Anniversary of the conclusion of the partition agreement by Prussia, Austria and Russia.
Today in our calendar we will look at events that accompanied the first partition of Poland.
The protracted struggles with the Bar Confederation have made the Tsar Catherine aware that she is incapable to pacify and keep under the control of the full Republic. Prussian king Frederick II insisted on demolishing the country, as this was the primary goal of its policy for a long time. The Austrians, in turn, did not bother undressing Poland, but gave another pretext, as already in 1769-1770, they occupied 4 border ancients – conspiracies, Czorsztyńskie, Nowotarskie and Sądeckie. They agreed to occupy larger areas, only as part of maintaining a balance of power between the another invaders.
The demolition decision was yet made in mid-1771, after prior consultations in secret offices. In order to make the partition act credible, the powers carried out large-scale propaganda actions. They were designed to explain their actions to an enlightened European public. First of all, historical claims were raised to occupied lands. The Prussian minister Ewald Friedrich von Hertzberg in his work entitled “The Lecture of Rights” argued that the right to Wielkopolska, March of Brandenburg had acquired the right to the mediate Ages.
His statements went to the world's first encyclopedia of general cognition with the title Encyclopédiethat Denis Diderot and Jean di’Alembert made. In many printings circulating in Europe at the time, they were blamed for the demolition of the Poles themselves, who first brought their country to ruin, and yet performed armedly against their own rightful king. This action was supported by enlightened French, English and German environments, which were fascinated by absoluteism as part of the then dominant wisdom of the stage.
Especially zealous in attacking Poland was the leading thinker of the era, the mason François-Marie Arouet, acting under the pseudonym Wolter. Thus he wrote about the introduction of Russian troops to Poland in the days of the Repninowski Sejm and the Bar Confederacy:
“This army came only to care for dissidents in case they were wanted to destruct them. ... The city ravaged the country, being there for tolerance.”
Wolter besides complimented the actions of Tsar Catherine and King Frederick of Prussia, to whom he wrote in his letter the following words:
‘They say, Sire, that you gave up the thought of cutting up Poland – and I think so due to the fact that I know the genius in it.”
In the opinion of Volter and another promoters of the time, so-called. enlightenment, Poland was an economically and socially backward country where peasant exploiters, intolerant Catholic spiritual fanatics rule.
On September 18, 1772, 3 partitioning powers officially announced the fact of the dismantling, after which they demanded the convening of the Polish Sejm and its approval of the land assignment. The petty opposition to partitions was broken by enemy armies entering the country, and no 1 was to defend it, due to the fact that the most patriotic part of the nobility was extinct during the Confederacy or went, like Kazimierz Pulaski, to emigration.
In 1773, a parliament was established confederated under the wire of a paid Russian agent and a public property thief, Adam Poniński. This parliament, with as many enemy troops, approved the dedication of the lands of Russia, Prussia and Austria. The purely desperate protest of Tadeusz Reytan, who covered the hall with his body, was only a small, theatrical effort to turn the river back with a stick.
The King's protests were equally frivolous and directed solely under the public, for as a consequence of the approval of the partition, he obtained repayment of his debts, drawn under the king's partition.
Interestingly, Poniatowski overstated his debts. The swindlers he defrauded paid the requested amounts to the counterfeit, fictitious creditors, mostly royal agents. In the end, his attitude during the partition parliament is best demonstrated by the fact that he accepted from the specially created by Russia Prussia and Austria the sum of 6,000 ducats. The amount was to be allocated to bribes for Members not to protest the demolition of their homeland besides loudly.
As a consequence of the First Partition, Austria took over Galicia, Prussia – Warmia and Pomerania (without Gdańsk and Toruń), and Russia – Inflanty Polish and east part of Belarus. The Republic lost 211,000 km2 from 4,500,000 people.
Previous entry from our calendar is available Here.
