From such comparatively trivial matters as royal marriages and misconduct it is necessary to turn to what forms one of the darkest passages in the political history of Europe. England, under the guidance of a ministry bound to support the selfish policy of a King whose real aim was solely the aggrandizement of the Crown, had held selfishly aloof from foreign affairs. France had just disgraced the last capable and vigorous minister she possessed, and lay supine under the hands of the King's scandalous mistress. So these two great countries, to their eternal disgrace, looked calmly on while the Eastern powers, without reason or plea of reason, dismembered an old kingdom and reduced a noble people to slavery. The institutions of Poland were very different from those of the rest of Europe, and such as lent themselves easily to the plans of encroaching neighbours. Since the failure of the house of Jagellon (1572) the monarchy had been elective. So great a prize had naturally attracted the notice of foreign powers, who sought to secure the advancement of their own interests by obtaining the election of some favourite candidate of their own. Faction within the country was the inevitable consequence, and the arrangements of the constitution made faction permanent. There was no middle class. The nation had not gone through the same processes as other Western people. Nobility was easily obtained, and each member of the nobility ranked as the peer of all the rest. Below the ranks of the nobility came the serfs. Political power, and also most of the executive, was vested in this wide aristocratical democracy. Usually delegates of the nobles constituted a governing house. Sometimes the whole body could, and did, claim the right of legislating. In the delegates' house one veto could check the progress of any law. If to this is added that the nation was divided by fierce differences in religion, it will be seen that no fairer field for foreign intrigue can be conceived. Nor, in spite of their individual bravery, were the Poles in a position to withstand force; the nobility still clung to their old habit of fighting on horseback, so that, at a time when modern warfare had fairly begun, there was no infantry but such as consisted of serfs. The strength of the army still consisted in an irregular body of light horse. Well might the Czarina Catherine say that anything might be had from Poland for the trouble of picking it up. She had made the experiment. On the death of Augustus of Saxony, in 1764, Russia had compelled the Poles to elect a late favourite of the Empress, Stanislas Poniatowsky, and from the time of his election had in fact treated Poland as her own property. It had been the hereditary policy of France to withstand Russian influence in Poland, and during Choiseul's ministry this policy was continued. The Turks were induced to make a war with Russia, which, though disastrous to them, no doubt somewhat lengthened the dying agonies of Poland.