one hundred thousand ducats was exacted, and one thousand young men were
pressed for the Prussian service. Frederick's military possession of
Posnania, as well as the greater part of Polish Prussia, seemed to be
but too consonant with his hinted claims, and his arbitrary levies
evinced not merely intended, but actual possession.

Austria, too, was playing a similar part on the south. In the spring of
1769 Birzynski, at the head of a small troop of confederates, entered
Lubowla, one of the towns in the starosty or district of Zips, or Spiz,
with the intention of levying contributions, as he was accustomed, in a
disorderly manner. This little district is situated to the south of the
palatinate of Cracow, among the Carpathian Mountains, and has been
originally a portion of the kingdom of Hungary. The confederates were
followed by the Russians, and took refuge in Hungary, as was their
custom. This near approach of the Russians to the imperial frontiers was
made a pretext by the court of Vienna for concentrating a body of troops
there; and at the same time hints were thrown out of Austria's claims,
not only to this but some of the adjacent districts. Researches were
ordered to be made into old records, to establish these pretensions; the
Austrian troops seized the territory of Zips, and engineers were
employed by the Empress to mark out the frontier. They advanced the
boundary line along the districts of Sandecz, Nowitarg, and Czorsztyn,
and marked it out with posts furnished with the imperial eagle.
Stanislaus had complained of this proceeding in a letter of October 28,
1770; to which the Empress returned for answer, in January, 1771, that
she would willingly make an amicable arrangement, after peace was
established, to settle the disputed frontier, but that she was
determined to claim her right to the district of Zips, and that for the
present it was requisite to pursue the operation of demarcation.

The Empress seems to have been instigated not only by the characteristic
avidity of Austrian policy, but by jealousies awakened by the near
approaches of the Russian troops. Besides, it is a point of some
consequence to be remembered--though it seems to have escaped the
observation of most historians--that she had before her eyes a fearful
proof of the danger of an uncertain frontier in the affair of Balta,
which was the ostensible cause of the war between Turkey and Russia.

This open encroachment on the Polish territory,