Good luck attended the opening years of the new reign. In 1699 the long Turkish War, which had been going on ever since 1683, was concluded by the peace of Karlowitz, whereby Podolia, the Ukraine and the fortress of Kamenets Podolskiy were retroceded to the Republic by the Ottoman Porte. Immediately afterwards Augustus was persuaded by the plausible Livonian exile, Johan Reinhold Patkul, to form a nefarious league with Frederick of Denmark and Peter of Russia, for the purpose of despoiling the youthful king of Sweden, Charles XII. (see Sweden: History). This he did as elector of Saxony, but it was War with Charles XII. of Sweden. the unfortunate Polish republic which paid for the hazardous speculation of its newly elected king. Throughout the Great Northern War (see Sweden: History), which wasted northern and central Europe for twenty years (1700-1720), all the belligerents treated Poland as if she had no political existence. Swedes, Saxons and Russians not only lived upon the country, but plundered it systematically. The diet was the humble servant of the conqueror of the moment, and the leading magnates chose their own sides without the slightest regard for the interests of their country, the Lithuanians for the most part supporting Charles XII., while the Poles divided their allegiance between Stanislaus Leszczyński. Augustus and Stanislaus Leszczyński, whom Charles placed upon the throne in 1704 and kept there till 1709. At the end of the war Poland was ruined materially as well as politically. Augustus attempted to indemnify himself for his failure to obtain Livonia, his covenanted share of the Swedish plunder, by offering Frederick William of Prussia Courland, Polish Prussia and even part of Great Poland, provided that he were allowed a free hand in the disposal of the rest of the country. When Prussia declined this tempting offer for fear of Russia, Augustus went a step farther and actually suggested that “the four[1] eagles” should divide the banquet between them. He died, however (Feb. 1, 1733) before he could give effect to this shameless design.
On the death of Augustus II., Stanislaus Leszczyński, who had in the meantime, become the father-in-law of Louis XV., attempted to regain his throne with the aid of a small French army corps and 4,000,000 livres from Versailles. Some of the best men in Poland, including the Czartoryscy, were also in his favour, and on the 26th of August 1733 he was elected king for the second time. But there were many malcontents, principally among the Lithuanians, who solicited the intervention of Russia in favour of the elector of Saxony, son of the late king, and in October 1733 a Russian army appeared before Warsaw and compelled a phantom diet (it consisted of but 15 senators and Augustus III., 1733-1763. 500 of the szlachta) to proclaim Augustus III. From the end of 1733 till the 30th of June 1734 Stanislaus and his partisans were besieged by the Russians in Danzig, their last refuge, and with the surrender of that fortress the cause of Stanislaus was lost. He retired once more to his little court in Lorraine, with the title of king, leaving Augustus III. in possession of the kingdom.
Augustus III. was disqualified by constitutional indolence from taking any active part in affairs. He left everything to his omnipotent minister, Count Heinrich Bruhl, and Bruhl entrusted the government of Poland to the Czartoryscy, who had intimate relations of long standing with the court of Dresden.
The Czartoryscy, who were to dominate Polish politics for the next half-century, came of an ancient Ruthenian stock which had intermarried with the Jagiellos at an early date, and had always been remarkable for their civic virtues and political sagacity. They had powerfully contributed to the adoption of the Union of Lublin; were subsequently received into the Roman Catholic Church; and dated the beginning of their influence in Poland proper from the time (1674) when Florian Czartoryski became primate there. Florian's nephews, Fryderyk Michal and Augustus, were now the principal representatives of “the Family,” as their opponents sarcastically called them. The former, through the influence of Augustus's minister and favourite Bruhl, had become, in his twenty-eighth year, vice-chancellor and subsequently grand chancellor of Lithuania, was always the political head of the family. His brother and Augustus, after fighting with great distinction against the Turks both by land and sea (Prince Eugene decorated him with a sword of honour for his valour at the siege of Belgrade), had returned home to marry Sophia Sieniawska, whose fabulous dowry won for her husband the sobriquet of “the Family Croesus.” Their sister Constantia had already married Stanislaus Poniatowski, the father of the future king. Thus wealth, position, court influence and ability combined gave the Czartoryscy a commanding position in Poland, and, to their honour be it said, they had determined from the first to save the Republic, whose impending ruin in existing circumstances they clearly foresaw, by a radical constitutional reconstruction which was to include the abolition of the liberum veto and the formation of a standing army.
Unfortunately the other great families of Poland were obstinately opposed to any reform or, as they called it, any “violation” of the existing constitution. The Potoccy, whose possessions in south Poland and the Ukraine covered thousands of square miles, the Radziwiłłowie, who were omnipotent in Lithuania and included half a dozen millionaires[2] amongst them, the Lubomirscy and their fellows, hated the Czartoryscy because they were too eminent, and successfully obstructed all their well-meant efforts. The castles of these great lords were the foci of the social and political life of their respective provinces. Here they lived like little princes, surrounded by thousands of retainers, whom they kept for show alone, making no attempt to organize and discipline this excellent military material for the defence of their defenceless country. Here congregated hundreds of the younger szlachta, fresh from their school benches, whence they brought nothing but a smattering of Latin and a determination to make their way by absolute subservience to their “elder brethren,” the pans. These were the men who, a little later, at the bidding of their “benefactors,” dissolved one inconvenient diet after another; for it is a significant fact that during the reigns of the two Augustuses every diet was dissolved in this way by the hirelings of some great lord or, still worse, of some foreign potentate. In a word constitutional government had practically ceased, and Poland had become an arena in which contesting clans strove together for the mastery.
It was against this primitive state of things that the Czartoryscy struggled, and struggled in vain. First they attempted to abolish the liberum veto with the assistance of the Saxon court where they were supreme, but fear of foreign complications and the opposition of the Potoccy prevented anything being done. Then they broke with their old friend Bruhl and turned to Russia. Their chief intermediary was their nephew Stanislaus Poniatowski, whom they sent, as Saxon minister, to the Russian court in the suite of the English minister Hanbury Williams, in 1755. The handsome and insinuating Poniatowski speedily won the susceptible heart of the grand-duchess Catherine, but he won nothing else and returned to Poland in 1759 somewhat discredited. Disappointed in their hopes of Russia, the Czartoryscy next attempted to form a confederation for the deposition of Augustus III., but while the strife of factions was still at its height the absentee monarch put an end to the struggle by expiring, conveniently, on the 5th of October 1763.
The interregnum occurring on the death of Augustus III. befell at a time when all the European powers, exhausted by the Seven Years' War, earnestly desired peace. The position of Poland was, consequently, much more advantageous than it had been on every other similar occasion, and if only the contending factions had been able to agree and unite, the final catastrophe might, perhaps, even now, have been averted. The Czartoryscy, of all men, were bound by their principles and professions to set their fellow citizens an example of fraternal concord. Yet they rejected with scorn and derision the pacific overtures of their political opponents, the Potoccy, the Radziwiłłowie, and the Braniscy, Prince Michal openly declaring that of two tyrannies he preferred the tyranny of the Muscovite to the
