Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/36

24 were driven out of Warsaw and in a short time Wilna, the capital of Lithuania, was also liberated. With varying success the contest was continued amidst victory, defeat, and treachery, until Kosciusko—on the sudden arrival of Suvorow on the battlefield—lost the battle almost won at Maciejowice, and, severely wounded, fell into the hands of the Russians. Suvorow carried Praga by assault, and after causing 20,000 men to be cut down on the 8th of November, entered Warsaw. In 1795 came the third and last partition. There was no longer any kingdom of Poland. But there was still a Polish people—a people who had heroic, chivalrous, brilliant, useless qualities enough, but very few of the useful, civic virtues. It was an enthusiastic and unpractical people, noble-minded and untrustworthy, pomp-loving and volatile, vivacious and thoughtless, a people who despised severe and fatiguing labour, and loved all intense and delicate, sensuous and intellectual enjoyments, but, above all, who worshipped independence to the point of insanity, freedom to the extent of the liberum veto, and who even now, when they had lost independence and freedom, had remained faithful to their old love.

It was a credulous and confiding martial people, always ready to risk their lives upon a promise, which no one thought of keeping.

Consider the relation of this people to Napoleon, on whom, after the last partition of the country, they naturally fixed their hopes. Only two years after the partition, General Dombrowski agreed with Bonaparte that the Polish legions (in national uniform, but under French leaders) should fight in Italy with the soldiers of the republic. The Poles received many a blow for the French in Lombardy in 1797 and in the Italian campaign of 1798-99. The first legion was almost annihilated under Dombrowski in the battles of Trebbia and Novi; the second under Wielhorski entered Mantua, which the Austrians were besieging; when the French were compelled to capitulate they bound themselves to surrender these deserters—that is, the Poles—to their masters. Nevertheless the Poles raised new legions,