Weak Justifications of the Big Three

Such a work hardly requires refutation. Truth, in fact, is outraged in every page of the writing.

Continuing First Partition of Poland,
our selection from History of Poland by James Fletcher. The selection is presented in seven easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in First Partition of Poland.

Time: 1772

Catherine of Russia continued:

The object was, therefore, to give the nations time to lay aside their inveterate hatred; and to remove immediate causes of dispute between the different subjects, and consequent rupture between the two states. Russia sacrificed for a time the possession of the territory which extends from the fertile town of Stoika to the river Tecmine, and from the right bank of the Dnieper, fifty versts in breadth along the frontiers of Poland. There is no idea of cession here on the part of Russia; it is a pledge (gage) which she advances for the solidity of the peace, which ought to be returned to her when the object of it is effected. This is the only reasonable construction which can be put upon the stipulation, ‘until it has been otherwise amicably settled.’ Russia is not to be a loser because the confusion of the internal affairs of Poland has never allowed that country to come to a definite agreement on this subject, notwithstanding the requests of Russia.”

It does not demand much acumen to unveil such impudent sophistry as this. The assertion that the arrangement was only provisional and temporary is false; the treaty indeed left the detail of the boundary line to be drawn out by commissioners, as must always be the case in arrangements of this kind, and as was meant to be implied by the words which the Russian minister transforms into “until it has been otherwise amicably arranged.”

Such was the weak manner in which the Russian diplomatists imagined to deceive Europe; their defense indeed is as triumphant a proof of the badness of their cause as the most earnest friend of Poland could desire. Our surprise may well be excited at the weakness of the argument, particularly when we remember that Catherine’s servants had long been trained in glossing over the basest and most shameful transactions. “The ministers of St. Petersburg,” said a contemporary writer, “are accustomed to appear without blushing at the tribunal of the public in defense of any cause; the death of Peter and assassination of Prince John inured them to it.”

Such a work hardly requires refutation. Every sophism and every falsehood is a damning argument against the Russian cause. Truth, in fact, is outraged in every page of the writing; and one striking instance will suffice. Catherine states that the Polish Government would never make any arrangement about the frontier; but the fact is that even as late as 1764 commissioners were appointed at the diet of coronation for this very purpose, but the Russians refused to nominate theirs; again in 1766, when Count Rzewinski, Polish ambassador to St. Petersburg, made a similar application, he was answered that the affairs of the dissidents must be first settled.

The Austrian pretensions were even more elaborately drawn up than those of Russia. In the first place, the district of Zips, the first sacrifice to Austrian rapacity, came under consideration. Sigismund, who came to the Hungarian throne in 1387, mortgaged this district to Wladislas II (Jagello), King of Poland, in 1412, for a stipulated sum of money. It is commonly called the “Thirteen Towns of Zips,” but the district contains sixteen. No reclamation of it had been made till the present time; it had then been in the undisputed possession of Poland nearly three hundred sixty years. The chief demur which the Austrians now made to the mortgage was that the King of Hungary was restricted by the constitution, as expressed in the coronation-oath, from alienating any portion of the kingdom. But even this plea, weak as it is under such circumstances, is not available; since it is proved that this article was never made a part of the coronation-oath until the accession of Ferdinand I in 1527.

The Austrian minister endeavored also to establish the right of his mistress to Galicia and Podolia, as Queen of Hungary, and the duchies of Oswiecim and Zator, as Queen of Bohemia. “What lastly establishes indisputably the ancient claim of Hungary to the provinces in question is that in several seals and documents of the ancient kings of Hungary preserved in our archives, the titles and arms of Galicia are always used.” After exhausting the records, and stating that the crown of Hungary has never in any way renounced its rights and pretensions, the author modestly winds up his arguments in the following way:

Consequently, after such a long delay, the house of Austria is well authorized in establishing and reclaiming the lawful rights and pretensions of her crowns of Hungary and Bohemia, and to obtain satisfaction by the means which she now employs; in the use of which she has exhibited the greatest moderation possible, by confining herself to a very moderate equivalent for her real pretensions to the best provinces of Poland, such as Podolia, etc.”

Frederick argues his cause on the general principles of civil law. “Since then,” he says,

the crown of Poland cannot prove express cessions, which are the only good titles between sovereigns to confer a legitimate possession of disputed provinces, it will perhaps have recourse to prescription and immemorial possession. We all know the famous dispute among the learned on the question of prescription and natural right, whether it obtains between sovereigns and free nations. The affirmative is founded only on that very weak argument that he who for a long time has not made use of his rights is presumed to have abandoned them; a presumption which is at best doubtful, and cannot destroy the right and established property of a monarch. Besides, even this presumption altogether vanishes when the superior strength of a usurper has prevented the lawful proprietor from claiming his rights, which has been the case in the present instance.

Time alone cannot render a possession just which has not been so from its origin; and as there is no judge between free nations, no one can decide if the time past is sufficient to establish prescription, or if the presumption of the desertion [of rights] is sufficiently proved. But even leaving this point undetermined, the prescription which the republic of Poland could allege in the present case has not any of the qualities which the advocates of prescription require, to render it valid between free states.”

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