Still it was only a privileged servitude after all, and the time was coming when it was to become an unmitigated one.

But effaced as a political sovereignty, Poland was to survive as a nationality of genius.

Her sons were going to sing their songs in other lands, but Mickiewiz and Sienkiewicz and Chopin are Polish, not Russian.
The alliance of the three sovereigns engaged in this dismemberment was about as friendly as is that of three dogs who have run down a hare and are engaged in picking nice morsels from its bones.

If Russia was getting more than her share, the Turks would be incited by Austria or Prussia to attack her in the South; and many times did Catherine's armies desert Poland to march down and defend the Crimea, and her new fort at Sebastopol, and her fleet on the Black Sea.

In 1787, accompanied by her grandsons, the Grand Dukes Alexander and Constantine, she made that famous journey down the Dnieper; visited the ancient shrines about Kief; stood in the picturesque old capital of Sarai, on the spot where Russian Grand Princes had groveled at the feet of the Khans; and then, looked upon Sebastopol, which marked the limit of the new frontier which she had created.
The French Revolution caused a revulsion in her political theories.
She indulged in no more abstractions about human rights, and had an antipathy for the new principles which had led to the execution of the King and Queen and to such revolting horrors.