388 AGONIA
inexpensively. It is the simple truth that Poland's weakness suited the purposes
of her neighbours most conveniently. In a tag of the day, Poland was Karczma
Europy - 'Europe's Staging Inn'. What is more, whenever the Poles took steps
to put their house in order, both Russia and Prussia took counter-steps to see
that nothing changed. In 1764, when the convocational Sejm appointed a
Commission of Finance to create a general customs system in line with other
modern states, Frederick of Prussia set up a fort at Marienwerder, on his side of
the river Vistula, to bombard and terrorize Polish shipping until the new pro-
posals were dropped. In the same year, the Russians dispatched the latest of
their military expeditions to see that the coming Royal election was enacted as
planned. If in the subsequent period the Poles are judged to have contributed to
the catastrophe themselves, it was more by their desperate efforts to escape from
Anarchy than from their supposed desire to wallow in it. It should have been
clear to all that the despots of St. Petersburg and Berlin, who denied most civil
liberties to their own subjects, could never be the genuine champions of any gen-
uine 'Golden Freedom' in Poland.
The same sort of hypocrisy was current in matters of religion. It is true that
the Roman Catholic establishment of the Republic, despite the long tradition of
toleration and freedom of worship, had denied the religious minorities,
Orthodox and Protestant, full political rights since 1718. In this, Polish practice
resembled that of Great Britain or Holland, and, until the bishops were goaded
into retaliation in the 1770s, had been far more tolerant than that of Russia,
whose visiting armies had invariably inflicted forcible conversion on the
Republic's Uniates. But this did not prevent the Russian court from posing as
the defender of oppressed minorities. On this issue, Frederick the Great had no
illusions. 'What would (the Russian Minister) say if France were to invade
Holland in order to force the Estates-General to admit papists to public
charges?' he asked,'... would he not say that France had been the aggressor?
But apply this to the present situation in Poland ... It's the Russians who are the
aggressors.'^2 Frederick knew his collaborators well, but did not flinch in joining
them in their pious demands for religious rights in Poland. If the Republic
had been strong, there is no doubt that the diplomats would have praised her
tradition of religious enlightenment instead of cultivating the grievances of the
'dissidents'.
Russia's expansionist policy towards Eastern Europe, and to Poland in par-
ticular, came in two variations. On the one hand, the military party were openly
in favour of direct annexations. They believed that Russia's interests could best
be served by seizing the territory of her neighbours on every possible occasion.
Chernyshev, the Vice-President of the War College, expressed this view when,
at the new Empress Catherine's council called to discuss the death of the King
of Poland, he proposed an invasion of Polish Livonia and of the palatinates of
Polotsk, Witebsk, and Mscislaw. He commanded the support no doubt of those
who in the previous years, with the Russian Army in Berlin, had urged the late
Empress Elizabeth to dismantle the upstart Kingdom of Prussia. The politicians,