Page:Pantadeuszorlast00mick.djvu/360

 note 38), and ministers, while the lower house was composed of deputies elected by district diets (p. 303). A unanimous vote was required on all measures; more than this, any one deputy by his veto could dissolve the Diet, even in the last moments of its session, and undo all the work previously accomplished. This law of the liberum veto, and the elective nature of the royal office, offered countless opportunities for foreign nations to interfere in the affairs of the Commonwealth. The district diets, besides electing deputies to the General Diet, instructed them how to vote, and chose local officials (p. 75); they also were bound by the rule of the liberum veto (pp. 182, 304). Under such a constitution the only practical means of reform was through armed rebellion. Hence rebellions, or confederacies, were legalised in Poland; a number of citizens might combine together, choose a marshal (pp. 180, 182, 285), and seek to overthrow the established order; in case of success they became the government, in case of failure they were not liable to punishment. A diet held by a confederacy was not subject to the liberum veto, but adopted decisions by a majority vote.

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

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

After the disaster of the first partition the patriotic party in Poland made efforts to save their country, which culminated in the Four Years' Diet (1788-92). The labours of this Diet, which again was convoked under the forms of a confederacy, culminated in the Constitution of May 3, 1791. This measure, which was drawn up in secret and rushed through the Diet at a time when most of its probable opponents were absent, transformed Poland from an aristocratic republic into a constitutional hereditary monarchy, abolished the liberum veto, and secured religious