It took three repasts to finish the banquet (the partitions of 1792-1793-1794), and then some time more was required to sweep up the fragments and to efface its name from the map of Europe.

Kosciusko and his followers made their last vain and desperate stand in 1794, and when he fell covered with wounds at the battle of Kaminski, Poland fell with him.
The Poles were to survive only as a more or less unhappy element among nations where they were aliens.

Their race affinities were with Russia, for they were a Slavonic people; their religious affinities were with Catholic Austria; but with Protestant Prussia there was not one thing in common, and that was the bitterest servitude of all.

The Poles in Russia were to some extent autonomous.

They were permitted to continue their local governments under a viceroy appointed by the Tsar; their Slavonic system of communes was not disturbed, nor their language nor customs.