Poland: A Novel Part 16

He found no support for this daring proposal: Kuprin adhered to his belief that eastern Europe needed Poland as a buffer, and to Von Eschl's surprise, the Austrian amba.s.sador said that he would have moral qualms about eliminating a free nation entirely.

Von Eschl was sharp in his rejection of that timorous att.i.tude: 'Prussia is Lutheran. Russia is Orthodox. Only Austria is Roman Catholic, and I think, sir, that that colors your att.i.tude.'

'It certainly does!' the Austrian agreed with surprising enthusiasm. 'Poland is a Christian country deserving of Christian rights.'

'So you will carve off a small piece for Austria-' Von Eschl began, but Kuprin interrupted: 'Not so small, either,' and Von Eschl concluded: 'You'll take some but not all?'

'I think that represents a significant moral difference,' the Austrian said, but Von Eschl was still reluctant to concede that Prussia's proposal had failed: 'Is it settled, then? Austria and Russia refuse to allow total elimination?'

However, when those two plenipotentiaries nodded, he acquiesced with a graciousness he did not often display: 'So be it. A partial cutting away. But in years to come, please remember what I prophesied this day. We three will return to this table, and sooner than you imagine, to complete our task. Poland is doomed, but we allow her a short breathing s.p.a.ce before the death rattle sets in.' Amiably he rose, shook hands with his colleagues, and said brightly: 'Let's bring out the maps.'

This meeting, which would initiate the dismemberment of Poland, took place in the very heart of Warsaw, in the Granicki palace, and when the large oak table was cleared and Von Eschl had spread his carefully drawn map, the others gasped, for the Prussian cartographers had awarded themselves all of western Poland including Warsaw, with the huge expanses of the east going to Russia and an insultingly small section in the south to Austria. No ent.i.ty called Poland remained. But before the others could point out that this total elimination was precisely what they had rejected, Von Eschl crumpled his map and threw it on the floor, saying with a cold smile: 'Obviously, that's not what we want ... at this time.'

When Kuprin revealed Russia's map, both Von Eschl and the Austrian amba.s.sador were visibly surprised, for the area to be absorbed by Russia was astonis.h.i.+ngly small, not much larger than what would be given to Austria, but as the three men studied the map, Von Eschl began to appreciate the cleverness of Russia's proposal. 'You win Poland's sympathy by taking little, but from your foothold, you intend to dominate all.'

Kuprin smiled. He was fifty years old, a man who had served on many delicate missions and who knew that he could not hoodwink this clever Prussian. 'To dominate what's left of Poland? Isn't that what we all aspire to?'

The three plotters interrupted their map study to discuss this interesting point, each disclosing what plans his nation had for the disciplining of Poland, but after a few exchanges Von Eschl said with some impatience: 'Let us see the Austrian map,' and when it was spread on the table, he saw that to a marked degree it resembled Russia's.

'Did you compare plans?' he asked, and when each denied any complicity, he shrugged and said: 'Prussia is defeated. My map is useless, so we shall conform yours and yours.'

For two days these brilliant men sat in the Polish palace and divided Poland, each with considerable knowledge of the terrains under debate, each with a clear view of what ought to be done. Von Eschl fought for all the lands that had ever been held by the Teutonic Knights back in the fourteenth century; Austria, for the rich farmlands east of Krakow; and Russia, for the low flatlands that would provide an easy entrance into Europe. If one granted that Poland had to be part.i.tioned because of her inability to govern herself, the part.i.tion devised by those neighbors was not impractical. Each received what it felt it needed, and a central core as large as France remained for the Poles to play with in their game of Golden Freedom.

As the diplomats folded their maps, each duplicating the lines on the others, Von Eschl said: 'Our major weapon in the years ahead, gentlemen, will be the phrase that the Poles themselves invented. The Golden Freedom. Everything we do to keep Poland off balance, everything we do to strangle it in preparation for the final part.i.tion, let us do in the name of Golden Freedom. We will become the champions of Poland's freedom. We will defend her rights against the revolutionaries. When we send our armies to Warsaw, and we will, let us always do so waving the flag of Golden Freedom.'

'Why do you propose that?' the Austrian asked, for his nation had less intimate experience with day-to-day political maneuvering in Poland than either of the other two.

'We have in our hands a subtle control,' Von Eschl explained. 'If we cry to the world "We are doing thus-and-so to protect Polish freedom," we will be permitted great lat.i.tude. We must show ourselves always to be the champions of freedom. Freedom this, freedom that. Our hearts bleed for freedom.'

'To what devious purpose?' the Austrian asked.

'No deviousness whatever,' Von Eschl replied sanctimoniously. 'We really shall protect Polish freedom-the freedom of a nation's few wealthy magnates to destroy the whole. The great families must remain free to terminate one Seym after another with the liberum veto. They must continue to own the serfs and control their labor. Let them continue to prevent townsmen from ever owning land. Let them remain free to oppose the king in any sensible move he tries to make. Gentlemen, by preserving such freedoms, we shall encourage Poland to strangle herself, and we shall divide the corpse without our marching battalions' ever firing a shot.'

'Can we rely upon the magnates to commit such folly?' the Austrian asked, and the Russian Kuprin replied: 'You can depend on them to do almost anything stupid that you can devise.'

At this point the conspirators engaged in a negotiation so shocking that they felt compelled to lower their voices. In the heart of Warsaw, which stood at the heart of Poland, they discussed which Polish leader was in the secure pay of which foreign power, and the precise degree to which this patriot could be depended upon to betray his country.

'You Russians,' said Von Eschl, 'have the Mniszechs tucked away in your hunting bag. And the Granickis.'

'We ought to have,' Kuprin said, 'considering how much money we spend on them every year. But you Germans do the same with your Pasek.'

'And we get just as loyal service from him as you do from Mniszech.'

'We have only two solid supporters,' the Austrian amba.s.sador confessed, 'but they are sterling. Count Lubonski of Gorka, to whom we make no payments whatever, and the younger Prince Lubomirski, to whom we pay a great deal.'

'Why do you give Lubonski nothing?' Von Eschl asked. 'He's your strongest voice in the Seym.'

'Lubonski visualizes himself as a patriot,' the Austrian said. 'He acts on our behalf because his family has always been strongly pro-Habsburg.' Smiling, he added: 'The traitor you win by conviction is always a better bargain than the one you hire.'

'But sometimes,' Von Eschl said, 'the paid spy works harder. We pay Radziwill handsomely, and from him we get excellent results.'

'Excuse me,' Kuprin said. 'It's Russia that pays Radziwill. And a great deal, too.'

'You must mean another Radziwill,' Von Eschl said. 'I'm speaking of Ja.n.u.sz Radziwill, of Lithuania.'

After briefly consulting his papers, Kuprin said: 'So am I. Ja.n.u.sz Radziwill, whose daughter Anna is married to Austria's Count Lubonski.'

'That Radziwill?' the Austrian amba.s.sador cried, consulting his own list. 'We're paying him ... and rather generously, Ja.n.u.sz Radziwill, father-in-law of Count Laskarz Lubonski, of Gorka. He came to us himself with a most interesting proposal-came to me personally-and he's been in our pay ever since.'

The three diplomats fell silent, conjuring up pictures of Ja.n.u.sz Radziwill, sixty-two years old, slight of build, clean-shaven in the French style, sharp-eyed, quick of speech and deft of manner, a n.o.bleman at home in any court ...

'Remember,' Von Eschl said, 'Radziwill spent two months in Paris three years ago, and in several close negotiations he seemed to us to favor France's position much more heartily than he did ours.'

'You must also remember,' Kuprin reminded the others, 'that France and Turkey are always allies, and we know for a fact that Ja.n.u.sz Radziwill accepted large gifts from the Sultan for a favorable vote on the Ukraine settlement.' He broke into a hearty laugh, for it appeared that this Radziwill, one of the more impecunious ones, had managed to place himself in the paid service of five different countries.

The men then proceeded to a.n.a.lyze which other magnates were receiving substantial funds from France, from Turkey and especially from Saxony, whose ruling family had occupied the Polish throne for more than sixty years and aspired to return. When the impressive list was completed, showing the apportionment of magnates among the competing countries, the Austrian amba.s.sador asked: 'Is there no one to be considered honest?' and Von Eschl replied: The Czartoryskis and the Zamoyskis ... they're the ones we must fear.'

They're new to the ranks of the magnates,' Kuprin said. Too young to have been corrupted.'

'But they seem to side with Russia these days,' Von Eschl complained.

They're like honest Lubonski,' Kuprin said. 'He votes always for Austria because he believes in the Habsburgs ... without pay. The Czartoryskis and the Zamoyskis vote for Russia because they honestly believe that only our Catherine, whom we are beginning to call Great, can save Poland.'

'Does n.o.body vote for Poland?' the Austrian asked.

'n.o.body with any sense,' Von Eschl said. 'Because if he had sense, he would know as we do that Poland is doomed.'

'It might survive another ten years,' Kuprin said. Then, pointing to the pile of maps, he asked: 'Are those boundaries agreed upon?'

'For the time being,' Von Eschl said, and the First Part.i.tion of Poland, the one of 1772, was under way.

Not everyone in what had once been Poland was unhappy with the new distribution of territory; some who were now within the Russian empire preferred their new masters and the Orthodox religion practiced there; some who found themselves in Prussia respected the stern order of that nation and its rigorous leaders.h.i.+p; and a good many in southern Poland were finding it easy to accommodate to Austrian rule.

Most of the people living about the village of Bukowo actually preferred the new regime, and in this response they were led by their count, Laskarz Lubonski, who proclaimed: 'At last we have reason in the saddle and the prospect of an easy canter through the remainder of this century.' He personally supervised the transfer of land t.i.tles from Polish law to Austrian, and encouraged his people to learn German so that they could cooperate with the new government.

As a reward for his services in helping to bring this huge area of Poland under Habsburg rule, he was offered a position with the new government, but declined: 'I can serve you better by staying here at home and seeing that things move easily.' Nor would he accept any money payment for his leaders.h.i.+p on behalf of the Habsburgs, but he was pleased when Vienna verified the t.i.tle Rome had given him and added one of her own: he was now Baron Lubonski of the Austrian n.o.bility, but he continued to use the older t.i.tle of Count.

When he studied the new map of the area, he saw with interest that whereas Poland had previously contained about 300,000 square miles, making it much larger than any other European nation except Russia, it now contained only 200,000, but this proportion did not maintain where population was concerned, because there the drop was from 12,000,000 to a mere 6,500,000. The salient facts about the part.i.tion were that Russia gained a geographical entrance to the heart of Poland, Prussia picked up a few points of great strategic importance, while Austria, which had not sought part.i.tion in the first place, acquired a large helping of the best lands and the most productive people.

Lubonski's castle at Gorka stood at the extreme northern edge of the Austrian territories, so that his Bukowo holdings represented a kind of frontier fortress, and he was pleased to find that Zamosc was similarly situated: 'We are the keys to northern safety. Vienna will have to treat us considerately.' But he did not voice his sore disappointment over the fact that his major castle, Lubon, remained not in the new Austria but in the old Poland; the dividing line ran two miles south of it.

'It's a blessing!' dapper Ja.n.u.sz Radziwill cried when he visited his son-in-law. 'Look, Lubonski, if you have your major estates in Austria, you possess great leverage in Vienna, and if you have three or four estates in what is still Poland, you can also operate in Warsaw. I would like that.'

He asked Lubonski to spread a map of his estates, and when the large free-hand paper was before him he picked out almost avariciously the fourteen large holdings of the Lubonskis: 'Gorka and Przemysl, here at the northern edge of Austria. That's good placement. Lubon and Ostroleka in old Poland, along with the three smaller ones. Two west of Torun in Prussia, and we can't predict what will happen to them. And the five really big ones in the Ukraine. They're the ones that will safeguard your income, Lubonski.'

Always eager to know the most intimate details, Radziwill continued: 'How many villages do you own, Lubonski?' and the count replied that he thought it must be about two hundred: 'But many of them are in the Ukraine, and they don't amount to much.'

'How many serfs?' Radziwill persisted, and Lubonski estimated that counting the rather substantial population of his six real towns, he might have as many as a hundred and thirty thousand: 'But many of them are toothless infants at one end, toothless old people at the other.'

Radziwill was pleased at the position in which his daughter and her husband found themselves. 'You have castles in four countries, counting the little one that's now in Russia, so you can exercise a voice in four governments. I've always preferred doing that, because then you can protect yourself.'

'No,' Lubonski said, 'I'm a man of one country. I wish it could be Poland, but that seems impossible. So I shall be quite content to be an Austrian.'

'Lubonski ...' his visitor began, but then he directed his attention to his pretty daughter. 'Anna, I charge you. Do not let your husband sever his ties with Poland. Events of enormous importance will develop there, and a clever man- Look, with Russia, Prussia and Austria all fighting for the spoils, a clever man ... he could accomplish almost anything.'

'Where will you be during the squabbles?' Lubonski asked.

'Well, I have that little place in Warsaw and I keep the family manor in Lithuania, and I've been living in St. Petersburg a lot. What I wanted to learn from you, Lubonski, is whether I could use the castle at Lubon. It would keep me close to Austrian interests.'

'You would always be welcome, Father,' Anna said, and with sudden emotion she crossed the room to kiss her ebullient parent. He was returning home from Paris and Vienna, and this opportunity to see Anna and her two-year-old son, Roman, had proved enticing.

'I don't know what will happen to Poland,' Radziwill said. 'I'm sixty-three and I've had the feeling several times that I might die before it's settled.'

'Don't say that!' his daughter protested. 'Our family lives to old ages.'

'I'm worried about those Czartoryskis and Zamoyskis ... their radical views. You've heard what they're proposing next? To allow townspeople to vote, and own land, and even sit in the Seym.'

'Would that be so wrong?' Anna asked.

Her father looked at her in astonishment. 'The heart of the world is the honest landowner, like Lubonski here. He knows what's good for the nation, what's best for the peasants. The man who lives in town is a bloodsucker, or a sniveling priest, or a Jew. In the long history of the world, no decent idea ever came from a town. Anna, believe me, when townspeople in their dismal shops get the right to vote, the world as we treasured it is doomed.'

'But can so few continue to keep power from so many?'

'That's what history is. The efforts of men like your uncles and Lubonski's sainted father, Onufry, to keep things as they are. Do you remember how he behaved when the king sent him to Torun to look into that wretched affair when the ten Protestant burghers refused to convert to Catholicism, even when the students at the Jesuit school begged them to do so? Onufry didn't waste words or pictures. As judge, he asked them twice "Will you accept the true religion?" and when they said "No," you remember what he did? I was there at the time, fifteen years old, and saw it all. For the third time he asked "Will you accept?" and when they said "No" again, he gave one simple command: "Chop off their heads." And they chopped them off with me watching, and we had very little trouble with Protestants after that.'

'I have always been ashamed of what my father did that day,' Lubonski said. 'It is the only blemish of its kind on our history, and it grieves me to think that my family was involved.'

'It settled things,' Radziwill said. 'Some of my family were dissenters, you may remember, and I suspect that some of them are secret Masons now, but, by G.o.d, after those heads rolled in the sand at Torun we heard very little about it.'

'Whose side will you support, Ja.n.u.sz, if things go poorly for Poland?' the count asked, and his father-in-law replied: 'If they go poorly? My dear son, they're bound to go poorly, and I suppose, as always, you'll back Austria.'

'I will. Because the Habsburgs bring order. And you?'

'I had some very interesting talks in Paris. You know, Lubonski, they're terrified of Prussia. They believe our interests are best served through Russia. I incline that way myself.'

'But you just asked us for the Lubon castle, so that you could be near Austria.'

'I certainly can't guess at this point how things are going to go.'

'You just said you thought Russia.'

Radziwill looked at his son-in-law in disbelief. 'Lubonski, a game of vast dimension is being played, old France and new Russia opposed to old Austria and new Prussia. Who in this room is wise enough to predict how that game will go? If you're intelligent, Lubonski, you'll put in appearances at your castles in each of the countries. Listen, and test, and judge, and be prepared always to jump in the right direction.'

'Is that what you're going to do, Ja.n.u.sz?'

'That's what I've always done. That's why I have two beautiful daughters married to men with castles, and two handsome sons married to women with castles.' He laughed at this felicitous summary of his life, then scowled. 'Anna, twice in our conversations today you sounded as if you were defending the rights of townspeople. What's got into this child, Lubonski?'

'She's been talking with this fellow Bukowski ... at the manor house in the village.'

'Command her to stop,' Radziwill said, but the count reminded him: 'You warned me at our wedding: "Son, remember one thing. No man has ever been born brave enough to give orders to a Radziwill woman."'

Lubonski had been correct in a.s.suming that his wife's surprising inclination toward republicanism as opposed to the Golden Freedom of the magnates stemmed from her casual a.s.sociations with Tytus Bukowski, who occupied the manor house in the village. She had met him occasionally at the castle when he came to discuss political matters with her husband, and during the next dozen years she had continued to move about the area with that intellectual and social restlessness which had always characterized the best Radziwills.

At such times she often asked Tytus what he thought of how Austria was governing her section of Poland: 'Doesn't it seem to you that they treat us as merely another remote colony?' And he would remind her that although he did live in the Austrian sector, subject to its laws, his more important responsibility was to serve in the Warsaw Seym as protector of Count Lubonski's interests in free Poland. It was an insane system, made worse by the fact that Lubonski worked diligently to bring all of remaining Poland under Austrian rule. Poles conspired to destroy Poland.

In recent years things had not gone well with the Bukowski family; indeed, things had never gone particularly well. The substantial fortune which one ancestor had filched from the Vienna expedition against the Turks had been quickly dissipated in the stables for the Arabian horses that accompanied the fortune and in dowries for daughters whose young husbands quickly squandered them. In only one decade after the Battle of Vienna, the Bukowskis had already fallen back to what they had always been: very poor gentry with an honorable history and some horses. Now, in 1785, their manor house needed major repairs and their fields improvements, but the stolid owners went their careless ways, with conditions along the Vistula continuing much as they had done for the past seven centuries.

There was, however, one notable change. Tytus Bukowski, for reasons which not even he could have explained, had begun to speculate on the nature of Polish history, especially as it compared with the development of surrounding countries about which he heard many accounts, and he saw that each of Poland's neighbors had strong central governments, and regular taxation, and armies which increased in size, while Poland did not.

More specifically, when he watched the Seym, of which he was now an important member, he realized that almost everything he was ordered to do by Count Lubonski, Prince Lubomirski and the powerful Granickis and Mniszechs was helpful only to them and extremely hurtful to the nation as a whole. Tytus was not a revolutionary, but he did believe that the time had come when people who lived in towns-some of the best people in Poland, he judged-must be given the right to own land, to vote, and even to take their rightful place in the legislative bodies. Jews he was willing to exclude because they denied Christ and the primacy of Rome, which any good Pole subscribed to, and he was not yet certain what he thought about freedom for peasants, since he owned three villages, and to give peasants rights might mean financial loss, but even in this case he was beginning to see that a prospering society required much more freedom for serfs than Poland now allowed.

One spring morning Countess Lubonska asked him about these matters: Tytus, when you meet with the Seym in Warsaw, what will be your feeling about greater freedom for the townspeople?'

When the countess first asked such questions he had temporized, for he suspected she might be a spy sent to test him on behalf of the magnates, but with the pa.s.sage of time he found that she was much like himself: a person trying to visualize a new Poland, and he grew to trust her. 'I think the time has come, Countess, when we must have a union of strong men in the towns with strong men in the countryside.'

'You've heard what my father says? "Townsmen are like horse p.i.s.s. Smelly, noisy and good for absolutely nothing."'

'That was the old view, Countess. But if Poland wants to protect itself ...'

'Would you allow your daughter to marry a townsman?'

'I'm n.o.bility, Countess. Poor but n.o.ble. My family has always married with its own kind.'

'So you have the same opinion as my father?'

'I do not.' He leaned against a stone fence that separated the castle grounds from those of the village, and said very carefully, choosing each word for its exact meaning: 'Countess, you must prepare your husband, and his friends, for what I believe the Seym is going to do if it is ever allowed to meet again.'

'It will do what it's told,' Anna Radziwill said, as if she were one of her fighting uncles.

'I think ... that such days ... are ended.' As soon as he uttered these portentous words, both he and Anna appreciated their profound significance, for they const.i.tuted a revolutionary challenge and she wanted to know its dimensions. Perching herself upon the fence, she asked bluntly: 'And what will your Seym attempt to do?'

'Have you listened to your magnates, Countess? Have you just listened to what they say when they meet in your castle?'

'They talk a lot of bombast, but I think all men do.' She laughed, a beautiful, free-spirited woman approaching fifty, amused by the contradictions of Polish life, whether in the Austrian segment or the free, and with a finger that contained two rings she pointed at Tytus and said: 'Right now, Bukowski, you're talking bombast, aren't you?'

'I must respectfully contradict you, Countess. I am the voice of the future, not of bombast.'

'Tell me about the future, Tytus.'

'Let's take three magnates. In old Poland, where I work. One takes his orders from Prussia because it's growing. One takes his orders from Russia because it's big. And one listens to Austria because it's well governed.'

'It's always been that way,' Countess Lubonska said, smiling. 'You speak as if there were something unusual.'

'There is. At a time when Poland needs everyone joined together in a great effort, the first magnate despises everyone in the town-the burghers, the shopkeepers, the Jews, the priests, the artisans. They're all cut off-permanently-from Polish life.' With both hands waving the air, he made broad exclusionary gestures. 'The second magnate hates peasants-will grant them no freedoms at all, not even land.'

'Who's left for the third magnate to despise?' the countess asked.

Bringing his hands back to his chest, he tapped himself with his fingertips: 'Me. The little n.o.bleman with few horses ... few villages ... few peasants.'