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France was the soul of the Protestant cause; she assisted it with her armies, and her subsidies: it may be truly said, that, if there be a Protestant state from the Vistula to the Rhine, or a Mahometan, state between the Danube and the Mediterranean, its existence is owing to the Bourbon monarchs.
So far as institutions are concerned, Teutonism was less modified in England than in the German fatherland itself, For the gradual conquest and Christianization of Germany which began with Charles the Great, and went on until in the thirteenth century the frontier had advanced eastward to the Vistula, entailed to a certain extent the romanization of Germany.
Many of the wealthiest of her citizens had taken refuge in the lower part of the city, leaving their magnificent palaces and residences situated in the newer part to the flood of invading soldiers, who went with unerring directness to the parts containing the greatest comfort and luxury. Warsaw is built in the midst of a beautiful plain mostly on the left bank of the river Vistula.
The threatened fall was highly significant. To the south of the Vistula the Teuton troops had advanced to the Blonie-Grojec lines. Blonie is some seventeen miles west of Warsaw and Grojec twenty-six miles south of the city.
These permanent fortifications were supported by strong natural barriers or obstacles in the form of rivers. The Niemen, Bobr, Nareff, Vistula and Bug, with their interminable windings, made more difficult to cross in some places by extensive swamp lands, had, together with the fortified places, offered ideal means for strong defense.
He glanced round as he worked, and, perceiving that he had been addressing an officer, he scrambled to his feet with a grumbled curse. He was an old man, baked by the sun. The wrinkles in his face were filled with dust. Since quitting the banks of the Vistula no opportunity for ablution seemed to have presented itself to him. He stood at attention, his lips working over sunken gums.
He told the Prussian envoy, Knesebeck, that, while handing over to Frederick William the whole of Saxony, Russia must retain all the Polish lands, a resolve which would have planted the Russian standards almost on the banks of the Oder. Nay, more: Knesebeck detected among the Russian officials a strong, though as yet but half expressed, longing for the whole of Prussia east of the lower Vistula.
The first feat in which he distinguished himself in the service of Sweden was at the relief of Mewe, a town in Eastern Prussia, which was blockaded by King Sigismund at the head of 30,000 Poles. The town is situated at the confluence of the Bersa with the Vistula, which washes two sides of its walls.
This host, composed of Huns, Alans, Gepidæ, and other tribes, German as well as Asiatic, from the plains of Sarmatia, and the banks of the Vistula and Niemen, extended from Bash to the mouth of the Rhine. The great object of attack was Orleans—an important strategic position. It was not now the Romans against barbarians, but Europe against Asia.
By the partitions of 1793 and 1795, Austria obtained the upper valley of the Vistula, and Prussia the lower, including the city of Warsaw, while the rest the major share went to Russia. Russia thenceforth bordered immediately on Prussia and Austria and became geographically a vital member of the European family of nations.
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