The Second and Third Partitions of Poland
Russia and Prussia took a second slice of Poland in 1793, and with Austria erased it entirely in 1795. The first partition in 1772 had removed about a third of the territory and had shocked the Polish political class into reform. The Great Sejm of 1788 to 1792 abolished the liberum veto — the rule by which any single deputy could dissolve a session and annul its acts — created a hereditary monarchy, and passed the Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first codified national constitution in Europe. That constitution is why the partitions accelerated. A functioning Polish state was precisely what its neighbours had been preventing for decades, and Catherine II acted against it as soon as the Turkish war freed her. A group of magnates who preferred the old anarchy signed a confederation at Targowica under Russian protection and invited the intervention. Russian troops entered in 1792, the king capitulated, and the second partition followed in 1793 — leaving a rump of about a third of the original. Tadeusz Kościuszko raised a national insurrection in March 1794 with peasants armed with scythes, won at Racławice, and was defeated and captured at Maciejowice in October. Suvorov stormed the Warsaw suburb of Praga and killed something over ten thousand people, many of them civilians. The third partition in 1795 divided the remainder among the three powers, and the king abdicated. Poland did not exist as a state for 123 years. The constitution of 3 May is a national holiday, and the anniversary was banned under every occupying power that observed it.
- Year: 1793 CE
- Category: Political
