II. Great Britain and Poland 1762–72

Extract

Applied to Britain and the First Partition, Campbell's “unwept” is perhaps misleading. Through five generations, despite much European slandering of the Poles, Britain always condemned Dismemberment. In 1772, when three Great Powers completed that “suicide of the old Europe” which the seizure of Silesia had begun, Burke styled their operations “fatal to the rights of mankind.” In the language of diplomacy, Suffolk's “disagreeable” sounds hardly less emphatic. The First Partition, we must remember, was a blow to France, struck by the group to which Britain looked for allies against the natural enemy. Yet our minister in Poland spoke unequivocally of “all this mischief,” and ascribed it to Frederick, the Satan of those behind the scenes. Voltaire, to whom the persecuting Poles were as odious as the persecuting French, sent Catherine the most ambiguous of congratulations. His heroine, he declared, had undertaken a task more useful and noble even than the expulsion of the Turks—that of destroying anarchy in Poland “en rendant a chacun ce que chacun croît lui appartenir, et en commençant par elle-même.” But Suffolk's official utterance was more pungent still. “Le Roi,” he replied to the ministers of the partitioning Powers,” veut bien supposer que les trois cours sont convaincues de la justice de leurs preventions respectives.”