Alpha Book

Poland and Turkey
remained to be dealt with by Catherine the Great. Let us see what had
lately transpired to render this task comparatively easy for the
tsarina.
[Sidenote: Poland in the Eighteenth Century]
Poland in the first half of the eighteenth century was geographically a
large state, but a variety of circumstances contributed to render it
weak and unstable. In the first place, it was without natural
boundaries or adequate means of defense. To the west it was separated
from Prussia and Austria by an artificial line drawn through level
plains or over low-lying hills. To the south a fluctuating frontier,
fixed usually along the Dniester River, set it off from the Ottoman
Empire. The fertile valleys of the Dnieper, to the east, and of the
Dona, to the north, were shared by Russia and Poland. No chains of
mountains and no strongly fortified places protected the Polish people
from Germans, Turks, or Russians.
Nor was this wide, but indefensible, territory inhabited by a single
homogeneous people.


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