Thaddeus of Warsaw | Page 8

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 people.
The family of Sobieski had ever been foremost in the ranks of their country; and at the present crisis its venerable head did not hang behind the youngest warrior in preparations for the field.
On the evening of an anniversary of the birthday of his grandson, the palatine rode abroad with a party of friends, who had been celebrating the festival with their presence. The countess (his daughter) and Thaddeus were left alone in the saloon. She sighed as she gazed on her son, who stood