DIPLOMACY IN POLAND-LITHUANIA 309
Sobieski can hardly be blamed for lacking prescience of the future. Even so, as a
direct result of Poland's preoccupations in the Danube Basin, the Hohenzollerns
were both given licence to consolidate their gains, and to steal a decisive march
on their rivals. By the time that Sobieski died, Frederick III was posed to found
a kingdom, and Peter III an empire. The idea that Poland-Lithuania might
somehow challenge these developments was already judged unrealistic. The
Ottomans had been humbled, and Sweden under Charles XII stood on the brink
of disaster. The way lay open for the full emergence of the two powers, Prussia
and Russia, whose growth and competition were to dominate Eastern Europe
for the next 250 years. The Republic's place in the international order slipped
away almost by default.
In the eighteenth century, the international standing of the Polish-Lithuanian
Republic slumped alarmingly. In the wars of the Holy League (1683-99), John
Sobieski had played a prominent if not a decisive role. But the price was high.
To fight the war, the Republic had to turn its back on the French connection, to
resign its plans for recovering Prussia, and to abandon the Ukraine to Muscovy.
In 1686, the 'Grzymultowski Peace' confirmed Moscow's possession of Kiev, the
left-bank Dnieper lands, Czernihow, Sieviersk, Smolensk, and Krasny
Gorodok, providing the new territorial base which transformed old Muscovy
into Peter I's new Russia. Sobieski's campaigns specially benefited the three
neighbouring powers which eighty years later were destined to partition the
Republic between them. In 1697, Sobieski's successor, Augustus II of Saxony
(1697-1733), was elected by Russian connivance in a disputed election which
divided the country into rival camps for the rest of his long reign, paralysing any
resistance which might have been offered to the depredations of foreign armies
during the Great Northern War. After Poltava in 1709, when Russian
supremacy was assured, the Russians in particular were able to behave with
impunity, terrorizing the constitutional institutions of the Republic, and
encouraging the disruptive elements. As the French consul in Danzig observed
in 1717, 'the Muscovites claim to be in command wherever they happen to be,
pretending that everything they find belongs to them, and that they can behave
as they like.'^29 In the succeeding reign of Augustus III (1733-63), almost as pro-
tracted as his father's, the slough of Polish despond deepened. Wars, depreda-
tions, magnatial factions, a rival election, a Pretender, the collapse of the central
legislation and treasury - all combined to obstruct reform.
Under such conditions, the Polish diplomatic service inevitably declined.
Augustus II, as King of Poland, sent only 38 missions abroad in 36 years. Under
Augustus III, only one of thirteen missions was directed to the West. The King
entrusted foreign affairs increasingly to his Saxon ministers, ignoring the dwin-
dling protests of the Republic's officers. Foreign ambassadors resided in
Dresden, visiting Warsaw ever less frequently. The only diplomatic activity
which enjoyed any sense of continuity was that of the Hermans, who during the
Great Northern War had often been left to their own devices and who kept con-
trol thereafter of relations with the Turks and Tartars. In the absence of central