The Duc de Choiseul, indignant at the debasement of France, was secretly preparing war against Prussia and England.  This powerful diversion in Poland was necessary for his plan of campaign, and he gave his confidential instructions to Dumouriez; but, thrown out of the administration by the intrigues of Madame Du Barry and M. d’Argenson, the Duc de Choiseul was suddenly exiled to Versailles before Dumouriez reached Poland.  The policy of France, changing with the minister, at once destroyed Dumouriez’s plans.  Still he followed them up with an ardour and perseverance worthy of better success.  He found the Poles debased by misery, slavery, and the custom of bearing a foreign yoke.  He found the Polish aristocrats corrupted by luxury, enervated by pleasures, employing in intrigues and language the warmth of their patriotism in the conferences and confederation of Eperies.  A female of remarkable beauty, high rank, and eastern genius, the Countess of Mnizeck, stirred up, destroyed, or combined different parties, according to the taste of her ambition or her amours.  Certain patriot orators caused the last accents of independence to resound again in vain.  Certain princes and gentlemen formed meetings without any understanding with each other, who contended as partisans rather than as citizens, and who boasted of personal fame, without any reference to the safety of their country.  Dumouriez availed himself of the ascendency of the countess, and endeavoured to unite these isolated effects, formed an infantry, an artillery, seized upon two fortresses, threatened in all directions the Russians, scattered in small bodies over the wide plains of Poland, prepared for war, disciplined the insubordinate patriotism of the insurgents, and contended successfully against Souwarow, the Russian general, subsequently destined to threaten the republic so closely.

But Stanislaus, the king of Poland, the crowned creature of Catherine, saw the danger of a national insurrection, which, by drawing out the Russians, would endanger his throne; and he paralysed it by offering to the federates to adhere, in his own person, to the confederation.  One of them, Bohuez, the last great orator of Polish liberty, returned to the king, in a sublime oration, his perfidious succour, and then combined the unanimity of the conspirators into the last resource of the oppressed—­insurrection.  It burst forth.  Dumouriez is its life and soul, flies from one camp to the other, giving a spirit of unity to the plan of attack.  Cracovis was ready to fall into his hands; the Russians regain the frontier in disorder; but anarchy, that fatal genius of Poland, suddenly dissolves the union of the chiefs, and they surrender one another to the united efforts of the Russians.  All desire to have the exclusive honour of delivering their country, and prefer to lose it rather than owe their success to a rival.