410 AGONIA
the other charges d'affaires closed their embassies for good. Only the Nuncio
and Gardner, the Englishman, remained - the one to protect the Catholic
Church, the other to settle his debts. Throughout 1796, the Nuncio refused to
leave. The armorials of St. Peter which defiantly hung on the gates of the
Nonciatura were the last public evidence of condolence for the deceased
Republic. He finally left on 15 February 1797, instructed by the Vatican to pro-
ceed to St. Petersburg. As his cortege turned the corner of the street, the police
removed the offending armorials, and placed them as trophies in a museum. It
was the last diplomatic incident in Warsaw for 121 years. Gardner alone
stayed on, as a bankrupt private citizen.
Gardner's dispatches during the death agony of the Republic make pathetic
reading indeed. On 12 November 1794, he wrote to the British Secretary of State
about the storming of Praga:
It is with regret I inform your Lordship that the day of the forcing the lines of Prag was
attended by the most horrid and unnecessary barbarities - Houses burnt, women massa-
cred, infants at the breast pierced with the pikes of cosaques and universal plunder, and
we now know the same fate was prepared for Warsaw...^33
After the massacre, it was obvious even to the most sanguine observer that the
Russians were determined to put an end to a state which repaid the benevo-
lence of their Empress with such fierce ingratitude. But no inkling of their
immediate intentions was available in Warsaw. Suvorov was as much in the
dark as the foreign ambassadors. Instructions arrived from St. Petersburg, and
had to be executed without query or explanation. Gardiner had nothing to tell
the government at home and confined his comments to vague speculations, and
to observations on the Russians' extraordinarily conspiratorial behaviour. In
December 1794, he had suspected that Stanislaw-August was about to be
deported, and wondered whether his own possession of two sets of letters of
credence, one for the Republic as well as that for the King, meant that his mis-
sion to the Republic could continue after his mission to the King had ended.
He watched the King's departure. 'It is impossible', he wrote, 'for any person
really attached to royalty, not to feel most sensibly on such an occasion.
I hope, however, that the King of Poland, even divested of his sovereignty,
has yet some happy days before Him.'^34 When Divov called on him, he had no
idea whether the Russian's interpretation of the situation was correct or not.
But it made no difference, since there was no one who would have listened to
his representations one way or another. On 13 February 1795 he received the
King's last official letter, painfully written in French, and sent a copy to
London:
Dear Gardiner, Comme mon role, et le votre aupres de moi paroissent finir tres
prochainement, et comme je n'espere plus de vous voir, il m'importe au moins de vous
dire Adieu, et cela du fond de mon coeur. Vous y garderez votre place jusqu'a ma mort,
et j'espere bien qu'on nous rejoindra au moins la ou des ames honnetes et des coeurs bons
devraient je crois se trouver ensemble a jamais... Toujours il restera vrai que j'aime et