The partitions of Poland

Marcello Bacciarelli painted King Stanisław August Poniatowski in 1786, between the first partition and the constitution that would provoke the second. Ermine, sash, a face still royal. The likeness is not a map. Poland still existed when it was painted, already reduced, not yet erased. This page is the three territorial divisions of 1772, 1793 and 1795 by which Russia, Prussia and Austria reduced the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until the state ceased to exist. Napoleon’s later Duchy of Warsaw is not this story. It is a nineteenth-century sequel, and the sources themselves note that the territorial divisions were altered in 1807. Stop before that alteration. Catherine’s Poland is a sequence of treaties, a constitution, a confederation, an uprising, and a blank on the map.

The first cut had a diplomatic trigger in the south. In the course of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, considerations of balance of power led Frederick II of Prussia to suggest that Russia, Austria and Prussia find territorial compensation at the expense of Poland rather than squabble over the spoils of the Ottoman Empire. The internal situation of the Polish Commonwealth — in particular the treatment of non-Catholics, which allegedly was grossly discriminatory — had led the three neighbours to meddle in Poland’s domestic affairs. After much diplomatic and political manoeuvring they compelled a cession. The treaty of 5 August 1772 was ratified by the Polish Sejm on 30 September 1773. Poland lost about half its population and almost one-third of its land, some 81,500 square miles.

A commonwealth already subject to its neighbours’ meddling was in no position to refuse. The first partition is therefore not a sudden idea of 1772. It is the moment when three courts converted meddling into miles. Russia took the largest, poorest slice. Austria took people. Prussia took the sea approach. The method, once shown, did not need a new philosophy for 1793 or 1795. It needed a constitution to dislike, a confederation to invite an army, and an uprising to punish. Bacciarelli’s king still had a country in 1786. The map in the next picture shows how that country was coloured away. Keep 1772 as a first act, not as the whole play.

Halibutt’s map, drawn in 2005 and later corrected, colours the three seizures. It is a schematic, not a facsimile of 1772. Use it as a legend for the paragraphs that follow, then return to the treaty language. Colours on a modern map are not the Sejm’s vote.

Read the map as three dates, not as one smear. 1772 takes the east to a Dvina–Dnieper line, Royal Prussia without two cities, and Galicia. 1793 takes Lithuanian Belorussia, western Ukraine, Gdańsk, Toruń, Great Poland, part of Mazovia. 1795 takes Courland, Lithuania east of the Neman, the rest of Volhynia, Warsaw’s Mazovia, the rest of Little Poland. The colours were added by a cartographer in 2005. The dates were added by armies and diets. A reader who uses the picture as a treaty will misread it. A reader who uses it as a table of contents for the next three acts will be closer to the sources.

In the First Partition Russia received all the Polish territory east of a line formed roughly by the Dvina and Dnieper, the Belarusian lands, the largest share by area and the least important economically. Prussia gained the economically valuable province of Royal Prussia, excluding the cities of Gdańsk and Toruń, and also the northern portion of Great Poland. Austria acquired Little Poland south of the Vistula, western Podolia, and the area that became Galicia, densely peopled. Prussia’s share was smaller in miles and heavier in leverage: Eastern Pomerania without Gdańsk cut Poland from the sea and allowed Frederick a stranglehold on the Polish economy. The helpless Sejm, fearing additional territorial losses, ratified the partition. Except for individual protests, Britannica records, that was the domestic answer.

Despite some British concern about Gdańsk and the Baltic trade, the European powers reacted with utmost indifference. The British political philosopher Edmund Burke was almost alone in criticising the immorality of the act and in recognising in it the beginning of a revolutionary change in the European balance of power. That sentence is not a Polish speech. It is how one observer in London named a precedent. The major beneficiaries, in the Russian account of the same years, were Russia, which obtained the Belarusian lands, and Austria; Prussia obtained less actual territory, but what it acquired was of great economic value. A first partition can look like a settlement. It was a method. The method would be used twice more.

Almost twenty years later Poland tried to strengthen itself through internal reforms. The Constitution of 3 May 1791 provided for stronger royal authority, established four-year sessions of the elected Sejm, abolished the liberum veto in its proceedings — under which any single member could kill a measure — and introduced significant liberal reforms in education and law. The prospect of social and political progress within the framework of a stable government did not suit the partitioning powers. Conservative opponents formed the Confederation of Targowica on 14 May 1792 and asked Russia to intervene to restore the former Polish constitution. Russia accepted the confederates’ invitation. Prussia also sent troops. On 23 January 1793 the two powers agreed on the Second Partition, confirmed in August and September by a Polish Sejm surrounded by Russian troops.

A constitution that abolished the veto was treated as a reason to finish the map.

The Second Partition transferred to Russia the major remnant of Lithuanian Belorussia and the western Ukraine, including Podolia and part of Volhynia, and allowed Prussia to absorb Gdańsk and Toruń as well as Great Poland and part of Mazovia. The cut accounted for about 115,000 square miles. Poland was now a rump. In response, the Polish officer Tadeusz Kościuszko led a national uprising from March to November 1794. Russia and Prussia intervened to suppress the insurgents. On 24 October 1795 they concluded an agreement with Austria that divided the remnants of Poland, about 83,000 square miles, between themselves. The Third Partition was not finally settled until 26 January 1797. By that settlement Russia incorporated Courland, all Lithuanian territory east of the Neman, and the rest of the Volhynian Ukraine.

Prussia acquired the remainder of Mazovia, including Warsaw, and a section of Lithuania west of the Neman. Austria took the remaining section of Little Poland, from Kraków northeastward to the arc of the Northern Bug River. The name of Poland was wiped from the map of Europe. Those lines would be altered in 1807 when Napoleon created a duchy from the centre. That alteration is the next numbered era’s business. This era’s business is the erasure of 1795, and the Russian claim that the seizures completed a gathering of “Russian” lands begun in the fifteenth century, with Belarusia and Volyn added. In the short term the partitions seemed a significant success. In the long run, Britannica argues, they proved more of a liability than an asset.

Russia became politically tied to Prussia. It had to shoulder an increased military burden to defend new boundaries and to maintain law and order among a people restive under foreign occupation. It also proved difficult to co-opt the Polish elites into the imperial establishment, as had been the case with the Ukrainians, the Baltic Germans, and non-Slavic natives. In addition, the empire acquired for the first time a large Jewish population, which created numerous unforeseen problems. It may also be argued that controlling the obstreperous nation resulted in a regime of harsh police supervision and oppressive censorship throughout the empire. A gathering of lands can arrive as a police problem. That is not a later novelist’s irony. It is the sources’ long-term ledger for this success.

Jan Matejko painted the Constitution of 3 May in 1891: a crowded Warsaw street, a century of longing put into one afternoon. It is not an eyewitness canvas. Kościuszko appears in the throng as later patriotism required. Use the picture for the document that Targowica asked Russia to kill, then return to 1792–95 as a sequence of troops, not as a costume drama.

Keep the inventory in three numbered acts, not as a fog called “Poland.” 1772: a compensation suggested by Frederick, a Sejm’s ratification, Belarusian lands to Russia, a sea cut by Prussia, Galicia to Austria. 1791–93: a constitution, Targowica, a second cut into Lithuania, Ukraine, Gdańsk and Toruń. 1794–97: Kościuszko from March to November, then Courland, the Neman line, Volhynia, Warsaw to Prussia, Kraków’s region to Austria. Bacciarelli’s king sits in the middle of that sequence, still crowned, already reduced. Matejko’s later crowd sits after it, painting a day that did not save the state.

The next article is not a duchy in 1807. It is a Cossack-peasant war inside Russia, already fought in 1773–75, which this Polish story must not swallow. Partition and Pugachev share a reign. They do not share a page. A reader who has followed the Nakaz, the steppe and Crimea already knows that Catherine could speak of law and still take. Here the taking is a commonwealth, done in concert with two other courts, finished while a harbour on the Black Sea was still new. Call it a golden age only if the gold is allowed to include a blank where Poland had been, and a police burden the gatherers did not put in the first treaty’s toast. The blank is dated 1795, settled in 1797. That is the last Polish date this chapter will carry.