Poland Sentence Examples

Having made an alliance with Christian II., king of Denmark, and interfered to protect the Teutonic Order against Sigismund I., king of Poland, Maximilian was again in Italy early in 1516 fighting the French who had overrun Milan.

The wedding was celebrated at Torgau on the 14th of October 1711, in the house of the queen of Poland, and three weeks later the bridegroom was hurried away by his father to Thorn to superintend the provisioning of the Russian troops in Poland.

After being educated at Cracow, he made the grand tour with his brother Mark and returned to Poland in 1648.

For the Vistula, with the Bug and Narew, see Poland.

Of the rest 8 governments are in Finland, ro in Poland.

In Russian Poland they constitute 132% of the total population.

Beer is chiefly brewed in Poland and the Baltic provinces.

Thus Poland disappeared for a time from the map of Europe.

It explains, too, Panin's strange tenderness towards Poland.

It resembled Poland.

Ivan intervened in 1558 and quickly captured Narva, Dorpat and a dozen smaller fortresses; then, in 1560, Livonia placed herself beneath the protection of Poland, and King Sigismund II.

On returning to Poland he was for a time in the Russian service, but lost his post, and his liberty as well for some time, for his outspokenness.

From 1651 the town was subject alternately to Poland and to independent hetmans (Cossack chiefs).

But now George discomfited all his enemies by suddenly excluding his own son from the throne in favour of Ladislaus, the eldest son of Casimir IV., thus skilfully enlisting Poland on his side.

The domestic order and tranquillity of the kingdom had been restored by his painstaking father, but Poland had shrunk territorially since the age of his grandfather Boleslaus I., and it was the aim of Boleslaus II.

The nearest enemy was Bohemia, to whom Poland had lately been compelled to pay tribute for her oldest possession, Silesia.

In 1069 he succeeded in placing Izaslaus on the throne of Kiev, thereby confirming Poland's overlordship over Russia and enabling Boleslaus to chastise his other enemies, Bohemia among them, with the co-operation of his Russian auxiliaries.

But Wratyslaus of Bohemia speedily appealed to the emperor for help, and a war between Poland and the Empire was only prevented by the sudden rupture of Henry IV.

At Rome too he obtained a canonry attached to Cracow cathedral, and on his return to Poland in 1755 threw himself heart and soul into the question of educational reform.

On the outbreak of Kosciuszko's insurrection he returned to Poland, and as member of the national government and minister of finance took a leading part in affairs.

He was finally released through the mediation of Prince Adam Czartoryski, and returned to Poland utterly discredited.

Alexander Ivanovich (1769-1825) served with distinction under his relative Suvarov in the Turkish Wars, and took part as a general officer in the Italian and Swiss operations of 1799, and in the war against Napoleon in Poland in 1806-1807 (battle of Heilsberg).

In the 18th century the nobility of France and the nobility of Poland alike answered to the very strictest definition of nobility; but the political positions of the two were as broadly contrasted as the positions of any two classes of men could be.

Poland, in short, came nearer than any kingdom or country of large extent to the nature of an aristocracy, as we have seen aristocracy in the aristocratic cities.

The kingly power in Poland, like the ducal power at Venice, had been so narrowed that Poland, though she still kept a king, called herself a republic no less than Venice.

In 1549 they spread into Great Poland; in the latter half of the century they opened many voluntary schools, and were joined by many of the nobility; and the result was that by 1609, when Rudolph II.

At the battle of the White Hill (1620) the Bohemian Protestants were routed; the Brethren were driven from their homes; the Polish branch wis absorbed in the Reformed Church of Poland; and then many fled, some to England, some to Saxony, and some even to Texas.

Many towns shut their gates upon them; but, in spite of discouragement, they spread from Poland to the Rhine, and penetrated as far as Holland and Flanders.

Although the name is thus correctly applied, both in English and Russian, to the whole area of the Russian empire, its application is often limited, no less correctly, to European Russia, or even to European Russia exclusive of Finland and Poland.

Germany, and containing brown coal and amber, has been met with only in Poland, Courland and Lithuania.

The deposits of the Post-Glacial period are represented throughout Russia, Poland and Finland, as also throughout Siberia and Central Asia, by very thick lacustrine deposits, which show that, after the melting of the ice-sheet, the country was covered with immense lakes, connected by broad channels (the fjarden of the Swedes), which later on gave rise to the actual rivers.

There are thirty-four cities in European Russia and Poland, and forty in the entire empire, with from 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants each.

Of the elected members 3 are returned by the " black " clergy (the monks), 3 by the " white " clergy (seculars), 5 18 by the corporations of nobles, 6 by the academy of sciences and the universities, 6 by the chambers of commerce, 6 by the industrial councils, 34 by the governments having zemstvos, 16 by those having no zemstvos, and 6 by Poland.

In this way the fundamental laws were suspended not only in Poland but in St Petersburg and other parts of the empire during the greater part of the four years succeeding the grant of the constitution.

The chief first-class fortresses of Russia are Warsaw and Novogeorgievsk in Poland, and Brest-Litovsk and Kovno in Lithuania.

The second-class fortresses are Kronstadt and Sveaborg in the Gulf of Finland, Ivangorod in Poland, Libau on the Baltic Sea, Kerch on the Black Sea and Vladivostok on the Pacific. In the third class are Viborg in Finland, Ossovets and Ust Dvinsk (or Dunamunde) in Lithuania, Sevastopol and Ochakov on the Black Sea, and Kars and Batum in Caucasia.

Vast areas in Russia are quite unfit for cultivation, 19% of the aggregate surface of European Russia (apart from Poland and Finland) being occupied by lakes, marshes, sand, &c., 39% by forests, 16% by prairies, and only 26% being under cultivation.

Viewed as a whole, the flora of the forest region is to be regarded as European-Siberian; and, though certain species disappear towards the E., while new ones make their appearance, it maintains, on the whole, the same features throughout from Poland to Kamchatka.

Thus the beech (Fagus sylvatica) is unable to survive the continental climate of Russia, and does not penetrate beyond Poland and the S.W.

They first entered Poland from Germany during the era of the crusades, and soon spread through Lithuania, Courland, the Ukraine, and, in the 18th century, Bessarabia.

During the closing years of the 19th century great numbers of Germans flocked into the industrial governments of Poland, namely, Piotrkow, Warsaw and Kalisz.

The Popovsti, who were served by priests converted from the Orthodox Church, made their headquarters in the island of Werka, in a tributary of the Dnieper, n Poland (1695), and after its destruction by the government in 1735 and again in 1764, at Starodubye in the government of Chernigov, whence their doctrine spread in the country of the Don.

The actual distribution of arable land, forests and meadows, in European Russia and Poland is shown in the following table The land in European Russia and Poland (Caucasia being excluded) is divided amongst the different classes of owners as follows Down to January 1st 1903, the peasants had actually redeemed out of the land allotted to them in 1861 a total of 280,530,516 acres..

In Poland the peasants as a body have, in addition to the land thus assigned to them by the government, bought some 22 million acres since 1863, and of this quantity they purchased no less than 1,600,000 acres, or 64% of the whole, between 1893 and 1905.

Taking the whole of European Russia and Poland, almost exactly two-thirds of the total area is sown every year with cereals.

But generally in from 18 to 33 out of the 72 governments in European Russia (including Caucasia) and Poland the yield of cereals is not sufficient for the wants of the people.

Beetroot (6-8 million tons annually) for sugar is especially cultivated in Poland, the governments of Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, Kharkov, Bessarabia and Kherson.

The state is the chief owner of forests (almost exclusive owner in Archangel), and owns no less than 289,226,000 acres in European Russia and Poland (235,000,000 acres of good forests), while private persons own 171,800,000 acres, the peasant communities 67,250,000 and the imperial family 22,400,000 acres.

The amount of iron and steel produced in the Urals is not quite 20% of the total in all European Russia and Poland.

The output of coal in the Urals is, altogether, less than 3% of the total for all the empire and 4% of the output of European Russia (exclusive of Poland) alone.

Mining in Poland and Siberia are more fully discussed under those headings.'

Industry of this character was first established in Poland in 1820, and it has grown there rapidly, though never so rapidly as during the last few years of the 19th century.

Byzantine territory, threatened Constantinople with a fleet of small craft, obtained as consort for one of their princes, Vladimir I, (q.v.), a sister of the Byzantine emperor on condition of the prince becoming a Christian, adopted Christianity for themselves and their subjects, learned to hold in check the nomadic hordes of the steppe, and formed matrimonial alliances with the reigning families of Poland, Hungary, Norway and France.

Those of the Volga and the Don professed allegiance to the tsar of Muscovy, whilst those of the Dnieper recognized at first as their suzerain the king of Poland.

Here lay the principality of Lithuania and beyond it the kingdom of Poland, two loosely conglomerated states which had been created by the Piast and Gedymin dynasties in pretty much the same way as the tsardom of Muscovy had been created by the descendants of Rurik.

On the death of Casimir, king of Poland and grand-prince of Lithuania, in 1492, the kingdom and the principality ceased to be united and Ivan III.

His successor, Basil, tried to get himself elected grand-prince of Lithuania when the throne became vacant by the death of his brother-in-law in 1506, but the choice fell on the late prince's brother Sigismund, who was likewise elected king of Poland.

Finding himself unable to resist the Muscovites, the grand master of the Order put himself under Polish protection, and this led to a seven years' war (1563-70) with Poland, during which the Swedes and Danes intervened on their own account.

In 1603 - a man calling himself Dimitri, and professing to be Demet- the rightful heir to the throne, appeared in Poland, reuses.

At the conclusion of the armistice in 1632, during a short interregnum in Poland, he attempted to avenge past injuries and recover lost territory; but the campaign was not successful, and in 1634 he signed a definitive treaty by no means favourable to Russia.

Livonia continued to be under Swedish rule, and Lithuania remained united with Poland.

In that year, when Lithuania and Poland were permanently united, it fell under Polish rule, and the Polish government considered it necessary to tame the wild inhabitants and bring them under regular administration.

It was proposed, therefore; in 1576, that 6000 families should be registered as a militia under a Polish Hetman for the protection of the country against Tatar raids, and that the remainder of the inhabitants should be assimilated to the ordinary peasants of Poland.

For some time Tsar Alexius hesitated, because he knew that intervention could entail a war with Poland, but after consulting a National Assembly on the subject, he decided to take Little Russia under his protection, and in January 1654 a great Cossack assembly ratified the arrangement, on the understanding that a large part of the old local autonomy should be preserved.

In the expected war with Poland, which followed quickly, the Russians were so successful that the arrangement was upheld; but it was soon found that the Cossacks, though they professed unbounded devotion to the Orthodox tsar, disliked Muscovite, quite as much as Polish, interference in their internal affairs, and some of their leaders were in favour of substituting federation with Poland for annexation by Russia.

During a halt of a few days in Poland on his way back from Vienna, King Augustus had explained to him a project for partitioning the transBaltic provinces of Sweden, by which Poland should recover Livonia and annex Esthonia, Russia should obtain Ingria and Karelia, and Denmark should take possession of Holstein.

In foreign affairs Catherine devoted her attention mainly to pushing forward the Russian frontier westwards and south- Foreign wards, and as France was the traditional ally of policy of Sweden, Poland and Turkey, she adopted at first Cath- the so-called systeme du Nord, that is to say, a close erine.

The next country to feel the expansive tendencies of Russia was Poland, which had now very little Poland.

Whilst Russia, Austria, Prussia and France were becoming powerful monarchies with centralized administration, Poland had remained a weak feudal republic with an elected king chosen under foreign influence and fettered by constitutional restrictions.

In these circumstances Catherine hesitated to bring matters to a crisis, but her hand was forced by Frederick, and in 1772 the first partition of Poland took place without any very strenuous resistance on the part of the victim.

Russia's advance westward raised indirectly the Eastern Question, because it threatened two of France's traditional allies, Sweden and Poland, and Choiseul considered that the best means of checkmating Catherine's 7l aryl, aggressive schemes was to incite France's third traditional ally, Turkey, to attack her.

Catherine had conceived an ambitious plan of solving radically the Eastern Question by partitioning Turkey as she and her allies had partitioned Poland, and she had persuaded the emperor Joseph II.

In the former there had been a fusion between the Radicals, supporters of the autonomy of Poland and a federal constitution for the empire, and the Independence party (Osvobozhdenya) formed by political exiles at Paris in 1903, the fusion taking the name of Constitutional Democrats, known (from a word-play on the initials K.D.) as " Cadets."

The non-Russian frontier provinces (okrainas) had even before been under-represented (one member for every 350,000 inhabitants, as against one for every 250,000 in the central provinces); the members returned by Poland, the Caucasus and Siberia were now reduced from 89 to 39, those from the Central Asian steppes (23) were swept away altogether; the total number of deputies was reduced from 524 to 442.

He excommunicated Casimir of Poland for marital infidelity and forced him to do penance.

Panin was the inventor of the famous "Northern Accord," which aimed at opposing a combination of Russia, Prussia, Poland, Sweden, and perhaps Great Britain, against the Bourbon-Habsburg League.

Poland, Panin opined, would be especially useful in case of Oriental combinations.

As to Poland, his views differed widely from the views of both Frederick and Catherine.

But he did not foresee the complications which were likely to arise from Russia's interference in the domestic affairs of Poland.

He was forced to acquiesce in the first partition of Poland, and when Russia came off third best, Gregory Orlov declared in the council that the minister who had signed such a partition treaty was worthy of death.

He aided the emperor in the Thirty Years' War, and the king of Poland against the Turks.

Following on this came the Black Death with its terrible consequences in Germany; even in Poland, where the Jews had previously enjoyed considerable rights, extensive massacres took place.

His miracles were reported and eagerly believed everywhere; " from Poland, Hamburg and Amsterdam treasures poured into his court; in the Levant young men and maidens prophesied before him; the Persian Jews refused to till the fields.

Aided by the Russians, his troops drove Stanislaus Leszczynski from Poland; Augustus was crowned at Cracow in January 1734, and was generally recognized as king at Warsaw in June 1736.

Augustus, who showed neither talent nor inclination for government, was content to leave Poland under the influence of Russia, and Saxony to the rule of his ministers.

He would have liked to organize a big move against the Bolsheviks from the west, but such a move could not be made while the Entente Powers were resolved to keep Germany out, and while they sympathized with all the new organizations hostile to RussiaEsthonia, Latvia and Poland.

After conducting a campaign in Poland which terminated unfortunately, he gave a ready response to the appeal for aid made by the Hungarians under Imre ThOkoly (q.v.) when they rose against Austria, his hope being to form out of the Habsburg dominions a Mussulman empire of the West, of which he should be the sultan.

The plan was foiled in part by his own lack of military skill, but chiefly through the heroic resistance of Vienna and its timely relief by John Sobieski, king of Poland.

He was certainly not the Jew of Prussian Poland which his enemies declared him to be, and he has to this day a circle of devoted adherents.

When Jagiello ascended the throne of Poland as Wladislaus II.

Nevertheless, subsequent attempts on the part of Poland to subordinate Lithuania drove Witowt for the third time into the arms of the Order, and by the treaty of Salin in 1398, Witowt, who now styled himself Supremus Dux Lithuaniae, even went so far as to cede his ancestral province of Samogitia to the knights, and to form an alliance with them for the conquest and partition of Pskov and Great Novgorod.

Originally it seems to have denoted the coast district between the Oder and the Vistula, a territory which was at first more or less dependent on Poland, but which, towards the end of the 12th century, was ruled by two native princes, who took the title of duke about 1170 and admitted the authority of the German king in 1181.

The latter, corresponding substantially to the present province of West Prussia, remained subject to Poland until 1309, when it was divided between Brandenburg and the Teutonic Order.

King Ladislaus would have made the book-loving youth a monk, and even designated him for the see of Eger; but Coloman had no inclination for an ecclesiastical career, and, with the assistance of his friends, succeeded in escaping to Poland.

The success of the Hussite raids in Germany gave fresh confidence to the Sla y s of Poland.

The League naturally sympathized with Poland, not only because Poland was the enemy of the knights, but also because under Poland it hoped to enjoy the practical liberty which Polish anarchy already seemed to offer.

The ultimate result was that in 1454 an embassy of the League offered Prussia to the Polish king, and that, after many years of war, the Peace of Thorn (1466) gave to Poland West Prussia, with Marienburg, Thorn, Danzig and other towns, in full possession, and, while leaving East Prussia to the Order, made the Order the vassals of Poland for the territory which it retained.

From 1466 to 1526 grand masters of the Order ruled in East Prussia as vassals of Poland.

When Lutheranism arose, it spread rapidly in Prussia; Albert himself came into contact with Luther, and turning Protestant he secularized his territories, and (1526) made them into an hereditary duchy, still held as a fief of the king of Poland.

But in 1561 another master followed the example of Albert, and received Courland as an hereditary fief from Poland.

When Frederic the Great gained West Prussia by the first partition of Poland (1772), he was uniting together once more the dominions of the Order, sundered since 1466; and it is the kings of Prussia who have inherited the Order's task of maintaining German influence on the banks of the Vistula.

Even so, Prussia was bereft of half of her territories; those west of the river Elbe went to swell the domains of Napoleon's vassals or to form the new kingdom of Westphalia for Jerome Bonaparte; while the spoils which the House of Hohenzollern had won from Poland in the second and third partitions were now to form the duchy of Warsaw, ruled over by Napoleon's ally, the elector (now king) of Saxony.

The House of Habsburg now ceded Salzburg and the Inn-Viertel to Napoleon (for his ally, the king of Bavaria); a great portion of the spoils which Austria had torn from Poland in 1795 went to the grand duchy of Warsaw, or Russia; and the cession of her provinces Carinthia, Carniola and Istria to the French empire cut her off from all access to the sea.

Delayed during the autumn months in Poland by the tardy arrival of reinforcements from Pomerania, it was not till November 1707 that Charles was able to take the field.

The frost broke at the end of February 1709, and then the spring floods put an end to all active operations till May, when Charles began the siege of the fortress of Poltava, which he wished to make a base for subsequent operations while awaiting reinforcements from Sweden and Poland.

After Moscow, Podolia is the most densely inhabited government of Russia outside Poland.

After the death (1430) of the Lithuanian prince Vitovt, Podolia was annexed to Poland, with the exception of its eastern part, the province of Bratslav, which remained under Lithuania until its union (1501) with Poland.

For about a century the possession of this marchland was disputed by Hungary, Poland and Bohemia, but in 1029 it was finally incorporated with Bohemia, and so became an integral part of the German empire..

He rapidly acquired the favour of the elector Frederick Augustus, surnamed the Strong, who had been elected to the throne of Poland in 1697.

He also set on foot a postal system between Muscovy, Courland and Poland, and introduced gazettes and bills of exchange into Russia.

Here, as later in the case of Poland, she subordinated her feelings to her duty to the state.

In the 14th century it became part of Lithuania, and afterwards of Poland.

In 1496 the temporary armistice between the Poles and Turks, renewed in 1493, came to an end, and John Albert, king of Poland, seized the occasion to invade Moldavia.

The efforts of Ladislaus of Hungary to mediate were vain, and the years 1497 and 1498 were marked by a terrible devastation of Poland by the Ottomans; only the bitter winter, which is said to have killed 40,000 Turks, prevented the devastation from being more complete.

Janissaries leisure to engage in plots against the sultan, and in order to occupy them and to remove them from the capital advantage was taken of the king of Poland having intervened in the affairs of Transylvania and the principalities to declare war against him.

However, Michael Wiesnowiecki, king of Poland, considering the Ukraine as under his protection, sought to intervene, with the result that Turkey declared war against him (1672).

All hope seemed lost, when by a brilliant feat of arms John Sobieski, king of Poland, drove away the besiegers in hopeless confusion and saved the cause of Christianity, 1683.

This was the signal for a general coalition against Turkey; Venice, Poland and the pope allied themselves with the Austrians; Russia, Tuscany and Malta joined in the attack.

The main provisions of these were, that Turkey retained the Banat, while Austria kept Transylvania; Poland restored the places captured in Moldavia, but retained Kamenets, Podolia and the Ukraine; Venice restored her conquests north of Corinth, but kept those in the Morea and Dalmatia.

But, though the questions at issue between Russia and Turkey in Poland and the northern littoral of the Black Sea were thus for the time settled, the aggressive designs of Russia in the Caucasus and in Persia soon caused a renewal of anxiety at Constantinople.

Russia's designs on Poland now brought about war.

On the death of Augustus II., king of Poland (1733), France had put forward as candidate Stanislaus Leszczynski, War of Louis XV.'s father-in-law.

The attitude of the northern powers, however, and especially of Russia, towards Poland was beginning to excite the sultan's liveliest suspicions; and these the accession, in 1762, of the masterful Catherine II.

Added to all this was the news of the continual Russian military aggressions in Poland, against which the Catholic confederation of Bar continued to appeal for aid.

At last, on the 6th of October 1768, on the refusal of the Russian minister to give guarantees for the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Poland and the abandonment of Russia's claim to interfere with the liberties of the republic, war was declared and the Russian representative was imprisoned in the Seven Towers.

The Tatars Treaty of from the frontier of Poland to the shores of the Kuchuk Caspian, including those of the Crimea and Kuban, were declared independent under their own khan 1774' of the race of Jenghiz, saving only the religious rights of the sultan as caliph of Islam.

Poland, the original cause of the war, was not even mentioned in the treaty, having been partitioned in 1772.

Exhaustive orders to organize the necessary trains were duly issued, but the emperor seems to have had no conception of the difficulties the tracks - there were no metalled roads - of Poland were about to present to him.

Experience only can teach the art of packing wagons and the care of draught animals, and throughout the campaign the small ponies of Poland and East Prussia broke down by thousands from over loading and unskilful packing.

But here too the weather and the state of the roads operated adversely, for Ney came up too late, while Davout, in the full tide of his victorious advance, was checked by the arrival of Lestocq, whose corps Ney had failed to intercept, Campaign Of 1807 In Poland And Prussia Scale.

The full reach of this discovery seems as yet scarcely to have impressed itself upon the emperor with complete conviction, for in the succeeding campaign in Poland we find that he twice departed from this form - at Pultusk and Heilsbergand each time his enemy succeeded in escaping him.

Charles's invasion of Poland (July 1654) came as a distinct relief to the Danes, though even the Polish War was full of latent peril to Denmark.

Bohemia obtained a temporary respite when, in 1422, Prince Sigismund Korybutovic of Poland became for a short time ruler of the country.

By sheer tenacity of purpose, Bestuzhev had extricated his country from the Swedish imbroglio; reconciled his imperial mistress with the courts of Vienna and London, her natural allies; enabled Russia to assert herself effectually in Poland, Turkey and Sweden, and isolated the restless king of Prussia by environing him with hostile alliances.

Nevertheless, a simultaneous outbreak of a jacquerie in Little-Russia contributed to the extension of the confederation throughout the eastern province of Poland and even in Lithuania.

His treatise De monetae cudendae ratione, 1526 (first printed in 1816), written by order of King Sigismund I., is an exposition of the principles on which it was proposed to reform the currency of the Prussian provinces of Poland.

On the collapse of the insurrection he emigrated, and on his return to Poland devoted himself exclusively to literature and the cultiva tion of his estates.

Charles married Elizabeth, the sister of Casimir the Great of Poland, with whom he was connected by ties of close friendship, and Louis, by virtue of a compact made by his father thirty-one years previously, added the Polish crown to that of Hungary in 1370.

With the aid of inquisitors from Rome, the evil was literally burnt out, but not before provinces, especially in the south and 1 In 1412 he pawned the twenty-four Zips towns to Poland, and, .in 1411 he pledged his margraviate of Brandenburg to the Hohenzollerns.

Poland was restrained by his alliances with the Teutonic Knights and the tsardom of Muscovy, and his envoys appeared in Persia and in Egypt to combat the diplomacy of the Porte.

P g g the emperor Maximilian and Sigismund of Poland, might be dispensed with.

What is not quite so generally known is the fact that Leopold slackened at once and would have been quite content with the results of these earlier victories had not the pope stiffened his resistance by forming a Holy League between the Emperor, Poland, Venice, Muscovy and the papacy, with the avowed object of dealing the Turk the coup de grace (March 5, 1684).

It was granted in 1738 to Stanislaus Leszczynski, ex-king of Poland, and on his death in 1766 was once more attached to the crown of France.

In Lemberg is the National Institute founded by Count Ossolinski, which contains a library of books and manuscripts relating chiefly to the history and literature of Poland, valuable antiquarian and scientific collections, and a printing establishment; also the Dzieduszycki museum with collections of natural history and ethnography relating chiefly to Galicia.

His wars were of the nature of raids, on the Dalmatian coast and into Croatia, Hungary, Moldavia and Poland.

The ill-feeling, influenced by the ravages of members of the order in Poland, culminated in a struggle which began in December 1519.

Luther for his part did not stop at the suggestion, but in order to facilitate the change made special efforts to spread his teaching among the Prussians, while Albert's brother, George, prince of Ansbach, laid the scheme before Sigismund of Poland.

The duke was consequently obliged to consent to a condemnation of the teaching of Osiander, and the climax came in 1566 when the estates appealed to Sigismund II., king of Poland, who sent a commission to Konigsberg.

The dukes were members of the illustrious Piast family, which gave many kings to Poland.

The interests of the two states in Turkey, Poland and Sweden were diametrically opposed, and Russia could never hope to be safe from the intrigues of France in these three borderlands.

To prevent undergound intrigues, Bestuzhev now proposed the erection of a council of ministers, to settle all important affairs, and at its first session (14th-30th of March) an alliance with Austria, France and Poland against Frederick II.

He accompanied the count palatine of Zweibriicken to Poland, and on his return to Paris he devoted himself to writing.

For the next few years he was employed by Cardinal Hosius, the learned Polish prelate, in his efforts to check the spread of heresy in Poland, Lithuania and Prussia.

Peter's first serious outburst of indignation was due to the prince's looting in Poland.

Subsequently he was appointed successively superintendent of the mineral waters of Languedoc (1721), first physician to the king of Poland (1729), and regius professor of medicine at Paris (1731).

Of more importance were the two sieges by the Turks (1529 and 168 3), when the city was saved on the first occasion by the gallant defence of Count Niclas von Salm (1459-1530), and on the second by Rüdiger von Starhemberg (1638-1701), who held out until the arrival of the Poles and Germans under John Sobieski of Poland.

The same year witnessed the restoration of peace in Italy and the return of the emperor to Germany, where he received the homage of the rulers of Poland, Bohemia and Denmark; but he died suddenly at Memleben on the 7th of May 973, and was buried at Magdeburg.

In his account, however, of the quarrel between Casimir and Olesnicki concerning the question of priority between the cardinal and the primate of Poland he warmly embraced the cause of the former, and even pronounced Casimir worthy of dethronement.

This great book, the first and still one of the best historical works on Poland in the modern sense of the word, was only undertaken after mature consideration and an exhaustive study of all the original sources then available, some of which are now lost.

The principal archives of Poland and Hungary were ransacked for the purpose, and in his account of his own times Dlugosz's intimate acquaintance with the leading scholars and statesmen of his day stood him in good stead.

They invaded Europe about 1237 under the leadership of Bail Khan, a younger son of Juji, eldest son of Jenghiz Khan, passed over Russia with slaughter and destruction, and penetrated into Silesia, Poland and Hungary, finally defeating Henry II., duke of Silesia, at Liegnitz in the battle known as the Wahlstatt on the 9th of April 1241.

In Austria-Hungary, Germany, Poland, Sweden and some other countries, haiduk came to mean an attendant in a court of law, or a male servant, dressed in Hungarian semi-military costume.

In 1676 he was appointed chaplain to Lawrence Hyde (afterwards earl of Rochester), ambassador-extraordinary to the king of Poland, and of his visit he sent an interesting account to Edward Pococke in a letter, dated Dantzic, 16th December, 1677, which was printed along with South's Posthumous Works in 1717.

The Teutonic knights in the north and the Tatar hordes in the south were equally bent on the subjection of Lithuania, while Olgierd's eastern and western neighbours, Muscovy and Poland, were far more frequently hostile competitors than serviceable allies.

His son Jagiello ultimately ascended the Polish throne, and was the founder of the dynasty which ruled Poland for nearly 200 years.

The union between the kingdom of Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania was brought about on Feb.

Thus was established a political combination in which Lithuania in point of territory was three times the size of Poland.

Russia had annexed the six Lithuanian Governments between 1772 and 1795 and united them as the" Litovskaya Gubernia "in 1797, that is to say, before the Treaty of Vienna conceded her the kingdom of Poland in 1815.

In the closing years of Alexander's reign events in Poland cast their shadow before them, and in answer to political conspiracies Novosiltsov, formerly adviser to the Grand Duke Constantine as governor of Poland, upon his transfer to Lithuania initiated the persecution of liberal thought.

Petersburg; Catholic and Uniate Church property sequestrated from 1836 onwards; the Lithuanian Statute, which had remained the law of the land through four centuries of union with Poland, replaced by the Russian code in 1840, while prominent natives, debarred from public service in their own country, were forced to emigrate or exiled to Siberia.

This measure, applied by Russian officials, was designed against the Poles and the Lithuanian Nationalists alike, for not even the Progressives who favoured autonomy for Poland contemplated its grant to Lithuania.

Alone the Pan-Polish party reverted irreconcilably to the historic solution of union or federation with Poland.

In the beginning of March 1921, direct negotiation between Poland and Lithuania under the aus p ices of the League of Nations, to be followed by arbitration on unsettled points, was proposed in lieu of the plebiscite and agreed to by all parties.

The independence of Lithuania de facto was recognized by Sweden, Norway, England, Esthonia, Finland, France and Poland; de jure by Germany on March 23 1918, by Soviet Russia on July 12 1920, by Latvia and Esthonia in Feb.

This was the maximum expansion possible under the conditions prevailing in 1920 -I, of a crisis in the political relations with Poland; but the maintenance of this establishment for any length of time appeared to be impracticable, since on this basis the army absorbed close on 60% of the revenue of the State, viz.

C. Propolanis, L'Eglise Polonaise en Lithuanie (1914); Albinas Rimka, Lietuvos ukis pries didji kara (1918); Russian Poland, Lithuania and White Russia, Handbook No.

He was hampered, however, by want of funds, and his counsels were distracted by the affairs of Poland, which promised a richer booty than was likely to be gained by the anti-revolutionary crusade into France.

A subsidy treaty with the sea powers (April 1 9, 1 794) filled his coffers; but the insurrection in Poland that followed the partition of 1793, and the threat of the isolated intervention of Russia, hurried him into the separate treaty of Basel with the French Republic (April 5, 1795), which was regarded by the great monarchies as a betrayal, and left Prussia morally isolated in Europe on the eve of the titanic struggle between the monarchical principle and the new political creed of the Revolution.

I,151,210 II 1 Czechs, Magyars, Sla y s Bohemia 77,247 01 Hungary 256,347 2.5 Poland 141,908 Rumania 10,377 0.1 Russia 500,797 0 I Total Europe 9,197,014 88.9 3.6 Grand Total 10,339,539 Total Swiss-Switzerland Greeks-Greece Turks-Turkey Europe, not specified 135,736 7,325 3,411 294 North America All other countries 77 6, 071 7.5 366,454 100 0 1'4 4.8 9.5 A very important transformation has taken place in the proportionate number coming from different countries during the last half of the 19th century.

The next war in which he was called upon to take part was with Poland, in defence of the Cossacks, who had appealed to Turkey for protection.

Called to office after disaster had driven Turkey's forces from Hungary and Poland and her fleets from the Mediterranean, he began by ordering strict economy and reform in the taxation; himself setting the example, which was widely followed, of voluntary contributions for the army, which with the navy he reorganized as quickly as he could.

When, therefore, he ascended the Polish throne in 1333, the future of his country, which then consisted of little more than the lately reunited provinces of Great and Little Poland, seemed dark indeed; especially as she was still at war with the Teutonic Order and with John of Luxemburg, king of Bohemia, who claimed the crown of Poland also.

A careful, calculating dynastic policy, which aimed at the establishment of an equilibrium by means of prudent compromises and defensive alliances, was, he rightly judged, the best guarantee for the future safety and glory of Poland.

At this congress the differences between Casimir and John of Bohemia were finally adjusted; peace was made between the king of Poland and the Teutonic Order on the basis of the cession of Pomerania, Kulm, and Michalow to the knights, who retroceded Kujavia and Dobrzyn; and the kings of Hungary and Poland further agreed to assist each other in the acquisition of the south-eastern border province of Halicz, or Red Russia (very nearly corresponding to the modern Galicia), in case the necessity for intervention should arise.

Nine years later Lubart of Lithuania, who also had claims upon Red Russia, disputed the sway of Poland in that principality.

Hungary coming to the assistance of Poland, Lubart was defeated and taken prisoner; but Casimir, anxious to avoid a bloody war with Lithuania's Tatar allies, came to a compromise with Lubart whereby Poland retained Halicz with Lemberg, while Vladimir, Belz, and Brzesc fell to the share of Lithuania.

With the Teutonic knights, still Poland's most dangerous foe, Casimir preserved peaceful relations throughout his reign.

He kept them within due bounds by using the influence of the Luxemburgers against them at the papal court; but the disputes between Poland and the order were ultimately settled by the peace of Kalisz (July 2 3, 1 343), when the knights engaged for the first time to pay tribute to the Polish crown.

The first result of their joint labours was the much-needed codification of the laws of Great and Little Poland in 1347.

The lawlessness of the nobility was most noticeable in the province of Great Poland, where outrageous acts of violence were of everyday occurrence.

To remedy the evil, Casimir drew up and promulgated the severe statute of Great Poland, which went to the very root of the matter and greatly strengthened the hands of the king's justices.

The same year he was chosen to design a monument for Warsaw, commemorating the rebirth of Poland.

Some years after, he visited Germany, France and England, and subsequently Italy, Russia and Poland.

From Poland the word was introduced into Russia, in the form ataman, and was adopted by the Cossacks, as a title for their head, who was practically an independent prince, when under the suzerainty of Poland.

Ochino was banished from Zurich, and, after being refused a shelter by other Protestant cities, directed his steps towards Poland, at that time the most tolerant state in Europe.

Thereupon the Swedes entered Warsaw without opposition and occupied the whole of Great Poland.

The fall of Cracow extinguished the last hope of the boldest Pole; but before the end of the year an extraordinary reaction began in Poland itself.

By this time Charles had discovered that it was easier to defeat the Poles than to conquer Poland.

For weeks he scoured the interminable snow-covered plains of Poland in pursuit of the Polish guerillas, penetrating as far south as Jaroslau in Galicia, by which time he had lost two-thirds of his 15,000 men with no apparent result.

In July an offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between Denmark and Poland.

Part of the same field also lies within Russian territory (Poland) near the point where the frontiers of the three powers meet.

In 1558 it was captured by the Russians, but in 1582 was yielded to Stephen Bathori, king; of Poland.

Plehve carried out the "russification" of the alien provinces within the Russian Empire, and earned bitter hatred in Poland, in Lithuania and especially in Finland.

Speranski's labours also bore fruit in the constitutions granted by Alexander to Finland and Poland.

At the congress of Vienna (1814-15) for the settlement of European affairs, Talleyrand, as the representative of the restored house of Bourbon in France, managed adroitly to break up the league of the Powers (framed at Chaumont in February 1814) and assisted in forming a secret alliance between England, Austria and France in order to prevent the complete absorption of Poland by Russia and of Saxony by Prussia.

Poland, after a defection of years, was ultimately recovered for the papacy by the zeal and devotion of the Jesuit missionaries.

Faustus Sozzini, a native of Sienna (1539-1603), much influenced by his uncle Lelio Sozzini, after a wandering, questioning life, found his way to Poland, where he succeeded in uniting the various Anabaptist sects into a species of church, the doctrines of which are set forth in the Confession of Rakow (near Minsk), published in Polish in 1605 and speedily in German and Latin.

In 1762, in reply to the attacks on his order, he published an A pologie generale de l'institut et de la doctrine des Jesuites, which won him much fame and some exalted patronage; notably that of the ex-king Stanislaus of Poland and of his grandson the dauphin.

On the conclusion of the Peace of Oliva, which adjusted the long outstanding differences between Poland and Sweden, Czarniecki was transferred to the eastern frontier where the war with Muscovy was still raging.

The diet of 1661 publicly thanked him for his services; the king heaped honours and riches upon him, and in 1665 he was appointed acting commander-in-chief of Poland, but died a few days after receiving this supreme distinction.

Czarniecki is rightly regarded as one of the most famous of heroic Poland's great captains, and to him belongs the chief merit of extricating her from the difficulties which threatened to overwhelm her during the disastrous reign of John Casimir.

According to the German Freiherr von Herberstein (1486-1566), in his Moscovia, of which an Italian translation was published at Venice in 1550, the aurochs survived in Poland (and probably also in Hungary) during the latter middle ages.

As Herberstein had travelled in Poland, it is probable that he had seen both species alive, and the drawings were most likely executed under his own direction.

The order, having purchased the Danish part of Esthonia, in 1347, began a war against the bishop of Riga, as well as against Lithuania, Poland and Russia.

From that time (1561) Livonia formed a subject of dispute between Poland and Russia, the latter only formally abdicating its rights to the country in 1582.

In 1621 it was the theatre of a war between Poland and Sweden, and was conquered by the latter power, enjoying thus for twenty-five years a milder rule.

In 1654, and again at the beginning of the 18th century, it became the theatre of war between Poland, Russia and Sweden, and was finally conquered by Russia.

The foreign-born population in 1900 was 1, 9 00, 4 25, including 480,026 natives of Germany, 425,553 of Ireland, 182,248 of Italy, 165,610 of Russia, 135,685 of England, 117,535 of Canada, 78,49 1 of Austria, 69,755 of Poland and 64,055 of Scandinavia.

He was also a strenuous advocate of religious toleration in Poland.

At the peace of Thorn in 1466 it came under the lordship of Poland.

The Poles proper chiefly inhabit the centre of the province, and the borders of Russian Poland.

West Prussia, with the exception of southern Pomerania (around Marienwerder) which belonged to Prussia, was a possession of Poland from 1466 till the first partition of Poland in 1772, when it was given to Prussia with the exception of Danzig and Thorn, which Poland retained till 1793.

Of the 2726 European immigrants born in non-British states 1025 came from Russian Poland.

This prince was elected king of Poland as Augustus II.

The connexion with Poland was disastrous for Saxony.

For a year before the peace of Altranstadt in 1706, when Augustus gave up the crown of Poland, Saxony was occupied by a Swedish army, which had to be supported at an immense expense.

Frederick Augustus II., who succeeded his father in the electorate in 1733, and was afterwards elected to the throne of Poland as Augustus III., was an indolent prince, wholly under the influence of Count Heinrich von Briihl (q.v.).

The country was deserted by its king and his minister, who retired to Poland.

The elector died seven months after his return from Poland; Briihl died twenty-three days later.

The connexion with Poland was now at an end.

In 1791 Frederick declined the crown of Poland, although it was now offered as hereditary even in the female line.

After serving as divisional chief of the staff in Poland, he went to Orenburg in 1858 as assistant to the commander of the line of the Syr-Darya, and the following year commanded an expedition to support the Kirghiz tribes on the borders of the Sea of Aral against the Khivans.

With a few exceptions (Poland, Bosnia) it was through their free will that the Empire had come into being.

The Poles were, together with the Ruthenians, the youngest Austrian nation; the repeated partitions of Poland since the 18th century brought them unwillingly under Austrian rule.

In home affairs his influence was insignificant, but his foreign policy was distinguished by the peace with Poland in 1683, whereby Russia at last recovered Kiev.

In the interval between these visits he fought for his country during the war of the second partition, and would subsequently have served under Kosciuszko also had he not been arrested on his way to Poland at Brussels by the Austrian government.

Fantastic as it was in some particulars, this project was partly realized 2 in more recent times, and it presented the best guarantee for the independent existence of Poland which had never been able to govern itself.

The town carries on considerable trade, due to the navigable river Pina, which connects it with the fertile regions in the basin of the Dnieper, and, by means of the Dnieper-and-Bug canal, with Poland and Prussia, while the Oginsky canal connects it with the basin of the Niemen.

In 1320 it was annexed to Lithuania; and in 1569, after the union of Lithuania with Poland, it was chief town of the province of Brest.

He then served the emperor of Russia in Poland, and after that (1800) returned into the pay of England, and fought in Bavaria.

It was not, indeed, till the settlement of Westphalia in 1648, after the Thirty Years' War, that this territorial division of Christendom became stereotyped, but the process had been going on for a hundred years previously; in some states, as in England and Scotland, it had long been completed; in others, as in South Germany, Bohemia and Poland, it was defeated by the political and missionary efforts of the Jesuits and other agents of the counter-Reformation.

With Poland the relations of the Czechoslovak Republic were for a considerable time seriously troubled by the question of Teschen, both countries laying claim to that territory.

Posen, one of the oldest towns in Poland and the residence of some of the early Polish princes, including Boleslaus I., provincial colonization " and to prevent German emigration.

Posen became a great depot for the trade between Germany and western Europe on the one hand and Poland and Russia on the other.

New life was infused into the city after its annexation by Prussia at the second partition of Poland in 1 793, and since this date its growth has been rapid.

We possess no certain historical data relating to Poland till the end of the 10th century.

Subsequently he elevated Gnesen into the metropolitan see of Poland, with jurisdiction over the bishoprics of Cracow, Breslau and Kolberg, all three of these new sees, it is important to notice, being in territory conquered by Boleslaus; for hitherto both Cracow and Breslau had been Bohemian cities,-while Kolberg was founded to curb the lately subjugated Pomeranians.

In less than twenty years after the death of its founder, it collapsed before a combined attack of all Poland's enemies, and simultaneously a terrible pagan reaction swept away the poor remnants of Christianity and civilization.

This partitional period, as Polish historians generally call it, lasted from 1138 to 1305, during which Poland lost all political significance, and became an easy prey to her neighbours.

But Masovia to the north, and Great Poland to the north-west, refused to recognize the supremacy of Little Poland, while Silesia soon became completely germanized.

Batu's invasion had an important influence upon the social and political development of Poland.

There was, for instance, Mendovg (1240-1263), who submitted to baptism for purely political reasons, checkmated the Teutonic Knights by adroitly seeking the protection of the Holy See, and annexed the principality of Plock to his ever-widening grand duchy, which already included Black Russia, and formed a huge wedge extending southwards from Courland, thus separating Poland from Russia.

At the very time when Lithuania was thus becoming a compact, united, powerful state, Poland seemed literally to be dropping to pieces.

For a time it seemed highly probable that Poland would be completely germanized, like Silesia, or become a part of the new Bohemian Empire which Wenceslaus II.

From this fate she was saved by the valour of Wladislaus Lokietek, duke of Great Poland (1306-1333), who reunited Great and Little Poland, revived the royal dignity in 1320, and saved the kingdom from annihilation by his great victory over the Teutonic Knights at Plowce in 1332.

It is to him that Poland owed the important acquisition of the greater part of Red Russia, or Galicia, which enabled her to secure her fair share of the northern and eastern trade.

Conrad has been loudly blamed by Polish historians for introducing this foreign, and as it ultimately proved, dangerous element into Poland.

A second Tatar raid in 1259, less dangerous, perhaps, but certainly more ruinous, than the first invasion - for the principalities of Little Poland and Sandomir were systematically ravaged for three months - still further but Poland formed but a small portion of his vast domains, and Poland's interests were subordinated to the larger demands of an imperial policy which embraced half Europe within its orbit On the death of Louis there ensued an interregnum of two years marked by fierce civil wars, instigated by duke Ziemovit of Masovia, the northernmost province of Poland, the daughter of Louis the Great and the granddaughter of Wladislaus Lokietek, had an equal right, by inheritance, to the thrones of Hungary and Poland.

By an agreement with the queen mother of Hungary at Kassa in 1383, the Poles finally accepted Jadwiga as their queen, and, on the 18th of February 1386, greatly against her will, the young princess, already betrothed to William of Austria, was wedded to Jagiello, grand duke of Lithuania, who had been crowned king of Poland at Cracow, three days previously, under the title of Wladislaus II.

The union of Poland and Lithuania as separate states under one king had been brought about by their common fear of the Teutonic Order.

He at once made peace with his cousin; restored him his patrimony; and, to secure Lithuania against the future vengeance of the Knights, Jagiello made overtures to Poland for the hand of Jadwiga, and received the Polish crown along with it, as already mentioned Before proceeding to describe the Jagiellonic period of Polish history, it is necessary to cast a rapid glance at the social and political condition of the country in the preceding Piast period.

The paucity and taciturnity of our sources make it impossible to give anything like an adequate picture of Old Poland during the first four centuries of its existence.

The beneficial influence of the Church of Poland in these early times was incalculable.

To say nothing of the labours of the Cistercians as colonists, pioneers and churchbuilders, or of the missions of the Dominicans and Franciscans (the former of whom were introduced into Poland by Ivo, bishop of Cracow,' the personal friend of Dominic), the Church was the one stable and unifying element in an age of centrifugal particularism.

The frequent synods represented the whole of Poland, and kept alive, as nothing else could, the idea of national solidarity.

In the 13th century alone no fewer than forty-nine papal legates visited Poland, and thirty provincial synods were held by them to regulate church affairs and promote good government.

But in the ensuing anarchic period both cities were utterly ruined, and the centre of political gravity was transferred from Great Poland to Little Poland, where Cracow, singularly favoured by her position, soon became the capital of the monarchy, and one of the wealthiest cities in Europe.

The only portion of the community which had no privileges were the Jews, first introduced into Poland by Boleslaus the Pious, duke of Great Poland, in 1264, when bitter persecutions had driven them northwards from the shores of the Adriatic. Casimir the Great extended their liberty of domicile over the whole kingdom (1334).

From the first they were better treated in Poland than elsewhere, though frequently exposed to outbreaks of popular fanaticism.

The transformation of the pagan Lithuanian chieftain Jagiello into the catholic king of Poland, Wladislaus II., was an event of capital importance in the history of eastern Europe.

Ziemo Union of vit aimed at the Polish crown, proposing to marry Poland and the infant princess Jadwiga of Hungary, who, as Lithuania.

Skilfully taking advantage of the jealousies of Poland and Lithuania, as they were accentuated by the personal antagonism of Jagiello and Witowt (q.v.), with the latter of whom the Knights more than once contracted profitable alliances, they even contrived (Treaty of Salin, 1378) to extend their territory by getting possession of the province of Samogitia, the original seat of the Lithuanians, where paganism still persisted, and where their inhuman cruelties finally excited the horror and indignation of Christian Europe.

By this time, however, the prudent Jagiello had become convinced that Lithuania was too strong to be ruled by or from Poland, and yet not strong enough to stand alone, and by the compact of Vilna (January 18, 1401,1401, confirmed by the compact of Radowo, March 10) he surrendered the whole grand duchy to Witowt, on the understanding that the two states should have a common policy, and that neither of them should elect a new prince without the consent of the other.

But the excessive caution of Jagiello gave the Knights time to recover from the blow; the Polish levies proved unruly and incompetent; Witowt was suddenly recalled to Lithuania by a Tatar invasion, and thus it came about that, when peace was concluded at Thorn, on the 1st of February 1411, Samogitia (which was to revert to the Order on the death of Jagiello and Witowt), Dobrzyn, and a war indemnity of 10o,000 marks payable in four instalments, were the best terms Poland could obtain from the Knights, whose territory practically remained intact.

Jagiello's signal for the attack at the battle of Griinewald, "Cracow and Vilna" (the respective capitals of Poland and Lithuania) had 'eloquently demonstrated the solidarity of the two states.

This solidarity was still further strengthened by the Union of Horodlo (October 2, 1413) which enacted that henceforth Lithuania was to have the same order of dignitaries' as Poland, as well as a council of state, or senate, similar to the Polish senate.

He was now declared to be the equal of the Polish king, and his successor could be elected only by the senates of Poland and Lithuania in conjunction.

The Union of Horodlo also established absolute parity between the nobility of Poland and Lithuania, but the privileges of the latter were made conditional upon their profession of the Roman Catholic faith, experience having shown that difference of religion in Lithuania meant difference of politics, and a tendency Moscow-wards, the majority of the Lithuanian boyars being of the Greek Orthodox Confession.

Sigismund, in 1422, even went so far as to propose a partition of Poland between Hungary, the empire and the Silesian princes, a scheme which foundered upon Sigismund's impecuniosity and the reluctance of the Magyars to injure the Poles.

But by nature he was pre-eminently a diplomatist, and it must in fairness be admitted that his diplomacy in every direction was distinctly beneficial to Poland.

During his long reign of forty-nine years Poland had gradually risen to the rank of a great power, a result due in no small measure to the insight and sagacity of the first Jagiello, who sacrificed every other consideration to the vital necessity of welding the central Sla y s into a compact and homogeneous state.

Neither a turbulent minority, nor the neglect of an absentee king; neither the revival of separatist tendencies in Lithuania, nor the outbreaks of aristocratic lawlessness in Poland, could do more than shake the superstructure of the imposing edifice.

Two-thirds of the grandduchy consisted of old Russian lands inhabited by men who spoke the Ruthenian language and professed the Orthodox Greek religion, while in the north were the Lithuanians proper, semisavage and semi-catholic, justly proud of their heroic forefathers of the house of Gedymin, and very sensitive of the pretensions of Poland to the provinces of Volhynia and Podolia, the fruits of Lithuanian valour.

A Lithuanian'himself, Casimir strenuously resisted the attempts of Poland to wrest these provinces from the grandduchy.

The acquisition of the Prussian lands was vital to the existence of Poland.

It meant the excision of an alien element which fed like a cancer on the body politic; it meant the recovery, at comparatively little cost, of the command of the principal rivers of Poland, the Vistula and the Niemen; it meant the obtaining of a seaboard with the corollaries of sea-power and world-wide commerce.

Yet, except in the border province of Great Poland, which was.

By the second peace of Thorn, Poland recovered the provinces of Pomerelia, Kulm and Michalow, with the bishopric of Ermeland, numerous cities and fortresses, including Marien 18,000 of their 21,000 villages were destroyed, moo churches were razed to the ground, and the population was diminished by more than a quarter of a million.

Thus Prussia was now confederated with Poland, but she occupied a subordinate position as compared with Lithuania, inasmuch as the grand-master, though filling the first place in the royal council, was still a subject of the Polish crown.

Still the Knights had been driven beyond the Vistula, and Poland had secured a seaboard; and it was due entirely to the infinite patience and tenacity of the king that even as much as this was won at last.

He encouraged the Teutonic Order to rebel against Poland; he entertained at his court antiPolish embassies from Moscow; he encouraged the Tatars to ravage Lithuania; he thwarted Casimir's policy in Moldavia.

The death of the brilliant adventurer at Vienna in 1490 came therefore as a distinct relief to Poland, and all danger from the side of Hungary was removed in 1490 when Casimir's son Wladislaus, already king of Bohemia, was elected king of Hungary also.

Poland, indeed, was far less able to cope with the Turks than compact, wealthy Hungary, which throughout the 15th century was one of the most efficient military monarchies in Europe.

Poland had established a sort of suzerainty over Moldavia as early as the end of the 14th century; but at best it was a loose and vague overlordship which the Hospodars repudiated whenever they were strong enough to do so.

This aggression seriously threatened the trade of Poland, and induced Casimir IV.

The first symptom of this lawlessness was the separation of Poland and Lithuania, the Lithuanians proceeding to elect Alexander, Casimir's fourth son, as their grand-duke, without even consulting the Polish senate, in flagrant violation of the union of Horodlo.

Much more dangerous was the political revolution proceeding simultaneously in Poland, John !.!.

In Poland, meanwhile, something very like anarchy prevailed.

In foreign affairs a policy of drift prevailed which encouraged all the enemies of the Republic to raise their heads, while the dependent states of Prussia in the north and Moldavia in the south made strenuous efforts to break away from Poland.

Eminently practical, Sigismund recognized that the first need of Poland was a standing army.

The miserable collapse of the Polish chivalry during the Bukovinian campaign of 1497 had convinced every one that the ruszenie pospolite was useless for serious military purposes, and that Poland, in order to hold her own, must in future follow the example of the West, and wage her warfare with trained mercenaries.

In view of the fact that Poland was the most defenceless country in Europe, with no natural boundaries, and constantly exposed to attacks from every quarter, it was not unreasonable to expect even this patriotic sacrifice from the privileged classes, who held at least two-thirds of the land by military tenure.

To this the dietines, or local diets, of Great Poland, and Little Poland, agreed, but at the last moment the whole project foundered on the question who was the proper custodian of the new assessment rolls, and the king had to be content with the renewal of former subsidies, varying from twelve to fifteen groats per hide of land for three years.

Poland, as the next neighbour of Hungary, was more seriously affected than any other European power by this catastrophe, but her politicians differed as to the best way of facing it.

In Poland Zapolya's was the popular cause, and he also found powerful support in the influential and highly gifted Laski family, as represented by the Polish chancellor and his nephews John and Hieronymus.

Almost every acre of densely populated Masovia was in the hands of her sturdy, ultra-conservative squires, in point of culture far below their brethren in Great and Little Poland.

All the .more disquieting was the internal condition of the country, due mainly to the invasion of Poland by the Reformation, and the coincidence of this invasion with an internal revolution of a quasi-democratic character, which aimed at substituting the rule of the szlachta for the rule of the senate.

The edict of Wielun (1424), remarkable as the first anti-heretical decree issued in Poland, crushed the new sect in its infancy.

For a time, therefore, the Protestants had to be cautious in Poland proper, but they found a sure refuge in Prussia, where Lutheranism was already the established religion, and where the newly erected university of Konigsberg became a seminary for Polish ministers and preachers.

Meanwhile conversion to Calvinism, among the higher classes in Poland, became more and more frequent.

We hear of crowded Calvinist conventicles in Little Poland from 1545 onwards, and Calvinism continued to spread throughout the kingdom during the latter years of Sigismund I.

Another sect, which ultimately found even more favour in Poland than the Calvinists, was that of the Bohemian Brethren.

We first hear of them in Great Poland in 1548.

It is not too much to say that the condition of the Catholic Church in Poland was almost as bad as it was in Scotland during the same period.

Moreover, despite her immense wealth (in the province of Little Poland alone she owned at this time 26 towns, 83 landed estates and 772 villages), the Church claimed exemption from all public burdens, from all political responsibilities, although her prelates continued to exercise an altogether disproportionate political influence.

Education was shamefully neglected, the masses being left in almost heathen ignorance - and this, too, at a time when the upper classes were greedily appropriating the ripe fruits of the Renaissance and when, to use the words of a contemporary, there were "more Latinists in Poland than there used to be in Latium."

Nothing indeed did so much to popularize the new doctrines in Poland as this beneficial revival of the long-negle-ted vernacular by the reformers.

Then began a religious interim, which was gradually prolonged for ten years, during which time Protestantism in Poland flourished exceedingly.