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Citizen, Nation, Constitution: The Realization and Failure of the Constitution of 3 May, 1791 in Light of Mutual Polish-French Influence

Jörg K. Hoensch

In Delá Pologne published in Paris in 1839, the radical democrat François V. Raspail put: forward tibe view that tibe intellectual current of Ancient Roman legal thought that had been revived by humanism gained ideological significancc for the French Enlightenment and the Revolution of 1789 only through Polish transmission. In this process he ascribed a key role to Jan Zamoyski, a statesman, military commander, learned humanist, and constitutional theorist, who, as author of the treatise De Senatu Romano and coauthor of Dialéctica Ciceronis and as founder of the Academy of Zamosc, had applied republican ideas derived from Roman constitutional history to the political life of Renaissance Poland.¹ Raspail attempted to derive Rousseau’s volontégénérale from Zamoyski’s principle of communis consensus when he had him say to Henri de Valois: “... nous sommes tous nobles égaux, nous ne formons tous qu ’un seul corps; toutes nos volontés individuelles composent la volontégénéral” (p. 52). Raspail asserted further that during their stay in Poland in 1573 Henri de Valois and his entourage were “infected” with the ideas of equality, liberty, and fraternity such that this influence remained active in France to 1789: “la peste qu’il nous rapporta de Pologne gagna la royauté franęaise en 1789” (p. 53).

Although this genesis of the leading slogans of the French Revolution today seems questionable, the secret of the democratic structure of the Polish nation of nobles rested on Zamoyski’s comparison of the nobility with the civis Romanus of the Roman republic. More essential, of course, was that the heritage of the formal equality of all nobles within the gentry republic was retained and enriched into the last years of the eighteenth century. Until 1791 there were no dejure differences of rank among the approximately 725,000 nobles of the “royal republic.” The “equality” and “liberty” (równosc i wolność) of all members of the sovereign nation of nobles remained such a self-evident legal principle that the many attempts of the possessionati to exclude the landless plebeian nobles from the active and passive electorate remained unsuccessful up to the Law on Dietines and the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Thus, the nation of nobles, despite some residual traits of feudal orders and despite its differentiated social strata, constituted neither a governing caste nor an aristocracy but rather a self-contained legal corporation. The equality and liberty of all nobles found their original moral-political substantiation in the idea of “brotherhood” (braterstwo), which rested on the higher ethical obligation which noble birth entailed in relation to other estates and an equal obligation within the nation of nobles. Thus, at least theoretically, a consistent communis consensus in political decisions had to be maintained among the rota communitasof the nation of nobles, which stood over the republic as guardian, protector, and sovereign. All these elements gave the nation of nobles, at least in its internal structure, a thoroughly democratic character. The poorest plebeian from the golota could proudly claim the same civil and political rights as the magnates, who in status, possessions, and power, if not in noble rights, were the equal of the German imperial princes. So deeply were these principles anchored in the consciousness of the people of Poland that they became proverbial: “the nobleman on his estate is the equal of the voivode” (szlachcic na zagrodzie równy wojewodzie).

For a nation of nobles, which could regard only the commonality and equality of political rights as a binding criterion, the use of the title of “citizen” was not merely a natural decision but rather a proudly proclaimed and jealously guarded right. Only the nobleman could adorn himself with the rank of “citizen” (obywatel), for only this designation symbolized political rights and thereby his belonging to the sovereign nation. This never-forgotten, at most partially repressed, consciousness of noble citizenship received a powerful new stimulus in the middle of the eighteenth century from the Enlightenment, especially from the penetration of the citoyen concept of the Encyclopedists. Further, the Enlightenment fashion of reaching back to the forms of the Roman republic at the same time furthered reflection on the Poles’ own Romanrepublican traditions integrated during the Renaissance. As demonstrated in the work Głos wolny wolność ubezpieczający² of 1749 that has been attributed to the emigre King Stanisław Leszczyński³, the ideas of the Enlightenment that were new to Europe—those of “liberty,” “equality,” “democracy,” and res publica-wete long comprehended in the nation of nobles, albeit recently in a degenerate form. All the more ruthlessly could he attack the sickly political conditions of the Republic as he was able to preach the return to the old civic “virtues and talents,” to the reformed “true” Republic.⁴ For him, accordingly, the question of the formation of the Polish nation, which the Enlightenment regarded as decisive, was already solved by the existence of citizenship.

A little later, in 1763, the Piarist Stanisław Konarski attempted to rouse the old civic pride by bluntly translating the ethically binding civis Romanus sum as “I am a Polish nobleman.”⁵ In his Uwaginad życiem Jana Zamoyskiego, of 1787, Stanisław Staszic praised the noble virtues because they had been considered Roman and republican since the times of the great Chancellor.⁶ With this work Staszic opened a lively discussion of Zamoyski and the principles he represented.⁷ Both the reformist and conservative factions of the Four-Year Diet—and here they outdid the contemporary French constitutional theorists—used the conceptual world of the ancient republic as the arsenal of their terminology. The senators were referred to as patres conscripti, the deputies as tribuni plebis, while Hugo Kołłątaj attributed the corona cńvica (korona obywatelska) to the civic sense of community,⁸ his opponent Seweryn Rzewuski posed as the “archtribune of the republic”⁹ and its old unrestricted liberties.¹⁰

The strength and broad appeal of the reform ideas discussed in Poland and the patriotism that sprang from them, the natural sensibility of a community of free citizens with equal rights, entered the cosmopolitan world of the Enlightenment after the Confederation of Bar of 1768. Rousseau’s Considerations,¹¹ written under the influence of the Sarmatian-Roman concepts of the Bar Confederation, can well be regarded “as one of the first manifestoes of integral nationalism.”¹² Regarding Poland, Rousseau stood rather alone in his positive, not always accurate, evaluation of the Polish political system. (King Stanisław August Poniatowski called the Considerations “the most beautiful political novel about Poland.)”¹³ Most contemporary foreign observers, under the influence of the ruthless self-criticism of the Poles, tended to regard degeneration and disease as the decisive criteria of the Polish Republic. Judgments such as that of James Madison that Poland combined “aristocracy and monarchy in their worst forms”¹⁴ accurately portrayed much of the praxis without reaching the essence of the Polish political system. Even Alphonse de Lamartine, who was deeply concerned about the Polish question, termed the nation of nobles an “aristocracy without a people” and revised his judgment only when Zygmunt Krasiński put to him the rhetorical question: “one million electors, each of whom can become a representative, a senator, or even king—is that an aristocracy without a nation?”¹⁵ More justified was the critique directed at those aspects of the Polish polity in which the welfare state of Enlightened absolutism was clearly superior, such as in the promotion of the urban and peasant estates. Through the weakening of the king and the establishment of noble sovereignty that had made the king a “first oligarch,” the non-noble estates were robbed of their natural protector, and thus disappeared the highest independent authority that alone could have hindered the identification of noble interests with those of the entire nation. The unsatisfactory political and social situation of the peasantry and urban population in comparison with those of France, Prussia, or the Habsburg Monarchy essentially resulted from the omnipotence of the Polish nobility.

The peculiar characteristic of the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Union from Krewa in 1385 to 1791 was the fact that the governing noble class proceeded after the Polish-Lithuanian Union of Lublin in 1569 from a purely personal, monarchical union to a real constitutional one, which had a solid foundation in a broad social union. This was a social union of the nobles of all historical-ethnic regions into the corporate body of the nation of nobles. Poland was the first state in Europe to raise the principles of religious, and beyond that national, or rather prenational, tolerance to a fundament of its political system. In the course of the eighteenth century, the governing estates developed into a Polish-speaking state-nation, which stretched over nine-tenths of the state’s territory in 1791. The fusion of the higher estates into a national society united by language and culture resulted primarily from common rights, liberties, and privileges. The non-Polish nobility, as well as the townspeople, had already assimilated by 1648, at least in language. By 1791 the result was impressive: of the approximately 2.1 million nobles, bourgeois, and yeomen who played the central role in the establishment of civil society, over 80 percent were Polish speakers. The higher and more privileged the rank of an estate in the social hierarchy, the more complete was its linguistic and cultural Polonization.¹⁶

Around 1770 Baroque Sarmatism, which was the dominant Catholic and proto-national tendency until the Confederation of Bar, found a kind of connection with French rationalism, although, of course, it shared neither its original cosmopolitan tendency nor its anticlerical passion. The fruit of this synthesis of Catholic with secular and Enlightenment ideas was a powerful, deeply historically rooted state patriotism. The developing civil society drew on the most convinced carriers of patriotic ideas from the nobility, the middle classes, the yeomanry, and especially from the ethnically mixed provinces. The unity of the Polish cultural nation was taken for granted by the supporters of the reform of 1791. Thus Franciszek Salezy Jezierski could aptly define the concept of the nation for the Poles: “Nation-this is a union of people who have a common language, customs, and manners, a union that comprises common and general legislation for all citizens.”¹⁷ His reference to language in no way sprang from an early breath of Romantic sensibilities; he meant only the lingua nationalis as the idiom of civil society. Therefore, the united national existence of the societas civilis of the Poles remained vital in the national consciousness of its bearers. The most striking evidence of the unitary character of this nation was that it designated itself not as a “society” in a pluralistic sense but rather as a “community” (towarzystwo); the modern term spoleczenstwo as a designation for the social formation replaced the older towaizystwo (actually, “association” in the sense of the societas civilis) only in the middle of the nineteenth century. Under these conditions it could not be doubted that the civil society of the Polish Republic toward the end of the eighteenth century formed that nation une et indivisible that so impressively demonstrated its unity after the final partition of the state territory.

No national consciousness was present among the non-Polish-speaking peoples of Poland before 1795; even the elementary preconditions of an independent national identity were lacking. For the nobility, on the other hand, the commitment to Polish as a native language, to Polish culture and history and thus to the Polish nation was self-evident, although the old differentiation between gens and natio was still in general use at the time of the partitions and the conventional formulation of gente Ruthenus, natione Polonus still enjoyed undisputed recognition. Language was thereby regarded not as the essential characteristic of nationality but only as an emblem of social rank; that Polish was the “lords’ language” and Ruthenian, Lithuanian, and Latvian were “peasant languages,” while Yiddish was the idiom of a large part of the urban population, was a natural occurrence for the thinking of the time. Polish thus became the lingua nationalis; the non-Polish languages were regarded as ’linguae vulgares. “Nation” (naród) could mean the entire Republic as well as the lands of the Polish Crown, on the one hand, and those of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, on the other. In view of the diversity of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and estate structures and of the frequent changes of state territory, the uniting principle of the aggregate Polish nation consisted of a common history, which was politically and culturally represented by the Polish governing class. Thus, in the period of its decline, Poland must be defined, at least as an ideal type, as a “historic nation.” At that time, the designation of “nation” became binding for the entire territory of Poland through the renewed union of Lithuania and the lands of the Crown of 20 October 1791, which reformed the Commonwealth of Two Nations (Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów) and especially strengthened the “united and indivisible Republic.”

In spite of everything, from 1573 to 1789 Poland could claim to be the only territorial state in Europe in which the “nation” practiced a constitutionally established democracy. According to the ideas and social-political configurations common at that time, the republic was to be classified simply as a democracy as such, not merely as a democracy within the ruling class. It may be debated whether the republic bore the greatest democratic potency, the greatest ability to extend civic democracy to broader social spheres and eventually to the entire populace. In any event, for the era up to the beginning of the French Revolution, Krasmski was thoroughly justified when he wrote his friend Lamartine that the Polish constitution was “the most magnificent democracy that has ever been realized in Europe.”¹⁸ The civic-patriotic mentality not only remained active in Poland until the Constitution of 1791 but also was transferred through Rousseau to France up to the revolution, to Robespierre, and even to Fichte.¹⁹ The Polish elements in their constitutional thinking, especially the connection between civil-political rights and patriotism, were not infrequently so self-evident to the heirs of the French revolutionaries of 1789 that they—as with Adolphe Thiers or F. V. Raspail—occasionally exaggerated this intellectual inheritance.

The Contents of the Patriotic Reform Movement

The discussions of reform that were undertaken in Poland in the mideighteenth century endeavored to grasp the problems of state and society in their totality and, along with historical analysis, to reveal ways to limit the “excess of liberty” (Leszczyński) and to terminate the general condition of anarchy and powerlessness.²⁰ The most important demands put forward were the abolition or at least restriction of the liberum veto, the modernization of the administration and the establishment of new central authorities, state support for trade and manufacture, the protection and opportunity for development of the cities and peasantry, and the foundation of an educational system open to a broad section of the public. After the shock of the First Partition of 1772, the establishment of the Permanent Council (Rada Nieustajaęa, 1775)²¹ as the central organ of government and the founding of the Commission for National Education (Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, 1773)²² created the prerequisites for the consolidation of the reform movement. Especially the ideas of the French Enlightenment—transmitted in part by young Polish nobles, great numbers of whom became acquainted with West European conditions through their studies or through travel-were integrated and adapted to Polish conditions. At his court King Stanisław August Poniatowski sought to gather a circle of enlightened thinkers who agreed on the general tendency of the renewal but not on all specific questions and methods.²³ This initiative found resonance primarily among representatives of the middle and lower nobility, among whom many were clerics descended from the impoverished gentry. This circle was not as numerous or important as that of France, but it did boast an abundance of political talent.²⁴ The members of this circle belonged thoroughly—and here is also a certain parallel to the politicians of the French Revolution—to the relatively young generation that was born around the middle of the century.

Distinguished among them were Józef Wybicki, a deputy in the Diet, and especially Hugo Kołłątaj, who in 1788 gathered a circle of younger intellectuals in his “Forge” (“Kuźnica Kołłątajowska ’);²⁵ not to mention Franciszek Salezy Jezierski, Franciszek Ksawery Dmochowski, Antoni Trębicki, and Jan Dembowski. Alongside these radicals of the lower nobility stood members of the townspeople such as the Warsaw city president Jan Dekert, who was actually of greater importance as a practical politician than as a constitutional theorist, and his associate, the lawyer and politician Franciszek Barss, but especially Stanisław Staszic, who had provided the opening contribution to the constitutional debate in his Uwagi nad zyciem Jana Zamoyskiego.²⁶

So penetrating was the general desire for reform of the political system at its root and branch that it had even seized the thoroughly noble officer corps. Tadeusz Kościuszko devoted himself to the idea of patriotic-democratic reform. As engineer-general in the American Revolutionary War and as fortifier of Saratoga and West Point, he had won great fame, and finally in 1789 he took a military post again as major-general in the Polish army and became a demigod for many younger officers.²⁷ Next to him and his moderate views, the brilliant officer Jakub Jasiński, who, like Kościuszko, came from the Cadets’ Corps and who later gained national fame as the liberator of Wilno in 1794, was considered a burning adherent of the French Revolution.²⁸ The same could be said of the young Prince Józef Sułkowski—who later demonstrated his republican convictions as political confidant of Carnot in the French Army of Italy in 1796 and as Napoleon’s adjutant. Thus, the reform movement was embraced by and ranged from the landed noble to the bourgeois, from the priest to the line officer, and from the royal official to the noble plebeian. Its members held diverging political convictions, and the desire for reform was most pervasive among the young. The schools of the Commision for National Education, the Cadets’ Corps, the copious reform literature, and not least the bitter experience of the Confederation of Bar had borne fruit. Notwithstanding the plethora of political opinions, the young reformers were united by the fact that they based their ideas first on the native Polish constitutional tradition, strengthened by the spirit of the ancient republic, and on the views of natural rights and social theory of the French Enlightenment. It was hardly a coincidence that Russo (Rousseau) and Monteskiusz (Montesquieu) are among the few French surnames that have been polonized.²⁹ Alongside the French Revolution, the American debates of 1787-1789 preceding the ratification of the Constitution lent a further strong impulse.

The reform party in the mid-1780s advocated the immediate shaking off of the Russian protectorate established in 1768 as well as the enlargement and reorganization of the army, a financial and tax reform, modernization of the work of the dietines and the Diet, the introduction- of a hereditary monarchy, political rights for urban citizens, the beginning of the liberation of the peasantry through the elimination of corvée, the integration of Jews into society, and, most important, the curtailment of the omnipotence of the magnate oligarchs. Political journalism had a long tradition in Poland; “public opinion” was more of a direct political force in the Republic of nobles than elsewhere. An impressive number of newspapers and journals appeared, an abundance of tracts, letters, satires, and pamphlets on relevant or potentially relevant questions, because the latter publications corresponded more to the reading habits of the provincial nobility. Alongside the Monitor, which appeared from 1763 to 1784 and patterned itself on the British Spectator, the most influential publications were the Pamiętnik Historyczno-Polityczny (1782-1792) published and edited by Piotr Świtkowski, the Gazeta Narodowa i Obca, shaped by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and Józef Weyssenhoff, and the Pamiętnik Historyczno-Literacki i Ekonomiczny. These organs presented the contents of important foreign reform writings—such as Camil Desmoulin’s La France libre or Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès’ Qu-est-ce que le Tiers Était (1789)—describing the course of the debates on the ratification of the American Constitution and the French constitutional discussions, and offering vivid descriptions of events in France. Especially during the Four-Year Diet political literature swelled to a vast flood of diverse writings—including series of discussions with theses, replies, and counter replies—with the goal of mobilizing the masses of passive or neutral people in the cause of reform. In this “Kołłątaj’s Forge” acted as a modern propaganda center with specialists for the various levels and interest groups of the szlachta and townspeople and for regional special interests.

Relatively little was published by the camp of the conservative opposition, which-as the supporter of Russia-partly out of conviction, partly out of selfinterest, and partly because of their unconditional commitment to the maintenance of the unrestricted liberty of the nobility, called on the “republican” heritage and rejected the stabilization and the strengthening of central state power and the reorganization of the parliamentary system. The Grand Hetman Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, the Field Hetman Seweryn Rzewuski, the Bishop of Livonia (in partibus) Józef Kossakowski, and General Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki led the “Republicans.” Opposed to them stood the “Patriots,” which included among the magnates the Marshal of the Diet Stanisław Małachowski, the brothers Ignacy and Stanisław Kostka Potocki, the Czartoryskis, and the Lithuanian Grand Hetman Michał Ogiński. The King and his followers—led. by his brother, Primate Michał Poniatowski and Great Crown Chancellor Jacek Małachowski-long sought to assume an intermediary position, until at the end of 1790 he sided definitely with the “Patriots.” In the battle of opinions the patriotic faction supported by Prussia quickly gained ground in view of the involvement of Russia in a difficult war with the Turkish Empire and in view of the enthusiasm that the program of the reformers found among the middle and lower nobility.

The great social and political importance of the first term of the Four-Year Diet³⁰ rested on the fact that its decisions on the alliance with Prussia (29 March 1790), on the expansion of the army to 100,000 men (20 October 1788), and especially on tax policy-and here the Polish awakening was not dissimilar to the contemporary French Revolution-aroused a powerful movement for general improvement of the political system among the middle and lower levels of the politically enfranchised population as well as among the city dwellers. The broad current of reform sentiment, which had been active for more than a generation and was artificially held back by the Russian guarantees and their defenders among the magnates, now surged forward. “That every nation is free and independent, that the nation has the right to establish the form of government that it holds to be best, that no foreign state has the authority to interfere with its constitution-this is the first and most important maxim of international law.”³¹ This thesis presents the point of view that human rights justify constitutional reform as encapsulated in the sentence: “A nation that does not have the right to govern itself is not a nation.”³²

Both camps, the patriotic as well as the republican, used the American and French debates as an arsenal for their arguments. Despite their essentially democratic convictions, the “Patriots” were in the paradoxical situation of having to curtail old, apparently self-evident liberties in order to strengthen the republic, and their republican opponents did not neglect to capitalize on this situation. This tactical reversal of fundamental positions came to the fore especially in the decisive questions of the replacement of the electoral monarchy by an inherited kingship and of the introduction of the principle of majority rule. Thus, Seweryn Rzewuski painted a frightening picture of the tyranny of hereditary monarchy, which would give rise to a renewed age of Tarquinius; he praised those great Americans “to whom America owes her freedom,” who had certainly felt that “a hereditary monarchy cannot be reconciled with freedom.”³³ Hugo Kołłątaj could only reply that Great Britain and the Netherlands were free under their kings and that France had not abolished monarchy “in its current revolution;” the Polish nation would deal with refractory kings “just as England had done with the Stuarts, the Netherlands with Joseph II, and France with Louis XVI.”³⁴ When Rzewuski praised the liberum vero as “a mighty bulwark of our form of government” and feared that majority rule would produce a new bondage, “the right of the strongest,” Kołłątaj could with more reason reply: “Did Franklin and Washington not have in mind the notion of general liberty when they began?” Moreover, it became clear in this discussion that the conservative “Republicans” could proclaim ultrademocratic slogans because, thanks to clientage, they served the interests of the oligarchy, while the essentially democratic “Patriots”—and this was indeed a unique situation in Europe at that time—wanted to curtail the existing democratic laws in order to raise the democracy of the nobility from the disfunction that had lasted for generations. If the “Patriots” were thereby in an outwardly less favorable position, their unconditional advocacy of the natural rights of the individual, of liberty and equality before the law, proved the purity of their intentions. “The rights of the individual are the foundation of all other rights among people,” wrote Kołłątaj around 1790,³⁵ and Staszic added a clear jab at the magnate oligarchy: “Any association that is established between a few or a few thousand people, between a dozen or several dozen families, without the permission of the other people who are forced to live in this social formation is not a human society but rather a conspiracy against humanity.”³⁶ Here the basic question of constitutional reform is revealed; the reform could not be limited to a strictly institutional change, but rather, to be truly successful, it must fundamentally reshape the class of politically enfranchised citizens.

The political confrontation over the reform of noble voting rights rested on the principle, “Birth makes a man a noble, but only property makes him a citizen.”³⁷ The emancipation of the urban population had taken a prominent place in the first term of the Four-Year Diet but was brought to legislative ripeness only in the second term that opened on 16 December 1790 after the doubling of the number of delegates. The parallel events of the French Revolution and the growing fear of revolution among the szlachcawee skillfully used by the patriotic political writers to arouse readiness for at least modest concessions.³⁸ Meanwhile the international constellation, which had been favorable to the Republic since the middle of 1790, had severely deteriorated.³⁹ The further development of the revolution in France and new intentions in British policy provided the impetus for a disentanglement of the militarypolitical complexities of Eastern Europe. The Reichenbach Convention of 27 July 1790, in which Joseph H’s successor Leopold II accepted the Prussian conditions, prevented the outbreak of war between Prussia and Austria but at the same time, by settling conflicts between Berlin and Vienna, removed a crucial precondition of the Prussian-Polish alliance of 29 March 1790. This alliance lost appeal to King Frederick William II as he recognized in August-September that the Diet had no intention of ceding Gdansk and Torun in accordance with the “Great Plan” of his minister Hertzberg. The separate peace signed at Werela on 14 August 1790, under which King Gustav III of Sweden withdrew from the war with Russia, further strained the international position of the republic of nobles. Finally, after long negotiations with the Porte, Leopold signed the T reaty of Sistowa (24 August 1791); this treaty cleared the way for the Declaration of Pillnitz of 27 August 1791, in which the monarchs of Austria and Prussia joined for common surveillance of the French Revolution. From July 1789 Catherine II of Russia had been occupied with the plans of Prince Potemkin and his secretary Bezborodko for the “creation of a confederation” against the reform measures in Poland and had considered plans to provoke an uprising in Polish Ukraine. The Russian military success against the Sublime Porte raised the danger that Russia, after an advantageous peace treaty, could march experienced troops into Poland. Therefore, it was high time for the “Patriots” to bring the reform effort initiated in extensive legislation to a conclusion in order to crown their efforts by the codification of a general constitution:

Persuaded that our common fate depends entirely upon the establishing and rendering perfect a national constitution... and willing to profit by the present circumstances of Europe, and by the favorable moment which has restored us to ourselves...We do solemnly establish the present Constitution.⁴⁰

The patriotic camp found itself in a favorable parliamentary position, because several leaders of the “Republicans”—among them Szczęsny Potocki⁴¹ — had left the country due to their disappointment over the course of the proceedings, while the King, since the elections held for the second term in the fall of 1790, stood with the reformers. The solidarity of King and nation, the ideal of the French Gironde of 1790-1792, and the office of Roi Citoyen, which the founders of the French Constitution of 1791 had in mind, deeply moved Stanisław August at the time of the Polish constitutional discussions.⁴² Knowledgeable about and friendly to the American Constitution (a bust of Washington adorned his study) in July 1788 he had already made the Florentine Philip Mazzei, the representative of Virginia in France and a confidant of Jefferson, his agent in Paris.⁴³ Through Mazzei, who from 1790 was co-founder of the Society of 1789—which included moderate Jacobins such as Lafayette, Sieyès, and Mirabeau and which offered honorary membership to Franklin, Washington and Stanisław August⁴⁴—the King was familiar with all the personalities of the French Revolution from Condorcet to Robespierre and with all the intellectual currents of France. Although Stanisław August was certainly no “Jacobin,” rather at most an advocate of constitutional monarchy, he nevertheless thoroughly approved of social reforms in the republic, and he was determined to defend “our revolution” and its citoyens. In the contest between the parties the King gained great personal influence, and through his loosely organized circle of friends, he was able to exert it in support of constitutional reform .

Thus to the King fell the decisive role of furthering the work of the Constitutional Deputation, which had begun its work in September 1789 and whose guiding spirit was the magnate leader of the “Patriots,” Ignacy Potocki. The strong impact of American and French influence is also seen in the introductory declaration of human rights in the first draft of the Principles to Reform the Government proposed by Potocki on December 17:: “...the nation has the obligation to guarantee and to preserve the freedom, property and equality of every citizen...”⁴⁵ Thanks to the constructive suggestions of the King and the willingness to compromise of the leading reformers, the text of the constitution, which had been prepared in secret in spring 1791, gained the approval of the Diet on 3 May 1791—in a coup d’état according to its opponents.⁴⁶

In view of its derivation from native constitutional traditions as well as from contemporary American and French ideas, the Constitution was of a moderate and mixed type.⁴⁷ If the electoral monarchy, the old symbol of the democracy of the nobility, was replaced by hereditary monarchy through the house of Wettin and thus a certain affinity shown for monarchical sovereignty, nevertheless “the definition of public powers” in the Constitution expressly declared that “all power in civil society should be derived from the will of the people.” The preamble found a compromise in that it designated that the monarch rules “by the grace of God and the will of the Nation.”⁴⁸ Further, no agreement was reached on whether the terms “citizen” and “nation” used in the Constitution were to be applied beyond the noble estate;⁴⁹ thus, at one point “nation” was understood as the old nation of the nobility (Article II), at another as the entire populace of the Republic, including even the enserfed peasants (Article IV).⁵⁰ In any event, the Constitution placed greater weight on the description of social along with strictly constitutional conditions, and therefore laws on noble rights and the royal cities were incorporated as integral parts (Article III, Article VI). On this social structure rested the triple division of public authority into the legislative, the executive, and the judicial, which according to the advice of Montesquieu was put into constitutional practice and which appeared for the first time in Europe (Article V).

The idea of popular sovereignty was firmly anchored in the Constitution, for the Chamber of Deputies, “being the manifestation and repository of supreme national authority,” would be “the temple of legislation” and should determine the law; the Senate held only a suspensive veto (Article VI). For the final enactment of laws “the votes of both Houses shall be jointly computed, and the majority, as described by law, shall be considered as a decree and the will of the Nation. . . . The majority of votes shall decide everything, and everywhere; therefore we abolish, and utterly annihilate, liberum veto “(Article VI). Executive authority was entrusted to the king and behind him a state council of Guardians of the Laws (Straz Praw) consisting of the Primate of Poland, the five cabinet ministers responsible to the Diet, and two secretaries (Article VII). Finally, “as judicial power is incompatible with the legislative, nor can be administered by the king, therefore tribunals and magistratures ought to be established and elected” (Article VIII). The Constitution and all its institutions thus represented an example of a parliamentary monarchy based on a democratically organized nation of citizens, and it would assume a model character for modern constitutional history as the first codified Constitution in Europe and—after the American federal Constitution—the second in the world.

This exemplary character was eloquently expressed in the stormy acclamation that the Polish Constitution found in all European countries, from Portugal to Sweden and from the Netherlands to Italy.⁵¹ In Amsterdam the citizenry had a commemorative medal struck for the Polish King; in London a society was formed to celebrate the anniversary of the Polish Constitution with yearly banquets; and in revolutionary Paris the popular sections celebrated the government of the great King and generous nobility in votes of thanks at their reunions of 1 and 4 June 1791. Among European constitutional theorists, above all Edmund Burke praised the Constitution in that he ascribed to himself a sort of philosophical protectorate over its drafting; also he sought to launch his attack on the French Revolution in the name of the Polish Constitution. Burke’s opponent Mackintosh and his colleagues Henry Fox, Mallet du Pan, and Volney, Sieyès and Condorcet, but also the historian and economist Sismondi, all had approving or even admiring words for the creation of this Constitution. Even the very critical Thomas Paine had to at least acknowledge that the Polish Constitution provided an example of a reform based on internal strength On the other hand, in the German states, which were mostly under absolutist governments, the Constitution was little noticed. Nevertheless one should mention here the lecture, including remarks on its contents, held on 6 October 1791 at the Berlin Academy by Count Hertzberg and the account of Friedrich Schulz of Courland.⁵² In the United States of America, where Kościuszko and Pułaski were still remembered, public opinion was particularly interested in the Polish Constitution because the ratification of the federal Constitution and the associated constitutional comparisons lay only two years in the past.⁵³

Of course, nowhere did the news of the enactment of the Polish Constitution arouse greater enthusiasm than in France.⁵⁴ Even the Jacobin Club, in some Chapters of the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, endorsed the Republic and its King. In general, however, a naive and spontaneous enthusiasm, springing from the idea of a brotherhood of constitutional nations, predominated, especially among the Jacobins in the provinces. Letters of homage to Stanisław August were sent from a series of French cities from Lyon to Neu-Breisach in summer 1791, and an address by the Jacobins of Valognes celebrated the King for his “reason and philanthropy” and as a “benefactor of the human race.”⁵⁵ In this way, the Polish Constitution was certainly essential to the final draft of the French revolutionary constitution of 3 and 14 September 1791, which in turn served as a model, in many respects, for subsequent constitutional monarchies in Europe.⁵⁶

Within the Polish Republic the Constitution was significant primarily in that it thoroughly corresponded to the expressed political wishes of the majority of citizens. The weakening of the magnate oligarchy and its clientele, the strengthening of executive power, and legislation through majority rule appealed mainly to the middle nobility, the “knights,” and to propertied urban citizens.

Thus, it was natural that the citizens of Warsaw, Wilno, Poznan, Lublin, and other large cities took a passionate interest in the creation of the Constitution and were willing to defend it with arms if necessary.⁵⁷ The electorates of the individual palatinates quickly accepted the Constitution in their dietines; that of Polock was the first (18 August 1791), and this, in light of the demonstrative arrival of Russian batteries north of the border along the Dvina River, was no coincidence.⁵⁸ On 4 February 1792 all the dietines assembled to elect the judges and officials as the Constitution had foreseen.⁵⁹ Despite the machinations of the “Republicans,” the majority of the dietines confirmed the Constitution, while a minority contented themselves with dispatching delegations to thank the Diet and the King. By May 1792 nearly all the dietines had ratified the Constitution, and the supposed coup d’état of 3 May 1791 was thereby brilliantly justified.⁶⁰

Despite some inconsistencies, the Constitution that had thus been ratified distinguished itself from all existing European constitutions in that it was the first to apply the term “nation” to all inhabitants of the Republic⁶¹ wherein the chamber of deputies was no longer a congress of delegates but rather a representative of the entire nation. The statesmanlike wisdom of the fathers of the Constitution also revealed itself in the fact that, although they had set down the unchanging foundations of the Constitution (such as the principle of separation of powers), they provided for necessary modifications in the Constitution every quarter century in the interests of further social development. In view of its structure and its electorate the Constitution assumed a middle position between the contemporary constitutions of France, Great Britain, and the United States: in its deep historical roots it equaled the British; in its combination of monarchy and democratic natural rights principles, the French; and in its peculiar combination of unitary nation and federative territorial structure, as well as in terms of the relationship between electorate and populace, the union of states of the United States of America, especially the states south of the Mason-Dixon line. The common criterion of the social constitution of the Polish Republic and the southern states of North America was the existence of a democratically organized electorate consisting of landowners and propertied city-dwellers, which in turn rested on a broad stratum of unfree persons—in the Republic the enserfed peasants, in the southern United States the slaves.

After the elimination of the plebeian noble voters, roughly 160,000 citizens enjoyed full political rights, out of a total population of approximately 8.8 million inhabitants. The Polish Republic thus assumed a most honorable place among the constitutional states of the world at that time. In Europe Polish standards were exceeded only by the French Constitution of 1791, which was then in preparation. The latter recognized the electoral rights of 1.8 million active citizens out of a total population of roughly 25 million people in the Kingdom of France. Thus, the Four-Year Diet and the Constitution it passed became a significant, socially cohesive force, which nourished traditional state patriotism and, by undermining the oligarchy, called forth a natural interest in the success of the state and its unlimited sovereignty among broad strata of the propertied middle nobility and urban populace.

The Fall of the Reformed Republic

It was a dramatic coincidence in the history of the Polish Republic that the main cause of its fall was attributed to its achievement in establishing the first codified constitution in Europe. It was the strengthened internal coherence that the reforms of 1791-1792 bestowed on the structure of Polish society that supplied the most essential cause for the imminent fall of the Republic. The oligarchic factions, anarchist excesses, and a general communal disfunction, which discredited the republican idea in practice (and even seemed to reduce it to absurdity) was thoroughly acceptable to the neighboring powers of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The customary “disorder” of the Polish polity was even excellently suited to demonstrate the apparent necessity of a strict, absolutist monarchy. Finally, the material achievements of, for instance, the Prussian state outwardly appeared much more impressive than the seemingly fruitless argument over the “cardinal rights” or the ponderousness of a parliament dependent on communis consensus. A reformed Republic, however, which would almost certainly be functional, placed the internal justification of absolute monarchy, even if Enlightened, in question.⁶² Thus, the strong discomfort that Frederick William II and the more reformist Leopold II experienced in regard to the upheavals of 1791 was understandable. For Catherine II the loss of the Russian protectorate over the Republic was irksome; moreover, she must have been aware of the imminent danger posed by a functioning constitutional state on the western border of her empire, in view of the clear discrepancy between the fashionable, republican content of her speeches, on the one hand, and her despotic government, on the other.

The peace with Turkey of 9 January 1792 had hardly been settled when Catherine II marched her armies to the eastern border of Poland and negotiated the principles of the Second Partition with Prussia.⁶³ In the belief that the “pure” republic based on the laws decreed in 1768 could be restored, she placed the leaders of the Polish “Republicans” at her disposal and on 27 April 1792 established the notorious confederation that was later named for the Ukrainian border town of Targowica and falsely dated to 14 May.

The beginning of the invasion and thereby the end of the new Constitution were announced in the Empress’ manifesto of 7/18 May 1792, which was typical of Catherine’s grandiose Machiavellianism in its political insincerity and unscrupulousness. The woman of the Enlightenment, a supporter of liberty and natural rights and a correspondent of Voltaire, Grimm, Falconet, and d’Alembert, denied the Polish nation its freedom to establish a constitution for itself and took refuge in the state guarantee of 1768. The autocrat criticized the “despotism” of the new hereditary monarchy and simultaneously its democratic elements.⁶⁴ Above all, with perfect skill she made use of old Europe’s fear of the French Revolution in that she introduced the useful notion that the reform was the work of the Jacobins. She wrote her friend Grimm on 9 May 1792: “the Jacobins of Warsaw are in regular correspondence with those of Paris, and you want me...to concern myself only with those of Paris? No, I will fight and defeat them in Poland.”⁶⁵

It was especially ironic that she made use of Szczęsny Potocki, the Marshal of the Confederation of Targowica and a fierce opponent of absolute monarchy, and of Seweryn Rzewuski, a politician who loved to invoke Franklin and Washington. The proclamation of the Targowicians was scarcely less politically hypocritical than that of their “principal.” According to them, the Constitution had transformed the “republic into a monarchy,” and in the cities of Poland “clubs on the Parisian model” had arisen. The extensive arsenal of contemporary republican phrases was exploited for the justification of the restoration of oligarchic liberty, and it was difficult to cover over the contradiction between accusations of royal despotism, on the one hand, and of Jacobinism, on the other.⁶⁶ It was scarcely conceivable that the Targowicians could believe that the Empress sought only the reestablishment of the former oligarchy and the Russian proconsulate.

Only an armed conflict carried out according to the rules of the old cabinet wars, which ended with the exhaustion of Polish resources, sealed the rapid fall of the new Constitution and, presendy, the further dissection of the country. Although nullified as state law, the Constitution of 3 May 1791 lived on in the hearts of the citizens and, beyond that, of all Poles. Not the internal weaknesses or instability of the reform movement but rather its liquidation by external force provided the cause of the fall of the Republic. The demise of Poland that was already underway was thus an indication not of its powerlessness but rather that the rediscovery of its internal strength had become frightening to the Russian Empire. Here lay the real reason that, of the three great social movements of 1787-1789 that introduced the “revolutionary decade” in Europe and America, only the French and American developed freely while the Polish movement seemed to disappear in political destruction. In this the forcible suppression of the reformed Polish Constitution provided a valuable, if unintentional, service in the birth of modern democracy in France.

The Confederation of Targowica constituted itself in St. Petersburg seven days after the declaration of war of 20 April 1792 that the French government issued to the German Emperor as King of Hungary and Bohemia and thereby implicitly to all of conservative Europe. The beginning of the offensive of the Duke of Brunswick against revolutionary France (25 July 1792) coincided almost to the day with Stanisław August’s joining the camp of the Confederation of Targowica; and the bloody genesis of the French Republic, which stretched from the September murders to the opening of the Convention and the abolition of the monarchy (2-21 September 1792), marked for the Polish Republic the establishment of the Targowician state authority under the protection of Russian arms. In any event, the Russian Empire—for a full three years—was militarily engaged in the Republic, so that it could not intervene against France. In consideration of the enticements from St. Petersburg, Prussia also had decided to conduct the campaign in France at only half strength, since it was now seriously interested in the annexation of Gdansk, Torun and Great Poland.⁶⁷ By the time that the Duke of Brunswick set out from Coblenz, the military preparations for the march into Poland had begun.⁶⁸ Under the shadow of these preparations against Poland occurred, for Goethe at least, the “world historical” Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792), which brought about the withdrawal of the allied Prussians and Austrians. Thus, France owed the first great military reversal in the war of the coalition to a great degree to the Polish Republic. Here, there truly appeared to be a cunning historical wisdom at work, which used the demise of constitutional life in one country to prepare a home for it in another.

Thus, a motive presents itself for the virtually natural alliance between the French and Polish republics, which resulted not only in a foreign policy but also to a large degree in an internal affinity. The French republic recognized the advantages of this support but, as in 1791, limited its help for Poland to empty declarations of sympathy. Thus, on 26 August 1792 Kościuszko along with Washington was granted French citizenship for his service in “the protection of peoples against despots.” This was demonstrated emphatically on 23 January 1793 as the agreement on the Second Partition was concluded between the courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg and as Prussia sent troops into Great Poland under the watchword of Catherine II that they had to stop “the spread of French democracy and the principles of the horrible reds who seek proselytes everywhere.”⁶⁹ Thus was completed the defeat of the reform Constitution of 1791 and the second act of the final liquidation of Poland, which after 1795 left behind a “nation without a state” for 123 years.

Notes

1. Wacław Sobieski, Trybun ludu szlacheckiego (The tribune of the noble folk) (Warszawa: Gebethner i Wolff, 1905); Artur Sliwinski, Jan Zamoyskl-kanderz i hetman wielki kotonny (Jan Zamoyski-Chancellor and Great Hetman of the Crown) (Warszawa: Trzaska, Evert i Michalski, 1947); Adam Andrzej Witusik, OZamoyskich, Zamos’ciu i Akademii Zamoyskiej (On the Zamoyskis, Zamosc, and the Zamoyski Academy) (Lublin: Wydaw. Lubelskie, 1978).

2. (Stanisław Leszczyński), Glos wolny wolność ubezpieczający (The free voice that safeguards freedom) (Nancy, 1743). Also published in 1749 in French: La voix libre du citoyen, ou Observations sur le gouvernement de Pologne and reprinted many times in both languages.

3. In his essay “Czy Stanisław Leszczyński jest autorem Glosu wolnego?” (Is Stanisław Leszczyński the author of Glos wolny?) in Legendyi fakty XVIII w. (Warszawa: PWN, 1963),pp. 67-144, Emanuel Rostworowski argued that only the Lithuanian starosta Mateusz Białłozor could have been the author of Glos wolny. Compare the older view in M. K. Dziewanowski, “King Stanisław Leszczyński: Some Remarks and Question Marks,” in Jahrbücher fur die Geschichte Osteuropas 16 (1968): 104-116.

4. Leszczyński, Glos wolny, pp. 55-57.

5. Stanisław Konarski, O skutecznym rad sposobie albo o utrzymywaniu ordynaryjnych seymów (On effective counsel), in 4 volumes (Warszawa, 1760-63), vol. 2, p. 203; also published in German, Von einem nützlichen Mittel zum Bestände der ordentlichen Reichstage in Pohlen (Warschau, 1762).

6. Stanisław Staszic, Uwagi nad zyciem Jana Zamoyskiego kanclerza i hetmana wielkiego koronnego do dzisiejszego stanu Rzeczypospolltej Polskiej przystosowane (Remarks on the life of Jan Zamoyski, Chancellor and Great Hetman of the Crown, applied to the current state of the Polish Commonwealth) (Luck?: 1785) (Warszawa: 1787); Stefan Czarnowski, ed., Uwagi nad zyciem Jana Zamoyskiego (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1952), pp. 223, 238, 315, 362, 364, et al.

7. Above all to be mentioned here are the anonymous remarks “Mysl na mys’Ii” (Remarks about remarks) (1788), and Staszic’s “Poprawy y przydatki” (Emendations and additions) (1788). But the discussion took place in numerous other writings that were not concerned solely with Zamoyski; compare here Władysław Smoleński, “Spór o Jana Zamoyskiego w publicystyce polskiej wieku XVIII” (The controversy over Jan Zamoyski in Polish political writings of the 18th century), in Wybórpism (Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1954), pp. 202-10.

8. Hugo Kołłątaj, Listy Anonima i Prawo polityczne narodu polskiego (Anonymous letters and Political law of the Polish nation), in 2 volumes, edited by Bogusław Leśnodorski and Helena Wereszycka (Warszawa: PWN, 1954) vol. 2, pp. 37 ff; Wybór pism politycznych (Selected political writings) ed., Bogusław Leśnodorski (Wrocław: 1951). The original Listy Anonimaoi 1788 comprised three volumes, to which Prawo polityczne was added as a fourth in 1790.

9. As characterized by Walerian Kalinka, Sejm Czteroletni (The Four-Year Diet), in three volumes (Kraków: 1895-96), vol. 2, part 2, p. 514; also in German translation, Valerian Kalinka, Der Vierjährige Polnische Reichstag 1788-1791, in two volumes (Berlin: 1896-98).

10. Especially in the work O sukcesyi tronu w Polszcze rzecz krórka (A short essay on the succession to the throne in Poland) (1790); a contemporary German translation appeared as “Gedanken über die Erb-Thronfolge in Polen” in Reichstags-Diarium 4: pp. 108-28.

11. Considérations sur le Gouvernement de Pologne et sur la reformation projetée en avril 1772 (Londres, 1782). It is fairly certain that this well-known work was written between November 1770 and January 1771 and that the final emendations were completed before 1 January 1772, that is, before the first rumors of the partition. One of the leaders of the Confederation of Bar, Michał Wielhorski, delivered essential materials to Rousseau, and further Rousseau may have been at least indirectly aware of the work of Konarski through the mediation of Stanisław Leszczyński, the Abbé G. F. Coyer, and Pyrrhys de Varilles, among others. Thanks to this Polish aid, the influence of Polish theorists on the Considérations may well have been rather great. On this, compare Jean Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski et l’Europe des lumières (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1952), pp. 108 Ś, 343 ff., 640, 656 f.

12. Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, p. 108.

13. Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, p. 344.

14. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist, edited by Benjamin F. Wright (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1961), p. 152.

15. Zygmunt Krasiński, “LettreáA. M. Lamartine,” in Pisma Zygmunta Krasiriskiego (The Works of Zygmunt Krasiński) (Kraków, 1912), vol. 7, p. 223.

16. Oscar Halecki, Das Nationalitätenproblem im alten Polen (Kraków, 1916), p. 69.

17. In his work Niektóre wyrsay porządkiem abecadla zebrane (Some terms collected in alphabetical order) (Warszawa, 1791), cited in Bogdan Suchodolski, ed., Nauka polska wokresie oswiecenia (Polish scholarship in the age of Enlightenment) (Kraków: PWN, 1953), p. 584.

18. Krasiński, Pisma, p. 213.

19. This extended influence was traced with some certainty by Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, pp. 180 f. On the intellectual influence of Rousseau on Fichte, see Iring Fetscher, Rousseaus politische Philosophie. Zur Geschichte des demokratischen Freiheitsbegriffs (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1960).

20. Michael G. Müller, Polen zwischen Preußen und Rußland. Souveränitätskrise und Reformpolitik 1736-1752 (Berlin: Colloquim, 1983); Zofia Zielińska, Walka “familii” o reformę Rzeczypospolitej, 1743-1752 (The struggle of the “family” for reform of the Commonwealth, 1743-1752) (Warszawa, 1983); Jörg K. Hoensch, Sozialverfassung und politische Reform. Polen im vorrevolutionären Zeitalter (Köln, Wien, Böhlau, 1973); Kurt Georg Hausmannn, Die politischen Begriffe und Wertungen in der polnischen Aufklärung. Zum Selbstverständnis der Polen in ihrer Reformpublizistik am Ende der Adelsrepublik (zweite Hälfte des 18. Jhs.) (Phil. Diss., Göttingen, 1958); Hans Roos, Der Fdl der polnischen Nation und die Idee der Demokratie (Habil.-Schrift Tübingen, 1961).

21. Daniel Stone, Polish Politics and National Reform, 1775-1788 (New York: Boulder, Colorado U. Press: 1976).

22. Ambroise Jobert, La Commision d’Éducation Nationale en Pologne (1773-1794). Son euvre d’instruction civique (Paris: Librairie Droz, 1941); Renata Dutkowa, Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (The Commission for National Education) (Wrocław, Ossolineüm, 1973); Łukasz Kurdybacha and Mieczysława Mitera-Dobrowolska, Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (Warszawa: PZWS, 1973); Bogdan Suchodolski, Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (Warszawa, 1973).

23. Emanuel Rostworowski, Ostatni król Rzeczypospolitej. Geneza i upadek Konstytucji 3 maja (The last king of the Commonwealth: The genesis and fall of the Constitution of 3 May) (Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna, 1966); Andrzej Zahorski, Stanisław August polityk (Stanisław August as a politician) (Warszawa: Książka i Wiedzal966).

24. See Bogusław Leśnodorski, “Les facteurs intellectuels de la formation de la société Polonaise moderne au Siècle des Lumières ,” in La Pologne au XCongrès International des Sciences Historiques á Rome (Warszawa: PWN, 1955), pp. 167-216 including rich bibliographical references.

25. Władysław Smoleński, Kudnica Kołłątajowska (Kołłątaj’s Forge) (Kraków, 1885), with biographical references for all members; Bogusław Leśnodorski, ed., Kuznica Kołłątajowska. Wybór dródei (Kołłątaj’s Forge: selected sources) (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1949), with numerous selections from texts by Kołłątaj, Jezierski, Dmochowski, Kossakowski, Trębicki, Zablocki, and others, as well as a number of pamphlets from the time of the uprising of 1794.

26. Hausmann cites the most important writings of the authors named, see pp. 198-203 (here the easily accessible new editions are also listed); also to be mentioned is the Reichstags-Diarium published by Michael Gröll, a printer and publisher of Warsaw and Dresden, which includes numerous pamphlets in contemporary German translation. The relevant secondary literature is also listed by Hausmann, pp. 203-208; see further Charles Dany, Les idées politiques et l’esprit public en Pologne á la fin du XVIIIe siècle. La constitution du 3 Mai 1791 (Paris: 1901); Bogusław Leśnodorski, Dzieło Sejmu Czteroletniego (1788-1792). Studium Historycznoprawne (The work of the Four-Year Diet, 1788-1792: A historical-legal study) (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1951), pp. 75-91.

27. On Kościuszko see especially Tadeusz Korzon, Kościuszko-Biografia z dokumentów wysnuta (Kościuszko: A biography deduced from documents) (Kraków: 1894); H. Monfort, Le drame de la Pologne-Kościuszko (Paris, 1945); Henryk Moscicki, Kościuszko-Listy, odezwy, wspomnienia (Kościuszko: Letters, addresses, reminiscences) (Warszawa: 1917); Miecislaus Haiman, Kościuszko: Leader and Exile (New York: 1946), and Poland and the American Revolutionary W’ŚrńChicago : Polish Roman Catholic Union, 1932).

28. On Jasiński see Emil Kipa, “Z mlodych lat Jakuba Jasińskiego” (The Youth of Jakub Jasiński), in Studia i szkice historyczne (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1959) pp. 329; H. Moscicki, General Jasiński i powstanie kosciuszkowskie (General Jasiński and the Kościuszko Uprising) (Warszawa: 1917).

29. The intellectual influence of Rousseau and Montesquieu on Polish constitutional thought has been so often and so exhaustively treated that here only the standard works need to be mentioned: Władysław Smoleński, Monteskiusz w Polsce w wieku XVIII (Montesquieu in Poland in the 18th century) (Warszawa: 1925); Marian Szyjkowski, MyŚl Jana Jakuba Rousseau ’a w Polsce XVIII w. (The Thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau in Poland of the 18th century) (Kraków: 1913). Hausmann undertook a systematic presentation of Enlightened natural rights thought in Poland in his fundamental chapter, “Die Theorie der Gesellschaft,” pp. 33-65.

30. Leśnodorski, Dzieło Sejmu Czteroletniego; Jerzy Łojek, Geneza i obalenie Konstytucji 3 Maja (The genesis and overthrow of the Constitution of 3 May) (Lublin: Wydaw. Lubelskie, 1986); Jerzy Kowecki, ed., Sejm Cztercdetni i jego tradycje (The Four-Year Diet and its traditions) (Warszawa: PWN, 1991); among the older literature Kalinka’s Sejm Czteroletni stands out.

31. Hugo Kołłątaj [Ignacy Potocki, Fr. K. Dmochowski], O ustanowieniu i upadku Konstytucji polskiej 3 maja 1791 roku (On the enactment and the fail of the Polish Constitution of 3 May 1791), in 2 volumes ((Metz), Kraków: 1793), taken from the Paris: 1868 edition), vol.l, p. 5; also in German translation by Samuel Bogumił Linde, Vom Entstehen und Untergang der Polnischen Konstitution vom 3ten Mai 1791 (Leipzig: 1793).

32. Kołłątaj, O ustanowieniu i upadku, p. 5.

33. Seweryn Rzewuski, O sukcesji tronu w Polszcze.

34. Hugo Kołłątaj, Uwagi nad pismem... Seweryna Rzewuskiego hetmana polnego koronnego o sukcessyi tronu w Polszcze rzecz krótka (Remarks on Field Hetman of the Crown Seweryn Rzewuski’s work, A short essay on the succession to the throne in Poland) (Warszawa: 1790); a German version appeared under the title “. . . Gedanken über die unter dem Titel: Severin Rzewuski ... erschienene Schrift...,” in Reichstags-Diarium 4, pp. 150-77, 209-17.

35. In a work not published at that time, “O prawach i prawodawstwie” (On laws and legislation), in Wybórpism politycznych, p. 180 f.

36. Stanisław Staszic, Przestrogi dla Polski (Warnńngs for Poland) (Warszawa 1790), reprinted in Pisma filozoficzne i spoleczne (Philosophical and social writings), in two volumes edited by Bogdan Suchodolski (Warszawa: Kraków: PWN, 1954), vol. 1, p. 207; German translation, Warnungen für Polen (Oliwa: 1794).

37. Kalinka, Sejm Czteroletni, vol. 1, part 2, p. 659.

38. Examples in Hausmann, Die polnische Begriffe, pp. 108 f. 124.

39. Kalinka, Sejm Czteroletni, and Łojek, Geneza iobalenie, describe the international situation in detail.

40. Cited from the preamble to the Constitution of 3 May 1791, New Constitution of the Government of Poland Established by the Revolution of the Third of May, 1791 (London: 1791), pp. 2-3; K.H.L. Pölitz, Die Constitutionen der europäischen Staaten seit den letzten 25 Jahren, in 4 volumes (Leipzig and Altenburg: 1817-25), vol. 2, pp. 16-31.

41. After Szczęsny Potocki gave up his plans to emigrate to the U.S., he stayed in Paris from 30 March 1790; Szymon Askenazy, Przymierze polsko-pruskie (The Polish-Prussian Alliance) (Warszawa: 1918), pp. 257-68.

42. The decisive role of the King in the constitutional debates is described in detail by Emanuel Rostworowski, “Marzenie dobrego obywatela, czyli królewski projekt konstytucji” (The dream of a good citizen, or the royal project for a constitution), in Legendy i fakty XVIII w., pp. 265-464.

43. The importance of Philip Mazzei for the transfer of ideas of the French Revolution to Poland has not been adequately evaluated in the literature; see the article by Witold Lukasiewicz in Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol. 20 (1975): 322-24; R. C. Garlick, Philip Mazzei, Friend of Jefferson: His Life anti Letters (Baltimore: 1933); Howard R. Marraro, Philip Mazzei, Virginias Agent in Europe (New York, 1935); Fabre provides a summary, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, pp. 505-33; Szymon Askenazy, Napoleon a Polska (Napoleon and Poland), vol. 1, Upadek Polskia Francja (France and the Fall of Poland) (Warszawa and Kraków: 1918), pp. 163 ff. Philip Mazzei, Selected Writings and Correspondence, vol. 2, 1788-1791. Agent for the King of Poland During the French Revolution. Margherita Marchione ed. (Prato: Cassa di Risparmi e Deposito, 1983).

44. The King wrote on this to Mazzei, “Je me trouverai toujours très honoré de me voir en compagnie de Franklin et de Washington,” Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, p. 519; Mazzei, Selected Writings, p. 344.

45. Remnants of this declaration-which was understandably rejected by the “Republicans”—reached the Constitution in Article V, New Constitution of rhe Government of Poland, p. 12. See also Kołłątaj, O ustanowieniu.., vol. 2, p. 34; Leśnodorski, Dzieło Sejmu Czteroletniego, p. 149. Rostworowski; Legendy... p. 295.

46. Only 182 deputies, roughly one-third of the total, took part in the decisive session because the other deputies were still on Easter vacation. Because the Constitution was subsequently ratified by most of the dietines, however, doubts about the legality of its passage appear unwarranted; see Kalinka, Sejm Czteroletni, vol. 3.

47. Marceli Handelsman, Konstytucja Trzeciego Maja roku 1791 (The Constitution of the Third of May 1791) (Warszawa: 1907), pp. 85-109; Leśnodorski, Dzieło Sejmu Czteroletniego, pp. 219-375; Jerzy Michalski, Konstytucja 3 Maja (Warszawa:. Zamek Królewski, 1985).

48. This formulation, unique for its time, was later used in a similar way by the Napoleonic principate; significantly, it was never used by the German monarchies, even after the establishment of constitutional forms of government.

49. Both terms were discussed in the Diet but no agreement was reached; compare Handelsman, Konstytucja 3 Maja, pp. 58 ff.

50. Article IV expressly stated that the rural populace was “the most numerous in the nation, consequently forming the most considerable part of its force,” New Constitution of Poland, p. 9.

51. Extensive citations from copious contemporary opinions were gathered as early as 1793 by Kołłątaj in O ustanowieniu i upadku, vol. 3, pp. 42-49; and by Joachim Lelewel in Geschichte Polens (Leipzig, 1847), pp. 319-27. For a more recent work, see Fabre’s Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, pp. 526-33, which takes the older literature fully into consideration.

52. Ewald Friedrich Graf v. Hertzberg, “Abhandlung über äußere, innere und religiöse Staatsrevolutionen” in: Staatsanzeigen 17 (Göttingen 1792): 46. The first edition of Schulz’s Reise eines Liefländers von Riga nach Warschau ... (Berlin, 1795/96). For the description of his stay in Warsaw (September 1791-June 1792), see the new edition by Klaus Zernack, Reise nach Warschau (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982). See also: Hermann Vahle, “Die polnische Verfassung vom 3. Mai 1791 im zeitgenössischen deutschen Urteil,” in: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 19 (1971): 347-370.

53. On this see the collection of several hundred comments from the contemporary United States by Miecislaus Haiman, The Fall of Poland in Contemporary American Opinion (Chicago: Polish Roman Catholic Union, 1935).

54. Marceli Handelsman, “Konstytucja 3 maja r. 1791 a spoleczna opinia publiczna we Francji” (The Constitution of 3 May 1791 and public opinion in France), Studia historyczne (Warszawa, 1911), pp. 75-104; Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, pp. 526-30. The reception of French events by “public opinion” in Poland was investigated by Helena Rzadkowska, Stosunek polskiej opinii publicznej do Rewolucji Francuskiej (The attitude of Polish public opinion to the French Revolution) (Warszawa: Książka, 1948).

55. Fabre, Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, p. 529.

56. This theme cannot be further pursued at present; see, among others, Charles E. Konic, Comparaison des constitutions de la Pologne et de la France (Lausanne, 1918) ; Henry B. Hill, “The Constitutions of Continental Europe, 1789-1813,” Journal of Modem History 8, 1 (1936): 90 ff.

57. The citizens of the larger cities wished to form militias, for which Kołłątaj in particular made a stand; but even patriotic spokesmen such as Ignacy Potocki recoiled before such action because of the “French example.” On this, Emanuel Rostworowski, “Sprawa milicji mieszczanskich w ostatnim roku Sejmu Czteroletniego” (The question of citizens’ militias in the last year of the Four-Year Diet), Przegląd Historyczny 46 (1955): 561-84:

58. Bronisław Dembiński, Ze żródeł do dziejów drugiego i trzeciego rozbioru Polski (Sources on the history of the Second and Third Partitions of Poland) (Lwów, 1902), pp. 37 ff.

59. Kołłątaj, O ustanowieniu i upadku, vol. 3, pp. 48-54, vol. 4, p. 79.

60. Compare Handelsman, Konstytucja 3 Maja, pp. 104 ff.

61. In Article IV of the cardinal law of 1768 the nation was expressly identified with the noble estate; this definition was clearly nullified in Article IV of the new constitution, Handelsman, Konstytucja 3 Maja, pp. 84, 91. Tadeusz Lepkowski referred to the fundamental importance of this development in Polska—narodziny nowoczesnego narodu 1764-1870 (Poland–the birth of a modern nation, 1764-1870) (Warszawa: PWN, 1967), p. 233 and passim.

62. Handelsman, Konstytucja 3 Maja, pp. 108 f.

63. The most extensive study of the Second Partition is that of Robert Howard Lord, The Second Partition of Poland: A Study in Diplomatic History (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1915). On the problem of the partitions and the current state of research and interpretation, see Michael G. Müller, Die Teilungen Polens 1772, 1793, 1795 (München: C.H. Beek, 1984).

64. German text in F. von Smitt, Suwarow und Polens Untergang nach archivalischen Quellen, part 2 (Leipzig and Heidelberg, 1858), pp. 40-51, 223-27. See also Władysław Smoleński, Konfederacja Targowicka (The Confederation of Targowica) (Kraków, 1903).

65. Cited in Askenazy, Napoleon a Polska, p. 195.

66. Bogusław Leśnodorski presents the entire issue of Polish Jacobinism, Les Jacobins Polonais (Paris, 1965).

67. Besides Askenazy, Przymierze polsko-pruskie, pp. 195 ff, see also Lord, The Second Partition, pp. 377 ff, on the Prussian fear of the odium of breaking the existing alliance.

68. General von Mölleridorf presented a “Plan for the invasion of Poland” already on 1 July 1792, before the beginning of the offensive against France; on 8 November 1792, during the withdrawal from France, the mobilization order against the Republic was issued.

69. The German text of this proclamation is in R. Prümers, Das Jahr 1793-Urkunden und Aktenstücke zur Geschichte der Organisation Südpreussens (Posen, 1895), p. 21 (The declaration is dated already to 6 January 1793).

Translated by Philip Pajakowski