392 AGONIA
cornered. Her moment of satisfaction soon passed. She had not counted on the
Poles, or the Turks, or on Frederick of Prussia. She was soon obliged to rethink
her policy.
In 1768, the repercussions of Russian brutalities in the Republic made rapid
progress. On 2.9 February, at Bar in Podolia, a new Confederation was consti-
tuted by a consortium of disillusioned nobles headed by Jan Michal Pac
(1730-80), together with members of the Potocki, Sapieha, and Krasinski
clans. They started a war which the Russians were unable to stamp out for
nearly four years. They generated an idealism, a questioning of fundamental
principles, which had not occurred for decades, and which was to form the
starting-point of modern Polish nationalism. At the same time, they provoked
violent side-effects which were completely beyond their control. In the
Ukraine, their forces were taken in the rear by the so-called 'Kolivshchyzna', a
peasant and Cossack rising which left a horrifying trail of butchered noble-
men, Jews, and priests. The rising briefly diverted the attentions of the Russian
and Royal armies who were advancing together against the Confederates. At
Uman (Human), it led to a massacre of legendary proportions. Some twenty
thousand Catholics and Jews, herded respectively into their churches and syn-
agogues, were murdered in cold blood. The rebels produced the slogan: 'Pole-
Jew-Dog: all of one Faith', and in three weeks of unbridled violence killed
almost two hundred thousand people. Thereafter, they were suppressed with
matching severity. Their leader Maksym Zelezniak, was taken into custody by
the Russians, and deported to Siberia. His chief lieutenant, Ivan Gonta, was
handed over to the Poles, to be flayed and quartered alive.^10 In the following
months, the Russians under Krechetnikov aided Hetman Branicki in his pur-
suit of the Confederates. But in October, they sparked off a further reaction
from Turkey. Exasperated by Catherine's broken promises to withdraw her
forces from Poland, the Porte ordered the arrest of the Russian Minister in
Constantinople. It was a declaration of war. Catherine was caught by the
'fork' of her simultaneous commitments in Poland and in Turkey.
Catherine's troubles multiplied fast. Fighting a war against the Turks, she
could not spare the troops to crush the risings which sprang up in Cracow, in
Wielkopolska, and in Lithuania. In 1769 she found that the Confederates of Bar
had set up a 'Generality' at Biala on the Austrian frontier, and that French
officers were assisting in their activities. In 1771, open war flared again. The
young Suvorov was hard pressed to contain the brilliant improvisation of
Casimir Pulaski in Poland, and of Hetman Oginski in Lithuania. The last centre
of resistance at the monastery of Jasna Gora, at Czestochowa, was not sup-
pressed till 18 August 1772.^11
Frederick of Prussia was delighted with the turn of events. He waited until the
Polish pot was nicely on the boil, before giving it a stir himself. In September
1768, he produced a plan of Partition, supposedly worked out by one Count
Lynar. On finding that Catherine was not yet ready, he bided his time, hinting
all the while that the Empress's indulgent treatment of the ungrateful Poles was