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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: lingering tortures; to strip noble ladies and maidens, and hunt them
to death with the whips of his Cossacks; and after defeating the
nobles in battle after battle, to inaugurate an era of misery and
anarchy from which Poland never recovered.
Thus did the masses of Southern Poland discover, for one generation
at least, that they were not many things, but one thing; a class,
capable of brotherhood and unity, though, alas! only of such as
belongs to a pack of wolves. But such outbursts as this were rare
exceptions. In general, feudalism kept the people divided, and
therefore helpless. And as feudalism died out, and with it the
personal self-respect and loyalty which were engendered by the old
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