♦European position of Poland,♦ Although considerably[2] larger than France, Poland took scarcely any part in the general history of Europe before the end of the sixteenth century. Once only, just before the taking of Constantinople, we find her with Hungary striving to check the advance of the Turks, when she lost in battle her king Wladislas VI. (1444). ♦At first inconsiderable,♦ As she was the north-eastern outpost of the Church, the Popes took care that she should always be remarkable for her submission to the Holy See. But it was beyond their power to check the turbulence of the nobles or to instil any love for a higher civilisation. During the sixteenth century, chiefly through the enterprise of foreigners, commerce made rapid advances in the country. English and Italian merchants, favoured by treaties between the king and queen Elizabeth, settled in the prosperous town of Dantzic, and spread a moderate knowledge of Poland in western countries. That this knowledge was only moderate may be judged from a valuable geographical work[3] published in London early in the seventeenth century, in which we are told that the Lithuanians still worshipped idols, and that in another province they had not learned the use of the plough. The reformed doctrines were widely disseminated before the year 1600; but their progress was checked by the activity of the Jesuits. ♦Owing to exclusiveness,♦ The Papal Nuncio of that time[4] complains of the exclusiveness of the Poles and their distrust of foreign nations. They used commonly to boast that alliances were of no service to them, for, if the country were conquered, they could, like their ancestors, recover in winter what they had lost in summer. Yet very early in their history they had lost the rich province of Prussia[5] by neglect and mis-government. When, in 1573, they allied themselves with France by electing as their king Henry of Valois, they bound him by such a crowd of onerous restrictions that he fled the country in disgust at their wild and barbarous freedom. ♦Anarchy,♦ During the next three quarters of a century (1573-1648), under three princes of conspicuous ability, Poland began to rank among the second-rate powers of Europe; but her internal condition was all the while frightful. Unceasing struggles between the greater and lesser nobility, and the cruel oppression of the peasants by both alike, distracted the kingdom. ♦And foreign wars,♦ Then followed thirty years of desolating war, in which the country was several times on the brink of final subjugation by a foreign invader. The Poles themselves attributed their survival to God alone[6], who had preserved them to form a barrier against the Turks.