Showing The Second Partition of Poland : A Study in Diplomatic History by Robert Howard Lord

Excerpt from The Second Partition of Poland, Vol. 23: A Study in Diplomatic History The diplomatic history of the Second Partition of Poland has never hitherto been made the subject of a monograph. It has by no means escaped attention, but it has always been treated as a matter of secondary or collateral interest: it has been adduced to explain the policy of the great Powers during the Eastern and Northern wars of 1787-92, or in connection with the formation and collapse of the First Coalition against Revolutionary France, or again as a chapter in the long struggle between Poland and Russia; it has not been studied as a whole, by and for itself. The serious investigation of the diplomatic questions connected with the Second Partition began in the sixth decade of the last century with Gesckichie (1854-57), Herrmann's Geschichte des russischen Staates (vol. vi, 1860), Zinkeisen's Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (vol. vi, 1859), and Sybel's Geschichte der Revolidianszeit (1853 ff.). The first three of these works were based chiefly on the records of the Prussian and Saxon archives and on private papers (particularly Diez's), and, owing to the scantiness of their sources, they went very far astray both in general conceptions and in matters of detail. Greatly superior to all of them was Sybel's masterly work, especially in view of the corrections and additions made in the successive editions through which it passed. In it most of the questions that have since been debated were raised, and many of them were practically settled. The '60s were filled by a rather acrimonious controversy between Herrmann and Sybel with regard to the policy of Leopold II; and a little later Sybel engaged in lively polemics with Vivenot and Huffer about the falling-out of Austria and Prussia over the Polish Question, and especially about the character and policy of Thugut. Researches on all these problems entered upon a new stage when towards 1870 the Viennese archives were finally thrown op