First Partition of Poland
On 5 August 1772, Russia, Prussia, and Austria signed the First Partition Treaty, by which the three powers annexed approximately 30 percent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's territory and 35 percent of its population without a declaration of war. Frederick II of Prussia took Royal Prussia (connecting Brandenburg to East Prussia), Catherine the Great of Russia took the eastern borderlands of White Russia and Livonia, and Maria Theresa of Austria took Galicia — the richest of the three shares, which she accepted with characteristic (and much-mocked) reluctance. The partition was the direct consequence of Russia's overwhelming dominance of Polish affairs since Peter the Great's reign: Catherine had effectively controlled the Polish throne since installing her former lover Stanislaw Poniatowski as king in 1764, and the partition was partly a mechanism for bringing Prussia and Austria into acquiescence with Russian hegemony in the region. Frederick II provided the blueprint and the diplomatic energy, exploiting Austria's weakness after the Seven Years' War and Russia's preoccupation with the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). Poland's inability to resist stemmed from the liberum veto system — any single noble deputy could dissolve the Sejm — which had rendered the state constitutionally paralysed for decades, a warning to reformers everywhere of what aristocratic veto power could produce.
- Year: 1772 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
