The Confederation of Radom, and its victorious Diet, had hardly begun their Song of Triumph, when there ensued on the per-contra side a flaming CONFEDERATION OF BAR;--which, by successive stages, does at last burn out the Anarchies of Poland, and reduce them to ashes. Confederation of Bar; and then, as progeny of that, for and against, such a brood of Confederations, orthodox, heterodox, big, little, short-lived, long-lived, of all complexions and degrees of noisy fury, potent, at any rate, each of them for murder and arson, within a certain radius, as the Earth never saw before. Now was the time of those inextricable marchings (as inroads and outroads)through the Lithuanian Bogs, of those death-defiant, unparalleled exploits, skirmishings, scaladings, riding by the edge of precipices, of Pulawski, Potocki and others,--in which Rulhiere loses himself and turns on his axis, amid impatient readers.
For the Russian troops (summoned by a trembling Stanislaus and his Senate, in terms of Treaty 1764), and in more languid manner, the Stanislaus soldiery, as per law of the case, proceeded to strike in,--generally, my impression was, with an eye to maintain the King's Peace and keep down murder and arson:--and sure enough, the small bodies of drilled Russians blew an infuriated orthodox Polack chivalry to right and left at a short notice; but as to the Constable's Peace or King's, made no improvement upon that, far the reverse. It is certain the Confederate chivalry were driven about, at a terrible rate,--over the Turk frontier for shelter; began to appeal to the Grand Turk, in desperate terms: "Brother of the Sun and Moon, saw you ever such a chance for finishing Russia?
Polack chivalry is Orthodox Catholic, but also it is Anti-Russian!"The Turk beginning to give ear to it, made the matter pressing and serious. Here, more specifically, are some features and successive phases,--unless the reader prefer to skip.
"BAR, MARCH, 1768. The Confederation of Radom, as efficient preliminary, and chief agent in that Diet of emancipation to the Dissident human mind, might long have been famous over Poland and the world; but there instantly followed as corollary to it a CONFEDERATION OF BAR, which quite dimmed the fame of Radom, and indeed of all Confederations prior or posterior! As the Confederation of Bar and its Doings, or rather sufferings and tragical misdoings and undoings, still hang like fitful spectralities, or historical shadows, of a vague ghastly complexion, in the human memory, one asks at least: Since they were on this Planet, tell us where? Bar is in the Waiwodship Podol (what we call Podolia), some 400 miles southeast of Warsaw; not far from the Dniester River:--not far very from that mystery of the Dniester, the Zaporavian Cossacks,--from those rapids or cataracts (quasi-cataracts of the Dniester, with Islands in them, where those Cossack robbers live unassailable):--across the Dniester lies Turkey, and its famed Fortress of Choczim. This is a commodious station for Polish Gentlemen intending mutiny by law.
"MARCH 8th, 1768, Three short days after the Diet of Radom had done its fine feat, and retired to privacy, news came to Warsaw, That Podolia and the Southern parts are all up, confederating with the highest animation; in hot rage against such decision of a Diet, contrary to Holy Religion and to much else; and that the said decision will have to fight for itself, now that it has done voting. This interesting news is true; and goes on intensifying and enlarging itself, one dreadful Confederation springing up, and then another and ever another, day after day; till at last we hear that on the 27th of the month, MARCH 27th, 1768, at Bar, a little Town on the Southern or Turkish Frontier, all these more or less dreadful Confederations have met by delegates, and coalesced into one 'Confederatiou of Bar,'--which did surely prove dreadful enough, to itself especially, in the months now ensuing!"No history of Bar Confederation shall we dream of; far be such an attempt from us. It consists of many Confederations, and out of each, PRO and CONTRA, spring many. Like the Lernean Hydra, or even Hydras in a plural condition. A many-headed dog: and how many whelps it had,--I cannot give even the cipher of them, or I would!
One whelp Confederation, that of Cracow, is distinguished by having frequently or generally been "drunk;" and of course its procedures had often a vinous character. [In HERMANN (v. 431-448);and especially in RULHIERE (ii. livre 8 et seq.), details in superabundance.] I fancy to have read somewhere that the number of them was one hundred and twenty-five. The rumor and the furious barking of Bar and its whelps goes into all lands: such rabid loud baying at mankind and the moon; and then, under Russia's treatment, such shrill yelping and shrieking, was not heard in the world before, though perhaps it has since.
Poor BAR'S exploits in the fighting way were highly inconsiderable;all on the same scale; and spread over such a surface of country, mostly unknown, as renders it impossible to give them head-room, were you never so unfurnished. They can be read in eloquent Rulhiere; but by no mortal held in memory. Anarchy is not a thing to be written of; a Lernean Hydra, several Lernean Hydras, in chaotic genesis, getting their heads lopped off, and at the same time sprouting new ones in such ratio, where is the Zoologist that will give account of it? There was not anything considerable of fighting; but of bullying, plundering, murdering and being murdered, a frightful amount. There are seizures of castles, convents, defensible houses; marches at a rate like that of antelopes, through the Lithuanian parts, boggy, hungry, boundless, opening to the fancy the Infinitude of Peat, in the solid and the fluid state. This, perhaps, is the finest species of feats, though they never lead to anything. There are heroes famed for these marches.
