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Corrected year of birth of Michał Jerzy Poniatowski (see entry on him) from 1784 to 1736 (1784 was the beginning of his term as Primate of Poland)
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| place of burial = [[St. John's Cathedral, Warsaw]]
| place of burial = [[St. John's Cathedral, Warsaw]]
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'''Stanisław II August Poniatowski''' (born '''Count Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski''';<ref name="jardetzky">{{en icon}} {{cite book |author=Oleg Jardetzky|coauthors=|title=The Ciolek of Poland|year=1992|editor= |page=176|pages= |chapter= |chapterurl= |publisher=Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt|location= |isbn=32-01015-83-0|url=|format= |accessdate=}}</ref> 17 January 1732 &ndash; 12 February 1798) was the last King and Grand Duke of the [[Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth]] (1764–95). He was the son of [[Stanisław Poniatowski (1676-1762)|Count Stanisław Poniatowski]], [[Castellan]] of [[Kraków]], and [[Konstancja Czartoryska (1700-1759)|Princess Konstancja Czartoryska]];<ref>According to a contemporary statement, his father Stanisław was in reality a natural son of [[Hetmans of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth|Great Lithuanian Hetman]] [[Kazimierz Jan Sapieha]] by an unknown [[Jews|Jewish]] maiden, adopted by Franciszek Poniatowski; [[Jerzy Łojek]], ''Dzieje zdrajcy'', [[Katowice]], 1988, ISBN 83-216-0759-4, p. 189.</ref> brother of [[Michał Jerzy Poniatowski]], (1784–94), [[Primate of Poland]]; and uncle to Prince [[Józef Poniatowski]], (1763–1813).
'''Stanisław II August Poniatowski''' (born '''Count Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski''';<ref name="jardetzky">{{en icon}} {{cite book |author=Oleg Jardetzky|coauthors=|title=The Ciolek of Poland|year=1992|editor= |page=176|pages= |chapter= |chapterurl= |publisher=Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt|location= |isbn=32-01015-83-0|url=|format= |accessdate=}}</ref> 17 January 1732 &ndash; 12 February 1798) was the last King and Grand Duke of the [[Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth]] (1764–95). He was the son of [[Stanisław Poniatowski (1676-1762)|Count Stanisław Poniatowski]], [[Castellan]] of [[Kraków]], and [[Konstancja Czartoryska (1700-1759)|Princess Konstancja Czartoryska]];<ref>According to a contemporary statement, his father Stanisław was in reality a natural son of [[Hetmans of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth|Great Lithuanian Hetman]] [[Kazimierz Jan Sapieha]] by an unknown [[Jews|Jewish]] maiden, adopted by Franciszek Poniatowski; [[Jerzy Łojek]], ''Dzieje zdrajcy'', [[Katowice]], 1988, ISBN 83-216-0759-4, p. 189.</ref> brother of [[Michał Jerzy Poniatowski]], (1736–94), [[Primate of Poland]]; and uncle to Prince [[Józef Poniatowski]], (1763–1813).


== Royal titles ==
== Royal titles ==

Revision as of 18:12, 25 November 2010

For other persons named "Stanisław Poniatowski", see Stanisław Poniatowski (disambiguation).
Stanisław August Poniatowski
King of Poland
King of Poland
PredecessorAugust III the Saxon
Burial
St. John's Cathedral, Warsaw
Issuewith Elżbieta Szydłowska
Michał Grabowski
Stanisław Grabowski
Izabela Grabowska
Aleksandra Grabowska
with Catherine II of Russia (informal)
Anna Petrovna
with Magdalena Agnieszka Lubomirska (informal)
Konstancja Zwanowa,
Michał Cichocki
HousePoniatowski
FatherStanisław Poniatowski
MotherKonstancja née Czartoryska
SignatureStanisław August Poniatowski's signature

Stanisław II August Poniatowski (born Count Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski;[1] 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;[2] brother of Michał Jerzy Poniatowski, (1736–94), Primate of Poland; and uncle to Prince Józef Poniatowski, (1763–1813).

Royal titles

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.[3]

Biography

Poniatowski was born in 1732 at Wołczyn, (now Belarus).[1] 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.[4] The same year, through the influence of Russian Empress Elizabeth and Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin, he joined the Russian court as ambassador of Saxony.[5]

At Saint Petersburg he met the twenty-six-year-old future Empress Catherine Alexeievna (Catherine the Great).[6] She was irresistibly drawn to the handsome, brilliant young Polish nobleman, for whom she forsook all other lovers.[6] In 1755 he was appointed to the office of Stolnik Litewski and later he became Starosta of Przemyśl.[7]

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

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.[8]

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.[9]

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.[10]

In 1768 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth effectively became a protectorate of the Russian Empire.[11] As king, Poniatowski supported the Russian army's repression of the Bar Confederation between 1768-72.[12] 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.[13]

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.[14]

Moreover, Poniatowski was obliged to place his reliance in Russia's ambassador, Otto Magnus von Stackelberg.[15]

Stanisław August Poniatowski by Giovanni Battista Lampi, after 1788.

In 1783/1784 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 marriage, Count Stanisław Konopnicy-Grabowski (1780-Dresden, 1845).

Poniatowski son married firstly Cecylia Dembowska (19 December 1787 - 17 January 1821 ), and secondly May 8, 1822 Countess Julia Zabiełło; he left issue, his descendants were the Counts Konopnicy-Grabowski. Acting in concert with him, he hoped to strengthen his authority and bring about essential reforms.

It was only during the Four-Year Sejm of 1788-1792 that he threw in his lot with the reformers, centered in the Patriotic Party, and with them co-authored the Constitution of 3 May 1791.[16]

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.[17] 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.[18] 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.[19]

Stanisław August Poniatowski by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1797.

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.

Nevertheless, he did accomplish much in the realm of culture and education.[15] 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.[15] 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.[20]

After the final, Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanisław August was forced to abdicate[21] (25 November 1795) and left for Saint Petersburg, Russia. There, a virtual prisoner,[22] 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.[18]

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.[23] Among his living relatives is Elena Poniatowska, a famous Mexican journalist.

Ancestors

Family of Stanisław August Poniatowski
16. Kasper Poniatowski
8. Jan Poniatowski
17. Barbara Lisowska
4. Franciszek Poniatowski
18. Stanisław Maciejowski
9. Jadwiga Maciejowska
19. Urszula Rapsztyńska
2. Stanisław Poniatowski
20.
10. Baltazar (Balcer) Niewiarowski
21.
5. Helena Niewiarowska
22. Paweł Czapliński
11. Zuzanna Czaplińska
23.
1. Stanisław II August Poniatowski
24. Mikolaj Jerzy Czartoryski
12. Michał Jerzy Czartoryski
25. Izabella Korecka
6. Kazimierz Czartoryski
26. Tomasz Olędzki
13. Joanna Weronika Olędzka
27. Anna Grzybowska
3. Konstancja Czartoryska
28.
14. Jan Andrzej Morsztyn
29.
7. Izabela Elżbieta Czartoryska
30. George Gordon, 2nd Marquess of Huntly
15. Marie Catherine Gordon
31. Anne Campbell

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stanislaus II Augustus of Poland.

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b Template:En icon Oleg Jardetzky (1992). The Ciolek of Poland. Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt. p. 176. ISBN 32-01015-83-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  2. ^ According to a contemporary statement, his father Stanisław was in reality a natural son of Great Lithuanian Hetman Kazimierz Jan Sapieha by an unknown Jewish maiden, adopted by Franciszek Poniatowski; Jerzy Łojek, Dzieje zdrajcy, Katowice, 1988, ISBN 83-216-0759-4, p. 189.
  3. ^ Template:En icon Mieczysław B. Biskupski, James S. Pula (1990). "Volume 289". Polish democratic thought from the Renaissance to the great emigration: essays and documents. East European Monographs. p. 168. ISBN 08-80331-86-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  4. ^ Butterwick 1998, p. 92
  5. ^ Butterwick 1998, p. 94
  6. ^ a b Butterwick 1998, p. 93
  7. ^ Template:Pl icon Teresa Zielińska (1997). "Volume 1". Poczet polskich rodów arystokratycznych. Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne. p. 239. ISBN 83-02064-29-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  8. ^ Butterwick 1998, p. 156
  9. ^ Lindemann 2006, p. 236
  10. ^ Zamoyski 1992, p. 88
  11. ^ Andrzej Jezierski, Cecylia Leszczyńska, Historia gospodarcza Polski, 2003, p. 68.
  12. ^ Zamoyski 1992, p. 171
  13. ^ Template:En icon Annmarie Francis Kajencki (2005). Count Casimir Pulaski: From Poland to America, a Hero's Fight for Liberty. The Rosen Publishing Group. p. 20. ISBN 14-04226-46-X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  14. ^ Zamoyski 1992, p. 198
  15. ^ a b c Template:En icon Jerzy Jan Lerski, Piotr Wróbel, Richard J. Kozicki (1996). "Volume 289". Polish Historical dictionary of Poland, 966-1945. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 565. ISBN 03-13260-07-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ Zamoyski 1992, p. 343
  17. ^ Zamoyski 1992, p. 363
  18. ^ a b Template:En icon Charles Knight (1857). "Volume 5". The English cyclopædia: a new dictionary of universal knowledge. Biography. Bradbury & Evans. p. 686. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
  19. ^ Schulz-Forberg 2005, p. 163
  20. ^ Butterwick 1998, p. 218
  21. ^ Schulz-Forberg 2005, p. 162
  22. ^ Butterwick 1998, p. 1
  23. ^ Butterwick 1998, p. 2

Bibliography

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

Further reading

  • Template:Pl icon Kiliński, Jan (1818, 1899). Drugi pamiętnik, nieznany, o czasach Stanisława Augusta (Recollections of the Times of Stanislaw Augustus). Aleksander Kraushar. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)
  • Template:Fr icon Mémoires secrets et inédits de roi Stanislas Auguste Comte Poniatowski, dernier roi de Pologne. Leipzig. 1862.
  • Template:Pl icon 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. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  • 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).
  • Template:En icon 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. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)
  • Template:En icon 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

Stanisław August Poniatowski
Born: 17 January 1732 Died: 12 February 1798
Regnal titles
Preceded by King of Poland
1764–1795
Succeeded byas King of Galicia and Lodomeria
Succeeded byas Duke of Warsaw
Succeeded byas Grand Duke of Posen
Succeeded byas King of Poland
Grand Duke of Lithuania Succeeded by

Public Domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

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