f the rights of Lutherans, Calvinists, and other "dissidents"
obnoxious to the Roman Catholic Church played a great part, resulted
in the intervention of Russia and Prussia, and in 1772 the first
partition of Poland was consummated. The second followed in 1793,
under an arrangement between the same countries, which had taken
alarm at a liberal constitution voted by the Polish Diet in 1791,
especially as it had provided for the emancipation of the _adscripti
gleboe_. The struggle made by Thaddeus Kosciuszko ended in the entry
of Suvoroff into Warsaw over the ashes of the Prague suburb, and
in the third dismemberment (1795), of ancient Poland, under which
even Warsaw was absorbed by Russia.

Previous to these several partitions, Poland occupied a territory
much more extensive than that of France. In addition to the kingdom
proper, it included the province of Posen and part of West Prussia,
Cracow, and Galicia, Lithuania, the provinces of Volhynia and Podolia,
and part of the present province of Kief. In 1772, Dantzig was a
seaport of Poland, Kaminets, in Podolia, its border stronghold
against Turkey; while to the west and north its frontier extended
almost to the walls of Riga, and to within a short distance from
Moscow. In still earlier times, Bessarabia, Moldavia, Silesia,
and Livonia were embraced within the Polish possessions.

These successive partitions gave the most extensive portion of
Polish territory to Russia, the most populous to Austria, and the
most commercial to Prussia. Napoleon I. revived a Polish state
out of the provinces that had been seized by Prussia and Austria.
This was first constituted into a Grand Duchy under the King of
Saxony, and in 1815, when Galicia (with Cracow) was restored to
Austria, and Posen to Prussia, Warsaw became again a kingdom under
a constitution granted by Alexander I. The old Polish provinces
that had fallen to the share of Catherine II. at the partitions
remained incorporated with the Russian Empire, but were not fully
subjected to a Russian administration until after the great Polish
insurrection of 1830, when also the constitution of 1815 was withdrawn,
the national army abolished, and the Polish language proscribed in
the public offices.

Notwithstanding the wide measures of Home Rule introduced by Alexander
II. into the administration of the kingdom, and which, in combination
with many liberal and pregnant reforms in Russia Proper appeared
to offer to the Poles the p