Thaddeus of Warsaw | Page 8

for that which is to come."
JANE PORTER.
BRISTOL, November, 1844.

CONTENTS.
I. II. The Mill of Mariemont. III. The Opening of the Campaign. IV.
The Pass of Volunna. V. The Banks of the Vistula. VI. Society in
Poland. VII. The Diet of Poland. VIII. Battle of Brzesc--The Tenth of
October. IX. The Last Days of Villanow. X. Sobieski's Departure from
Warsaw. XI. The Baltic. XII. Thaddeus's First Day in England. XIII.
The Exile's Lodgings. XIV. A Robbery and its Consequences. XV. The

Widow's Family. XVI. The Money-Lender. XVII. The Meeting of
Exiles. XVIII. The Veteran's Narrative. XIX. Friendship a Staff in
Human Life. XX. Woman's Kindness. XXI. Fashionable Sketches from
the Life. XXII. Honorable Resources of an Exile. XXIII. XXIV. Lady
Tinemouth's Boudoir. XXV. The Countess of Tinemouth's Story.
XXVI. The Kindredship of Minds. XXVII. Such Things Were. XXVIII.
Mary Beaufort and her Venerable Aunt. XXIX. Hyde Park. XXX.
Influences of Character. XXXI. The Great and the Small of Society.
XXXII. The Obduracy of Vice--The Inhumanity of Folly. XXXIII.
Passion and Principle. XXXIV. Requiescat in Pace. XXXV. Deep are
the Purposes of Adversity. XXXVI. An English Prison. XXXVII.
XXXVIII. Zeal is Power. XXXIX. The Vale of Grantham--Belvoir. XL.
Somerset Castle. XLI. The Maternal Heart. XLII. Harrowby Abbey.
XLIII. The Old Village Hotel. XLIV. Letters of Farewell. XLV.
Deerhurst. XLVI. The Spirit of Peace. XLVII. An Avowal. XLVIII. A
Family Party. XLIX. L. APPENDIX.
CHAPTER I.
The large and magnificent palace of Villanow, whose vast domains
stretch along the northern bank of the Vistula, was the favorite
residence of John Sobieski, King of Poland. That monarch, after having
delivered his country from innumerable enemies, rescued Vienna and
subdued the Turks, retired to this place at certain seasons, and thence
dispensed those acts of his luminous and benevolent mind which
rendered his name great and his people happy.
When Charles the Twelfth of Sweden visited the tomb of Sobieski, at
Cracow, he exclaimed, "What a pity that so great a man should ever
die!" [Footnote: In the year 1683, this hero raised the siege of Vienna,
then beleagured by the Turks; and driving them out of Europe, saved
Christendom from a Mohammedan usurpation.] Another generation
saw the spirit of this lamented hero revive in the person of his
descendant, Constantine, Count Sobieski, who, in a comparatively
private station, as Palatine of Masovia, and the friend rather than the
lord of his vassals, evinced by his actions that he was the inheritor of
his forefather's virtue as well as of his blood.

He was the first Polish nobleman who granted freedom to his peasants.
He threw down their mud hovels and built comfortable villages; he
furnished them with seed, cattle, and implements of husbandry, and
calling their families together, laid before them the deed of their
enfranchisement; but before he signed it, he expressed a fear that they
would abuse this liberty of which they had not had experience, and
become licentious.
"No," returned a venerable peasant; "when we were ignorant men, and
possessed no property of our own except these staffs in our hands, we
were destitute of all manly motives for propriety of conduct; but you
have taught us to read out of the Holy Book, how to serve God and
honor the king. And shall we not respect laws which thus bestow on us,
and ensure to us, the fruits of our labors and the favor of Heaven!"
The good sense and truth of this answer were manifested in the event.
On the emancipation of these people, they became so prosperous in
business and correct in behavior, that the example of the palatine was
speedily followed by the Chancellor Zamoiski [Footnote: This family
had ever been one of the noblest and most virtuous in Poland. And had
its wisdom been listened to in former years by certain powerful and
wildly ambitious lords that once great kingdom would never have
exchanged its long line of hereditary native-princes for an elective
monarchy--that arena of all political mischiefs.] and several of the
principal nobility. The royal Stanislaus's beneficent spirit moved in
unison with that of Sobieski, and a constitution was given to Poland to
place her in the first rank of free nations.
Encircled by his happy tenantry, and within the bosom of his family,
this illustrious man educated Thaddeus, the only male heir of his name,
to the exercise of all the virtues which ennoble and endear the
possessor.
But this reign of public and domestic peace was not to continue. Three
formidable and apparently friendly states envied the effects of a
patriotism they would not imitate; and in the beginning of the year
1792, regardless of existing treaties, broke in upon the unguarded
frontiers of Poland, threatening with all the horrors of a merciless war

the properties, lives, and liberties of the