We do not
allude to the sixteenth century, when Poland by the success of its
arms became for a short time the most powerful state in the north;
when the Teutonic knights, the conquerors of Prussia, were compelled
to acknowledge its protection; and when not only were Livonia and
Courland, the one a component part of the Polish kingdom, and the
other a Polish fief, but even the ancient Smolensk and the venerable
Kief, the royal seat of Vladimir, and the Russian provinces adjacent
to Galicia, all were subjugated by Poland. We speak of this kingdom as
it was at the time of its first partition between Russia, Austria, and
Prussia. Of the four or five millions of inhabitants in the provinces
united with Russia at the three successive partitions of 1772, 1793,
and 1795, only one and a half million are strictly Poles, that is,
Lekhes, who speak dialects of that language;[5] in White and Black
Russia, the Russniaks are by far more numerous; and in Lithuania the
Lithuanians. Besides the independent language of these latter, the
Malo-Russian and White Russian dialects are spoken in these provinces;
and all documents of the grand-duchy of Lithuania before it was united
with Poland in A.D. 1569, were written in the latter.
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