and curtailing
her growth. On went Mehemet Baltadji with his Turks, and met Peter the
Czar, and pent him up in a corner, where there was no possibility of
escape. There Mehemet held him with iron grasp till hunger came to his
aid. Nature claimed her rights, and in a council of war it was decided
to surrender to Mehemet. Then Catharine who was present in the camp,
appeared in person before the Grand Vizier to sue for mercy. She was
fair, and she was rich with jewels of nameless value. She went to the
Grand Vizier's tent. She came back without her jewels, but she brought
mercy, and Russia was saved. From that celebrated day dates the downfall
of Turkey, and the growth of Russia. Out of this source flowed the
stream of Russian preponderance over the European continent. The
depression of liberty, and the nameless sufferings of Poland and of my
poor native land, are the dreadful fruits of Catharine's success on that
day, cursed in the records of the human race.

The second lady who will be cursed through all posterity in her memory,
is Sophia, the mother of the present usurper of Hungary--she who had the
ambitious dream to raise the power of a child upon the ruins of liberty,
and on the neck of prostrate nations. It was her ambition--the evil
genius of the House of Hapsburg in the present day--which brought
desolation upon us. I need only mention one fact to characterize what
kind of a heart was in that woman. On the anniversary of the day of
Arad, where our martyrs bled, she came to the court with a bracelet of
rubies set in so many roses as was the number of heads of the brave
Hungarians who fell there, declaring that she joyfully exhibited it to
the company as a memento which she wears on her very arm, to cherish in
eternal memory the pleasure she derived from the killing of those heroes
at Arad. This very fact may give you a true knowledge of the character
of that woman, and this is the _second_ claim to the ladies'
sympathy for oppressed humanity and for my poor fatherland.

Our _third_ particular claim is the behaviour of our ladies during
the last war. It is no arbitrary praise--it is a fact,--that, in the
struggle for our rights and freedom, we had no more powerful
auxiliaries, and no more faithful executors of the will of the nation,
than the women of Hungary. You know that in ancient Rome, after the
battle of Cannae, which was won by Hannibal, the Senate called on the
people spontaneously to sacrifice all their we