to the dissolution of the
assembly. The treasury, the army, the civil authority then fell into a
state of anarchy. Zamoyski also recommended the emancipation of serfs,
the encouragement of commerce, the elevation of the trading classes,
and the abolition of the fatal custom of electing a king. But the
Polish nobles, infatuated and doomed, opposed these wholesome reforms.
They even had the madness to invoke the aid of the Empress Catharine
to protect them in their ancient privileges. She sent an army into
Poland, and great disturbances resulted.

[Sidenote: The Fall of Poland.]

Too late, at last, the nobles perceived their folly, and adopted some
of the proposed reforms. But these reforms gave a new pretence to the
allied powers for a second dismemberment. An army of one hundred
thousand men invaded Poland, to effect a new partition. The unhappy
country, without fortified towns or mountains, abandoned by all the
world, distracted by divisions, and destitute of fortresses and
military stores, was crushed by the power of gigantic enemies. There
were patriotism and bravery left, but no union or organized strength.
The patriots made a desperate struggle under Kosciusko, a Lithuanian
noble, but were forced to yield to inevitable necessity. Warsaw for a
time held out against fifty thousand men; but the Polish hero was
defeated in a decisive engagement, and unfortunately taken prisoner.
His countrymen still rallied, and another bloody battle was fought at
Praga, opposite Warsaw, on the other side of the Vistula, and ten
thousand were slain; Praga was reduced to a heap of ruins; and twelve
thousand citizens were slaughtered in cold blood. Warsaw soon after
surrendered, Stanislaus was sent as a captive to Russia, and the final
partition of the kingdom was made.

"Sarmatia fell," but not "unwept," or "without a crime." "She fell,"
says Alison, "a victim of her own dissensions, of the chimera of
equality falsely pursued, and the rigor of aristocracy unceasingly
maintained. The eldest born of the European family was the first to
perish, because she had thwarted all the ends of the social union;
because she united the turbulence of democratic to the exclusion of
aristocratic societies; because she had the vacillation of a republic
without its energy, and the oppression of a monarchy without its
stability. The Poles obstinately refused to march with other nations
in the only road to civilization; they had valor, but it could not