First Partition of Poland
gigatos | June 11, 2022
Summary
The term partitions of Poland primarily refers to the partitions and subsequent dissolution of the noble republic of Poland-Lithuania towards the end of the 18th century. In 1772, 1793 and 1795 the neighboring powers Russia, Prussia and Austria gradually divided Poland-Lithuania among themselves, so that on the map of Europe from 1796 until the end of the First World War in 1918 there was neither a sovereign Polish nor a sovereign Lithuanian state for more than 120 years.
After defeating Prussia at the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte created the Duchy of Warsaw as a French satellite state from the Prussian partition territories of the second and third partitions. In 1809, in the Peace of Schönbrunn, he expanded the Duchy by Western Galicia, the Austrian partition territory of 1795. After its defeat in the Wars of Liberation, in 1815 the Congress of Vienna reduced it by Poznan and Krakow. The duchy became the constitutional “Kingdom of Poland”, ruled in personal union by the autocratic Emperor of Russia as “King of Poland”.
In reference to the three partitions of Poland, the term Fourth Partition of Poland exists, which was later applied to various curtailments of the Polish territory.
After Poland-Lithuania, a dualistic and federal estates state with a king at the head of state elected by the aristocracy in free elections, had been severely weakened in the second half of the 18th century by numerous previous wars and internal conflicts (e.g., by the confederations), the country came under the domination of Russia from 1768. Tsarina Catherine II demanded legal-political equality for the so-called dissidents, as the numerous Orthodox East Slavic population of Poland-Lithuania was called at that time, but also Protestants. However, this provoked the resistance of the Catholic Polish nobility (cf. Confederation of Bar 1768-1772).
Prussia took advantage of this uneasy situation and negotiated a strategy for Poland with Russia. Eventually, King Frederick II and Tsarina Catherine II succeeded by purely diplomatic means in achieving an annexation of large areas of Poland by Austria, Russia and Prussia. Prussia”s long pursued goal of creating a land bridge to East Prussia was achieved in this way in 1772.
The state that remained after this first partition implemented various reforms within it, including the abolition of the principle of unanimity in the Diet (liberum veto), through which Poland sought to regain its ability to act. The reforms finally culminated in the adoption of a liberal constitution on May 3, 1791. However, such reformist zeal, influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution, ran counter to the interests of neighboring absolutist powers and parts of the conservative Polish high nobility (cf. the Confederation of Targowica in 1792), and in 1793 encouraged further partition, in which Prussia and the Russian Empire participated.
The new partition met with fierce resistance, so that the representatives of the lesser nobility joined with parts of the bourgeoisie and peasantry in a popular uprising around Tadeusz Kościuszko. After the Kościuszko uprising was put down by the partitioning powers, Prussia and Russia decided in 1795 – now again with Austrian participation – to partition the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic completely.
Already since the first half of the 17th century, Poland-Lithuania got into a long phase of mostly involuntary warlike conflicts with its neighbors. In particular, the recurring clashes with the Ottoman Empire (cf. Ottoman-Polish Wars), Sweden (cf. Swedish-Polish Wars) and Russia (cf. Russian-Polish Wars) strained the stability of the union state.
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Second Nordic War
Warlike conflicts that severely shook the Union State began in 1648 with the large-scale Khmielnicki Uprising of the Ukrainian Cossacks, who rebelled against Polish rule in Western Rus. In the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the Cossacks placed themselves under the protection of the Tsardom of Russia, which triggered the Russo-Polish War of 1654-1667. The victories and the advance of the Russians and the Ukrainian Cossacks under Khmielnicki also caused the Swedish invasion of Poland from 1655 (see Second Northern War), which became known in Polish historiography as the “Bloody” or “Swedish Deluge”. At times, the Swedes advanced as far as Warsaw and Kraków. Toward the end of the 1650s, Sweden was weakened and put on the defensive by the entry of other powers into the war to such an extent that Poland was able to negotiate the status quo ante in the Peace of Oliva in 1660. However, the disputes with Russia continued and finally resulted in an armistice treaty in 1667, which was unfavorable for Poland and by which the Rzeczpospolita lost large parts of its territory (Smolensk, Left Bank Ukraine with Kiev) and millions of inhabitants to the Russian tsardom.
Poland was now weakened not only territorially. In terms of foreign policy, the Union state became increasingly unable to act, and economically the consequences of the war meant disaster: Half of the population died in the turmoil of war or was displaced, 30 percent of villages and towns were destroyed. The decline in agricultural products was dramatic, with grain production alone reaching only 40 percent of pre-war levels. Poland fell behind in social and economic development by the beginning of the 18th century and was unable to catch up until the following century.
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Great Northern War
Nevertheless, the new century began with another devastating war, the Third or Great Northern War of 1700-1721, which today is often considered the starting point of the history of the partitions of Poland. Over 20 years lasted the renewed disputes for supremacy in the Baltic Sea area. Most of the riparians united in the Treaty of Preobrazhenskoye to form the “Northern League” and eventually defeated Sweden. The Peace of Nystad in 1721 sealed Sweden”s end as a major regional power.
The role of Poland-Lithuania in this conflict revealed the weakness of the republic all too clearly. Even before the war began, the noble republic had ceased to be an equal among the Baltic powers. Rather, Poland-Lithuania fell further and further under the hegemony of Russia. Nevertheless, the new King of Poland and Elector of Saxony August II strove to profit from the disputes over the “Dominium maris baltici” and to strengthen his position as well as that of the Wettin house. The background to these efforts was probably in particular the intention to set a dynastic signal in order to force the transfer of the Saxon-Polish personal union into a real union and hereditary monarchy, which he desired (Poland-Lithuania had been an elective monarchy since its foundation in 1569).
After Russia had defeated the Swedish troops at Poltava in 1709, the “Northern League” was finally under the leadership of the Tsarist Empire. For Poland, this decision meant a considerable loss of importance, since it could no longer influence the further course of the war. Russia no longer regarded the dual state of Poland-Lithuania as a potential ally, but only as the “forefield” of its empire. The Russian political calculation envisaged bringing the noble republic under control to such an extent that it remained removed from the influence of competing powers. Poland thus entered an era of sovereignty crisis.
The situation within the state was just as difficult as the foreign policy situation: In addition to his attempts to gain external recognition, the Saxon elector August II, as the new Polish king, was anxious to reform the republic in his interests and to expand the king”s power. But he had neither domestic power nor sufficient support within the republic to push through such an absolutist reform against the powerful Polish nobility. On the contrary, no sooner had his reform efforts entered the scene than resistance formed among the nobility, which ultimately led to the formation of the Confederation of Tarnogród in 1715. August”s coup led to open conflict. Russia seized the opportunity of the civil war and eventually secured longer-term influence through its intervention.
At the end of the Great Northern War in 1721, Poland was one of the official winners, but this victory belies the increasingly progressive process of subordination of the republic to the hegemonic interests of neighboring states, conditioned and fostered by a “coincidence of internal crisis and a change in foreign policy constellations. De iure, of course, Poland was not yet a protectorate of Russia, but de facto the loss of sovereignty was clearly noticeable. In the following decades, Russia determined Polish policy.
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Dependence on foreign countries and resistance at home
The extent of dependence on the other European powers was shown by the decision on the succession to the throne after August II died in 1733. It was not only the szlachta, i.e. the Polish landed gentry, who were to make this decision. In addition to the neighboring powers, France and Sweden also interfered in the succession discussion, trying to place Stanisław Leszczyński on the throne. The three neighboring states Prussia, Russia and Austria, however, tried to prevent Leszczyński”s accession to the throne and, even before the death of August II, mutually committed themselves to place their bets on their own common candidate (Löwenwoldesches Traktat or Alliance Treaty of the Three Black Eagles). In the process, a Wettin candidate was to be excluded. However, the Polish nobility ignored the decision of the neighboring states and voted with a majority for Leszczyński. Russia and Austria, however, were not satisfied with this decision and imposed a counter-vote. Contrary to the agreements and without consultation with Prussia, they nominated the son of the deceased king, the Wettin August III. The result was a three-year war of succession, in which the anti-Wettin confederation of Dzików was defeated and at the end of which Leszczyński abdicated. At the “Pacific Empire Day” in 1736, the Saxon August III finally bought himself the title of king by renouncing his own possibilities for shaping the state, thus ending the interregnum.
The warring confederations were to paralyze the Republic for almost the entire 18th century. Different factions with different interests confronted each other, making it impossible to implement reforms in a system based on the principle of unanimity. The “Liberum Veto” allowed any individual member of the szlachta to bring down a previously negotiated compromise through his or her objection. The influence of the neighboring powers further strengthened the internal division of the Republic, so that, for example, during the entire reign of August III between 1736 and 1763, not a single Imperial Diet could be successfully concluded and thus not a single law was passed. In the years before that, too, the balance sheet of the imperial diets shows the paralyzing effect of the unanimity principle: of the total of 18 imperial diets from 1717 to 1733, eleven alone were “blown up,” two ended without passing a resolution and only five achieved results.
After the death of August III, the two Polish noble families Czartoryski and Potocki in particular strove for power. However, as in the case of the interregnum in 1733, succession to the throne again became a question of European dimension. Once again, it was by no means the Polish noble parties who determined the succession, but the major European powers, especially the large neighboring states. Although the result of the royal election was entirely in Russia”s favor, Prussia also played a decisive role.
Increasingly, the Prussian King Frederick II tried to pursue his interests. As already described in his wills of 1752 and 1768, he intended to create a land connection between Pomerania and East Prussia, his “kingdom”, by acquiring the Polish “Prussian Royal Share”. The importance of this acquisition is shown by the frequency with which Frederick repeatedly renewed this desire. As late as 1771, he wrote: “Polish Prussia would be worth the effort even if Danzig were not included. For we would have the Vistula and free communication with the kingdom, which would be an important thing.”
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Poland under Russian Hegemony
Since Russia would not have readily accepted such a gain in power by Prussia, the Prussian king sought an alliance with the Russian empress Catherine II. A first opportunity to forge such a Russian-Prussian agreement was the nomination of the new Polish king in April 1764, when Prussia accepted the election of the Russian candidate of choice to the Polish throne. Austria remained excluded from this decision, and so Russia virtually single-handedly determined the succession to the throne.
Russia”s decision on the successor to the throne had already been made long ago. As early as August 1762, the tsarina assured the succession to the throne to the former British embassy secretary Stanisław August Poniatowski and reached an agreement with the noble family of the Czartoryski about their support. Her choice fell on a person with no domestic power and little political weight. In the eyes of the tsarina, a weak, pro-Russian king offered “the best guarantee for the subordination of the Warsaw court to the directives of Petersburg.” The fact that Poniatowski was a lover of Catherine II probably played a minor role in the decision. Nevertheless, Poniatowski was more than just an embarrassment choice, because the only 32-year-old pretender to the throne had a comprehensive education, a great talent for languages, and possessed extensive knowledge of diplomacy and state theory. After his election on 6.
However, Poniatowski proved not to be as loyal and compliant as the tsarina had hoped. After only a short time, he embarked on far-reaching reforms. In order to guarantee the new king”s ability to act after his election, the Imperial Diet decided on December 20, 1764, to transform itself into a general confederation, which was supposed to last only for the duration of the interregnum. This meant that future imperial diets were freed from the “liberum veto” and majority decisions (pluralis votorum) were sufficient to pass resolutions. In this way, the Polish state was strengthened. However, Catherine II did not want to give up the advantages of the permanent blockade of political life in Poland, the so-called “Polish anarchy,” and looked for ways to prevent a system capable of functioning and reform. To this end, she had some pro-Russian nobles mobilized and allied them with Orthodox and Protestant dissidents who had suffered discrimination since the Counter-Reformation. In 1767, Orthodox nobles joined together to form the Confederation of Sluzk and Protestant ones the Confederation of Thorn. As a Catholic response to these two confederations, the Confederation of Radom was formed. At the end of the conflict there was a new Polish-Russian treaty, which was compulsorily approved by the Imperial Diet on February 24, 1768. This so-called “Eternal Treaty” included the manifestation of the unanimity principle, a Russian guarantee for the territorial integrity and for the political “sovereignty” of Poland, as well as religious tolerance and legal-political equality for the dissidents in the Imperial Diet. However, this treaty did not last long.
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The Triggers: Anti-Russian Uprising and Russian-Turkish War
Poniatowski”s attempts at reform presented the tsarina Catherine with a dilemma: if she wanted to put a lasting stop to them, she would have to become militarily involved. But that would provoke the other two great powers bordering Poland, which, according to the doctrine of the balance of power, would not accept a clear Russian hegemony over Poland. To persuade them to keep quiet, territorial concessions at Poland”s expense offered themselves as a “bribe,” as historian Norman Davies writes. The year 1768 gave particular impetus to the First Partition of Poland. The Prussian-Russian alliance took on more concrete forms. Decisive factors for this were the internal Polish difficulties as well as the foreign policy conflicts Russia faced: Within the Kingdom of Poland, the Polish nobility”s resentment of Russian protectorate rule and open disregard for sovereignty intensified. Only a few days after the adoption of the “Eternal Treaty”, on February 29, 1768, the anti-Russian Confederation of Bar was formed, supported by Austria and France. Under the slogan of defending “faith and freedom”, Catholic and Polish republican men joined forces to force, even by force, the withdrawal of the “Perpetual Treaty” and to fight against Russian domination and the pro-Russian King Poniatowski. Russian troops then invaded Poland once again. The will to reform intensified as Russia increased its repressive measures.
Only a few months later, moreover, the Ottoman Empire declared war on the Russian Tsarist Empire in the fall (see Russo-Turkish War 1768-1774), triggered by internal unrest in Poland. The Ottoman Empire had long disapproved of Russian influence in Poland and used the unrest to show solidarity with the rebels. Russia now found itself in a two-front war.
The war was a co-trigger of the First Polish Partition, 1772, due to the threat of internationalization of the conflict: the Ottomans had formed an alliance with the Polish rebels, with whom France and Austria also sympathized. Russia, on the other hand, drew support from the Kingdom of Great Britain, which offered advisors to the Imperial Russian Navy. However, when Austria considered officially entering the war alongside the Ottomans, the intertwined alliance systems threatened to internationalize the conflict, with the participation of the five major European powers.
Prussia, which since the conclusion of a defensive alliance with Russia in 1764 had been obliged to provide military assistance to the tsardom in the event of an attack, for example by Austria, tried to defuse the explosive situation. This was to be achieved by encouraging the adversaries Russia and Austria to annex Polish territories, the first Polish partition, and to participate in it themselves.
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Prussian-Russian agreements
The Prussian calculation, according to which the Hohenzollerns acted as Russia”s helpers in order to gain a free hand in the annexation of Polish Prussia, seemed to work. Under the pretext of containing the spread of the plague, King Frederick had a border cordon drawn across western Poland. When his brother Henry in 1770
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Execution despite initial concerns
Although Russia and Austria initially rejected annexation of Polish territory in principle, the idea of partition became increasingly central to their considerations. The decisive leitmotif was the will to maintain a balance of power while preserving the “anarchy of the nobility,” which manifested itself in and around the Liberum Veto in the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic.
After Russia had gone on the offensive in the conflict with the Ottoman Empire in 1772 and Russian expansion in southeastern Europe had become foreseeable, both the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs felt threatened by a possible growth of the tsarist empire. Their rejection of such a unilateral territorial gain and the associated Russian increase in power gave rise to plans for all-round territorial compensation. Frederick II now saw the opportunity to realize his agrandissement plans and intensified his diplomatic efforts. He referred to a proposal already sounded out in 1769, the so-called “Lynar project,” and saw in it an ideal way out to avoid a shift in the balance of power: Russia was to renounce its occupation of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which was primarily in Austria”s interest. Since Russia would not agree to this without a corresponding quid pro quo, the tsardom was to be offered a territorial equivalent in the east of the Kingdom of Poland as a compromise. At the same time, Prussia was to receive the territories it sought on the Baltic Sea. In order that Austria would also agree to such a plan, the Galician parts of Poland were finally to be added to the Habsburg Monarchy.
Thus, while Frederician policy continued to aim at the consolidation of West Prussian territory, Austria was offered the chance of a small compensation for the loss of Silesia in 1740 (cf. Silesian Wars). But Maria Theresa had, according to her own statement, “moral misgivings” and resisted the idea of making her compensation claims effective at the expense of an “innocent third party,” and a Catholic state at that. It was the Habsburg monarchy, however, that had already set the precedent for such a partition in the fall of 1770 with the “reincorporation” of 13 towns or market towns and 275 villages in the Spiš County. These villages had been ceded by the Kingdom of Hungary to Poland in 1412 by way of a pledge and were later not redeemed. According to the historian Georg Holmsten, this military action had initiated the actual partition action. While the head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine was still consulting with her son Joseph II, who sympathized with partition, and the state chancellor Wenzel Anton Kaunitz, Prussia and Russia concluded a separate partition agreement as early as February 17, 1772, thus putting pressure on Austria. In the end, the monarch”s concern about a shift or even a loss of power and influence outweighed the risk of antagonism with the two powers. The Polish territory was not to be divided among them alone, which is why Austria joined the partition treaty. Although the Habsburg monarchy hesitated in this case, there had already been attempts by the state chancellor von Kaunitz at the end of the 1760s to conclude a barter deal with Prussia in which Austria would get Silesia back and in return support Prussia in its consolidation plans in Polish Prussia. Austria was thus not only a silent beneficiary, for both Prussia and Austria were actively involved in the partition. The Russian plans came in handy for them in view of the plans that had been circulating years earlier and provided a welcome occasion to implement their own interests.
Finally, on August 5, 1772, the Partition Treaty was signed between Prussia, Russia and Austria. The “Petersburg Treaty” was declared as a “measure” for the “pacification” of Poland and meant for Poland a loss of more than a third of its population as well as more than a quarter of its previous national territory, including the economically so important access to the Baltic Sea with the mouth of the Vistula. Prussia got what it had been striving for for so long: except for the cities of Danzig and Thorn, the entire territory of the Prussian Royal Share as well as the so-called Netzedistrict became part of the Hohenzollern Monarchy. It thus received the smallest share in terms of size and population. Strategically, however, it acquired the most important territory and thus profited considerably from the First Partition of Poland.
In the future, the king was allowed to call himself “King of Prussia” and not only “King in Prussia”. Russia renounced the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, but was granted the territory of Polish Livonia and the Belarusian territories up to the River Düna. Austria secured the Galician territory with the city of Lviv as its center with parts of Lesser Poland.
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Stabilization of the European power structure
For the Kingdom of Poland, the largest territorial state in Europe after Russia, the fragmentation of its territory meant a caesura. Poland became the plaything of its neighbors. The alliance of the three black eagles regarded the kingdom as a bargaining chip. Frederick II described the partition of Poland in 1779 as an outstanding success of novel crisis management.
The balance of interests between the great powers lasted for almost 20 years, until the French Revolution. It was not until the outbreak of the Coalition Wars that major military conflicts between the great powers were to occur again in Europe. France”s intervention against Great Britain during the American War of Independence and the almost bloodless “Potato War” (1778
Despite the territorial gains of the First Partition, Prussian officials were not completely satisfied with the outcome. Although the negotiators tried hard, they did not succeed in annexing the cities of Danzig and Thorn to Prussian territory, as had already been promised by the Polish side in the Polish-Prussian Alliance, which is why the Hohenzollern Monarchy sought further rounding off. Even Maria Theresa, who had initially shied away from the step of partition, suddenly expressed further interest. She was of the opinion that the territories acquired through partition were insufficient in view of the loss of Silesia and the comparatively higher strategic importance of the territories acquired from Prussia.
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Domestic political disputes
The domestic political situation in Poland initially continued to be characterized by rivalry between the king and his supporters on the one hand and the magnate opposition on the other. Russia strove to maintain this rivalry while at the same time securing its role as a protectorate power. Poland”s weakness was to continue. The goal was therefore to keep the opposing noble parties in a stalemate and maintain the balance of power, with the side loyal to the king, i.e., primarily the Czartoryskis, having a slight preponderance. The Imperial Days of 1773 and 1776 were to institutionalize this and enact reforms to strengthen the king. However, the magnates” opposition rejected strengthening the executive power and extending the king”s prerogatives anyway, and thus their opposition to the reforms intensified in view of the fact that the resolutions were the result of Poniatowski”s collaboration with Russia. The supreme goal of the magnates was now to reverse the Imperial Diet resolutions of 1773 and 1776. However, this would only have been possible by forming a Confederation Reichstag, at which decisions could be taken by a simple majority without being brought down by a liberum veto. Such an Imperial Diet, however, met with considerable resistance from the protector Russia. Consequently, it was impossible to amend the constitution. Neither could the magnate opposition obtain a revision of the resolutions of 1773 and 1776, nor was it possible for Poniatowski to push through more far-reaching reforms, especially since Russia supported the last reforms to strengthen the king but rejected any action that meant moving away from the status quo. Although encouraged by Catherine II, the Polish king continued to pursue measures to reform and consolidate the Polish state and, for his part, also sought the formation of a confederation kingdom to this end. In 1788, Poniatowski had an opportunity to do so when Russian troops were engaged in a two-front war against Sweden and Turkey (cf. Russo-Austrian Turkish War 1787-1792 and Russo-Swedish War 1788-1790), so Russian military means could be directed less against Poland.
The strong spirit of reform that was to characterize this long-awaited Imperial Diet revealed the beginnings of a new capacity for action on the part of the noble republic, which could not have been in the Russian tsarina”s mind. Klaus Zernack described this situation as the “shock effect of the first partition,” which “quickly turned into a mood of departure of its own kind.” The changes in the administration and political system of the aristocratic republic envisaged by Stanisław August Poniatowski were intended to lift the political paralysis of the elective monarchy, to transform the country in social, societal and economic terms, and to lead to a modern state and national administration. Russia and Prussia, however, viewed this development with suspicion. Poniatowski, who was initially supported by the tsarina, suddenly proved to be too reformist, especially for Russian tastes, so that Catherine II endeavored to put an end to the intended modernization. For her part, she therefore reversed the signs and now openly supported the anti-reformist magnate opposition.
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Constitution of May 3, 1791
Prussia, however, acted contradictorily in view of its negative attitude toward the reforms. After pro-Prussian sympathies in Poland quickly came to an end after the First Partition, relations between the two states improved. The rapprochements even resulted in a Prussian-Polish alliance on March 29, 1790. After some friendly declarations and positive signals, the Poles felt secure and independent towards Prussia and even saw Frederick William II as their protector. The alliance was therefore also intended, Poland hoped, to secure reforms, especially in foreign policy. Prussia”s role in the First Partition seemed forgotten. However, Prussia”s policy was not as altruistic as it had hoped, because it was also true for Prussia that the “anarchy of the nobility” and the power vacuum were quite intentional, which is why it was in the interest of both Prussia and Russia to counteract the aforementioned reform efforts. However, the efforts were unsuccessful. Among the most important innovations were the abolition of the nobility”s privilege of tax exemption and the establishment of a standing crown army of 100,000 men, as well as the realignment of citizenship law.
Under the ever-increasing pressure from neighboring states, combined with fears of intervention, the king felt compelled to implement his further reform plans as quickly as possible. At a session of the Diet on May 3, 1791, Poniatowski therefore presented the deputies with a draft for a new Polish constitution, which the Diet approved after only seven hours of deliberation. Thus, at the end of the Four-Year Sejm, Europe”s first modern constitution was in place.
The constitution, known as the “Statute of Government,” consisted of only eleven articles, but they brought about far-reaching changes. Influenced by the works of Rousseau and Montesquieu, the principles of popular sovereignty and separation of powers were enshrined. The constitution provided for the introduction of the majority principle as opposed to the liberum veto, ministerial responsibility and a strengthening of the state executive, especially the king. Furthermore, state protection clauses for the peasantry were adopted, which were intended to protect the mass of serf peasants from arbitrariness and extortion. The townspeople were also guaranteed civil rights. Catholicism was declared the predominant religion, but the free practice of other denominations was legitimized.
To ensure the noble republic”s ability to act even after the death of a king and to prevent an interregnum, the deputies further decided to abolish the elective monarchy and introduce a hereditary dynasty – with the Wettins as the new ruling dynasty. Poland thus became a parliamentary-constitutional monarchy. However, the will to compromise prevented even more far-reaching reforms: The planned abolition of serfdom and the introduction of basic personal rights, including for the peasantry, failed due to the resistance of the conservatives.
Influenced by the works of the great state theorists, shaped by the climate of the Enlightenment and its discourses, and impressed by the events of the French Revolution and the ideas of the Jacobins, Poland was to become one of the most modern states at the end of the 18th century. Although after the adoption of the Constitution the deputies made efforts to implement the new constitutional principles, what was achieved did not last long.
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Reactions of the neighboring states
The constitutional affront soon prompted neighboring states to act. “Catherine II of Russia was furious at the adoption of the Constitution and raged that this document was a machination worse than the French National Assembly could devise and, moreover, likely to wrest Poland from the Russian apron.” Russia now supported those forces in Poland that opposed the May Constitution and had also already fought against the Imperial Diet resolutions of 1773 and 1776. With the support of the tsarina, the Targovica Confederation now took vehement action against the king and his supporters. When the Russo-Ottoman conflict finally came to an end in January 1792, military forces were thus once again released, enabling Catherine II to intervene (cf. Russo-Polish War 1792). A year after the end of the Four Years” Sejm, Russian troops entered Poland. The Polish army was outnumbered; moreover, Prussia unilaterally left the 1790 Polish-Prussian defensive alliance directed against Russia, and Poniatowski was forced to submit to the tsarina. The Constitution of May 3 was abrogated, while Russia regained its role as a power of order. In view of the events, Catherine II now showed herself open to further partition of Poland:
Prussia also recognized the opportunity to profit from this situation in order to gain possession of the coveted cities of Danzig and Thorn. However, Russia, which alone suppressed the reform efforts in Poland, was little inclined to comply with Prussia”s request. Prussia therefore linked the Polish question with the French question and threatened to withdraw from the European coalition war against revolutionary France if it was not compensated accordingly. Faced with a choice, Catherine II, after much hesitation, decided to maintain the alliance and agreed to a renewed division of Polish territories among Prussia, as “compensation for the cost of the war” contre les rebelles français,” but Austria, at the tsarina”s demand, remained outside this act of division.
In the Partition Treaty of January 23, 1793, Prussia now gained control over Gdansk and Thorn as well as Greater Poland and parts of Mazovia, which were combined into the new province of South Prussia. Russian territory expanded to include all of Belarus as well as vast areas of Lithuania and Ukraine. In order to legalize this act, only a few months later in Grodno, the deputies of the Reichstag were pressured to agree to the partition of their country under the threat of arms and heavy bribes from the partitioning powers.
After the First Partition of Poland, it was in the interest of the neighboring states to stabilize the kingdom and then establish it as a weak and incapable remnant state. However, after the Second Partition of 1793, the situation changed. The question of the continued existence of the remaining Polish state was not raised. Neither Prussia nor Russia sought the continued existence of the kingdom in the new borders. The Second Partition of Poland mobilized the resistant forces of the Kingdom. Not only the nobility and the clergy resisted the occupying powers. The bourgeois intellectual forces as well as the peasant social revolutionary population also joined the resistance. Within a few months, the anti-Russian opposition drew large sections of the population to its side. At the head of this counter-movement was Tadeusz Kościuszko, who had already fought alongside George Washington in the American War of Independence and returned to Kraków in 1794. That same year, the resistance culminated in the Kościuszko Uprising, named after him.
The clashes between the insurgents and the partitioning powers lasted for months. Time and again, the resistance forces were able to score successes. In the end, however, the occupying forces prevailed and on October 10, 1794, Russian troops captured Kościuszko, seriously wounded. In the eyes of the neighboring powers, the insurgents had gambled away another right to exist as a Polish state.
Russia now sought to partition and dissolve the residual state and, to this end, first sought an understanding with Austria. If Prussia had been the driving force so far, it now had to put its claims on the back burner, since both Petersburg and Vienna considered that Prussia had so far benefited most from the two previous partitions.
On January 3, 1795, Catherine II and the Habsburg Emperor Francis II signed the Partition Treaty, which Prussia joined on October 24. According to it, the three states divided the rest of Poland along the rivers Memel, Bug and Pilica. Russia moved further west and occupied all territories east of the Bug and Memel rivers, Lithuania, and all of Courland and Semgallia. The Habsburg sphere of power expanded northward around the important cities of Lublin, Radom, Sandomierz, and especially Kraków. Prussia, on the other hand, received the remaining territories west of Bug and Memel with Warsaw, which subsequently became part of the new province of New East Prussia, as well as New Silesia, located north of Kraków.After Stanisław August abdicated on November 25, 1795, the partitioning powers declared the Kingdom of Poland extinct two years after the third and final partition of Poland.
The Poles did not resign themselves to the lack of statehood. In 1797, in the course of the formation of the Polish Legion within the French army, the battle song “Poland is not yet lost” was created, which accompanied the various uprisings in the following century and finally became the national anthem of the Second Polish Republic, which came into being in the wake of the First World War 1914-1918.
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Territorial statistics
As a result of the partitions, one of the largest states in Europe was wiped off the map. Data on the size and population vary widely, making it difficult to quantify the losses of the Polish state or the gains of the partitioning powers. Based on Roos” data, Russia benefited the most from the partitions in purely quantitative terms: With 62.8 percent of the territory, the tsardom received about three times as much as Prussia with 18.7 percent or Austria with 18.5 percent. Almost every second inhabitant of Poland, about 47.3 percent in total, lived in Russian territories after the partition. Austria had the smallest increase in terms of area, but the newly created Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria was a densely populated region, so 31.5 percent, almost one-third of Poland”s population, became part of the Habsburg Monarchy. Prussia had received a slightly larger area than Austria, but only 21.2 percent of the population inhabited it.
Also read, biographies – John Huston
Ethnic composition of the division areas
In German historical scholarship, the partitions of Poland-Lithuania have so far been a marginal topic. Michael G. Müller”s “Die Teilungen Polens” (The Partitions of Poland), probably the most relevant overview work, was published as early as 1984 and has not been reprinted in the meantime. Yet its historical significance is by no means insignificant. Müller already states: “It is common not only for Polish, but also for French and Anglo-Saxon historians to classify the partitions of Poland among the epoch-making events of early modern Europe, i.e. to give them similar weight to the Thirty Years” War or the French Revolution. Nevertheless, 30 years after Müller”s statement, it is still true that “measured against its objective being affected,” German historiography has “taken an all too small part” in the partitions of Poland. Despite new research efforts (especially at the Universities of Trier and Giessen), the topic still presents itself in part as a desideratum of German research. The latest research results are presented in the anthology Die Teilungen Polen-Litauens (The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania) from 2013. As expected, the topic is much more widely researched in Polish literature.
The source situation, on the other hand, is much better. The most important holdings can be found in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (GStA PK) in Berlin-Dahlem and in the Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD) in Warsaw. An edited collection of sources is the Novum Corpus Constitutionum (NCC), which is available online and contains mainly public announcements.
The partitions of Poland are also well documented on maps. As a result of the extensive territorial changes, there was a great demand for up-to-date maps. In German-speaking countries, for example, the publishing house of Johannes Walch published a map of Poland, which he had to adapt several times to the political circumstances. However, an even approximately complete bibliography of all maps of the Polish partitions is still missing.
In the city of Thorn and its vicinity you can still see the remains of the former Prussian-Russian border. It is a 3-4 m wide earth depression with two high ramparts on both sides.
The Dreikaisereck is the name given to the place near Myslowitz where the borders of Prussia, Austria and Russia collided from 1846 to 1915.
In the village Prehoryłe in the district Hrubieszów, about 100 m from the Ukrainian border, there is a wayside cross, the lower, long arm of which was an old Austrian border post. In the lowest part the word “Teschen” is visible, the name of today”s town Cieszyn, where the border posts were made. The river Bug, which today forms the Polish-Ukrainian border, was the border river between Austria and Russia after the third partition of Poland.
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