1772–1792 · the Commonwealth, reduced
The First Partition
Russia, Prussia and Austria take close to a third of the territory. The reduced state answers with reform: the Commission of National Education (1773) is Europe’s first ministry of education, and the Constitution of 3 May 1791 is the world’s second written constitution. Russia responds with invasion.
Population
- 8,800,000 (census data, ±400,000) — The census of 1789–91, the first real head count, though it left out the nobility and clergy, whose numbers were estimated later — the reduced Commonwealth, after the First Partition took some 4.5 million people, over a third of its population.
Rulers and leaders
- 1764–1795 Stanisław August Poniatowski — the last King of Poland monarch
- 1772–1786 Frederick the Great — King of Prussia — partitioning power occupying power
- 1772–1780 Maria Theresa — ruler of the Habsburg monarchy — partitioning power occupying power
- 1772–1796 Catherine II — Empress of Russia — partitioning power occupying power
- 1780–1790 Joseph II — Holy Roman Emperor — partitioning power occupying power
- 1786–1797 Frederick William II — King of Prussia — partitioning power occupying power
- 1790–1792 Leopold II — Holy Roman Emperor — partitioning power occupying power
- 1792–1835 Francis II — Holy Roman Emperor, from 1804 Emperor of Austria — partitioning power occupying power
Events
- 1772The First Partition 5 August loss
Russia, Prussia and Austria take close to a third of the territory and over a third of the population; the following year the sejm would be forced to ratify it. A sovereign state carved up by agreement among its neighbours, with no war declared on it, had no precedent in Europe.
- 1791The Constitution of 3 May 3 May constitution
Europe’s first modern codified constitution and the world’s second: it abolishes the liberum veto and the elective throne, and creates a hereditary crown and a government answerable to parliament. It was in force for fourteen months.
- 1792The Targowica Confederation 27 April loss
Magnates who had signed the confederation’s act in St Petersburg call in the empress’s armies against the Constitution of 3 May. After a two-month war in which the army was not beaten, the king gives in and joins Targowica, and its name becomes the Polish byword for treason.
Wars, uprisings and longer processes
- 1768–1772The Bar Confederation uprising
Four years of fighting between bands of nobles and the Russian and royal armies, from Podolia to Greater Poland. The confederates were united by opposition to Russian tutelage and to equal rights for Protestants and Orthodox; in 1770 they declare the king deposed. Jasna Góra, the confederates’ last great fortress, surrenders in August 1772, the month the powers sign the First Partition.
- 1773–1794The Commission of National Education reform
The first ministry of education in Europe, funded from the estates of the dissolved Jesuit order. It takes over schools from the parish level to the academies of Kraków and Vilnius, writes Polish textbooks for them and teaches the sciences in them, not only Latin. The generation of the Great Sejm came out of its schools.
- 1788–1792The Great Sejm reform
The sejm sits for four years while Russia is busy fighting the Ottomans: it votes an army of a hundred thousand (on paper), the first permanent tax on the incomes of the nobility and clergy, rights for townsmen, and in the end the Constitution of 3 May. It disperses in May 1792 as Russian armies cross the border.
People of the age
- 1742–1780 Tadeusz Reytan — envoy for Navahrudak; tried to block the sejm that ratified the First Partition
- 1746–1817 Tadeusz Kościuszko — general; fought in the American War of Independence and the war of 1792, and led the 1794 uprising
- 1755–1826 Stanisław Staszic — priest and political writer, author of Warnings for Poland; co-founder of the Society of Friends of Learning
- 1750–1812 Hugo Kołłątaj — Vice-Chancellor of the Crown, co-author of the 3 May Constitution
- 1763–1813 Józef Poniatowski — prince; commanded in the war of 1792, later war minister of the Duchy, Marshal of France
- 1736–1809 Stanisław Małachowski — Marshal of the Great Sejm and co-author of the 3 May Constitution; in 1807 he headed the Duchy of Warsaw’s first government
- 1750–1809 Ignacy Potocki — leader of the Patriotic Party in the Great Sejm, co-author of the 3 May Constitution
- 1751–1805 Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki — leader of the Targowica Confederation, which called in the Russian army; the Second Partition followed in 1793