of the king's absence from Prussia, speedily regained possession of
the country. What was Frederick William's policy in this dilemma? He
was strongly advised to make peace with France, to throw himself at
the head of the whole of his forces into Poland, and to set a limit to
the insolence of the autocrat; but--he feared, should he abandon the
Rhine, the extension of the power of Austria in that quarter, and--
calculating that Catherine, in order to retain his friendship, would
cede to him a portion of her booty,[1] unhesitatingly broke the faith
he had just plighted with the Poles, suddenly took up Catherine's
tone, declared the constitution he had so lately ratified Jacobinical,
and despatched a force under Mollendorf into Poland in order to secure
possession of his stipulated prey. By the second partition of Poland,
which took place as rapidly, as violently, and, on account of the
assurances of the Prussian monarch, far more unexpectedly than the
first, Russia received the whole of Lithuania, Podolia, and the
Ukraine, and Prussia, Thorn and Dantzig, besides Southern Prussia
(Posen and Calisch). Austria, at that time fully occupied with France,
had no participation in this robbery, which was, as it were, committed
behind her back.

Affairs had worn a remarkably worse aspect since the campaign of 1792.
The French had armed themselves with all the terrors of offended
nationalism and of unbounded, intoxicating liberty. All the enemies of
the Revolution within the French territory were mercilessly
exterminated, and hundreds of thousands were sacrificed by the
guillotine, a machine invented for the purpose of accelerating the
mode of execution. The king was beheaded in this manner in the January
of 1793, and the queen shared a similar fate in the ensuing
October.[2] While Robespierre directed the executions, Carnot
undertook to make preparations for war, and, in the very midst of this