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Poland The Three Partitions, 1764-95
During the reign of Empress Catherine the Great
(1762-96),
Russia intensified its manipulation in Polish affairs.
Prussia
and Austria, the other powers surrounding the republic,
also took
advantage of internal religious and political bickering to
divide
up the country in three partition stages. The third
partition in
1795 wiped Poland-Lithuania from the map of Europe.
First Partition
In 1764 Catherine dictated the election of her former
favorite, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, as king of PolandLithuania . Confounding expectations that he would be an
obedient
servant of his mistress, Stanislaw August encouraged the
modernization of his realm's ramshackle political system
and
achieved a temporary moratorium on use of the individual
veto in
the Sejm (1764-66). This turnabout threatened to renew the
strength of the monarchy and brought displeasure in the
foreign
capitals that preferred an inert, pliable Poland.
Catherine,
among the most displeased by Poniatowski's independence,
encouraged religious dissension in Poland-Lithuania's
substantial
Eastern Orthodox population, which earlier in the
eighteenth
century had lost the rights enjoyed during the Jagiellon
Dynasty.
Under heavy Russian pressure, the Sejm restored Orthodox
equality
in 1767. This action provoked a Catholic uprising by the
Confederation of Bar, a league of Polish nobles that
fought until
1772 to revoke Catherine's mandate.
The defeat of the Confederation of Bar again left
Poland
exposed to the ambitions of its neighbors. Although
Catherine
initially opposed partition, Frederick the Great of
Prussia
profited from Austria's threatening military position to
the
southwest by pressing a long-standing proposal to carve
territory
from the commonwealth. Catherine, persuaded that Russia
did not
have the resources to continue unilateral domination of
Poland,
agreed. In 1772 Russia, Prussia, and Austria forced terms
of
partition upon the helpless commonwealth under the pretext
of
restoring order in the anarchic Polish situation (see
fig. 5).
Data as of October 1992
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