Catherine the Great

Ultimately, it was Catherine who forced a decision on him. Stanislaus received an official message from the Russian foreign ministry in St. Petersburg telling him that it was essential that, before the opening of the election Diet, he marry, or at least select a bride. He realized that the message must have been approved by Catherine. Understanding, finally, that he had lost the woman he loved, he surrendered and signed a declaration that he would never marry anyone other than a Roman Catholic, and then only with the approval of the Polish Diet. He was sufficiently practical, however, to write to Catherine that if she wanted to make him a king, she must provide the money for him to live up to this position. She sent him money. His promise to marry calmed Turkish fears, and the election was allowed to proceed.

Once Stanislaus agreed, Catherine sent the Russian army to help him keep his promise. Fourteen thousand Russian troops surrounded Warsaw to “keep the peace” and “guarantee a free and tranquil election.” Some Poles talked of armed resistance and appealing for foreign assistance, but most Diet members were too pleased by the prospect of a native king to oppose Russian intervention.

The “free election” took place by voice vote on a summer day, August 26, 1764, in an open field outside Warsaw where members of the Diet, standing in the meadow grass, had a good view of the large Russian military camp nearby. Stanislaus was elected, and, as he wrote afterward, “The election was unanimous and tranquil.” He was now King Stanislaus II Augustus of Poland, and, as it turned out, he had become the last king of Poland. Catherine’s former lover, who had dreamed of becoming her husband, became her royal vassal. In St. Petersburg, a relieved empress of Russia saluted the event by sending a note to Panin: “My congratulations on the new king we have made.”

54

The First Partition of Poland and the First Turkish War

CATHERINE WAS PLEASED. Stanislaus’s election as king had been a triumph for her, if not for Poland or for Stanislaus. Her victory, however, led to an optimistic view of her ability to influence Polish affairs. Two years later, by attempting to force the Diet to alter policies on the issue of Polish “dissidents,” she opened the door to adversity and war.

The “dissident issue” was the official terminology applied to the conflicted status of various religious minorities in predominantly Roman Catholic Poland. These minorities—the Russian Orthodox population in the eastern third of the country, and hundreds of thousands of Protestant Lutherans in the north—had been actively harassed in their religious practices and had been denied most political rights. They were not permitted to elect deputies to the Diet or to occupy high administrative and military posts. For years, their leaders had looked abroad for help: Orthodox believers to Russia; the Protestants to Prussia. Their continuing troubles and recurrent appeals for protection gave Russia and Prussia another common interest in Poland and a further pretext for interference in Polish internal affairs.

From the beginning of her reign, Catherine had heard that Orthodox believers were forbidden to build new churches and frequently barred from attending those that existed. The empress had a reason to respond. She had secularized church lands and serfs in Russia and she wished to do something to earn back the favor of the church at home. A further incentive was that any restriction of the authority of the Catholic Church would be in keeping with Enlightenment principles of religious toleration.

Three months after Stanislaus’s election to the Polish throne, the Russian ambassador, Prince Nicholas Repnin, informed the new king that the empress would not permit the reforms in Poland for which the Czartoryskis and other powerful noblemen were asking—abolition of the liberum veto, making the crown hereditary, an increase in the army—until they made concessions to religious minorities: Orthodox and Protestant believers must be allowed to worship in their own churches and to take part in the public life and government of the community. Stanislaus agreed to raise the dissident issue in the next Diet. Antidissident agitation flared immediately, fanned by ardent Catholic churchmen. Both sides were unyielding. By demanding political rights for religious minorities, Catherine was imposing demands on a fervently Catholic people who would rather fight than suffer the slightest alteration of their faith or infringement of their privileges. Religion was the overriding national issue; a threat to the Catholic faith reminded every Pole that he was a patriot. When the 1766 Diet met, it firmly refused to respond to any dissident grievance. Catherine reiterated her position: there were to be no other reforms until Poland permitted dissidents’ rights.