She bestowed estates equal in extent to provinces; and by a word, by a stroke of her pen, she, who called her people her children, and, by her royal clemency, had substituted the word _subject_ for _slave_, gave away thousands, tens of thousands, of serfs, poor wretches transferred like cattle from one proprietor to another. “She gave diamonds by handfuls, and made gold and silver as common as pebbles. Yet when we read over the names and qualifications of those who were her confidants and ministers, or of those who were particularly distinguished by her munificence, it is like looking over the peerage of Pandemonium”; for where but in the court of Russia, with a female Louis XV. in the person of Catherine II. upon the imperial throne, could such an assemblage of fiends and savages, ruffians and reptiles, demons and cormorants, have been congregated together to fatten on the blood and tears of an oppressed people? In pursuance of the mighty plans which she had formed, Catherine kept two objects steadily in view: first, to extend her dominions on the west by seizing Poland; and secondly, to drive the Turks from Constantinople. She began with Poland, marched an army into that country, forced upon the Poles a king of her own choice, dictated laws at the point of the bayonet, intimidated the weak by threats, and massacred and exiled all who resisted. The Poles could not endure this usurpation of their country. They rose against the Russians, and from 1765, when Catherine first invaded the country, till its final seizure in 1795, Poland presented a scene of horror, calamity, and crime. The Poles besought the aid of the Turks, and thus began the first Turkish war declared in 1768. Fierce and bloody was this war, and in 1774 the Turks were compelled to sue for peace, acceding to the humiliating conditions which Catherine haughtily demanded, that the Ottoman Porte should recognize the independence of the Crimea, and yield to Russia the free navigation of the Black Sea and the Archipelago.