who had been continually encroaching on the royal authority, now carried their equality, rivalry, and aspirations for the crown to such dangerous extremities, as to prefer a foreign prince, rather than yield to the coronation of one of their own number. Hence the Polish Crown was made a prize of competition for foreign princes, and the neighboring potentates now commenced that bloodthirsty struggle for Poland, which finally resulted in the conquest and ruin of the nation. After an interregnum of about one year, and after passing several laws regulating the future elections of their kings, the nobles assembled at Warsaw, with all their military pomp and retinue, well armed for the fight. After the assembly had convened, several candidates were nominated, among whom was Henry, Duke of Anjou, son of Catharine de Medicis, and brother of Charles IX., the reigning king of France, who was finally elected king of Poland. He received the Polish crown reluctantly; and immediately after reaching Warsaw, hearing of the death of his brother, the king of France, he abdicated voluntarily and secretly the throne of Poland, and returned to Paris.

Anne, the sister

of Sigismund, with Stephen Batory, Duke of Transylvania, for her husband, was elected as the sovereign of Poland in 1575.*

Batory, who died in 1586, was succeeded by Sigismund III., prince of Sweden, in 1587; who died in 1629, and was succeeded by his son Wladislas VII. This bigot, who died in 1648, was followed by his younger brother, John Casimir. This monarch abdicating the throne, returned to France, and Michael Koribut Wiecnowiecki was chosen king of Poland, in 1669. On the death of Michael, in 1673, John Sobieski, the most distinguished king of Poland, was elected to the throne May 19th, 1674, and reigned *Fletcher, 58, 62, 273..

until his death in 1696. He was succeeded by Augustus II., elector of Saxony. This prince, after being dethroned several times, and fighting his way back to his palace repeatedly, closed his eventful life in 1733, after a reign disastrous in the extreme, both to himself and his subjects.

The Poles, on the 11th of September, 1733, re-elected Stanislas, who formerly had been defeated, and was again driven from the throne, while Augustus III. was crowned by Russian power. On the death of Augustus in 1763, Stanislas Poniatowski was made king of Poland, by his licentious mistress, Catharine of Russia, September 7th, 1764; and with this monarch ended the national career of Poland, on his abdication in 1796.

The fifth period in the history of Poland, embraces the time. of that unjust, treacherous, and bloody tragedy, in which Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Poland were the actors, and in its catastrophe, revealed a scene of national villany unparalleled in the history of crime. This disgraceful plan of dismembering and plundering unfortunate Poland, first originated with the king of Prussia, or his brother, prince of Hungary! In 1772, Poland became distracted by internal dissensions, which furnished Russia, Austria, and Prussia with a pretence for interfering, who accordingly took possession of a large portion of the country, and divided it between them. In 1793, they interfered a second time, and made a second dividend. And in 1795, they partitioned the balance between them. Thus, by three repeated acts of the greatest injustice, and by the double crime of fratricide and matricide, Poland fell.

In 1815, the Congress of Vienna erected a small portion of the central part of ancient Poland, containing about forty-seven thou

sand square miles, and two millions of inhabitants, into a state, by the name of the "Kingdom of Poland," and placed it under the government of the emperor of Russia, who, in consequence, added to his long list of royal titles, "The King of Poland." A Polish constitution was soon issued by the emperor Alexander, consisting of one hundred and sixty-five articles, which would have greatly improved the condition of this unfortunate people, if they had not been so frequently and so cruelly violated by Russia.*

On the 29th of November, 1830, an insurrection broke out in Warsaw, and immediately extended throughout the kingdom, and other parts of ancient Poland; which, after a short but severe struggle for independence, was quelled by an overpowering Russian army. By a proclamation of the emperor Nicholas in 1832, Poland was incorporated with Russia, and has since formed an integral portion of that mighty empire.

All that now remains of this once powerful nation, the common parent of the modern kingdoms of Europe, is, the fertile soil which entombs the bones of her heroes-together with a salubrious climate the detached fragments which belong to their cruel destroyers, Russia, Austria, and Prussia-distinguished from the surrounding nations only by their national character, language, and manners—a towering monument of national misfortune, and a beacon to all nations, to avoid a similar fate by shunning similar errors. Her patriots wandering, weeping, and dying in every clime, in every continent and kingdom on the globe, robbed of their native country, their homes, their hearths, their families, and the graves of their ancestors, are daily invoking the ven

* A copy of this constitution will be found in the Appendix.

geance of Heaven on the heads of their merciless tyrants and robbers.*

The remaining history of Poland will be found in the succeeding chapters.

* Alison's Hist. of Europe, chap. 17, p. 348, Rulhièrè's Hist. of Poland, also Fletcher's and Salvandy's.

CHAPTER II.

SOVEREIGNTY.

General Principles of Sovereignty-Sovereignty of Poland under the Piasts-Sovereignty of the Jagellons-Sovereignty of the elective

Kings.

SECTION 1..

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF SOVEREIGNTY.

SOVEREIGNTY, in its largest sense, is the absolute right to exercise supreme power, without responsibility to any superior, except the Supreme Being. Such sovereignty is despotic and uncontrollable, when possessed by an individual monarch, or by a number of individuals, as an aristocracy. When any society of men, or body politic, is united for the purposes of government and mutual protection, such a society, or body politic, is called a state or nation. Every state or nation possesses the attributes of sovereignty, independence and equality, with other nations. Every nation which governs itself without dependence upon any foreign power, is considered a sovereign state. But it must not be inferred, that the possession of such absolute, despotic sovereignty, is necessary to the existence of a nation; or that it is ordinarily conferred, or proper to be conferred, upon any one man, or number of men, as the functionaries of government.