Thaddeus of Warsaw Part 7

In vain the palatine combated these arguments, showing the vain quiet such a peace might afford, by declaring it could only be temporary.

In vain he told his majesty that he would purchase safety for the present race at the vast expense of not only the liberty of posterity, but of its probity and happiness.

"However you disguise slavery," cried he, "it is slavery still. Its chains, though wreathed with roses, not only fasten on the body but rivet on the mind. They bend it from the loftiest virtue to a debas.e.m.e.nt beneath calculation. They disgrace honor; they trample upon justice. They transform the legions of Rome into a band of singers. They prostrate the sons of Athens and of Sparta at the feet of cowards. They make man abjure his birth right, bind himself to another's will, and give that into a tyrant's hands which he received as a deposit from Heaven--his reason, his conscience, and his soul.

Think on this, and then, if you can, subjugate Poland to her enemies."

Stanislaus, weakened by years and subdued by disappointment, now retained no higher wish than to save his subjects from immediate outrage. He did not answer the palatine, but with streaming eyes bent over the table, and annulled the glorious const.i.tution of 1791. Then with emotions hardly short of agony, he signed an order presented by a plenipotentiary from the combined powers, which directed Prince Poniatowski to deliver the army under his command into the hands of General Brinicki.

As the king put his signature to these papers, Sobieski, who had strenuously withstood each decision, started from his chair, bowed to his sovereign, and in silence left the apartment. Several n.o.blemen followed him.

These pacific measures did not meet with better treatment from without. When they were noised abroad, an alarming commotion arose among the inhabitants of Warsaw, and nearly four thousand men of the first families in the kingdom a.s.sembled themselves in the park of Villanow, and with tumultuous eagerness declared their resolution to resist the invaders of their country to their last gasp. The Prince Sapieha, Kosciusko, and Sobieski, with the sage Dombrowski, were the first who took this oath of fidelity to Poland; and they administered it to Thaddeus, who, kneeling down, inwardly invoked Heaven to aid him, as he swore to fulfil his trust.

In the midst of these momentous affairs, Pembroke Somerset bade adieu to his Polish friends, and set sail with his governor from Dantzic for England.

CHAPTER VII.

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 a.s.semblies.

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 amba.s.sador not only refused to forward the dispatches, but threatened the n.o.bles "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 amba.s.sador, 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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al members, whom the amba.s.sadors 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 amba.s.sadors; 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 amba.s.sadors, 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 acc.u.mulated 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 amba.s.sador, hearing of this, sent to Stanislaus to command the grandson of Sobieski to disband his troops. The king refusing, and his answer being communicated to the Russian envoy also, war was renewed with redoubled fury.

The palatine remained in confinement, hopeless of obtaining release without the aid of stratagem. His country's enemies were too well aware of their interest to give freedom to so active an opponent.

They sought to vex his spirit with every mental torture; but he rather received consolation than despair in the reports daily brought to him by his jailers. They told him "that his grandson continued to carry himself with such insolent opposition in the south, it would be well if the empress, at the termination of the war, allowed him to escape with banishment to Siberia." But every reproach thus levelled at the palatine he found had been bought by some new success of Thaddeus; and instead of permitting their malignity to intimidate his age or alarm his affection, he told the officer (who kept guard in his chambers) that if his grandson were to lose his head for fidelity to Poland, he should behold him with as proud an eye mounting the scaffold as entering the streets of Warsaw with her freedom in his hand. "The only difference would be," continued Sobieski, "that as the first cannot happen until all virtue be dead in this land, I should regard his last gasp as the expiring sigh of that virtue which, by him, had found a triumph even under the axe. But for the second, it would be joy unutterable to behold the victory of justice over rapine and violence! But, either way, Thaddeus Sobieski is still the same--ready to die or ready to live for his country, and equally worthy of the sacred halo with which posterity would encircle his name forever."

Indeed, the accounts which arrived from this young soldier, who had formed a junction with General Kosciusko, were in the highest degree formidable to the coalesced powers. Having gained several advantages over the Prussians, the two victorious battalions were advancing towards Inowlotz, when a large and fresh body of the enemy appeared suddenly on their rear. The enemy on the opposite bank of the river, (whom the Poles were driving before them,) at sight of this reinforcement, rallied; and not only to r.e.t.a.r.d the approach of the pursuers, but to ensure their defeat from the army in view, they broke down the wooden bridge by which they had escaped themselves.

The Poles were at a stand. Kosciusko proposed swimming across, but owing to the recent heavy rains, the river was so swollen and rapid that the young captains to whom he mentioned the project, terrified by the blackness and dashing of the water, drew back. The general, perceiving their panic, called Thaddeus to him, and both plunged into the stream. Ashamed of hesitation, the others now tried who could first follow their example; and, after hard buffeting with its tide, the whole army gained the opposite sh.o.r.e. The Prussians who were in the rear, incapable of the like intrepidity, halted; and those who had crossed on their former defeat, now again intimidated at the daring courage of their adversaries, concealed themselves amidst the thickets of an adjoining valley.

The two friends proceeded towards Cracow, [Footnote: Cracow is considered the oldest regal city in Poland; the tombs of her earliest and n.o.blest kings are there, John Sobieski's being one of the most renowned. It stands in a province of the same name, about 130 miles south-west of Warsaw, the more modern capital of the kingdom, and also the centre of its own province.] carrying redress and protection to the provinces through which they marched. But they had hardly rested a day in that city before dispatches were received that Warsaw was lying at the mercy of General Brinicki. No time could be lost; officers and men had set their lives on the cause, and they recommenced their toil of a new march with a perseverance which brought them before the capital on the 16th of April.

Things were in a worse state than even was expected. The three amba.s.sadors had not only demanded the surrender of the national a.r.s.enal, but subscribed their orders with a threat that whoever of the n.o.bles presumed to dispute their authority should be arrested and closely imprisoned there; and if the people should dare to murmur, they would immediately order General Brinicki to lay the city in ashes. The king remonstrated against such oppression, and to "punish his presumption," his excellency ordered that his majesty's garrison and guards should instantly be broken up and dispersed. At the first attempt to execute this mandate, the people flew in crowds to the palace, and, falling on their knees, implored Stanislaus for permission to avenge the insult offered to his troops. The king looked at them with pity, grat.i.tude, and anguish. For some time his emotions were too strong to allow him to speak; at last, in a voice of agony, wrung from his tortured heart, he answered, "Go, and defend your honor!"

The army of Kosciusko marched into the town at this critical moment; they joined the armed people; and that day, after a dreadful conflict, Warsaw was rescued from the immediate grasp of the hovering Black Eagle. During the fight, the king, who was alone in one of the rooms of his palace, sank in despair on the floor; he heard the mingling clash of arms, the roar of musketry, and the cries and groans of the combatants; ruin seemed no longer to threaten his kingdom, but to have pounced at once upon her prey. At every renewed volley which followed each pause in the firing, he expected to see his palace gates burst open, and himself, then indeed made a willing sacrifice, immolated to the vengeance of his enemies.

While he was yet upon his knees pet.i.tioning the G.o.d of battles for a little longer respite from that doom which was to overwhelm devoted Poland, Thaddeus Sobieski, panting with heat and toil, flew into the room, and before he could speak a word, was clasped in the arms of the agitated Stanislaus.

"What of my people?" asked the king.

"They are victorious!" returned Thaddeus. "The foreign guards are beaten from the palace; your own have resumed their station at the gates."

At this a.s.surance, tears of joy ran over the venerable cheeks of his majesty, and again embracing his young deliverer, he exclaimed, "I thank Heaven, my unhappy country is not bereft of all hope! Whilst a Kosciusko and a Sobieski live, she need not quite despair. They are thy ministers, O Jehovah, of a yet longer respite!"

CHAPTER VIII.

BATTLE OF BRZESC--THE TENTH OF OCTOBER.

Thaddeus was not less eager to release his grandfather than he had been to relieve the anxiety of his sovereign. He hastened, at the head of a few troops, to the prison of Sobieski, and gave him liberty, amidst the acclamations of his soldiers.

The universal joy at these prosperous events did not last many days: it was speedily terminated by information that Cracow had surrendered to a Prussian force, that the King of Prussia was advancing towards the capital, and that the Russians, more implacable in consequence of the late treatment their garrison had received at Warsaw, were pouring into the country like a deluge.

At this intelligence the consternation became dreadful. The Polonese army in general, worn with fatigue and long service, and without clothing or ammunition, were not in any way, excepting courage, fitted for resuming the field.

The treasury was exhausted, and means of raising a supply seemed impracticable. The provinces were laid waste, and the city had already been drained of its last ducat. In this exigency a council met in his majesty's cabinet, to devise some expedient for obtaining resources. The consultation was as desponding as their situation, until Thaddeus Sobieski, who had been a silent observer, rose from his seat. Sudden indisposition had prevented the palatine attending, but his grandson knew well how to be his subst.i.tute. Whilst blushes of awe and eagerness crimsoned his cheek, he advanced towards Stanislaus, and taking from his neck and other parts of his dress those magnificent jewels it was customary to wear in the presence of the king, he knelt down, and laying them at the feet of his majesty, said, in a suppressed voice, "These are trifles; but such as they are, and all of the like kind which we possess, I am commanded by my grandfather to beseech your majesty to appropriate to the public service."

"n.o.ble young man!" cried the king, raising him from the ground; "you have indeed taught me a lesson. I accept these jewels with grat.i.tude.

Here," said he, turning to the treasurer, "put them into the national fund, and let them be followed by my own, with my gold and silver plate, which latter I desire may be instantly sent to the mint. Three parts the army shall have; the other we must expend in giving support to the surviving families of the brave men who have fallen in our defence." The palatine readily united with his grandson in the surrender of all their personal property for the benefit of their country; and, according to their example, the treasury was soon filled with gratuities from the n.o.bles. The very artisans offered their services gratis; and all hands being employed to forward the preparations, the army was soon enabled to take the field, newly equipped and in high spirits.