Polish-Prussian Alliance
The Polish-Lithuanian-Prussian alliance was an alliance concluded on March 29, 1790 in Warsaw between Poland-Lithuania and Prussia . Prussia tried to use the opportunity in which the Russian Empire was embroiled in its wars against the Ottoman Empire and Sweden to pull the weakened Poland-Lithuania into its sphere of influence. Some interest groups within Poland saw this as a way of breaking free from decades of control over Russia. Both countries promised each other support in case of war and in a secret clause Poland left Danzig and Thorn to Prussia. The four-year-old Sejm decided in 1791, however, that the Polish-Lithuanian territory could not be divided.
In 1792, however, the situation changed: with the Peace of Jassy , which ended the war between the Russians and the Ottomans in January 1792, Russia was no longer militarily bound elsewhere, while the First Coalition War , which broke out in April, forced Prussia to unite To move part of his force west to fight France. In May Russia invaded Poland to regain control. Citing the fact that it was not consulted on the Constitution of May 3, Prussia annulled the alliance with Poland and refused to give any support. Rather, it invaded Wielkopolska in January 1793 in order to secure its share in the second partition of Poland after an understanding with Russia .
Footnotes
- ↑ a b Piotr Stefan Wandycz : The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present , Routledge (UK), 2001, ISBN 0-415-25491-4 , Google Print, p. 128, accessed on January 16, 2009.
- ↑ Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki: A Concise History of Poland , Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-55917-0 , Google Print, pp.101-103 , accessed on January 16, 2009
- ^ Henry Smith Williams, The Historians' History of the World , The Outlook Company, 1904, Google Print, pp. 88-91 , accessed January 16, 2009