It was a defective social organization and an arrogant nobility that ruined Poland. There existed only two classes--nobles and serfs. The business and trade of the state were in the hands of Germans and Jews, and there existed no national or middle class in which must reside the life of a modern state. In other words, Poland was patriarchal and mediaeval. She had become unsuited to her environment. Surrounded by powerful absolutisms which had grown out of the ruins of mediaeval forces, she in the eighteenth century was clinging to the traditions of feudalism as if it were still the twelfth century. It was in vain that her sons were patriotic, in vain that they struggled for reforms, in vain that they lay down and died upon battlefields. She alone in Europe had not been borne along on that great wave of centralization long ago, and she had missed an essential experience. She was out of step with the march of civilization, and the advancing forces were going to run over her. The more enlightened Poles began too late to strive for a firm hereditary monarchy, and to try to curb the power of selfish nobles. Not only was their state falling to pieces within, but it was being crushed from without. Protestant Prussia in the West, Greek Russia in the East, and Catholic Austria on the South, each preparing to absorb all it could get away--not from Poland, but from each other. It was obvious that it was only a question of time when the feeble kingdom wedged in between these powerful and hungry states must succumb; and for Russia, Austria, and Prussia it was simply a question as to the share which should fall to each. Such was the absorbing problem which employed Catherine's powers from the early years of her reign almost to its close. Europe soon saw that it was a woman of no ordinary ability who was sitting on the throne of Russia. In her foreign policy, and in the vigor infused into the internal administration of her empire, the master-hand became apparent. As a counter-move to her designs upon Poland, the Turks were induced to harass her by declaring war upon Russia. There was a great surprise in store for Europe as well as for the Ottoman Empire. This dauntless woman was unprepared for such an emergency; but she wrote to one of her generals: "The Romans did not concern themselves with the _number_ of their enemies; they only asked, 'Where are they?'" Her armies swept the Peninsula clear of Tatars and of Turks, and in 1771 a Russian fleet was on the Black Sea, and the terror of Constantinople knew no bounds. If affairs in Europe and disorders in her own empire had not been so pressing, the long-cherished dream of the Grand Princes might have been realized.