peace. Catharine was only too glad to grant it, for her money and soldiers were going fast. So peace

was made.

All this made the Russians love and honour Catharine more and more. For they hated the Turks.

And Poland? Poland was like a poor stag hunted down by dogs trying in vain to save itself.

Stanislas was doing his very best while Russia was busy with the Turks to make Poland free and happy. He built schools, and invited clever men to Poland, and tried to teach them common-sense and love of their country.

But one unlucky day he went a little too far. For he called a free meeting of the Poles, and arranged that Poland should be ruled by a senate of her own nobles and deputies from her own towns— that she might rule herself. And that news was brought to Catharine and the Prussians, and they were furiously angry, and each sent a great army into Poland, and they took possession of it.

Worse than that, she called a Diet, and as before set soldiers round the hall, and the Prussian general sat in a chair next the king with his hand on his sword. The members were to agree that Poland should be divided between Russia and Prussia. All the night they sat there silent, but in the morning, when their enemies would wait no longer, for fear

of worse they consented, and came out weeping into the streets. They made one attempt to win back freedom. For the peasants rose and armed themselves with scythes, and joined the nobles, and they fought bravely and fiercely against the Russians and Prussians-and Kosciusko led them, as you will read by and by in another book. But it was of no use. They were terribly beaten by the large armies of their enemies, and the Russians took Prague.

So ended the freedom of Poland. Yet a time was coming when they would fight the Russians again fiercely, and march even to the Holy City, Moscow.

This is almost the end of Catharine's reign. There were great troubles in France at this timethe time of the French Revolution. You know how the poor oppressed people rose to get liberty, and, in their ignorance, only got a worse bondage. You know how they beheaded thousands on the guillotine, and at last killed the king and queen.

Catharine was afraid, when she saw this, that the Russian peasants would do the same. So she would no longer allow books to be written on Liberty, nor let the Russians go into France. Also she opened the letters of Russians whom she had suspected.

But one day Catharine was found lying insensible in her room. That evening the news began and spread through Russia that the great Catharine was dead. This was in 1796.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PAUL.

Now we shall hear how the Russians won themselves glory in the eyes of all Europe, though they lost much, and what happened to them once in dark snowy nights on the top of high mountains.

The new Czar of Russia thought a great deal of himself. One day he said to his minister, "Know that the only person of importance in Russia is the person I speak to, at the moment I am speaking to him." He was of a bad temper, too, and sour. His mother had made him obey her like a child, though he was forty-two years old; she would not even allow him to teach his own children. Besides this, he remembered well how his father had died suddenly; and, when he thought of it, he began to suspect dark things about his mother. So gradually he grew to hate her, and all she did, more and more; and when she died, and he became the Czar, he determined to act in all things contrary to what she would have willed.

And besides this, Paul had had a great trouble. He had loved dearly the wife whom he first married. But she died, and after her death he found out that she had not loved him really, but had only feigned love. And from that time he distrusted all his friends, and his temper grew sharp and bitter.

So he made foolish and despotic laws, and that made the nobles discontented. He forced their carriages to stand still when he passed, and he made all his subjects, both men and women, throw themselves on their knees in the snow and mud before him. He would allow very few books or plays to be published, and would not even allow European music to be brought to Russia. Neither would he let many foreigners travel and live. there.

But the serfs and peasants were happy, and praised the good Czar. "Thank God," they said, "he no longer takes so many of our men to be soldiers."

While they were rejoicing Paul was writing to the kings of different countries, and saying to them that Russia had been engaged in ceaseless wars, and that he would now give his people the peace for which they sighed. And to France he wrote, and said that he wished to live at peace with her, and to stop the war that was wasting Europe.

Then he set himself to reform the army; but

it.

though there was much to reform, he did not do For he only took his own advice, and that advice was poor. He put all the soldiers into Prussian costume, with pigtails and powdered heads, and shoe-buckles and gaiters, and heavy uncomfortable caps, instead of leaving them their own comfortable, useful dress. Souvorof, the old

general, shook his head one unlucky day, and said, "There are powders and powders! Shoebuckles are not gun-carriages, nor pigtails exactly bayonets. We are not Prussians, but Russians." When Paul heard that he was so enraged that he sent Souvorof away to a little country village. Souvorof was very happy there, and he rode a cockhorse with the little village children, and on Sundays and Saints'-days he rang the church bell for service, and then read the Epistle, and gave the choir singing-lessons. He knew well enough that when Russia wanted him he would be fetched back again; and so it turned out.

Now Paul, above all things, hated the French Revolutionists and Napoleon Buonaparte. He did not mean to go to war with him until he was obliged, but that time was not far off.

For Buonaparte was gradually coming nearer and nearer Russia; and in one French harbour a fleet was being quietly built, and very quickly. When Paul heard of that he feared that the Black Sea