Ignacy Potocki

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Count
Roman Ignacy
Potocki
Elżbieta Lubomirska
IssueKrystyna Potocka
FatherEustachy Potocki
MotherMarianna Kątska

Count Roman Ignacy Potocki, generally known as Ignacy Potocki (Polish pronunciation:

Grand Marshal of Lithuania
from 16 April 1791 to 1794.

He was an educational activist, member of the

an alliance with Prussia in 1790. He co-authored the Constitution of 3 May 1791
.

Life

Youth

Potocki was born in Radzyń on 28 February 1750 into the influential magnate Potocki family.[1] He was the son of Eustachy Potocki and Marianna Kątska, brother of Jerzy Michał Potocki, Jan Nepomucen Eryk Potocki and Stanisław Kostka Potocki.[1]

Potocki was an alumnus of the

Stanisław II Augustus' Thursday Dinners.[1]

Political career

As a member (1772–1791) of Poland's

Cracow Academy.[4] His involvement with the educational projects earned him a nickname bakałarz (holder of baccalarius degree, teacher).[4] His involvement with the educational reforms lessened only during the era of the Great Sejm (1788–1792), when he became increasingly involved with the wider reform program.[4]

Ignacy Potocki by Anna Rajecka

On 29 May 1773 he received the office of Great Clerk (Writer) of Lithuania, a relatively low-ranked position that was seen by some as below the magnates of the Potocki family.[4] He participated in the Partition Sejm of 1773, where he sat on several commissions.[4] Seeing himself in opposition to the king, he refused a seat on the Permanent Council that he was offered in March 1774.[4] The king tried to appease him with the Order of Saint Stanislaus on 14 July that year, but that failed to bring Potocki to his side.[4] Instead, Potocki became, for the next decade and half, one of his chief political critics and opponents; on 1776 he went to Moscow to argue, unsuccessfully, for limiting the power of king and the Russian ambassador, Otto Magnus von Stackelberg.[5] Later that year, his election to the Sejm was disputed, and the king and Stackelberg managed to block his election.[5] In 1778 however, the growing rift between the king and Stackelberg allowed him to take, through political maneuvering, the chairmanship of the Permanent Council Marshal of the Sejm.[5] That year he also became a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle.[5]

In 1779 Potocki joined the

Court Marshal of Lithuania.[6] He continued to oppose various royal projects at the Sejms of 1784 and 1786.[6] In 1785 he lost some face for his involvement in the Dogrumowa affair, in which the king was falsely accused of an instigation of a poisoning attempt.[6]

Disappointed with Russia's lack of support for any serious reforms in Poland, he shifted to favoring an alliance with the

Polish-Prussian alliance) and a major reform of the government, both with which he was closely involved, begun accelerating in 1789.[8] At first supportive more of a republican form of a government, political reality (such as royal faction victory at the elections of 1790) resulted in his acceptance of a more constitutional monarchy approach.[9][10] In 1790, through the mediation of Scipione Piattoli, the king and Potocki begun drifting closer together, working on a draft document that would eventually become the 3 May 1791 constitution.[9][10] Alongside Poniatowski, Kołłątaj and Piattoli, he is seen as one of the major authors of that document.[11] He supported the quasi-coup d'état in which the constitution was passed on 3 May 1791.[11]

On 17 May 1791, he resigned his position in the Commission of National Education to take an appointment (Minister of Police) in the newly created government, the

War in the Defence of the Constitution in 1792, he went on an unsuccessful diplomatic mission to Berlin to request assistance from the Prussian government.[12] On 4 July 1792, a sudden depression made him resign his ministerial positions.[12] A vocal opponent of the Targowica Confederation and likely an author of an anonymous anti-Targowica brochure, he was specifically requested by the Russian government to not be involved in the negotiations; he also refused to join the Targowica Confederation, even after Poniatowski's accession to it.[13]

Final years

Following the victory of the

May 3rd Constitution, Potocki emigrated from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, settling in Leipzig.[13] Together with Tadeusz Kościuszko, he proposed a plan for a French-Polish alliance of republics, that was however not met with much support in France.[13] He co-authored a work with Hugo Kołłątaj, On the Adoption and Fall of the Polish Constitution of 3 May (O ustanowieniu i upadku Konstytucji Polskiej 3-go Maja, 1793).[13]

Potocki participated in preparations for the

Tsarist Russian authorities.[14] He has lost most of his wealth following the Uprising, as most of his estates were confiscated.[15][16] Near the end of his life he would be troubled by his inability to pay off debts from the 1780s.[15]

Released in 1796, following the death of Catherine the Great, Potocki retired to Kurów, Puławy county (central Poland).[15] There he devoted himself to historical studies, publishing several books, translations and commentaries.[15][17] He also wrote poems, but those were never published during his lifetime.[15] Historians still debate over his potential authorship of several anonymous works (primarily political brochures).[15][17] He distanced himself from activists discussing a new insurrection, but was nonetheless arrested and imprisoned by the Austrian authorities again in the years 1798–1800.[15] In 1801 he joined the Warsaw Scientific Society.[15] He returned to politics shortly after much of Galicia was liberated by Napoleon and attached to the Duchy of Warsaw.[17] During the negotiations with Napoleon in Dresden he contracted severe diarrhea and died on 30 August 1809.[17] He was buried in Wilanów.[17]

He had no direct descendants, his only surviving daughter, Krystyna, (born 1778) died in 1800.[17] His reduced estates were inherited by a nephew, Aleksander Potocki.[17]

Remembrance

In private life, he is said to have had a weakness for gambling, but he also had a reputation of an honest reformer, who puts the good of the country above his own.[18]

He is one of the figures immortalized in

Constitution of 3 May 1791.[19]

See also

  • List of Poles

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.1
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-83-02-04615-5
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-83-02-04615-5
    .
  4. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.2
  5. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.3
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.4
  7. ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.5
  8. ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.6
  9. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.8
  10. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.7
  11. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.9
  12. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.10
  13. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.11
  14. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.12
  15. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.13
  16. ISBN 978-83-02-04615-5
    .
  17. ^
    ISBN 0-900661-24-0
    , p.14
  18. ISBN 978-83-02-04615-5
    .
  19. ISBN 978-83-7022-172-0
    .

External links

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