[History of Friedrich II. of Prussia<br> Vol. IX. (of XXI.) by Thomas Carlyle]@TWC D-Link book
History of Friedrich II. of Prussia
Vol. IX. (of XXI.)

CHAPTER VI
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For which too there is a remedy.

Cut off sufficient outlying slices of Poland; fling these to the neighboring Kings to produce consent: Partition of Poland, in fact; large sections of its Territory sliced away: that will be the method, thinks King August.
"Neighboring Kings, Kaiser, Prussia, Russia, to them it is not grievous that Poland should remain in perennial anarchy, in perennial impotence; the reverse rather: a dead horse, or a dying, in the next stall,--he at least will not kick upon us, think the neighboring Kings.

And yet,--under another similitude,--you do not like your next-door neighbor to be always on the point of catching fire; smoke issuing, thicker or thinner, through the slates of his roof, as a perennial phenomenon?
August will conciliate the neighboring Kings.

Russia, big-cheeked Anne Czarina there, shall have not only Courland peaceably henceforth, but the Ukraine, Lithuania, and other large outlying slices; that surely will conciliate Russia.

To Austria, on its Hungarian border, let us give the Country of Zips;--nay there are other sops we have for Austria.
Pragmatic Sanction, hitherto refused as contrary to plain rights of ours,--that, if conceded to a spectre-hunting Kaiser?
To Friedrich Wilhelm we could give West-Preussen; West-Preussen torn away three hundred years ago, and leaving a hiatus in the very continuity of Friedrich Wilhelm: would not that conciliate him?
Of all enemies or friends, Friedrich Wilhelm, close at hand with 80,000 men capable of fighting at a week's, notice, is by far the most important.
"These are August's plans: West-Preussen for the nearest Neighbor; Zips for Austria; Ukraine, Lithuania, and appendages for the Russian Czarina: handsome Sections to be sliced off, and flung to good neighbors; as it were, all the outlying limbs and wings of the Polish Territory sliced off; compact body to remain, and become, by means of August and Saxon troops, a Kingdom with government, not an imaginary Republic without government any longer.


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