Everything about Adam Jerzy Czartoryski totally explained
Prince
Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (also known, in
English, as
Adam George Czartoryski;
January 14,
1770 –
July 15,
1861) was a
Polish noble,
statesman and
author. He was the son of Prince
Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and
Izabela Fleming (though he was rumored to have been the fruit of a liaison between Izabela and Russian
ambassador to Poland,
Nikolai Repnin).
Czartoryski was known in
Russia as the Russian Imperial Minister of Foreign Affairs and was rumored to have been a lover of
Louise of Baden,
Empress consort to
Alexander I of Russia.
Czartoryski holds the distinction of having headed, at different times, the governments of two mutually hostile countries. He was
de facto Chairman of the
Russian Council of Ministers (1804-6), and President of the
Polish National Government during the
November 1830 Uprising against
Tsarist Russia.
Travels
Czartoryski was born in
Warsaw, and after a careful education at home by eminent specialists, mostly
French, he went abroad in 1786. At
Gotha, Czartoryski heard
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe read his
Iphigeneia in Tauris and made the acquaintance of the dignified
Johann Gottfried Herder and "fat little
Christoph Martin Wieland."
In 1789 Czartoryski visited
Great Britain with his mother and was present at the trial of
Warren Hastings. On a second visit in 1793 he made many acquaintances among the British
aristocracy and studied the British
constitution.
In the interval between these visits, he fought for his country during the
war of the second partition and would subsequently also have served under
Tadeusz Kosciuszko, had he not been arrested on his way to Poland at
Brussels by the
Austrian government in the service of
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor. After the third partition of Poland the Czartoryski estates were confiscated, and in May
1795 Adam and his younger brother Constantine were summoned to
Saint Petersburg.
Service in Russia
Later in 1795, the two brothers were commanded to enter the Russian service, Adam becoming an officer in the horse, and Constantine in the foot guards.
Catherine the Great was so favorably impressed by the youths that she restored them part of their estates, and in early 1796 made them gentlemen-in-waiting.
Adam had already met
Grand Duke Alexander at a ball at Princess
Golitsyna's, and the youths at once conceived a strong "intellectual friendship" for each other. On the accession of Tsar
Paul I, Czartoryski was appointed adjutant to Alexander, now
Tsarevich, and was permitted to revisit his Polish estates for three months.
At this time the tone of the Russian court was extremely liberal. Humanitarian enthusiasts like
Pyotr Volkonsky and
Nikolay Novosiltsev possessed great influence.
Diplomatic career
Throughout the reign of Paul I, Czartoryski was in high favor and on terms of the closest intimacy with the Tsar, who in December 1798 appointed him ambassador to the court of
Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia. On reaching
Italy, Czartoryski found that that monarch was a king without a kingdom, so that the outcome of his first diplomatic mission was a pleasant tour through
Italy to
Naples, the acquisition of the
Italian language, and a careful exploration of the antiquities of
Rome.
In the spring of 1801 the new tsar,
Alexander I, summoned his friend back to
Saint Petersburg. Czartoryski found the Tsar still suffering from remorse at his father's
assassination, and incapable of doing anything but talk religion and politics to a small circle of friends. To all remonstrances, he only replied, "There's plenty of time." The Senate did most of the current business;
Pyotr Vasilyevich Zavadovsky, a pupil of the
Jesuits, was minister of education.
De facto foreign minister
Tsar Alexander appointed Czartoryski curator of the
Vilna Academy, now Vilnius University (
April 3,
1803) so that he might give full play to his advanced ideas. Czartoryski was, however, unable to give much attention to education, for from the beginning of 1804, as adjunct of foreign affairs, he'd practical control of Russian
diplomacy. His first act was to protest energetically against the murder of
Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d'Enghien (
March 20,
1804), and insist on an immediate rupture with the government of the
French Revolution, then under
First Consul Napoléon Bonaparte.
On
June 7,
1804, the French minister,
Gabriel Marie Joseph, comte d'Hédouville, left St. Petersburg; and on August 11 a note dictated by Czartoryski to Alexander was sent to the Russian minister in
London, urging the formation of an anti-French coalition. It was also Czartoryski who framed the Convention of
November 6,
1804, whereby
Russia agreed to put 115,000, and
Austria 235,000, men in the field against Napoleon.
Finally, in April 1805, he signed an offensive-defensive alliance with the
United Kingdom of
George III.
But Czartoryski's most striking ministerial act was a memorial written in 1805, otherwise undated, which aimed at transforming the whole map of
Europe:
Austria and
Prussia were to divide
Germany between them. Russia was to acquire the
Dardanelles, the
Sea of Marmora, the
Bosphorus with
Constantinople, and
Corfu. Austria was to have
Bosnia,
Wallachia and
Ragusa.
Montenegro, enlarged by
Mostar and the
Ionian Islands, was to form a separate state. The United Kingdom and Russia together were to maintain the equilibrium of the world. In return for their acquisitions in Germany, Austria and Prussia were to consent to the erection of an autonomous
Polish state extending from Danzig (
Gdańsk) to the sources of the
Vistula, under the protection of Russia. This project presented the best guarantee, at the time, for the independent existence of Poland. But in the meantime Austria had come to an understanding with England as to subsidies, and war had begun.
Chief minister
In 1805 Czartoryski accompanied Alexander to
Berlin and to
Olmütz (Olomouc,
Moravia) as chief minister. He regarded the
Berlin visit a blunder, chiefly due to his distrust of
Prussia; but Alexander ignored his representations, and in February 1807 Czartoryski lost favor and was superseded by
Andrei Budberg.
But, though no longer a minister, Czartoryski continued to enjoy Alexander's confidence in private, and in 1810 the Tsar candidly admitted to Czartoryski that his policy in 1805 had been erroneous and he hadn't made a proper use of his opportunities.
That same year, Czartoryski left
Saint Petersburg forever; but the personal relations between him and Alexander were never better. The friends met again at
Kalisz (
Greater Poland) shortly before the signature of the Russo-Prussian alliance on
February 20,
1813, and Czartoryski was in the Tsar's suite at
Paris in 1814, and rendered him material services at the
Congress of Vienna.
Later career
Everyone thought that Czartoryski, who more than any other man had prepared the way for the
Congress Kingdom, and designed the
Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland, would be
its first namestnik, but he was content with the title of
senator-palatine and a share in the administration.
In 1817 he married
Anna Sapieżanka. The wedding led to a duel with his rival,
Ludwik Pac(External Link
).
On his father's death in 1823, Czartoryski retired to his ancestral castle at
Puławy; but the
November 1830 Uprising brought him back to public life. As president of the provisional government, he summoned (
December 18,
1830) the
Sejm of 1831, and, after the end of
Chlopicki's dictatorship, was elected chief of the supreme council (
Polish National Government) by 121 out of 138 votes (
January 30,
1831).
On
September 6,
1831, his disapproval of the popular excesses at
Warsaw caused him to resign from the government after having sacrificed half his fortune to the national cause. Throughout the Uprising, he didn't live up to his great reputation.
Yet the sexagenarian statesman showed great energy. On
August 23,
1831, he joined
Italian General
Girolamo Ramorino's army corps as a volunteer, and subsequently formed a
confederation of the three southern provinces of
Kalisz,
Sandomierz and
Kraków. At war's end, when the Uprising was crushed by the Russians, he was
sentenced to death(External Link)(External Link)(External Link), though the sentence was soon commuted to
exile(External Link).
On
February 25,
1832, in the
United Kingdom, he founded a
Literary Association of the Friends of Poland.
Czartoryski emigrated to France, where he resided in
Paris'
Hôtel Lambert—a prominent Polish-émigre political figure, head of a political faction accordingly called the
Hotel Lambert.
He died at his country residence at
Montfermeil, near
Meaux, on
July 15,
1861. He left two sons, Witold (1824-65) and
Władysław Czartoryski (1828-94), and a daughter Izabela, who in 1857 married
Jan Działyński.
Proposed federation
Between the
November and
January Uprisings, in 1832–61, Czartoryski supported the idea of resurrecting an updated
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on
federation principles.
The visionary
statesman and former friend, confidant and
de facto foreign minister of Russia's
Tsar Alexander I acted as the "uncrowned king and unacknowledged
foreign minister" of a nonexistent Poland.
He had been disappointed in the hopes that he'd reposed, as late as the
Congress of Vienna, in
Alexander's willingness to undertake reforms, and the distillation of some years' subsequent study and thought was Czartoryski's book, completed in 1827 but published only in 1830,
Essai sur la diplomatie (Essay on Diplomacy). This book is, according to the historian
Marian Kamil Dziewanowski, indispensable to an understanding of the Prince's many activities conducted in France's capital following the ill-fated Polish
November 1830 Uprising. Czartoryski wanted to find a place for Poland in the Europe of the time. He sought to interest western Europeans in the adversities of a stateless nation that was nevertheless an indispensable part of the European structure.
Pursuant to the Polish motto, "
For our freedom and yours," Czartoryski connected Polish efforts for independence with similar movements of other subjugated nations in Europe and in the East as far as the
Caucasus. Thanks to his private initiative and generosity, the émigrés of a subjugated nation conducted a foreign policy often on a broader scale than had the old independent
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Of particular interest are Czartoryski's observations, in the
Essay on Diplomacy, regarding
Russia's role in the world. He wrote that, "Having extended her sway south and west, and being by the nature of things unreachable from the east and north, Russia becomes a source of constant threat to Europe." He argued that it would have been in Russia's interest, instead, to have surrounded herself with "friend[srather than] slave[s]." Czartoryski also identified a future threat from
Prussia and urged the incorporation of
East Prussia into a resurrected Poland.
Above all, however, he aspired to reconstitute — with
French,
British and
Turkish support — a
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth federated with the Czechs, Slovaks,
Hungarians, Romanians and all the
South Slavs of the future Yugoslavia. Poland, in his concept, could have mediated the conflicts between Hungary and the Slavs, and between Hungary and Romania.
Czartoryski's plan seemed achievable during the period of
national revolutions in 1848-49 but foundered on lack of western support, on Hungarian intransigence toward the Czechs, Slovaks and Romanians, and on the rise of
German nationalism. "Nevertheless," concludes Dziewanowski, "the Prince's endeavor constitutes a [vital] link [between] the 16th-century
Jagiellon [federativeprototype] and
Józef Piłsudski's federative-
Prometheist program [thatwas to follow after
World War I]."
Awards
Works
Czartoryski's principal works, as cited in the
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, are
Essai sur la diplomatie (Marseilles, 1830);
Life of J. U. Niemcewicz (Paris, 1860);
Alexander I. et Czartoryski: correspondence ... et conversations (1801-1823) (Paris, 1865);
Memoires et correspondence avec Alex. I., with preface by C. de Mazade, 2 vols. (Paris, 1887); an English translation,
Memoirs of Czartoryski, &c., edited by A. Gielguch, with documents relating to his negotiations with Pitt, and conversations with Palmerston in 1832 (2 vols., London, 1888).
In popular culture
Czartoryski makes a
cameo appearance in volume 3 of
Leo Tolstoy's novel,
War and Peace, at an Allied Council conference that takes place at
Olmütz (Olomouc,
Moravia) on
November 18,
1805, just before the
Battle of Austerlitz.
Further Information
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