Chapter 2. STANISLAV PONIATOWSKI AND CATHERINE THE GREAT

Now we have come close to the era of the partitions of Poland. The relevance of this topic has not disappeared for two and a half centuries. All this time, Polish and Western European historians are looking for those to blame for the division of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among the “villains” were Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the monarchs of Prussia, Austria, Russia and others, right up to... Molotov and Ribbentrop. When there are so many to blame, you inevitably think about the victim.

As already mentioned, the degradation of the Polish state began in the 15th century, and in the 17th century. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth could be considered a state with a very big stretch. All those atrocities that were mentioned in the chapter “Cossack Wars 1580–1653” not only did not stop, but also intensified. A strong lord could take away land, crops, and his beloved woman from a weaker neighbor, and without regard to royal power. Speaking modern language, the gentlemen lived not according to laws, but “according to concepts.”

The big tycoons knew very well French and literature, their wives and daughters dressed in the latest Parisian fashion, but this did not prevent “his lordship,” at his whim, from arranging for a guilty or innocent person such an execution that would have made both the inquisitor fathers and Malyuta Skuratov shudder. I note that in Russia during the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna not a single death sentence was carried out.

Meaning royal power under Augustus II and Augustus III it fell even more. Both father and son found quiet Saxony much dearer than the violent gentlemen. From there both kings “ruled” the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The role of the Sejms in governing the country was also small. Firstly, there was no strong executive power capable of implementing the decisions of the Sejms. Secondly, the principle of unanimity in decision-making - liberum veto - led to the blocking of most proposals and the cessation of the activities of the Sejms. Thus, from 1652 to 1764, 48 out of 55 Sejms were disrupted, and a third of them were defeated by the vote of just one deputy. The financial situation of the kingdom is well characterized by the fact that the minting of Polish coins ceased in 1688.

The unity of the country was greatly undermined by the fanatical Catholic clergy, who demanded ever new restrictions on the rights of Orthodox and Protestants. In a monographic study of the divisions of Poland, P. V. Stegny says that by 1760, among the 14 million population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, there were 600 thousand Orthodox Christians and 200 thousand Protestants. It follows from this that in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Orthodox Christians made up 4.2 percent of the population, and Protestants - 1.4. Alas, Stegny simply did not read the sources carefully. 14 million is the entire population of Poland, including women and children, and 600 thousand Orthodox and 200 thousand Protestants are the number of men (heads of families) who are active believers. And if we add here members of their families, as well as people forced to hide their religious beliefs, then the percentage of Orthodox and Protestants will be at least forty. In early childhood, I heard a joke from my grandfather: “A Muscovite asks a Ukrainian: “Do you believe in God?” - “We believe in God at home, but not at work!” So ​​in Poland, millions of people did not believe in the infallibility of the Pope.

Pansky oppression and religious persecution continued to lead to uprisings in Ukraine.

At the beginning of the 17th century. The military power of Poland in comparison with Russia and the German states has sharply weakened. The effectiveness of rifle and artillery fire increased significantly, radically changing battle tactics. Infantry, equipped with rifles with bayonets, and field artillery began to play a decisive role in the battle. The Polish cavalry, despite the excellent individual training of each cavalryman, courage and daring, turned out to be unable to resist the regular troops of Prussia and Russia.

The political and military weakness of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth led to the fact that its territory in the 18th century. became literally a “passage yard” for the armies of neighboring states. I'm not saying that for twenty years Northern War The armies of Russia and Sweden operated on Polish territory. During the Russian-Turkish War of 1735–1739. Russian, Turkish and Tatar troops fought in southern regions Rzeczpospolita, and during Seven Years' War(1756–1763) Russian and Prussian troops operated in northern Poland. Between wars Crimean Tatars regularly passed through the territory of southern Poland and often raided Russian territory from there.

Needless to say, not only in the 18th, but also in the 21st century. no state will want to tolerate such a neighbor and will try to somehow change the situation.

In addition to the above, Russia has accumulated many minor claims against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. So, for example, in 1753, based on the results of a reconnaissance of the area carried out by engineer-colonel de Bosquet, it turned out that, contrary to the “eternal peace” of 1686, 988 square miles of Russian lands illegally remained in Polish possession, including territories assigned to the Starodub, Chernigov and Kyiv Ukrainian regiments. Due to continuous internecine disputes, the Russian-Polish border was strengthened only from the “Smolensk province to Kyiv”; along the rest of the length it remained practically open. Taking advantage of this, the Poles voluntarily settled ten cities of Right Bank Ukraine, which were recognized under the treaty of 1686 as controversial and therefore not subject to settlement.

By the way, the Polish Sejm until 1764 refused to ratify the “eternal peace” of 1686. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the last of the European countries that did not recognize the imperial title for Russia.

A serious problem that darkened relations between both states was the flight of hundreds of thousands of Russian people from Russia to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Thus, in the areas west of Smolensk alone there were about 120 thousand (only men were counted) fugitive Russian peasants. Thousands of deserters from the Russian army also fled to Poland.

Some readers may try to catch the author in a contradiction: he just wrote about the master's oppression, and now he is writing about the mass exodus of peasants to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In fact, there is no contradiction here. Firstly, I never said that Russian landowners are angels (remember the same Saltychikha), and secondly, Polish magnates had a differentiated attitude towards their old flops and fugitive Muscovites. Did it make sense for the rich gentleman to send fugitive Russian dragoons to plow? It is much more profitable to enroll them in your private army. There were also cases when lords married their daughters to fugitive Muscovites and gave them “fake” letters of nobility. Thousands of robbers settled in the lands bordering Russia, carrying out raids across the cordon, and then sharing the loot with the lords. “Of those fugitive people, the thieves to whom the Poles give harbor at home, gathering in parties, come from abroad to Russia and commit robberies, burglaries and capital murders, and then go back abroad and make their way there with their plundered belongings.”

Assessing the overall policy of Moscow rulers in the West, two main trends can be identified. Starting from Ivan III and up to Boris Godunov, the dominant trend was the unification under the rule of Moscow of all Russian lands that were part of the Kyiv state. Troubles 1603–1618 interrupted this process. Tsar Michael decided only to return the lands taken by the Poles during the Time of Troubles, and then he suffered a shameful defeat near Smolensk. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich forced himself for a very long time to ask to intervene in Little Russian affairs.

But Peter I forgot about the Russian lands in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the Northern War, Poland was in such a deplorable state that to return Right-Bank Ukraine would not have required a single Russian soldier; the Cossacks of Left-Bank Ukraine would have accomplished the job in a few weeks.

Peter was overcome by the dream of “standing with a firm foot”... in Germany. For this reason, he patronized the German barons in Estland, and for this purpose he organized a series of dynastic marriages with the rulers of the German states. I note that all subsequent kings, except Alexander III, married German women.

Anna Ioannovna and Elizaveta Petrovna were also much more interested in German affairs than in the affairs of Little and White Rus'. It was not for nothing that in the winter of 1758 Elizabeth ordered the population of East Prussia to be brought under Russian citizenship.

And only Catherine II (1729–1796; d. pr. 1762–1796) realized the futility of Russian intervention in German affairs and turned her gaze to Poland. Catherine renounced hereditary rights in Holstein for her son Paul. The wise queen, being an ethnic German, gradually began to cleanse the state apparatus from the dominance of the Germans, replacing them with Russians, in extreme cases, the British, the French and representatives of other nations. None of Catherine's many German relatives received a responsible position in Russia. Among Catherine’s lovers there was not a single German. When talking about inciting national hatred, one should distinguish between hostility towards all representatives of a particular nation indiscriminately and hostility towards the national mafia, which has seized the most important posts in the state and infringes on the interests of the indigenous population. Anna Ioannovna was one hundred percent Russian, but she covered up the German mafia, but behind the back of the German Ekaterina, there was no German mafia in St. Petersburg, just as the Corsican Napoleon did not have a Corsican mafia in Paris, and the Georgian Dzhugashvili did not have a Georgian mafia.

It is the duty of great people to correctly assess the national question. Dzhugashvili understood what Georgia was and what Russia was, and at the age of 33 he changed his Georgian pseudonym Koba to the Russian one - Stalin. At the age of 22, Napoline Buona Parte understood the difference between Corsica and France and became Napoleon Bonaparte. At the age of 15, the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst realized the difference between her principality and Russia.

But let's return to the situation in Poland. At the end of the 50s. King Augustus III began to fall ill, and Polish magnates began to think about his successor. Naturally, the king himself dreamed of passing the throne to his son, the Elector of Saxony. The Saxon party was led by Prime Minister Bril and his son-in-law, Grand Marshal Crown Count Mniszech, as well as the powerful Potocki clan of magnates.

The Czartoryski clan opposed them. This numerous clan in Poland began to be called a Surname back in the 20s and 30s. XVIII century According to the Polish version, the Czartoryskis descended from the son of Grand Duke Olgerd Lubart, and according to the Russian version, from another son of Olgerd, Prince of Chernigov Konstantin. They got their nickname from the Czartorysk estate on the Styr River in Volyn. The first five generations of the Czartoryskis were Orthodox, but Prince Yuri Ivanovich (according to some sources in 1622, according to friends - in 1638) converted to Catholicism.

The Czartoryskis proposed implementing a number of reforms in Poland, and the main one was to be the transfer of full power to the Familia. They argued that only Piast should be the new king. This statement was pure demagoguery. The legitimate descendants of the royal Piast dynasty died out several centuries ago, and the same members of the Family had nothing to do with the Piasts. However, in St. Petersburg they pretended that they did not understand Polish genealogy and called any tycoon loyal to Russia Piast. By the way, Mother Catherine II also descended from the Piasts on the female line. Her distant ancestor, the German prince Bernhard III, was married to Judita, the daughter of the Krakow prince Metko III the Old, who died in 1202.

Stanisław Poniatowski (1676–1762), a Masovian voivode and Krakow castellan, also joined the Czartoryskis.

Poniatowski, like the vast majority of Polish magnates, had neither moral principles nor political convictions, but acted solely for reasons of his own benefit. For the sake of self-interest, at the beginning of the century he sided with King Leshchinsky and even took part in the Battle of Poltava - naturally, on the side of the Swedes. Poniatowski then fled with the Swedish king to Turkey, where they both incited the Sultan to war with Russia. Convinced that Leszczynski’s case was lost, Poniatowski went to make peace with King Augustus P.

Poniatowski’s subsequent successful career was facilitated by his marriage to the daughter of Kazimir Czartoryski, the Lithuanian sub-chancellor and Vilnius castellan. Immediately after the death of King Augustus II, Stas tried to climb into the kingship. On this occasion, the Russian ambassador in Warsaw Levenvolde wrote to St. Petersburg: “...the election of Stanislav Poniatowski as king is more dangerous for Russia than the election of Leszczynski.”

Soon Poniatowski realized that he would not be king, but he could not resist active political play, and in addition, he “bet on the wrong horse.” As a result, Poniatowski ended up in Danzig, besieged by the Russians, along with his old friend Leszczynski.

After the confirmation of Augustus III on the throne, Stanislav Poniatowski joined the “Russian party” led by the Family. In 1732, Stanisław Poniatowski had a son, also named Stanisław. Stanislav the Younger, being half Poniatowski and half Czartoryski, quickly made his career and, while still a teenager, received the rank of Lithuanian steward.

Stanislav the Younger spent most of his time not in Poland, but in the capital of Saxony, Dresden, at the court of King Augustus III. There he attracted the attention of Sir Genbury Williams, the English ambassador to the Saxon court. In 1755, Williams was appointed English ambassador to St. Petersburg, and he took twenty-three-year-old Stanislav with him.

This is how the Polish historian Kazimir Waliszewski characterizes the new star who appeared on the St. Petersburg horizon: “He had a pleasant face... he was gentilhomme in the full sense of the word, as he was understood at that time: his education was versatile, his habits were refined, his upbringing was cosmopolitan, with a subtle touch of philosophy... He personified that mental culture and secular gloss to which she [Catherine II] at one time became addicted, thanks to reading Voltaire and Madame de Sevigne. He traveled and belonged to high society in Paris, whose splendor and charm impressed all of Europe, as well as royal prestige, which no one had yet encroached on at that time. He seemed to have brought with him a direct stream of this atmosphere and possessed both its qualities and its shortcomings. He knew how to conduct a sparkling conversation about the most abstract matters and skillfully approach the most sensitive topics. He was a master at writing little notes and knew how to deftly twist a madrigal into a banal conversation. He had the art of being moved at the right time. He was sensitive. He flaunted the romantic direction of thoughts, on occasion giving it a heroic and bold coloring and hiding under flowers a dry and cold nature, imperturbable egoism, even an inexhaustible supply of cynicism.”

Knowing the character of Elizabeth Petrovna, William Genbury did not miss a single ball or masquerade, but all his attempts to gain any influence on the empress were in vain. As Walishevsky wrote, “...his search for Elizabeth was apparently very pleasant for her, but politically it turned out to be completely fruitless. When he tried to stand on firm ground for negotiations, the empress evaded. He searched in vain for the empress, but found only a charming minuet dancer, and sometimes a bacchante. After a few months, he came to the conclusion that it was impossible to talk to Elizabeth seriously, and began to look around. Disillusioned with the present, he thought about the future. The future is a young yard.

But again, he came across the figure of the future emperor and, possessing the clear gaze of people of his race, decided from the first time that he would only waste time here too. His eyes finally settled on Catherine... William noticed significant steps towards the Grand Duchess, underground passages leading to her. He quickly made up his mind. Aware of court rumors about love adventures in which the handsome Saltykov and the handsome Chernyshev, himself quite enterprising, appeared, Williams tried to follow these romantic tracks.

Catherine received him very kindly, talked to him about everything, even about serious subjects that Elizabeth refused to discuss, but she looked the other way.” And then William remembered Poniatowski.

The wife of the heir to the throne, Catherine, was almost three years older than Poniatovsky and had already given birth to a son, Pavel (according to the most common version, from Sergei Saltykov). And she was the first to take the initiative in her relationship with Stas. Moreover, the Grand Duchess managed, as they say, to eat a fish and sit on... Poniatowski’s lap. But the “fish” was supplied by Sir Genbury to William. The total cost of all the “fish” is unknown. Only two receipts signed by the Grand Duchess have survived, for a total amount of 50 thousand rubles, marked July 21 and November 11, 1756. And the loan on July 21 was obviously not the first, since, asking for it, Catherine wrote to Williams’ banker: “It’s hard for me.” contact you again."

Later Poniatowski would write about the object of his love: “... she had recently just recovered from her first birth and was in that phase of beauty, which is its highest point for women in general endowed with it. Brunette, she was dazzlingly white; her eyebrows were black and very long; a Greek nose, a mouth that seemed to invite kisses, amazingly beautiful arms and legs, a thin waist, rather tall stature, an extremely light and at the same time noble gait, a pleasant timbre of voice and a laugh as cheerful as the character that allowed her to with equal ease she could move from the most playful games to a table of numbers that did not frighten her either by their content or the physical labor they required.”

It must be assumed that during the intervals between “naughty games” Stas and Kato did not move on to playing “tic-tac-toe” or “sea battle”. The table of numbers is digital codes, and the crown princess, as we see, collected the information herself and encrypted it herself.

Complex political intrigues forced Williams to leave St. Petersburg in October 1757, but Poniatowski remained - both in St. Petersburg and in the bed of the princess. Soon the lover lost all sense of proportion and in July 1758 he visited Catherine at night in the Oranienbaum Palace, despite the fact that her husband was in the neighboring chambers. We are, of course, not talking about the palace of Peter III, which was still under construction at that time, but about the old Grand Palace, built by A.D. Menshikov. Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich at that time was completely absorbed in his passion for Elizaveta Vorontsova and did not pay attention to Catherine, however, concerned about his own safety, he ordered a horse guard to be placed around the palace.

Early in the morning, Poniatowski, upon leaving the palace, was captured by a mounted picket and taken to the heir to the throne. Poniatowski was in disguise and refused to identify himself. Pyotr Fedorovich thought that an assassination attempt was being prepared on him, and decided to interrogate the stranger with passion. In the end, Stanislav had to admit everything. If you believe the later “Notes” of Poniatowski, Peter burst out laughing and said: “Aren’t you crazy that you still haven’t trusted me!” He, laughing, explained that he didn’t even think of being jealous, and the precautions taken around the Oranienbaum Palace, were associated with ensuring the safety of his person. Then Poniatowski remembered that he was a diplomat and began to pour out compliments on His Highness’s military dispositions, the skill of which he experienced firsthand. The Grand Duke's good mood intensified. “And now,” he said, “if we are friends, there is someone else missing here.” “With these words,” says Poniatowski in “Notes,” he goes to his wife’s room, drags her out of bed, does not give her time to put on stockings and boots, only allows her to put on a bonnet (robe de Batavia), without a skirt, in this he brings her to us and says to her, pointing at me: “Here he is; I hope that now they are happy with me.”

The cheerful company drank until four o'clock in the morning. “The revelry resumed the next day, and for several weeks this marvelous marriage of four was infinitely happy.”

Poniatowski wrote in “Notes”: “I often visited Oranienbaum, I arrived in the evening, climbed the secret staircase that led to the Grand Duchess’s room; were there Grand Duke and his mistress; we dined together, then the Grand Duke took his mistress away and told us: “Now, my children, you no longer need me.” “I stayed as long as I wanted.”

However, soon talk about these amusements spread throughout the capital. Elizabeth herself loved to play pranks and turned a blind eye to Catherine’s pranks, but this was too much. The French ambassador in St. Petersburg, the Marquis de L'Hopital, began to openly mock Poniatowski. Naturally, the matter ended with Stanislav’s expulsion from Russia.

After the departure of her favorite, Catherine entered into a love correspondence with him, but her bed was not empty - now the main favorite was the twenty-seven-year-old artillery officer Grigory Orlov. In December 1761, Empress Elizabeth died, and Peter III (1728–1762) ascended the throne. However, the new emperor failed to cope with his duties, and on June 28, 1762, the guard staged a coup in St. Petersburg in favor of Catherine. The Orlov brothers played a significant role in the coup, who then acquired great power at court. The deposed emperor was taken under arrest to the town of Ropsha near St. Petersburg, where he soon died from “hemorrhoidal colic.”

Having received news of the coup in St. Petersburg, Poniatowski got ready to visit his beloved, but already on July 2, 1762, Catherine II wrote to him: “I urge you not to rush to come here, because your stay under the present circumstances would be dangerous for you and very harmful for you.” me".

Exactly a month later, Catherine sent a second letter: “I am immediately sending Count Keyserling as an ambassador to Poland to make you king after the death of the present [king] and in case he does not succeed in this in relation to you, I wish that [king] there was Prince Adam. All minds are still in ferment. I ask you to refrain from traveling here for fear of strengthening it.”

Finally, on April 27, 1763, the Empress wrote a very frank letter to Poniatowski: “So, since you need to speak quite frankly and since you have decided not to understand what I have been repeating to you for six months now, that if you come here, you risk that They'll kill us both."

Catherine's power is indeed very fragile. She is afraid of the jealousy of the Orlovs, and even more - of the negative reaction of the Russian nobility, who do not want to see a Pole, and indeed a foreigner in general, either as a temporary worker like Biron, or even more so as a Russian Tsar.

Meanwhile, the Familia in Poland went on the offensive, without even waiting for the death of King Augustus III. A broad campaign was launched against the abuses of the “Saxon” ministers and officials. The court party responded by threatening Czartoryski with arrest. Having learned about this, Catherine sent an order to her ambassador at the Polish court, Keyserling, on April 1, 1763: “Disclose that if they dare to capture and take any of Russia’s friends to Königsstein, then I will populate Siberia with my enemies and release the Zaporozhye Cossacks who want send a deputation to me with a request to allow them to take revenge for the insults that the King of Poland inflicts on them.”

At the same time, Catherine demanded that Keyserling restrain the impulses of the Czartoryski party. So, on July 4, she wrote: “I see that our friends are very excited and ready for a confederation; but I do not see what the confederation will lead to during the lifetime of the King of Poland? I’m telling you the absolute truth: my chests are empty and will remain empty until I put my finances in order, which cannot be done in a minute; my army cannot march this year; and therefore I recommend that you restrain our friends, and most importantly, that they do not arm themselves without asking me; I don’t want to be carried away further than the benefits of my affairs require.”

The French government during the time of Louis XV looked at Poland almost as its own province and considered it its duty to constantly interfere in its affairs. However, now French diplomats were confused and did not know what to do. Things got to the point that the “secret” envoy of Louis XV, Ennen, secretly met several times in Warsaw with Stanislaw Poniatowski. Ennen offered Stanisław a deal: if the Czartoryski candidate gains an advantage at the convocation (election) Sejm, the “French party” will support him; if the French candidate gains an advantage, the Czartoryskis will do the same.

On February 1, 1763, St. Petersburg received information about the deteriorating health of Augustus III. Two days later, at the direction of the queen, a council was convened with the participation of Chancellor M.I. Vorontsov, Vice-Chancellor A.M. Golitsyn, N.I. Panin, A.P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin and M.N. Volkonsky. The elderly Count Bestuzhev-Ryumin tried to campaign for the son of August III Charles, but the majority of the council members, and most importantly, Catherine herself, were in favor of electing Piast as king. The Council decided to concentrate thirty thousand soldiers on the border with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and keep another fifty thousand on standby.

On October 5, 1763, King Augustus III died. “Don’t laugh at me that I jumped up from my chair when I received the news of the death of the King of Poland; The King of Prussia jumped up from the table when he heard it,” wrote Catherine Panin.

Hetman Branitsky brought the crown (Polish) army into combat readiness, which was joined by Saxon troops. In response, the Czartoryskis turned directly to the empress with a request to send two thousand cavalry and two infantry regiments to their aid.

By that time, in Poland there were only small detachments of Russians (one and a half to two thousand people) guarding the stores (warehouses) left after the Seven Years' War. It was decided to gather these forces and move to the residence of the crown hetman in Bialystok. The Russian ambassador to Poland, Prince N.V. Repnin, wrote to Count N.I. Panin: “It is true that this army is not enough, but it is enough for Poland; I am sure that five or six thousand Poles not only cannot overcome Khomutov’s detachment, but they will not even dare to think about it.”

At the beginning of April 1763, new units were introduced into Poland. The first column, under the command of Prince M.N. Volkonsky, moved through Minsk, and the second, under the command of Prince M.I. Dashkov (husband of the famous Ekaterina Dashkova), went through Grodno.

On April 10 (21), 26 Polish magnates signed a letter to Catherine II, which said: “We, who are second to none of our fellow citizens in ardent patriotism, learned with sorrow that there are people who want to be distinguished by their displeasure regarding the entry of your Imperial Majesty’s troops into our country and even considered it decent to complain about this to Your Majesty. We see with sorrow that the laws of our fatherland are insufficient to keep these supposed patriots within proper limits. With danger for us, we experienced oppression of our freedom on their part, precisely at the last sejmiks, where military force restricted voting in many places. We were threatened with the same abuse of force in future Sejms, convocation and election, at which we would not have had troops to oppose them to the state army, instead of protecting the oppressive state, when we learned about the entry of the Russian army sent by your Majesty to defend our decrees and our freedom. The purpose of this army’s entry into our borders and its behavior arouse the liveliest gratitude in every well-meaning Pole, and we considered it our duty to express this gratitude to your imperial majesty.”

Among the signatures were the names of the Kuyavian Bishop Ostrowski, the Płock Bishop Sheptycki, Zamoyski, the five Czartoryskis (August, Michael, Stanisław, Adam and Joseph), Stanisław Poniatowski, Potocki, Lobomirski, Sulkowski, Sologub, Wielopolski.

Comments on this call, I think, are completely unnecessary.

At the end of April 1763, senators, deputies and lords began to gather in Warsaw for the convocation Sejm. So, Prince Karl Radziwill, the Vilna voivode, came with a private army of three thousand. The Czartoryskis also brought a private army, and Russian troops were stationed not far from it (in Uyazov and Solets).

The Sejm opened on April 26 (May 7), 1763. Warsaw on that day was a city occupied by two hostile troops ready for battle. The Czartoryski party came to the Sejm, but their opponents were not there: they early morning conferred with the hetman and finally signed a protest against the violation of popular law by the appearance of Russian troops. They wanted to disrupt the Sejm, but they failed, they demanded that a confederation be formed right there in Warsaw, but Branicki chickened out. He declared that he did not feel safe in Warsaw, and set out from the city to form a confederation in a more convenient place, but time was wasted in vain, and meanwhile the hetman was followed by the Russian detachment of Dashkov, who had crossed from Lithuania to Poland. 30 versts from Warsaw a skirmish occurred between Dashkov’s detachment and the hetman’s rearguard.

On March 31 (April 11), 1764, a Russian-Prussian defensive treaty and a secret convention regarding Poland were signed in St. Petersburg. In accordance with the third article of the treaty, Prussia was obliged to pay Russia annual subsidies of 400 thousand rubles in the event of a war with Turkey or Crimea. Catherine and Frederick agreed to elect Stanislaw Poniatowski as king, which was recorded in the convention, and also to preserve the current “constitution and fundamental laws” of Poland “until the use of weapons.” They jointly advocated for the return to dissidents of “the privileges, liberties and advantages that they previously owned and enjoyed in both religious and civil affairs.”

The plans of Catherine and Frederick were also facilitated by the death of the son of King Augustus III, Charles Augustus, on December 6, 1763. The youngest son of the late king, Frederick Augustus, was only 13 years old, and his election as king was unlikely. The main opponent of Stanislav Poniatovsky could only be Hetman Branitsky.

In June 1764, the convocation diet ended. It created a Polish general confederation, which united with the Lithuanian one. Prince Czartoryski, a Russian governor, was elected marshal of the crown confederation. The Sejm decided not to allow foreign candidates in the royal elections; only a Polish nobleman on his father’s and mother’s side, professing the Roman Catholic faith, could be elected.

To achieve their goal, the Czartoryskis used Russian money and Russian troops, and in gratitude for this, the Sejm recognized the imperial title of the Russian empress. The act of confederation included public gratitude to the Russian Empress, and with the expression of this gratitude, the clerk Crown Count Rzhevusky was supposed to go to St. Petersburg. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers had to finally clear Poland of the enemies of the Family.

Radziwill, who left Warsaw together with Branicki, separated from him along the road and headed to his place in Lithuania, but near Slonim he encountered a Russian detachment and was defeated. Together with his cavalry (1200 sabers), Radziwill crossed the Dnieper at Mogilev and went to Moldova. But the infantry and artillery from his private army were surrounded by Prince Dashkov near the village of Gavrilovka and capitulated.

From Moldova, Radziwill moved to Hungary, and from there to Dresden. Branicki, pursued by the Russians, also could no longer remain in Poland and went to Hungary.

Meanwhile, the Russian ambassador to Poland Repnin suspected Prince August Czartoryski of wanting to become king himself, so Repnin asked the Empress for permission to openly support the candidacy of Stanislav Poniatowski. Catherine weakly resisted and wrote on Repnin’s report: “It seems to me that it is not appropriate for us to name a candidate so that we can fully say that the republic acted freely.”

Now it is difficult to say whether Prince Repnin received the sanction of the Empress or acted on his own initiative, but on July 27, Keyserling and Repnin went to the primate of Poland, where they had already found the Prussian ambassador, the princes Czartoryski and other lords. Keyserling told the primate in front of everyone that the empress wanted to see Polish throne Count Poniatowski, whom he, the ambassador, in the name of Her Majesty, will recommend to the whole nation at the electoral Diet. The Prussian ambassador said the same on behalf of his sovereign; the Czartoryski princes also recommended their nephew and thanked both courts for their favor to their family.

From August 5 (16) to August 15 (26), 1764, the electoral (electoral) Sejm passed quietly. Count Poniatowski was unanimously elected king under the name of Stanisław August IV. The lords were extremely surprised by this and said that such a calm election had never happened. In St. Petersburg they were also very happy; Catherine wrote to Panin: “I congratulate you on the king we have made.”

In September, Repnin began paying royalties. He gave the king 1,200 chervonets, but then Catherine intervened and sent another 100 thousand chervonets. August-Alexander Czartoryski received 3 thousand chervonets from Repnin. The Primate of Poland was promised 80 thousand, but so far only 17 thousand have been given. Smaller persons were given accordingly. Thus, the nobleman Oginsky received only 300 chervonets for the maintenance of his private army.

The love story of a king: Stanislav-August Poniatowski In the midst of a noisy ball, by chance, Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna, the future Empress Catherine II, and Stanislav-August Poniatowski, the future Polish king, met by chance at a ball in Oranienbaum. However, not