POLAND 64T delivered Vienna and filled Christendom with the fame of Polish arms, but obtained no bene- fit for his own country. Equally fruitless were his later undertakings, and he died little be- loved by his people in 1696. His sons found no support at the election; the diet was di- vided, and two foreigners, the prince of Oonti and the elector of Saxony, Augustus (II.), were elected by the opposing factions. The elec- tor arrived before Conti, and prevailed. His alliance with Peter the Great of Russia and Frederick IV. of Denmark, against the young Charles XII. of Sweden, proved a source of calamities to himself and the country. The Saxons fought Augustus's battles, and the Poles, who had not been consulted about the war, were little inclined to aid him. Charles after the battle of Narva easily overran Lithuania and Poland, and occupied Warsaw and Cracow ; but he preferred giving away the crown of Poland to taking it himself, and had his friend, the youthful Stanislas Leszczynski, substituted for the voluptuous Saxon (1705). But scarcely had he lost the battle of Poltava (1709) when Augustus returned, and with the help of the Russians recovered the regal crown. Stanislas joined his protector in Turkey. The follow- ing period of peace was one of public and pri- vate corruption. The nobility was infected by the effeminacy of the court, and abandoned the defence of constitutional rights ; religious fanaticism legalized the long exercised exclu- sion of the dissidents from office ; and Rus- sian interference became permanent. A Rus- sian army helped a faction of the nobles to establish the son of Augustus as his successor in 1733, instead of the reflected Leszczynski. Louis XV. of France, who had married the daughter of Stanislas, commenced a war of Polish succession on the Rhine, at the termi- nation of which the latter received Lorraine, but Augustus III. remained on the throne of Poland. During the seven years' war Russian armies crossed and recrossed the country with- out opposition. Constitutional anarchy made legislation almost impossible. But already the more enlightened of the nation began to think of vital reforms. To transform the republic of the nobles into a regular constitutional king- dom became the scheme of the Czartoryskis and their friends. In order to conquer the op- position of Radziwill, the Potockis, and other adherents of the old republican constitution, they secretly sought the aid of Catharine II. of Russia, who readily but treacherously granted it. After the death of Augustus III. in 1763, Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski, a favorite of the empress and nephew of the Czartoryskis, was illegally placed upon the throne by a con- federation of the reformers, aided by Russian bayonets. The regal prerogative was some- what enlarged. But Poniatowski was feeble to fickleness, and allowed himself to be used as a tool by the designing empress. Her ambas- sador Repnin, who had an army at his dis- posal, became the real ruler. He encouraged | the dissidents and enemies of reform, who | formed numerous small confederations, united | them into one at Radom, and by force of arms compelled them to accept the guarantee of the unlimited republican liberty by Russia. The patriots, however, took up arms. The con- federation of Bar took the lead (1768), its
- soul being the Pulaskis, especially Casimir,
I and Krasinski, bishop of Kamenetz. The strug- ! gle against the Russians, the Porte too declar- j ing war against them, was carried on long I and fiercely in various parts of the country, but only by a part of the nobles. Meanwhile Catharine concerted a division of Poland with Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa. The Prussians and Austrians entered Poland in 1772; the confederates, already greatly weak- ened, dispersed, and the dismemberment of the country began. A diet was convoked in 1773 to sanction the deed; but few of the members appeared, and these remained silent. Russia took the palatinates of Polotzk, Vitebsk, and Mstislav, and some adjoining parts ; Prus- sia, the Polish province of that name, with the exception of the towns of Thorn and Dantzic, and a part of Great Poland on the Netze ; Austria, Red Russia and some adjoin- ing districts, uniting them under the names of Galicia and Lodomeria. The old constitution with all its abuses was fastened upon the remaining territories of Poland, under the guarantee of Russia. To save and strengthen the country by reforms now became a general tendency. A new constitution, framed by the double diet of 1788-'92, promulgated May 3, 1791, and most solemnly adopted by the king and the people, abolished the liberum veto, gave political rights to the cities and civil rights to the peasantry, and made the throne hereditary, offering the succession to the elector of Saxony. Frederick "William II. of Prussia encouraged the reformers, and offered his aid against Russia. But the aid of Catharine II. was invoked by the defenders of the old constitution, who, un- der the lead of Felix Potocki, Francis Xavier Branicki, and Severin Rzewuski, in 1792 formed the confederation of Targovitza against the new order of things. The Russians entered Poland ; the Polish army, commanded by Jo- seph Poniatowski, the, nephew of the king, retreated to the Bug; the arrival of the king in person was waited for in vain ; Prussia proved traitorous, and Kosciuszko's splendid fight at Dubienka (July 17) was useless. After long wavering, the king virtually ended the struggle by going over to the confederation ; the Russians occupied the capital, and a diet convened by the victors at Grodno in 1793 was compelled at the point of the bayonet to sanction a new division of the country. The ostensible defender of the old "republican liberty," Catharine, with her own hand drew a line on a map across Lithuania and Volhy- nia, taking all the land E. of it; the late ally of Poland, Frederick William, secured him- self against "Polish Jacobinism" by taking
