Born in 1732, Poniatowski already at twenty, in 1752, as a Sejmdeputy attracted attention with his oratory. He ultimately owed his career, however, to his uncles, the powerful Czartoryskis, who in 1755 sent him to Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the suite of the British ambassador, Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams. There, through the influence of Russian Chancellor A. P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, he gained accreditation to the Russian court as ambassador of Saxony. Through Hanbury-Williams he met twenty-six-year-old Grand Duchess Catherine, who was irresistibly attracted to the handsome and brilliant young nobleman, for whom she forsook all other lovers.
Portrait of King Stanisław August Poniatowski with Hourglass and crown, by Marcello Bacciarelli, 1793, oil on canvas. National Museum, Warsaw.
After Coup d'état of Czartoryski`s Familia, followed by entering of Russian army in Poland he was elected (September 7, 1764) as King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The coronation took place in Warsaw on November 25, 1764. The new King's uncles in the Familia would have preferred another nephew, Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, on the throne but Czartoryski had declined to seek the office.
Stanisław August--as he now styled himself--or "Ciołek," as he was deprecatingly called by some contemporaries and later historians (after his Ciołek Coat of Arms)--as King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was at that time almost entirely controlled by the much more powerful neighboring powers (Russia and Prussia), remained at the mercy of circumstances. Nevertheless, in his difficult situation he strove to do his duty. He inaugurated some useful economic changes. He supported the Familia's reform program until 1766, when he fell out with his uncles. King has effectively supported Russian army crushing Bar Confederation in 1768-1772. On October 221770 Council of the Bar Confederation proclaimed him dethroned. Thus the king was for a short time kidnapped by confederates in 1771 in Warsaw.
He protested the first partition of the Commonwealth (1772); but being powerless to do anything about it, and in the face of implacable opposition from Polish magnates, he was obliged to place his reliance in Russia's German ambassador, Otto Magnus Stackelberg. Acting in concert, 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 Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791.
His eloquent speech before the Sejm on taking an oath to uphold the newly adopted Constitution moved his audience to tears. But when the Targowica Confederation was formed to overthrow the Constitution, with the connivance of Russia's Catherine the Great, and Russian army entered to Poland - Polish-Russian War of 1792 started. After series of battles the King upon her demand and the recommendation of some advisers, including the otherwise usually radical Hugo Kollataj, acceded to the Confederation. This undermined the operations of the Polish Army, which under Tadeusz Kosciuszko 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 Second partition of Poland in 1793. During the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794 the King was threatened when Russian bribery of his contributors was revealed. He was paralyzed, as well, by radical insurgent movements.
kidnapping of Stanisław August 1771
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. 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 Royal Castle in Warsaw, and erected the elegant Łazienki 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.
Stanisław August Poniatowski, last elected King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
After the final, Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanisław August was forced to abdicate (November 25, 1795) and left for St. Petersburg, Russia. There, a virtual prisoner, he subsisted on a pension from Catherine the Great and died deeply in debt. 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 May 3, 1791, he had celebrated, earlier that day, the adoption of the Constitution he had co-authored.
Jan Kibinski, Recollections of the Times of Stanislaw Augustus (in Polish), Krakow, 1899.
Mémoires secrets et inédits de Stanislas Auguste, Leipzig, 1862.
Stanislaw and Prince Joseph Poniatowski in the Light of Their Private Correspondence, in French, edited in Polish by Bronislaw Dembinski, L'viv, 1904.
R.N. Bain, The Last King of Poland and His Contemporaries, 1909.
Adam Zamoyski, The Polish Way: a Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture, New York, Hippocrene Books, 1994.
Adam Zamoyski, Last King of Poland, New York, Hippocrene Books, 1997.
Poniatowski's diaries and letters, held for many years in the Russian ministry of foreign affairs, appeared in the January 1908 Vestnik Evropy [News of Europe].
