Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/325

 Rh representative of the living forces of the Poland of the sixteenth century, which was, and still remains—I believe I may say it without offence—the highest historical expression of the Slav race the world has ever seen, a country already sapped by anarchy, but capable, materially speaking, as he was to prove, of a mighty and formidable effort, and prepared, morally speaking, for the noblest conquests of the modern intellect; a land of sublime warriors and inspired poets, of fluent political writers and orators, whose eloquence, sacred or profane, reaches the very heights; where Frycz Modrzewski, with his programme of social reform, claiming universal rights for all, outstripped all the writers of his day, where Kochanowski's grace and feeling made him Ronsard's worthy compeer, and where Skarga was the forerunner of Bossuet.

Foreign and uncouth as were his extraction and appearance, Batory brought all this about by the grace of his own genius. And this being so, he prepared the struggle with Moscow—for Livonia, in the first place, and after that for the very existence of Poland. He saw, in fact, that Poland as he realized her, civilized, well governed, liberal, turbulent, Catholic, must either absorb her great neighbour, and impose her own culture and political system on her, or be herself absorbed and brought into subjection by her.

The coexistence of these two great Slav States, each moving in its own orbit and developing after its own independent, if not contrary, fashion, might not have been so utterly impossible,indeed. But to that end the Poland of the Piasts and the Jagellons should have moved in the direction naturally indicated by her own origin—that is to say, westward—and drawn the Slavs of the west and south after her. Whereas, driven backward by the German Drang nach Osten, Poland had been forced eastward, and had founded a great State, half Polish, half Russian or Ruthenian, half Catholic and half Orthodox, at once a republic and a monarchy, a compound of civilization and barbarism.

There was but one orbit, and a planet too many—two Sovereigns of all the Russias, and only one empire for them to rule.

No sooner had Batory seated himself firmly on his throne than he had to put down a revolt at Dantzig. Though he had had some experience of siege-work, his success on this occasion was not conspicuous. His Poles were not well in hand as yet. And, indeed, his right to be numbered among the great military leaders of his epoch has been disputed. Those who have taken him to be the inventor of the red-hot bullets, which, as a matter of fact, produced little or no effect at the Siege of Dantzig, are certainly mistaken. The use of these engines, according to