Poland: A Novel Part 15

As he raised his head, two Polish soldiers came roistering down the pa.s.sageway between the tents, and seeing Janko, asked him what was going on. Before the boy could respond, Piotr, sensing danger and the possible loss of this immensely valuable find, rushed out, made the sign of the cross, and cried: 'King Jan Sobieski.' This sudden combination of piety and political power confused the soldiers, and after a prolonged consultation, during which Piotr explained that the king personally had placed him there to protect the royal booty, the two soldiers decided to help him guard it.

'If you do that,' Piotr a.s.sured them, 'the king will reward you when we return to Krakow.'

So the guard was mounted, and all during the night whenever intruders tried to ravage this tent, Piotr reared up before them, crossed himself once or twice, and said in a loud voice: 'King Jan Sobieski.'

Sometime after midnight Janko told Piotr: 'I want to fix the dead lady,' and he left the others, returning to the little room which had made him so violently sick only a few hours before, and tenderly he straightened out the exquisite fawn-colored dress and draped the voluminous cloth, which weighed almost nothing, so that folds covered the bloodstained areas. Then, his heart beating as if it might explode, he knelt down and placed his two hands tenderly about the girl's head, moving it slowly until it resumed its proper angle in relation to her torso. Then he sat in the darkness at her feet, as if she merited a guard of honor, and he was still there when dawn broke.

'Now!' Piotr cried when the sun was up. 'Your job is to find Lukasz.' And he sent the boy out to search the area, and in time Janko found his master and one Frenchman guarding the twenty-four Arabian horses. He started to take Lukasz aside to whisper about the treasure he and Piotr had found, but Lukasz said: 'The man knows no Polish,' and he listened with his mouth agape as the boy spoke.

Lukasz, sixty-two years old and a veteran of a dozen wars from which he had brought home almost nothing, sat down and studied his position. He already had in his possession, more or less securely, twenty-four of the best horses he had ever seen, and with them he could start a stud at Bukowo. It would require some careful managing to get the horses home, but with the help of Brat Piotr, Janko and the Frenchman this might be done.

But if what the boy said was true, and it was not improbable, then the more important booty might be that tent, and to transport it and its contents home would require wagons, so he told Janko: 'Find me three carts. Get them to the tent immediately.'

'How?'

'That's your task. But first, lead me to the tent.'

Tying the horses one to the other, Lukasz and the Frenchman and Janko led them to where Piotr waited with his two soldiers, and when the friar heard approaching footsteps he rushed to the flap, threw it back just far enough for him to exit, and shouted: 'King Jan Sobieski,' but when he saw it was his brother-in-law Lukasz, he cried: 'G.o.d has smiled upon us!'

Janko took the two soldiers and scouted the demolished camp area for wagons and the horses to draw them, but at first they found nothing. Then, turning a corner, they came upon a storage area that contained at least two thousand carts, and carefully selecting ones which looked as if they might survive a journey of several hundred miles, they commandeered a set of horses and drove back to the tent.

Lukasz was staggered by the sumptuousness of the tent, especially by the incredibly valuable fabric from which it was constructed-drab on the outside, flashing with precious metals and jewels on the inside, but he was also impressed by the luxury with which the owner had gone to battle: 'What time did he have for fighting, Piotr, tell me that? A golden basin for washing his hands. A big tub of what looks like marble for bathing himself. Fifty cloths for drying. This basket of figs and dates and dried plums. The bags of Austrian money. And those little swords decorated with rubies. My G.o.d, Piotr, one of those swords ...'

'The trick will be to get them home,' the friar warned, and many times that day he had to make his sign of the cross, most reverently, and cry: 'King Jan Sobieski.'

Janko faced his own problem: he wanted to make sure that the slain girl was buried. The camp contained so many corpses that one more scarcely mattered, but when he saw how the townspeople of Vienna, free at last to move about, were vandalizing the bodies, he crept into the tent, carefully picked up the slave girl and carried her to a gra.s.sy bank, where with a stick and his two hands he dug a shallow grave. He collected some rocks, which he piled over it, and although he could find no wood with which to form a cross, he used his digging stick to draw a rude one in the dust, for he had convinced himself that she must have been a Christian. He then crossed himself and returned to the treasure-filled tent, where he suddenly burst into tears and remained unconsoled while Lukasz and Piotr plotted how they might get their three wagons home.

That day, the thirteenth, when Sobieski had expected to be in the midst of battle, he rode in triumph through the battered streets of Vienna, a flopping, misshapen man dressed in royal purple and wearing a large Russian-style fur shako that seemed on the point of falling off his pumpkinlike head. He was not accompanied by either the Duke of Lorraine or Prince Waldeck, for they were fearful that if they appeared on the streets before King Leopold had time to get back, they might be severely disciplined, and indeed the reception Sobieski received as the savior of Vienna did infuriate the emperor, who was already designing a grandiose monument which would proclaim him to have been the salvation of the city.

When Leopold finally arrived he expressed no grat.i.tude to the Polish troops who had come so far to rescue his city, nor would he review the winged hussars whose whistling flight had started the rout of the Turkish armies. He rebuffed Sobieski, paid no tribute to General Lubomirski, whose fort.i.tude during the bleak days had been heroic, and refused permission for the erection of any statue, ever, to Sobieski. He authorized two for himself, and perhaps he was sagacious in what he did, however ridiculous it might have seemed, for if the dead Count Lubonski had always envied Austria, siding with her in every contest between the nations, it could only have been because the Habsburgs gave the country excellent leadership. When the long welfare of Austria was considered, it was much more important that the Habsburg Leopold be remembered as the victor of Vienna rather than the intruder Sobieski, who would not be able to found a dynasty even in Poland.

Now the hard work began. Lukasz Bukowski, as he would be known after his exploits in this battle, had to transport three heavily loaded wagons and twenty-four Arabian horses-six stallions and eighteen mares-two hundred and eighty miles to his village. He would be threatened at every step of the way by voracious Poles who would seek to grab their share of the loot, and by the streams which had to be forded, and by the mountain pa.s.ses to be negotiated. The returning army, which had not lost an excessive number of men thanks to the brilliant manner in which Sobieski had used it, contained about twenty-two thousand men, and each one was now a potential enemy of Lukasz Bukowski.

To help him in his difficult task he had his undependable brother-in-law, the peasant serf Janko, the French engineer and the two soldiers Brat Piotr had conscripted. They had arms, but so did everyone else.

The little expeditionary force left Austria in good style and completed half of Moravia with the loss of only one horse; two men from Lublin made off with it one midnight.

They were approaching the mountain pa.s.s at Cieszyn, which would take them into Poland, when disaster struck ... twice. One evening just after sunset a small group of cavalrymen returning to the walled city of Zamosc dashed in among the Arabians and made off with five of the best, taking time to ensure that they had one stallion and four mares. Lukasz trembled with rage when he learned of it, and he wanted his five a.s.sistants to storm after the thieves and recover the horses, but Piotr simply stared at him and asked: 'Brother, have you gone mad?'

That was all. Piotr would not allow anyone even to track the stolen horses, let alone try to recover them, for he knew the raiders were armed and bound by no law.

Piotr was undergoing curious changes as this foray into Austria ended. He had seen great battle; he had ridden as a hussar, although a rather dubious one; he had helped defeat an enemy of Jesus Christ; and he was half a year older. He realized the futility of much that mankind did, and he sometimes speculated on what honor meant when a man as stalwart as Count Lubonski could end the way he did, alone and pierced by sabers, and he grieved over the insulting way King Jan Sobieski had been treated by the city he saved. Then, too, although he had behaved in a more constrained manner than young Janko, he had been deeply shaken by the beheading of the Circa.s.sian slave, and as he rode north he reflected often on the strangeness that must have characterized her life. Where had she been born? Who captured her for what slave market? The man who bought her had obviously loved her deeply, for he had killed her-or tried to-rather than have her fall into the hands of others. No fabric in that tent had been more precious or more beautifully made than the simple gown she wore. Piotr knew nothing of women, but he supposed that had he lived an ordinary life, like his brother-in-law Lukasz, he might have loved a woman like that dead girl, and he thought kindly of young Janko for having buried her properly.

He was reflecting on these matters when the Frenchman raised a cry, and all the Lukasz party ran to where the trouble was. Too late! An army contingent on its way back to Warsaw, a rough lot, had boldly swept in and stolen an entire wagon, and were now so far in the distance that overtaking them was impossible. One-third of the treasure was gone, but when Lukasz, blinded by tears, surveyed what remained, he said several times: 'Thank G.o.d, they didn't get the tent!' And Piotr began to realize that his brother-in-law valued the ornate tent more highly than any of its contents. The eighteen remaining Arabians first, then the tent, then the jeweled scimitars.

When they reached Krakow the two soldiers and the Frenchman supposed that Brat Piotr was going to turn his cargo over to King Jan Sobieski, whose property he had proclaimed it so often to be, but it became quickly clear that Lukasz Bukowski intended marching right past the king's palace and on to his home village of Bukowo, and the men began to complain.

Lukasz faced this dangerous situation head-on, for he knew he required their help now more than ever, for as the army dispersed, the various contingents became in effect freebooters capable of almost anything. So he and Piotr a.s.sembled the three men: 'We shall be taking the king's treasure to our village, where the dead count's family must get his share. Then the king gets his. Europe is in turmoil and so is Poland. You men know nothing of what is happening at your homes. Stay with us in Bukowo and we will give you a little piece of land and a cottage and local girls from whom to choose a wife. You can have a good life with us, and the new Count Lubonski will be just as fine a man as the old. You saw what he could do.'

So these clever conspirators delivered the two wagons and the eighteen Arabians to Bukowo, where they formed the basis of the Bukowski wealth and prestige, for Lukasz was no longer a poor n.o.bleman with only five horses. Now he had eighteen Arabians and the nine regulars that had hauled the wagons and the riders north, and he was at last a man to reckon with.

But as they approached Bukowo and saw looming on the horizon the towers of Castle Gorka, both Lukasz and Piotr were overcome with remorse over the fact that they had deserted their knight in battle and been the agency of his death. So as soon as the wagons were safely delivered to Lukasz's mansion, and the treasure safely stored in his rooms, he and Piotr selected one beautifully decorated small dagger-one six-hundredth of the total-and ceremoniously delivered it to Countess Halka Lubonska, with a heartbreaking account of how they had stood with her husband in the fatal moments when eighteen Turkish Janissaries had ambushed them, and of how the three had fought almost clear of their a.s.sailants when Lubonski's horse had stumbled, killing him instantly.

'We did manage to hold off his attackers,' Lukasz said with tears in his eyes, 'until we could recover his body, which we buried with honors on the battlefield. Piotr himself said the prayers.' As a token of the affection in which they held the old count, they wanted Halka to have a memento of the fight: 'Your husband captured it from a Turkish general just before he was slain.'

But when the two heroes returned to Bukowo village Lukasz faced an accounting which stunned him, for Piotr forced his way, uninvited, into the room where the treasure was being kept, and when Lukasz demanded sternly: 'What are you doing here?' the friar said: 'I have come for G.o.d's share.'

'What?'

'Brother Lukasz, you have stolen this treasure from King Jan.

You have stolen it from the soldiers who helped us bring it here.

And you have stolen it from the widow of Count Lubonski. But you cannot steal it from G.o.d, who has protected us in this venture.'

Trembling, Lukasz asked: 'What do you intend?'

'We are going to divide this treasure, half for G.o.d, half for you.'

'And what are you going to do with G.o.d's share?'

'Give it as a votive to Czestochowa.'

Lukasz broke into relieved laughter. 'You must be insane. The monks there don't need this.'

'You are right,' Piotr agreed. 'They don't need it, but the safety of their monastery does. Remember how it stood off the Swedes and saved Poland? It needs strengthening against the next siege.' He saw that his avaricious brother-in-law was not impressed, so he said quietly, but with unmistakable conviction: 'If you do not give G.o.d His share, He will strike you dead. And if He doesn't, I will.'

Lukasz looked at his stupid brother-in-law, this scarecrow of a man, and saw that he meant what he was saying. 'You would ... 'I will kill you, Lukasz, and publish to the world how you behaved in the battle.'

So the two men sat in the room and divided the spoils, this to G.o.d, this to Lukasz, and from time to time the latter would protest his share and lift a piece from G.o.d's pile into his: 'G.o.d doesn't need anything that rich,' and Piotr allowed this, for as he said: 'G.o.d never objects to a little stealing.'

The treasure was delivered to Czestochowa by the two brothers, and the priests in charge of the shrine were astounded by what Brat Piotr had achieved, for like Lukasz, they had underestimated both his intelligence and his piety.

In the centuries to come, architects' diagrams of the great monastery in which the Black Madonna rested would show a set of formidable bastions protecting the compa.s.s points of the fortress, and each carried the name of the man who in reverence had paid for it: Lubomirski, Potocki, Czartoryski and, one of the most reverent, Bukowski.

So in the grand distribution of spoils from the legendary victory of the Poles over the Turks at Vienna, each partic.i.p.ant received something. Poland received a spiritual boon of dubious and temporary value-respect among nations for her valor in defending Christianity-and two practical gifts of long-lasting value. Coffee had not been known in the country before, but when Sobieski's soldiers brought samples home it quickly became the national drink; and potatoes were welcomed not only as a tasty alternative to kasha but also as the staple food of the peasant. The Virgin of Czestochowa, who fought on the bosom of King Jan Sobieski, received a new defense system. Count Lubonski won a hero's death and a small bejeweled scimitar for his widow. Lukasz Bukowski came home with a name, eighteen Arabian horses and a room full of treasure. Brat Piotr was promoted to a position of some distinction in his order. The Frenchman and the two soldiers received wives, cottages and small plots of land in the village. And the peasant Janko, as always, received nothing, for it had been his duty to go where his owner directed and do as he was told. He did, of course, remember for the rest of his life the Circa.s.sian slave girl whom he had buried.

VI.

The Golden Freedom

Legend is replete with instances of how Mars, the G.o.d of war, influences the history of nations, and never more instructively than in the case of Poland. Incessant war with Tatars, Teutons and Turks-it sometimes seemed as if Poland were the special province of Mars.

But Venus, the G.o.ddess of love, can also play a major role in the destiny of nations, and once more Poland is a good example. It was Jadwiga, the heavenly Hungarian, whose love for Jagiello, the barbarous Lithuanian, inspired him to develop the courage and the skill to win the Battle of Grunwald. The last two kings of the original Polish line, Zygmunt I, who ascended the throne in 1506, and his son Zygmunt II-who in 1529, at age nine, was elected king to rule jointly with his father-experienced unfortunate first marriages and magnificent second ones. The father had the great good luck in 1518 to import Bona Sforza of the famous Italian family; she brought with her flowers, music, painting, good table manners and a fierce intuition where the defense of royal prerogative was concerned. The son made an important dynastic marriage with the daughter of the Habsburg emperor, only to find that his child bride was a hopeless epileptic; when she died prematurely he fell under the spell of two powerful Radziwill brothers who, fortunately, had a sister Barbara of great beauty, and they maneuvered her so that in 1547, Zigmunt could not escape falling in love. Thus he found himself a charming, pa.s.sionate, knowing a.s.sistant who helped him stand off the pressures of the other magnates, but not of the Radziwills.

King Jan Sobieski owed an enormous debt to his French divorcee, the conniving Marie-Louise, known to her admirers as Marysienka, who took him when he was merely another magnate and converted him into a magisterial king with a personal fortune of eighty million. But in no instance was the power of Venus greater than in 1757, when in two towns not far from Bukowo two of the ablest families Poland was to produce combined for the moment in daring enterprises which changed the destiny of the country.

At Pulawy, a lovely little town some distance to the north on the right bank of the Vistula, the tenacious Czartoryskis, who had never attained the political power to which their intelligence ent.i.tled them, were developing through study, travel, thoughtful a.n.a.lysis and exceptional instinct a vision of a greater Poland. It was to be led by a strong king who would found a dynasty in which elections dominated by alien powers would no longer be permitted. It would have a properly elected Seym exercising the same functions as the English Parliament; people living in towns would at last be ent.i.tled to vote and own land, and serfs owned by rich people would be set free.

The Czartoryski brothers had a sister Konstancja, who married a man of insignificant background, a Poniatowski, with whom she produced six handsome, clever and enterprising sons. One of them, Michal, would be placed in the priesthood, where with his uncles' goading he would become primate of all Poland. His younger brother, Stanislaw August, was earmarked for an even more exalted position, King of Poland, and groomed with meticulous care for the throne. The uncles felt that as king he could sponsor their reforms and coax Poland into the family of respectable nations. In brutally frank discussions with their young protege they said: 'If you do become king, your first job will be to produce sons who will inherit the crown after you, and their sons after them, so that never again shall we elect foreigners, who do us only damage.' Since he was an ambitious young fellow, he listened.

The Czartoryskis were not powerful enough to achieve this exalted goal by themselves, but they had the support of an equally remarkable family, also late to acquire conspicuous power, the Zamoyskis, who had built with their own funds the walled city of Zamosc, so important in Polish history. From decade to decade power seemed to flow toward the Czartoryskis and Zamoyskis, and always the two great clans kept in tandem, striving mutually for a better, saner Poland. They were supported by many-the powerful Potockis and sometimes the intelligent branch of the Radziwills-but the leadership came from them.

They were opposed by many, too-the Lubomirskis, the Lubonskis and invariably the neanderthal Mniszechs of Dukla-but as the 1750s waned, it began to look as if the Czartoryskis with their splendid tier of Poniatowski nephews were destined to triumph, and Poland's chances for a modern state never looked brighter.

In this year of 1757 the studious Czartoryskis decided that if Stanislaw was ever to become king, he had better learn kingly manners, and they arranged for him to be sent to St. Petersburg to catch a taste of court life. He arrived there one snowy day, a twenty-five-year-old handsome diplomat with good manners and a command of French, German and Russian; within a week of his arrival he had attracted the serious attention of a headstrong, beautiful German n.o.blewoman, Sophia Anhalt-Zerbst, who would be known to history under a more glamorous name, and within the second week he was in bed with her.

They enjoyed a pa.s.sionate love affair: sleigh rides over frosted fields, with wolves howling in the forest; a duel in military barracks; concerts at court; and when spring came, endless bucolic picnics. Young Sophia obtained from this flattering attention a strengthening of her ego; Poniatowski gained notoriety as her Polish lover, a young man of enormous promise, and it was here in the Russian court that he was first publicly mentioned as a possibility for the Polish throne. 'With Russian help,' Sophia said several times, 'you could become king.'

'And how would I get Russian help?' he asked.

'Through me,' she replied.

'You're a German,' he said.

'I intend to be a Russian,' she said with a grimness he had not observed when they were in bed.

The possibility that she might help him to the throne burgeoned spectacularly in 1762 when the tough old Empress of Russia, Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great, died. This meant that by a series of improbable events, Sophia Anhalt-Zerbst's pitiful husband, Peter, became czar, in which position he proved himself as incompetent as he had been in bed. His brief rule of 185 days was so inept, so totally chaotic that Sophia had to take steps to protect her interests. Rallying about her a group of officers, many of whom had shared her favors, she proclaimed herself Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias; as Catherine the Great she would rule for thirty-four tumultuous years. Eight days after her self-coronation her husband was found murdered.

Young Poniatowski trembled with excitement as these events unfolded, and imagined himself Catherine's new consort-in Russia, husband of the czarina; in Poland, king-and he made plans along these lines. But Catherine had moved far beyond her interest in this rustic Pole; she was now so enamored of an authentic count, Grigorii Orlov, that poor Poniatowski became an embarra.s.sment; he was hustled out of Russia without wife or crown.

However, his ambitious uncles in Pulawy did not intend to allow this unique opportunity for family advancement to slip through their fingers. Intimate friendship with a czarina, even though it had evaporated, was negotiable, and they sent emissaries to St. Petersburg outlining the advantages which would accrue to Russia if Catherine threw her considerable support to Stanislaw: 'If he is not elected King of Poland, some German or Austrian will be, greatly to your loss. If you help him to the throne, you will have bought yourself a constant ally.'

Catherine repaid her former lover in a most dramatic way. When the Saxon king died, last of a pathetic chain of b.u.mblers, the magnates of historic and distinguished lineage like the Lubonskis and Radziwills refused to allow upstarts like the Czartoryskis and Zamoyskis to put one of their members on the throne; as so often before, the Polish magnates would much rather see a weak German or Frenchman or Portuguese as king than a strong Pole, and they made it clear that young Poniatowski was not acceptable. He and his family seemed to have lost their bold gamble.

But Catherine was unwilling to see her one-time favorite abused, especially when he might prove to be of service to her in the future, so after a disgracefully protracted interregnum, in which five nations pressed large sums of money upon the voting magnates, she told her advisers: 'We cannot maintain a festering Poland on our doorstep.' As a reward for Poniatowski's love, she dispatched a full Russian army to the place in Poland where the magnates were conducting their circus. Surrounding the voting area, the Russians let it be known that Catherine insisted upon the election of Poniatowski and that if any magnates refused to abide by her wishes, they would be shot. In this crude and even brutal manner, Poland elected the king who would prove to be her last.

So Stanislaw August ascended the throne thinking that Catherine had awarded it to him because she still loved him, and he told his uncles: 'With her support we can achieve all we dreamed of. A bright new day has dawned for Poland.'

He miscalculated dreadfully. Catherine, watching the debacle in Warsaw from her command post in St. Petersburg, chuckled with the knowledge that she had solved her Polish problem so easily: 'Poniatowski will prove a miserable king. He has the heart of a poet. He proved that many times. But he's weak. He knows not his own mind. He will be despised by the senior magnates because he's so obviously nouveau riche. And in the end he will destroy the nation he loves.'

'What will happen to Poland?' an adviser named Fyodor Kuprin asked.

'It will break into a thousand pieces,' Catherine said. 'And you are to be there when it happens, my dear Kuprin. To pick up our share of the pieces.' When he bowed obediently, she added: 'Go there quickly, Kuprin, and encourage it to fall apart.'

It can be seen from this peculiar chain of events that Venus proved as adroit as Mars in altering the destiny of nations, but the scandalous affair with Catherine the Great represented only half the G.o.ddess' intervention, with the second episode the more interesting. The Czartoryski uncles recommended that in order to reinforce the concept of dynasty, with members of the family inheriting the throne perpetually, it would be prudent for King Stanislaw August to marry one of the Czartoryski girls, a somewhat heavy, gawky young woman his own age named Izabella. She was not from one of the historic families, nor was she what even her friends could call a beauty; what was worse, she was already spoken of in the Pulawy district as a young woman with a sharp mind of her own.

The uncles made the embarra.s.sing mistake of spreading the rumor-'The king is going to marry Izabella'-and there was even speculation as to when the wedding was to be. But the king, having known the splendor of the Russian court and the excitement of a love affair with a czarina, could not imagine himself wedded to a drab like Izabella, and he rejected her: 'Too plain. Too lacking in courtly graces.' He chose instead a woman with a lineage more distinguished, a face more standard and a mind more vapid, with tragic consequences which would become apparent only thirty years later.

In the year 1771, after Catherine the Great had done everything possible to weaken Poland and prevent King Stanislaw August from inst.i.tuting the reforms the Czartoryski-Zamoyski cabal proposed, a strategy in which she was supported by Prussia and Austria, it became apparent to Poland's neighbors and to Europe generally that the amorphous nation surrounded by great powers was no longer viable. Prussian diplomats sent messages to Russia: 'As long as Poland is allowed to exist, she will form a danger spot between us,' and Russian diplomats wrote to Austria: 'The time approaches when we should settle the Polish question lest it become a bone of contention between us,' and Austria sent a demarche to Prussia: 'If you and Russia are prepared to settle the Polish question once and for all, we will join you.'

What animosity did these three powers have toward Poland? There were religious differences-Poland was devoutly Roman Catholic; Russia was Orthodox Catholic, with all the bitterness which that implied; and Prussia was Lutheran-but even such fundamental contrasts had rarely caused open breaks. Economically the interests of the four nations interlocked and provided no cause for warfare or invasion. Dynastic struggles would be eliminated with the establishment of a Czartoryski-Poniatowski ruling family, and since each of the adjoining nations had conspicuously larger armies than Poland's, she posed no military threat.

But even so, the danger she represented to the others was real, and each of the great powers sensed it. Poland loved freedom; it was a restricted freedom, to be sure, and it applied only to the very rich, but nevertheless it was freedom. Specifically, every incident in Polish history testified to the nation's determination to avoid autocracy and dictatorship. King Jan Sobieski had been a n.o.ble king, no doubt about it, and he had saved Poland, but the nation did not want his inept son inheriting the throne. Nor did Poland want to spend its good money supporting a large army which might, like the armies of ancient Rome and modern Turkey, become the agents of repression.

Very rich people-in all nations-can be divided into two categories; those with brains and those without. Those with brains make a great effort to hold on to every penny they have while preaching to the general population that freedom and dignity and patriotism are possible only under their protection; in this way they elicit the support of the very people they hold in subjection. The magnates of Poland used this tactic brilliantly, preaching loudly: 'The most insignificant member of the gentry with one horse and sword is the equal of the most powerful magnate in his castle,' while at the same time depriving landless gentry of almost all rights and treating them with contempt. The peasant was kept happy by being a.s.sured that it was the magnate who defended Christianity. The townsman, who was allowed no rights whatever, was reminded: 'It is the magnate who protects your freedom and your shop.' And all were told repeatedly: 'If the magnate is left free to acc.u.mulate his great wealth, you can be sure that some of it will sift down to you.'

Rich people without brains, such as those in France who were heading blindly into a revolutionary debacle, saw no reason to defend themselves with words and built no philosophical justification for their position of privilege. 'Let them eat cake' would soon be their response to demands for freedom. No Polish magnate, in public, ever uttered such inflammatory words, although Ja.n.u.sz Radziwill, father-in-law of Count Lubonski, did one day proclaim during a drinking bout at Castle Gorka: 'The petty gentry, those who clutter the palaces of the magnates, jumping at every command, they're nothing but horse manure. And the peasants whom some of our fools worry about, they're the ugly little beetles that burrow in the dung.' But such opinions were kept to the privacy of the great halls, where they were believed and acted upon.

And yet, despite all its cynicism, Poland was a democracy; it did know freedom, and its gentry were both more numerous than in any other nation of the time and more involved in the rights of government. It was the nation's misfortune to espouse these relative freedoms at the precise time when her three neighbors were developing the most powerful autocracies Europe had known for a thousand years. The Habsburgs in Austria, the Hohenzollerns in Prussia and the Romanoffs in Russia were perfecting techniques which would keep them in dictatorial power for more than a century, constantly enlarging their prerogatives at the expense of the burgher and the peasant. At the precise time when good-hearted King Stanislaw August was honestly attempting to improve the lot of his peasants, Catherine was depriving hers of what few privileges they had, and she would not stop until ninety-seven percent had been driven into the most abject serfdom. To Russia, which was enforcing such a cruel dictatorship, it was offensive for neighboring Poland to strive to build a workable democracy, for if the Polish worker attained even the slightest freedom, it might encourage the Russian to attempt the same, and that could not be tolerated. Poland must be crushed.

Adroitly Catherine enlisted Prussia and Austria in her plan, and together they devised a program in which the internal weaknesses of Poland could be cleverly used to destroy her, and in the winter of 1771 three foreign diplomats convened at the Granicki palace in Warsaw to ensure that destruction.

'Poland's grief,' said the Prussian minister, addressing the committee that would decide how the country should be divided, 'is that no other nation can take her seriously.'

'Quite right,' the Austrian amba.s.sador agreed. 'Three times now they've elected two different kings at the same time, and the ultimate winner had to be decided by warfare. Preposterous.'

'One would think,' said the Russian agent, Fyodor Kuprin, 'that they would have learned from our history. One of the worst things that can happen to a nation is an interregnum. That fearful period when no one knows who is to be the next king.'

'With every election Poland has that,' the Prussian said. 'We would never permit it in our country.'

'I disagree with you, sir, on your basic point,' the Austrian amba.s.sador said reflectively. 'Poland could have survived dual kings the way Rome survived two Popes. And could have weathered the interregnums. Other nations have. But no country could exist for long with the liberum veto. The day that started, Poland was doomed.'

'No,' said the Russian. 'She could have survived even that monstrous wrong if she had defended herself.' Turning to the German, he asked, 'How big is Prussia? I mean in people?'

'Two and a half million.'

'And you support an army of a hundred and forty thousand.'

'We do. At great cost, but we do.'

'And what is the population of Poland?'

'About twelve million,' said the Austrian.

'But has an army of only eighteen thousand.'

'In truth,' said the Prussian, who knew about such matters, 'it's an army of eleven thousand. They tell the king it's eighteen thousand and he pays for eighteen thousand, but there is so much deception and falsification.' The minister shook his head. 'In Prussia they would all be shot.'

'They do our work for us,' the Austrian said, and then, without philosophical preparation of any kind, he asked bluntly: 'Are we to part.i.tion the entire country, so that nothing remains ...'

The German laughed, a thin-lipped, grudging laugh, more in contempt than jollity: 'You know what my king once said of Poland? "Let us eat it as we would an artichoke, leaf by leaf." I no longer subscribe to that. Let us with one stroke finish this pitiful country, each of us taking his just share.'

'No,' said Fyodor Kuprin, who had a clever, devious mind. 'Russia wants a truncated Poland to stand forever, no strength of her own and subservient to whatever we three decide, but existing.' He paused, either to find the right French words to explain his position or to allow time for the others to appreciate the gravity of what he was about to say. 'We feel it would be best to retain something called Poland as a permanent buffer between Russia and Germany, between Russia and Austria.'

The German representative was a tall, thin man skilled in negotiation, Baron Ottokar von Eschl, whose family had served the German states for centuries and who had acquired from his hard-thinking ancestors a distinct vision of what eastern Europe should be. Only forty-one years old, he had many reasons to believe that Poland would never be viable, regardless of how much land the present part.i.tion allowed her. 'There is no need in the future history of Europe for an ent.i.ty called Poland. If we offer a partial solution now in 1771, we shall have to come back in 1781 and finish it, and if we offer another partial in 1781, we will be called back to our task in 1791. Let us erase the foolishness now, once and forever.'