Volume 1 — CHAPTER XI. (continued 2)

♦No original Polish territory gained by Russia in the partitions.♦

It is important to remember that the three partitions gave no part of the original Polish realm to Russia. Russia took back the Russian territory which had been long before won by Lithuania, and added the greater part of Lithuania itself, with the lands immediately to the north. ♦The old Poland divided between Prussia and Austria.♦ The ancient kingdom of Poland was divided between Prussia and Austria, and the oldest Poland of all fell to the lot of Prussia. ♦Poland passes to Prussia,♦ Great Poland, Silesia, Pomerania, the Polish lands which had passed to the mark of Brandenburg, once united under Polish rule, were again united under the power to which they had gradually fallen away. ♦Chrobatia to Austria.♦ Austria or Hungary meanwhile took the rest of the northern Chrobatia, seven hundred years after the acquisition of the former part, and also the Russian land which had been twice before added to the Magyar kingdom.

♦Advance to the Euxine.♦

Meanwhile Russia made advances in other quarters of nearly equal extent. As the remnant of the Saracen at Granada cut off the Castilian from his southern coast or the Mediterranean, for more than two hundred years, so did the remnant of the Tartar in Crim cut off the Russian for as long a time from his southern coast on the Euxine. ♦Occupation of Azof. 1696-1711.♦ Peter the Great first made his way, if not to the Euxine, at least to its inland gulf, by the taking of Azof. But the new conquest was only temporary. After seventy years more the work was done. ♦Independence of Crim 1774. Annexation of Crim. 1783.♦ First came the nominal independence of the Crimean khanat, then its incorporation with Russia. The work at which Megarian and Genoese colonists had laboured was now done; the northern coast of the Euxine was won for Europe.[73] The road through which so many Turanian invaders had pressed into the Aryan continent was blocked for ever. ♦Conquest of Jedisan. 1791.♦ The next advance, the limit of Russian advance made strictly at the expense of the barbarian as distinguished from his Christian vassals, carried the Russian frontier from the Bug to the Dniester.

♦Russian conquests from Persia. 1727-1734.♦

The chief Asiatic acquisition of Russia in the eighteenth century took a strange form. It was conquest beyond the sea, though only beyond the inland Caspian. Turk and Russian joined to dismember Persia, and for some years Russia held the south coast of that great lake, the lands of Daghestan, Ghilan, and Mazanderan. ♦Superiority over Georgia. 1783.♦ Later in the century the ancient Christian kingdom of Georgia passed under Russian superiority, the earnest of much Russian conquest on both sides of Caucasus. ♦Superiority over the Kirghis. 1773.♦ And nearly at the same time as the first steps towards the acquisition of Crim, the Russian dominion was spread over the Kirghis hordes west of the river Ural, winning a coast on the eastern Caspian, the sea of Aral, and the Baltash lake.

♦Survey at the end of the eighteenth century.♦

Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century, the Swedish power has fallen back. Its territory east of the Baltic is less than it was at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Denmark, on the other hand, has grown by an advance in the debateable southern duchies. All Sleswick is added to the Danish crown; all Holstein is held by the Danish king. Poland has vanished. The anomalous power on the middle Danube, whose princes, it must be remembered, still wore the crown of the Empire, has thrust itself into the very heart of the old Polish land. But the power which has gained most by the extinction of Poland has been the new kingdom of Prussia. If part of her annexations lasted only a few years, she made her Baltic coast continuous for ever. But Prussia and Austria alike, by joining to wipe out the central state of the whole region, have given themselves a mighty neighbour. Russia has wholly cast aside her character as a mere inland power, intermediate between Europe and Asia. She has won her way, after so many ages, to her old position and much more. She has a Baltic and an Euxine seaboard. Her recovery of her old lands on the Duna and the Dnieper, her conquest of new lands on the Niemen, have brought her into the heart of Europe. And she has opened the path which was also to lead her into the heart of Asia, and to establish her in the intermediate mountain land between the Euxine and the Caspian.

§ 6. The Modern Geography of the Baltic Lands.

♦The French revolutionary wars.♦

The territorial arrangements of Northern and Eastern Europe were not affected by the French revolutionary wars till after the fall of the Western Empire. At that moment the frontier of Germany and Denmark was still what it had been under Charles the Great; “Eidora Romani terminus Imperii.” Only now the Danish king ruled to the south of the boundary stream in the character of a prince of the Empire. ♦Holstein incorporated with Denmark, and Swedish Pomerania with Sweden. 1806.♦ The fall of the Empire put an end to this relation, and the duchy of Holstein was incorporated with the Danish realm. In the like sort, the Swedish kingdom was extended to the central mainland of Europe, by the incorporation of the Pomeranian dominions of the Swedish king. ♦Russian conquest of Finland, 1809.♦ Before long, the last war between Sweden and Russia was ended by the peace of Friderikshamn, when Sweden gave up all her territory east of the gulf as far as the river Tornea, together with the isles of Aland. ♦Grand Duchy of Finland.♦ These lands passed to the Russian Emperor as a separate and privileged dominion, the Grand Duchy of Finland. Thus Sweden withdrew to her own side of the Baltic, while Russia at last became mistress of the whole eastern coast from the Prussian border northward. ♦Union of Sweden and Norway. 1814-1815.♦ The general peace left this arrangement untouched, but decreed the separation of Norway from Denmark and its union with Sweden. This was carried out so far as to effect the union of Sweden and Norway as independent kingdoms under a single king. ♦Swedish Pomerania passes to Denmark.♦ Denmark got in compensation, as diplomacy calls it, a scrap of its old Slavonic realm, Rügen and Swedish Pomerania. ♦Exchanged with Prussia for Lauenburg.♦ These detached lands were presently exchanged with Prussia for a land adjoining Holstein, the duchy of Lauenburg, the representative of ancient Saxony.[74] ♦Heligoland passes to England.♦ Denmark kept Iceland, but the Frisian island of Heligoland off the coast of Sleswick passed to England. Thus the common king of Sweden and Norway reigns over the whole of the northern peninsula and over nothing out of it. No such great change had affected the Scandinavian kingdoms since the union of Calmar.

♦Holstein and Lauenburg join the German Confederation.♦

Meanwhile the king of Denmark, remaining the independent sovereign of Denmark, Iceland, and Sleswick, entered the German Confederation for his duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg. ♦Disputes and wars in the Duchies.♦ Disputes and wars made no geographical change till the war which followed the accession of the present king. The changes which then followed have been told elsewhere.[75] ♦Transfer of Sleswick and Holstein, with Lauenburg to Prussia. 1864-1866.♦ They amount to the transfer to Prussia of Lauenburg, Holstein, and Sleswick, with a slight change of frontier and a redistribution of the smaller islands. A conditional engagement for the restoration of northern Sleswick to Denmark was not fulfilled, and has been formally annulled.

♦Losses of Prussia. 1806.♦

In the lands which had been Poland and Lithuania, the immediate result of the French wars was the creation of a new Polish state; their final result was a great extension of the dominion of Russia. Prussia had to surrender its whole Polish territory, save West Prussia.[76] ♦Bialystok added to Russia. Danzig a commonwealth.♦ A small Lithuanian territory, the district of Bialystok, was given to Russia; Danzig became a separate commonwealth. ♦Duchy of Warsaw♦ The rest of the Prussian share of Poland formed the new Duchy of Warsaw. This state was really no bad representative of the oldest Poland of all. Silesia was gone; but the new duchy took in Great Poland and Cujavia, with parts of Little Poland, Mazovia, and Lithuania. It took in the oldest capital at Gnesen and the newest at Warsaw. ♦Enlarged by part of Austrian Poland. 1810.♦ The new state was presently enlarged by the addition of the territory added to Austria by the last partition. Cracow, with the greater part of Little Poland, was again joined to Great Poland. ♦Extent of the Duchy.♦ Speaking roughly, the duchy took in nearly the whole of the old Polish kingdom, without Silesia, but with some small Lithuanian and Russian territory added.

♦Arrangements of 1815.♦

It was the Poland thus formed, a state which answered much more nearly to the Poland of the fourteenth than to the Poland of the eighteenth century, which, by the arrangements of the Vienna Congress, first received a Russian sovereign. ♦Danzig and Posen restored to Prussia.♦ Prussia now again rounded off her West-Prussian province by the recovery of Danzig and Thorn, and she rounded off her southern frontier by the recovery of Posen and Gnesen, which had been part of her South-Prussian province. The Grand Duchy of Posen became again part of the Prussian state. ♦Cracow a commonwealth. Annexed by Austria. 1846.♦ Cracow became a republic, to be annexed by Austria thirty years later. ♦Kingdom of Poland united to Russia. 1831-1863.♦ The remainder of the Duchy of Warsaw, under the style of the Kingdom of Poland, became a separate kingdom, but with the Russian Emperor as its king. ♦Russia takes old Polish territory for the first time.♦ Later events have destroyed, first its constitution, then its separate being; and now all ancient Poland, except the part of Great Poland kept by Prussia and the part of Little Poland kept by Austria, is merged in the Russian Empire. Thus the Russian acquisition of strictly Polish, as distinguished from old-Russian and Lithuanian territory, dates, not from the partitions, but from the Congress of Vienna. It was to the behoof of Prussia and Austria, not of Russia, that the old kingdom of the Piasts was broken in pieces.

The changes of the nineteenth century with regard to the lands on the European coasts of the Euxine have been told elsewhere.[77] ♦Fluctuation of the Russian frontier towards Moldavia. 1812-1878.♦ They amount, as far as the geographical boundaries of Russia are concerned, to her advance to the Pruth and the Danube, her partial withdrawal, her second partial advance. ♦Advance in the Caucasus.♦ Meanwhile the Russian advance in the nineteenth century on the Asiatic shores of the Euxine and in the lands on and beyond the Caspian has been far greater than her advance during the eighteenth. It is in our own century that Russia has taken up her commanding position between the Euxine and the Caspian seas, one which in some sort amounts to an enlargement of Europe at the expense of Asia. The old frontier on the Caspian, which had hardly changed since the conquest of Astrakhan, reached to the Terek. The annexation of Crim made the Kuban the boundary on the side of the Euxine. ♦Incorporation of Georgia. 1800.♦ The incorporation of the Georgian kingdom gave Russia an outlying territory south of the Caucasus on the upper course of the Kur. ♦Advance on the Caspian. 1802.♦ Next came the acquisition of the Caspian coast from the mouth of the Terek to the mouth of the Kur, the land of Daghestan and Shirwan, including part of the territory which had been held for a few years in the eighteenth century. ♦Advance in Armenia and Circassia. 1829.♦ The Persian and Turkish wars gave Russia the Armenian land of Erivan as far as the Araxes, Mingrelia and Immeretia, and the nominal cession of the Euxine coast between them and the older frontier. ♦1859.♦ But it was thirty years before the mountain region of Circassia was fully subdued. ♦1878.♦ The last changes have extended the Trans-Caucasian frontier of Russia to the south by the addition of Batoum and Kars.

♦Advance in Turkestan. 1853-1868.♦

In the lands east of the Caspian the new province of Turkestan gradually grew up in the lands on the Jaxartes, reaching southward to Samarkand. ♦1875.♦ Khokand to the south-east followed, while Khiva and Bokhara, the lands on the Oxus, have passed under Russian influence. The Turcoman tribes immediately east of the Caspian have also been annexed. The Caspian has thus nearly become a Russian lake. Hardly anything remains to Persia except the extreme southern coast which was once for a moment Russian.

♦Advance in Eastern Asia. 1858.♦

Far again to the east, Russia has added a large territory on the Chinese border on the river Amoor. ♦Extent and character of the Russian dominion.♦ All these conquests form the greatest continuous extent of territory by land which the world has ever seen, unless during the transient dominion of the old Mongols. No other European power in any age has, or could have had, such a continuous dominion, because no other European power has ever had the unknown barbarian world lying in the same way at its side. Nowhere again has any European power held a dominion so physically unbroken as that which stretches from the gulf of Riga to the gulf of Okhotsk. The greater part of the Asiatic dominion of Russia belongs to that part of Asia which has least likeness to Europe. It is only on the Frozen Ocean that we find a kind of mockery of inland seas, islands, and peninsulas. Massive unbroken extent by land is its leading character. And as this character extends to a large part of European Russia also, Russia is the only European land where there can be any doubt where Europe ends. The barbarian dominion of other European states, a dominion beyond the sea, has been a dominion of choice. The barbarian dominion of Russia in lands adjoining her European territory is a dominion forced on her by geographical necessity. The annexation of Kamtschatka became a question of time when the first successors of Ruric made their earliest advance towards the Finnish north.

♦Russian America.♦

Alongside of this continuous dominion in Europe and Asia, the Russian occupation of territory in a third continent, an occupation made by sea after the manner of other European powers, has not been lasting. The Russian territory in the north-west corner of America, the only part of the world where Russia and England marched on one another, has been sold to the United States.

♦Final Survey.♦

To return to Europe, the events of the nineteenth century have, in the lands with which we are dealing, carried on the work of the eighteenth by the further aggrandizement of Russia and Prussia. The Scandinavian powers have withdrawn into the two Scandinavian peninsulas and the adjoining islands, and in the southern peninsula the power of Denmark has been cut short to the gain of Prussia. The Prussian power meanwhile, formed in the eighteenth century by the union of the detached lands of Prussia and Brandenburg, has in the nineteenth grown into the imperial power of Germany, and has, even as a local kingdom, become, by the acquisition of Swedish Pomerania, Holstein, and Sleswick, the dominant power on the southern Baltic. The acquisition of the duchies too, not only of Sleswick and Holstein, but of Bremen and Verden also, as parts of the annexed kingdom of Hannover, have given her a part of the former oceanic position both of Denmark and Sweden. Russia has acquired the same position on the gulfs of the Baltic which Prussia has on the south coast of the Baltic itself. The acquisition of the new Poland has brought her frontier into the very midst of Europe; it has made her a neighbour, not merely of Prussia as such, but of Germany. The third sharer in the partition has drawn back from her northern advance, but she has increased her scrap of Russia, her scrap of Little Poland, her scrap of Moldavia,[78] by the suppression of a free city. The southern advance of Russia on European ground has been during this century an advance less of territory than of influence. The frontier of 1878 is the restored frontier of 1812. It is in the lands out of Europe that Russia has in the meanwhile advanced by strides which look startling on the map, but which in truth spring naturally from the geographical position of the one modern European power which cannot help being Asiatic as well.