Stanisław August Poniatowski

For other persons named "Stanisław Poniatowski", see Stanisław Poniatowski (disambiguation).

Stanisław August Poniatowski
King of Poland
Reign	25 November 1764 – 7 January 1795 (&1000000000000003000000030 years, &1000000000000004300000043 days)
Predecessor	August III the Saxon
Spouse	Elżbieta Szydłowska
House	Poniatowski
Father	Stanisław Poniatowski
Mother	Konstancja née Czartoryska
Born	17 January 1732(1732-01-17) Wołczyn, present day Belarus
Died	12 February 1798(1798-02-12) (aged 66) Saint Petersburg, Russia
Burial	St. John's Cathedral, Warsaw
Signature

Stanisław II August Poniatowski (born Count Stanisław Antoni Ciołek Poniatowski; 17 January 1732 – 12 February 1798) was the last King and Grand Duke of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1764–95). He was the son of Count Stanisław Poniatowski, Castellan of Kraków, and Princess Konstancja Czartoryska; brother of Michał Jerzy Poniatowski, (1736–94), Primate of Poland; and uncle to Prince Józef Poniatowski, (1763–1813).

Royal titles

Stanisław August Poniatowski Ciołek coat of arms

English translation of the Polish text of the 1791 Constitution: Stanisław August, by the grace of God and the will of the people King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania and Duke of Ruthenia, Prussia, Masovia, Samogitia, Kiev, Volhynia, Podolia, Podlasie, Livonia, Smolensk, Severia and Chernihiv.

Life

Election of Stanisław August Poniatowski (detail), by Bernardo Bellotto

Poniatowski was born in 1732 at Wołczyn, now Belarus. By the age of twenty, in 1752, as a Sejm deputy, he had attracted attention with his oratory.

He owed his career ultimately, however, to his family connections with the powerful Czartoryski family, who in 1755 sent him to Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, in the service of British ambassador Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams. The same year, through the influence of Russian Empress Elizabeth and Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin, he joined the Russian court as ambassador of Saxony.

At Saint Petersburg he met the twenty-six-year-old future Empress Catherine Alexeievna (Catherine the Great). She was irresistibly drawn to the handsome, brilliant young Polish nobleman, for whom she forsook all other lovers. In 1755 he was appointed to the office of Stolnik Litewski and later he became Starosta of Przemyśl.

Stanisław August Poniatowski, by Giovanni Battista Lampi, ca. 1790

Stanisław August, by Lampi

Stanisław August, by Lampi

In October 1763, upon the death of Poland's King August III, negotiations began regarding who should be elected king. After a coup d'état on 7 September 1764, supported by Russian troops, the ambitious 32-year-old Poniatowski was elected King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The formal coronation took place in Warsaw on 25 November 1764. The new King's uncles in the "Familia" would have preferred another nephew, Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski on the throne, characterized by his contemporary as débauché, sinon dévoyé (debauched if not depraved), but Czartoryski had declined to seek the office.

Stanisław August, as he now styled himself, combining the names of his two immediate royal predecessors, or "Ciołek" (bull calf, as he was derisively referred to in reference to his Coat-of-Arms), inaugurated economic changes by supporting the Familia's reform program until 1766, when he fell out with his uncles.

In 1768 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth effectively became a protectorate of the Russian Empire. As king, Poniatowski supported the Russian army's repression of the Bar Confederation between 1768-72. In 1770 the Council of the Bar Confederation had proclaimed him dethroned. In 1771 he was kidnapped by Bar Confederate sympathizers and briefly held prisoner outside of Warsaw.

Although he protested the first partition of the Commonwealth (1772), he was powerless to do anything about it, and in the face of implacable opposition from the Polish magnates.

Moreover, Poniatowski was obliged to place his reliance in Russia's ambassador, Otto Magnus von Stackelberg.

In 1783 or 1784 he married morganatically his lover, Elżbieta Szydłowska (1748–1810), whose first husband, Jan Jerzy Grabowski, was general inspektor wojsk litewskich, and by whom he had an only son, born before the marriage, Count Stanisław Konopnicy-Grabowski (1780 - 1845, Dresden).

Poniatowski's son married first Cecylia Dembowska (19 December 1787 - 17 January 1821 ), and later (May 8, 1822) Countess Julia Zabiełło. His descendants were the Counts Konopnicy-Grabowski.

It was only during the Four-Year Sejm of 1788-92 that Stanisław August threw in his lot with the reformers, centered in the Patriotic Party, and with them co-authored the Constitution of 3 May 1791.

Poniatowski's eloquent speech before the Sejm on taking an oath to uphold the newly adopted Constitution moved his audience to tears. Shortly thereafter, the Targowica Confederation was formed by Polish nobility to overthrow the Constitution. The confederates aligned with Russia's Catherine the Great, and the Russian army entered Poland, starting the Polish-Russian War of 1792.

After a series of battles, Poniatowski, upon the advice of Hugo Kołłątaj and others, acceded to the Confederation. This undermined the operations of the Polish Army, which under Tadeusz Kościuszko and the King's own nephew, Prince Jozef Poniatowski, had been performing prodigiously on the battlefield. The war was ended, and Russia and Prussia undertook the Second partition of Poland in 1793.

King Stanisław August remains a controversial figure. He was accused by some of striving for absolutism, of doing away with the liberties of the szlachta (Polish nobility), of desiring the downfall of the Roman Catholic Church; by others, of weakness and subservience, even of treason, especially after he had joined the Targowica Confederation.

Stanisław August, by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1797

Nevertheless, he did accomplish much in the realm of culture and education. He founded the School of Chivalry (otherwise "Corps of Cadets"), which functioned 1765-1794 and whose alumni included Tadeusz Kościuszko; and the Commission of National Education (1773), the world's first national ministry of education. In 1765 he helped found the Monitor, the leading periodical of the Polish Enlightenment, and the Polish national theater. He hosted his famous "Thursday Dinners", the most brilliant social functions in the Polish capital. He supported the establishment of manufactures and the development of mining. He remodeled the Royal Castle in Warsaw, and erected the elegant Royal Baths complex in Warsaw's most romantic park. He created a numismatic collection, a picture gallery, and an engravings room. His plan to create an even larger painting gallery in Warsaw was interrupted by the destruction of Poland; nonetheless, most of the paintings he had ordered can now be seen at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.

After the final, Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanisław August was forced to abdicate (25 November 1795) and left for Saint Petersburg, Russia. There, a virtual prisoner, he subsisted on a pension granted to him by Empress Catherine the Great, and died deeply in debt. He was buried at the Catholic Church of St. Catherine in St. Petersburg.

In 1938 his remains were transferred to a church at Wołczyn, his birthplace, and in 1995, to St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw, where, on 3 May 1791, he had celebrated the adoption of the Constitution he had co-authored and/or endorsed. Among his living relatives is Elena Poniatowska, a famous Mexican journalist and author.

Remembrance

In May 1765 Stanisław August Poniatowski established the Order of the knights of Order of Saint Stanislaus, Bishop and Martyr, in honor of Poland's and his own patron saint, as Poland's second order of chivalry to reward Poles for noteworthy service to their king. In 1792 he also founded a third order, the Order of Virtuti Militari to reward Poles for exceptional military leadership and courage in combat.

The King is one of the figures immortalized in Jan Matejko's 1891 painting, Constitution of May 3, 1791.

Issue

Name	Birth	Death	Notes
By Elżbieta Szydłowska
Michał Grabowski	1773	17 August 1812	Brigadier general of the Army of the Duchy of Warsaw, died during the Battle of Smolensk (1812); no issue
Stanisław Grabowski	29 October 1780	3 October 1845	married twice
Izabela Grabowska	26 March 1776	21 May 1858	married to Walenty Sobolewski, three daughters
Aleksandra Grabowska	13 April 1771	12 May 1789	married to Franciszek Salezy Krasicki; no issue
By Catherine II of Russia
Anna Petrovna	9 December 1757	8 March 1758
By Magdalena Agnieszka Lubomirska
Konstancja Żwanowa	1768	1810	married to Karol Żwan; no issue (divorced)
Michał Cichocki	September 1770	5 May 1828

See also

• Ambassadors and envoys from Russia to Poland (1763–1794)
• History of Poland (1569-1795)
• History of philosophy in Poland
• List of Poles

References

Bibliography

1. (English) Butterwick, Richard (1998), Poland's last king and English culture: Stanisław August Poniatowski, 1732-1798, Oxford University Press, ISBN 01-98207-01-8 .
2. (English) Lindemann, Mary (2006), Liaisons dangereuses: sex, law, and diplomacy in the age of Frederick the Great, JHU Press, ISBN 08-01883-17-2 .
3. (English) Schulz-Forberg, Hagen (2005), Unravelling civilisation: European travel and travel writing, Peter Lang, ISBN 90-52012-35-0 .
4. (English) Zamoyski, Adam (1992), The last king of Poland, J. Cape, ISBN 02-24035-48-7 .

Further reading

• (Polish) Kiliński, Jan (1818, 1899). Drugi pamiętnik, nieznany, o czasach Stanisława Augusta (Recollections of the Times of Stanislaw Augustus). Aleksander Kraushar. 
• (French) Mémoires secrets et inédits de roi Stanislas Auguste Comte Poniatowski, dernier roi de Pologne. Leipzig. 1862. 
• (Polish) ed. Dembiński, Bronisław (1904). Stanisław August i książe Józef Poniatowski w świetle własnej korespondencyi (Stanislaw and Prince Joseph Poniatowski in the Light of Their Private Correspondence). Nakład Towarzystwa dla Popierania Nauki Polskiej Lviv. 
• Poniatowski's diaries and letters, held for many years in the Russian ministry of foreign affairs, appeared in the January 1908 Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe).
• (English) Nisbet Bain, Robert (1909, 2007). The Polish way: a thousand-year history of the Poles and their culture. Kessinger Publishing, LLC (reprint). ISBN 05-48141-90-8. 
• (English) Zamoyski, Adam (1994). The Polish way: a thousand-year history of the Poles and their culture. Hippocrene Books. ISBN 07-81802-00-8. 

External links

• Poniatowski, in: The Historical Geography of the Ciołek clan AD 950-1950.
• Biography at www.poland.gov.pl
• Stanisław August w Gdańsku

Stanisław August Poniatowski House of Poniatowski Born: 17 January 1732 Died: 12 February 1798
Regnal titles
Preceded by August III the Saxon	King of Poland 1764–1795	Succeeded by Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor as King of Galicia and Lodomeria
		Succeeded by Frederick Augustus I of Saxony as Duke of Warsaw
		Succeeded by Frederick William III of Prussia as Grand Duke of Posen
		Succeeded by Alexander I of Russia as King of Poland
	Grand Duke of Lithuania	Succeeded by Alexander I of Russia

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.