Alpha Book

In the course of the
seventeenth century the principle of the _liberum veto_ had been
so far extended as to recognize the lawful right of any one of the ten
thousand noblemen of Poland to refuse to obey a law which he had not
approved. This amounted to anarchism. And anarchism, however beautiful
it might appear as an ideal, was hardly a trustworthy weapon with which
to oppose the greedy, hard-hearted, despotic monarchs who governed all
the surrounding countries.
[Sidenote: Steady Decline of Ottoman Power during Seventeenth Century]
The Ottoman Empire was not in such sore straits as Poland, but its
power and prestige were obviously waning. In another place we have
reviewed the achievements of the Turks in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries--how they overran the Balkan peninsula, captured
Constantinople, put an end to the ancient Graeco-Roman Empire and under
Suleiman the Magnificent extended their conquests along the northern
coast of Africa and in Europe across the Danube into the very heart of
Hungary.


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