Arizona republican., 1914-12-24
CRACOW |S THE. ].
 POLISH MECCA
City Threatened by Rus sians Has Proud and Splendid Past-Romance and Legend Abound - Hand of War There

One must approach Cracow. as the Russians now do, from the eastward in order to get a proper impression of the old Polish capital, now in the melancholy sunset of it's proud and splendid past. It is from the east one sees the multitude of towers and tur. rets, steeples and domes of Cracow, and sees them untarnished by the network of narrow, tortuous and dirty streets which characterize the city that was the glory of the Polish king dom when it was the rival of Russia and Prussia.
 In Cracow lived Kasimir the Great author of the celebrated edict of tol- erance to the Jews in the fourteenth century. Here was performed the marriage which fused Poland and Lithuania. And here, too, in 1895, the fatal mistake was made by King Sigismund of granting to Albrecht of Brandenburg the Duchy of Prussia in perpetual fief-that Duchy which in course of time grew to be the Prus- sia of Frederick the Great, the gra-
 ve-digger of Poland. Although the capital was removed to Warsaw in 1900. the kings continued to be crown ed in Cracow and buried in the Cra- COW Katedra, the cathedral which still survives.
 Legend attributes the origin of the city to the Slav Sagas, Krakus, who lived in the ninth century Legend tells of his beautiful daughter, Wanda
 who was driven by the importantly of her numerous suitors to such despair as to throw herself into the Vistula Certain it is that in the eleventh cen tury Cracow, on the crossroads from
 three seas and four great rivers en- joyed prosperity It counted among 1 it's bishops the martyr Stanislas, sub sequently canonized by the Roman church, who had been slain before the altar by King Boleslas the Great. For three centuries during the feud- al period it passed from hand to hand, now captured by the Germans, now
 sacked by the Tartars and again seiz- ed by the Bohemians Casimir the | Great was its greatest leader, found 1 ing in 1864 the university which two centuries later was to become one of
 the seats of humanism and the arena
 of long battles between the Jesuits and the numerous students. At that
 time Cracow had a population of
 100, ,O0O, and traded with all Europe. including England. The city received
 moral blow when the capital was
 transferred to Warsaw.
 | In 1855, Charles Gustavus of Sweden sacked Cracow, disarmed it's citizens, expelled the clergy and professors. destroyed the schools and churches. | and exacted a heavy tribute. No sooner had he gone than the Transyl- vania prince, the amous Prince Ra-
 koczy, came and completed the work of devastation Again, in 17O2,
 Charles XII of Sweden, suffering de- 1 feat everywhere, wrecked his ven- geance on Cracow by plundering and burning it. Russia and Prussia were already on Poland's track and the so- called Confederation of the Bar, with | it's seat at Cracow was formed to offer resistance But Suvaroff took | Cracow by storm in 1772. Twice was
 Poland partitioned, and then came the
 great rising under Koscusko in lI49'
 which brought about the end of Po- l land. Cracow was pillaged by the Austrians and Prussians. and the lat ter carried off the contents of the
 royal treasury
 l Cracow now became an Austrian
 city, but with the restoration Of the Duchv of Warsaw by Napoleon 1t
 was incorporated with it. By the