Stanisław August Poniatowski

“ Stanislaus Poniatowski (1757–1833) , son of Casimir, shared in the aggrandisement of the family during the reign of Stanislaus II., becoming grand treasurer of Lithuania, starost of Podolia and lieutenant-general of the royal army. In 1793 he settled in Vienna, and subsequently in Rome, where he made a magnificent collection of antique gems in his house on the via Flaminia. This collection was sold at Christie's in London in May 1839. He died in Florence on the 13th of February 1833, and with him the Polish and Austrian honours became extinct. ”

“ He did everything to make himself agreeable to the nobility and the people, and he partly succeeded. But there were so many disorderly interior elements, in addition to the scheme of the three great neighbouring powers for the seizure of Poland, that it would have been a miracle had he triumphed. He ultimately succumbed and retired to Grodno, where he lived on a pension allowed him by Russia, Prussia and Austria, who had divided his kingdom between them.
After the death of Catherine II., the Emperor Paul invited Poniatowski to St. Petersburg, to be present at his coronation. ”

“ This young man was Stanislas Poniatowski, son of Constance Czartoryski and the celebrated Poniatowski, the friend of Charles III. As luck would have it, a revolution was unnecessary to place him on the throne, for the king died in 1763, and gave place to Prince Poniatowski, who was chosen king on the 6th of September, 1776, under the title of Stanislas Augustus I. He had reigned two years at the time of my visit; and I found Warsaw in a state of gaiety, for a diet was to be held and everyone wished to know how it was that Catherine had given the Poles a native king. ”

“ The news fell as the sentence of death upon the Polish camp that was palpitating with patriotic ardour. In the presence of all his officers Poniatowski wrote to the King as plainly as he dared: "News is here going through the camp which surely must be spread by ill-disposed men who wish evil to Your Majesty, as though Your Majesty would treat with the betrayers of our country. The degradation of cringing to the betrayers of our country would be our grave." [3]
The army, was, however, bidden by the King to lay down arms, and was recalled to Warsaw. ”

“ He was to become one of the most popular of Poland's heroes, as the brilliant leader of a Polish army during the Napoleonic wars; but at this moment he was a youth of twenty-eight, whose military knowledge was wholly negligible, and who owed his high position to his family connections. The only Polish general who had practical experience of war was Kościuszko; and with him, for all Poniatowski's devoted service of his country, rests the chief fame of the Ukraine campaign. ”

“ When, in 1809, the great European conflagration forced Napoleon to leave the Grand Duchy to its fate, Prince Joseph was able to keep the Austrians in check, and actually to penetrate into Galicia before the battle of Wagram brought the war to an end.
Poniatowski's campaign against Austria, glorious as it was for the Poles, was in reality the forerunner of disaster. During the campaign the Polish troops were supported by a Russian division. ”

“ In Napoleon's campaign against Russia in 1812 Poniatowski commanded the fifth army corps; and after the disastrous retreat of the grand army, when many of the Poles began to waver in their-allegiance to Napoleon, Poniatowski remained faithful and formed a new Polish army of 13,000 men with which he joined the emperor at Lützen. ”

“ But these measures were but steps in the work of making Poland a nation, instead of a loose confederation of nobles; the final decision was taken in 1788, when the Polish Diet elected a Committee to draw up a new Constitution, raised the national army to 60,000 men, and decreed regular taxes in order to replenish the national treasury. This consciousness of nationality enabled Stanislas Poniatowski, King of Poland, to negotiate as an independent and powerful sovereign with Prussia in 1789, and to send his envoys to Reichenbach in 1790 to act with the envoys of the other powers. ”

“ Poniatowski was no doubt an elected king, but so were the others, and he was a Lithuanian nobleman before he became King. The kingdom over which he ruled exists no longer except in history, and even if the infamous partitions had never taken place and Stanislaus had owned his English marriage and taken his English family with him, I should have no more claim to the throne than to that of the Queen. But I am the lineal descendant of a king who reigned for a generation, and neither the malignity of to-day nor the lies of history can destroy that fact. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But before Pontiac was many years old he knew that the wigwam was the place for women and children, and that it was a shame for a man not to follow the deer through the forest, and go upon the warpath. He saw that if a man stayed at home and loved ease and comfort his squaw would scold him with a shrill tongue. ”

“ We now come to the reign of the last Polish king, Stanislaus Poniatowski, and the few quiet years before the final division of the country, during which the French taste was all powerful. This is the second great period of the development of Polish literature, which has known nothing of medieval romanticism. The literature of the first or Renaissance period gives us some good poets, who although occasionally imitators are not without national feeling, and a goodly array of chroniclers, most of whom made use of Latin. ”

“ The capital, Pondicherry (41) , is the capital of the French possessions in India; has handsome tree-lined streets, government buildings, college, lighthouse, cotton mills, and dye-works. The harbour is an open roadstead; trade is small, the chief export oil seeds.
Pondos, a branch of Zulu-Kaffirs, 200,000 in number, occupying territory called Pondo Land, annexed to Cape Colony, in South Africa.
Poniatowski, Prince Joseph, Polish general, born in Warsaw; commanded the Polish contingent that accompanied Napoleon in his expedition into Russia in 1812 ”

“ These were all sums of money owing to the French ambassadors to the Porte, Thomas Cook, and other English, and Jews of Constantinople, to M. La Motraye, the French gentleman of Bender, besides to all the members of his suite.
Karl chafed at all this like a lion tickled with straws.
“We must have more money,” he said impatiently. “Pay these usurers cent for cent—get it, somehow. I must send an embassy to the Porte to say farewell. You must go, Grothusen, and with some magnificence. Poniatowski thinks the Sultan might lend money if he will not lend an army.” ”

“ Pale-face cannot deceive Pontiac. You see before you that great warrior. Pontiac likes the English pale-face not at all; for has he not found the pale-face tongue ever fair and false? Where are the lands of our fathers? Did they not reach from the ocean beyond the big river of the Mississippi? Pontiac’s tribe very great. His chiefs have ever been renowned in council and in war. Were not our braves as numerous as the leaves of the forest? Were not peace and plenty ours until the white man came among us? ”

“ POINCARÉ, RAYMOND (1860–⁠) , French statesman, was born at Bar-le-duc on the 20th of August 1860, the son of Nicolas Antoinin Hélène Poincaré, a distinguished civil servant and meteorologist. Educated at the university of Paris, Raymond was called to the Paris bar, and was for some time law editor of the Voltaire. He had served for over a year in the department of agriculture when in 1887 he was elected deputy for the Meuse. He made a great reputation in the Chamber as an economist, and sat on the budget commissions of 1890–1891 and 1892. ”

“ He left school with a sound classical training and with an early developed passion for his country. Already Timoleon was his favourite hero of antiquity because, so he told a friend fifty years later, "he was able to restore his nation's freedom, taking nothing for himself."
In 1763 the long and dreary reign of Augustus III, the last Saxon king of Poland, came to an end. Russian diplomacy, supported by Russian cannon, placed Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski, the lover of Catherine II, upon the Polish throne in 1764. ”

“ Brought up in Saxony, he served for some years in the Saxon army; but when, in 1791, the Polish diet recalled all Poles serving abroad, he returned to his native land. Under Poniatowski, he took part in the campaign of 1792 against the Russians. In 1794 he distinguished himself under Kosciusko in the defence of Warsaw. For two years thereafter he lived in retirement, declining the offers of high ranks in their armies made to him by Russia and Prussia. He then went to Paris, and in January 1797 was authorized by the government of the Cisalpine Republic to organize a Polish legion. ”

“ Catherine II. and Frederick II. had already determined (Treaty of St Petersburg, April 22, 1764) that the existing state of things in Poland must be maintained, and as early as the 18th of October 1763 Catherine had recommended the election of Stanislaus Poniatowski as “the individual most convenient for our common interests.” The personal question did not interest Frederick: so long as Poland was kept in an anarchical condition he cared not who was called king. Moreover, the opponents of the Czartoryscy made no serious attempt to oppose the entry of the Russian troops. ”

“ Every warrior present shouted his readiness to go to war, and before the council broke up it was agreed that in four days Pontiac 'should go to the fort with his young men for a peace dance' in order to get information regarding the strength of the place. The blow must be struck before the spring boats arrived from the Niagara with supplies and additional troops. The council at an end, the different tribes scattered to their several summer villages, seemingly peaceful Indians who had gathered together for trade. ”

“ Think on this, and then, if you can, subjugate Poland to her enemies."
Stanislaus, weakened by years and subdued by disappointment, now retained no higher wish than to save his subjects from immediate outrage. He did not answer the palatine, but with streaming eyes bent over the table, and annulled the glorious constitution of 1791. Then with emotions hardly short of agony, he signed an order presented by a plenipotentiary from the combined powers, which directed Prince Poniatowski to deliver the army under his command into the hands of General Brinicki. ”

“ The white men concealed the joy which they felt at their escape from death. They had expected nothing less. Pontiac directed some of his warriors to accompany the traders and then retired to his wigwam. The traders, once safely out of his country were very careful not to revisit it while he lived. A war broke out soon after this event, in which Pontiac displayed the skill and courage of a great commander. He was victorious on many occasions, but was at last forced to conclude a peace, by the superior numbers and discipline of the whites. ”

“ All this Pontiac saw. He felt commissioned to lead a return to nature. The arts of the white man must be discarded and the Indians must come back to their primitive mode of living in dependence upon their own skill and ingenuity.
And so Pontiac waged a religious war. At a great convention of the savages he told them that a Delaware Indian had, while lost in the forests, been guided into a path which led to the home of the Great Spirit, and, on coming there, had been upbraided by the Master of Life himself for the degenerate state to which his race was falling. ”

“ In any event, Pontiac, like his great successor, the incomparable Shawano chief, Tecumseh, was a native of Ohio.
The Ottawas, Ojibwas, and the Pottawottomis had formed a sort of alliance of which Pontiac was the virtual head. He was of a despotic and commanding temperament, and he wielded practical authority among all the tribes of the Illinois country, and was known to all the Indian nations of America. Pontiac, conscious of his power and position, haughtily asked Major Rogers, "What his business was in that country?" ”

“ The young man would spy upon the Indians and then go and tell the great English general of what he has seen. He is a snake in the grass, close to the trail of Pontiac and his followers."
"I am not a spy, Chief Pontiac. My father is a trader and I help him at his trading-post on the Ohio, that is all."
Pontiac waved his hand. "The wind can blow a lie away, but the truth is like a rock that the wind cannot stir. Pontiac's followers have watched the white youth, and he knows." ”

“ Pontiac was an orator of a high order, fierce and impassioned in style. He presented at length the injustice of the British as compared with that of the French; he set forth the danger to his race from the threatened supremacy of the British power; he predicted the awakening of "their great father the King of France," during whose sleep the English had robbed the Indian of his American possessions. In passionate appeals he aroused the vengeance and superstition of his people and warned them that the white man's civilization was poisoning and annihilating the red race. ”