Stanisław August Poniatowski

Born into wealthy aristocracy, Stanisław Antoni Poniatowski arrived at the Russian court in 1755 at twenty-two and became intimately involved with the future Catherine the Great. With her backing, he was elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in September 1764. He tried to reform and strengthen the sprawling Commonwealth, but neighboring Prussia, Russia, and Austria wanted it weak, and conservative Polish interests saw his reforms as threats to their ancient privileges. The War of the Bar Confederation led to the First Partition in 1772. His later reforms - the Great Sejm of 1788-1792, the Constitution of 3 May 1791 - were crushed by the Targowica Confederation and the 1792 Polish-Russian War, triggering the Second Partition in 1793, the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, and the final Third Partition in 1795. He abdicated that November and spent his last years captive in Saint Petersburg's Marble Palace, dying in 1798. Historians credit him as a skillful statesman and a great patron of the arts - the Constitution was an act of bravery - but fault him for not mounting a proper uprising afterward, the failure that sealed Poland's fate.