At several points in Poland
's history, various Powers
got together and appropriated large chunks of Polish territory
The medieval Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania was a full-fledged power
in its own right; the largest country in Europe besides Russia. During
the 15th century, Poland decided to change itself into a limited elective
monarchy on the same model as the Holy Roman Empire. An extremely
bad choice, as the Holy Roman Empire was a patchwork of petty nobles, princes,
and priests bent on maintaining their tiny scraps of power.
Towards the end of the 17th Century, this antiquated structure guaranteed
that every time a Polish king died, the various factions would get together
and start a cycle of bribery, thuggery, and positioning various candidates
for the election.
The last chance for meaningful change came during the 1675-1696
reign of Jan Sobieski, the last effective Polish king.
Unfortunately for Poland, Sobieski was effective mostly in fighting and
defeating invading Ottoman Turkish armies. His
colossal 1683 victory before the gates of Vienna only made him want
in on the dividing-up of Turkey-in-Europe. Instead of securing
the succession for his heir, he spent the rest of his reign leading battles
in the Ukraine and Hungary.
On Sobieski's death, Polish nobles elected August the Strong, elector
of Saxony. Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg, was also duke
of the Polish province of Prussia, and figured out a way to style himself
a king despite the Holy Roman Empire's prohibition against such things.
This loophole involved elevating his Polish duchy to a kingdom and crowning
himself king of it. Historians never number this one.
Not only did German overlords tend to make the Polish populace fractious,
August promptly allied himself with Russia against Sweden in the Great
Northern War. This was a disaster for Poland, as Swedish king Karl
XII invaded Poland, eventually capturing Warsaw and installing the puppet
Stanislaus Leszczynski in August's place. This might have stood
if only Karl hadn't decided to add Russia to his list of conquests.
The 1709 Battle of Poltava crushed Karl's dreams of conquest, and Russia
began to add up the number of times an invading army had come out of Poland.
The war helped Peter the Great make Russia into the unified state Poland
had failed to become.
So instead of Polish nobles duking it out (cough) over every royal succession,
there were foreign powers advancing their various candidates, guaranteeing
a civil war with each royal succession. The death of August
the Strong in 1733 led to a general European conflict, the War of the
Polish Succession. Leszczynski married the daughter of Louis XV
and the Polish people rose in support of him, but France wasn't yet ready
to drag an army halfway across Europe to support him. Instead, a Russian
army barricaded the Sejm in its chamber until it decided on a pro-Russian
candidate (the new Elector of Saxony).
Anyway, Poland's three strongest neighbors received their own new rulers:
Frederick was an unrepentant opportunist
, seeking to aggrandize Prussia.
Catherine was a protege and rival of Frederick's. And Maria Theresa
was Frederick's bitter enemy after his 1740 seizure of Silesia
to the War of the Austrian Succession
. To all three, Poland
was a power vacuum
, a temptation, a place that could get one of the countries
involved in a war against the other two.
In 1764, Catherine decided to put one of her former lovers, Stanislaw
August Poniatowski, on the throne. Poniatowski was a puppet
of Russia. In 1768, Polish nobles joined together in the Confederation
of Bar, an attempt to kick the Russians out. Poniatowski discovered
Polish patriotism, and a general anti-Russian uprising resulted.
They appealed for help to -- get this -- the Ottoman Empire! Granted,
the Turks tried to help, but the Russians defeated them at every turn.
By 1772, the Russians had crushed this rebellion (among the thousands of exiles was Kazimierz Pulaski), and Frederick and Catherine
saw their chance, with Maria Theresa taking her own slice so as not to
be left out.
And thus happened the First Partition of Poland:
The Poles, of course, weren't too happy about this but couldn't do much
about it, and called a Four Year Sejm
which tried to make up
for lost time with sweeping constitutional reforms. The document
this Sejm produced in 1792
was truly remarkable, advancing religious
toleration, universal education, abolishing slavery
, and giving rights
similar to those granted in the new United States
(but to everyone). This appealed
to neither Catherine, nor Frederick's successor Frederick William II
, and in 1793
, they concluded
the Second Partition of Poland
The second partition led to another rebellion, this time led by Tadeusz
, all the pretext Catherine needed to wipe Poland off the map
, with the Third Partition of Poland
wound up in Prussia
, just southwest of the point where the three
engorged countries met.
Kosciuszko was exiled to Switzerland and Poniatowski was imprisoned
until his death in 1817.
Of course, the story doesn't end there.
In the wake of World War I, a new Polish state was established.
Its territory was only the core of Poland, plus West Prussia. But
a civil war was going on in Russia, and Polish troops rushed in to take
large sections of territory that had been part of pre-1772 Poland.
The Soviet Union licked its wounds but remembered. And of
course, the cession of West Prussia angered German nationalists.
This led in 1939 to the Fourth Partition of Poland, accompanying
the nonagression pact concluded between Stalin and Hitler.
the Nazis agreed that the Soviets could take the territory Poland captured
during the Russian Civil War,
the Soviets agreed that the Nazis could take the remainder of the Polish