First Partition of Poland
Russia, Prussia and Austria each took a piece of Poland in 1772 and the Polish parliament was made to ratify it. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been the largest state in Europe in the seventeenth century and had by the eighteenth become ungovernable by design. Its king was elected, its parliament could be dissolved by the objection of a single member under the liberum veto, and its neighbours financed the factions that used it. Russia had effectively controlled the country since 1717 and had installed Stanisław August Poniatowski, a former lover of Catherine II, as king in 1764. The immediate crisis was the Confederation of Bar, a rising of Polish nobles against Russian domination and against toleration for religious minorities, which ran from 1768 and drew in the Ottomans and produced a Russian victory that alarmed Austria. Frederick II's solution was to compensate everyone at Poland's expense rather than fight over it. Prussia took Royal Prussia, joining East Prussia to Brandenburg, which is what he had wanted for thirty years; Austria took Galicia; and Russia took the eastern borderlands. The Commonwealth lost about a third of its territory and half its population. The Sejm was surrounded by troops and ratified it. What followed was a serious attempt at reform — the education commission, and the constitution of 3 May 1791, the first written constitution in Europe — which produced the second partition in 1793 and the third in 1795. Poland disappeared for 123 years. The three powers explained the partition in the language of restoring order and preventing anarchy, and the argument was widely accepted in Europe. Rousseau, asked by Polish reformers what to do, told them that they could not stop the Russians swallowing them and could make sure they were not digested.
- Year: 1772 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
