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Updated: May 9, 2025
In the second half of the eighteenth century, thanks to the peace with which Lithuania was blessed after its subjection by Russia, Rabbinical studies reached their zenith. The high schools, the Yeshibot, became the centres of attraction for the best of the young men. The number of writers and scholars increased considerably, and the Hebrew printing presses were kept in full blast.
Such was, and such in part is still, the manner in which they live a sober, energetic, melancholy, and subtle people, the mass of the two millions of Jews who reside in Lithuania and White Russia, and send forth, to the great capitals of Europe and to the countries beyond seas, a stream of industrious immigrants, resourceful intellectually and morally.
One authority reckons the population of Prussia at this time at two million one hundred and forty thousand eight hundred. The greater part of these were German immigrants, since the original inhabitants had either perished in the war or retired to Lithuania.
It was requisite, therefore, to constitute an artificial line; to construct towns and fortresses capable of defying the elements, and every species of scourge; to create every thing, land and atmosphere; for every thing was deficient, even provisions, unless, indeed, he chose to drain Lithuania, and render her hostile, or ruin ourselves; that if they were at Moscow, they might take what they pleased; here it was necessary to purchase every thing.
Early in the new year, January 2. 1918, the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk were suspended for several days, owing to the nature of the German terms of peace, which demanded that Russia surrender to Germany the territory including Poland, Courland, Esthonia and Lithuania. Foreign Minister Trotzky declared that the Russian workers would not accept the German terms.
In far Lithuania they had celebrated Christmas; and it came to him as if it had been yesterday himself a little child, with his lost brother and his dead father in the cabin in the deep black forest, where the snow fell all day and all night and buried them from the world.
"And with what means? Why was not that liberty offered to them in 1807? Lithuania was then rich and populous. Since that time the continental system, by sealing up the only vent for its productions, had impoverished it, while Russian foresight had depopulated it of recruits, and more recently of a multitude of nobles, peasants, waggons, and cattle, which the Russian army had carried away with it."
A report, I do not know how well founded, was current throughout the district, that he was the first to bring from abroad and make popular in that time and place the song which is to-day famous all over the world, and which was first played in the Ausonian land to Italians by the trumpets of the Polish legions.71 The talent of song pays well in Lithuania; it gains people’s affection and makes one famous and rich.
It was no more a secret, that at the advent of winter, when the swamps should be frozen, or even earlier than that, if the season was dry, a great war would break out, which would embrace all the lands of Lithuania, Zmudz, and Prussia.
Some thought that, finding himself in the centre of his operations with a strong reserve, he awaited the event, in readiness to direct his motions either towards Davoust, Murat, or Macdonald; others thought that the organization of Lithuania, and the politics of Europe, to which he was more proximate at Wilna, retained him in that city; or that he did not anticipate any obstacles worthy of him till he reached the Düna; a circumstance in which he was not deceived, but by which he was too much flattered.
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