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
