The King of Poland, alive to the shortcomings of his countrymen, was unable to correct them. A man who was at least the most eminent soldier, general we may not say, of Europe; a man who above all others living fulfilled the character of a hero; a king who had saved his country; a husband who was devoted to his wife, found himself thwarted by his subjects, and distracted by quarrels in his family. No doubt he laboured to render the crown hereditary in his house, a service to his country it would have been had he succeeded; but the jealousy of the Poles, still more that of the neighbouring sovereigns, and to some extent the misconduct of his wife, rendered this impossible. He found himself the object of an empty respect, but the wielder of no authority; he saw his country without order, without steadiness of purpose, unable to follow any settled policy in conjunction either with France or with the enemies of France. The factions of the Diet left him without soldiers and without money. Not for the first, but nearly for the last time, the Poles were victorious in battle, but were destined to fail woefully in attaining the objects of war. The end was not far off. Sobieski was followed by a foreigner upon the throne, and within ten years of his death, Charles XII. of Sweden was disposing as a conqueror of the crown of Poland. The prey to the ambition of her neighbours his country has remained, now like her king a memory, to serve as a lesson of the consequences of the disregard of those restraints and of that self-control which alone can render freedom safe and liberty a blessing. For want of these her place has vanished from the map of Europe, sooner even than that of the foe whom she destroyed. FOOTNOTES: [26] A moderate estimate of the Christian loss is five thousand men, or about one-fifteenth of those on the field; a loss in about the same proportion as that of both sides at Sadowa. The Poles alone confessed to the loss of one hundred officers killed, and they were neither so long nor so hotly engaged as the left wing. The loss of the centre was probably less. Thürheim and Schimmer give of the allies four thousand, and twenty-five thousand Turks; but the latter figures are quite uncertain, and the Christians made the least of their losses. As the fight was so much hand-to-hand, with little artillery fire, it would resemble ancient battles, where the loss of the vanquished was always disproportionately large. The memoirs of the Duke of Lorraine simply say, that "for about three hours the fighting was very bloody upon both sides." Fighting, however, had began soon after daybreak, and the pursuit lasted till nightfall. [27] [Greek: epeidê ton huper kephalas ge Tantalon lithon para tis etrepsen ammi theos, atolmaton Elladi mochthon.] PINDAR, Isth. viii. 10. Written after the repulse of the great Persian invasion. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. [Illustration: Map