Russo-Polish War (1792)
| date | 1792 |
|---|---|
| place | Republic of Poland-Lithuania |
| output | Victory of the Targowica Confederation and the Russian Empire through the accession of the Polish king to the Targowica Confederation |
| consequences | Cancellation of the Constitution of May 3rd, Second Partition of Poland in 1793 |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
 Russian Empire Targowica Confederation |
 Republic of Poland-Lithuania |
| Commander | |
|
Mikhail Kretschetnikow |
Stanislaus II August Poniatowski |
| Troop strength | |
| up to 98,000 men | up to 37,000 men |
The Russo-Polish War of 1792 was a war between the Republic of Poland-Lithuania on one side and the Russian Empire in alliance with the Targowica Confederation on the other.
prehistory
The armed forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita, loyal to King Stanislaus August and the four-year-old Sejm , defended the liberal May Constitution of 1791 against the conservative Targowica Confederation of part of the Polish magnates of April 27, 1792, who were supported by troops of the Russian Empire was supported. The war began after the reading of a declaration by Russian Tsarina Catherine II against Poland-Lithuania on May 18, 1792, which she used as a pretext for Russia's invasion of Poland. In her statement, Katharina spoke of the alleged persecution of Russian nationals and people of Orthodox denomination in Poland and of alliance talks between Poland and the Ottoman Empire . However, it had no character of an open declaration of war.
The spa located just being developed young Polish national army had before the outbreak of war a actual status of about 70,000 men. According to the constitution of May 3, 1791, the nominal strength of the constituent Polish land army should be up to 100,000 men. A little more than half stood in the way of the almost 100,000-strong Russian army, which had significantly more experience thanks to the wars against Sweden and the Turks .
course
Poland's ally, the Kingdom of Prussia , unilaterally left the Polish-Prussian defensive alliance of 1790, which was directed against Russia, when Russian troops marched into Poland . The commander of the Lithuanian troops, Prince Ludwig von Württemberg , who had been loaned to Poland as a Prussian general, was the brother-in-law of the Russian Crown Prince Paul . He pretended to be sick and refused to fight the Russian troops ; thus he contributed not insignificantly to the Polish defeat in the battle of Mir near Nowogródek on June 10th. Because of this betrayal , his Polish wife divorced him when it became public.
The Polish troops, under the command of Prince Józef Antoni Poniatowski , concentrated the main enemy forces on themselves and won the Battle of Zielńce in what is now Ukraine on June 18 . Despite the isolated victory, the Polish army withdrew into the interior of the country due to the overwhelming power of the Russians and the fear of encirclement, where the Polish general Tadeusz Kościuszko initially asserted the defensive line on the Bug River against the Russians on July 18 in the Battle of Dubienka , but in the end also had to withdraw.
Ultimately, the royal Polish troops were abandoned by King Stanislaus August's hasty accession to the Targowica Confederation on July 23 and his order to give up military resistance.
consequences
The king's decision laid the foundation for the Sejm of Grodno and the Second Partition of Poland in 1793. The Targowica Confederation was dissolved by order of the Tsarina, and its members were de facto disempowered, the rump state after the partition between Prussia and Russia involved, occupied by foreign troops and restricted its pre-war sovereignty . The last attempt to regain Poland's independence culminated in the Kościuszko uprising of 1794, which failed and led to the complete destruction of Polish statehood as part of the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.
literature
- Wolański Adam: Wojna polsko-rosyjska 1792 r. , Wydawnictwo volume, Warszawa 1996, ISBN 83-85218-48-3
- Derdej Piotr: Zielńce Mir Dubienka 1792. , Wydawnictwo Bellona, Warszawa 2000, ISBN 83-11-09108-0
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alex Storozynski: Kościuszko - Książę chłopów, p. 223, WAB, 2011, ISBN 978-83-7414-930-3 .
- ↑ Juliusz Bardach, Boguslaw Lesnodorski and Michal Pietrzak: HISTORIA PAŃSTWA I PRAWA POLSKIEGO , Paristwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warsaw 1987, p. 317.