Summary

Stanislaw II Augustus, born Stanislaw Antoni Poniatowski of the Ciołek coat of arms (born January 17, 1732 in Wolczyn, died February 1?

The assessment of his reign remains a matter of dispute. Appreciated as the initiator and co-author of the political reforms carried out by the Four-Year Sejm, one of the main authors of the May 3 Constitution, and as a patron of science and the arts, Stanislaw Augustus was simultaneously criticized as a king elected to the Polish throne thanks to the support of Empress Catherine II of the Russian Empire, and for failing to prevent the partition of the Republic and joining the Targowitz Confederation.

From 1755, he was a Grand Constable of Lithuania, and then, from 1756 to 1764, he was Starosta of Przemysl. In 1755-1758, while staying at the St. Petersburg court, he began an affair with Princess Catherine Alexeyevna, the future Empress of Russia. Associated with the Czartoryski Familia, he became its candidate for king of Poland after the death of August III. With the personal support of Catherine II and with the military intervention of Russia, he was elected king at the electoral parliament in 1764. Contrary to the expectations of the empress, he sought to modernize and strengthen the politically troubled Republic. He began implementing the Familia program of strengthening royal power and reforming the state system. In 1765 he established the Knights' School in Warsaw to educate future cadets. He formed a permanent Polish diplomatic service. His reform efforts met with external opposition from Prussia, the Habsburg Empire and the Russian Empire, which had a vested interest in maintaining the weak position of the Republic; as well as internal opposition, mainly in conservative magnate circles. The king's reformist activities led to Russian intervention, ostensibly in defense of the Republic's system and the rights of dissidents. In response to the encroachment of Russian troops, an anti-King and anti-Russian confederation was formed in Bar (1768-1772), which intensified the crisis in the state. The consequence of the defeat of the confederation was the First Partition of Poland in 1772.

Since his accession to the throne, Stanislaw Augustus has made efforts to strengthen Polish culture. In 1765 he established the National Theater in Warsaw. In the same year the Monitor magazine was founded under his patronage. From around 1770 the king organized "Thursday dinners." At his request in 1773 the Commission of National Education was established. The king also established a palace and garden complex in Lazienki Park. The situation of the king was difficult, because already in the first years of his reign he lost the support of the Czartoryskis, while the opposition of the nobility did not weaken. Subsequent sejms, not held under the knot of confederation (like the first ones during the king's reign), gave no hope for political reform. From the 1776 Sejm until 1788, no Sejm operated under the knot of confederation. In the last part of Stanislaw August's reign, between 1788 and 1792, the Four-Year Sejm made significant political reforms. Russia, focused on the war with Turkey and encouraged by the king's proposal of an anti-Turkish alliance, agreed to have the Sejm sit under the knot of a confederation and carry out partial reforms, mainly of the army. The parliament was dominated by the Prussian orientation, to which the king was sympathetic. This resulted in the support of the sejm and an alliance with Prussia in 1790. The sejm did not dissolve, but only co-opted additional deputies, which further strengthened the reformist party. The result was the adoption of the Constitution of May 3, 1791, of which the king was one of the main authors.

The opposition of the nobility, supported by Russia, formed a confederation at Targowica in May 1792. After the Russian army entered, war broke out in defense of the Constitution. Despite the moderate successes of the new, enlarged royal army, the king, disbelieving in the chances of further resistance and disappointed by the lack of response from Prussia, capitulated and joined the Targowica. In 1793 he took part in the Sejm of Grodno, which reversed the reforms of the Four-Year Sejm and enacted the Second Partition of Poland. The king did not play an important role in the Kosciuszko insurrection, which he joined despite his reluctance. After the conclusion of the Third Partition (1795), marking the end of the Republic's existence, the king left Warsaw and went to Grodno, under the care and supervision of the Russian governor, after which he abdicated on November 25, 1795 in favor of Russia. He spent the last years of his life in exile in St. Petersburg. He died on February 12, 1798.

He was a political writer and speaker, memoirist, translator and epistolographer.

Youth

He was born on January 17, 1732 in Wolczyn as the son of Stanislaw Poniatowski, castellan of Cracow (from 1752), politician and political writer, and Konstancja, née Czartoryska. His brothers were crown chamberlain Kazimierz, Austrian Field Marshal Andrzej, Primate Michał Jerzy, Aleksander and Franciszek; he also had two sisters, Ludwika Maria and Izabella. He was the great-grandson of Polish poet-treasurer Jan Andrzej Morsztyn. His great-grandmother Catherine Gordon was related to the Stuarts and intermarried with the greatest families of Scotland, Spain and France.

From the autumn of 1733, he and his parents were in Gdansk, where at the end of the following year, at a time when his father, already for five months, had been on the side of King August III, he was kidnapped on the orders of the Kiev voivode, regent Jozef Potocki, and taken to Kamieniec Podolski. There he stayed for several months under the guard of Waclaw Rzewuski. He was taken back to his parents, probably in March 1735, and stayed with his parents in Gdansk for the next few years until 1739. Initially he was taught by his mother, later by various private teachers. There he studied with the historian Gotfryd Lengnich, who was the personal preceptor of the young Poniatowskis. After returning from Gdansk to Warsaw, he was educated at the Theatine College, where he was taught by Antonio Portalupi, among others. In 1746-1747 Stanislaw performed twice as an actor on the Theatine stage. In 1744, he was given lessons in logic and mathematics by the Russian envoy to the Republic, Herman Karl von Keyserling, a former professor at Königsberg University. He continued Stanislaw's teaching after his reappearance in Warsaw in 1749, at the same time stating that the student had made great progress under the guidance of another teacher. Jerzy Michalski states that some historians have overestimated the impact of Keyserling's lessons on S's personality and views. Beginning in 1749, lessons in architecture and engineering were given to the future king by former Austrian officer John Luke Toux de Salverte. The confessor chosen by his parents, until 1774, was the missionary Piotr Sliwicki. Influenced by the metaphysics instilled in him by his mother, Stanislaw Antoni Poniatowski suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of 12.

Thanks to his home education, Stanislaw mastered Polish and French perfectly, had a good knowledge of Latin and German, while he had a rather passive knowledge of Italian and English. He developed a habit and love of reading. "Warmer upbringing" and the lack of the company of his peers (in his memoirs he lamented that he was deprived of childhood) influenced his self-confidence, although he was aware of the danger of conceit. He had a strong tendency toward self-reflection and melancholy.

He first left the country at his father's request to gain military experience. He went with the Russian army to the Rhine, which was going to the aid of Maria Theresa's troops during the War of the Austrian Succession. His delayed departure (May 1748) came at the end of the armed struggle. On June 10, he arrived in Aachen, where he was taken care of by Saxon envoy J.H. Kauderbach. Thanks to his father's connections, he was able to meet many prominent people, including Maurice Saxon and future Chancellor W. Kaunitz. He also viewed military camps and fortresses. Later visiting the Austrian Netherlands and Holland, he was mainly interested in art, especially painting. He also noted the enthusiasm of the local population for the ruling Orange dynasty. On September 5 he left on a return trip and returned to Warsaw via Kassel and Dresden in mid-October.

Upon his return to the capital, he witnessed the broken Sejm. From November 1748 (until 1750), he apprenticed in the chancellery of his uncle Michał Czartoryski (then Lithuanian sub-chancellor, later Lithuanian grand chancellor), first in Warsaw and then in Wolczyn. Thanks to this, he came into contact with the mechanism of the family's politics. In his memoirs, Stanislaw considered this period to be barren, and his uncle's teachings to be of little worth. At the beginning of October 1749, together with his brother Kazimierz, who led the Czartoryski party, he participated in the broken reassumption of the Piotrkow Tribunal. He then continued his home schooling in Warsaw.

On Keyserling's advice, in the spring of 1750, he went to Berlin for treatment with the famous physician J. Lieberkühn. The city and its upper classes made a negative impression on Stanislaw. An important event from his stay was meeting the English diplomat Charles Hunbury Wiliams. A new friend of the future king, seeing potential in the young man, decided to become his guardian and mentor and gave him much valuable advice. He was, mainly because of C. Rulhière, recognized as Stanislaus' demoralizer. The friendship deepened when Wiliams came to Warsaw in August of that year for an extraordinary parliament, which was broken up. At the time, Stanislaw was a deputy from the Zakroczym area.

In 1751, he was appointed as a lieutenant colonel, and shortly thereafter elected commissioner from the Lomza land for the next year's Crown Tax Tribunal. A year later (1752) he was elected a deputy to the Sejm from the Lomza region. At the time of the Sejm, his father bought for him the cession of the wealthy Przemyśl castle starosty (over 17,000 quarters).

While in Berlin, he met the British MP there, Charles Hanbury Williams. At his invitation, in 1751 he stayed for six weeks in Dresden, where Williams took up a new post. At the behest of his parents, Poniatowski traveled to Vienna in early 1752. Upon his return, he spent some time in the country, then traveled again, visiting Vienna, from where he left for the Netherlands with Williams. At the end of August, he arrived in Paris, where he gained the friendship of his father's acquaintance who ran a social salon where France's intellectual elite gathered, Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (he called her Maman). He was in a Paris prison for debt, from where he was rescued by his father's friends. At the end of February 1754, he arrived in England. There he traveled and corresponded with Charles Yorke, son of Lord Chancellor Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke. From his stay there, he gained knowledge of English political and literary culture. He remained an Anglophile, valuing Shakespearean theater above French theater.

Becoming increasingly politically connected with August Czartoryski, he supported the Czartoryski Familia in its dispute with the court over the unlawful division of the Ostrog Ordynacja estate carried out by the latter. In April 1755, on behalf of the Czartoryskis, he participated in the defeat of the reassumption of the Main Tribunal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Vilnius. With the support of the Familia, he took the office of a Lithuanian stolnik.

Thanks to the efforts of the Familia, he went to St. Petersburg as private secretary to British ambassador Charles Hanbury Williams, whom he had met earlier in Berlin. In June he met the wife of the heir to the tsarist throne, Catherine, the future Empress Catherine II of Russia, while in December of the same year he began an affair with her. Even then, Catherine promised him her support in achieving the Polish crown. Williams, eager to protect his secretary, sent him back to Poland in August 1756. Catherine required Chancellor Alexei Bestuzhev to demand that the Saxon court send Poniatowski again on a diplomatic mission. In 1757 Stanislav returned to St. Petersburg as a Saxon deputy, where he continued his affair with the future tsarina, the fruit of which was their daughter Anna Petrovna. On July 6, 1758, he was caught in flagranti by Catherine's husband Grand Duke Peter; the lovers were then shielded from his wrath by Franciszek Ksawery Branicki.

He was elected Crown deputy from the Livonian province to the 1756 Sejm, which, however, did not take place. He was a Lithuanian deputy to the 1758 Sejm from the province of Livonia In 1760, he was a deputy from the Sanok region to the broken Sejm. He was a deputy from the Bielsk region to the extraordinary Sejm of 1761, which was broken off by the Czartoryskis. This Sejm, which was to deal with monetary reform, was broken up with, among other things, the support of Poniatowski, who, as one of 43 deputies, signed a manifesto against its legality. After his father's death in August 1762, he inherited an inheritance calculated at nearly 4 million zlotys.

A military coup in St. Petersburg on July 9 brought Catherine II to power. On August 2, the Empress assured Poniatowski: I am sending Count Keyserling to Poland to make you king immediately after the death of the present one (August III). Catherine assured Poniatowski of her patronage, but forbade him to come to the Russian capital. Blinded by affection, he wrote letters to her in defiance of the prohibitions and assured her that he would rather renounce the crown than his beloved. The threat of marriage between Stanislav and Catherine and the unification of the two states was quite seriously feared by the Ottoman Empire at the time. Voltaire made such a wish to him in verse.

On October 5, 1762, as a deputy of the Mielnica region to the Sejm, he attacked, on behalf of the Czartoryski Family, the parliamentary seat of Count Aloysius Frederick Brühl, who, not being a Polish nobleman, illegally sat in the chamber of deputies. This provoked a sharp reaction from his father Henry von Brühl, a trusted minister of Augustus III, who, in view of this turn of events, was forced to break off the sejm session.

In November 1762, in a conversation with Gédéon Benoît, the secretary of the Prussian ministry, he encouraged King Frederick II of Prussia for general pacification, assuring him that the Prussian and Russian courts could gain unlimited influence in Poland, and that the Poles would more readily accept the conciliation of Prussia than of Russia, for which they had acquired a deep loathing.

The Czartoryski coup and the election

At the time, major magnate factions played a major role in the country, while neighboring powers Prussia, Austria and especially Russia, interested in imposing limited political reforms on the Republic, undermining the democracy of the nobility, had more and more say.

While August III was still alive, in 1763, the Czartoryski party (Familia) was preparing a coup d'état and the introduction of a representative of their camp to the Polish throne with the help of Russian troops. The Czartoryskis wanted to form a confederation that, with Russian help, would limit the role of August III and allow them to reform the state. In a letter Anectode historique intended for Catherine, Poniatowski outlined a plan to transform the Republic into a constitutional monarchy. He postulated the introduction, following the model of the British parliament, of a permanent parliament, where a majority vote would be taken. Executive power was to rest in the hands of the king and a 20-member Privy Council. Among other things, the plan called for the sale of royal estates and the transition of all officials to a salary paid from the treasury. On August 6, 1763, Catherine II's order to abandon the intentions of confederation during the lifetime of August III arrived.

Catherine II, in her letter to Frederick II of October 17, 1763, disclosed Poniatowski's candidacy, writing that of all the candidates for the Polish crown, he had the least possibility of attaining it ... and therefore he would be most grateful for it to those from whose hands he would receive the crown.

April 11, 1764 saw the signing of an agreement between Russia and Prussia regarding the election of a common candidate in the Republic. The choice fell on Stanislaw Antoni Poniatowski, the Lithuanian capitalist, who, as a former lover of Catherine II and a supporting figure of the Familia, was to guarantee submission to Russia. As the Tsarina wrote at the time: it is indispensable that we bring to the throne of Poland a Piast convenient to us, useful to our real interests, in a word, a man who would owe his elevation exclusively to us. In the person of Count Poniatowski, a Lithuanian capitalist, we find all the conditions necessary to please us, and as a result we have decided to elevate him to the throne of Poland.

At the request of Familia leaders Andrzej Zamoyski and August Aleksander Czartoryski, Russian troops entered the borders of the Republic. On April 20, 1764, he signed a letter of thanks to Catherine II for the introduction of Russian troops. Catherine II issued a special declaration stating that this action was to take care of all the freedoms of the Republic. On May 7, the Convocation Sejm, which, acting under the knot of the confederation and taking advantage of the absence of conservative opposition deputies, began deliberations in Warsaw and carried out limited political reforms. He became a consul of the Czartoryski confederation in 1764. Poniatowski was elected deputy of the Warsaw region to this Sejm. He was a member of the General Confederation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1764, the General Confederation of 1764. and a deputy to the Convocation Sejm (1764) from the Warsaw land.

A few days before the elevation, the chancellery of the Russian deputation issued a proclamation, praising Piast's candidacy: the art of ruling Poland can only be learned in Poland, and who is more capable of achieving it than he who from childhood has instilled her freedom, laws and statutes and learned to obey them. The declaration of the Prussian deputation proclaimed: both the benefit and the honor of your nation seem to demand that finally, by old custom, a candidate should be elected king who only has Poland as his homeland, who will not mix her interests with foreign ones and will revive the fame of the Jagiellons and Sobieski.

On September 7, 1764, with little participation by the nobility and in the presence of Russian troops (7,000 soldiers within the borders of the Republic), he was elected king of Poland in a de facto coup. His election was signed by only 5320 people, an unusually low number in this case. On September 13, the king swore a pacta conventa, pledging, among other things, to marry a Catholic woman.

On November 25, 1764, the Tsarina's name day, the Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland Wladyslaw Lubienski crowned him King of Poland at St. John's Collegiate Church in Warsaw. To the dismay of traditionalists, he appeared not in Polish attire, but in 16th century Spanish dress.

At the end of November, at the Coronation Diet, Russian deputy Nikolai Repnin demanded that the Republic introduce equal rights for adherents of the Orthodox Church and Protestantism, but Stanislav Augustus did not openly support these claims. He tried to remain neutral, not wanting to alienate the majority of the Catholic nobility.

The king intended to send envoys to all European courts to notify them of his election. However, the recognition of the new ruler of the Republic was delayed by France, Austria, the Bourbon courts and the Ottoman Empire, which regarded Poniatowski as a tool of Catherine II imposed by Russia on the Republic. Contributing to this, among others, was Grand Hetman of the Crown Jan Klemens Branicki, who sought to accept the mediation of the Bourbon and Austrian courts in order to guarantee the rights of the Republic. A joint speech by Russian and Prussian diplomats eventually prompted these states to recognize Stanislaw Augustus. In 1764, he was awarded the Russian Order of St. Alexander Nevsky.

In September and October 1765, it was intended to entrust Prince August Sulkowski with the mission of notifying the election and coronation of Stanislaus Augustus at Versailles, but Russia objected to sending a dignitary of this rank and known name.

King of Poland: 1764-1774

The king changed the custom of holding Senate Councils, convening them twice a week for closed-door sessions. In the first years of his reign, he established a substitute for government, the so-called King's Conference with Ministers. It consisted of four chancellors, August Czartoryski, Stanislaw Lubomirski, Jacek Bartlomiej Ogrodzki and the royal brothers. In September 1764, he began creating a royal chancellery, the so-called Cabinet, headed by Jacek Ogrodzki. He attempted to establish a permanent Polish diplomatic service. However, the Russians made him feel at every turn that he was merely an executor of instructions sent from St. Petersburg, and that he should not unduly exercise the rights of royal majesty, not being an independent ruler in his own country. It was then that the political paths of the king and his Czartoryski uncles began to diverge, intending only to use Russian aid to strengthen their position, which would give them the opportunity to later become independent and shed external protection. With his conduct, the king proved that he did not seek the independence of the Republic, realizing that, being imposed by force, he would not then have survived without the help of Catherine II.

In 1765, the Kingdom of Prussia considered the introduction of a general duty in the Republic as detrimental to its commercial interests and contrary to the Polish-Prussian treaties, and as a reprisal in April of that year established a customs chamber in Kwidzyn manned by posse guns, where the Prussians levied a duty of 10 to 15% on all goods floated to and from Gdansk. This caused a protest from the authorities of the Republic, and Stanislaw Augustus asked for help from the Russian side. After an unsuccessful attempt by the Prussians to corrupt the king (he was offered 200,000 thalers of a fixed salary from the income of the Kwidzyn chamber), Catherine II's diplomacy led to the suspension and liquidation of the general duty and the closure of the Kwidzyn chamber in June 1765. The king sent his thanks to the Empress of Russia, but the Republic lost a financial source.

Shortly after ascending to the throne, the king carried his intention to establish a Catholic synod in the Republic, independent of the Holy See.

Desiring to strengthen the country's defense system, the king founded the Knights' School on March 15, 1765, which was intended as an elite military academy to train future cadres for the army of the Republic. He himself became head of the Corps of Cadets of this institution, for the maintenance of which income from royal estates was allocated. Stanislaw Augustus allocated 1.5 million Polish zlotys from his own purse for this purpose, and later contributed 600,000 zlotys a year (200,000 from the royal coffers and 400,000 from the treasury of the Republic) for its upkeep. This made it possible to raise 200 cadets in a year. He also donated his Kazimierzowski Palace in Warsaw for the use of the Knights School.

In 1765, the ruler attempted to strengthen cities by establishing Commissions of Good Order in all provinces. They dealt with sorting out property rights in urban areas, revindicating illegally seized property of magistrates. They also abolished a number of magnate's jurisdictions, and by streamlining the collection of city taxes, cities gained new funds, now earmarked for paving streets, among other things.

Fulfilling Article 45 of his obligations signed in the pacta conventa, Stanislaw Augustus began carrying out monetary reform. A mint commission appointed by the king tackled the project of introducing new monetary rates. As late as 1765, mints that had been closed in the Republic for three generations were opened. On February 10, 1766, Grand Treasurer of the Crown Theodore Wessel issued a coinage universal, by which he introduced a new rate of gold. From now on, 80 zlotys were to be minted from the Cologne fine, and a zloty was divided into 4 silver or 30 copper pennies. The thaler was equal to 8 zlotys, and the ducat was equal to 16.75 zlotys. All foreign coins were withdrawn from circulation, as well as the so-called efraimiki - minted with the stamps of August III in Saxony by the occupying Prussian army.

On March 21, 1765 the King, together with Ignacy Krasicki and Franciszek Bohomolc, founded the Monitor magazine. Articles in it treated, among other things, the need to improve the plight of the peasantry and religious tolerance.

The demand to support Polish dissenters was included as a secret point in all Russian-Prussian alliance treaties since 1730.

The issue of equal rights for dissidents gained importance when, in July 1765, the Orthodox Bishop of Mogilev, George, presented a memorandum to the King on the persecution of the Orthodox population of the Republic. The head of Russian foreign policy, in a rescript to Repnin, pointed out to him that in the matter of dissidents Russia could only count on Stanislav Augustus, since the Czartoryski Family, which exerts influence on the king, would strongly oppose raising the issue. In September 1765, Repnin described in his diplomatic correspondence a conversation with the king, who pledged to support Russian plans to resolve the issue of dissidents and conclude an alliance, even foreseeing the possibility of civil war, for which the ruler is prepared to prove unlimited submission to the will of the Emperor. In his diplomatic correspondence, Nikita Panin recommended that the issue of equal rights for dissenters should become a pretext for future meddling in the internal affairs of the Republic, and the resolution of this issue should be the axis of Russian policy in the country. From the king's letter to Rzewuski, the contents of which were seen by the Prussian deputy in St. Petersburg, Victor Friedrich Solms, it appears that Stanislav Augustus advised the Russian side to raise the issue of equal rights for dissenters suddenly at the opening of the Sejm, so that the ruler could act as a peacemaker between the Poles and the Russian court and act as Russia's proxy. When the king tried to oppose Repnin's demands, the latter threatened to withdraw Russian troops to Grodno, which, in view of the majority of the nation's dislike of their monarch, could mean his dethronement.

In the summer of 1766, Poniatowski sent an envoy, Franciszek Rzewuski, to St. Petersburg to convey to Catherine II the king's confidential advice that the latter send Russian officers to Lithuania and the Crown to move the magnates and dissident rights activists designated by the ruler. Rzewuski handed them letters of recommendation issued by him on behalf of the king. Rzewuski's secretary Peter Maurice Glayre presented Stanislaw August's confidential request for cash to the Russians. Nikita Panin instructed to pay the Polish king 50,000 rubles in silver.

The king's plans to send an envoy to France caused concern on the Russian side. At a meeting with Repnin, Poniatowski veiled his loyalty to Catherine II, he said: I lose more than my life and crown, with the loss of the friendship and trust of the Empress. It turns out that the Empress does not know me enough if she can doubt my sincerity. The King tried unsuccessfully to get Austrian help, sending 4 memoranda in which he warned that Catherine II's real intention was to make Poland a Russian province, and that the restoration of the liberum veto was aimed at weakening the Republic.

The king took from Nikolai Repnin the sum of 11,000 ducats to agitate the sejmiks to elect royal supporters. The previous camp supporting reform in the Republic had disintegrated, and the royal, Czartoryski and old-republican camps were to appear at the upcoming Sejm.

The project of granting equal rights to dissenters was such a revolutionary break with the political tradition of the Republic that at the Czaplica Sejm even the Familia Czartoryski camp stopped supporting it. From then on, the stranded Stanislaw Augustus could count only on Russian support. The 1766 Sejm restored the principle of liberum veto and, against the diplomatic intervention of Russia, Prussia, Great Britain and Denmark, at the request of the Catholic bishops, confirmed the privileged position of the Catholic Church. During the session of the Sejm, Stanislaw Augustus, listening to the voices of the opposition, fainted on the throne and broke into tears when attempts were made to dissuade him from leaning on Russia. According to a Prussian diplomat, the lost cause of the majority vote made the monarch ill, so that he was unable to accept congratulations on the anniversary of his coronation. The king reassured Repnin that the law passed by the Sejm on the night of November 29-30, 1766, introducing majority voting at assemblies harmed the monarch himself the most, as he would henceforth not be able to break them so that they would not elect deputies unfavorable to the court.

On December 3, 1766, the king, in a letter to Catherine II, stressed submission to her recommendations on the issue of the liberum veto, explained his inability to carry out equal rights for dissidents and asked for the evacuation of Russian troops from Poland.

To support the equality of dissenters, also known as dissidents (which, by the way, was just a pretext for the intolerant Orthodox Catherine II), a forty-thousand-man corps of Russian troops entered. Under his protection, Nikolai Repnin established two dissenting confederations on March 20, 1767: the Slutsk Confederation for Lithuania and the Torun Confederation for the Crown. The King, in violation of established state laws, approved the appointment of Referendary Gabriel Podoski as Primate of Poland by the Russian envoy Nikolai Repnin, contrary to canon law.

The Russian deputy also set up a nationwide Radom confederation in June in defense of endangered Catholicism and noble liberties, against "Tzolko," as his opponents called the king. It was supported significantly by Prussia, eager to diminish Russia's influence and power. Repnin took advantage of the discontent of the conservative Catholic nobility, skillfully directing his blade against the person of the king, thereby further chessing Poniatowski and forcing him to do the will of Catherine II. The king succumbed to Repnin's pressure and included in his universal to the pre-Sejm assemblies demands for the conclusion of a guarantee treaty with Russia, the equality of dissenters and the restoration of the freedoms of the nobility. The monarch, threatened by the specter of losing his crown, relied entirely on the Russian deputy, whose acquiescence he expected even in less important matters of a financial nature such as the establishment of a snuff monopoly in the Republic.

Pope Clement XIII, concerned about Russia's support for the Radom, Slutsk and Torun confederations and the threat to the rights of the Catholic Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, established the Congregation for Polish Affairs in mid-1767.

Established under the knot of the Radom Confederation, the so-called Repnin Sejm in Warsaw dealt with the revision of the reforms carried out by the Convocation Sejm in 1764. The bone of contention remained the issue of the equality of dissenters, supported by Poniatowski. In a conversation with the bishop of Cracow, Kajetan Soltyk, Repnin let him know that the king himself had set his sights on deporting the bishop in order to get rid of the leader of the party opposed to the equality of dissenters.

Repnin decided to terrorize the deputies by kidnapping the leaders of the Radom Confederation on October 14: Bishop of Cracow Kajetan Soltyk, Bishop of Kiev Józef Andrzej Załuski, Crown Field Hetman Wacław Rzewuski and his son Severin. Stanislaw August's role in these events remains unclear to this day. Contemporaries accused him of having reported to Repnin himself about the preparations being made by the conspirators. On October 22, 1767, the king reviewed Russian troops holding maneuvers near Wola.

In addition to the treaty delegation, the King, together with Primate Gabriel Podoski, negotiated with Repnin, aiming to divide domestic policy issues into three categories: cardinal rights, the immutable principles of the Republic's political system, internal affairs, decided in accordance with the liberum veto, and economic matters voted by a majority. Nikita Panin, in a letter to a Russian deputy, assured him that with its free vote, and with such cardinal laws, Poland would remain forever, with its internal disorder, a political zero for us. In a ciphered addendum, he recommended that cardinal rights and rights for dissidents be brought into the Treaty of Guarantee, that the liberum veto be maintained throughout, so that ordinary assemblies could be broken in their entirety. The hijacking had the expected effect on the deputies. On February 24, 1768, the Republic signed the Treaty of Perpetual Friendship with Russia, by virtue of which it became a Russian protectorate. Catherine II, for her part, guaranteed the inviolability of the country's borders and internal system.

On February 26, cardinal rights were passed (including liberum veto, free election, the right to denounce obedience to the king, the exclusive right of the nobility to hold office, the total power of the nobility over the peasants - with aggravated liability in the event of murder, p. headship), along with the inviolable right of equality for dissidents. The resolution contributed to the consolidation of the old political order (with the exception of the attitude to dissenters), of which Russia became the guarantor. This greatly complicated the chance for broader reforms of the system.

At the time of the treaty's ratification, the Russians left the word Most Gracious next to the king, which became the reason for the ruler's interpellation to Repnin on April 23, 1768, indicating that it was written in the Grzymułtowski treaty.

Some of the nobility, opposed to de facto dependence on Russia, organized the Bar Confederation on February 29, 1768, which launched a war against Russia in defense of the independence of the Republic and the Catholic faith.

On March 24, 1768, at the Senate Council, even against the majority of senators, he was ready to sign a resolution to call in Russian troops to suppress the Bar Confederation, in order to show his zeal and unshakeable loyalty to Russia.

In October 1768, Turkey declared war on Russia and accused the Commonwealth of violating the Treaty of Carlowitz. Repnin proposed to the king a joint action against Turkey. However, Stanislaw Augustus refused, hiding behind the fact that he could not do so without the consent of the Sejm, and that this could only deepen the nation's hatred of him. In June 1769, he received 600 ducats from the Russian embassy's coffers for the upkeep of a detachment fighting the Bar Confederates in Lithuania. After Barzanians lost the battle of Dobra, some 500 captured confederates, stripped of their clothing and footwear, were rushed through Warsaw to appear before the king.

On February 2 and 17, 1770, the Bishop of Poznań, Andrzej Stanislaw Mlodziejowski, at the inspiration of a Russian deputy, issued pastoral letters on the occasion of the opening of the jubilee by the Pope, in which he stigmatized by the name of traitors to religion and the homeland all those who would dare to doubt the good and holy intentions of the King and share the opinion of the Confederates of Bar.

On Oct. 13, 1770, in Prešov, the General of the Bar Confederation issued an act dethroning Stanislav August Poniatowski and declared an interregnum.

At the beginning of 1771, Mazovian Voivode Pawel Michal Mostowski tried to interest Frederick II of Hesse in the Polish crown.

On May 16, 1771, the king concluded a treaty, by virtue of which the commander of the Russian army in Poland, General Ivan Weymarn, and Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, at the head of the royal court regiments and part of the guard, were to fight together against the confederates. The king received monetary subsidies from Russian ambassador Kasper von Saldern for this purpose.

In October 1771, the head of the Generalate, Michal Jan Pac, authorized Colonel Casimir Pulaski to kidnap the ruler and transport him to the fortress at Jasna Gora. Participating in the preparations for the kidnapping was the Apostolic Nuncio to the Republic Angelo Maria Durini. Late in the evening of November 3, 1771, on Miodowa Street in Warsaw, the king, returning in a carriage, was attacked by a detachment of confederates. Wounded in the head, he was abducted outside the city's ramparts. There the king managed to elicit remorse from the last of his escorting captors named Kuzma, who escorted him to a mill in Marymont. From there he was taken to the Castle by a detachment of royal guards under the command of Charles Coccei. The assassination was condemned by the bishops in pastoral letters, and commemorative works were written on the occasion by Stanisław Konarski and Adam Tadeusz Naruszewicz, among others. At the trial of the perpetrators of the kidnapping, which took place later, the king tried to mitigate the sentences passed on the confederates as much as possible.

The decision to partition Poland had already been made in St. Petersburg in mid-1771, but Russian Ambassador Saldern was instructed to keep the Poles in the dark. When the Russian ambassador threatened the king that he would withdraw Russian troops to Grodno, Stanislaw August issued a secret reverse on May 16, 1771, pledging to seek Her Imperial Majesty's advice in everything, to act in accordance with her, not to reward common friends without her consent, not to grant vacancies and starosties, etc. On September 18, 1772, Russia, Austria and Prussia notified the Republic of the fact of partition, demanding that a parliament be convened to carry out the cession. Resistance was broken by threats and the vexatious occupation of the country by the armies of the three powers. The leaders of the new Russian party in Poland formed a confederation under the staff of Adam Poninski in April 1773. The king refrained from joining it until the protest of Novgorod MP Tadeusz Reytan ceased. The king's resistance was sustained by Apostolic Nuncio Giuseppe Garampi. The king's persistence in opposition, which according to contemporaries was merely a game to preserve and increase his power, became a cause for derision when one of the Sulkowskis spoke up to the ruler: It is easy for Your Majesty to pretend to be a zuch, being safe on the throne. Your Majesty, you endanger neither goods, nor riches, nor honor, nor children because you do not have them.... After an ultimatum from Russian ambassador Otto Magnus von Stackelberg, threatening to ruin the country to the ground, the ruler joined the confederation, declaring to the senators that he did not want to be blamed for public misfortune.

The King and the Senate in early 1773 sent out notes to all European governments objecting to the violation of the rights of the Republic, asking them to intervene. The cession of the territory was approved by the Partition Sejm (1773-1775), convened in April 1773 in Warsaw. It appointed the Permanent Council to the King - the prototype of the Cabinet of Ministers. The king initially resisted the annexation demands of the diplomats of the three powers, holding a majority among the members of the Chamber of Deputies, but in the face of constant attacks from the Russian party prevailing in the Senate, he eventually gave in.

As a result of the approval of the partition treaty, the king obtained payment of his debts, the amount of which he gave as largely fictitious. The money was paid to fictitious creditors he had substituted, who were largely his retainers. He also received a high indemnity for renouncing his right to distribute starships. In carrying out the partition, Stanislaw Augustus took a sum of 6,000 ducats from the joint fund of the courts of Russia, Austria and Prussia, created to bribe the deputies of the delegation's Sejm. The Sejm delegation, as compensation for the royal estates seized by the partitioning states, granted him and his heirs the starosties of Bialocerkovsk, Bohuslavsk, Kanikovsk, Khmelnytsky, which Stanislaw August immediately distributed. Prince Jozef Poniatowski got the Khmelnytsky starosty, Franciszek Ksawery Branicki got the Bialocerkivsk starosty, his son-in-law Stanislaw Poniatowski got the Kanya and Bohuslav starosties.

The King did not oppose when the Partition Sejm silently adopted Clement XIV's cassation breve Dominus ac Redemptor, liquidating the Jesuit Order in the Republic. In order to organize the financial affairs of the liquidated order, the Crown and Lithuanian Distribution Commissions were created with reference to the King. On October 14, 1773, at the request of Stanislaw August Poniatowski and with the approval of the Russian extraordinary deputy and minister plenipotentiary Otto Magnus von Stackelberg, the Commission of National Education was established.

In September 1774, through Russian Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Minister Otto Magnus von Stackelberg, the King made a pact with the leaders of the Partition Sejm delegation.

King of Poland: 1775-1791

After the imposition of political guarantees on the Republic in 1775, the Russian ambassador Otto Magnus von Stackelberg became the de facto co-governor of the state. According to Russian intentions, all decisions of the monarch were to be consulted with and approved by him in advance. The Russian diplomat had an overwhelming influence on the distribution of offices; the awarding of the Orders of the White Eagle and St. Stanislaus, among others, depended on his decision.

A magnate opposition arose against the system of rule by the king and the Russian ambassador and the imposed Permanent Council, grouping the Czartoryskis, the Potocki family, Hetman Branicki, Seweryn Rzewuski and Michal Oginski. At some sejmiks, the resistance of magnate partisans was broken by the intervention of Russian troops. In Lithuania, the royal party gained the upper hand.

Together with Stackelberg, the king tried to limit the number of deputies at the new 1776 Diet, and opposed projects to peel them from the partitioned lands. The very fierce electoral competition in 1776 was won by the royal party thanks to, among other things, the assistance of Russian troops sent to the assemblies. In Ciechanow the soldiers used firearms and there were fatalities among the nobility. With the support of the Russian ambassador, he formed a confederation with the Permanent Council in 1776, so that, taking advantage of the cover of Russian troops that surrounded Warsaw, he was able to strengthen his own position at the confederated Sejm at the expense of the magnate ministers. Among other things, he then regained the right to grant all military charges.

At the request of Stanislaus Augustus, Pope Pius VI, through a breve of May 23, 1775 issued to Polish bishops, abolished some church holidays.

The 1776 Sejm strengthened the power of the Permanent Council over ministers, abolished the Military Commissions, limited the powers of hetmans, gave supremacy over the army to the Military Department of the Permanent Council, and granted the Commission of National Education complete control over the Jesuit estate. At this Sejm, the king declared himself a friend of Catherine II because he was a Polish patriot. In 1776, the King's Military Chancellery, an executive body of the monarch actually superior to the army and the Military Department of the Imperial Council, was established, thanks to which Stanislaw Augustus strengthened his position.

In the second half of 1777, the Russians demanded that the king recall the envoy to Turkey, Charles Boscamp-Lasopolsky, and the envoy in Paris, Peter Maurice Glayre. Catherine II did not allow the 1778 Diet to confederate, but most of its deputies were partisans of the king. In 1780, the Russian occupation corps left the territory of the Republic. Despite the fact that the king had a majority of deputies at subsequent sejms each time, he was unable to carry out even such minor changes as the establishment of funds for salt exploration, the establishment of officers' pensions, etc. In 1784 the king fell victim to the intrigue of the so-called Maria Dogrum affair, which at the 1786 Diet divided him with influential magnate families.

The annual income of Stanislaw August's treasury of 7 million Polish zlotys was far from sufficient to cover the ruler's large-scale artistic projects. The king never counted his expenses, which included so-called gratuitous salaries or dowries for ballerinas, so from the beginning of his reign he was forced to seek loans. They were given to him by his rich relatives, foreign, Warsaw and Cracow bankers and usurers. The king was not shy about incurring debts from his own courtiers and servants.

In 1766, a state mint was opened in Warsaw. Monetary reforms were carried out twice more in 1788 and 1794, at which time official weights and measures were introduced. Internal customs duties were abolished in 1766, and a uniform general duty was introduced in 1775. Many textile, cloth and leather manufactories were built, as well as glassworks, tanneries, mills, breweries, brickyards, factories for carriages, furniture, faience and weapons. In 1783 Prot Potocki founded the Black Sea Trade Company, which, in view of the Prussian blockade, handled the export of Polish goods across the Black Sea. A government company of woolen manufactories was also established at that time. In 1787 the king's brother, Primate Michał Poniatowski, established the National Linen Factory. The largest investments were the construction of the Oginsky Canal, connecting the Dnieper and Neman rivers, and the Royal Canal, connecting the Pripyat and Bug rivers. There was also rapid industrialization of the Grodno area by Lithuanian treasurer Tyzenhauz. Warsaw was enriched by the Łazienkowski Palace, built in the classicist style, the Stanislawski Axis, the Rabbit House, and the Royal Castle was rebuilt. Palaces were built in Szczekociny, Natolin. Some magnates voluntarily abolished serfdom, replacing it with rents (Andrzej Zamoyski). Warsaw was also encircled by a network of newly established royal granges, intended to revitalize the capital economically and supply the city with food products. An example of such a grange established on the initiative of Stanislaw August Poniatowski is the Sielce Grange, which still exists today.

Stanislaw Augustus advised Poles sending their sons for further education abroad to send them to St. Petersburg, where at the enlightened court of Catherine II they could acquire refinement and complete their education.

In 1765 the king founded the first Polish secular university, the School of Knights, training future cadres for the army of the Republic, and was its head until 1794. In 1766, on his initiative, the School of Oriental Languages was established in Istanbul, training cadres for Polish diplomacy. In 1773, thanks to the approval of the Russian ambassador Otto Magnus von Stackelberg, a school dependent only on the king and the Sejm was established Commission of National Education - the world's first central institution for education, which took over the staff and buildings of the cancelled Jesuit schools. In 1775, meanwhile, the Society for Elementary Books was established to develop textbooks. In 1777, Polish astronomer Marcin Poczobutt-Odlanicki created the new (now defunct) constellation Ciolus Poniatowski to honor the king.

The Age of Enlightenment was a period of great development of culture and art in Poland. The king was a great patron of science, art and literature, organizing Thursday dinners to which he invited scholars, writers and poets. The royal art collection was overseen by the painter Marcello Bacciarelli. The king was the initiator of the creation of the Monitor magazine, which was published starting March 21, 1765. On his initiative a few months later (November 19, 1765) a public national stage was established. The poet and historian Adam Tadeusz Naruszewicz, the poet Stanislaw Trembecki, the satirist and comedy writer Franciszek Zablocki, the creator of the national theater Wojciech Boguslawski and others were frequent guests of the king. Among the most prominent representatives of the Age of Enlightenment were: Bishop Ignacy Krasicki, Father Stanisław Staszic, Hugo Kołłątaj, Stanisław Konarski.

The king left behind, one of the largest, third most valuable cartographic collections in Europe. Cartographer Charles de Perthées worked for 20 years to draw detailed maps of the Republic.

During his reign, the King built up an outstanding painting collection of 2289 paintings, which included works by Rembrandt van Rijn (13 items including The Polish Rider, The Scholar at the Pulpit and The Girl in the Picture Frame), Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens (3 items), van Dyck (3), Bruegel (14), Cranach, Holbein (3), Teniers (5), Titian, Guido Reni, Veronese, Per Kraffta, de Largillière, Angelika Kauffmann, Bacciarelli, Anton Raphael Mengs, Jacob Jordaens ("Satyr playing the flute"), Fragonard, David, Gabriël Metsu. The collection also included 700 sculptures (including 176 marble ones), 1,800 drawings, 70,000 engravings, as well as porcelain, furniture and miniatures. This collection was sold off or looted after his abdication and the Third Partition. Some of the paintings related to Polish history were ordered by Czar Nicholas I to be burned in 1834. The 39 most valuable works from the King's collection became the beginnings of one of the finest collections of paintings in the British Isles - the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. To date, about 600 paintings have been located from the King's collection, of which only about 260 are in Polish collections (Royal Łazienki - 116, Royal Castle in Warsaw - 106, National Museum in Warsaw - 54).

On the king's orders, in 1779-1783 Dominik Merlini built a new building of the royal library at the castle in Warsaw, which housed the king's collection, estimated in 1798 at 15-20 thousand volumes. After the king's death, the collection passed to Prince Józef Poniatowski, who sold the books along with astronomical and mathematical instruments, medals (54 thousand pieces), minerals and ancient monuments to Tadeusz Czacki. The latter donated them to the library of the Krzemieniec High School. After the November Uprising, by order of Czar Nicholas I, these collections were seized by the Russians and taken to Kiev, where they became the nucleus of the Kiev University Library.

Stanislav Augustus was accepted as a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in June 1778, and in October 1791 he was admitted to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

During his educational journey to the West in 1753-1754, he came into contact with the freemasonry movement. After his accession to the throne, Western freemasonic circles treated him either as a member of a lodge or an exponent of its ideas.

As early as September 1768, he participated in the meetings of the Virtuous Sarmatian lodge. On June 24, 1770, he contributed 2,000 zlotys to the ceremony of the official opening of the headquarters of this lodge (installation) in the jurisprudence of Bielino. However, it was not until 1777 that he was formally admitted to Freemasonry of the Strict Observance rite in the Charles Lodge under the Three Helmets. He immediately obtained all degrees of initiation including the highest, the eighth, for which he paid 66 and a half thalers in gold. He took the monastic name Salsinatus (an anagram from Stanislaus) Eques a Corona vindicata. His accession to Freemasonry was kept strictly secret, with only a few freemasons of the seventh and eighth degrees in the Republic knowing about it. Among other things, the king signed a pledge of obedience to the head of the Strict Observance, Prince Ferdinand Brunswick. The ruler also took an active part in the work of the Warsaw Rosicrucian circle. On May 8, 1788, Catherine's lodge under the North Star changed its name to Stanislaus Augustus under the North Star in his honor.

In 1780, Russian troops left the territory of the Republic, with only Ambassador Otto Magnus von Stackelberg remaining. The magnates remained in fierce opposition to the king. The King sent to Catherine II a draft of a Polish-Russian alliance that he had drawn up, framed in the form of the so-called Souhaits du Roi (Wishes of the King). It envisaged a joint appearance of the Republic and Russia against Turkey. Compensation to the RP for its participation in the war was to be territorial acquisitions in the form of Bessarabia and some port on the Black Sea. In order to negotiate directly, the king began efforts to meet with Catherine. The opportunity soon presented itself when the Empress went to meet Emperor Joseph II in Kherson. On the way, she stopped in Ukraine. Accordingly, the king set out to meet Catherine with a retinue of 350 people, visiting some 400 towns along the way. However, the ruler had to wait as long as 7 weeks for a 1-day meeting with the Empress of Russia, when the latter meanwhile conferred in Kiev with the leaders of the magnate malcontents, led by Stanislaw Szczesny Potocki. During a meeting with Tsarina Catherine II on May 6, 1787 in Kiev on a galley moored on the Dnieper, the king proposed a close alliance of the two countries in the war against Turkey. A 45,000-strong army of the Republic, rearmed by Russia, was to take part. Catherine partially agreed. After a while, a Polish-Lithuanian corps of 12,000 was formed under the leadership of Grand Crown Hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki. The Young Poland writer Tadeusz Micinski based the plot of his novel Wit on these events.

On his way back, the king visited Krakow, where he stayed for two weeks, stopping at Wawel Castle (June 16 - 29). During his stay he held many meetings, receptions, visited historical monuments and churches, took part in services (including the traditional expiatory procession of Polish kings from Wawel to Skałka), thus wishing to make up to the city for the fact that his coronation - contrary to custom - took place years ago in Warsaw.

The king, seeing the growing sympathies of Poles for Sweden and Turkey, sought to stoke anti-Turkish sentiment, which was to be served by the founding of the Jan III Sobieski Monument in Warsaw in September 1788. However, his propaganda was unsuccessful.

On October 6, 1788, the Sejm, later known as the Great Sejm, was convened in Warsaw with the consent of Russia. It began the thorough work of reforming the system. The king drew up a preliminary draft of a Polish-Russian alliance at the behest of Stackelberg, hoping to gain a margin of freedom from Catherine II in deciding the internal affairs of the Republic through joint action with Russia against Turkey. However, Russia did not care about teasing Prussia at a time when it was engaged in wars with Turkey and Sweden, and it was undoubtedly against the interests of the Russian empire to activate the Republic on the international stage. As early as September 28, 1788, the Russian ambassador notified Stanislaw August that the project of a Polish-Russian alliance was unrealistic in the current situation.

On October 13, a declaration by Prussian deputy Ludwig Heinrich Buchholtz was read to the Diet, in which he warned the assembled against tying themselves to a military alliance with Russia against Turkey, offering instead a Polish-Prussian alliance guaranteeing the Republic's wholeness and independence, giving formal consent to the country's internal reforms.

Facing fierce opposition from deputies, the king was forced to withdraw his draft alliance from the Speaker's staff. When Russian ambassador Stackelberg threatened the Diet that overthrowing the system guaranteed by Catherine II would be tantamount to breaking the 1775 treaty, the king addressed the Diet, where he warned against breaking with Russia.... you have no potency of any kind whose interests are less in dispute with ours than Russia's.

The deputies of the Patriotic Party, supported by Prussian diplomacy, began dismantling the instruments of Russian rule over the Republic. On January 19, 1789, the Sejm abolished the Imperial Council. Stanislaw August Poniatowski thus lost any real influence over the executive power in the Republic, which he exercised in consultation with the Russian ambassador through this body. The opposition backed by Prussia stripped the king of the right to appoint officers and the direction of diplomacy, entrusting them to the Deputation of Foreign Interests, which was selected by the Sejm and accountable to it. The king still tried to salvage the remnants of Russian influence by proposing a military alliance between Russia and Austria. Catherine II was not yet interested in a war with Prussia, and Austria only wanted to secure possession of Galicia by concluding such an alliance. The king tried unsuccessfully to sabotage the conclusion of a Polish-Prussian alliance, trying to get the Sejm to sign a trade treaty with Prussia first, on terms more favorable than those of 1775. In the end, he acceded to the majority opinion and supported the conclusion of this alliance. In March 1790, a Polish-Prussian alliance targeting Russia was signed. The result was a rapprochement between the king and the Patriotic Party camp and joint work on the Basic Law. On September 13, 1790, the Four-Year Sejm passed a resolution to restore the king's right to confer offices, which had been taken away from him in 1775.

Since 1789, the king was consulted on changing the state system. The leaders of the Patriotic Party presented him with projects prepared in the Deputation for the Form of Government, the so-called Principles for the Form of Government, but they were an expression of Ignacy Potocki's republican ideology, so Stanislaw Augustus, being a supporter of constitutional monarchy, accepted them with reluctance. From May to July 1790, the Italian Scipione Piattoli, who remained in the King's service, submitted to him the legislative drafts prepared by Ignatius Potocki, to which the King made amendments, but they were scarcely taken into account. In November 1790 a second set of deputies was elected, increasing the number of royal supporters in the Sejm. Beginning in December 1790, Stanislaw Augustus undertook to draft changes to the political system of the Republic. Until March 1791, the king, through Piattole, presented successive versions of the new Government Act to Ignacy Potocki, Stanisław Małachowski and Hugon Kołłątaj. At the end of March, Kollataj drafted a compromise edition of the text, which became the basis of the Government Act of May 3, 1791.

On May 3, 1791, the Sejm passed a new state constitution. In accordance with the provisions of the constitution, the king stood at the head of the Guard of Rights, thus gaining leadership of Polish diplomacy and the state's foreign policy, as well as control over the activities of the executive branch.

On April 13, 1792, Piattoli presented Stanislaw Augustus with a plan to establish a dictatorship on the first anniversary of the May 3 Constitution, which was intended to strengthen the monarch's power, in line with a note from the Elector of Saxony, who advocated increased powers for the king as a condition for his assumption of the Polish throne. However, these plans were abandoned. Rumors circulated in the capital about an assassination attempt being prepared against the king's person in Warsaw on May 3, 1792.

Against the change in the state system intended by the Constitution, a small group of Crown and Lithuanian magnates formed the Targowitz Confederation on May 14, 1792, which called for the overthrow of the monarchical system of the Republic, introduced by the provisions of the May 3 Constitution. The confederates turned for military assistance to Catherine II, who, still treating the Polish state as a Russian protectorate, decided on May 18 to invade the borders of the Republic of Poland by Russian troops without declaring war. Stanislaw Augustus was the main author of the text of the May 3 Constitution.

King of Poland: 1792-1795

Despite warnings from the Polish envoy in St. Petersburg, Antoni Augustin Debola, about the hostile intentions of Empress Catherine II toward the Republic, the king did not allow himself to think about the possibility of Russian intervention. The king's attempts to establish negotiations with the Russian side failed. On May 18, 1792, Russian troops entered the Republic. The Four-Year Sejm entrusted Stanislaw August with the supreme command of the army and on May 29 zalimit its deliberations. The Sejm granted the king 2 million Polish zlotys for the war expedition. Of the 600,000 zlotys given to him, which the ruler did not manage to use for military purposes, only 327 red zlotys were returned after the war.

The Polish-Russian war began, which lasted from May until almost the end of July. King Stanislaw August Poniatowski became Grand Master of the Order of Virtuti Militari, which he established, and by law a Knight of the Grand Cross of that order. The Crown army, struggling against the vast superiority of the enemy, achieved several successes (especially on the Ukrainian front, where the King's nephew Prince Joseph Poniatowski was in command), while the Lithuanian army, as a result of the treachery of its commander (Prince Louis Wirtemberski), offered virtually no resistance to the Russians.

Given the disproportion of forces and the practical impossibility of a defensive campaign, the king (as commander-in-chief), in accordance with the opinion of the Guard of Rights, decided to abandon resistance and join (by signing an accession) the Targowitz Confederation on July 23, 1792. Two days earlier, he received a letter in which Tsarina Catherine urged him to join the confederation. The king rejoined the Targowitz Confederation five weeks later (August 25, 1792).

In his private correspondence with Catherine II, the ruler was mindful that further continued armed resistance could result in the Empress demanding repayment of the king's private debts of some 30 million zlotys, paid by the Empress into the monarch's private coffer. Deprived of armed assistance from his Prussian ally, the king turned to Catherine II by letter, proposing to her a perpetual alliance and his eventual abdication in favor of the tsarina's grandson, Konstantin. In response, the empress reiterated her support for the Targowitz confederates and demanded that the king join the confederation. On July 23, the Guard of Rights responded in favor of Poniatowski's accession to the Targowitz confederation. Supporting this decision, Hugon Kollataj said: "Today still, Merciful Lord, it is necessary to join the Targowicka confederation, not tomorrow; every moment is dear, because the blood of the Poles is pouring over it." On July 24, the ruler submitted the requested accession to the Targowitz Confederation to Russian deputy Yakov Bulgakov.

Stanislaw August Poniatowski had already been secretly negotiating the terms of the cessation of hostilities with the Russian deputy Yakov Bulgakov, who remained in Warsaw, through the intermediary of the Lithuanian sub-chancellor Joachim Litavor Chreptowicz. Following the new instructions of the Vice Chancellor of the Russian Empire, Ivan Andreevich Ostermann, the Russian deputy edited the final version of the act presented to him of the king's accession to the Targowitz confederation. The king, complying with the demand of the St. Petersburg court, did not convene the Guard of Rights, the constitutional body of the state, but presented his decision at a meeting of the Republic's ministers on July 23, 1792.

Upon hearing this, Prince Jozef Poniatowski sent him back his orders of the White Eagle and Saint Stanislaus. The monarch's decision was met with opposition and outraged Warsaw residents. On July 24 and 25, demonstrations of the patriotic bourgeoisie and nobility took place in the Saxon Garden, where shouts of Constitution even without a king were raised! On July 25, Sejm marshals Stanislaw Malachowski and Kazimierz Nestor Sapieha lodged solemn protests with the land records at the Royal Castle in Warsaw against the king's recognition of the Targowitz confederation as the legitimate authority of the Republic.

At the same time, the king entered into correspondence with Russian generals Mikhail Kachovsky and Mikhail Krechetnikov, asking them strenuously to seize Warsaw as soon as possible. Fearing the resistance of the Warsaw garrison against the encroaching Russian army and the troops of the haggard army, on August 1 the king ordered Eustachy Sanguszko to lock up the heavy weapons at the Warsaw Arsenal.

Bargain Confederates then occupied all the provinces of the Republic. The Prussians, breaking the covenant, entered Greater Poland in January 1793.

Even before the Second Partition, the entire Republic was occupied: Greater Poland was occupied by Prussia, Warsaw by Russia. The military occupation by foreign powers and the rule of the haggard government (mainly representatives of the Hetman party at the Great Sejm) were very oppressive, so discontent and rebellion quickly grew among the population. Conspiracies were formed against the occupiers.

On January 23, 1793, the Second Partition of the Republic of Poland was signed in St. Petersburg by Prussia and Russia. Austria did not participate in the Second Partition of Poland, as it was preoccupied with war with its neighbors (especially revolution-stricken France). Prussia wanted to make amends for its losses incurred in fighting France, while Russia wanted to make amends for its losses in fighting Turkey. On May 12, 1793, the king sent a letter to Catherine II reiterating his desire to abdicate, as he saw no way to serve his country with honor. The Empress, in a letter to Russian envoy Jakob Sievers, made the arrangement of abdication in accordance with the King's wishes conditional on the end of the current crisis. The king tried unsuccessfully to reach an agreement with Sievers behind the backs of the leaders of the Targowitz confederation. Stanislaw August's goal was to return to the Polish-Russian alliance, and therefore, in his talks with the Russian diplomat, the ruler excused himself that during the Four-Year Sejm, he was forced to take steps against this political line.

Faced with a banking crisis in Poland in 1793, the king, being in debt for more than 30 million zlotys, lost his ability to obtain new credit. After a month's hesitation, Stanislaw August, urged by Sievers, finally agreed to go to Grodno (he left Warsaw on April 4, 1793), accepting 20,000 zlotys from the Russian envoy for travel expenses. The monarch then told one of his trusted courtiers that he would certainly sign the partition treaty presented to him, without stopping to publicly proclaim that he would never do so.

In June 1793, the last Sejm was convened in Grodno. A Russian deputy forced the king to issue universals for the sejm on May 3, 1793. On July 12, the king was forced to appoint 31 members to a parliamentary deputation tasked with negotiating with Sievers.

In order to carry out the partition treaties smoothly, the Grodno Confederation was formed by the majesty of Stanislaw August on September 15, 1793, on the initiative of Russian deputy Jakob Sievers. The Sejm, after selecting treaty deputies to carry out the Second Partition, carried out the cession of the territory of the Republic to Russia on July 22, and to Prussia on the night of September 23-24, 1793. The Grodno Sejm also addressed the issue of royal debts, which were estimated at 33 million Polish zlotys. Sievers imposed on the Sejm a resolution in which the treasuries of the Crown and Lithuania undertook to satisfy the monarch's creditors by installments. At the sejm, the king opted to set only a lower limit on the size of the Republic's army. As he argued: put it out of his mind, so that we could maintain such an army as we would be able to resist the strength of our neighbors. Stanislaw Augustus returned to Warsaw on December 3, 1793.

As a result of the collapse of Warsaw banks in 1793, the indebted king was deprived of credit and forced to accept a donation from the Russian embassy's coffers of 400,000 zlotys in cash. After signing the imperial treaty with Russia, the king hugged Sievers twice, hugging him to his chest and shedding tears of joy.

On January 7, 1794, under pressure from Catherine II, the King issued a universal in which he banned the wearing of badges of the Order of Virtuti Militari, ordering holders to return them along with their diplomas to the Permanent Council. At the same time, he announced that he would send an envoy to the tsarina with expressions of deepest regret that the unhappiest Poland could accede, even for a moment, to the sentiments of no variety of independent, accompanied by the most thorough trust in the spankability and protection of Great Catherine.

In March 1794, a national uprising broke out against Russia and Prussia, led by General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who was a participant in the American War of Independence in 1775-1783 and commanded at the Battle of Dubienka in 1792.

Stanislaw Augustus, in a letter to Father Joseph Poniatowski dated March 19, considered it his duty to stick with the Russians. Having learned of Kosciuszko's actions, he considered him a rebel whom he must fight as an ally of Russia. On April 2, the king signed a universal against the uprising, prepared by the Justice Department of the Imperial Council. In this act, the king condemned the French Revolution, called on the nation to come to its senses and warned against believing in French aid.

After the Warsaw insurrection, when the Russian embassy in Warsaw was captured and documents were seized proving that Stanislaw August's entourage received a fixed Russian salary - the king effectively became a hostage of the insurgents and locked himself in the castle.

Kosciuszko ordered that the king's mint be taken away and that the ruler's image be removed from minted coins, and he also ruled that he could not enter the authorities of the uprising.

On May 8, 1794, the king went to Praga to see the fortification works. At the same time, a rumor was spread in Warsaw that the king was fleeing the capital and about the arrival of Russian and Prussian troops near the city. The crowd overran the Arsenal and captured weapons. It was feared that Stanislaw Augustus, following the example of Louis XVI, was preparing an escape to the enemy. Forewarned, the ruler returned to the castle, but before entering he was met with agitation from the crowd. Amid shouts Long live the king, but let him not flee! and Let the traitor die! someone fired inaccurately at the monarch. At the last moment Onufry Kicki picked up the shotgun. From then on, the ruler was assigned an assistant consisting of townspeople. Under pressure from the street, the event hastened the trial of the haggard and their execution on May 9.

After the massacre of Prague, he entered into capitulation negotiations with Alexander Suvorov, who allowed the king to retain a 1,000-strong guard. On December 1, 1794, he abolished the School of Knights. Catherine II demanded his departure to Grodno. On January 7, 1795, the ruler left Warsaw under a Russian military escort. On January 12 he arrived in Grodno, where he was directly supervised by General Bezborodko.

After the fall of the uprising, on October 24, 1795, the Third Partition of the Republic was signed by Russia, Austria and Prussia. The First Republic ceased to exist as a state. Tsarina Catherine II demanded Poniatowski's abdication, the act of which, with some changes, he signed on November 25, 1795 (Catherine II's name day) and on the 31st anniversary of his coronation. He received a fixed salary from the tsarina. On January 15, 1797, the partitioning powers concluded a convention under which Russia and Austria each took over 2

After the abdication (1796-1798)

After the death of Empress Catherine II (November 17, 1796), the Russian throne was assumed by Emperor Paul I Romanov, who was sympathetic to Poniatowski and invited him to St. Petersburg. He arrived there on March 10 and took up residence in the Marble Palace. This was a residence built in 1768-1785 for Catherine II's favorite Grigory Orlov. Its builder was Antonio Rinaldi. The palace was finally finished after the death of Orlov, who was never given the chance to live in it. Pink Siberian marbles were used for the interior and facade of the building. At the time of its construction, the Marble Palace was inferior in splendor only to the Winter Palace, but after the arrival of Stanislav Augustus, it became apparent that the residence required extensive internal repairs due to the prevailing dampness and the lack of appropriate furniture and furnishings. The Marble Palace was the king's residence during the winter months. In the summer, he would move to the Stone-Oster Palace on Stone Island.

The king was quickly drawn into St. Petersburg court life. At his residence he received aristocracy, court dignitaries, representatives of the diplomatic corps and numerous Polish guests, including participants in the Kosciuszko uprising released by the tsar, whom he supported financially. He participated in the coronation ceremony of Paul I in Moscow. He died in St. Petersburg on February 12, 1798 by a sudden death after drinking the contents of a teacup. The cause of death was an apoplectic attack. At the time of his death he was heavily in debt. He was buried in St. Catherine's Church in St. Petersburg, where his sarcophagus remained until the temple was closed in 1938, at which time he was handed over by the Soviet authorities to Poland and buried in secret in July of the same year in the crypt of the Holy Trinity Chapel in his hometown of Volchin. The site, now located on Belarusian territory, was chosen due to the fact that the future monarch was baptized there. The fact that the sarcophagus had been deposited in the Volchin chapel was soon made public, as the Soviet authorities officially informed the Polish side of the transfer of the body.

The fate of the mortal remains

In September 1939, after the Red Army entered the town, the tomb was looted and the sarcophagus destroyed. It remained in such a constantly deteriorating condition until 1987, when conservators from the Grodno museum cleaned up the ruins. In 1988, alleged fragments of the remains of Stanislaw Augustus' coffin and his vestments collected in the chapel were once again transferred to Poland by the Soviet authorities. On December 15, 1988, they were brought from Minsk by a delegation led by Aleksandr Gieysztor. They were initially displayed at the Palace on the Island in the Royal Baths Park, and then deposited at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The proposal to bury the king in the Archcathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Warsaw met, among other things, opposition from the church hierarchy due to his membership in Freemasonry.

Finally, his solemn funeral at St. John's Archcathedral took place on February 14, 1995. The remains, brought from Belarus, were buried in a symbolic tomb in the cathedral's basement. The author of the design of the king's tomb was Robert Kunkel.

Earlier, in 1989, a small amount of soil from the king's burial crypt was deposited by Marek Kwiatkowski in Lazienki Park, at the site of the king's planned mausoleum (north of the western pavilion of the Palace on the Isle). In 1992, a bronze bust of Stanislaw August Poniatowski was unveiled at the site (moved to the vicinity of the White House in 2013). There is now a memorial plaque there.

Stanislaw Augustus was also a political writer and speaker, memoirist, translator, epistolographer and patron of the arts. In his literary works he usually used one of several pseudonyms: Eques Salsinatus; Milosnicki; Salisantus Magnus; Un bon citoyen.

More important speeches and works

Stanislaw August's litteraria: the fable Celestyn reformat warszawski and the poem Invocatio Musarum (written in prose divided into poems) and a draft of a poem on the abolition of the Jesuit order, from a now defunct portfolio of royal litteraria (kept before 1944 in the National Library, ref. 262) announced S. Tomkowicz, Stanislaw August as a poet, "Czas" 1879 no. 83-84 and separately Kraków 1879; prer. From the age of Stanislaw August (brulions of some literary works preserved in the manuscript of the Czartoryski Library, ref. 938. Other poetic works were also attributed to the king (W. Gomulicki: Poets on the Polish throne, Kłosy z polskiej niwy, Warsaw 1912).

In addition, Stanislaw Augustus also left official writings: instructions, circular letters, ordinances, universals - see Estreicher XXV (he is credited as the author of No. 46 of 1769 (signed with a pseudonym: Miłośnicki).

Manuscripts of his Sejm speeches and addresses have been preserved, including: a collection of speeches from 1761-1793 in the Archiwum Główny Akt Dawnych (Archive of the Kingdom of Poland, ref. 207), 12 speeches from 1773-1781 with the King's own handwritten remarks in the Ossolineum manuscript, ref. 5832

Translations

The above register of Stanislaus Augustus' correspondence includes only the more important surviving items announced in print. Poniatowski's vast collection of official and private correspondence was gathered in the Royal Archives. After the king's death, a major part of this archive, inherited by Prince Stanislaus Poniatowski, was taken to Lichtenstein Castle near Vienna - this part is still considered irretrievably lost.

Over the years, different judgments have been formulated about the reign of Stanislaw Augustus.

Evaluation of modern

Contemporaries repeatedly accused the king of an immoral lifestyle, insufficient attention to state affairs, entrusting high functions at court to foreigners, lack of ceremonial dinners staged for senators and dignitaries, falling into debt, submissiveness and weakness of character.

King Gustav III of Sweden, who himself staged a successful coup in 1772, commenting on events in the Republic in 1768, wrote in his diary: Two councils were held in Warsaw; the result was that the king and the senate gave themselves up to the Imperator. This is a disgrace. Ah, Stanislaw Augustus, thou art not a king, and not even a citizen! Die in defense of the independence of the fatherland, but do not accept the unworthy yoke in the venerable hope of preserving the shadow of power, which will be abolished by a single decree of Moscow.

According to Swedish MP and Minister Plenipotentiary Lars Engeström: He was completely lacking in character and energy. He was extravagant, not knowing how to be magnificent. He did not like to give, but he did not know how to refuse. He was not malicious, but took childish revenge in small things. He was not good, but so weak that he could often pretend to be good. I don't know if he had as much personal courage as his brothers, but he lacked courage of spirit and allowed himself to be led by all who surrounded him, who approached him, for the most part women, or the influence of their sex or stronger fortitude yielding to them. With the exception of only the prince primate, who was highly energetic. The predilection for women and flirtatiousness was in him the strongest-prevalent passion.

According to some assessments, the king lacked masculine energy and decisiveness, and in his powerlessness he often cried to convince his interlocutors of his best intentions.

According to Jędrzej Kitowicz, Stanisław August Poniatowski behaved towards Catherine II like a nobleman from Podlasie or Łków, who considers himself equal to the lord governor and delights in the fact that the lord governor sometimes says "mospanie brat" to him, although he is sometimes beaten with a whip by the lord governor's under-steward or driven to the enlistment.

Empress Catherine II treated Stanislaw August with contempt. Wanting to remove Stanislaw August from the throne and from the capital, she entrusted the supervision of the interned monarch to Nikolai Repnin, the latter advised to take him outside the borders of the Republic, arguing that: numerous examples have confirmed to us that this ruler has always stood across our interests, no organized enterprise against us has gone on without the king and under his main leadership.

Russian diplomats spoke overwhelmingly negatively about Stanislav Augustus. Russian ambassador Kasper von Saldern characterized the king as follows: warm-hearted, but incomprehensibly weak.... Reason neither embracing much, nor confident, unable to judge and taming his imagination. Someone must always guide him, impose a resolution on him and urge him to perform. Recalling the role the king played at the Grodno Sejm in 1793, which approved the Second Partition of Poland, Russian MP Jacob Sievers wrote that the king was too wicked and covetous of pleasures, so that he would not relent in spite of all contrary fancies, threats.

According to the testimony of an eyewitness, British diplomat James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury, Russian MP Repnin publicly humiliated the king. When the ruler wanted to stop the start of the dances, Repnin replied that this could not be, and if the king did not come to the hall, I will order the dances to begin without him. Once when the conversation turned to the fate of the kings of Poland, who, expelled from the country, were forced to work as craftsmen, Stanislav Augustus raised that in such a case his fate would be hopeless, because he does not know any craft. Repnin replied cogently: after all, Your Majesty is an excellent dancer. The King sought to strengthen the position of the Republic through an alliance with Russia. He advised Poles sending their sons abroad to send them to the enlightened court of Catherine II, where they could gain familiarity and complete their education.

At the time of the abdication, the sum of royal debts had reached 40 million Polish zlotys. This was an amount sufficient to maintain a 120,000-strong army.

The ruler himself was critical and reflective of himself, his works and his own hopeless situation. The Earl of Malmesbury cites a conversation with the ruler when he tried to convince him of the fruitlessness of his efforts with the words: from all these devices I wanted to bring in, nothing good would result for the country. ...If I had been allowed to remove myself, I would have made my nation happy. During his hospitality at the home of Michal Kleofas Oginski in 1793, the king cried before him, saying: such is already my sad fate! I have always desired the good of my country and I have done evil to it alone.

Evaluation of historiography

Nineteenth-century historians, including Joachim Lelewel and Tadeusz Korzon, spoke overwhelmingly negatively about Stanislaw Augustus, contributing to the circulating image of a traitor-targovich. Critics of Stanislaw Augustus pointed out that he capitulated prematurely during the Polish-Russian War of 1792, joined the Targowica and voluntarily abdicated in favor of the main partitioner.

The first to partially but significantly rehabilitate the king was Walerian Kalinka, who shed new light on the figure of Stanislaw Augustus and emphasized his merits, based on reliable queries. More sympathy was shown to the king in their works by twentieth-century historians Emanuel Rostworowski, Jerzy Michalski and Zofia Zielińska, who pointed out that Stanislaw Augustus was in fact a pragmatic and soberly calculating politician, putting the raison d'etat above personal interests, determined to carry out the reform of the Republic, a skilled diplomat, knowledgeable in languages, displaying great personal culture, hardworking, and shying away from parties and alcohol.

Some authors have pointed out that his contribution to Polish culture became the basis for defending national identity during the more than 100-year period of partition. According to Andrzej Zahorski, the rise of the king's "black legend" was linked to the need to find a scapegoat after the collapse of the First Republic.

The head of the Order of the White Eagle since 1764 (awarded in 1756), the Order of St. Stanislaus since 1765 and the Order of the Military Cross (Virtuti Militari) since 1792, and as such awarded its Grand Cross. In 1764 he became a Chevalier of the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle and the Russian Order of St. Andrew (conferred in 1764, presented in 1787 already with diamonds, and awarded with a chain in 1797), and in 1797 of the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky (according to the new law of 1797, bachelors of the first Russian order were also awarded the second counting from the date of receipt of the first).

As early as 1766, when the Czartoryskis attempted to bind the Republic to Austria through the king's marriage to an Austrian archduchess, Repnin forced the ruler to pledge that he would not enter into any marriage without the advice and consent of Russia. He remained single for the rest of his life.

Stanislaw August's natural children from his union with Magdalena Sapieżyna, née Lubomirska, were:

His children from his relationship with Elzbieta Grabowska, née Szydlowska, were:

Source.

Stanislav August Poniatowski is a character in the Russian series Catherine (2014-2019). It depicts images of the life of the Russian Empire during the reign of Tsarina Catherine II the Great. The character of Stanislav August Poniatowski is played by Marcin Stec.

Sources

1. Stanisław August Poniatowski
2. Stanisław August Poniatowski
3. Zob. sekcję Losy doczesnych szczątków.
4. ^ pronounced [staˈɲiswaf druɡiˈauɡust].
5. Senat, chambre haute de la Diète.
6. Les Czartoryski pensaient que 1) la Pologne ne pouvait pas se passer d'un protecteur 2) que le moins dangereux (par rapport à la Prusse et à l'Autriche) était la Russie.
7. Page polonaise Magnateria w Polsce.
8. Royaume de Hongrie, royaume de Bohême, principautés autrichiennes, etc., qu'on peut appeler « Autriche » d'un point de vue géopolitique (comme dans guerre de Succession d'Autriche.