Chair of Catherine II, former throne of Polish kings. Stanislav August Pyatovsky. Who started the war
Chapter 2. STANISLAV PONIATOWSKI AND CATHERINE THE GREAT
Now we have come close to the era of the partitions of Poland. The relevance of this topic has not disappeared for two and a half centuries. All this time, Polish and Western European historians are looking for those to blame for the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among the “villains” were Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the monarchs of Prussia, Austria, Russia and others, right up to... Molotov and Ribbentrop. When there are so many to blame, you inevitably think about the victim.
As already mentioned, the degradation of the Polish state began in the 15th century, and in the 17th century. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth could be considered a state with a very big stretch. All those atrocities that were mentioned in the chapter “Cossack Wars 1580–1653” not only did not stop, but also intensified. A strong lord could take away land, crops, and his beloved woman from a weaker neighbor, and without regard to royal power. In modern language, the gentlemen lived not according to laws, but “according to concepts.”
Large magnates knew the French language and literature very well, their wives and daughters dressed in the latest Parisian fashion, but this did not stop “his lordship”, at his whim, from arranging for a guilty or innocent person such an execution that would have made both the inquisitor fathers and Malyuta Skuratov shudder . I note that in Russia during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna not a single death sentence was carried out.
The importance of royal power under Augustus II and Augustus III declined even further. Both father and son found quiet Saxony much dearer than the violent gentlemen. From there both kings “ruled” the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The role of the Sejms in governing the country was also small. Firstly, there was no strong executive power capable of implementing the decisions of the Sejms. Secondly, the principle of unanimity in decision-making - liberum veto - led to the blocking of most proposals and the cessation of the activities of the Sejms. Thus, from 1652 to 1764, 48 out of 55 Sejms were disrupted, and a third of them were defeated by the vote of just one deputy. The financial situation of the kingdom is well characterized by the fact that the minting of Polish coins ceased in 1688.
The unity of the country was greatly undermined by the fanatical Catholic clergy, who demanded ever new restrictions on the rights of Orthodox and Protestants. In a monographic study of the divisions of Poland, P. V. Stegny says that by 1760, among the 14 million population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, there were 600 thousand Orthodox Christians and 200 thousand Protestants. It follows from this that in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Orthodox Christians made up 4.2 percent of the population, and Protestants - 1.4. Alas, Stegny simply did not read the sources carefully. 14 million is the entire population of Poland, including women and children, and 600 thousand Orthodox and 200 thousand Protestants are the number of men (heads of families) who are active believers. And if we add here members of their families, as well as people forced to hide their religious beliefs, then the percentage of Orthodox and Protestants will be at least forty. In early childhood, I heard a joke from my grandfather: “A Muscovite asks a Ukrainian: “Do you believe in God?” - “We believe in God at home, but not at work!” So in Poland, millions of people did not believe in the infallibility of the Pope.
Pansky oppression and religious persecution continued to lead to uprisings in Ukraine.
At the beginning of the 17th century. The military power of Poland in comparison with Russia and the German states has sharply weakened. The effectiveness of rifle and artillery fire increased significantly, radically changing battle tactics. Infantry, equipped with rifles with bayonets, and field artillery began to play a decisive role in the battle. The Polish cavalry, despite the excellent individual training of each cavalryman, courage and daring, turned out to be unable to resist the regular troops of Prussia and Russia.
The political and military weakness of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth led to the fact that its territory in the 18th century. became literally a “passage yard” for the armies of neighboring states. I'm not even saying that during the twenty years of the Northern War, the armies of Russia and Sweden operated on Polish territory. During the Russian-Turkish War of 1735–1739. Russian, Turkish and Tatar troops fought in the southern regions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) Russian and Prussian troops operated in northern Poland. Between the wars, the Crimean Tatars regularly passed through southern Poland and often launched raids into Russian territory from there.
Needless to say, not only in the 18th, but also in the 21st century. no state will want to tolerate such a neighbor and will try to somehow change the situation.
In addition to the above, Russia has accumulated many minor claims against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. So, for example, in 1753, based on the results of a reconnaissance of the area carried out by engineer-colonel de Bosquet, it turned out that, contrary to the “eternal peace” of 1686, 988 square miles of Russian lands illegally remained in Polish possession, including territories assigned to the Starodub, Chernigov and Kyiv Ukrainian regiments. Due to continuous internecine disputes, the Russian-Polish border was strengthened only from the “Smolensk province to Kyiv”; along the rest of the length it remained practically open. Taking advantage of this, the Poles voluntarily settled ten cities of Right Bank Ukraine, which were recognized under the treaty of 1686 as controversial and therefore not subject to settlement.
By the way, the Polish Sejm until 1764 refused to ratify the “eternal peace” of 1686. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the last of the European countries that did not recognize the imperial title for Russia.
A serious problem that darkened relations between both states was the flight of hundreds of thousands of Russian people from Russia to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Thus, in the areas west of Smolensk alone there were about 120 thousand (only men were counted) fugitive Russian peasants. Thousands of deserters from the Russian army also fled to Poland.
Some readers may try to catch the author in a contradiction: he just wrote about the master's oppression, and now he is writing about the mass exodus of peasants to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In fact, there is no contradiction here. Firstly, I never said that Russian landowners are angels (remember the same Saltychikha), and secondly, Polish magnates had a differentiated attitude towards their old flops and fugitive Muscovites. Did it make sense for the rich gentleman to send fugitive Russian dragoons to plow? It is much more profitable to enlist them in your private army. There were also cases when lords married their daughters to fugitive Muscovites and gave them “fake” letters of nobility. Thousands of robbers settled in the lands bordering Russia, carrying out raids across the cordon, and then sharing the loot with the lords. “Of those fugitive people, the thieves to whom the Poles give harbor at home, gathering in parties, come from abroad to Russia and commit robberies, burglaries and capital murders, and then go back abroad and make their way there with their plundered belongings.”
Assessing the overall policy of Moscow rulers in the West, two main trends can be identified. Starting from Ivan III and up to Boris Godunov, the dominant trend was the unification under the rule of Moscow of all Russian lands that were part of the Kyiv state. Troubles 1603–1618 interrupted this process. Tsar Michael decided only to return the lands taken by the Poles during the Time of Troubles, and then he suffered a shameful defeat near Smolensk. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich forced himself for a very long time to ask to intervene in Little Russian affairs.
But Peter I forgot about the Russian lands in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the Northern War, Poland was in such a deplorable state that to return Right-Bank Ukraine would not have required a single Russian soldier; the Cossacks of Left-Bank Ukraine would have accomplished the job in a few weeks.
Peter was overcome by the dream of “standing with a firm foot”... in Germany. For this reason, he patronized the German barons in Estland, and for this purpose he organized a series of dynastic marriages with the rulers of the German states. I note that all subsequent kings, except Alexander III, married German women.
Anna Ioannovna and Elizaveta Petrovna were also much more interested in German affairs than in the affairs of Little and White Rus'. It was not for nothing that in the winter of 1758 Elizabeth ordered the population of East Prussia to be brought under Russian citizenship.
And only Catherine II (1729–1796; d. pr. 1762–1796) realized the futility of Russian intervention in German affairs and turned her gaze to Poland. Catherine renounced hereditary rights in Holstein for her son Paul. The wise queen, being an ethnic German, gradually began to cleanse the state apparatus from the dominance of the Germans, replacing them with Russians, in extreme cases, the British, the French and representatives of other nations. None of Catherine's many German relatives received a responsible position in Russia. Among Catherine’s lovers there was not a single German. When talking about inciting national hatred, one should distinguish between hostility towards all representatives of a particular nation indiscriminately and hostility towards the national mafia, which has seized the most important posts in the state and infringes on the interests of the indigenous population. Anna Ioannovna was one hundred percent Russian, but she covered up the German mafia, but behind the back of the German Ekaterina, there was no German mafia in St. Petersburg, just as the Corsican Napoleon did not have a Corsican mafia in Paris, and the Georgian Dzhugashvili did not have a Georgian mafia.
It is the duty of great people to correctly assess the national question. Dzhugashvili understood what Georgia was and what Russia was, and at the age of 33 he changed his Georgian pseudonym Koba to the Russian one - Stalin. At the age of 22, Napoline Buona Parte understood the difference between Corsica and France and became Napoleon Bonaparte. At the age of 15, the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst realized the difference between her principality and Russia.
But let's return to the situation in Poland. At the end of the 50s. King Augustus III began to fall ill, and Polish magnates began to think about his successor. Naturally, the king himself dreamed of passing the throne to his son, the Elector of Saxony. The Saxon party was led by Prime Minister Bril and his son-in-law, Grand Marshal Crown Count Mniszech, as well as the powerful Potocki clan of magnates.
The Czartoryski clan opposed them. This numerous clan in Poland began to be called a Surname back in the 20s and 30s. XVIII century According to the Polish version, the Czartoryskis came from the son of Grand Duke Olgerd Lubart, and according to the Russian version, from another son of Olgerd, Prince Konstantin of Chernigov. They got their nickname from the Czartorysk estate on the Styr River in Volyn. The first five generations of the Czartoryskis were Orthodox, but Prince Yuri Ivanovich (according to some sources in 1622, according to friends - in 1638) converted to Catholicism.
The Czartoryskis proposed implementing a number of reforms in Poland, and the main one was to be the transfer of full power to the Familia. They argued that only Piast should be the new king. This statement was pure demagoguery. The legitimate descendants of the royal Piast dynasty died out several centuries ago, and the same members of the Family had nothing to do with the Piasts. However, in St. Petersburg they pretended that they did not understand Polish genealogy and called any tycoon loyal to Russia Piast. By the way, Mother Catherine II also descended from the Piasts on the female line. Her distant ancestor, the German prince Bernhard III, was married to Judita, the daughter of the Krakow prince Metko III the Old, who died in 1202.
Stanisław Poniatowski (1676–1762), a Masovian voivode and Krakow castellan, also joined the Czartoryskis.
Poniatowski, like the vast majority of Polish magnates, had neither moral principles nor political convictions, but acted solely for reasons of his own benefit. For the sake of self-interest, at the beginning of the century he sided with King Leshchinsky and even took part in the Battle of Poltava - naturally, on the side of the Swedes. Poniatowski then fled with the Swedish king to Turkey, where they both incited the Sultan to war with Russia. Convinced that Leszczynski’s case was lost, Poniatowski went to make peace with King Augustus P.
Poniatowski’s subsequent successful career was facilitated by his marriage to the daughter of Kazimir Czartoryski, the Lithuanian sub-chancellor and Vilnius castellan. Immediately after the death of King Augustus II, Stas tried to climb into the kingship. On this occasion, the Russian ambassador in Warsaw Levenvolde wrote to St. Petersburg: “...the election of Stanislav Poniatowski as king is more dangerous for Russia than the election of Leszczynski.”
Soon Poniatowski realized that he would not be king, but he could not resist active political play, and in addition, he “bet on the wrong horse.” As a result, Poniatowski ended up in Danzig, besieged by the Russians, along with his old friend Leszczynski.
After the confirmation of Augustus III on the throne, Stanislav Poniatowski joined the “Russian party” led by the Family. In 1732, Stanisław Poniatowski had a son, also named Stanisław. Stanislav the Younger, being half Poniatowski and half Czartoryski, quickly made his career and, while still a teenager, received the rank of Lithuanian steward.
Stanislav the Younger spent most of his time not in Poland, but in the capital of Saxony, Dresden, at the court of King Augustus III. There he attracted the attention of Sir Genbury Williams, the English ambassador to the Saxon court. In 1755, Williams was appointed English ambassador to St. Petersburg, and he took twenty-three-year-old Stanislav with him.
This is how the Polish historian Kazimir Waliszewski characterizes the new star who appeared on the St. Petersburg horizon: “He had a pleasant face... he was gentilhomme in the full sense of the word, as he was understood at that time: his education was versatile, his habits were refined, his upbringing was cosmopolitan, with a subtle touch of philosophy... He personified that mental culture and secular gloss to which she [Catherine II] at one time became addicted, thanks to reading Voltaire and Madame de Sevigne. He traveled and belonged to high society in Paris, whose splendor and charm impressed all of Europe, as well as royal prestige, which no one had yet encroached on at that time. He seemed to have brought with him a direct stream of this atmosphere and possessed both its qualities and its shortcomings. He knew how to conduct a sparkling conversation about the most abstract matters and skillfully approach the most sensitive topics. He was a master at writing little notes and knew how to deftly twist a madrigal into a banal conversation. He had the art of being moved at the right time. He was sensitive. He flaunted the romantic direction of thoughts, on occasion giving it a heroic and bold coloring and hiding under flowers a dry and cold nature, imperturbable egoism, even an inexhaustible supply of cynicism.”
Knowing the character of Elizabeth Petrovna, William Genbury did not miss a single ball or masquerade, but all his attempts to gain any influence on the empress were in vain. As Walishevsky wrote, “...his search for Elizabeth was apparently very pleasant for her, but politically it turned out to be completely fruitless. When he tried to stand on firm ground for negotiations, the empress evaded. He searched in vain for the empress, but found only a charming minuet dancer, and sometimes a bacchante. After a few months, he came to the conclusion that it was impossible to talk to Elizabeth seriously, and began to look around. Disillusioned with the present, he thought about the future. The future is a young yard.
But again, he came across the figure of the future emperor and, possessing the clear gaze of people of his race, decided from the first time that he would only waste time here too. His eyes finally settled on Catherine... William noticed significant steps towards the Grand Duchess, underground passages leading to her. He quickly made up his mind. Aware of court rumors about love adventures in which the handsome Saltykov and the handsome Chernyshev, himself quite enterprising, appeared, Williams tried to follow these romantic tracks.
Catherine received him very kindly, talked to him about everything, even about serious subjects that Elizabeth refused to discuss, but she looked the other way.” And then William remembered Poniatowski.
The wife of the heir to the throne, Catherine, was almost three years older than Poniatovsky and had already given birth to a son, Pavel (according to the most common version, from Sergei Saltykov). And she was the first to take the initiative in her relationship with Stas. Moreover, the Grand Duchess managed, as they say, to eat a fish and sit on... Poniatowski’s lap. But the “fish” was supplied by Sir Genbury to William. The total cost of all the “fish” is unknown. Only two receipts signed by the Grand Duchess have survived, for a total amount of 50 thousand rubles, marked July 21 and November 11, 1756. And the loan on July 21 was obviously not the first, since, asking for it, Catherine wrote to Williams’ banker: “It’s hard for me.” contact you again."
Later, Poniatowski would write about the object of his love: “... she had recently just recovered from her first birth and was in that phase of beauty, which is its highest point for women in general endowed with it. Brunette, she was dazzlingly white; her eyebrows were black and very long; a Greek nose, a mouth that seemed to invite kisses, amazingly beautiful arms and legs, a thin waist, rather tall stature, an extremely light and at the same time noble gait, a pleasant timbre of voice and a laugh as cheerful as the character that allowed her to “with equal ease she could move from the most playful games to a table of numbers that did not frighten her either by their content or the physical labor they required.”
It must be assumed that during the intervals between “naughty games” Stas and Kato did not move on to playing “tic-tac-toe” or “sea battle”. The table of numbers is digital codes, and the crown princess, as we see, collected the information herself and encrypted it herself.
Complex political intrigues forced Williams to leave St. Petersburg in October 1757, but Poniatowski remained - both in St. Petersburg and in the bed of the princess. Soon the lover lost all sense of proportion and in July 1758 he visited Catherine at night in the Oranienbaum Palace, despite the fact that her husband was in the neighboring chambers. We are, of course, not talking about the palace of Peter III, which was still under construction at that time, but about the old Grand Palace, built by A.D. Menshikov. Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich at that time was completely absorbed in his passion for Elizaveta Vorontsova and did not pay attention to Catherine, however, concerned about his own safety, he ordered a horse guard to be placed around the palace.
Early in the morning, Poniatowski, upon leaving the palace, was captured by a mounted picket and taken to the heir to the throne. Poniatowski was in disguise and refused to identify himself. Pyotr Fedorovich thought that an assassination attempt was being prepared on him, and decided to interrogate the stranger with passion. In the end, Stanislav had to admit everything. If you believe the later “Notes” of Poniatowski, Peter burst out laughing and said: “Aren’t you crazy that you still haven’t trusted me!” He, laughing, explained that he didn’t even think of being jealous, and the precautions taken around the Oranienbaum Palace, were associated with ensuring the safety of his person. Then Poniatowski remembered that he was a diplomat and began to pour out compliments on His Highness’s military dispositions, the skill of which he experienced firsthand. The Grand Duke's good mood intensified. “And now,” he said, “if we are friends, there is someone else missing here.” “With these words,” says Poniatowski in “Notes,” “he goes to his wife’s room, drags her out of bed, does not give her time to put on stockings and boots, only allows her to put on a bonnet (robe de Batavia), without a skirt, in this he brings her to us and says to her, pointing at me: “Here he is; I hope that now they are happy with me.”
The cheerful company drank until four o'clock in the morning. “The revelry resumed the next day, and for several weeks this marvelous marriage of four was infinitely happy.”
Poniatowski wrote in “Notes”: “I often visited Oranienbaum, I arrived in the evening, climbed the secret staircase that led to the Grand Duchess’s room; the Grand Duke and his mistress were there; we dined together, then the Grand Duke took his mistress away and told us: “Now, my children, you no longer need me.” “I stayed as long as I wanted.”
However, soon talk about these amusements spread throughout the capital. Elizabeth herself loved to play pranks and turned a blind eye to Catherine’s pranks, but this was too much. The French ambassador in St. Petersburg, the Marquis de L'Hopital, began to openly mock Poniatowski. Naturally, the matter ended with Stanislav’s expulsion from Russia.
After the departure of her favorite, Catherine entered into a love correspondence with him, but her bed was not empty - now the main favorite was the twenty-seven-year-old artillery officer Grigory Orlov. In December 1761, Empress Elizabeth died, and Peter III (1728–1762) ascended the throne. However, the new emperor failed to cope with his duties, and on June 28, 1762, the guard staged a coup in St. Petersburg in favor of Catherine. The Orlov brothers played a significant role in the coup, who then acquired great power at court. The deposed emperor was taken under arrest to the town of Ropsha near St. Petersburg, where he soon died from “hemorrhoidal colic.”
Having received news of the coup in St. Petersburg, Poniatowski got ready to visit his beloved, but already on July 2, 1762, Catherine II wrote to him: “I urge you not to rush to come here, because your stay under the present circumstances would be dangerous for you and very harmful for you.” me".
Exactly a month later, Catherine sent a second letter: “I am immediately sending Count Keyserling as an ambassador to Poland to make you king after the death of the present [king] and in case he does not succeed in this in relation to you, I wish that [king] there was Prince Adam. All minds are still in ferment. I ask you to refrain from traveling here for fear of strengthening it.”
Finally, on April 27, 1763, the Empress wrote a very frank letter to Poniatowski: “So, since you need to speak quite frankly and since you have decided not to understand what I have been repeating to you for six months now, that if you come here, you risk that They'll kill us both."
Catherine's power is indeed very fragile. She is afraid of the jealousy of the Orlovs, and even more - of the negative reaction of the Russian nobility, who do not want to see a Pole, and indeed a foreigner in general, either as a temporary worker like Biron, or even more so as a Russian Tsar.
Meanwhile, the Familia in Poland went on the offensive, without even waiting for the death of King Augustus III. A broad campaign was launched against the abuses of the “Saxon” ministers and officials. The court party responded by threatening Czartoryski with arrest. Having learned about this, Catherine sent an order to her ambassador at the Polish court, Keyserling, on April 1, 1763: “Disclose that if they dare to capture and take any of Russia’s friends to Königsstein, then I will populate Siberia with my enemies and release the Zaporozhye Cossacks who want send a deputation to me with a request to allow them to take revenge for the insults that the King of Poland inflicts on them.”
At the same time, Catherine demanded that Keyserling restrain the impulses of the Czartoryski party. So, on July 4, she wrote: “I see that our friends are very excited and ready for a confederation; but I do not see what the confederation will lead to during the lifetime of the King of Poland? I’m telling you the absolute truth: my chests are empty and will remain empty until I put my finances in order, which cannot be done in a minute; my army cannot march this year; and therefore I recommend that you restrain our friends, and most importantly, that they do not arm themselves without asking me; I don’t want to be carried away further than the benefits of my affairs require.”
The French government during the time of Louis XV looked at Poland almost as its own province and considered it its duty to constantly interfere in its affairs. However, now French diplomats were confused and did not know what to do. Things got to the point that the “secret” envoy of Louis XV, Ennen, secretly met several times in Warsaw with Stanislaw Poniatowski. Ennen offered Stanisław a deal: if the Czartoryski candidate gains an advantage at the convocation (election) Sejm, the “French party” will support him; if the French candidate gains an advantage, the Czartoryskis will do the same.
On February 1, 1763, St. Petersburg received information about the deteriorating health of Augustus III. Two days later, at the direction of the queen, a council was convened with the participation of Chancellor M.I. Vorontsov, Vice-Chancellor A.M. Golitsyn, N.I. Panin, A.P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin and M.N. Volkonsky. The elderly Count Bestuzhev-Ryumin tried to campaign for the son of August III Charles, but the majority of the council members, and most importantly, Catherine herself, were in favor of electing Piast as king. The Council decided to concentrate thirty thousand soldiers on the border with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and keep another fifty thousand on standby.
On October 5, 1763, King Augustus III died. “Don’t laugh at me that I jumped out of my chair when I received the news of the death of the King of Poland; The King of Prussia jumped up from the table when he heard it,” wrote Catherine Panin.
Hetman Branitsky brought the crown (Polish) army into combat readiness, which was joined by Saxon troops. In response, the Czartoryskis turned directly to the empress with a request to send two thousand cavalry and two infantry regiments to their aid.
By that time, in Poland there were only small detachments of Russians (one and a half to two thousand people) guarding the stores (warehouses) left after the Seven Years' War. It was decided to gather these forces and move to the residence of the crown hetman in Bialystok. The Russian ambassador to Poland, Prince N.V. Repnin, wrote to Count N.I. Panin: “It is true that this army is not enough, but it is enough for Poland; I am sure that five or six thousand Poles not only cannot overcome Khomutov’s detachment, but they will not even dare to think about it.”
At the beginning of April 1763, new units were introduced into Poland. The first column, under the command of Prince M.N. Volkonsky, moved through Minsk, and the second, under the command of Prince M.I. Dashkov (husband of the famous Ekaterina Dashkova), went through Grodno.
On April 10 (21), 26 Polish magnates signed a letter to Catherine II, which said: “We, who are second to none of our fellow citizens in ardent patriotism, learned with sorrow that there are people who want to be distinguished by their displeasure regarding the entry of your Imperial Majesty’s troops into our country and even considered it decent to complain about this to Your Majesty. We see with sorrow that the laws of our fatherland are insufficient to keep these supposed patriots within proper limits. With danger for us, we experienced oppression of our freedom on their part, precisely at the last sejmiks, where military force constrained the casting of votes in many places. We were threatened with the same abuse of force in future Sejms, convocation and election, at which we would not have had troops to oppose them to the state army, instead of protecting the oppressive state, when we learned about the entry of the Russian army sent by your Majesty to defend our decrees and our freedom. The purpose of this army’s entry into our borders and its behavior arouse the liveliest gratitude in every well-meaning Pole, and we considered it our duty to express this gratitude to your imperial majesty.”
Among the signatures were the names of the Kuyavian Bishop Ostrowski, the Płock Bishop Sheptycki, Zamoyski, the five Czartoryskis (August, Michael, Stanisław, Adam and Joseph), Stanisław Poniatowski, Potocki, Lobomirski, Sulkowski, Sologub, Wielopolski.
Comments on this call, I think, are completely unnecessary.
At the end of April 1763, senators, deputies and lords began to gather in Warsaw for the convocation Sejm. So, Prince Karl Radziwill, the Vilna voivode, came with a private army of three thousand. The Czartoryskis also brought a private army, and Russian troops were stationed not far from it (in Uyazov and Solets).
The Sejm opened on April 26 (May 7), 1763. Warsaw on that day was a city occupied by two hostile troops ready for battle. The Czartoryski party came to the Sejm, but their opponents were not there: they conferred with the hetman from early morning and finally signed a protest against the violation of popular law by the appearance of Russian troops. They wanted to disrupt the Sejm, but they failed, they demanded that a confederation be formed right there in Warsaw, but Branicki chickened out. He declared that he did not feel safe in Warsaw, and set out from the city to form a confederation in a more convenient place, but time was wasted in vain, and meanwhile the hetman was followed by the Russian detachment of Dashkov, who had crossed from Lithuania to Poland. 30 versts from Warsaw a skirmish occurred between Dashkov’s detachment and the hetman’s rearguard.
On March 31 (April 11), 1764, a Russian-Prussian defensive treaty and a secret convention regarding Poland were signed in St. Petersburg. In accordance with the third article of the treaty, Prussia was obliged to pay Russia annual subsidies of 400 thousand rubles in the event of a war with Turkey or Crimea. Catherine and Frederick agreed to elect Stanislaw Poniatowski as king, which was recorded in the convention, and also to preserve the current “constitution and fundamental laws” of Poland “until the use of weapons.” They jointly advocated for the return to dissidents of “the privileges, liberties and advantages that they previously owned and enjoyed in both religious and civil affairs.”
The plans of Catherine and Frederick were also facilitated by the death of the son of King Augustus III, Charles Augustus, on December 6, 1763. The youngest son of the late king, Frederick Augustus, was only 13 years old, and his election as king was unlikely. The main opponent of Stanislav Poniatovsky could only be Hetman Branitsky.
In June 1764, the convocation diet ended. It created a Polish general confederation, which united with the Lithuanian one. Prince Czartoryski, a Russian governor, was elected marshal of the crown confederation. The Sejm decided not to allow foreign candidates in the royal elections; only a Polish nobleman on his father’s and mother’s side, professing the Roman Catholic faith, could be elected.
To achieve their goal, the Czartoryskis used Russian money and Russian troops, and in gratitude for this, the Sejm recognized the imperial title of the Russian empress. The act of confederation included public gratitude to the Russian Empress, and with the expression of this gratitude, the clerk Crown Count Rzhevusky was supposed to go to St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers had to finally clear Poland of the enemies of the Family.
Radziwill, who left Warsaw together with Branicki, separated from him along the road and headed to his place in Lithuania, but near Slonim he encountered a Russian detachment and was defeated. Together with his cavalry (1200 sabers), Radziwill crossed the Dnieper at Mogilev and went to Moldova. But the infantry and artillery from his private army were surrounded by Prince Dashkov near the village of Gavrilovka and capitulated.
From Moldova, Radziwill moved to Hungary, and from there to Dresden. Branicki, pursued by the Russians, also could no longer remain in Poland and went to Hungary.
Meanwhile, the Russian ambassador to Poland Repnin suspected Prince August Czartoryski of wanting to become king himself, so Repnin asked the Empress for permission to openly support the candidacy of Stanislav Poniatowski. Catherine weakly resisted and wrote on Repnin’s report: “It seems to me that it is not appropriate for us to name a candidate so that we can fully say that the republic acted freely.”
Now it is difficult to say whether Prince Repnin received the sanction of the Empress or acted on his own initiative, but on July 27, Keyserling and Repnin went to the primate of Poland, where they had already found the Prussian ambassador, the princes Czartoryski and other lords. Keyserling told the primate in front of everyone that the empress wanted to see Count Poniatowski on the Polish throne, whom he, the ambassador, in the name of Her Majesty, would recommend to the whole nation at the electoral diet. The Prussian ambassador said the same on behalf of his sovereign; the Czartoryski princes also recommended their nephew and thanked both courts for their favor to their family.
From August 5 (16) to August 15 (26), 1764, the electoral (electoral) Sejm passed quietly. Count Poniatowski was unanimously elected king under the name of Stanisław August IV. The lords were extremely surprised by this and said that such a calm election had never happened. In St. Petersburg they were also very happy; Catherine wrote to Panin: “I congratulate you on the king we have made.”
In September, Repnin began paying royalties. He gave the king 1,200 chervonets, but then Catherine intervened and sent another 100 thousand chervonets. August-Alexander Czartoryski received 3 thousand chervonets from Repnin. The Primate of Poland was promised 80 thousand, but so far only 17 thousand have been given. Smaller persons were given accordingly. Thus, the nobleman Oginsky received only 300 chervonets for the maintenance of his private army.
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On that gloomy and late St. Petersburg morning of November 6, 1796 (old style), the Russian Empress Catherine the Great woke up with a severe migraine. She was sixty-seven years old, she was the ruler of the largest European power, which by that time had reached the zenith of its power and influence on pan-European affairs. Catherine did a lot for the rise of the Russian Empire, being one of the brightest and most gifted women in world history on the royal throne, with whom many of the smartest and most educated people of that time considered it an honor to correspond. But she was a woman of supreme power, and rumors about her novels and hobbies still excite idle minds. To the moment we describe at the empress a new favorite has appeared- the twenty-year-old handsome Guards officer Zubov, and heir to the throne - Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (the future Paul I) practically stopped talking to his mother. But who will understand a woman's heart? And at sixty-seven, Catherine wanted to be loved.
Meanwhile, while performing her morning toilet, the Empress proceeded to the sovereign's personal water closet - a technical novelty of that time, which appeared in Russia only with the construction of the Winter Palace (another achievement of Catherine the Great). Until then, even the sovereign's outhouses were not fundamentally different from the latrines of ordinary peasant houses, except perhaps in the construction materials and the richness of the interior decoration. However, Catherine the Great’s personal water closet had one more difference from all similar, so to speak, utility technical rooms - both in the Winter Palace and in other royal castles throughout Europe at that time. The fact is that the “toilet” in this very water closet was the ancient throne of the first Polish kings - the legendary Piasts. The Piast throne was removed from Poland on the personal orders of Catherine the Great, after the suppression of the uprising led by Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the Third Partition of Poland, which put an end to the existence of the once powerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Cause of death of Catherine II
Some time later, after the doors of her personal water closet closed behind Catherine, the sound of a falling body reached the ears of the royal servants. This sound came from behind the doors of the Empress's water closet. The servants hesitated for some time, but then they finally decided to enter there. The Empress lay on the floor bleeding, unconscious. Although the sovereign’s physicians were immediately called, the medicine of that time could not help the all-powerful Russian autocrat - after a few hours she died from vaginal bleeding without regaining consciousness. Throughout the aristocratic salons of St. Petersburg, the terrible details of the death of Catherine the Great were whispered. Allegedly, in the water closet of the empress, under the Piast throne, a certain Polish fanatic, who knew how he got there, was hiding there, almost the dwarf who struck Her Majesty from below with a spear or a cleaver, and then, taking advantage of the turmoil, slipped away unnoticed from the royal chambers and from the Winter Palace. Surely, treason - the listeners of these chilling stories of sensitive aristocrats cautiously agreed. Whether this really happened is difficult for us to find out now. But the fact remains that Catherine the Great practically embarked on her mortal path on the ancient Polish royal throne that she had turned into a “toilet.”
The reason for the appearance of a lover is the reason for the absence of marital relations with the husband
And the beginning of this whole story can be considered the meeting in 1757 of the young Polish ambassador to Russia Stanislav Poniatovsky and the young heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna (the future Catherine II). Handsome brilliant Polish the diplomat managed to captivate the Russian princess, and their love relationship lasted almost until the end of the 50s of the 18th century. Historians explain this connection in different ways. The future Catherine the Great (née Sophia Augusta Frederica, Princess of Anhalt-Zerbt) at the age of fifteen (1744) was summoned with her mother to Russia by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, baptized according to the Orthodox rite under the name of Ekaterina Alekseevna and named the bride of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich (future Emperor Peter III), whom she married in 1745. But the personal life of the newly-made Russian princess was unsuccessful in her new homeland. Her husband Peter was childish, and therefore During the first years of their marriage, there was no marital relationship between them. At the beginning of the 1750s, Catherine had an affair with the guards officer S.V. Saltykov. And although in 1754 she gave birth to a son, the future Emperor Paul I, Catherine still did not find happiness in her married life.
Stanisław August Poniatowski (born in 1732) was a scion of two old Polish aristocratic families – Poniatowski and Czartoryski. Already in 1752, he received a seat as a deputy of the Polish Sejm (parliament), where he gained fame for his eloquence and wit. Having set foot on the path of diplomatic service, young Poniatowski went to Paris, where he willingly took part in the fun and luxurious life of the French royal court. In 1757, the Polish king and Saxon Elector Augustus III appointed Stanislaus Augustus as his envoy to Russia. This appointment was arranged by the influential relatives of our hero on the maternal side - the Czartoryskis. Through the young Poniatowski, the Czartoryskis hoped to enlist the support of the Russian court in their intrigue against Augustus III. As is known, in St. Petersburg Poniatowski was not very successful in protecting family interests, but a long-term love relationship with the future Russian empress changed his life forever, and his entire future career passed under their sign.
The emergence of a new lover
In the early 1760s, Catherine became interested in new lover - guards officer Grigory Orlov, and Stanislav August was dismissed. In 1762, Stanislav Poniatowski returned to his homeland, but most importantly, even after the end of the love affair, he retained the benevolent attitude of the future Catherine the Great towards himself. In 1763, the Polish king Augustus III died. By this time, Polish society had formed an opinion about the need to carry out reforms in order to strengthen state power and eliminate the dominance of foreign states in the foreign and domestic policy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's neighbors Austria and Prussia, taking advantage of its weakness, sought to divide the Polish lands. These plans were opposed by Russia, which viewed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a puppet state and advocated its integrity. But Russia was also reserved about reform projects in Poland, suspecting them of an attempt to get out from under its tutelage.
How Catherine helped her former lover become king
In the camp of supporters of reforms in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, by that time two parties had emerged. One of them was headed by the Potocki princes, who took militant anti-Russian positions. The second was headed by the Czartoryski princes, who believed that without Russian support no reforms in Poland were possible. In this situation, elections for a new Polish king took place (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, having a king at its head, was in fact a monarchical republic). The Czartoryskis nominated their relative Stanisław August Poniatowski, who had close connections at the St. Petersburg court. And this proposal found a favorable response in the feminine heart of Catherine II, who wished to have a person close to her on the Polish throne. Catherine was supported by the Prussian king Frederick II the Great, who in turn treated the young Russian empress with great respect. Austria, which had bet on the candidate of the Potocki party, remained in the minority, and the outcome of the elections was a foregone conclusion. To make her position more convincing, the Russian empress brought an army of thirty thousand into Poland., and on September 7, 1764, the Sejm proclaimed Poniatowski king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stanislaw II Augustus.
It so happened that with the help of Catherine II, a natural Pole with the blood of the Piast dynasty flowed in his veins on the Polish throne. In other words, we can say that at that moment the Piasts again regained their ancient throne, since, starting from the middle of the 14th century, they no longer ruled the country, and the Polish throne was occupied mainly by foreigners. During the first years of his reign, Stanislaus Augustus II, as they say, swam in the ocean of people's love and popularity. The new king had a good-natured character, was a witty and pleasant conversationalist, and loved the splendor of social life. His superficial education and, as a consequence, shallow knowledge of the sciences was compensated by concerns about the development of the Polish educational system. Particular delight in Warsaw was caused by evening parties at the court on Thursdays, when all the cream of the Polish artistic, literary and scientific world gathered. The former lover of Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna shone and was already in his usual role - numerous socialites and high-born aristocrats literally lined up for the royal bed, and considered it an honor to be considered the mistresses of Stanislav August II.
Reforms that changed the course of history and forced us to abandon our lover
On this wave of public support, Stanislav August carried out some reforms aimed at centralizing state power and limitation of oligarchic arbitrariness. These steps displeased not only the reactionary part of the magnates and gentry, but also Russia and Prussia. A consistent opponent of these reforms was the Russian envoy in Warsaw, Prince N.V. Repnin, who managed to rally part of the Polish gentry against the king. Relying on the occupying Russian army, already stationed in Poland on a permanent basis, opponents of the reforms blocked their implementation. And just here Catherine showed that for her state interests are more important than personal attachments, refusing to support her former lover. The ladies' darling Stanislav August had to obediently follow the instructions of the real manager of Poland's affairs - Prince Repnin.
Who started the war
But following in the wake of Russian politics caused cooling, and then hatred of the Polish patriots towards their so recently adored king. His most energetic opponents formed the Bar Confederation, which in 1768 began military operations against the Russian and royal troops. Stanislaus Augustus II avoided decisive action against the Confederates, preferring secret negotiations and bribery of the leaders of the Confederacy. The main burden of the war fell on the shoulders of the Russian occupation army, which suppressed the Confederate uprising in 1772.
The rebellion of the Bar Confederation and its defeat served as the reason for the demand of Austria and Prussia to divide the Polish lands, due to the inability of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to maintain proper order on its territory. Busy with the war with Turkey (1768 - 1774), Russia was unable to resist the claims of Austria and Prussia and also decided to take part in the division of an increasingly weakening country. In 1772, a significant part of the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth came under the jurisdiction of neighboring states. Stanisław August obediently accepted the decision of the great powers, not daring to protest or go over to the side of the Polish patriots. From that moment Stanislav Augustus II ceased to play any noticeable role in the political life of his country. He spent his years in the fun and pleasures of social life, without thinking about the future. To accusations of forgetting the interests of Poland, Stanislav August responded with bravado that he personally needed as much land as could fit under his triangular hat.
Who benefited from Russia's war against Turkey?
Meanwhile, the real threat of the liquidation of Polish statehood accelerated the process of maturation of the national identity of the Polish people. Polish educators Stanislaw Staszic and Hugo Kollontai put forward a program of political and social reforms designed to strengthen Polish statehood. All this coincided with the beginning of another war by Russia in alliance with Austria against Turkey (1787 – 1791), which obviously began to drag on. Polish patriots decided to take advantage of this situation and, using the basic ideas of Staszyc and Kollontai, they convened the so-called Four-Year Sejm of 1788 - 1792, which adopted a number of reforms aimed at strengthening the army, changing the state-legal system and adopted the “fundamental law” (Constitution of the third of May 1791).
Stanislav Augustus II decided that Catherine the Great had no time for Poland, and suddenly supported the patriots, swearing allegiance to the new Constitution. But man proposes, but God disposes. In 1790, Suvorov with an army of 8,000 took the impregnable Izmail, which was defended by a Turkish army of 35,000, and in 1791 the war ended with the complete triumph of Russia and its ally Austria. The reactionary Polish magnates immediately raised their heads, alarmed by the infringement of their rights, forming the Targowitz Conference in 1792, at the call of which the troops of Prussia and Russia again occupied the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Stanislav August immediately renounced his oath of allegiance to the Constitution and went over to the side of the “Targovichans”.
Division of territory
In 1793 the second partition of Poland took place between Prussia and Russia, the reforms of the Four Year Diet were canceled. In response, an uprising broke out in 1794 under the leadership of Tadeusz Kosciuszko (hero of the recently ended War of American Independence from the British Crown of 1776 - 1783). The rebels executed some of the leaders of the Targowitz Conference. The king again withdrew from the course of events, rightly fearing for his life, remembering the fate of Louis XVI of Bourbon, executed by French revolutionaries quite recently (the Great French Revolution of 1789 -1794). Meanwhile, the king’s brother, primate of the Catholic Church in Poland, Mikhail-Yuri Poniatovsky, was an opponent of this uprising. He joined secret correspondence with Prussian troops who besieged Warsaw. Cardinal Poniatowski's letters were intercepted by the rebels, he was imprisoned and faced the death penalty by hanging. His brother, the king, did not lift a finger to save his blood relative, and all he could do for him was to bring poison into the cell, which the primate took, and thereby avoided a shameful death on the gallows. Catherine the Great, annoyed by the events in Poland, summoned Suvorov from exile and threw him into battle. The vaunted Kosciuszko was unexpectedly beaten by the “Russian Lion”, who had much fewer troops, in the very heart of the uprising - in a military camp in the Warsaw suburb of Prague.
Catherine called her ex-lover
When the uprising was finally suppressed, the third and final partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth took place, which disappeared from the political map of the world for more than a century. Stanislav Augustus readily obeyed the demands of Catherine the Great - he arrived from Warsaw to Grodno, where on November 25, 1795 he abdicated the throne. However, even here Catherine’s generous heart could not abandon her once loved one. Stanislav Poniatowski was summoned to St. Petersburg, where he led a luxurious lifestyle. Remains a mystery- why did the very cautious and tactful Catherine the Great order the ancient Piast royal throne to be brought from Warsaw and given such an inappropriate purpose to it? Perhaps Catherine wanted to remind herself all the time (we must not forget that at that time the fire of the French Revolution, deadly for monarchs, was raging in Europe) what could happen to the ancient glory of her ancestors if she behaved the way the Polish elite behaved towards to your country? After all, Russia has always treated Poland with respect, calling it Slavic France. Catherine the Great also loved Poland, as evidenced by her long-term tutelage of Stanislav Poniatowski. And, as they say, from love to hate there is only one step.
Stanislav outlived his crowned lover by just over a year. He died in February 1798, leaving huge debts, which he incurred under the cover of the patronage of the imperial family. The tight-fisted Paul I refused to pay the bills of the last Polish king. There are also memoirs left by Stanislaw Poniatowski, in which he posthumously slandered his once beloved benefactress, published in 1914-1924.
Personality Empress Catherine the Great has been surrounded by myths for centuries. One of them says: a fatal cerebral hemorrhage overtook the queen in the toilet room at the moment when she was sitting on a toilet seat, which had previously been the ancient throne of the Polish Piast dynasty. Catherine allegedly ordered the throne to be converted into a toilet seat after the third partition of Poland, when this country ceased to exist as an independent state.
The attack actually overtook the empress in the toilet room, but experts are skeptical about the story with the throne-toilet: Catherine was not prone to such tricks, even when she was in a state of extreme irritation.
Polish affairs irritated the empress very much, since she saw in them the black ingratitude of the person to whom she gave the most expensive gift in her life.
Catherine was never stingy with her lovers. Regardless of their intelligence and talent, they were all generously gifted. But neither Grigory Orlov, nor his namesake Potemkin didn't get what I got Stanislav August Poniatowski: royal crown.
Sir Williams' secretary
Stanislav was three years younger than Catherine. He was born in 1732 in Volchin, on the territory of modern Belarus, into a family Castellan of Krakow Stanislaw Poniatowski And Constance Poniatowska, née Princess Czartoryska.
Stanisław, belonging to one of the most influential families in Poland, received a good education and traveled extensively throughout Western Europe, spending a long time in England. At home, he was noticed during his speeches in the Seimas, where he established himself as an excellent speaker.
In 1755 Poniatowski went to Russia as a personal secretary English envoy Charles Hanbury-Williams.
The representative of England in Russia was looking for ways to pursue a course beneficial to the British crown. Most of all, in this regard, he was interested in the heir to the throne and his wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna.
Williams understood that it would be difficult for him personally to establish close ties with the Grand Duchess, and it would also attract attention. Therefore, on June 29, 1756, at the celebration of the name day of the heir to the throne, the English envoy introduced his secretary to Catherine.
Stanislav August Poniatowski. Artist Marcello Bacciarelli, 1785 Source: Public Domain
“When the guards asked him who was coming, he called himself: “M, a soldier of the Grand Duke!” " "
Catherine was unhappy in her marriage, which was known both at the Russian court and at the courts of European monarchs. After childbirth, having given birth to a son Pavel, the Grand Duchess became even more beautiful. Favorite Sergei Saltykov sent as an envoy to Sweden, and Catherine suffered from female melancholy.
It was at this moment that a stately handsome Polish man appeared before her, striking the future empress on the spot.
However, Poniatowski was also conquered. “She was twenty-five years old. Recovering from her first birth, she blossomed as a woman endowed with natural beauty could only dream of. Black hair, delightful white skin, large bulging blue eyes that said a lot, very long black eyelashes, a sharp nose, a mouth inviting a kiss, perfectly shaped arms and shoulders, average height - rather tall than short - an unusually light gait... .,” he wrote about his first meeting with Catherine.
A whirlwind romance began that lasted three years. Poniatowski eventually changed his status: he himself became an envoy to the Russian court. This complicated his relationship with Catherine, but Poniatovsky, lost in love, did not pay attention to the difficulties. He entered the Grand Duchess's chambers even when she herself did not expect it, and left them under the noses of the guards.
“Count Poniatowski usually took with him a blond wig and a cloak to leave me, and when the guards asked him who was coming, he called himself: “The Grand Duke’s musician!” “,” wrote Ekaterina.
"Stanislav Poniatowski in St. Petersburg." Artist Jan Czeslaw Moniuszko, the painting was painted between 1880 and 1910. Source: Public Domain
Exile
In 1757, Catherine gave birth to a daughter Anna. The girl was officially recognized by Pyotr Fedorovich, but both he and the courtiers doubted paternity. Most likely, Anna's father was Poniatowski. Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna died in March 1759, less than one and a half years old.
By this time, her alleged father was no longer in St. Petersburg. In 1758, both Catherine and Poniatowski encountered major troubles. The security still caught the Pole on his way to the Grand Duchess's chambers. Pyotr Fedorovich, to whom the envoy was brought, ordered him to be lowered from the stairs. But these were mere trifles compared to the conspiracy case. Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, having recovered from a serious illness, suspected those around her of preparing a palace coup, as a result of which the young Pavel Petrovich would ascend to the throne under the guardianship of Catherine.
To the Mighty Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin this story cost a career and exile, Field Marshal Apraksin- life. Catherine was saved by the fact that no incriminating evidence could be found on her from the other participants in the conspiracy. The English envoy and Poniatowski were suspected of involvement in the case. Their diplomatic status saved them from the rack, so both were simply asked to leave Russia.
Catherine was terribly sad, and so was Poniatovsky. Therefore, after the coup of 1762, when Catherine became the mistress of Russia, the Pole was ready to immediately go to his beloved.
"I will do anything for you and your family"
Catherine cooled her lover's ardor, noting that her position was unstable, and the appearance of Poniatowski would only worsen the situation.
And then the empress more than transparently made it clear that the relationship had come to an end, writing: “I will do everything for you and your family, be firmly confident in this... Write to me as little as possible, or better yet, do not write at all unless absolutely necessary.”
The proud Pole did not immediately understand that it was not just about high politics. Catherine fell in love with someone else, Russian Guardsman Grigory Orlov, who, together with his brothers, became one of the main characters in the 1762 coup.
Of all Catherine’s lovers, only Poniatowski was a foreigner. The empress who ascended the throne rightly considered that there were enough men worthy of her in Russia.
Catherine the Great always sought to find state use for the men who found themselves next to her. This rule also affected Poniatowski.
Died in 1763 in Poland King Augustus III. The state structure of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was such that there was no direct and only heir to the crown, and different aristocratic parties nominated their own candidate.
Catherine saw this as a chance to solve the eternal “Polish problem” for Russia. The consignment Czartoryski nominated Stanislav August Poniatowski as king, and the Russian empress supported the claims of her former lover with money and force of arms.
In 1764, Poniatowski became King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Thus, Catherine kept her promise, doing even more for Stanislav than he could have expected.
“Stanisław August Poniatowski at the head of the army.” 19th century, artist unknown. Source: Public Domain
The fate of the "straw king"
But for Stanislav August the crown was not a happy lot. With whose help he ascended the throne, the Poles knew very well. The king turned out to be completely dependent on the opinion of the Russian ambassador. The Poles themselves called the monarch the “straw king,” and the opposition was preparing an armed rebellion.
The king tried to carry out reforms, but some encountered resistance from the aristocracy, others were stopped by dissatisfied shouts from St. Petersburg. In 1768, a bloody civil war broke out in Poland, in which opponents of Poniatowski and Russia turned to Turkey and France for help. As a result, Russia began to gain the upper hand, which Prussia and Austria did not like. In an effort to stop the strengthening of Russia, Prussian King Frederick II the Great proposed dividing part of the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between three states. Catherine, after hesitating, agreed.
Polish sovereignty became a formality, as did Poniatowski's royal status. This situation depressed Stanislav August, and he tried to force Catherine to reconsider her views. “But it wasn’t just to be hated that you wanted to make me king? It wasn’t so that Poland would be dismembered under my rule that you wanted me to wear the crown?” - he wrote to St. Petersburg.
The king dreamed of a personal meeting, hoping that old feelings would awaken and help him change Catherine’s attitude towards both him and Poland.
But the meeting took place only in 1787 during Catherine’s trip to Crimea. Nothing that Stanislav hoped for happened. Catherine had no feelings for him, and she was clearly burdened by his presence. Russia's policy towards the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth has not changed.
The Empress did not understand what did not suit him: he became king, and his throne was guarded by the entire might of the Russian army. But the proud Poniatowski wanted real independence.
Weak-willed ruler
In 1791, the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth signed the Constitution of the country, which changed the system to a constitutional monarchy. This was to be followed by reforms that would turn Poland into a strong and independent state.
Catherine was furious at such “arbitrariness,” but Russian forces were diverted to the war with Turkey. Therefore, Russian emissaries were ordered to form confederations of oppositionists dissatisfied with the Constitution. At the right time, they had to turn to Russia for help.
In May 1792, the Russian-Polish War began, in which Stanislav August Poniatowski de facto confronted his former lover. By the end of July it was all over: Stanislav Poniatowski ordered an end to resistance and announced the abandonment of the Constitution and reforms.
This was followed by the second partition of Poland between Prussia and Russia, after which only a third of the territory remained from the state of Stanislaw Poniatowski.
The magnanimous Catherine again kept the crown on his head.
Stanislav II Poniatowski.
The last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1764-1795. In 1752 he received a seat as a deputy of the Polish Sejm, where he gained fame for his eloquence and wit. In 1757, the Polish king and Saxon elector Augustus III appointed him as his envoy to Russia. This appointment was arranged by Stanisław August's influential maternal relatives. Through the young Poniatowski, the Czartoryskis hoped to enlist the support of the Russian court in their intrigue against Augustus III. In St. Petersburg, Poniatowski was not very successful in protecting family interests, but managed to establish a love relationship with Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna, the future Russian Empress Catherine II. Even after the love affair ended and Poniatowski returned to his homeland in 1762, Catherine maintained a favorable attitude towards Stanislav August. In 1763, King Augustus III died. By this time, Polish society had formed an opinion about the need to carry out reforms in order to strengthen state power and eliminate the dominance of foreign states in the foreign and domestic policy of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's neighbors Prussia and Austria, taking advantage of its weakness, sought to divide the Polish lands. These plans were opposed by Russia, which viewed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as its puppet state and advocated its integrity. But Russia was cautious about reform projects in Poland, suspecting an attempt to break away from its tutelage. By that time, two parties had emerged in the camp of Polish reform supporters. One of them was headed by the Potocki princes, who took militantly anti-Russian positions. The second was headed by the Czartoryski princes, who believed that without Russian support no reforms in Poland were possible. In this situation, elections for a new Polish king took place. The Czartoryskis nominated their relative Stanisław August Poniatowski, who had close connections at the St. Petersburg court. This proposal found a favorable response in the heart of Catherine II, who wished to have a person close to her on the Polish throne. Catherine was supported by the Prussian king Frederick II the Great and the outcome of the elections was a foregone conclusion. On September 7, 1764, the Sejm proclaimed Poniatowski King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Stanislaw II Augustus. The election of a natural Pole, in whose veins the blood of the ancient Piast dynasty flowed, as king, aroused the enthusiasm of Polish patriots. The new king had a good-natured character, was a witty and pleasant conversationalist, and loved the splendor of social life. His superficial education and, as a consequence, shallow knowledge of the sciences was compensated by concerns about the development of the Polish educational system. Particular delight in Warsaw was caused by evening parties at the court on Thursdays, when all the cream of the Polish artistic, literary and scientific world gathered. A lover of the fair sex, Stanislav August willingly met the wishes of numerous ladies of Polish high society, who considered it an honor to become the royal mistress. On this wave of public support, Stanislav August carried out some reforms aimed at centralizing state power and limiting oligarchic tyranny. In particular, the liberum's right of veto was limited. These steps caused discontent not only among the reactionary strata of the magnates and gentry, but also in Russia and Prussia. A consistent opponent of the reforms was the Russian envoy in Warsaw, Prince N.V. Repnin, who managed to rally part of the Polish gentry against the king. Relying on the thirty-thousand-strong Russian army stationed in Poland, opponents of the reforms blocked their implementation. Catherine II refused to support Stanislav Augustus. The king, forced to focus on Russia, agreed with Repnin’s demands. Following in the wake of Russian policy caused cooling, and then hatred of the Polish patriots towards the king. His most energetic opponents formed the Bar Confederation, which in 1768 began military operations against the Russian and royal troops. Stanislav Augustus avoided decisive action against the Confederates, preferring secret negotiations and bribery of the leaders of the Confederacy. The main burden of the war fell on the shoulders of the Russian expeditionary force, which suppressed the resistance of the Confederates in 1772. The Bar Confederation served as the reason for the demand of Prussia and Austria to divide the Polish lands, due to the inability of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to maintain proper order on its territory. Busy with the war with Turkey, Russia could not resist the claims of Prussia and Austria and decided to also take part in the division. In 1772, a significant part of the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth came under the jurisdiction of neighboring states. Stanislaw August obediently accepted the decision of the great powers, not daring to protest and openly go over to the side of the Polish patriots. From that time on, Stanislav August ceased to play a significant political role in the life of Poland. He spent years in the fun and pleasures of social life, without thinking about the future. To accusations of forgetting the interests of his homeland, Stanislav August responded with bravado that he personally needed as much land as would fit under his triangular hat. Meanwhile, the real threat of the liquidation of Polish statehood accelerated the process of maturation of the national identity of the Polish people. Polish educators Stanislaw Staszic and Hugo Kollontai put forward a program of political and social reforms designed to strengthen the Polish state. This program determined the activities of the Four-Year Sejm of 1788-1792, which adopted a number of reforms aimed at strengthening the army, changing the state-legal system, finally abolished the liberum veto, and adopted the “fundamental law” (Constitution of the third of May 1791). Stanislav August supported the patriots and swore allegiance to the constitution. The reactionary magnates opposed the infringement of their privileges and in 1792 formed the Targowica Confederation, at the call of which the troops of Russia and Prussia occupied the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The king immediately renounced the constitution and joined the Targovichans. In 1793, the second division of part of the territory of Poland between Prussia and Russia took place, and the reforms of the Four Year Sejm were canceled. In response, an uprising broke out in 1794 under the leadership of Tadeusz Kościuszko (Polish Uprising of 1794). The rebels executed some leaders of the Targowica Confederation. The king tried not to interfere in the course of events, but feared for his life, remembering the fate of Louis XVI of Bourbon. The king's brother, Primate of the Catholic Church in Poland Mikhail-Yuri Poniatowski, was an opponent of the uprising. He entered into secret correspondence with the Prussian troops besieging Warsaw. Poniatowski's letters were intercepted by the rebels, he was imprisoned and faced the death penalty by hanging. Mikhail-Yuri managed to avoid the gallows only by taking a lethal dose of poison, which Stanislav Augustus himself brought to him in prison. After the suppression of the uprising and the third, final partition of Poland, Stanislav August, at the request of Russia, left Warsaw for Grodno, where on November 25, 1795 he abdicated the throne. He spent his last years in St. Petersburg, leading a luxurious lifestyle. After his death, Stanislav August left huge debts and memoirs, which were published in 1914-1924.
The last Polish king, Stanislaw Poniatowski, is a controversial personality. The highly educated and gallant Polish handsome man captivated the hearts of his contemporaries, and even Catherine II herself could not resist his charm. At the same time, most Poles hated their weak-willed king, who became a puppet in the hands of the Russian Empire. On the other hand, it was Stanislav II Augustus who signed the first constitution of Poland and strongly supported culture and the arts. Who really was Poniatowski: a traitor or a weak-willed victim of circumstances?
Stanislav PoniatowskiThe future Polish king Stanislav Poniatowski was born on January 17, 1732 in the small Polish village of Volchin (now the town is part of Belarus). There was no question that the son of the Krakow castellan and Princess Czartoryska would ever ascend to the Polish throne, because Stanislav had no relation to the crowned persons. However, there was still something royally noble in young Poniatowski: Stanislav was a stately young man, with stately bearing and aristocratic features. His upbringing was impeccable, and his wit made him an excellent conversationalist. As for appearance, Poniatowski Jr. was not lacking in beauty - the Italian blood of his ancestors played a role.
As already mentioned, Stanislav Poniatowski received an excellent education and traveled almost all of Western Europe. In addition, the young man had excellent oratorical talent, which became a compelling argument for starting a political career. After a short participation in the Diets of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1755, with the help of the powerful Czartoryskis, Stanislav managed to take the position of secretary of the English ambassador to Russia, Williams. It was after moving to St. Petersburg that a fateful meeting took place that changed Poniatowski’s whole life and made him a king.
Meeting Ekaterina
Stanislav, accompanying the ambassador, accidentally ended up at a ball in Oranienbaum on June 29, 1756. It was Peter's Day and all the diplomats and courtiers gathered to celebrate the name day of the heir to the Russian throne. Sir Hanbury Williams, acting in the interests of the British crown, tried in every possible way to establish friendly relations with the royal family and generously distributed compliments to Princess Catherine. Trying to start a conversation, he introduced the princess to his secretary Stanislav Poniatovsky, and the future autocrat immediately liked the prominent young man, just as he liked her.
Contemporaries more than once described Catherine as a woman with rough features and not particularly beautiful. At the age of 16, young Sophia Augusta (this is the name the future Empress of All Rus' received at birth) was married to Peter III, but, as was customary in those days, without love or even mutual sympathy. The relationship between the spouses did not work out right away and Catherine, like Peter, found joy in connections on the side. Therefore, when the wife of the heir to the Russian throne saw the foreign-looking, handsome and witty Poniatowski, she immediately prepared a role for him in her life and even became inflamed with true feelings for the Pole.
Poniatowski was simply fascinated. In his memoirs, he will describe his meeting with Catherine with particular enthusiasm, emphasizing that the princess was beautiful and fresh, there was very lightness in her image, and her facial features were delightfully combined with the blackness of her hair. Although the meeting was fleeting, both at that moment realized that they would see each other again and become something more for each other than casual acquaintances.
Secret romance of future rulers
We didn't have to wait long for the outcome. The interesting and witty Stanislav Poniatowski quickly gained confidence among the nobility and made quite a few important acquaintances. So, one of the Pole’s comrades was Lev Naryshkin, a close friend of Catherine. It was with the help of Naryshkin that Stanislav found the way to Catherine’s palace, and then to her chambers.
One day Naryshkin fell ill and was unable to visit Catherine. He maintained communication with her through letters that Stanislav wrote instead of him. From the very first lines, Catherine realized that the letters belonged to the pen of some witty secretary, and later she found out who their author was. Thus, Ekaterina and Stanislav got to know each other better and could no longer refuse to communicate in person.
The lovers' passion flared up and it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep it within the confines of the princess's bedroom. Problems were also added by the fact that Empress Elizaveta Petrovna began to suspect her daughter-in-law of some kind of conspiracies and assigned “guards” to her, the purpose of which was to spy on Peter’s wife. But even in such conditions, Stanislav managed to sneak into his beloved’s chambers unnoticed, although for this he had to stage an entire theatrical performance with wigs and makeup.
Exposure and shame of Poniatowski
Peter nevertheless became aware of the romance between Catherine and Poniatowski. On one of these evenings, when Stanislav was making his way on a date with his beloved, he was grabbed by guards and dragged to the heir to the throne. Peter, in anger, ordered the insolent man to be pushed out of the palace, so that he rolled down the stairs. After such a disgrace, the future king of Poland hastily returned to his homeland, without even receiving a letter of recall from the empress.
Catherine was inconsolable and kept writing letters to Poland. But time heals, and soon the storm in the soul of the future empress calmed down, and palace intrigues and the death of Elizabeth completely pushed feelings into the background. The vain and self-willed Catherine faced the prospect of seizing the reigns into her own hands; what kind of love could she think about and lament at that moment? In addition, there were many prominent men at court and Poniatowski’s beloved found solace in the arms of Count Orlov...
Catherine's ransom
Having learned about the coup in the Russian Empire and Catherine’s ascension to the throne, Stanislav began preparing to move to St. Petersburg. Many prospects opened up before him: now no one would interfere with his love affair with Catherine, and he would be a close friend of the Empress herself, maybe even her husband! But the Empress, who “desperately loved” Stanislav, was in no hurry to see him and did her best to prevent the Pole from moving. In her letters, she essentially said goodbye to Stanislav, explaining that it was too dangerous at court and emphasized that she would never forget Poniatowski and would help him.
Of course, the empress’s crazy feelings had long cooled down by this point and, most likely, Catherine still had some feeling of guilt before her Polish lover. Stanislav believed that their reunion was being hampered by palace intrigues and other reasons beyond Catherine’s control. Poniatowski was very wrong about this, and his former lover prepared him a gift that would complicate his already difficult life.
In 1763, the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth died and a desperate struggle for the Polish throne began. In the group of magnates who laid claim to him, Stanisław Poniatowski was an upstart who had the protectorate of the powerful Czartoryskis. But this was negligible to become a king. Catherine cunningly took advantage of the situation and helped Stanislav sit on the throne. There was not a drop of nobility in this act - the empress killed three birds with one stone: she calmed down her feelings of guilt before Poniatowski, thanked her former lover and received a puppet that was easy to control, and therefore to rule Poland with the wrong hands.
Outwardly, Catherine’s act looked very noble: the courtiers considered her crazy, who remembered her old love. Poniatowski himself did not understand the empress’s true motives, but very soon he regretted that he had entered the fight for the crown.
The Empress knew that the courageous lover was by nature a weak person who was prone to vanity and narcissism. Poniatowski was easy to control, dictate his terms, and even with strong resistance, he would not have dared to break out of the golden cage or say a word against her will. In addition, Catherine thought that having the least rights to the throne and becoming king, Stanislav would be most grateful to the Russian Empire. The autocrat was right in this, but she underestimated Poniatowski, who would nevertheless make an attempt to go against the ruler.
Straw King
Having become the king of Poland, Stanislav Augustus had to protect the interests of Russia in everything - this was the decree of the great empress, who, with a sweeping gesture, bestowed the crown on her former lover. For Poland, a sad page of history began, when it still officially existed, in fact, it was crushed by the Russians long ago.
All state affairs were handled by Prince Repnin, who was officially the Russian ambassador, but in reality was a full-fledged ruler. The destiny that went to Stanislav August was to lead a court life, organize luxurious balls and increase the debts that the benefactor Catherine patiently paid.
When the uprising began, which overthrew the king, and then the bloody massacre of the patriotic Poles, Stanislav Augustus played the most pathetic role in everything. Thus, the king reigned, but did not rule until the period of the partitions of Poland began. At this moment, Poniatowski began to have compassion for his homeland and sometimes openly showed it. In letters from this time to Catherine, he more than once mentioned how painful the state of Poland, dismembered and deprived of rights, was for him. At the same time, compassion in no way interfered with leading a cheerful life and taking on new debts.
Stanislav's joys were graceful. Every Thursday he organized luxurious receptions that the whole of Europe was talking about. Once, the famous womanizer Giacomo Casanova attended such a “Thursday with the Polish king”. Later, he would talk admiringly about the erudition of Stanislav August, his eloquence and knowledge of the classics, and be completely perplexed how such a comprehensively developed person could rule his state so ineptly.
Cold meeting
A quarter of a century after the last date between the ardent lovers, their next rendezvous took place. In 1787, Poniatowski learned that Catherine was going to Crimea and agreed to see her in Kanev. Many expected that the meeting would awaken old feelings and favor towards Stanislav Augustus would arise in the empress’s soul, but this did not happen.
The half-hour conversation led to nothing. It remains unknown what goal Poniatowski set for himself when he met with Catherine II: renewal of relations, expansion of his powers, or maybe he wanted to put in a good word for his homeland? In any case, the king’s attempts were in vain - the half-hour meeting did not change anything either in the heart of the Russian mistress or in the affairs of Stanislav August.
Awakening Patriotism
Poniatowski was simply hated by his fellow countrymen. Weak-willed, pampered - he did not even try to improve matters in the state. And so, quite unexpectedly, after meeting with Catherine, Stanislav gained determination and signed the Polish constitution, which gave a chance to revive the independence of the state. Unfortunately, very quickly the king backed down and again began to carry out the orders of the empress.
By order of Catherine II, Stanisław August was arrested and forced to sign the Second Partition of Poland. The uprising that followed was brutally suppressed, and the king abdicated the throne, after which Poland ceased to exist. As for Poniatowski, he was ordered to live in Grodno, the empress paid his huge debts, and the further maintenance of the ex-king was entrusted to three states, which divided his kingdom among themselves.
Captive King
Until the end of her days, Catherine did not want to see the former king and lover. When her son Paul I ascended the throne, he summoned Poniatowski to St. Petersburg. The vain ruler wanted to see in his retinue the king who had renounced the throne, and to show it off to everyone as some kind of exhibit or trophy. At the same time, Stanislav Augustus was not a prisoner who suffered humiliation and deprivation - he lived in the beautiful Marble Palace (which Catherine built during her lifetime for her other lover, Grigory Orlovsky), his pension was increased and even allowed personal guards. The only taboo for Poniatowski was leaving Russia.
The last Polish king spent his period of life on the territory of Russia as in previous years - in noisy balls, luxurious receptions and social events. At this time, Poniatowski began writing memoirs. In them, he completely justifies all his actions, explaining everything by the irresistible power of love for Catherine, which constrained his will throughout his life.
Death and burial of Stanislaus II Augustus
In February 1798, the last Polish king died. But the misadventures did not end there, and even after death Poniatowski was unable to find peace. Paul I organized a solemn funeral for the embalmed body of the king, accompanied by troops. A copy of the Polish crown was placed on the head of the deceased, and the body itself was lowered into the cellars of the Church of St. Catherine.
Church of the Holy Trinity, where Poniatowski was re-buried In the 30s of the twentieth century, the Soviet authorities, led by Stalin, in the context of anti-church policies, decided to demolish the very cathedral in which the last Polish ruler was buried. When the question arose about what to do with the buried remains, Stalin invited Poland to take back its king. Of course, the Poles, who blamed Poniatowski for the dismemberment of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, accepted such a proposal without much enthusiasm.
The Polish side nevertheless took the body of the king, but considered it inappropriate to place it in Wawel, where the bodies of Polish heroes and important figures rested. That is why the remains were transported to Poniatowski’s homeland in Volchin, where they were buried in the local Church of the Holy Trinity.
But his native land did not immediately allow Stanislav August to rest in peace. Since the reburial, speculation has arisen that it was not the king’s body that was brought from Leningrad, but an empty coffin. In order to establish the location of Poniatowski’s remains, an entire expedition of Belarusian specialists was organized, who, having examined the crypt, found that there were no remains of a body in it! Scientists were able to find only fragments of the king’s clothing and bones, which after examination turned out to be of animal origin.
From what the expedition was able to establish, it became clear that the king’s body was still in Volchin. In Soviet times, a fertilizer warehouse was organized in the temple, and local residents plundered the burial place of the last king of Poland as best they could. The local pious caretaker, who reburied them, could not tolerate the desecration of the remains. According to many scientists, Poniatowski’s remains are now in the local cemetery. Whether this is true or not may become known in the future; in any case, the ex-king is buried in his native land, which accepted him after so many trials and alienation.
