CZARNIECKI, STEPHEN (1590–1665), Polish general, learnt the science of war under Stanislaw Koniecpolski in the Prussian campaigns against Gustavus Adolphus (1626–1629), and under Wladislaus IV. in the Muscovite campaign of 1633. On the 15th of April 1648 he was one of the many noble Polish prisoners who fell into the hands of Chmielnicki at the battle of “Yellow Waters,” and was sent in chains to the Crimea, whence he was ransomed in 1649. He took an active part in all the subsequent wars with the Cossacks and received more disfiguring wounds than any other commander. When Charles X. of Sweden invaded Poland in 1655, Czarniecki distinguished himself by his heroic defence of Cracow, which he only surrendered under the most honourable conditions. His energy and ability as a leader of guerillas hampered Charles X. at every step, and though frequently worsted he from time to time inflicted serious defeats upon the Swedes, notably at Jaroslaw and at Kozienice in 1656. Under his direction the popular rising against the invader ultimately proved triumphant. It was he who brought King John Casimir back from exile and enabled him to regain his lost kingdom. It was against his advice that the great battle of Warsaw was fought, and his subsequent strategy neutralized the ill effects of that national disaster. On the retirement of the Swedes from Cracow and Warsaw, and the conclusion of the treaty of Copenhagen with the Danes, he commanded the army corps sent to drive the troops of Charles X. out of Jutland and greatly contributed to the ultimate success of the Allies. On the conclusion of the Peace of Oliva, which adjusted the long outstanding differences between Poland and Sweden, Czarniecki was transferred to the eastern frontier where the war with Muscovy was still raging. In the campaign of 1660 he won the victories of Polonka and Lachowicza and penetrated to the heart of the enemy’s country. The diet of 1661 publicly thanked him for his services; the king heaped honours and riches upon him, and in 1665 he was appointed acting commander-in-chief of Poland, but died a few days after receiving this supreme distinction. By his wife Sophia Kobierzycka he left two daughters. Czarniecki is rightly regarded as one of the most famous of heroic Poland’s great captains, and to him belongs the chief merit of extricating her from the difficulties which threatened to overwhelm her during the disastrous reign of John Casimir. Czarniecki raised partisan-warfare to the dignity of a science, and by his ubiquity and tenacity demoralized and exhausted the regular armies to which he was generally opposed.
See Ludwik Jenike, Stephen Czarniecki (Pol.) (Warsaw, 1891); Michal Dymitr Krajewski, History of Stephen Czarniecki (Pol.), (Cracow, 1859).
CZARTORYSKI, ADAM GEORGE, Prince (1770–1861), Polish statesman, was the son of Prince Adam Casimir Czartoryski and Isabella Fleming. After a careful education at home by eminent specialists, mostly Frenchmen,[1] he first went abroad in 1786. At Gotha he heard Goethe read his Iphigenie auf Tauris, and made the acquaintance of the dignified Herder and “fat little Wieland.” In 1789 he visited England with his mother, and was present at the trial of Warren Hastings. On a second visit in 1793 he made many acquaintances among the English aristocracy and studied the English constitution. In the interval between these visits he fought for his country during the war of the second partition, and would subsequently have served under Kosciuszko also had he not been arrested on his way to Poland at Brussels by the Austrian government. After the third partition the estates of the Czartoryskis were confiscated, and in May 1795 Adam and his younger brother Constantine were summoned to St Petersburg; later in the year they were commanded to enter the Russian service, Adam becoming an officer in the horse, and Constantine in the foot guards. Catherine was so favourably impressed by the youths that she restored them part of their estates, and in the beginning of 1796 made them gentlemen in waiting. Adam had already met the grand duke Alexander at a ball at the princess Golitsuin’s, and the youths at once conceived a strong “intellectual friendship” for each other. On the accession of the emperor Paul, Czartoryski was appointed adjutant to Alexander, now Cesarevich, and was permitted to revisit his Polish estates for three months. At this time the tone of the Russian court was extremely liberal, humanitarian enthusiasts like Peter Volkonsky and Nikolai Novosiltsov possessing great influence.
Throughout the reign of Paul, Czartoryski was in high favour and on terms of the closest intimacy with the emperor, who in December 1798 appointed him ambassador to the court of Sardinia. On reaching Italy Czartoryski found that the monarch to whom he was accredited was a king without a kingdom, so that the outcome of his first diplomatic mission was a pleasant tour through Italy to Naples, the acquisition of the Italian language, and a careful exploration of the antiquities of Rome. In the spring of 1801 the new emperor Alexander summoned his friend back to St Petersburg. Czartoryski found the tsar still suffering from remorse at his father’s assassination, and incapable of doing anything but talk religion and politics to a small circle of private friends. To all remonstrances he only replied “There’s plenty of time.” The senate did most of the current business; Peter Vasilevich Zavadovsky, a pupil of the Jesuits, was minister of education. Alexander appointed Czartoryski curator of the academy of Vilna (April 3, 1803) that he might give full play to his advanced ideas. He was unable, however, to give much attention to education, for from the beginning of 1804, as adjunct of foreign affairs, he had the practical control of Russian diplomacy. His first act was to protest energetically against the murder of the duc d’Enghien (March 20, 1804), and insist on an immediate rupture with France. On the 7th of June the French minister Hédouville quitted St Petersburg; and on the 11th of August a note dictated by Czartoryski to Alexander was sent to the Russian minister in London, urging the formation of an anti-French coalition. It was Czartoryski also who framed the Convention of the 6th of November 1804, whereby Russia agreed to put 115,000 and Austria 235,000 men in the field against Napoleon. Finally, on the 11th of April 1805 he signed an offensive-defensive alliance with England. But his most striking ministerial act was a memorial written in 1805, but otherwise undated, which aimed at transforming the whole map of Europe. In brief it amounted to this. Austria and Prussia were to divide Germany between them. Russia was to acquire the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmora, the Bosphorus with Constantinople, and Corfu. Austria was to have Bosnia, Wallachia and Ragusa. Montenegro, enlarged by Mostar and the Ionian Islands, was to form a separate state. England and Russia together were to maintain the equilibrium of the world. In return for their acquisitions in Germany, Austria and Prussia were to consent to the erection of an autonomous Polish state extending from Danzig to the sources of the Vistula, under the protection of Russia. Fantastic as it was in some particulars, this project was partly realized[2] in more recent times, and it presented the best guarantee for the independent existence of Poland which had never been able to govern itself. But in the meantime Austria had come to an understanding with England as to subsidies, and war had begun.
In 1805 Czartoryski accompanied Alexander both to Berlin and Olmütz as chief minister. He regarded the Berlin visit as a blunder, chiefly owing to his profound distrust of Prussia; but Alexander ignored his representations, and in February 1807 he lost favour and was superseded by Andrei Eberhard Budberg. But though no longer a minister Czartoryski continued to enjoy Alexander’s confidence in private, and in 1810 the emperor candidly admitted to Czartoryski that his policy in 1805 had been erroneous and he had not made a proper use of his opportunities. The same year Czartoryski quitted St Petersburg for ever; but the personal relations between him and Alexander were never better. The friends met again at Kalisch shortly before the signature of the Russo-Prussian alliance of the 20th of February 1813, and Czartoryski was in the emperor’s suite at Paris in 1814, and rendered his sovereign material services at the congress of Vienna.
On the erection of the congressional kingdom of Poland
