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384 General History of Europe The kingship was not hereditary in Poland, but whenever the ruler died the nobles assembled and chose a new one, commonly a foreigner. These elections were tumultuous, and the various European powers regularly interfered, by force or bribery, to secure the election of a candidate who, they believed, would favor their interests. 663. The Polish Nobles and Peasants. The nobles in Poland were numerous. There were perhaps a million and a half of them, mostly very poor, owning only a trifling bit of land. There was a saying that the poor noble's dog, even if he sat in the middle of his master's estate, was sure to have his tail upon a neigh- bor's land. There was no middle class except in the few German towns. The peasants were miserable indeed. They had sunk from serfs to slaves, over whom their lords had even the right of life and death. 664. First Partition of Poland (1772). It required no' great insight to foresee that Poland was in danger of falling a prey to her greedy and powerful neighbors, Russia, Prussia, and Aus- tria, who clamped in the unfortunate kingdom on all sides and coveted her territory. The ruler of Russia was now the famous Catherine II, who proved herself one of the most efficient of queens. She arranged with Frederick the Great to prevent any improvement in Poland and to keep up and encourage the disorder. Finally the rulers of Prussia, Russia, and Austria agreed, in 1772, each to take a slice of the unhappy kingdom. Austria was assigned a strip inhabited by almost three million Poles and Russians and thus added two new kinds of people and two new languages to her already varied .collection of races and tongues. Prussia was given a smaller piece, but it was the coveted West Prussia, which she needed to fill out her boundaries, and its inhabitants were to a considerable extent Germans and Protestants. Russia's strip, on the east, was inhabited entirely by Russians. 665. Second and Third Partitions (1793, 1795). Russia and Prussia continued to promote disorder in Poland and twenty years