Franciszek Ksawery Branicki

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Hetman
Franciszek Ksawery Branicki
Great Crown Hetman
Field Crown Hetman
Władysław Grzegorz Branicki

Zofia Branicka
Elżbieta Branicka
FatherPiotr Branicki
MotherMelania Teresa Szembek

Franciszek Ksawery Branicki (1730–1819) was a Polish nobleman, magnate, French count, diplomat, politician, military commander, and one of the leaders of the Targowica Confederation. Many consider him to have been a traitor who participated with the Russians in the dismemberment of his nation.

Early life

Born into the mighty

Chorąży of Halicz, Castellan of Bratslav (1708-1762) and his wife, Melania Teresa Szembek (b. 1712). He was the brother of Princess Elżbieta Sapieha
.

Career

He was appointed Great Crown

Master of the Hunt of the Crown in 1766–1773, Artillery General of Lithuania in 1768–1773, Ambassador to Moscow in 1771, Crown Hetman in 1773 and was Great Crown Hetman of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1774 and 1794.[1]

In 1774,

Hetman Party
instead.

During the Kościuszko Uprising (1794) he was sentenced by the Supreme Criminal Court, in absentia, to hang for treason, witness his decades long pro-Russian stance and anti-patriotic politics and plotting against the state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, he escaped the death penalty.

Branicki was awarded the Order of the White Eagle in December 1764. He married Aleksandra von Engelhardt, member of the powerful Engelhardt family. She was supposed niece of Prince Potemkin, which made him the putative son-in-law of Empress Catherine of Russia.[1][3]

Biography

He started his career as a soldier in the Seven Years' War, firstly in the Russian Imperial army and later with the French. He distinguished himself at the battle of Sarbinowo (Zorndorf) in 1758 while commanding a squadron of Russian cavalry. For his services in the French army Louis XV awarded him the title of count, however, in Poland, prior to the partitions, the title was not officially recognized by parliament.

In 1765, he became a Knight of the Order of Saint Stanislaus. He became a member of the Polish Sajm in 1762 representing the Ruthenian Voivodeship (later known as Galicia). He inherited his father's noble titles. In 1764, Branicki was one of the Electors of Stanisław August Poniatowski who reigned as Stanisław II August. Branicki later became a member of the Military Commission of the Crown. In 1766, he gave a speech in the Sejm on behalf of Halicz county.

Branicki was a strong supporter and member of the

Nikolai Repnin in order to review the function of the government of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
.

As a commander, Branicki decided to side with the king and faithfully led the Royal Polish Army in the years 1768–1772 and helped to suppress the supporters of the Bar Confederation who were Polish patriots. On 19 June 1768, together with Russian troops, he captured the city of Bar in Ruthenia, which served as the Bar's headquarters.

Franciszek Ksawery Branicki

In 1770, during the crisis in Russian-Polish relations, king Stanisław II Augustus, appointed him as his envoy to the

Sejm Marshals and Hetmans. On 18 January 1771 Branicki arrived in St. Petersburg, from where he warned king Stanisław that if the Russian delegation in Warsaw
headed by general Kasper von Saldern could not reach agreement with the Polish Sejm, the Russian Empress would partition the country. So it came to pass.

He and Suvorov armed the Jews in

Biała Cerkiew and appointed him Crown Hetman.[4][5]

In 1776, Branicki became a member of Andrzej Mokronowski's controversial political party. At the 1778 Sejm Branicki was appointed the adviser to the "Permanent Council's" Chief Marshal.

Later he became a member of the

Confederation of Targowica.[6]

Branicki was included on Yakov Bulhakov's list, which included the names of people, mostly senators and deputies, on whom the Russians could rely and were keen to overthrow the latest Constitution, and possibly even the monarch himself. Throughout his career, Branicki had been one of the leaders of the pro-Russian political tendency.

As a conservative, along with the founder of Bar confederation Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk, Branicki tried everything to keep his former Hetman privileges. Even as a determined counter-revolutionary, he supposedly refused to sign any treaty that sanctioned the partitioning of his homeland.

However, due to his sympathies and cooperation with the Russians, Branicki was considered throughout the 19th-century as a national traitor, along with all the leaders and members of the Targowica Confederation, which was essentially a conspiracy against the state and led to second and third partitions of Poland.

Branicki held several important posts in the Commonwealth, as Crown Hetman, then Great Hetman. Additionally, he was commander of the Lithuanian artillery. On 13 August 1793 he resigned from that position in order to become a general in the Russian army. The ownership of vast estates, towns and villages in

Kiev, where he spent the last years of his life, having retired from politics and military service.[6]

Family

A memorial waterfall in Oleksandriya

In 1781 already aged 51, Branicki contracted a strategic marriage with one of the leading members of the

Polish classicism
. They had five surviving children:

Katarzyna Branicka
Aleksander Branicki

Władysław Grzegorz Branicki
Zofia Branicka
Elżbieta Branicka[8]

As a memorial to their children who did not survive, the couple had a waterfall and folly constructed in the grounds of Oleksandriya.

Treason

Death sentence

During the

Kingdom of Poland sentenced him to death by hanging, to eternal infamy and to the confiscation of all his property and titles. Because of the absence of the accused, the sentence was carried out symbolically in absentia on 29 September 1794. His portrait, painted by an anonymous artist was hung from the gallows. The portraits of Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki and Hetman Seweryn Rzewuski
, who were not captured either, but were convicted for treason, were also hung the same day.

Infamy

Constitution of 3 May 1791 by Jan Matejko

Branicki's reputation was subsequently immortalized as a symbol of national treason by Poland's leading writers and artists, most notably by

Karol Stanisław "Panie Kochanku" Radziwiłł
.

Trivia

In 1766, as a result of a pistol duel over an Italian actress in Warsaw with the adventurer and notorious predator, Giacomo Casanova, who happened to be in Poland at that time, Branicki sustained a serious wound to his stomach. Casanova was injured in the hand and was recommended an amputation which he declined. They both survived.[10]

Representations in art

He is one of the figures immortalized in Jan Matejko's 1891 painting, Constitution of 3 May 1791.[1]

Branicki's greed, treason and baronial excesses appear in Stanisław Wyspiański's drama, The Wedding (Wesele).

References

  1. ^ a b c "Franciszek Ksawery Branicki (Ok. 1730-1819) – awanturnik i zdrajca".
  2. ^ The estate remained in the Branicki family until the Russian Revolution
  3. Nikolai Vasilyeich Repnin
    's presence at the private wedding in the court chapel at St Petersburg.
  4. ^ "Białacerkiew". Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland (in Polish). 1. Warszawa: Kasa im. Józefa Mianowskiego. 1880. p. 174.
  5. ^ "Białacerkiew". Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland (in Polish).  p. 122.
  6. ^ a b "BRANICKI FRANCISZEK KSAWERY (1730- 1819), herbu Korczak - Słownik historyczny - Bryk.pl".
  7. ISBN 8304032910
  8. Polish Academy of Learning
    – Skład Główny w Księgarniach Gebethner i Wolff. 1936, p. 398.
  9. ^ "historycy.org -> Franciszek Ksawery Branicki".
  10. ISBN 978-0-7181-0570-9
    .

Bibliography

In Polish:

  • Historia Dyplomacji Polskiej – tom II 1572-1795, PWN, Warsaw 1981, p. 541.
  • Marek Ruszczyc, Dzieje rodu i fortuny Branickich, Warsaw 1991.
  • Roman Kaleta, Oświeceni i sentymentalni, Wrocław 1971.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Franciszek_Ksawery_Branicki&oldid=1184600157"