dismissed the patriot officers of troops on the Spanish frontier. Some objections being the army, and dispersed the army itself in small divisions raised to war on account of the enormous cost of it, into widely-separated places. They abolished the new con- Lacombe exclaimed, "Have no fears on the subject of stitution, thrust the burgher class again out of their newly-money; victory will bring us plenty of money." This was acquired privileges, and put the press under more igno- the adopted principle of the revolution to make the minious restrictions than before. They confiscated the invaded countries pay for their own oppression; and by estates of those nobles who had advocated the new reforms, this principle the French were afterwards enabled to overand even the hurried attempt to shield themselves by joining run Europe. Prudhomme announced in his paper that the confederations of Taragowica and Lithuania did not there was a grand conspiracy existing betwixt Austria, Rave others. Count Oginski, who had been one of the Prussia, and England with the court at the Tuileries, to

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invade France, and that the royalists had collected sixty pieces of cannon into Paris, simultaneously with a movement on the frontiers, to break open the prison doors, and release all the aristocrats and priests, when there would be a general massacre of the people. He reiterated these falsehoods in the journal, again and again declaring that the Feuillant club, the Barnaves, Lameths, the queen, the princess Lamballe-who had, fatally for herself, again returned to Paris-Narbonne, the minister at war, and his mistress, Madame de Staël, were all deep in the plot. The other journals joined in these cries, thus preparing the people for the bloody scenes of the following September in the prisons of Paris.

That excitable city was now in a condition of ríot from the scarcity and consequent dearness of sugar and coffee. The great French colony which furnished the bulk of these articles was in open rebellion on the part of the negroes, who grew the articles, in consequence of the teachings of the declaration of the "Rights of Man," which Brissot had sent thither, for which he had been applauded by La Fayette, Condorcet, the abbé Raynal, and the other members of the society of the friends of the blacks. Two hundred thousand slaves, at this unexpected proclamation, rose to demand their liberty. The mulattoes, who were free, but without the privileges of citizens, and felt themselves despised by the whites, their fathers, put themselves at the head of the blacks. Ogé, a mulatto, who had been in Europe to plead the cause of the half-castes, and had been in communication with Clarkson and Wilberforce in England, with Barnave and others in France, put himself, with two hundred mulattoes, at the head of the blacks. He was defeated, taken, imprisoned, tortured, and put to death. He died on the wheel, and his mutilated carcase was left on the highway. The mulattoes swore a terrible revenge. In one night they led on sixty thousand slaves to the massacre of their masters. Within a circuit of six leagues, they burnt down every plantation, and murdered men, women, and children. The outrages of centuries were repaid in a few hours, and that with tortures and abominations still more appalling than they themselves had suffered. They became the masters of a great part of the island, and, by the destruction of the plantations, and the black population now wielding guns and swords instead of hoes, the produce of coffee and sugar was for a time at an end. A fierce outcry arose in the faubourgs, and that of St. Antoine marched in a body to the national assembly on the 26th of January, demanding their coffee and sugar. With the constant practice of mobs, they did not perceive the true cause of the deficiency—the destruction of the plantations, and the cessation of labour amongst the slaves, now, like themselves, enjoying the rights of man-but they attributed the dearth of sugar and coffee to the conspirators, forestallers, and monopolisers, and demanded "Death to them all!" The assembly was helpless, and the jacobin club discussed the same topic, and swore to abandon the use of these articles. But they were in a very ill humour over their new abstinence, and Manuel, the introducer of the motion on this subject, fell all the more bitterly on the emigrant priests and nobles, and on the king, who, he declared, was in league with them. protesting that he ought not to reign,

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nor even to live, and he wrote a letter to poor Louis in the same deadly strain.

Brissot and the Gironde maintained a determined war on the king's ministers, as men not to be trusted with the affairs of the country in the approaching crisis. The ministers were at strife amongst themselves. Bertrand de Molleville was jealous of the popularity of Narbonne; Narbonne complained, not only of the conduct of Molleville to him, but of his unconstitutional sentiments, and implored the king to dismiss him. Molleville and his party, on the other hand, represented the popularity of Narbonne as dangerous, and that he was aiming at governing the whole cabinet. The king was inclined to dismiss Narbonne rather than Molleville. Brissot and the Girondists raised a loud cry in favour of Narbonne, and the generals of the three divisions of the army wrote a letter to the king, deprecating his dismissal. The king, looking on this as dictation, dis、 missed Narbonne at once. The assembly was greatly excited, and declared that Narbonne had retired with its full confidence. In this state of growing exasperation, Herault de Sechelles denounced Molleville as guilty of various crimes, and the assembly called on the king to dismiss him. Louis complied, for he did not dare refuse. Two days after, Brissot denounced De Lessart, the foreign minister, for having professed unconstitutional doctrines in his correspondence; and for having given Kaunitz, the Austrian minister, a false notion of the state of France. Vergniaud followed up the attack, for the Girondists were resolved to drive the ministry from office, and force their own men into their places-thus securing the government of the country. Vergniaud accused De Lessart of having delayed, when minister of the interior, the union of Avignon to France, and of having thus occasioned a horrible massacre, which had taken place there in August, 1791. In that city the secretary, Lescuyer, had been murdered by the mob. A band of volunteers had united themselves with a band of plunderers and assassins. At their head was that ruffian butcher, Jourdan, called "Coupe-tête," who had plucked out the hearts of Foulon and Berthier, before the Hôtel de Ville, in Paris, in 1789, and who had cut off the heads of two of the body-guards at Versailles, on the 6th of October, and stuck them on pikes, reproaching the people that they had let him decapitate only two! This monster and his accomplices had, on the 30th of August, closed the gates of Avignon, broken into the houses of the citizens, and committed a frightful massacre of men, women, and children, attended by the most scandalous indignities to the women. They had done all this as taking vengeance on persons whom they deemed enemies to the revolution. The assembly professed to be horrified at the details of these atrocities; the president fainted whilst reading them; yet the jacobins protected the fiend, and he was permitted to return to Avignon to avenge himself of his accusers.

These crimes, which the Gironde had not the vigour or the virtue to expiate with the blood of the arch-murderer, they now piled on the head of De Lessart, who was totally innocent of them. A decree of accusation was passed against him, and he was consigned to the prison of Versailles for trial before the high court established at Orleans; but his trial not coming on in September, he was massacred

by the mob in the general carnage which then took place.

Louis was deeply affected at this treatment of a minister whom he esteemed for his moderate and pacific sentiments. Duport-Dutertre and Cahier de Gerville, the other ministers, resigned, in terror of a like fate, and the king was left at the mercy of the Gironde. General Dumouriez, whom we have seen assisting Gensonné in the commission to La Vendée, obtained the post of minister for foreign affairs. Charies François Dumouriez was born at Cambray in 1739,

[GEORGE III.

against Russia. He saw the Polish leaders ruined by discord; he saw the Russians prevail, and he quitted the country, despairing for ever of an aristocracy without a people, of a kingdom which he called "The Asiatic nation." At the outbreak of the French revolution he joined the revolu tionists, having himself been a prisoner in the Bastille, and he contrived to conciliate all parties, foreseeing that in such a state of things war must come, and generals would be wanted. He had courage for anything; he was extremely fascinating in his manners; and, with a certain looseness of

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and, consequently, was now in his fifty-third year. He had led a life of adventure; he had fought bravely in the German wars; he had played a questionable part in the events which made over Corsica to France; he had been sent by Louis XV. into Poland to support the Polesthough not as the avowed agent of France, but, as it were, an adventurer on his own account-against their enemies, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. He found the Poles debased by misery, slavery, and the custom of bearing a foreign yoke. He found the Polish aristocracy corrupted by luxury, enervated by pleasures. He fought bravely but vainly

principle-for everything must, in him, give way to his thirst for fame and leadership-he was inclined to the good and the generous. In his intercourse with Gensonné in La Vendée, he had made a deep impression on that eloquert member of the Gironde, who introduced him to all the leaders of the party-the Rolands, Condorcet, Brissot, Vergniaud, and the rest. They were seeking able instruments, but not masters, for they were determined to rule themselves. They were enchanted with Dumouriez, whe seemed calculated to serve their views admirably as a general; they had no dread of him as a dictator. Yet

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