444 Chapter XVIII
made against France, conquests in which, so to speak, every inch must be bought
at the price of blood and at the immense cost of a ruinous war, while the acquisi-
tions of the two Courts in Poland have been accompanied by no danger and have
met with no resistance.”^29 Austria, in short, desired an easier dividend. Finding
France too strong, it would prefer to join in an expropriation of the weak.
As for the Prussians, they had long aspired to the annexation of the city of Dan-
zig, and of the area called Great Poland or Poznan, which reached westward as a
triangular salient between Silesia and Prussia proper. While the Russians occupied
Poland, the Prussians were involved as allies of the Austrians in the war against
France. The conjuncture was unfortunate for the court of Berlin, which, after its
disconcerting experience with the French at Valmy, notified the court of Vienna
that it would abandon the French war unless compensated by territory in Poland.
In January 1793 the Prussian army crossed the Polish frontier. The governments of
Prussia and Russia immediately began to negotiate their territorial demands upon
Poland—the “second” partition—expecting to exclude Austria, as they in fact suc-
ceeded in doing.
It was to combat “the spirit of French democratism” that the king of Prussia sent
his army into Poland.^30 He feared the “maneuvers of Jacobin emissaries” both in
Poland and in his own adjoining states. Where formerly there had been a fear that
the Poles might govern themselves only too well, it was now feared that they could
not govern themselves at all. Anarchy and the poisonous influence of secret societ-
ies were seen as menaces to neighboring countries. The Poles were not even cred-
ited with having their own revolution; they were said to be merely the dupes and
victims of French subversives. In January 1793 the Prussian and Russian rulers
signed a kind of holy alliance; at least it was drawn up “in the name of the Most
Holy and Indivisible Trinity.” The two powers declared that they must protect
themselves against the “imminent and universal danger” presented by the “progress
and extension” of the French Revolution. They would therefore each annex certain
specified territories in Poland, in return for which the king of Prussia agreed to
remain at war “against the French rebels.”^31
The experience of the Targowica Poles was not unlike that of the Belgian demo-
crats. They had been liberated from domestic despotism by a foreign army. Suppos-
edly they had come, with foreign aid, into power in their own country. They had
expected to enjoy an independent republic, constructed according to their own
political philosophy and befriended by an ideologically sympathetic neighbor. To
be annexed to this mammoth neighbor was no part of their original design. They
were surprised and dismayed at the new turn of affairs. They were also divided; for,
as in Belgium some of the democrats concluded that their own security, and the
security of their principles, would be better assured by incorporation into France,
so some of the Targowicans came to feel that their control of their serfs, and their
preferred agrarian and social system, would be better guaranteed by membership
29 Lutostanski, 152.
30 The declaration of the king of Prussia on the entrance of his troops into Poland in January 1793
was widely published at the time, e.g. in the Paris Moniteur and in the Annual Register. The same is true
of various Russian declarations of 1792 and 1793.
31 Lutostanski, 140–43.