enforce obedience to the laws; it could not preserve domestic
tranquillity; it could not restrain the violence of petty feuds and
intestine commotions; it could not preserve the proud nobles from
unbounded dissipation and corruption; it could not prevent foreign
powers from interfering in the affairs of the kingdom; it could not
dissolve the union of these powers with discontented parties at home;
it could not inspire the slowly-moving machine of government with
vigor, when the humblest partisan, corrupted with foreign money, could
arrest it with a word; it could not avert the entrance of foreign
armies to support the factious and rebellious; it could not uphold, in
a divided country, the national independence against the combined
effects of foreign and domestic treason; finally, it could not effect
impossibilities, nor turn aside the destroying sword which had so long
impended over it."

But this great crime was attended with retribution. Prussia, in her
efforts to destroy Poland, paralyzed her armies on the Rhine. Suwarrow
entered Warsaw when its spires were reddened by the fires of Praga;
but the sack of the fallen capital was forgotten in the conflagration
of Moscow. The remains of the soldiers of Kosciusko sought a refuge in
republican France, and served with distinction, in the armies of
Napoleon, against the powers that had dismembered their country.

The ruin of Poland, as an independent state, was not fully
accomplished until the year 1832, when it was incorporated into the
great empire of Russia. But the history of the late revolution, with
all its melancholy results, cannot be well presented in this
connection.

* * * * *

REFERENCES.--Fletcher's History of Poland. Rulhiere's
Histoire de l'Anarchie de Pologne. Coyer's Vie de Sobieski.
Parthenay's History of Augustus II. Hordynski's History of
the late Polish Revolution. Also see Lives of Frederic II.,
Maria Theresa, and Catharine II.; contemporaneous histories
of Prussia, Russia, and Austria; Alison's History of Europe;
Smyth's Lectures; Russell's Modern Europe; Heeren's Modern
History.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE DECLINE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.

[Sidenote: Saracenic Empire.]

While the great monarchies of Western Europe were struggling for
preeminence, and were developing resources greater than had ever
before been exhibited since the fall of the Roman empire, that great
power