its session, and undo all the work previously
accomplished. This law of the _liberum veto_, and the elective nature of
the royal office, offered countless opportunities for foreign nations to
interfere in the affairs of the Commonwealth. The district diets, besides
electing deputies to the General Diet, instructed them how to vote, and
chose local officials (p. 75); they also were bound by the rule of the
_liberum veto_ (pp. 182, 304). Under such a constitution the only
practical means of reform was through armed rebellion. Hence rebellions,
or _confederacies_, were legalised in Poland; a number of citizens might
combine together, choose a marshal (pp. 180, 182, 285), and seek to
overthrow the established order; in case of success they became the
government, in case of failure they were not liable to punishment. A diet
held by a confederacy was not subject to the _liberum veto_, but adopted
decisions by a majority vote.

In the seventeenth century, not to speak of civil troubles, Poland was
devastated by disastrous wars, in particular with the Cossacks and with
the Swedes (1655-60; pp. 169, 302). The great victory of Jan Sobieski, the
warrior king, over the Turks in 1683, when he went to the relief of
Vienna, was the last military triumph of old Poland (pp. 167, 170, 200,
201).

During the eighteenth century Poland sank to a condition of disgraceful
dependence on Russia. In 1764 Catharine II. caused her favourite,
Stanislaw Poniatowski, to be elected King. In 1768 Polish patriots, in a
convulsive effort to throw off the Russian ascendancy, organised the
Confederacy of Bar, which maintained a desperate struggle for four years.
The Confederacy was crushed by Russia, and soon after its defeat followed
the first partition of Poland (1772), by which Russia received a large
share of the former Lithuanian provinces. A Diet, convoked under the forms
of a confederacy, in order to avoid dissolution by the _liberum veto,_ was
obliged to sanction this partition. The desperate opposition of Rejtan,
the deputy from the district of Nowogrodek (that is, from the region of
which Mickiewicz was a native), Korsak, and other patriots, was of no
avail (pp. 3, 139, 140).

After the disaster of the first partition the patriotic party in Poland
made efforts to save their country, which culminated in the Four Years'
Diet (1788-92). The labours of this Diet, which again was convoked under
the forms of a confederacy, culminated in the Constitu