In Defence Of Stanisław, the Last King Of Poland
One of the reasons why I’m so fond of Polish history is that it’s full of lessons which apply so well to the times we live in. Within it, I’ve often heard an oversimplified judgement of a personality as complex as his own era. Let’s take a look at the life – and legacy – of King Stanisław August Poniatowski.
As Adam Zamoyski writes in The Last King of Poland, King Stanisław – the last monarch to rule the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth – has often been blamed for Poland’s disappearance from the world map. In the author’s words:
Text
His abdication was an act of no practical significance whatsoever: his refusal would have made not one jot of difference. But generations condemned to captivity cannot see beyond the fact that it was he who signed the sentence, and in their hearts reproach him for having been able to live while his country perished. The underlying charge is that he did not die.
Before delving into the demise of Poland, we must answer the question of when and where this happened to begin with. The years of the Commonwealth are painfully framed in times which were turbulent for the entire world: from the beginning of the Great Sejm in 1788, to the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.
Russia, which has been the protector of the Polish status quo since 1709 (more on this later), is by now severely worn down by recurrent conflicts with The Porte, as the sublime central government of the Ottoman Empire is called – plus a second front with the Swedish. Hence, the Russian army flees Poland. In line with the Enlightenment philosophy of the time, the Americans had shown France that a rebellion based on Enlightenment principles – including natural rights and equality for all citizens – against an authoritarian regime could succeed, unfolding one of the most relevant series of events in history.
As the French establishment failed again and again, ever more liberal and desperate in its attempts, to get bread to the populace – amongst a countless other, even more severe issues – summoning the Estates-General was a last resort. While Russia is away, a segment of the magnates decides to line with Prussia, ruled by Friedrich Wilhelm II. Two years into his reign, the monarch risks being the first Prussian ruler not to add new lands to the royal estates.
Stanisław rightly distrusts Friedrich Wilhelm, who simply seeks confrontation within Polish politics: the Prussian policy , Stanisław argues, is to socially divide the Commonwealth, and then:
Text
Prussia would offer to drop his support for her party in Poland, in return for which a grateful Russia would permit her to a second partition.
Author
From ‘The Last King of Poland’ by Adam Zamoyski
Here Stanisław tries to avoid such division and decides to align with the rebels, keeping the Commonwealth in a united front – despite the fact that this new unity aligns with the most viperous of her neighbours.
In April, George Washington becomes the first President of the United States. In May, the Estates-General meet in France, in June the National Assembly is convened, defying all traditional order; finally, in July, the Bastille is stormed. In August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen is published –one of the main inspirations for our contemporary United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights–, further unfolding the French crisis, which Stanisław was following closely with initial excitement. In September, Warsaw appoints a new deputation to prepare a new constitution. In December, Friedrich Wilhelm II personally encourages Poland to reform.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
‘Liberty Leading the People’ by Eugène_Delacroix, 1830, photo: Louvre Museum / Wikipedia.org
In March 1790, Prussia, concerned about the recent gains of Austria and Russia against the Ottomans, signs a military defence pact with the Commonwealth. It is filled with Prussian promises, such as recovering Galicia from the Austrians. Soon enough, in July, Prussia hesitates, seeing no real gains – so she signs the Convention of Reichenbach with Austria in favour of the status quo.
This leaves Poland having antagonised both Austria and Russia and with nothing to offer to Prussia. Also in July, Louis XVI accepts a constitutional monarchy, markedly a republican one. In August, diverse members of the Sejm propose a new form of government based on monarchical terms,and write the first draft of the constitution. Two weeks later, Sweden signs peace with Russia.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
‘Constitution of 3rd May’ manuscript in the Potocki Archives, 1791, Central Archives of Historical Records, photo: Wikimedia.org
In March, William Pitt the Younger is alarmed at the Russian expansion. He enables an alliance with Prussia, the Dutch, Sweden, Turkey, and also Poland, to force Russia into submission. But Russian diplomacy holds public opinion in England, and Pitt wavers, saving Catherine. Comes May, and on the 3rd, the new Polish constitution is finally successfully voted upon. This was received in places like Britain or the United States with great approval, who compared the peaceful Polish revolution to the rivers of blood of the French one.
But while the French constitution is much more republican in essence, the Polish one is more monarchical, centralised in a hereditary crown. This crown is to be given to the Saxon house upon Stanisław’s death, but the Saxons delay their answer on the offer, raising concerns. In the meantime, as noted by Zamoyski, Catherine cries: ‘How dare they alter the form of government that I guaranteed!’ – making it clear that it will be the Russian policy to mercilessly overthrow the new Polish order.
In September 1791, the French king swears oath to the new French constitution, and in January 1792, the Treaty of Jassy ends the Russo-Turkish war. Now Russian troops are fully available. Catherine II arrives in Feodosia, by Ivan Aivazovsky, to commemorate the recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea in the treaty of Jassy – yes, that annexation again.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
‘Arrival of Catherine II in Feodosia During 27th May 1787’, directly following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783, 1883, photo: AgniArt.ru
The last few years have been a whirlpool of events, changes, treaties, shifts of powers, and revolutions. Thus, we have arrived at the key moment – in which neither Stanisław, nor the bravest Jan III Sobieski, nor any other great hero could have ruled.
This is not to say that the entirety of the Polish society hasn’t made many decisions far above the allowance the very Polish system gave to their rulers. These are not to blame their ruler for but their citizens and their traditions. But here, in a greater order, we face a challenge that lies in the hands of nothing else than luck, fate or the arbitrariness of history: the French Revolution.
With an army of well over 100,00 men, hardened and well-trained in years of war, well-equipped and prepared, and ready for even the most protracted war, Russia, with its seemingly infinite resources, prepares to invade. Her army is vastly superior to that of the Poles: amounting to a total maximum of 65,000 men, the Polish army had only been raised in the last two years, and at this point, only two rifle factories have been set up in Poland (one of them by private money from Stanisław himself).
There’s no possibility to buy arms abroad, as all German factories are overbooked in preparations for the war with France. Barracks and stores are not even built yet, and the officer corps represented less than 5% of the total number of men. Poland’s fate would depend on the support it could rally.
In May 1792, in the little town of Targowica, Feliks Potocki, Seweryn Rzewuski, Ksawery Branicki and a number of other magnates proclaim a confederation and invoke Russian aid. Stanisław and the Sejm almost unanimously decide to fight, and they work hard on raising the army’s capabilities, all while seeking the needed support. But Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia declines to follow the alliance with Poland he himself arranged – on the grounds that the state of affairs was now entirely different than when the alliance was signed.
Just as Stanisław suspected, Prussia made up an alliance, encouraged reform and then promptly dropped their support. The French would not support anything but the most radical Republicanism, but the British and the Prussian would react to any slight Jacobinism in Poland. And Austria was entirely dragged down by their conflicts with Jacobin France. In this context, desertion amongst the Polish troops skyrocketed, to the extent that high-profile figures sought Russian favour beforehand and even revealed military secrets.
In this context, Stanisław summons an extraordinary council on the 23rd of July, attended by the Primate Michał Jerzy Poniatowski, Marshalls Michał Jerzy Mniszech and Ignacy Potocki, Stanisław Sołtan, Ludwik Tyszkiewicz, Antoni Dziekoński, Tomasz Ostrowski, Chancellor Jacek Małachowski, Vice-Chancellor Hugo Kołłątaj and Joachim Chreptowicz, as well as Marshall of the Sejm Stanisław Małachowski, Kazimierz Sapieha and Prince Kazimierz Poniatowski. The council agreed – by a vote of 7‑to‑5, and with the strong support of the near-Jacobin and very well respected Kołłątaj – to surrender to Catherine’s request to unconditionally drop the constitution and join the Confederation of Targowica.
Ultimately, it was tradition which kept the army small and unprepared. It was the magnates who legitimised Russian’s intervention. It was the French Revolution which had already disrupted the diplomacy and balance of powers of Europe. And most important, it was a council of royalists, republicans, Jacobins, bishops and soldiers who agreed to surrender.
Text
Some historians have traced the root of Poland’s downfall to the Jagiellonian kinds of the fifteen and sixteenth century, others to the Cossack and Swedish wars of the seventeenth, but to the majority of Poles the most obvious critical moment is the reign of Stanisław Augustus, and the quest for the decisive cause of disaster inevitably centres on his person. There is a widespread conviction that if he had done one thing or left undone another, then everything would somehow have been all right.
Author
From ‘The Last King of Poland’ by Adam Zamoyski
But here another question arises: how did this whole states of affairs come to be? Could it have been avoided, would it have been possible to cut it at the roots? Here I like to make one provocative argument: Polish sovereignty was already lost long before Stanisław was even born.
Let’s wind back almost a century…
The glorious King Jan III Sobieski dies. Poland holds a vote, and the Prince de Conti, from the House of Bourbon, is elected. But before he arrives to Poland to take his crown, August of Saxony, who came in second in the election, rushes into Poland with a Saxon Army and secures coronation by proclamation of the Bishop of Kujawy. His intention is to turn the Commonwealth into an absolutist and hereditary monarchy, like that of his own in Saxony. A sacred election is thus rigged – 35 years before Stanisław is even born.
Spain has just entered its War of Succession, upon the death of Charles II ‘El Hechizado’ – I had to study that one a lot in high school. Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’, fought to put his family on the Spanish throne at the expense of the finances of his country, assuming debts it would carry for the rest of the century, up to the American War of Independence and the French Revolution.
At the same time, a young Peter of Russia seeks to recover access to the Baltic Sea, attacking the Swedish powerhouse with the alliance of Denmark, Prussia, and Saxony. Augustus has entered the war as the king of Saxony alone, but then forces the Commonwealth into battle by his own persona. Charles XII of Sweden promptly smashes all of its rival, and pursues Peter deep into Russia. Augustus, ironically, actively seeks defeat in order to weaken Poland and proceed with his monarchical plans.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
‘Battle of Poltava’ by Pierre-Denis Martin, 1726, photo: The Catherine Palace / Wikipedia.org
Charles XII is decisively defeated in Poltava and flees to the Ottoman Empire. Prussia offers a better deal to Peter than that of Augustus: partition Poland between Russia and Prussia. ‘Es sei nicht praktikabel’ (‘It is not practical’), Peter refuses – at this time Russia is not ready to conquer the new land, but instead seeks to weaken the Commonwealth. Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia will state in his testament his will to proceed with the annexation of Polish territory. A partition has been planned. The seed has been planted – 21 years before the birth of Stanisław.
Peter is the sole victor of the Great Northern War. Augustus seeks to take control of the Commonwealth, and the nobles confederate and request assistance to Peter. Peter accepts, but on his own terms: the Russian army invades, forcibly pacifies the country, and summons a confederated Sejm, which runs under strict control of Russian Troops.
This is known as the Silent Sejm (Sejm Niemy) – because only the marshal and a few selected other deputies were allowed a voice – ‘with Russian soldiers “guarding” the proceedings’. This Sejm enacts laws favourable to Poland against Augustus, like the removal of Saxon troops from the Commonwealth, and disallowed the king to grant any office to foreigners. But others severely weaken the Polish State: the army was to be reduced to somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers (while Russia had above 300,000), to be financed by crown estates – effectively rendering an army only 12,000 strong, due to limited budget. A fixed state income and expenditures were also established, limiting centralised decisions on economy and protecting the Liberum Veto. Meanwhile Russia would be the power that would guarantee the settlement. Poland has just unofficially become a Russian protectorate, 15 years before Stanisław was even born.
The Seven Years War – which I like to call, jokingly, ‘World War Zero’– is nearing its end. Prussia, exhausted and surrounded, is just about to be invaded, when Elizabeth of Russia dies, and Peter III succeeds to the Russian throne. Peter III, appearing to be a near-psychopath, and fervently pro-Prussian, withdraws all Russian troops from the war. Prussia has been just saved in what is known as the – second – Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.
The Russian military is enraged, and so is Peter’s wife, Catherine, who plots a coup d’état. Catherine immediately decides that Stanisław will be the next king of Poland. Another election has been rigged, two years before Stanisław’s coronation. Whether or not he would agree made no difference, as Catherine would have simply placed anyone else. The only option was to play along and try to take advantage of the protection.
Historians nowadays like Adam Zamoyski and Norman Davies, or of previous generations like Walerian Kalinka and Emanuel Rostworowski, have argued in favour of the inevitability of the events. I’d add here something that my mother used to tell me as a kid, and I suppose any other mother told to their kids: it’s far too easy to blame someone else, it takes a lot of wisdom to see one’s own faults.
Text
The annihilation of Poland and the Napoleonic wars bred generations of patriots dedicated to active struggle. As they formed their legions and prepared their uprisings, each as ill-starred as that of 1794, they were in no mood for reflection on the real causes of Poland’s downfall.
Author
From ‘The Last King of Poland’ by Adam Zamoyski
In the aftermath of the Targowica Confederation and the Second Partition, Stanisław was severely humiliated. Catherine would promise protection of the Polish lands, only to then spout ideas of Russian protection to Polish freedoms – the Golden Freedoms, benefiting a priori mostly magnates – and the need for punishment to the rebels, the Constitutionals. She would promise protection of the important figures, only to later dismantle the army and imprison leaders.
The original plan of the Council of 23rd July was to submit to Russian dominance and take over the Targowica Confederation by sheer numbers – the original confederates were in disarray, and a group of 12 widely respected men had just joined it. Kołłątaj himself signed his own accession to Targowica, but by December, it became clear to him that collaboration with Russia would be unfeasible: ‘[…] for, as I presently perceive, all the courts are now interested solely in uniting against the French, and as a reward for all their costs they intend a division of Poland’, as he wrote to Małachowski.
They reassessed their plan: they were now to dissociate from the King and the policy they had just agreed upon. They now blame him, circulating pamphlets across the country with the idea that it was all Stanisław’s machinations, that the Polish army was well-supplied and ready to fight. Books circulated blaming Stanisław for treason and indifference: ‘he himself became an oblivious witness to what he had undertaken for himself and the nation'. They were written by Kołłątaj.
Text
The plan wasn’t to insult Stanisław, but to build the platform for a new policy. In order to carry on the struggle, they had to show that victory was possible. In order to persuade people of that, they had first to persuade them that victory had been within reach in 1792, and that the Polish nation was only robbed of it by a number of circumstances, the most important being the king’s betrayal.
Author
From ‘The Last King of Poland’ by Adam Zamoyski
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
‘Day of 21 January 179 the Death of Louis Capet on the Place de la Révolution’ by Isidore Stanislas Helman, French engraving, photo: Bibliothèque Nationale de France
The original Targowican has disappeared from the stage, and the newly joined members of the Council had just left as well, blaming Stanisław for everything. And Stanisław was there, alone, in the hands of the Russian minister Bulgakov. Across Europe, diplomats knew that Stanisław had become a scapegoat.
During the Kościuszko Uprising, Stanisław tried to step in – if only to pacify the European courts, who feared Poland might become the next France. European politics were becoming radicalised: have no king and you’re a Jacobine to be smashed by the Ancient Order, install a king and nobody will trust you as a revolutionary. There was no middle ground, and hardly anyone could find an equilibrium.
The uprising failed, as it was doomed to do. What’s more, Catherine was determined to cleanse the ‘Jacobin disease’, incarcerating all of those who had taken part in the Uprising. Stanisław begged Suvorov, one of the greatest military commanders of all times, to have mercy for the wounded. He tried to stop the looting of the Polish insignia, and even tried to recycle the Cadet Corps into a high school in order to preserve its existence – all to no avail.
When the last partition was signed, Prussians looted Kraków before giving the city over to the Austrians, and so the Russians looted Warsaw before giving it over to the Prussians. Stanisław was held in Grodno. He exchanged correspondence with all the figures of Europe, trying to assert some influence in helping the people of Poland.
Eventually, when things seemed to have cooled down, Catherine agreed to free him – though never to live in Austria, only in Italy. But in the last moment, Catherine demanded he be moved to Moscow. Stanisław knew that this meant he’d be incarcerated in Russia for the rest of his days. The French were victorious against the Prussians and Austrians, and General Bonaparte was sweeping through Italy: as Zamoyski writes, Catherine would not dream of allowing the king of Poland, that potent symbol of the injustice of the three monarchies, to go wandering in Europe’. Stanisław was a hostage in Russia, again because of the French Revolution.
Picture display
standardowy [760 px]
‘Napoleon Bonaparte Leading His Troops Over the Bridge of Arcole’ by Horace Vernet, 1826, photo: Wikipedia.org
When Catherine died, Tsar Paul softened the Russian policy towards Poland. Tsar Paul himself is said to have told Stanisław that he believed Stanisław was his father, but this makes no sense – Paul was born before Stanisław and Catherine even met for the first time.
The tripartite convention had agreed to remove the name of Poland from all diplomatic documents, and the Prussians took over the remainders of Stanisław’s property back in Poland. Meanwhile, Stanisław suffered a stroke, and died unexpectedly on 12th February 1798. He was buried, on the orders of Paul, on the Church of St Catherine in St Petersburg.
The romantic movement and the Napoleonic Wars that followed did more harm than good to his reputation, for an enlightened Stanisław was scarcely good material for romantic poets interested in intuition and emotion rather than rationalism and realpolitik.
Text
Polish poets of the Romantic period inherited only failure, and they did their utmost to give it meaning. Mickiewicz used the symbolism of the Crucifixion to exalt Poland, which he represented as the Christ of nations, whose suffering was not only glorious but redemptive as well. As a result, the Poles began to elevate such bloody fiascos as the Confederation of Bar into expressions of triumph. Suffering or a grim death on some forgotten battlefield became ends in themselves. And Stanisław had not suffered and he had not died in battle.
Author
From ‘The Last King of Poland’ by Adam Zamoyski
Polish history is not well-known everywhere in the world. In high school back in Spain, I saw the history of the world as one of the big players, with Poland not even remotely in the list. The education curricula of most countries barely mentions Poland as ‘the place where a lot of bad things happened in WWII’, which is tragic to say the least. But again, the question that needs to be asked is when and where this happened, and how it came to be. And playing the blaming game leads nowhere – Polish history itself is a lesson of this.
Text
The philosopher Immanuel Kant defined enlightenment as the liberation of man from his self-induced condition of deficiency or self-abasement. Polish society has been in such a condition since the seventeenth century, fighting a losing emotional and spiritual battle against reality. It is only when that struggle is over that the Poles will be able to look at their history with dispassionate reason. That day has yet to come. History is still, for most of them, a morality play.
Author
From ‘The Last King of Poland’ by Adam Zamoyski
Written by Nelson Vides, Sep 2020, originally published at Far From Ready, edited by LD, Mar 2021
Sources: ‘The Last King of Poland’ by Adam Zamoyski (Orion 2020), http://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/files/Przeglad_Historyczny/Przeglad_Historyczny-r1972-t63-n3/Przeglad_Historyczny-r1972-t63-n3-s389-412/Przeglad_Historyczny-r1972-t63-n3-s389-412.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Sejm, http://www.normandavies.com/books/europe-a-history/?lang=en, https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/publication/47312/edition/63967/content, https://www.dbc.wroc.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=22472
[{"nid":"5688","uuid":"6aa9e079-0240-4dcb-9929-0d1cf55e03a5","type":"article","langcode":"en","field_event_date":"","title":"Challenges for Polish Prose in the Nineties","field_introduction":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary\r\n","field_summary":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary","topics_data":"a:2:{i:0;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259609\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:26:\u0022#language \u0026amp; literature\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:27:\u0022\/topics\/language-literature\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}i:1;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259644\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:8:\u0022#culture\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:14:\u0022\/topic\/culture\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}}","field_cover_display":"default","image_title":"","image_alt":"","image_360_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/360_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ZsoNNVXJ","image_260_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/260_auto_cover\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=pLlgriOu","image_560_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/560_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=0n3ZgoL3","image_860_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/860_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ELffe8-z","image_1160_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1160_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=XazO3DM5","field_video_media":"","field_media_video_file":"","field_media_video_embed":"","field_gallery_pictures":"","field_duration":"","cover_height":"991","cover_width":"1000","cover_ratio_percent":"99.1","path":"en\/node\/5688","path_node":"\/en\/node\/5688"}]