THE END OF THE RUSSIAN PROTECTORATE 405
discovered that its precious Prussian ally had gone over to the enemy. In the
autumn of 1792 a Prussian Army appeared in Poland to complete the Russian
conquest. A Treaty of Partition signed on 4 January 1793 gave Prussia not only
Danzig and Thorn but the whole of Wielkopolska - the cradle of the Polish
kingdom. Russia took 100,000 square miles of the eastern provinces, thereby
annexing the remainder of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Austria, which was
demanding its share after avoiding the dirty work, was given nothing.^25
As in 1773, the defeated Poles were obliged to submit in a legal and orderly
manner. From June to October 1793, the last Sejm of the Republic's history
was assembled at Grodno in order to reverse the legislation of the previous five
years. Its membership was carefully screened. Its deliberations, conducted
under the sights of Russian guns, were a charade. The Constitution of 3 May
was formally rescinded. The 'Golden Freedom' was restored. The Second
Partition was approved. The King was persuaded to sign. The nobility, threat-
ened with the wholesale sequestration of their estates, were obliged to assent.
Here was another brilliant operation of decisive surgery. The treaties of ces-
sion were completed with Russia on 11/22 July 1793, and with Prussia on 25
September 1793.^26
Matters could not rest there, however. Having first encouraged the people to
resist, the King could not now command them to desist. The reformers had not
been finally defeated. In the winter of 1793-4, the Russians failed to bring the
Republic to heel. Ministers deserted their posts. Officers refused orders. Local
dietines passed resolutions of protest. Government business ground to a halt.
News from France, where Louis XVI had been guillotined, spelled danger for
the despots. This was the hey-day of Robespierre. The partitioning powers
were thoroughly frightened, and involved with the revolutionary war.
Moderate men, deprived of their Sejm but not yet of their hopes, grew more
radical. The exiles were planning a counter-coup from their refuges in Leipzig
and Dresden. Conspiratorial cells were formed, and oaths sworn. In Warsaw,
the nervous authorities took offence at the libretto of Boguslawski's comic
opera Krakowiacy i gorale (Cracovians and Highlanders). The spectacle of a
tenor in popular costume singing 'the sharper are the thistles, the sweeter is the
victory' was judged altogether too suggestive.^27 The theatre was closed after
three days. When, on 12 March, General Madalinski categorically refused to
disband the cavalry garrison at Ostrolf ka, but set out instead for Cracow, the
conditions for an insurrection were already very ripe. Kosciuszko's return was
imminent.
In essence, therefore, the National Rising of 1794 was the natural culmination
of the reformist movement. Its Jacobinist overtones were rather academic, and
at most a sign of the times. Its desperate methods were the reflection less of a
guiding philosophy than of the brute repression with which it was faced. The
aim, as in the debating chamber of 1791, was independence. The unprecedented
appeals for social revolution were motivated by the realization that nothing
short of the entire nation in arms could match the overwhelming numbers of the