THE END OF THE RUSSIAN PROTECTORATE 395
The Poles were required to submit to their treatment in the most proper way
possible. On the initiative of the new Russian ambassador, Staeckelberg, a Sejm
was called. For a salary of 3,000 ducats a month, the Marshal of the Sejm, Adam
Poninski, was raised to the dignity of Treasurer in return for managing the
confirmation of the treaties. As part of the process, yet another Confederation
was formed, and after that yet another Commission. The King was persuaded
to join, and in the summer of 1773 signed the necessary documents. The three
treaties of cession between the Republic and each of the partitioning powers
were completed on 7/18 September 1773. Legal niceties were observed to the
end. The air was full of compliments to the gracious Kings and Empresses and
of homage to the 'Golden Freedom'. In effect, the victim not only gave his assent
for the operation; he was persuaded to wield the knife himself. The one sover-
eign to protest was the King of Spain.
In a world careless of the Republic's fate, the mechanics of Partition passed
almost unnoticed. The platitudes were widely believed. The faults of the Poles
were universally recognized. Court apologists from Berlin, St. Petersburg, and
Vienna stressed the difficulties in which their sovereigns had been placed. In due
course, court and state historians from Karamzin to Treitschke, expatiated on
the Poles' good fortune in receiving the blessings of foreign rule.^13 No one
seemed to notice the sleight of hand which concealed a sophisticated form of
international violence. Carlyle came near the mark when he called the Partitions
an act of 'decisive surgery'. He only forgot to mention that the purpose of genu-
ine surgery is to cure and to heal, not to maim or to kill. For Frederick had
designed an operation whose avowed purpose was to weaken the Republic, and
to destroy its powers of resistance. Dissatisfied with the side-effects of his earl-
ier, direct acts of aggression, he was now perfecting a technique which cost less
and looked better. The demon-surgeon picks his victim well in advance, and
locates its weaknesses. Posing as a well-wisher disturbed by the symptoms, he
pokes the affected area until convulsions are produced, and the victim is
writhing in agony. Next he advises preventive surgery, to which the desperate
patient is easily persuaded to submit. During the operation he takes care to leave
enough of the diseased tissue untouched so as to ensure future inflammation,
and invites his assistants to amputate an arm or a leg by way of surgical prac-
tice. Afterwards, when the greatly weakened patient suffers further convulsions,
another operation can be prescribed, and then another, and another. If, at the
end, the patient is dead, and his property is in the surgeon's pocket, the world
can be told, with regret, that his illness was malignant from the start, and that
costly and elaborate efforts were made to save him. After all, it is the surgeon
who makes out the death certificate. Who will know that the patient's disease
was not really fatal? Who will suspect that he has been foully murdered? As
Frederick well knew, his new technique of 'decisive surgery' gave all the appear-
ances of legality and respectability. It was much safer and much more efficient
than assaulting one's victim in the street. Indeed, as it involved the minimum of
overt violence, it earned the skilful practitioner the admiration of the civilized