t popular songs at the beginning of the
Revolution (1789), said to have been suggested by Benjamin Franklin,
who, in speaking of the progress of the American Revolution, said: "Ca
ira" meaning, "It will succeed."--ED.

THE DOWNFALL OF POLAND

A.D. 1794

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON

That the French Revolution was not more actively interfered
with by the powers of Eastern Europe was largely due to the
fact that they were all busy with a spoliation of their own.
When Kosciuszko, the great Polish patriot and hero, failed
in his endeavor to rescue his country from foreign thraldom,
the doom of the ancient kingdom was sealed. In the following
year (1795) the third and final partition of Poland--between
Russia, Austria, and Prussia--was made. This destruction of
a heroic nationality was bewailed by the friends of liberty
throughout the world, and it was told in passionate regret
how "Freedom shrieked, as Kosciuszko fell."

Although brave and liberty-loving, the people of Poland had
not kept pace with political progress among the more
advanced nations. In the fourteenth century Poland had risen
to her greatest power. Her political character, from ancient
days, was peculiar, being at once monarchical and
republican. But she had a feudalism of her own, which
survived long after the European feudal system was outgrown
by other nations. Her political system was cumbrous and
lacking in unity. The first partition, by the powers above
named (1772), left her in still worse disorder. A new
constitution proved unsatisfactory, one party favoring it,
another seeking to overthrow it. Russian interference was
invoked, the Polish patriots resisted, but in 1792 they were
defeated, and Russia, with Prussia, made the second
partition of Poland in 1793.

In 1794 Kosciuszko was made commander-in-chief and dictator
of Poland. The insurrection began with the murder of the
Russians in Warsaw. But the Poles suffered from their own
dissensions as before, and met with the disaster that led to
their national extinction.

There is a certain degree of calamity which overwhelms the courage; but
there is another, which, by reducing men to desperation, sometimes leads
to the greatest and most glorious enterprises. To this latter state the
Poles were now reduced. Abandoned by all the world, distr