READING HALL

BLESSED BE THE PEACEFUL BECAUSE THEY WILL BE CALLED SONS OF GOD

THE HISTORY OF POLAND

CHAPTER I.

THE EARLIEST YEARS OF POLAND, TILL 1382 d.

Amidst the incessant influx of the Asiatic nations into Europe, during the slow decline of the Roman Empire and the migrations occasioned by their arrival, we should vainly attempt to trace the descent of the Poles. Whether they are derived from the Sarmatians, who, though likewise of Asiatic origin, were located on both sides of the Vistula long before the irruptions of the kindred barbarians, or from some horde of the latter, or, a still more probable hypothesis, from an amalgamation of the natives and newcomers, must forever remain doubtful. All that we can know with certainty is that they formed part of the great Slavonic family which stretched from the Baltic to the Adriatic, and from the Elbe to the mouth of the Dnieper (ancient Borysthenes). As vainly should we endeavour, from historic testimony alone, to ascertain the origin of this generic term “slav,” and the universality of its application. Conjecture may tell us that, as some of the more powerful tribes adopted it to denote their success in arms (its signification is glorious), other tribes, conceiving that their bravery entitled them to the same enviable appellation, assumed it likewise. It might thus become the common denomination of the old and new inhabitants, of the victors and the vanquished; the more readily as most of the tribes comprehended under it well knew that the same cradle had once contained them.

Other people, indeed, as the Huns or the Avars, subsequently arrived from more remote regions of Asia, and in the places where they forcibly settled introduced a considerable modification of customs and of language; hence the diversity in both among the Slavonic nations—a diversity which has induced some writers to deny the identity of their common origin. But as, in the silence of history, affinity of language will best explain the kindred of nations, and will best assist us to trace their migrations, no fact can be more indisputable than that most of the tribes included in the generic term “slavi” were derived from the same common source, however various the respective periods of their arrival, and whatever changes were in consequence produced by struggles with the nations, by intestine wars, and by the irruption of other hordes dissimilar in maimers and in speech. Between the Pole and the Russian is this kindred relation striking; and though it is fainter among the Hungarians from their incorporation with the followers of Attila, and among the Bohemians from their long intercourse with the Teutonic nations, it is yet easily discernible.

The Lithuanians, though their history is so closely connected with that of the Muscovites and Poles, are not originally Slavonic, a fact sufficiently clear from their language. By some they have been deemed of Gothic, by others of Alanic descent. Many Gothic words, indeed, are to be found in their language, but more Latin and Greek; the basis, however, is none of the three, but something perhaps resembling the Finnish.

Of these Slavonic tribes, those which occupied the country bounded by Prussia and the Carpathian Mountains, by the Bug and the Oder—those especially who were located on both banks of the Vistula—were the progenitors of the present Poles. The word Pole is not older than the tenth century, and seems to have been originally applied not so much to the people as to the region they inhabited; polska in the Slavonic tongue signifying a level field or plain.

EARLY RULERS

The Poles as a nation are not of ancient date. Prior to the ninth century they were split into a multitude of tribes independent of each other, and governed by their respective chiefs; no general head was known except in case of invasion, when combination alone could save the country from the yoke. Like all other people, however, they lay claim to an antiquity sufficiently respectable; their old-writers assure us that one of the immediate descendants of Noah colonised this part of ancient Sarmatia. But the absurdity of the claim was too apparent to be long supported, and less extravagant historians were satisfied with assigning the period of their incorporation as a people to Leszck or Lech I, who reigned, say they, about the middle of the sixth century. As the laws of evidence became better understood, even this era was modestly abandoned, and the authentic opening of Polish history was brought down three centuries—namely, to the accession of Semowit, 860 a.d. Finally, it was reserved for the Polish writers of our own day to abstract another century from the national existence, and hail Mieczyslaw I as the true founder of the monarchy.

But though the severity of historical criticism has rejected as fabulous, or at least doubtful, the period antecedent to Mieczyslaw I, many transactions of that period are admitted as credible. Tradition, indeed, is the only authority for the existence of preceding rulers, but it cannot be wholly disregarded : its first beams are visible through the darkness of time, and enable us to perceive that some of those rulers existed, whatever we may think of the events recorded concerning them. For this reason they may properly occupy

Of the immediate descendants of Leszek nothing is known. We are told only that their sceptre was one of iron, and that the indignant natives at length abolished the ducal authority, and established that of voivodes, or palatines, whose functions appear to have been chiefly, if not wholly, military. Experience, however, taught that one tyrant was preferable to twelve; they accordingly invested with the supreme power one of the palatines and deposed the rest—one whose virtues and genius rendered him worthy of the choice. Cracus repressed the licentious, encouraged the peaceable, established tribunals for the administration of justice, and triumphed over all his enemies, domestic and foreign. He founded Cracow, whither he transferred the seat of his government. His son, Leszek II, ascended the ducal throne by a fratricide: he assassinated his elder brother in a wood, but he had the address to conceal for a time his share in that dark deed. But divine justice slumbered not—his crime was discovered, and he was deposed and banished by his indignant subjects. The tender affection, however, which they bore to the memory of Cracus induced them to elevate his daughter Wanda to the throne.

This princess was of surprising beauty, of great talents, and of still greater ambition. Power she deemed too sweet to be divided with another, and she therefore resolutely refused all offers of marriage. Incensed at her haughtiness, or in the hope of accomplishing by force what persuasion had attempted in vain, Rudiger, one of her lovers, who was a German prince, adopted a novel mode of courtship. At the head of an army he invaded her dominions. She marched against him. When the two armies met, Rudiger again besought her to listen to his suit, and thereby spare the effusion of blood. The maiden was inexorable; she declared that no man should ever share her throne; that she would never become the slave of a husband, since, whoever he might be, he would assuredly love her person much less than her power.

Her answer, being spread among the officers of Rudiger, produced an effect which he little foresaw. Filled with admiration at the courage of the princess, whom they perceived hurrying from rank to rank in the act of stimulating her followers to the combat, and convinced that all opposition to her will would be worse than useless, they surrounded their chief, and asked him what advantage he hoped to gain from such an expedition. “ If thou shouldst defeat the princess, will she pardon thee the loss of her troops? If thou art subdued, will she be more disposed to love thee?” The passion of Rudiger blinded him to the rational remonstrances of his followers; he persisted in his resolution of fighting; they refused to advance; in utter despair he laid hands on himself, and turned his dying looks towards the camp of the Poles. Wanda, we are told, showed no sign of sympathy at the tragical news, but returned triumphant to Cracow. Her own end was not less violent. Whether, as is asserted, to escape similar persecution, or, as is equally probable, from remorse at her own cruelty, having one day sacrificed to the gods, she threw herself into the waters of the Vistula and there perished.

With this princess expired the race of Cracus. Again, it is said, the fickle multitude divided the sovereign power, and subjected themselves to the yoke of twelve palatines. The two periods have evidently been confounded; either the power never existed, or—an hypothesis, however, not very probable—as this form of government was common to the Slavonic tribes, it may have been the only one admitted in Poland prior to the domination of the Piasts. Anarchy, we are told, was the immediate effect of this partition of power. The new chiefs were weak, indolent, and wicked, the tyrants of their subjects and enemies of each other. In vain did the people groan; their groans were disregarded, and their efforts to shake off the bondage they had imposed on themselves were rendered abortive by the power of their rulers, who always exhibited considerable energy when their privileges were threatened.

The general wretchedness was increased by an invasion of the Hungarians, who had sprung from the same origin As the Poles, and who were inclined to profit by the dissensions between the chiefs and people. The palatines, whose duty it was to defend the country which they oppressed, were too conscious of their own weakness, and still more of their unpopularity, to risk an action with the enemy. Nothing but subjugation and ruin appeared to the dismayed natives, when both were averted by the genius of one man.

Though but a simple soldier, Przemvslaw aspired to the glory of liberating his country. One dark night he adopted an expedient which had the merit of novelty at least to recommend it, and which has never since been imitated by any other general. With the branches and barks of trees he formed images of men with lances, swords, and bucklers; these he smeared with certain substances proper to reflect the rays of the sun and render the illusion more striking. He placed these on a hill on the border of a forest directly opposite to the Hungarian camp. The stratagem succeeded; the following morning some troops of the enemy were despatched to dislodge the audacious few who appeared to confide in the excellence of their position. As the assailants approached the plain, the reflection ceased, and they were surprised to find nothing but fantastic forms of trees. The same appearance, however, of armed soldiers was discovered at a distance; and it was universally believed that the Poles had fallen back to occupy a more tenable post. The Hungarians pursued until, artfully drawn into an ambuscade, they were enveloped and massacred.

How to insure the destruction of the rest was now the object of Przemyslaw; it was attained by another stratagem scarcely less extraordinary. He clothed some of his followers in the garb and armour of the slain Hungarians, and marched them boldly towards the enemy’s camp, while another body of Poles, by circuitous paths, hastened towards the same destination. Having thus reached the outposts, the former suddenly fell on the astonished Pannonians; while the latter, rushing forwards from another direction, added to the bloody horrors of the scene. In vain did the invaders attempt a combined defence; before they could be formed into anything like systematic order they were cut off almost to a man, notwithstanding individual acts of bravery which called forth the admiration of the assailants.

The victor was rewarded with a sceptre; the twelve palatines were deposed, and he was thus confirmed in an authority undivided and absolute. Under the name of Leszek I, which he assumed from reverence to the celebrated founder of Gnesen, he reigned with equal glory and happiness. Unfortunately, however, for the natives, he left no children; the palatines armed, some to enforce the restitution of their alleged rights, others to seize on the supreme power. But the voice of the country, to which experience had at length taught a good lesson, declared so loudly against a partition of sovereignty that the chiefs ceased to pursue a common interest; each laboured for himself. According to ancient usage, the people were assembled to fill the vacant throne by their suffrages. But to choose, where the pretensions of the candidates were, to outward appearance, nearly balanced, and yet where the consequences of an improper choice might be forever fatal to liberty, was difficult. Where the risk was so great, they piously concluded that it was safer to leave the event to the will of the gods than to human foresight.

A horse-race was decreed, in which the crown was to be the prize of victory. One of the candidates had recourse to artifice: the course, which lay along a vast plain on the banks of the Pradnik, he planted with sharp iron points, and covered them with sand. In the centre, however, he left a space over which he might pass without danger; but lest he should accidentally diverge from it, he caused his horse to be shod with iron plates, against which the points would be harmless. Everything seemed to promise success to his roguish ingenuity, when the secret was discovered by two young men, as they were one day amusing themselves on the destined course. One of them was silent through fear, the other through cunning. On the appointed day the candidates arrived, the race was opened, and the innumerable spectators waited the result with intense anxiety. The inventor of the stratagem left all the rest far behind him except the youth last mentioned, who kept close to his horse’s heels; and who, just as the victor was about to claim the prize, exposed the unworthy trick to the multitude. The former was immediately sacrificed to their fury; and the latter, as the reward of his courageous conduct, notwithstanding the meanness of his birth, was invested (804) with the ensigns of sovereignty [with the title of Lesko II].

The new duke was humble enough to remember and rational enough to acknowledge his low extraction. He preserved with religious care the garments which he had worn in his lowly fortunes, and on which he often gazed with greater satisfaction than on his regal vestments. His temperance, his love of justice, his zeal for the good of his people, are favourite themes of the old chroniclers. Leszek III (810) inherited the virtues no less than the name of his father; for though of his twenty-one sons one only was legitimate, incontinency would scarcely be considered a blemish in a pagan and a Slav. After a short but brilliant reign, ennobled by success in war and wisdom in peace, he divided his dominions among his sons, subjecting all, however, to the authority of his lawful successor, Popiel I (815). Of this prince little is known beyond his jealousy of his brothers and his addiction to debauchery. After a base and ignoble life he was succeeded by his son, Popiel II, while yet a child.

The fostering care of the uncles, whose fidelity appears to have been as rare as it was honourable, preserved the throne to the chief of their house. But the prince showed them no gratitude; he was, indeed, incapable of such a sentiment; every day he exhibited to his anxious guardians some new feature of depravity, which, with a commendable prudence, they endeavoured to conceal from the nation, in the hope that increasing years would bring reformation. Their pious exhortations were in vain; he proceeded from bad to worse; he associated with none but the dissipated—“with drunkards, spendthrifts, and fornicators,” or with mimics and jesters. To correct one of his vices at least, a wife was procured for him: the expedient failed; it had even a mischievous effect, since his consort was avaricious and malignant, and was but too successful in making him the instrument of her designs. On reaching his majority his passions burst forth with fury; no woman was safe from his lust, no man from his revenge. His extortions, his debaucheries, his cruelty at length exhausted the patience of his people, who resolved to set bounds to his excesses. The formidable confederacy was headed by his uncles, who sacrificed the ties of blood to their patriotism or their ambition. To dissolve it, and at the same time to gratify his revenge, he was stimulated alike by his own malignity and by the counsels of his wife. He feigned sickness, sent for his uncles, as if to make his peace with them, and poisoned them in the wine which was produced for their entertainment. He even carried his wickedness so far as to refuse the rites of sepulture to his victims.

But, say the chroniclers, divine justice prepared a fit punishment for this Sardanapalus and Jezebel. From the unburied corpses sprang a countless multitude of rats, of an enormous size, which immediately filled the palace and sought out the guilty pair and their two children. In vain were great numbers destroyed : greater swarms advanced. In vain did the ducal family enclose themselves within a circle of fire; the boundary was soon passed by the ferocious animals, which, with unrelenting constancy, aimed at them and them alone. They fled to another element, which availed them as little. The rats followed them to a neighbouring lake, plunged into the water, and fixed their teeth in the sides of the vessel, in which they would soon have gnawed holes sufficient to let in the water and sink it, had not Popiel commanded the sailors to land him on an island near at hand. In vain; his inveterate enemies were on shore as soon as he. His attendants now recognised the finger of heaven, and left him to his fate. Accompanied by his wife and children, he now fled to a neighbouring tower; he ascended the highest pinnacle: still they followed; neither doors nor bars could resist them. His two sons were first devoured, then the duchess, then himself, and so completely that not a bone remained of the four.

With Popiel was extinguished the legitimate race of royalty; but the sons of the murdered uncles remained, the eldest of whom, with the aid of his brother, aspired to the throne. Again the palatines stepped forth to vindicate the ancient form of government. The two parties disputed, quarrelled, and, lastly, armed their adherents to decide the question by force; but the more enlightened portion of the nation was not convinced that a problem affecting the happiness or misery of millions ought to be resolved in such a way. Two assemblies were successively consulted at Kruswick, to discuss the respective claims of monarchy and oligarchy; but the forces, if not the arguments, of the two parties were so nearly equal that nothing was decided. Both were preparing to try the efficacy of arms, when heaven, in pity to the people, again interfered, and miraculously filled the vacant throne.

FOUNDATION OF THE HOUSE OF PIAST [842-892 A.D.]

There dwelt in Kruswick a poor but virtuous man, named Piast—so poor, indeed, that his wants were but scantily supplied by a small piece of ground which he cultivated with his own hands, and so virtuous that the blessings of thousands accompanied his steps. He had a wife and a son, both worthy of him. He lived contented in his poverty, which he had no wish to remove, since he had wisdom enough to perceive that the state most exempt from artificial wants is the most favourable to virtue, and consequently to happiness. When the time arrived that his son should be first shorn of his locks of hair and receive a name—a custom of great antiquity among the pagan Slavs—he invited, as was usual on such occasions, his neighbours to the ceremony. On the day appointed two strangers arrived with the rest, and were admitted with the hospitality so honourable to the people. Piast laid before his guests all he could furnish for their entertainment: that all, he observed, was little, but he hoped the spirit with which it was offered would compensate for the lack of good cheer. They fell to the scanty stock of viands and meal, when, lo—a miracle!—both were multiplied prodigiously; the more they ate and drank, the more the tables groaned under the weight of the viands. The portent was spread abroad with rapidity. Numbers daily flocked to the peasant’s house to share his hospitality and to witness the miraculous increase of his provisions.

A scarcity of these good things at that time afflicted the place, through the influx of so many thousands who met for the choice of a government. All hastened to Piast, who entertained them with princely liberality during several successive weeks. “Who so fit to rule,” was the universal cry, “as this holy man, this favourite of the gods?” Prince and palatine desisted from their respective pretensions, and joined their suffrages to that of the people. Piast was unanimously elected, in the year 842, to the vacant dignity; but so great was his reluctance to accept the glittering honour that he would have remained forever in his then humble condition, had not the two identical strangers, whom he found to be gods, and whom later Christian writers con­sider two angels, or at least two blessed martyrs, again favoured him with a visit, and prevailed on him to sacrifice his own ease to the good of the nation. The reign of Piast was the golden age of Poland. No foreign wars, no domestic commotions; but respect from without, abundance and contentment within, signalised his wise, firm, and paternal administration. The horror with which he regarded the scene of Popiel’s guilt and punishment made him abandon the place of his birth and transfer his court to Gnesen, which thus became a second time the capital of the country.

Semowit’s was no less glorious. He was the first chief who introduced regular discipline into the armies of Poland. Before his time they had fought without order or system; their onset had been impetuous, and their retreat as sudden. He marshalled them in due array; taught them to surrender their own will to that of their officers; to move as one vast machine obedient to the force which rules it; and whenever fortune was adverse, to consult their safety not in flight, but in a closer and more determined union, in a vigorous, concentrated resistance. The Hungarians, the Moravians, the Russians, who had insulted the country under the feeble sway of Popiel, and who had despised the inexperience of the, son of Piast, were soon taught to fear him and to sue for peace. Semowit was satisfied with the terror produced by his arms; he thirsted not after conquest; he loved his subjects too well to waste their blood in gratification of a selfish ambition. Their welfare was his only care, their gratitude and affection his only reward. An able captain, an enlightened statesman, an affable, patriotic sovereign, his person was adored during life, and his memory long revered after death.

His son and successor, Leszek IV (892), successfully imitated all his virtues but one. This prince refrained from war, making all his glory to consist in promoting the internal happiness of the people. His moderation, his justice, his active zeal, his enlightened care, were qualities, however, not very acceptable to a martial and ferocious people, who longed for war, and who placed all greatness in conquest. Of the same pacific disposition, and of the same estimable virtues, was Semomyslaw (921), the son and successor of Leszek. For the same honourable reason, the reign of this prince furnishes no materials for history. The tranquil, unobtrusive virtues must be satisfied with self­approbation, and a consciousness of the divine favour; only the more splendid and mischievous qualities attain immortality. That men’s evil deeds are written in brass, their good ones in water, is more than poetically just. Semomyslaw, however, has one claim to remembrance which posterity has not failed to recognise: he was the father of Mieczyslaw, the first Christian duke of Poland, with whom opens the authentic history of the country.

MIECZYSLAW I, BOLESLAW I, AND MIECZYSLAW II

This fifth prince of the house of Piast is entitled to the remembrance of posterity, not merely from his being the first Christian ruler of Poland, but from the success with which he abolished paganism and enforced the observance of the new faith throughout his dominions. He who could effect so important a revolution without bloodshed must have been no common char­acter.

When the duke assumed the reins of sovereignty both he and his subjects were strangers to Christianity, even by name. By the persuasion of his nobles, he demanded the hand of Dabrowka, daughter of Boleslaw, king of Hungary. Both father and daughter refused to favour so near a connection with a pagan; but both declared that if he would consent to embrace the faith of Christ his proposal would be accepted. After some deliberation he consented; he procured instructors, anil was soon made acquainted with the doctrines which he was required to believe and the duties he was bound to practise. The royal maiden was accordingly conducted to his capital (965), and the day which witnessed his regeneration by the waters of baptism also beheld him receive another sacrament, that of marriage.

The zeal with which Mieczyslaw laboured for the conversion of his subjects, left no doubt of the sincerity of his own. Having dismissed his seven concubines, he issued an order for the destruction of the idols throughout the country. He appears to have been obeyed without much opposition.

While he was occupied in forwarding the conversion of the nation, he was not unfrequently called to defend it against the ambition or the jealousy of his neighbours. In 968 he was victorious over the Saxons, but desisted from hostilities at the imperial command of Otto I, whose feudatory he acknowledged himself. Against the son of that emperor, Otto II, he leagued himself with other princes who espoused the interests of Henry of Bavaria; but, like them, he was compelled to submit, and own not only the title but the supremacy of Otto, in 973. He encountered a more formidable competitor in the Russian grand duke, Vladimir the Great, who after triumphing over the Greeks invaded Poland in 986, and reduced several towns. The Bug now bounded the western conquests of the descendants of Rurik, whose object henceforth was to push them to the very confines of Germany. But Mieczyslaw arrested, though he could not destroy, the torrent of invasion; if he procured no advantage over the Russian, he opposed a barrier which induced Vladimir to turn aside to enterprises which promised greater facility of success. His last expedition (989-991) was against Boleslaw, duke of Bohemia. In this contest he was assisted with auxiliaries furnished by the emperor Otto III, whose favour he had won, and by other princes of the empire. After a short but destructive war the Bohemian, unable to oppose the genius of Mieczyslaw, sued for peace; but this triumph was fatal to the peace of the two countries. Hence the origin of lasting strife between two nations whose descent, manners, and language were the same, and between whom, consequently, less animosity might have been expected.

But contiguity of situation is seldom, perhaps never, favourable to the harmony of nations. Silesia, which was the frontier province of Poland, was thenceforth exposed to the incursions of the Bohemians, and doomed to experience the curse of its limitrophic position. Mieczyslaw died in 999, universally regretted by his subjects.

BOLESLAW (999-1025 A.D.)

Boleslaw I, surnamed Chrobry, or the “lion-hearted,” son of Mieczyslaw and Dabrowka, ascended the ducal throne in 999, in his thirty-second year, amidst the acclamations of his people.

From his infancy this prince had exhibited qualities of a high order—great capacity of mind, undaunted courage, and an ardent zeal for his country’s glory. Humane, affable, generous, he was early the favourite of the Poles, whose affection he still further gained by innumerable acts of kindness to individuals. Unfortunately, however, his most splendid qualities were neutralised by his immoderate ambition, which, in the pursuit of its own gratification, too often disregarded the miseries it occasioned.

The fame of Boleslaw having reached the ears of Otto III, that emperor, who was then in Italy, resolved on his return to Germany to take a route somewhat circuitous, and pay the prince a visit. He had before vowed a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Adalbert, whose hallowed remains had just been transported from Prussia to Gnesen. He was received by Boleslaw with a magnificence which surprised him, and a respect which won his esteem. No sooner were his devotions performed than he testified his gratitude, or perhaps consulted his policy, by elevating the duchy into a kingdom, which he doubtless intended should forever remain a fief of the empire. Boleslaw was solemnly anointed by the archbishop of Gnesen; but the royal crown, it is said, was placed on his head by imperial hands. To bind still closer the alliance between the two princes, Rixa, a niece of Otto, was affianced to the son of the new king. The emperor returned home with an arm of St. Adalbert, which he probably considered as cheaply procured in exchange for a woman and a title.

The king was not long allowed to wear his new honours unmolested; he soon proved that they could not have been placed on a worthier brow. His first and most inveterate enemies were the Bohemians, who longed to grasp Silesia. Two easy triumphs disconcerted the duke of that country, who began to look around him for allies. The same disgrace still attended his arms; his fields were laid waste, his towns pillaged, his capital taken, with himself and his eldest son; the loss of sovereignty, of liberty, and soon of his eyes, convinced him, when too late, how terrific an enemy he had provoked. For a time his country remained the prey of the victor; but the generosity or policy of Boleslaw at length restored the ducal throne to Ulrich, the second son of the fallen chief. All Germany was alarmed at the progress of the Polish arms. Even the emperor, Henrv of Bavaria, joined the confederacy now formed to humble the pride of Boleslaw. Superior numbers chased him from Bohemia, dethroned Ulrich, and elevated the elder brother, the lawful heir, to the vacant dignity. The king returned to espouse the interests of Ulrich ; but, though he was often successful, he was as often not indeed defeated, but constrained to elude the combined force of the empire. Ulrich did at length obtain the throne, not through Boleslaw but through Henry, whose cause he strengthened by his adhesion.

Peace was frequently made during these obscure contests, and the king was thereby enabled to repress the incursions of his enemies on other parts of his frontier; but none could be of long continuance, where, on both sides, the love of war was a passion scarcely equalled in intensity even by ambition. In one of his expeditions Boleslaw penetrated as far as Holstein, reducing the towns and fortresses in his way, and filling all Germany with the deepest consternation. His conquests, however, were but transiently held; if he found it easy to make them, to retain them in opposition to the united efforts of the princes of the empire required far more numerous armies than he could raise. He fell back on Silesia to repair the disasters sustained by the arms of his son Mieczyslaw, whose talents were inadequate to the command of a separate force.

To recount the endless alternations of victory and failure during these obscure contests would exhibit a dry record—dry as the most lifeless chronicle of the times. It must be sufficient to observe that what little advantage was gained fell to the lot of Boleslaw until the Peace of Bautzen, in 1018, restored peace to the lacerated empire.

But the most famous of the wars of Boleslaw were with the dukes of Russia. After the death of Vladimir the Great, who had imprudently divided his estates among his sons, the eldest, Sviatopolk, prince of Tver, endeavouring to unite the other principalities under his sceptre, was expelled the country by the combined forces of his enraged brothers. He took refuge in Poland, and implored the assistance of the, king. Boleslaw immediately armed, not so much to avenge the cause of Sviatopolk as to regain possession of the provinces which Vladimir had wrested from Mieczyslaw. He marched against Iaroslav, who had seized on the dominions of the fugitive brother, and whom he encountered on the banks of the Bug.

For some time he hesitated to pass the river in the face of a powerful enemy; but a Russian soldier from the opposite bank one day deriding his corpulency, he plunged into the water with the most intrepid of his followers, and the action commenced. It was obstinately contested, but victory in the end declared for the king. He pursued the fugitives to the walls of Kiev, which he immediately invested and took. Sviatopolk was restored, but he made an unworthy return to his benefactor; he secretly instigated the Kievans to massacre the Poles, whose superiority he envied, and whose presence annihilated his authority. His treachery was discovered, and his capital nearly destroyed by his incensed allies, who returned home laden with immense plunder. The Russians pursued in a formidable body, and the Bug was again destined to behold the strife of the two armies. Again did victory shine on the banners of Boleslaw, who, on this occasion, almost annihilated the assailants. Thus ended this first expedition; the second was not less decisive. Iaroslav had reduced the Polish garrison left by the king in Kiev, had seized on that important city, and penetrated into the Polish provinces, which submitted at his approach.

A third time was the same river to witness the same sanguinary scenes. As usual, after a sharp contest, the Russians yielded the honour of the day to their able and brave antagonist, who hurried forward in the career of conquest; but his name now rendered further victories unnecessary; it struck terror in the hearts of the Russians, who hastened to acknowledge his su­premacy. On this occasion he appears to have conducted himself with a moderation which does the highest honour to his heart: he restored the prisoners he had taken, and, after leaving garrisons in the more important places, returned to his capital to end his days in peace.

Towards the close of life Boleslaw is said to have looked back on his ambitious undertakings with sorrow; they had added nothing to his prosperity, but had exhausted his people. lie now began to regret that he had not devoted his time and talents and means to objects which would have secured for them happiness, for himself a glory far more substantial than his brilliant deeds could bestow. Perhaps, too, he began to be apprehensive of the account which a greater potentate than himself might exact from him. Certain it is that the last six years of his reign were passed in the most laborious efforts to repair the evils he had occasioned—to improve alike the temporal and moral condition of his people. He administered justice with impartiality. Delinquents he punished with inflexible severity; the meritorious he honoured and enriched. Knowing the infirmity of his own judgments, he associated with him twelve of his wisest nobles. With their aid he redressed the wrongs of his subjects, not only in his capital but in various parts of his kingdom, which he traversed from time to time to inquire into the way justice was administered by the local magistrates. Nothing escaped his activity; it destroyed oppression and insured triumph to innocence.

Perhaps the severity of his labours, which allowed of no intermission by day, and which were often continued during the silence of night, hastened his end. Having convoked an assembly at Gnesen, in which his son was nominated his successor, he prepared for the approaching change. With his dying breath he exhorted that prince to favour the deserving, by conferring on them the distinction of wealth and honours; to love his God; to reverence the ministers of religion; to cherish virtue; to flee from pleasure; to reign by justice, and to inspire his subjects with love rather than fear. He died shortly afterwards, in 1025, leaving behind him the reputation of the greatest sovereign of his age; and, what is far more estimable, the universal lamentations of his subjects proved that he had nobly deserved their affectionate appellation, Father. Poland had never seen such a king as the last six years of his life exhibited: he was the true founder of his country’s greatness.

Mieczyslaw II ascended the throne of his father in 1025, in his thirty-fifth year—an age when the judgment is reasonably expected to be ripened and the character formed. But this prince had neither; and he soon showed how incapable he was of governing so turbulent a people as the Poles, or of repressing his ambitious neighbours. Absorbed in sloth, or in pleasures still more shameful, he scarcely deigned to waste a glance on the serious duties of royalty, and it was soon discovered that his temperament fitted him rather for the luxurious courts of southern Asia than for the iron region of Sarmatia.

Iaroslav, the restless duke of Kiev, was the first to prove to the world how Poland had suffered by a change of rulers. He rapidly reduced some fortresses, desolated the eastern provinces, and would doubtless have carried his ferocious arms to the capital, had not the Poles, without a signal from their king, who quietly watched the progress of the invasion, flocked to the national standard and compelled this second Sardanapalus to march against the enemy. The duke, however, had no wish to run the risk of an action; with immense spoil, and a multitude of prisoners, he returned to his dominions in the consciousness of perfect impunity. Mieczyslaw, thinking that by his appearance in the field he had done enough for glory, led back his murmuring troops to his capital; nor did the sacrifice of his father’s conquests draw one sigh, even one serious thought, from the confirmed voluptuary, who esteemed every moment abstracted from his sensual enjoyments as a lamentable loss of time and life—a loss, however, that he was resolved to repair by more than usual devotion to the only deities he worshipped. For the mead of Odin, the purple juice of Bacchus, and the delights of the Cytherean goddess he deemed no praise too exalted, no incense too precious.

From this dream of sensuality he was at length rudely awakened, not by the revolt of the Bohemians or that of the Moravians, whose countries his father had rendered, for a short time, tributary to Poland; not by the reduction of his strongest fortresses, nor even by the escape of whole provinces from his feeble grasp, but by the menaces of his people, who displayed their martial lines in front of his palace, and insisted on his accompanying them to crush the widespread spirit of insurrection. He reluctantly marched, not to subdue, but to make an idle display of force which he knew not how to wield. The Bohemians were too formidable to be assailed; the Moravians easily escaped his unwilling pursuit, and suffered him to wreak his vengeance—if, indeed, he was capable of such a sentiment—on a few miserable villages, or on such straggling parties of their body as accident threw in his way. As the enemy no longer appeared openly, he naturally wished it to be believed that none existed, and his discontented troops were again led back from the inglorious scene. He now hoped to pass his days in unmolested enjoyment; but—vexation on vexation!—the Pomeranians revolted. His first impulse was to treat with his rebellious subjects, and grant them a part at least of their demands, as the price of the ease he courted; but this disgraceful expedient was furiously rejected by his nobles, who a third time forced him to the field. In this expedition he was accompanied by three Hungarian princes, who had sought a refuge in his dominions from the violence of an ambitious kinsman. Through their ability, anil the valour of the Poles, victory declared for him. With all his faults he was not, it appears, incapable of gratitude, since he conferred both the hand of his daughter and the government of Pomerania on Bela, the most valiant of the three princes. Now he had surely done enough to satisfy the pugnacious clamours of his people. The Bohemians, the Moravians, and the Saxons, whom Boleslaw the Great had subjugated, were, indeed, in open and successful revolt; but he could safely ask the most martial of his nobles what chance existed of again reducing those fierce rebels. And though his cowardice might be apparent enough, no wise man would blame the prudence which declined to enter on a contest where success could scarcely be considered possible.

But Mieczyslaw was indifferent to popular opinion. To avoid the grim visages of his nobles, which he hated no less than he feared, he retreated wholly from society, and, surrounded by a few companions in debauchery, abandoned himself without restraint to his favourite excesses. The consequences were such as might be expected. Already enfeebled in the prime of life, this wretched voluptuary found his body incapable of sustaining the maladies produced by continued intemperance, his exhausted mind still less able to bear the heavy load of remorse which oppressed it. Madness ensued, which soon terminated in death.

Fortunately for humanity, there are few evils without some intermixture of good. If Micczyslaw the Idle was cowardly, dissipated, and despicable, there were moments when he appeared sensible of the duties obligatory on his station. To him Poland was indebted for the distribution of the country into palatinates, each presided over by a local judge, and consequently for the more speedy and effectual administration of justice. He is also said to have founded a new bishopric.

THE INTERREGNUM; CASIMIR I

Poland was now doomed to experience the fatal truth, that any permanent government, no matter how tyrannical, weak, or contemptible, is beyond all measure superior to anarchy. Mieczyslaw the Idle left a son of an age too tender to be intrusted with the reins of the monarchy, and his widow Rixa was accordingly declared regent of the kingdom and guardian of the prince. But that queen was unable to control the haughtiness of chiefs who despised the sway of a woman, and who detested her as a German—of all Germans, too, the most hated, as belonging to the archducal house of Austria. She added to their discontent by the evident partiality she showed towards her own countrymen, of whom it is said numbers flocked to share in the schools of Poland. Complaints followed on the one side, without redress on the other; these were succeeded by remonstrances, then by menaces, until a confederacy was formed by the discontented nobles, whose ostensible object was to procure the dis­missal of foreigners, but whose real one was to seize on the supreme authority. They succeeded in both: all foreigners were expelled the kingdom, and with them the regent. Whether Casimir, her son, shared her flight or immediately followed her is uncertain, but Europe soon beheld both in Saxony, claiming the protection of their kinsman, the emperor Conrad II.

The picture, drawn even by native historians, of the miseries sustained by the country after the expulsion of the queen and prince, is in the highest degree revolting. There was, say they, no authority, no law, and consequently no obedience. Innumerable parties contended for the supreme power, and the strongest naturally triumphed, but not until numbers were exterminated. As there was no tribunal to which the disputants could appeal, no chief, no council, no house of legislature, the sword only could decide their pretensions. The triumph was brief: a combination still more powerful arose to hurl the successful party from its blood-stained pre-eminence; and this latter, in turn, became the victim of a new association, as guilty and as short-lived as itself. Then the palatines or governors of provinces asserted their independence of the self-constituted authority at Gnesen. The whole country, indeed, was cursed by the lawless rule of petty local sovereigns, who made an exterminating war on each other, and ravaged each other’s territories with as much impunity as greater potentates. One Masos, who had been cup-bearer to the late king, seized by force on the country between the Vistula, the Narew, and the Bug, which he governed despotically, and which to this day is named from him, Masovia.

But a still greater evil was the general rising of the peasants, whose first object was to revenge themselves on the petty tyrants that oppressed them, but who, through the very success of the attempt, were, as must in all times and in all places be the case, only the more incited to greater undertakings. However beautiful the gradation of ranks which law and custom have estab­lished in society, the lowest class will not admire it, but will assuredly endeavour to rise higher in the scale, whenever opportunity holds out a prospect of success. Hence the necessity of laws backed by competent authority to curb this everlasting tendency of the multitude. Let the barrier which separates the mob from the more favoured orders be once weakened, and it. will soon be thrown down to make way for the most tremendous of inundations, one that will sweep away the landmarks of society, level all that is noble or valuable, and leave nothing but a vast waste, where the evil passions of men may find a fit theatre for further conflict.

Such, we are told, was the state of Poland during the universal reign of anarchy. The peasants, from ministers of righteous justice, became plunderers and murderers, and were infected with all the vices of human nature. Armed bands scoured the country, seizing on all that was valuable, consuming all that could not be carried away, violating the women, massacring old and young; priests and bishops were slain at the altar, nuns ravished in the depths of the cloisters. To add to horrors which had never before, perhaps, been paralleled among Christian nations, came the scourge of foreign invasion, and that, too, in the most revolting forms. On one side Predislaw, duke of Bohemia, sacked Breslaw, Posnania, and Gnesen, consuming everything with fire and sword; on another advanced the savage Iaroslav, who made a desert as he passed along. Had not the former been recalled by preparations of war against his own dominions, and had not the latter thought proper to return home when he had amassed as much plunder as could be carried away, and made as many captives (to be sold as slaves) as his followers could guard, Poland had no longer been a nation. Even now she was little better than a desert. Her cities exhibited smoking .ruins, and her fields nothing but the furrows left by “the plough of desolation.” Countless thousands had been massacred; thousands more had fled from the destroying scene. Those who remained had little hope that the present calm would continue; the evil power was rather exhausted than spent. But the terrific lesson had not been lost on them; they now looked forward to the restoration of the monarchy as the only means of averting foreign invasion, and the heavier curse of anarchy. An assembly was convoked by the archbishop at Gnesen. All, except a few lawless chiefs who hoped to perpetuate a state of things where force only was recognised, voted for a king: and, after some deliberation, an overwhelming majority decreed the recall of Prince Casimir.

But where was the prince to be found? No one knew the place of his retreat. A deputation waited on Queen Rixa, who was at length persuaded to reveal it. But here, too, an unexpected difficulty intervened: Casimir had actually taken the cowl in the abbey of Cluny. The deputies were not dismayed; they proceeded to his cloister, threw themselves at his feet, and besought him with tears to have pity on his country: “We come unto thee, dearest prince, in the name of all the bishops, barons, and nobles of the Polish kingdom, since thou alone canst restore our country and thy rightful heritage.” They prayed him to return them good for evil, and drew so pathetic a picture of the woes of his native land that he acceded to their wishes. He allowed an application to be made to Benedict IX to disengage him from his monastic engagements, who, after exacting some concessions from the Polish nobles and clergy, absolved him from his vows. He accordingly bade adieu to his cell, and set out to gratify the expectations of his subjects, by whom he was received with the most enthusiastic demonstrations of joy, and justly hailed as their saviour.

Casimir, surnamed the Restorer, proved himself worthy of the confidence reposed in him by his people; no higher praise can be given him than that he was equal to the difficulties of his situation. His first care was to repair the evils which had so long afflicted the country. The great he reduced to obedience—some by persuasion, others by firm but mild acts of authority; and, what was more difficult, he reconciled them to each other. The affection borne towards his person and the need which all had of him rendered his task not indeed easy, but certainly practicable. The submission of the nobles occasioned that of the people, whose interests were no less involved in the restoration of tranquillity and happiness. Where there was so good a dis­position for a basis, the superstructure could not fail to correspond. The towns were rebuilt and repeopled, industry began to flourish, the laws to resume their empire over brute force, and hope to animate those whom despair had driven to recklessness.

Nor was this politic prince less successful in his foreign relations. To con­ciliate the power of Iaroslav, the fiercest and most formidable of his enemies, he proposed an alliance to be still more closely cemented by his marriage with a sister of the duke. His offer was accepted, and he was also promised a considerable body of Prussian auxiliaries to assist him in reconquering Silesia, Pomerania, and the province of Masovia, which still recognised the rebel Masos.

This adventurer gave him more trouble than would have been anticipated. Though signally defeated by the king, he had yet address enough to assemble another army, chiefly of pagan Prussians, much more numerous than any he had previously commanded. Casimir was for a moment discouraged; his forces had been weakened even by his successes, and he apprehended that, even should victory again declare for him, he would be left without troops to make head against his other enemies. At this time he is said to have looked back with sincere regret to the peaceful cloister he had abandoned. But this weakness soon gave way to thoughts more worthy of him: he met the enemy on the banks of the Vistula, when a sanguinary contest afforded him an occasion of displaying bis valour no less than his ability. He fought like the meanest soldier, was severely wounded, and was saved from destruction by the devotion of a follower. But in the end his arms were victorious: fifteen thousand of the rebels lay on the field; Masos was glad to take refuge hi Prussia, by the fierce inhabitants of which he was publicly executed as the author of their calamities.

The rest of the reign of Casimir exhibits little to strike the attention. Bohe­mia was restrained from disquieting him, rather through the interference of his ally the emperor Henry III than by his own valour. Silesia was surrendered to him; Prussia acknowledged his superiority, and paid him tribute; Pomerania was tranquilliscd, and Hungary sought his alliance. But signal as were these advantages, they were inferior to those which his personal character and influence procured for his country. Convinced that no state can be happy, however wise the laws that govern it, where morality is not still more powerful, he laboured indefatigably to purify the manners of his people, by teaching them their duties, by a more extended religious education, and by his own example as well as that of his friends and counsellors. For the twelve monks whom he persuaded to leave their retirements at Cluny, to assist him in the moral reformation of his subjects, he founded two monasteries, one near Cracow, the other on the Oder, in Silesia. Both establishments zealously promoted his views; instruction was more widely diffused, and the decent splendour of the public worship made on the minds of the rude inhabitants, not yet fully reclaimed from paganism, an impression which could never have been produced by mere preaching. Before his death this excellent prince could congratulate himself that he had saved millions, and injured no one individual; that he had laid the foundation of a purer system of manners; that he was the regenerator no less than the restorer of his country. His memory is still dear to the Poles.

BOLESLAW II (1058-1082 A.D.)

Boleslaw II, surnamed the Bold, was only sixteen when he assumed the reins of government. But long before that period lie had exhibited proofs of extraordinary capacity, and of that generosity of sentiment inseparable from elevation of mind. Unfortunately, however, he wanted the more useful qualities of his deceased father; those which he possessed were splendid indeed, but among them the sparks of an insatiable ambition lay concealed, which required only the breath of opportunity to burst forth in flames.

That opportunity was not long wanting. A few years after his accession, three fugitive princes arrived at his court, to implore his aid in recovering their lost honours. None indeed of the three had any well-grounded claim to sympathy, since all had forfeited the privileges of their birth by misconduct of their own; but the “protector of unfortunate princes” was a title which he most coveted, and all were favourably received.

The first of these, Jaromir, brother of Wratislaw, duke of Bohemia, had early entered the church, allured by the prospect of the Episcopal throne of Prague; but he soon became disgusted with a profession which set a restraint on his worst passions, and ambitious of temporal distinctions, he left his cloister, plunged into the dissipations of the world, but was soon compelled by his brother to return to it. He escaped a second time, and endeavoured to gain supporters in his wild attempts to subvert the authority of Wratislaw; but finding his freedom, if not his existence, perilled in Bohemia, he threw himself into the arms of Boleslaw. The result was a war between the two countries, which was disastrous to the Bohemians, but to which an end was at length brought by the interference of the Germanic princes. Jaromir was persuaded to resume his former vocation, and to bound his ambition within the limits of a mitre; the marriage of Wratislaw with the sister of the Polish king secured for a time the blessings of peace to these martial people.

The second expedition, in favour of B6la, prince of Hungary, who aspired to the throne of his brother Andrew, was no less successful. Andrew was defeated, and slain in a wood, probably by his own domestics, and Bela was crowned by the conquering Boleslaw. This was not all. Seven years afterwards he again invaded Hungary, to espouse the interests of Geisa, the son of Bela, who had been killed in a hut which the violence of a storm had tumbled on the royal guest. Solomon, the son of Andrew, had been crowned by the influence of the emperor Henry III. Again was he joined by numerous partisans of the exiled prince. Solomon fled into lower Hungary, but he there occupied a position so strong by nature as to defy the force of his enemies. In consternation at the evils which impended over the kingdom, some prelates undertook the appropriate task of effecting an accommodation between the contending princes. Through their influence an assembly was held at Mofo, which was attended by the rival claimants; and it was at length agreed that Solomon should retain the title of king; that Geisa and his brothers should be put into possession of one-third of the country, to be governed as a duchy; and that the Polish monarch should be indemnified by both for the expenses he had incurred in the expedition. The reigning king was to be crowned anew, and to receive the ensigns of his dignity from the hands of Geisa.

But the most splendid of the warlike undertakings of Boleslaw was his expeditions into Russia. His ostensible object was to espouse the cause of Iziaslav. “I am obliged to succour that prince,” said he, “by the blood which unites us, and by the pity so justly due to his misfortunes. Unfortunate princes are more to be commiserated than ordinary mortals. If calamities must necessarily exist on earth, they should not be allowed to affect such as are exalted for the happiness of others.” This show of generosity, however, though it had its due weight with him, was not the only cause of his arming. The recovery of the possessions which his predecessors had held in Russia and of the domains which he conceived he had a right to inherit through his mother and his queen (like his father, he had married a Russian princess) was the aim he avowed to his followers. He accordingly marched against Ucheslav, who had expelled Iziaslav from Kiev; both were sons of Iaroslav, who had committed the fatal but in that period common error of dividing his dominions among his children, and thereby opening the door to the most unnatural of contests.

The two armies met within a few leagues of Kiev. The martial appear­ance and undaunted mien of the Poles struck terror into Ucheslav, who secretly fled from his tent. He had not gone far before his pusillanimity made him despicable even in his own eyes; he blushed and returned. Again was he seized with the same panic fear; he fled with all haste towards Polotsk, and his army, deprived of its natural head, disbanded. Kiev was invested; it surrendered to the authority of Iziaslav; Polotsk followed the example, but Ucheslav first contrived to escape. Boleslaw remained some time at Kiev, plunged in the dissipation to which his temperament and the loose morals of the inhabitants alike inclined him. He was not, however, wholly unmindful of his military fame, since he forsook the luxurious vices of that city for the subjugation of Przemyslaw, an ancient dependency of Poland. Probably he would at the same time have amplified his territories by other conquests, had he not been summoned into Hungary to succour, as before related, the son of the deceased Bela.

On the pacification of that kingdom he returned to Russia, to inflict vengeance on the brothers of Iziaslav, whom they had again expelled from Kiev. Though he was resolved to restore that prince, he was no less so to make him tributary to Poland. He speedily subjugated the whole of Volhinia, with the design of having a retreat in case fortune proved inconstant. Such precautions, however, were useless; in a decisive battle fought in the duchy of Kiev, he almost annihilated the forces of the reigning duke Vsevolod. Kiev was again invested; but as it was well supplied with provisions, and still better defended by the inhabitants, it long set his power at defiance. Perhaps Boleslaw, who was impetuous in everything, and with whom patience was an unknown word, would soon have raised the siege, and proceeded to less tedious conquests, had not a contagious fever suddenly broken out among the besieged, and driven the greater portion of them from the city. Those who remained were too few to dream of defending it any longer; they capitulated, and admitted the victor just as the fury of the plague had exhausted itself. Iziaslav was restored, and the other provinces of the dukes given to his children.

Boleslaw might have held them by the right of conquest, but he preferred leaving friends rather than enemies behind him; he preferred having these territories tributary to him, and dependent on him as sovereign paramount, rather than incorporating them at once with his dominions, and thereby subjecting himself and successors to the necessity of perpetually flying to their protection against the inevitable struggles of the Russians for freedom. Even this advantage he must either have perceived would be transient, or he must have had little sagacity. Ambition, however, seldom reasons; and Boleslaw, from his great success, might almost be justified in believing that for him was reserved a fortune peculiar to himself.

The generosity with which he behaved to the Kievans, the affability of his manner, and a mien truly royal soon rendered him a favourite with them. He plunged into dissipation with even more than his former ardour. Ere long his officers, then his meanest followers, so successfully imitated his example that, according to the statements of both Russian and Polish historians, all serious business seemed suspended, and pleasure was the only object of old and young, of Pole and Muscovite. Iziaslav, from gratitude no less than policy, endeavoured to make the residence of his benefactor as agreeable as he could. On one occasion, when desirous of a visit from Boleslaw, he offered to the king as many marks of gold as the royal horse should take steps from the palace of the king to that of the duke—a distance, we are told, consider­able enough to enrich the monarch.

The cruelty of the king is said to have sunk deep into the hearts of his subjects. There is more reason for believing that the excesses to which he abandoned himself after his return to Poland produced that effect. His character—outwardly at least—had changed; his industry, his love of justice, his regal qualities, had fled. His virtuous counsellors were dismissed, and none were retained near his person but such as consented to share his orgies. To increase the general discontent, impositions, arbitrary and enormous, were laid on an already burdened people.

Had conduct such as this been practised by almost any other sovereign of Poland, the popular indignation would have been appeased only by his depo­sition. But the son of Casimir, independently of his former merit and of his splendid deeds in war, required to be treated with greater indulgence. His reformation, not his ruin, was the prayer of his subjects. Such was the impetuosity of his disposition, and such the cruelties he had practised since his fatal residence at Kiev, that Stanislaus, bishop of Cracow, was the only man whom history mentions courageous enough to expostulate with him on his excesses and to urge the necessity of amendment. Mild and even affectionate as was the manner of this excellent prelate, the only effect which it had was to draw on him the persecution of the king. But persecution could not influence a man so conscious of his good purposes and so strong in his sense of duty. He returned to his exhortations; but finding that leniency had no good result, he excommunicated the royal delinquent. Rage took possession of the soul of Boleslaw.

Stanislaus had now recourse to one of the last bolts which the church held in the storehouse of her thunders: he placed an interdict on all the churches of Cracow—a measure at all times more violent than just, and in the present case not likely to have any other effect than to harden impenitence. Now no longer master of his fury, the king swore the destruction of the prelate, whose steps he caused to be watched by his creatures. Hearing one day that Stanislaus was to celebrate mass in a chapel situated on a hill beyond the Vistula, he took with him a few determined followers, and on reaching the extensive plain in the centre of which the hill lay he perceived from afar his destined victim ascending to the chapel. He was at the doors of the sacred edifice before the conclusion of the office; but, eager as was his thirst for instant vengeance, he forbore to interrupt the solemn act of worship in which Stanislaus and the attendant clergy were engaged. When all was over, he ordered some of his guards to enter and assassinate the prelate. They were restrained, say the chroniclers, by the hand of heaven; for in endeavouring to strike him with their swords, as he calmly stood before the altar, they were miraculously thrown backwards on the ground. They retreated from the place, but were again forced to return by Boleslaw. A second and a third time, we are told, was the miracle repeated, until the king, losing all patience, and fearless alike of divine and human punishment, entered the chapel himself, and with one blow of his ponderous weapon dashed out the brains of the churchman. If the miracle be fabulous, the tragedy at least was true.

Neither Boleslaw of Poland nor Henry of England could murder an eccle­siastic with impunity; and, enemies as we must all be to the extravagant pretensions of the church in these ages, we can scarcely censure the power which was formidable enough to avenge so dark a deed. Gregory VII, who then filled the chair of St. Peter, hurled his anathemas against the murderer, whom he deposed from the royal dignity, absolving his subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and at the same time placing an interdict on the whole kingdom. The proud soul of Boleslaw disdained submission to the church; he endeavoured to resist the execution of its mandates; but he speedily found that, in an age when the haughtiest and most powerful monarchs were made to bend before the spiritual throne, such resistance could only seal the. fate denounced against him. He was now regarded with horror by clergy and people. In daily fear of assassination by his own people, who universally avoided him, he fled into Hungary, accompanied by his son Mieczyslaw, in the hope of interesting in his behalf the reigning king of that country. But Wladyslaw, the brother of Geisa, who had succeeded Solomon, though he pitied the fugitive, had no wish to bring down on his own head the thunders of Gregory; and Boleslaw, after a short stay, was compelled to seek another asylum. His end is wrapped in great obscurity. One account says that he retired to a monastery in Carinthia, to expiate his crime by penance; another, that his senses forsook him, and that in one of his deranged fits he destroyed himself; a third, that he was torn to pieces by his own dogs when hunting; and a fourth, that, being compelled to occupy a mean situation, he preserved his incognito until the hour of death, when he astonished his confessor by the disclosure of his birth and crimes. Of these versions of the story it need scarcely be added that the first is the only one probable.

Had Boleslaw known how to conquer his own passions with as much ease as he conquered his enemies, he would have been one of the greatest princes that ever filled a throne. His character differed at different periods. Before his expedition to Russia he was the model of sovereigns; active, vigilant, just, prudent, liberal, the father of his subjects, the protector of the unfortunate, the conqueror and bestower of kingdoms. Afterwards his elevation of mind gave way to meanness, his valour to cowardice, his justice to tyranny, his boundless generosity to a pitiful selfishness, which valued no person or thing except in so much as its own gratification was concerned. At one time he was the pride, at another the disgrace, of human nature.  

WLADISLAW I, SURNAMED THE CARELESS (1082-1102 A.D.)

After the disappearance of Boleslaw and his son the state remained almost a year without a head; perhaps it would have remained so much longer but for the incursions of two neighbouring powers, the Russians and the Hungarians, the latter of whom reduced Cracow. In great consternation the nobles then raised to the throne Wladislaw, son of Casimir, and brother of the unfortunate Boleslaw.

The first act of Wladislaw was to despatch a deputation to Rome to pro­cure a reversal of the interdict. The churches were in consequence opened, and permission given that Poland should again be ranked among Christian nations; but the royal dignity was withheld. Wladislaw was allowed to reign as duke, but no prelate in Poland dared to anoint him king. It cannot but surprise us, in these times, that the chief of a great people should have incurred the humiliation of submitting to the papal pretensions; but perhaps Wladislaw expected the return of his brother, over whose fate a deep mystery was believed to hang, and had no very strong wish to assume a title which he might hereafter be compelled to resign. The example, however, was disastrous for the country; during more than two hundred years the regal title was disused; nor could the rulers of Poland, as dukes, either repress anarchy at home or command respect abroad so vigorously as had been done by the kings their predecessors.

But whether Boleslaw should return or not, Wladislaw, sensible that he had a powerful party in his interests, resolved to marry, and perpetuate his authority in his offspring. Judith, daughter of Andrew, king of Hungary, was selected as the duchess of Poland. As, however, in two years from her arrival this princess exhibited no signs of pregnancy, both Wladislaw and his clergy were apprehensive that she was cursed with barrenness, and no less so of the consequences which such a misfortune might produce. Recourse was had to the interference of heaven; prayers, alms, pilgrimages, were employed in vain, until the bishop of Cracow advised her to implore the intercession of St. Giles, who had done wonderful things in this way. Pilgrims with rich presents were accordingly sent to a monastery in Lower Languedoc, where that saint had spent and ended his days. Her prayers were heard; for who could doubt that the son which she afterwards brought forth was miraculously vouchsafed to her? Her child was christened Boleslaw; but the mother did not long live to enjoy her happiness.

Soon after his marriage Wladislaw surprised his subjects by the recall of his nephew, Mieczyslaw. By some this step was imputed to magnanimity, by others to policy. Certain it is that the young prince was very popular in Hungary, and the duke might have reason to fear for the prospects of his infant son should the interests of the exile be espoused by that country. However this be, he received Mieczyslaw with much apparent cordiality, and, in four years from his arrival, procured him the hand of Eudoxia, a Russian princess: but the prince became a greater idol in Poland than he had ever been in Hungary’, and the apprehensions of the duke naturally acquired three­fold strength. Things were in this state when news of the sudden death of Mieczyslaw was spread over the country, and caused a sincerer national grief than had ever been felt since the loss of Casimir. That his death had been violent was the general impression, and suspicion pointed to the duke as the murderer, merely because no other man was supposed to be so deeply interested in his removal. Wladislaw, however, was not a man of blood; on the contrary, he was remarkable beyond any prince of his age for the milder virtues of humanity; and some better foundation than suspicion must be found before impartial history will allow his memory to be stained with so dark a crime.

It was the misfortune of Wladislaw that, during the greater part of his reign, his dominions were exposed to the incursions of his fierce neighbours; and a still heavier one that he had neither the vigour nor the talents to repress them. The Russians were the first to revolt; the conquests made by Boleslaw the Bold were lost with greater rapidity than they had been gained. Before the duke could think of recovering them (if such, indeed, was ever his intention), the Prussians, a people more savage, though much less stupid, perhaps, than the ancient Muscovites, prepared to invade his dominions. With great reluctance he marched against them. The steady valour of his followers enabled him, or rather his general, Sieciech, to triumph over the undisciplined bravery of these pagan barbarians. But no sooner did the victors retire from the forests of Prussia than the natives again rose, massacred the garrisons which had been left in their fortresses, and joined in pursuit of the Poles. An obstinate and bloody battle ensued on the banks of the Netze, which arrested the advance of the enemy, but so weakened the invaders that they were compelled to return in search of fresh reinforcements.

Having gained these (chiefly Bohemian mercenaries), they again directed their march to the Netze, and assailed the strong fort of Nackel on the bank of that river; but on this occasion, we are told, they were seized with an unaccountable dread: they stood so much in fear of an irruption into their tents by the wild defenders of the fort that they could scarcely be persuaded to snatch a few moments of repose. Every bush, every tree, every rocky height to their alarmed imaginations seemed peopled with the terrific enemy; and one night, when it had covered the plain before them with these visionary beings, they left their tents to run the risk of an action. The besieged, in the meantime, penetrated to their tents, which they plundered and set on fire, and massacred all whom the light attracted to the place. The loss of the Poles in this most inglorious scene was so severe that they were compelled to retreat. To veil their cowardice, they averred that they had been driven back by supernatural means; that armies of spectres had arisen to oppose them. Absurd as was their plea, it was generally believed; the pagans were thought to be in league with the powers of darkness; so that in the following year, when Wladislaw returned to vindicate the honour of his arms, not a few wondered at his temerity. This time he was more successful; Prussia and Pomerania submitted, but with the intention of revolting whenever fortune presented them with the opportunity.

The wars of the duke with Bohemia were less decisive. Bretislaw, duke of that country, resolved to claim the rights which the emperor Henry, in a fit of displeasure with Wladislaw, had a few years before pretended to bestow on his father—rights involving even the possession of the Polish crown, which Henry, as lord paramount, claimed the power of transferring—invaded Silesia, and wrapped everything in flames. By the duke’s command reprisals were made in Moravia, a dependency of the Bohemian crown. The Pomeranians advanced to the assistance of Bretislaw and threw themselves into the strongest fortress in Silesia. They were reduced by Boleslaw, son of Wladislaw, who, though only in his tenth year, began to give indications of his future greatness. The army indeed was commanded by Sieciech, the Polish general, but the glory of the exploit belonged only to the prince. It is certain that from this time jealousy took possession of the general’s heart, and that he did all he could to injure the prince in the mind of Wladislaw, over whom his influence was without a rival—an influence which he exerted solely for his own advantage, and very often to the detriment of the people. Hence the dissensions which began to trouble the peace of the duke—-dissensions, too, in which another individual was destined to act not the least prominent part.

Before his marriage with the princess Judith the duke had a natural son named Sbigniew, whose depravity is represented as in the highest degree revolting, and who became a dreadful scourge to the kingdom. The youth, indeed, owed little gratitude to a parent by whom he had been grossly neglected. From a peasant’s hut, in a mean village, he had been sent to a mon­astery in Saxony, where it was intended he should assume the cowl. During his seclusion in the cloister the tyrannical conduct of Sieciech, to whom the duke abandoned the cares and the rewards of sovereignty, forced a considerable number of Poles to expatriate themselves and seek a more tranquil settlement in Bohemia. With the view of disquieting Poland, Bretislaw persuaded these emigrants to espouse the cause of Sbigniew, whom he drew from the monastery to procure for him the sovereignty of Silesia. The hope of crushing the haughty favourite, and of living in peace under the sway of one of their native princes, made them readily join the standard of the new chief.

At the head of these men, Sbigniew boldly advanced to the gates of Bres­lau, the governor of which he knew to be unfriendly to the favourite. As his avowed object was merely to effect the removal of an obnoxious minister, the city at length received him. Wladislaw advanced to support his authority: Sbigniew fled, collected an army of Prussians, and again took the field. The father conquered; the rebellious prince fell into the hands of Sieciech, his greatest enemy, by whom he was thrown into a dreary dungeon; but the advantage was counterbalanced by the incursions of the Bohemians, who ravaged Silesia, and whom the duke was too timid or too indolent to repress; and ere long the bishops procured the liberation of Sbigniew, whose influence they well saw would soon annihilate that of the detested favourite.

The youth, indeed, was more than pardoned; he was raised to the highest honours, and associated with his brother Boleslaw in the command of an army which was despatched against those inveterate rebels, the Pomeranians. The two brothers, however, disputed and effected nothing, when Wladislaw, alarmed at the prospect of the civil wars which might arise after his decease, took the fatal resolution of announcing the intended division of his states between his two sons: to Boleslaw he promised Silesia, the provinces of Cracow, Sendomir, and Sieradz, with the title of duke of Poland; to Sbigniew', Pomerania, with the palatinates of Leuszysa, Cujavia, and Masovia. This expedient, which he adopted in the belief that it would prevent all further contention between the princes, became the source of the worst troubles; the example, as we shall hereafter perceive, proved fatal to the prosperity and even threatened the existence of Poland.

For a time, indeed, the two youths were united. Both burned for the destruction of Sieciech, and each had need of the other to secure the common object. With the troops which they had obtained to oppose a pretended invasion of the Bohemians, they forced the feeble and infirm Wladislaw to exile his favourite to a distant fortress. But even this did not satisfy them; they besieged the place. Wladislaw, by means of a disguise, threw himself into it, resolved to share the fate of his favourite. His unnatural sons had the army and, what was more, the hearts of the Poles in their favour; nor would they lay down their arms until the odious minister was banished the country; they then submitted to their parent.

During the few remaining months of this feeble duke’s life Poland was governed by the two princes. Its frontiers were frequently a prey to the Pomeranians and Prussians; the valour of Boleslaw’ chastised their presumption. As for Sbigniew, his ambition indeed was boundless and his disposition restless; but his abilities were slender, and his weakness betrayed him into sit­uations from which he found it hard to escape. There is reason to believe he was meditating the means of weakening, if not of supplanting, his brother, when the death of the aged duke suspended for a moment his criminal designs.

Wladislaw deserved a better fate. He appears to have been a Christian and a patriot, a mild and benevolent monarch. That his weakness of mind rendered him the instrument of others, and his infirmity of body prevented him from long enduring the iron labours of war, can scarcely be attributed to him as a fault, however disastrous both proved to his subjects. Even for the fatal division of his dominions between his children—fatal more as an example to others than for the positive evil it produced in this case, though that evil was great—he had precedents enough, not only in the early history of Poland but in the neighbouring country of Russia.

BOLESLAW III, SURNAMED THE WRY-MOUTHED (1102-1139 A.D.)

Scarcely were the last rites paid to the deceased duke than Sbigniew began to show what the nation had to expect from his perversity, and from the imprudence which had left him any means of mischief. He forcibly seized on the ducal treasures at Plock, which, however, the authority of the archbishop of Gnesen compelled him to divide with his brother Boleslaw. He hoped, too, to usurp the provinces and title of that prince, whose assassination he had probably planned; and his rage may be conceived on learning that Boleslaw was about to marry a Russian princess, to perpetuate the hereditary dignity in the legitimate branch of the family. Instead of attending the nuptials, he proceeded into Bohemia, and at the head of some troops, furnished him by the duke of that country, he invaded Silesia. But his followers, who neither respected nor feared him, soon abandoned him and returned to their homes, before Boleslaw could march to the defence of that province. The latter despatched one of his generals to make reprisals in Moravia, and after the conclusion of his marriage feasts he himself hastened to humble the presumption of the Bohemians. But they fled before him, and left him nothing but the satisfaction of laying everything waste with fire and sword.

Though Sbigniew had thus signally failed, his disposition was too restless to suffer him to remain long at peace either with his country or his brother. In the Pomeranians, whose spirit was in many respects kindred to his own, he found ready instruments. They armed with the intention of retreating to their forests whenever a large Polish force appeared on their frontiers, and of emerging from their recesses on its departure. Boleslaw’, however, took a circuitous route, and fell by surprise on their town of Colberg. The place was valiantly defended, and the duke was obliged to raise the siege.

A second expedition was not more decisive: the barbarians fled before him. Soon he was constrained to make head a third time against not only them and his rebellious brother, but the Bohemians, the cause of whose exiled duke he had espoused. The latter retreated; their cowardice ashamed him, since it rendered his success too easy. He now marched into Pomerania and furiously assailed Belgard. The place was defended with great obstinacy; even women and children appeared on the walls to roll stones or pour boiling pitch on the heads of the Poles. The duke was undaunted; with a buckler in one hand and a battle-axe in the other, he hastened to one of the gates, passed over the ditch by means of long planks, and assailed the ponderous barrier with the fury of a demon. Boiling water, pitch, stones, missiles, fell on him in vain : he forced the door, admitted his soldiers, and with them made a terrible slaughter of the people, sparing neither age nor sex, and desisting only from the carnage when their hands were tired with the murderous work. No people in Europe, not even excepting the Russians, have shown themselves so vindictive in war as the Poles. The fall of this town was followed by that of four others no less considerable, and by the submission of the whole country.

In this expedition Boleslaw exhibited another proof of his fearless intrepidity. He had been invited to pass a few days at the house of a noble in the country, to be present at the consecration of a new church. Whilst there he set out early one morning for the chase, accompanied by eighty horse. He was suddenly enveloped by three thousand Pomeranians. He tranquilly drew his sabre, and, followed by his heroic little band, speedily fought his way through the dense mass which encompassed him. This was not all: disdaining to flee, he turned round on the enemy and again passed through them. His followers were now reduced to five; yet he was foolhardy enough to plunge a third time into the middle of the Pomeranians. This time, however, he was well-nigh paying dear for his temerity: his horse was killed; he fought on foot, and was on the point of falling, when one of his officers arrived with thirty horse, and extricated him from his desperate situation. Is this history, or romance ?

Sbigniew, disconcerted at the success of his brother, now sued for pardon through the duke of Kiev, father-in-law of Boleslaw. He readily procured it on engaging to have no other interests, no other friends or enemies than those of his brother. Yet at this very moment he was in league with the Bohemians to harass the frontiers of Poland. He had scarcely reached his own territories when, on Boleslaw’s requesting the aid of his troops, he refused it with expressions of insult and defiance; he knew that both Bohemia and Pomerania were arming in his cause. The patience of Boleslaw was worn out. With a considerable body of auxiliaries from Hungary and Kiev he invaded the territories of his brother, whose strongest places he reduced with rapidity; all were ready to forsake the iron yoke of a capricious, sanguinary, and cowardly tyrant. Sbigniew implored the protection of the bishop of Cracow, and by the influence of that prelate obtained peace, but with the sacrifice of all his possessions except Masovia. He was too restless, however, to remain long quiet; so that, in the following year, an assembly of nobles was convoked to deliberate on the best means of dealing with one who violated the most sol­emn oaths with impunity. It was resolved that he should be deprived of Masovia, and forever banished from Poland.

At this time Boleslaw was engaged in a serious war not only with the Bohemians but with Henry V, emperor of Germany, who espoused their interests. He was victorious; but, like the enemy, having occasion to recruit his forces, he abandoned the field. Hearing that the town of Wollin in Pomerania had revolted, he marched to reduce it. He had invested the place, when he was suddenly assailed in his rear by a troop of the natives, whom he soon put to flight, several prisoners remaining in his hands. One of these refused to raise the visor of his helmet; it was forcibly unlaced, and then was discovered Sbigniew! A council of war was assembled, and the traitor was condemned to death; but he was merely driven from the country by Boleslaw, who warned him, however, that his next delinquency—nay, his next appearance in Poland—should be visited with the last punishment. But Gnievomir, one of the most powerful Pomeranian chiefs, who had some time before embraced Christianity, had sworn fealty to Boleslaw, and had now both abjured his new religion and joined the party of Sbigniew, was not so fortunate as that outlaw; he was hewn to pieces in presence of the Polish army—a barbarous act, but one which had for a time a salutary effect on the fierce pagans.

In the war which followed with the imperialists, who were always ready to harass a power which refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the empire, which they hated and dreaded at the same time, nothing is more deserving of remembrance than the heroic defence made by the city of Glogau against the power of Henry. The women and children shared in the toils and the glory of the men. The emperor was often driven from the walls, his works demolished, the breaches repaired; but he as often returned, and vowed he would never leave the place until it fell into his power. At length both sides agreed to a suspension of hostilities, on the condition that if Boleslaw did not relieve the place within five days it should be surrendered to Henry, to whom hostages were delivered.

The Polish duke was not far distant; but he was waiting for the arrival of his reinforcements from Russia and Hungary, without whose aid he durst not attack the combined force of the empire; he exhorted the inhabitants to hold out at the expiration of the period limited, assuring them that he would hang them if they surrendered. The time expired; the citizens refused to fulfil their engagements. The indignant Henry moved his legions to the walls, placing in front the hostages he held. Not even the sentiments of nature affected them so powerfully as their hatred of the German yoke and their apprehensions of Boleslaw; they threw their missiles, beheld with indifference the deaths of their children transfixed by their own hands, and again forced the imperialists to retire from the walls. Boleslaw now approached; he enclosed the Germans between himself and the ramparts, and held them as much besieged in the plain as were his subjects in the city. For several succeeding days his cavalry harassed them in their intrenchments, but no general engagement took place.

Irritated at the delay, he had then recourse to a diabolical expedient: he procured the assassination of the Bohemian chief for whose cause Henry had armed, and in the very tent of that emperor. The Bohemians, as he had foreseen, now insisted on returning to their homes. Henry, weakened by their desertion, slowly retreated; the Poles pursued until both armies arrived on the vast plain before Breslau, where the emperor risked a battle. It was stoutly contested; but in the end the Germans gave way, and the Poles committed a horrible carnage on such as were unable to flee. Peace was soon after made between the emperor and duke; the latter, who was a widower, receiving the hand of Adelaide, and his son Wladislaw that of Christina (or Agnes), the one sister, the other daughter, of Henry.

During the following four years Boleslaw was perpetually engaged in war, either with the Bohemians or the Pomeranians, or, as was more frequently the case, with both at the same time. His own ambition was as often the cause of these wars as the restlessness of the enemy. He appears, indeed, to have been so far elated with his successes as to adopt a haughty, domineering tone towards his neighbours—a tone to which they were never willing to submit. Yet he had many great traits of character; he often behaved nobly to the van­quished Bohemian duke; and he even so far mastered his aversion as to recall his exiled brother, who never ceased either to importune for his return or to plot against his peace. 

Sbigniew made a triumphal entry into Poland—the very reverse of one that became a pardoned criminal. Every man who considered his ungrateful character, his insolence, his incorrigible depravity, and the irascible disposition of the duke, foresaw the fatal termination of his career. In a few short months Boleslaw yielded to the incessant arguments of his courtiers, and Sbigniew was assassinated.

During the succeeding years of his life Boleslaw endeavoured to stifle his remorse by such works as he hoped would propitiate the favour of heaven. Having quelled repeated insurrections in Pomerania, he undertook to convert it to the true faith. His efforts were to a certain extent successful, not, perhaps, so much through the preaching of his ecclesiastics, especially of Otto, bishop of Bamberg, as through the sums which he expended in disposing the minds of the rude but avaricious chiefs to the doctrines of Christianity. Many towns publicly embraced the new religion. For a time Stettin stood out; but the golden argument, or at least the promise of an exemption from imposts, brought about its conversion. Idols were in most places demolished, churches erected, priests ordained, and bishops consecrated.

Still the voice of inward conscience spoke out too loud to be silenced, and the unhappy duke had recourse to the usual expedient of the times. He built churches and monasteries, fasted, subjected himself to rigorous acts of penance, and visited, in the garb and with the staff of a pilgrim, the shrines of several saints. Not only did he thus honour the relics of St. Adalbert at Gnesen, and the tomb of St. Stephen of Hungary, but it is said he ventured on a long and painful pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Giles in Languedoc, the efficacy of whose intercession had been so signally experienced by his mother. On his way he relaxed not from the severe austerities he had imposed; with naked feet he daily stood in the churches, joining with the utmost fervency in the canonical hours, in the penitential psalms, and all other offices of devotion; at every chapel or oratory he turned aside to repeat his prayers or offer gifts; he relieved all the poor he approached, and wasted himself with vigils. On reaching the end of his journey he practised still greater austerities; during fifteen successive days he lay prostrate before the tomb of St. Giles. Such, indeed, was his abstinence, his contrition, his humility, that the monks were as edified by his visit as he himself. He returned safely to his country, light­ened, in his own mind at least, of no small burden of his guilt, and purified completely in the eyes of his subjects. If his reformation was in some respects mistaken, it was certainly sincere, and charity may hope availing.

But a mortification more bitter than any which religious penance could inflict awaited him. Until within four years of his death his arms were almost invariably successful. He had repeatedly discomfited the Bohemians and Pomeranians; he had humbled the pride of emperors; had twice dictated laws to Hungary, and gained signal triumphs over the Russians. It was now his turn to meet with a reverse of fortune. He was surprised and defeated on the banks of the Dniester by a vastly superior force of Hungarians and Russians: the Polish historians throw the blame on the palatine of Cracow, who retired from the field in the heat of the action. After a precipitate retreat, Boleslaw deliberated what vengeance should be inflicted on a man through whose cowardice his arms had been thus fatally dishonoured. His first impulse was to execute the recreant; but vengeance gave way to a disdainful pity. The palatine was left with life and liberty; but the reception of a hare-skin, a spindle, and distaff, from the hands of the duke, was an insult too intolerable to be borne, and he hanged himself.

One of the last acts of Boleslaw was to redeem as many of the prisoners made on this occasion as could be mustered. The blow fell heavily on his heart. The victor in forty-seven battles, the bravest prince of the age, could not review his disgrace at an age when his bodily strength had departed, and when no one was to be found on whom he could devolve the task of repairing it. After a year’s indisposition—more of the mind than of the body—in which he followed the fatal precedent of his father, by dividing his dominions among his sons, death put a period to his temporal sufferings. With him was buried the glory of Poland until the restoration of the monarchy. His character must be sufficiently known from his actions.

ARISTOCRATIC RULERS (1139-1295 A.D.)

The period from the death of Boleslaw the Wry-mouthed to the restoration of the monarchy is one of little interest; it exhibits nothing but the lamentable dissensions of the rival princes, and the progressive decay of a once powerful kingdom. By the will of the late duke, Poland was thus divided among his sons:

The provinces of Cracow, Leuszysa, Sieradz, Silesia, and Pomerania fell to the eldest, Wladislaw, who, to preserve something like the unity of power, was also invested with supreme authority over the rest. Those of Masovia, Cujavia, with the territories of Dobrezyn and Kulm, were assigned to the second brother, Boleslaw. Those of Gnesen, Posen, and Halitz were subjected to Mieczyslaw, the third brother. Those of Lublin and Sandomir were left to Henry, the fourth in order of birth. There remained a fifth and youngest son, Casimir, to whom nothing was bequeathed. When the late duke was asked the reason why this best beloved of his children was thus neglected, he is said to have replied by a homely proverb: “ The four-wheeled chariot must have a driver”—a reply prophetic of the future superiority of one whose talents were already beginning to open with remarkable promise. It is more probable that his tender years alone were the cause of his present exclusion; and that, as the provinces before enumerated were intended to be held not as hereditary, but as movable fiefs, reversible to the eldest son, as lord paramount, on the death of the possessors, he was secure of one in case such an event should happen during his life.

The fatal effects of this division were soon apparent. The younger princes were willing, indeed, to consider their elder brother as superior lord; but they disdained to yield him other than a feudal obedience, and denied his authority in their respective appanages. In an assembly at Kruswick, however, they were constrained not only to own themselves his vassals but to recognise his sovereignty, and leave to his sole decision the important questions of peace and war.

But such discordant materials could not be made to combine in one harmo­nious frame of government. Wladislaw naturally considered every appear­ance of authority independent of his will as affecting his rights of primogeniture. Ilis discontent was powerfully fomented by the arts of his German consort, who incessantly urged him to unite under his sceptre the dissevered portions of the monarchy. Her address prevailed. To veil his ambition under the cloak of justice and policy, he convoked an assembly of his nobles at Cracow. To them he exposed, with greater truth than eloquence, the evils which had been occasioned in former periods of the national history from the division of the sovereign power, and he urged the restoration of its union as the only measure capable of saving the country either from domestic treason or from foreign aggression. But they were not convinced by the arguments of one whose ambition they justly deemed superior to his patriotism; those arguments, indeed, they could not answer, but they modestly urged the sanctity of his late father’s will, and the obligation under which he lay of observing its provisions.

Disappointed in this quarter, he had recourse to more decisive measures. He first exacted a heavy contribution from each of the princes. His demand excited their astonishment, but they offered no resistance to it. With the money thus summarily acquired he not only raised troops, but hired Russian auxiliaries to aid him in his design of expelling his brethren from their appanages. Their territories were soon entered, and, as no defence had been organised, were soon reduced; and these unfortunate victims of fraternal violence fled to Posnania, the only place which still held for Henry. In vain did they appeal to his justice no less than his affection, in vain did they endeavour to bend the heart of the haughty Agnes, whom they well knew to be the chief author of their Woes. A deaf ear was offered to their supplications, and they were even given to understand that their banishment from the country would follow their expulsion from their possessions.

This arbitrary violence made a deep impression on the Poles. The arch­bishop of Gnesen espoused the cause of the deprived princes. Uszebor, pala­tine of Sandomir, raised troops in their behalf. The views of both were aided far beyond their expectation by a tragic incident. Count Peter, a nobleman of great riches and influence, who had been the confidential friend of Boleslaw the Wry-mouthed, and who lived in the court of Wladislaw, inveighed both in public and private against the measures of the duke. But as his opposition was confined to speaking, it did not wholly destroy his favour with the latter. One day, both being engaged in hunting, they alighted to take refreshment. As they afterwards reclined on the hard, cold ground (it was the winter season), Wladislaw observed: “ We are not so comfortably situated here, Peter, as thy wife now is, on a bed of down with her fat abbot Skrezcpiski!”. “No,” replied the other; “nor as yours in the arms of your page Dobiesz!”. Whether either intended more than as a jest is doubtful, but the count paid dear for his freedom. The incensed Agnes, to whom the duke communicated the repartee, contrived to vindicate herself in his eyes; but she vowed the destruction of the count. She had him seized at an entertainment, thrown into prison, and deprived both of his tongue and eyes.

The popular indignation now burst forth in every direction. Uszebor defeated the Russian auxiliaries; the Pomeranians poured their wild hordes into Great Poland; the pope excommunicated the princess, because through her he was disappointed of the aids he solicited against the infidels; and the same dreaded doom was hurled at the head of the duke by the archbishop of Gnesen, the staunch advocate of the exiled princes. Wladislaw himself was defeated, and forced to take refuge in Cracow. Thither he was pursued by his indignant subjects, who would probably have served him as he had done Count Peter, had he not precipitately abandoned both sceptre and consort and fled into Germany to implore the aid of his brother-in-law, the emperor Conrad. Cracow fell; Agnes became the captive of the princes whose ruin she had all but effected. Her mean supplications moved their contempt as much as her ambition and cruelty had provoked their hatred. She was, however, respectfully conducted over the frontiers of the duchy, and told to rejoin her kindred.

By the princes and nobles, Boleslaw, the eldest of the remaining brothers, was unanimously elected to the vacant dignity. The new duke had need of all his talents and courage—and he possessed both in no ordinary degree—to meet the difficulties of his situation. By confirming his brothers in their respective appanages, and even increasing their territories, he effectually gained their support; but he had to defend his rights against the whole force of the empire, which espoused the cause of the exiles. In a personal interview, indeed, he disarmed the hostility of Conrad, who was too honest to oppose a man whose conduct he could not fail to approve; but Frederick Barbarossa, the successor of that emperor, was less scrupulous, or more ambitious. A resolution of the diet having summoned the Polish duke to surrender his throne to Wladislaw, or acknowledge his country tributary to the empire, he prepared to defend his own dignity and the national independence.

Aided by his brothers, whose privileges he had so religiously respected, and by his subjects, whose welfare he had constantly endeavoured to promote, he feared not the result, though an overwhelming force of imperialists and Bohemians rapidly approached Silesia. Had he ventured, however, to measure arms with the formidable Barbarossa, neither the valour of his troops nor the goodness of his cause would have availed him much; but by hovering about the flanks of the enemy, by harassing them with repeated skirmishes, and, above all, by laying waste the country through which they marched, he constrained them to sue for peace. The conditions were that Wladislaw should have Silesia, and that Barbarossa should be furnished with three hundred Polish lances in his approaching expedition into Italy. The former died before he could take possession of the province; but through the interference of the latter it was divided among his three sons, who held it as a fief of Poland, and did homage for it to Duke Boleslaw.

The subsequent exploits of Boleslaw were less successful. In one ex­pedition, indeed, he reduced the Prussians, who, not content with revolting ever since the death of Boleslaw the Wry-mouthed, had abolished Christianity and returned to their ancient idolatry; but, in a second, his troops were drawn into a marshy country, were there surprised, and almost annihilated. This was a severe blow to Poland; among the number of the slain was Henry, the duke’s brother, whose provinces of Sandomir and Lublin now became the appanage of Casimir.

To add to the general consternation, the sons of Wladislaw demanded the inheritance of their father; the. whole nation, indeed, began to despise a ruler who had suffered himself to be so signally defeated by the barbarians. By a powerful faction of nobles Casimir was invited to wrest the sceptre from the hands which held it. Fortunately for Boleslaw his brother had the virtue to reject with indignation the alluring offer; and he himself, with his character­istic address, succeeded in pacifying the Silesian princes. His reverses, however, and the little consideration shown him by his subjects, sank deep into his heart and hastened his death. To his surviving son, Leszek, he left the duchies of Masovia and Cujavia; but, in conformity with the order of settlement, the government of Poland devolved on Mieczyslaw (1174).

This prince, from his outward gravity and his affectation of prudence, had been surnamed the Old; and the nation, on his accession, believed it had reason to hope a wise and happy administration. But appearances are proverbially deceitful, and gravity more so than any other. He had scarcely seized the reins of government before his natural character, which it had been his policy to cover, unfolded itself to the universal dismay of his people. His cruelty, his avarice, his distrust, his tyranny made him the object alike of their fear and hatred. They were beset with spies; were dragged before his inexorable tribunal for fancied offences; were oppressed by unheard-of imposts, which were collected with unsparing vigour; and were subjected to sanguinary laws emanating from his caprice alone. Confiscation, imprisonment, and death were the instruments of his government.

The people groaned; the nobles, whose privileges had increased inversely with the decline of the monarchy, and whose pride made them impatient of a superior, openly murmured; the clergy execrated one whose exactions weighed even on them. At length the archbishop of Cracow, after vainly endeavouring to effect his reformation, and employing, like the prophet of old, a striking parable to convict him of his injustice from his own lips, joined a conspiracy formed against him. Cracow was the first to throw off its allegiance; the example was followed by the greater part of the. kingdom, and with such rapidity that before he could dream of defending his rights his brother Casimir was proclaimed duke of Poland (1178 a.d.).

EXTINCTION OF THE DYNASTY OF THE PIASTS

Casimir was the youngest brother of Boleslaw IV. It was not ambition that induced him to take possession of the throne from which Mieczyslaw was ejected, for, on the contrary, he even requested to be allowed to resign it to him, pledging himself to the voyavods for his better conduct. This offer was, however, refused, the Poles not being willing to trust themselves to their former tyrant, and the only fruit of the negotiation was the proof of Casimir’s mild and generous disposition.

He was engaged in various wars with the Russians, though not of suffi­cient consequence to Poland to merit detail; in all which, however, he rendered himself conspicuous for clemency and benevolenee, “smoothing the rugged brow” of war, and binding up the wounds which his sword had made.

The following anecdote is given as an admirable illustration of the mildness and benevolence of this amiable prince: “He was one day at play and won all the money of one of his nobility, who, incensed at his ill fortune, suddenly struck the prince a blow on the ear, in the heat of his uncontrolled passion. He fled immediately from justice, but, being pursued and overtaken, was condemned to lose his head. The generous Casimir determined otherwise. ‘I am not surprised,’ said he, ‘at the gentleman’s conduct; for, not having it in his power to revenge himself on fortune, no wonder he should attack her favourite in me.’ After these generous words he revoked the sentence, returned the nobleman his money, and declared that he alone was faulty, as he encouraged, by his example, a pernicious practice that might terminate in the ruin of hundreds of the people.”

This prince was indeed a father to his subjects: he viewed the oppression of the nobles over the serfs with an eye of sorrow; and though it was not in his power to change the constitution of Polish society by emancipating them and making them perfectly independent, what he could do, he did, in protecting them by strict laws from wanton cruelty. He has left behind him the character of the most amiable monarch that ever swayed the Polish sceptre. He had faults, but they were almost lost in the number of his noble qualities and his virtues. He was a lover of peace, and the friend of the people.

His manners were of the most conciliating kind,

And e’en his failings loan’d to virtue’s side.

His clemency was not the result of fear, nor his bounty the ostentation of pride. Like Aristides, he never swerved from duty and equity, and, unlike him, he tempered right with mercy; he has therefore even one claim more than the Athenian to that rare and enviable appellation which his subjects bestowed on him—the Just.

After several succeeding reigns in which nothing occurred worthy to be remembered, we find Wladislaw III on the throne in 1306. He had been deposed, but after five years he was reinstated in his authority. The regal title had been revived by one of the preceding princes in the year 1296, but the Poles were determined not to bestow it on Wladislaw until he had rendered himself deserving of it by reforming his mind and character as a prince.

The first opportunity he had of meriting well of his country was in its defence against new enemies and invaders—no less than the Teutonic knights. This military order had obtained a settlement in Prussia, and were continually infesting the northern frontier. The Germans who accompanied Frederick Barbarossa, emperor of Germany, to the crusades in 1188, being left by his death without a commander, were at length formed by Henry, king of Jerusalem, into a religious and martial order, called the knights of St. George. This title was afterwards changed to knights of St. Mary. They were required to be of noble parentage, to defend the Christian religion, and promulgate it to the utmost extent of their power. In the year 1191 Pope Celestine III granted them a bull addressed to them under the title of the Teutonic knights of the Hospital of St. Mary the Virgin. In the beginning of the thirteenth century Kulm, in Prussia, was allotted to them, under the condition that they should turn their arms only against their pagan neighbours. This injunction, however, was soon set at naught; after conquering all Polish Prussia (as it is now called) and building Marienburg, they invaded the Polish terri­tory, and overran the greater part of Pomerania.

Wladislaw, when they had been denounced by the pope as out of the pale and protection of the church, soon checked their inroads. After several battles, in which the Poles were always superior, a great and last effort was made, but still fortune declared against the Teutonic, knights; for, according to the Polish historians, four thousand of them were left dead on the field, besides thirty thousand auxiliaries, either slain or taken captive. Wladislaw had it now in his power to exterminate the order; but, at the sacrifice of policy, he contented himself with taking possession of his own territory, and binding them down by a treaty.

Having thus fought the battles of his country, he returned, to obtain the crown which his subjects could no longer refuse. However, to give the ceremony the sanction of religion, Wladislaw sent an ambassador to Rome, to persuade the pope, more perhaps by a liberal sum of money than words, to ratify it with his authority. This confirmation being obtained, the ceremony of coronation was performed with great pomp in the cathedral at Cracow. Death, however, shortly transferred the diadem from his head to that of his son, Casimir, in the year 1333, to whom he gave these instructions on his death-bed: “If you have any regard for your honour or your reputation, take care to yield nothing to the knights of the Teutonic order and the marquis of Brandenburg. Resolve to bury yourself under the ruins of your throne rather than abandon to them the portion of your heritage which they possess, and for which you are responsible to your people and your children. Do not leave your successors such an example of cowardice, which would be sufficient to tarnish all your virtues and the splendour of the finest reign. Punish the traitors; and, happier than your father, drive them from a kingdom where pity opened an asylum for them, for they are stained with the blackest ingratitude”.

CASIMIR (III) THE GREAT (1333-1370 A.D.)

Notwithstanding the dying injunctions of his father, Casimir made no attempts to expel the Teutonic knights from his dominions. The reason doubtless was his inability to carry on the war with any prospect of success. His situation was not without its difficulties: the Bohemian king still aspired to the Polish throne; two of his own palatines were in the interests of that monarch; and the internal state of the kingdom, the nullity of the laws, the insecurity of property and persons, were evils which loudly called for reparation. Peace with these enterprising monks was indispensable to the reforms he meditated; it was at length concluded through the mediation of the Hungarian king, but on conditions deeply mortifying to the nation. Cujavia and the territory of Dobrzyn were restored: but Casimir renounced for himself and successors Kulm, Michalow, and Pomerania. The clergy, the barons, the equestrian order, long refused to sanction so unexpected a concession; but the arguments of the king convinced them that no better terms could be procured, and they reluctantly concurred.

In his proposed reformation of abuses, Casimir first applied his attention to one which threatened to dissolve the frame of society. The highways were infested by numerous parties of robbers, chiefly disbanded soldiers, who plundered alike travellers and peasantry, and long defied punishment. Many of them were doubtless protected by certain nobles, whose interests in return they zealously espoused. They were now pursued to their last hiding-places, were brought before the tribunals of the country, and punished with inflexible severity. The scaffolds of Cracow and the provincial towns continually smoked with the blood of the guilty. His severity not only struck a salutary terror into the hearts of the lawless, but impressed the whole nation with a high idea of his vigour.

Casimir at length aspired to the noble ambition of becoming the legislator of his people. He found the laws barbarous, but so sanctioned by time and custom that their abrogation or improvement was a work of great delicacy.

Nor were the judges who administered them a less evil; their sentences were not according to equity, but capricious or venal; corruption had seized on all, from the princely palatine to the lowest link in the judicial chain. To frame a body of laws uniform in their character and of universal application, he convoked at Wisliza a diet of bishops, palatines, castellans, and other magistrates, and, in concert with the best informed of these, he digested a code which was thenceforth to be received as obligatory anil perpetual. It was comprised in two books, one for Little, the other for Great Poland. Their provisions were on the whole as good as could be expected in an age when feudality reigned undisputed, and when civil rights were little understood. They secured to the peasant, no less than to the nobles, the possession and the rights of property, and subjected both, in an equal manner, to the same penalties and tribunals. In other respects the distinction between the two orders was strongly marked. Hitherto the peasants had been adscripti gleba, slaves to their masters, who had power of life and death over them, and were not allowed to change owners. Servage was now abolished; every serf employed in cultivating the ground, or in colonisation, was declared entitled to the privileges of the peasant; but the peasants were still chained by a personal, though not a territorial, dependence. Of this order there were two descriptions: those who, as serfs previously, could do nothing without their master’s permission; and those who, as born free or made so, could offer their industry to whatever master they pleased. Yet even one of the latter class—free as he would be thought—who, by his agreement with his feudal superior, could migrate to another estate with or without that superior’s permission, was affected by the system. If he sued another at the law, and sentence was pronounced in his favour, his lord shared the compensation awarded. The murderer of a peasant paid ten marks; five went to the lord, the other five to the family of the deceased. The reason of these regulations, apparently so arbitrary, was, that as the time of the peasant, so long as he remained on his lord’s estate, belonged to that lord, so any injury inflicted on him which interfered with his labour, or diminished in anyway the profits of his industry, must be felt by the other; by his death he left his family chargeable to the owner of the estate; the lord then, as he participated in the injury, had a claim to share also the compensation. The peasants not free—those who could not migrate as they pleased, and whose families were subject to the same dependence—were yet entitled to a share of the profits arising from their industry, and with these were qualified to purchase their freedom. On their decease their effects devolved, not as heretofore to their lords, but to their surviving kindred. If ill-treated themselves, or if their wives and daughters were persecuted by their masters, they could remove as free peasants to another estate; the freed peasant could even aspire to the dignity of a noble. Money, or long service in the martial retinue of the great barons, or success in war, or royal favour, could procure that distinction. The importance of the several. orders was carefully graduated by the code under consideration. The murder of a free peasant was redeemed by ten marks; of a peasant recently ennobled, or, in more correct language, recently admitted to the privileges of a gentleman, fifteen marks; of a common noble (Anglice, gentleman), thirty marks; of a baron or count, sixty marks. These distinctions in time gradually disappeared; all were merged in the common designation of noble; every noble was thenceforth equal; but the more the order was confounded in itself, the more it laboured to deepen the line of demarcation between itself and the inferior order of peasants. In the follow­ing reigns, indeed, the salutary regulations made in favour of the latter by this prince were disregarded. The nobles again assumed over them a des­potic authority, and arrogated to themselves a jurisdiction which rightly belonged to the local magistrates. Until within a very modern period, this judicial vassalage subsisted in Poland. The lord of the soil held his court for the trial of his peasantry as confidently as any judge in the realm; in capital cases, however, the culprit lay within the jurisdiction of the palatinal courts. The whole life of this king was a long chain of treaties; he wanted and he was obliged to have peace with all hostile powers before he could start the great work which he had made the aim of his life. He did not, however, conclude peace in a frivolous and light way at any price; on the contrary, he wisely hesitated as long as it was possible before he gave his last word, for he found it difficult to ask the country to make a sacrifice before it had comprehended that it would do so for its own benefit. The treaty of Kalish in 1343, and that of Bohemia a little later, left his hands free so that he could begin his great task of reconstructing the internal organisation of his kingdom. The country he had inherited from his father was no realm, but an incoherent complexity of provinces dependent upon the personality of the king. For this country to become a realm a soul had to be infused into it, and the soul of states is law. In place of the crumbling exercise of the tottering laws of usage he put the written constitutional laws. He touched, however, these time-honoured institutions with no violent hand; success never crowns such a proceeding; on the contrary, he allowed space for development, and towards the end of his life assembled all the state factors and explained to them the meaning of his actions and endeavours; he expresses the tendency of his whole life and the aim of the next future in the following words: “The same people under one sovereign ought not to enjoy various rights, otherwise it is similar to that monster with several heads. It is therefore useful for the state if it proceeds according to one law, no matter in what province.” Casimir was, however, far from disguising from himself the fact that the equality of all the elements forming the state is suitable for nomads—for the patriarchal conditions of the nations—but could never be practised in a cultured state such as Casimir was endeavouring to make Poland. And even if he had wished it, the community had reached such a point of development from which it could indeed advance but not go backwards. And here we discover in Casimir an inclination to imitate his German, Bohemian, and Hungarian neighbours in the feudal system. He forces the Masovian line of his house to become his liegemen, enters for some time with Wladislaw the White into a similar relationship, and on his death-bed bequeaths a great part of northern Poland to his grandson Casimir of Stettin, as a feudal tenure. One perceives his endeavours to have princes of vassalage. His inclination towards the feudal system appears still more in his fostering of the nobility, to whom he voluntarily accorded an influence over public affairs. The more the idea of property vanishes, the more the principle of noble birth prevails, and the king does not hesitate to countenance it and bestows coats-of-arms upon those families who did not possess them. He encourages the abolition of, the old-established system of equality existing among the nobles in favour of a new organisation which made the Polish nobility more similar to the feudal; in a word, he recognises the growing power of the nobility and allows it full development. He is, however, also endeavouring to create and foster for himself and the state a counterweight. This and his care for the national wealth were the cause of the king’s inexhaustible endeavours in the development of the towns and in the increase of settlements with German rights. In this respect the reign of Casimir is especially epoch-making.

German colonisation had in his time invaded the greatest part of the Polish realm as far as the district on the other side of the Vistula, and one of the first acts of Casimir was to endow the most important towns in the newly acquired south Russian provinces with German right to transplant German settlers into the thinly populated districts. Not without reason do the patriotic Polish authors of this period complain that the reign of Casimir was in so far destructive to the national spirit, for through his endeavours Germanism came so much to the front that it pervaded every phase of life of the community. German was spoken in the courts of justice, and the German language was employed in business and commerce; nay, it was preached even in the churches of the most important towns, and German expressions penetrated into the Polish language. It is a fact almost unheard of in the history of the world that without any previous conquest one nationality grew through another to such an extent that even now, after centuries, traces are still easily recognised. If, however, the national spirit suffered by it, the na­tional wealth and the welfare of the inhabitants gained. Casimir had received from his father an impoverished land full of tears, and he left it at his death in such a state of bloom and welfare that it could vie with the most prosperous country of the time. Everywhere it was the result of German settlement where German right was guaranteed. Where German right was granted to a town or a borough, the place after a short time became prosperous, enlarged, and enriched. In order to establish a firm foundation for the future, the king ordered the German right to be put in the form of a code as the national laws; he also established courts of appeal for those laws, and thus clearly showed his desire to nationalise those useful institutions which had assumed an indestructible extent during his reign, and to guarantee their co­existence together with national institutions.

As from his union with the princess Anne of Lithuania Casimir had only a daughter,¹ his attention was anxiously directed towards the choice of a successor. Though several princes remained of the house of Piast, he did not consider any one of them sufficiently powerful either to repress the insurrectionary disposition of his nobles, or to make head against the military monks, whose ambition he so justly dreaded. He proposed Louis, king of Hungary, the son of his sister, and therefore a Piast, to the diet he had convoked at Cracow. He thus recognised in that body a right to which they had never dared to make a claim. They felt their importance, and resolved to avail themselves of it. He encountered great opposition. One party would have him to nominate the duke of Masovia; another, the duke of Oppelen; both reproached him for his partiality to a foreigner, in prejudice of the male descendants of his house. Fortunately for his views, they opposed each other with so much animosity that, in the end, both adopted his proposition as a means of avoiding the shame of a defeat. But though they thus united in the election of Louis, they resolved to draw their own advantage from it. The sceptre of Casimir, though never swayed more rigorously than justice permitted, they felt to be one of iron, after the long impunity they had enjoyed during two centuries. Some years afterwards they sent deputies to Breda, to inform Louis that, though in compliance with the wishes of their king they had concurred in his election, they should yet consider themselves free to make choice of any other prince if he refused them certain concessions. He was not to invest Hungarians or any other foreigners with the offices of the state; he was to declare the Polish equestrian order exempt from contributions, to confirm them in their utmost privileges, and even to support their retinues in his warlike expeditions. The Hungarian king had the weakness to comply with these and other demands, and thereby to forge chains for his successors. Hence the origin of the pacta conventa, or the covenants between the nobles and the candidate they proposed to elect—covenants exclusively framed for their own benefit, and for the detriment alike of king and peasantry.

Casimir was a man of peace. War he desired not, yet he never shunned it when it was forced upon him, or when the voice of his nobles demanded it. Both he and they, perhaps, feared the knights too much to engage with them; but he triumphed over the Silesians (now subject to the Bohemians), the Russians, the Lithuanians, and Tatars; he subdued Volhinia and Podolia, with the palatinates of Brescia and Beltz. These successes, with the alliance of two princes so powerful as Louis and the emperor, rendered him formidable to his neighbours, and deterred his enemies of Pomerania from their cruel aggressions.

But the great qualities of this prince were sullied by some excesses. He was much addicted to drunkenness, and immoderately so to women. Long before his father’s death he had dishonoured the daughter of an Hungarian noble, and fled from the vengeance of her friends. To none of his wives (and he had three) did he dream of fidelity. After the death of the princess Anne, he married Adelaide, a German princess; but her jealousy, and still more her reproaches, incensed him so much that he exiled her to a fortress. His career of intemperance was thenceforth the more headstrong. He soon became enamoured of a Bohemian lady, whom all his arts, however, failed to seduce, and who declared she would yield only to marriage. (How his engagement with Adelaide was to be set aside, we are not informed; perhaps he had the art to convince her that he had obtained a divorce.) He feigned to comply; but instead of the bishop of Cracow, whom she wished to perform the ceremony, and whose authority she conceived would sanction the act, he substituted a monk (the abbot of Tynieck), who assumed the pontifical robes, and thus became a participator in the most detestable of deceptions. Her he soon discarded, to make way for a Jewess named Esther, by whom he had two sons. During this concubine’s favour Poland was the paradise of the Israelites; the privileges, indeed, which at her entreaties he granted to them, remained in force long after his reign, and, no doubt, was the cause why they have continued for so many ages to regard this kingdom with peculiar affection, and to select it as their chief residence. After Esther, or perhaps contemporary with her, we find a multitude of favourites. His licentiousness knew no bounds; he established a regular seraglio, which he filled with frail beauties. The bishops murmured, but dared not openly reproach him; the pope expostulated, but in vain. A priest of Cracow at length had the cour­age to reprove him; but as he was quickly thrown into the Vistula, his fate deterred others from imitating his temerity. Age effected what reason and religion had attempted in vain. After his union with a third wife (a Piast), he became less notorious for his amours; and as the fire of lust expired before the chilling influence of age, his subjects had the consolation of finding that their wives, sisters, and daughters were safe from pollution.

Casimir’s death was occasioned by a fall from his horse while hunting. The accident might not have been fatal, had he not turned a deaf ear to the advice of his physicians. To this day his memory is cherished by his country, which justly regards him as the greatest prince of a great line. Of his genius, his patriotism, his love of justice, his success in improving the condition of his people, his acts are the best comment; but his splendid qualities must not blind us to his vices—vices which not only sully the lustre of his character, but must have had a pernicious influence on the minds of a people with whom the obligations of religion and morality were not in that age usually strong.

During the reign of this last male prince of the house of Piast, the Flagellants, a numerous sect of enthusiasts, so called from the rigour of their self-inflictions, entered Poland from Hungary; they went naked to the waist, wore crosses on their lower garments, and entered every town two by two, with caps descending to their eyes, and exhibiting on their breasts and backs the wounds caused by their merciless whippings. Twice a day, and once during the night, did they inflict upon themselves this horrible penance—sometimes in the churches, sometimes in the public cemeteries, vociferating the whole time, “Mercy!” After which, joining in a song alluding to our Saviour’s passion, they would suddenly throw themselves on the ground, regardless of stones, flint, or mud ; one of their lay preachers would then pass from one to another, saying, “ God forgives thee thy sins!” Thirty days’ continued suffering they considered a full atonement for sin; hence they dispensed with the sacraments, which they taught were abrogated, grace being obtained and guilt removed by this penance alone. They took in a strange sense that most Christian of truths, “without shedding of blood there can be no remission.” The success of these madmen in making proselytes would appear incredible, had we not instances enough in our times how easily heresy and fanaticism—and those, too, of the worst kind—may be propagated among the vulgar. Hungary, Poland, Germany, Italy, France, and even England, were overrun by the Flagellants. They were long treated with respect even by those who considered them as dis­playing more zeal than knowledge; but, in the end, it was found that their vices were superior to both. Men and women roamed together from kingdom to kingdom; and while thus publicly enduring so severe a discipline, made ample amends for it in secret; they lived in the worst species of fornication. Until their knavery was discovered, and they were scouted by the very populace, pope and prince vainly endeavoured to repress them.

                                  LOUIS (1370-1382 A.D.)

On the death of Casimir, there being no immediate heirs, his sister’s son, Louis, king of Hungary, was called to the Polish throne.

As Louis was the sovereign of another kingdom, the Polish nobles, appre­hending that their interests would be compromised to those of his other subjects, made him agree to certain stipulations as a safeguard before they would allow him to take possession of the insignia of authority. There had always been some form of this kind on the accession of the preceding kings, but it was merely a formal coronation oath, binding the new monarch to preserve the interests of his people. In the present case it became something more than a mere matter of form, being made in fact a “corner-stone” of the Polish constitution. This bond between the king and his subjects was called the Pacta Conventa, and—subject to the alterations made by the diets—has continued to be administered to the monarchs on oath ever since, and is the Magna Charta of Poland. The conditions required of Louis were as follows: He was obliged to resign all right to most of the extensive domains annexed before to the. crown, and make them the benefices of his officers or starostas, whom he could not remove without consulting the senate, or assembly of nobles. He was not to exact any personal service, to impose any taxes, or wage war without their consent. Nor was he to interfere with the authority of the lords over their serfs. The power of the king was thus limited to little, more than that of a guardian of the laws.

Louis agreed to these demands, but his conduct afterwards proved that it was not with an intention of observing them. He fixed his residence entirely in Hungary, and, regardless of the complaints of the Poles, filled all the principal offices with Hungarians. Great disturbances ensued, and the neighbours of Poland, taking advantage of the discord, made frequent incursions. Happily, however, death removed the author of these troubles after he had reigned twelve years, and, having no male heirs, Louis terminated the dynasty of the Piasts in the year 1382.

In this first period were laid the foundations of all the most important Polish institutions, its laws, diets, orders, and not only political establishments, but those of learning also.

The laws, we have seen, were formed into a regular code by Casimir; Wladislaw first assembled his nobles in a diet in the year 1331, and his successor, Casimir, followed his example. These convocations were not merely assemblies of one order, but were formed by the kings on the very principle of balance of power, between the aristocracy, consisting of the influential nobles, and the numerous barons who possessed the title of noblemen, but, in fact, constituted a separate interest. This is a distinction of no small importance; all the army, at least those who fought on horseback, were styled nobles, for miles and nobilis were synonymous.

The commercial classes were not admitted to any great privileges, since at that time they consisted chiefly of foreigners and Jews. The latter people, indeed, had obtained possession of most of the ready money in Poland, as well as elsewhere. Boleslaw II granted them a charter in 1264, and the same protection was extended to them by Casimir the Great. It is said that this prince was interested in their favour by Esther, a young Jewess, of whom he was enamoured. Cracow was in his time one of the Hanse towns in alliance with forty other cities in Europe. The exchange, still standing, impresses us with a high idea of the commerce of this age, thus intrusted to the Jews. So sedulously did this industrious people avail themselves of their advantages, that at the marriage of Casimir’s granddaughter, Elizabeth, Wierzynck, a Jewish merchant of Cracow, requested the honour of being allowed to make the young bride a marriage present of 100,000 florins of gold, an immense sum at that time, and equal to her dowry from her grandfather.

With regard to the learning of this period, we first meet with the monkish historian, Gallus, who wrote between the years 1110 and 1135. His history commences in 825, and extends to 1118. According to the custom of his order, he wrote in bad Latin verse. He was followed by Matthew Cholewa, bishop of Cracow, and Vincent Kadlubek. This latter writer was also diocesan of the same see, and was born about the year 1160. He wrote in the time of Casimir the Just, and in his history attempts to penetrate the mysteries of the Polish origin. But the circumstance which most conduced to the promotion of learning in Poland was the foundation of the University of Cracow, by Casimir the Great, in 1347. It was regulated in imitation of that of Paris, and such eminence had its professors attained in a short time that Pope Urban V estimated it, in 1364, as equal to any of the universities of Europe.

CHAPTER II.

ZENITH AND DECLINE

1382-1696 a.d