France and Poland: A Study in Contrasts

France and Poland:

Study in Contrasts

Few countries in Europe have such widely differing modern histories as France and Poland. Both began the modern era as ancient Catholic monarchies. Each nation covered a large expanse of territory and could claim, at least in theory, to be a power within its own region. There however, the comparison stops. France was a relatively well-organized, and fairly coherent state under the rule of a powerful king and a centralizing absolute monarchy. Poland, on the hand, was a hold-over from the medieval past, an elective monarchy dominated by an overweening, exceedingly numerous aristocracy. While France was destined to enter the Nineteenth Century as a powerful empire, and to become more highly centralized than ever before, Poland would, at almost the very same time, completely disappear from the map. Absorbed into Russia, Germany, and Austria, the Polish people...
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