CHAPTER XX
VICTORIES OF THE
COUNTER- REVOLUTION IN
EASTERN EUROPEQuis scopus revolutionis Polonicae?... The aristocrats expect an aristocracy to re-
sult, the wiser and more enlightened expect a future democracy, the populace and
poorer people... will seize the land. My own belief is that the beginning was a
cloak for the aristocracy, but that the end will be a democracy.
—A HUNGARIAN PATRIOT ON THE POLISH REVOLUTION,
1794
The Russian tsarina, rightly and for the good of Russia and the deliverance of the
entire North from the ulcer of French corruption, had to take arms for the pacifica-
tion of the wanton Warsaw horde established by the French tyrants.
—CATHERINE II TO MARSHAL SUVOROV, 1794
Hope, for a season, bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shriek’d—as KOSCIUSZKO fell!—THOMAS CAMPBELL, EDINBURGH, 1799
The year that saw the survival of the Revolution in France saw its extinction in
Poland. The same months in which it became clear that structural changes would
spread to Belgium and Holland saw the stamping out of “Jacobinism” in Austria
and in Hungary. The present chapter is designed to describe—not the failure of
revolution in Eastern Europe, since, except in Poland, no revolution was at-
tempted—but the triumph and strengthening of counter- revolutionary forces in
Eastern Europe at this time. These were the forces, agrarian and conservatively