What means long? Between the first use and LV going out of fashion passed less than a century
The “Magnificent Age” - Catherine II TL
- Thread starter alexmilman
- Start date
There are 100,000 or so noble families in Poland, including couple dozen that actually matter, don't treat them as a monolithic bloc.
Although I too dont get why a magnate with income in hundreds thousands or millions would care for a pension from foreign ambassador amounting to maybe couple thousand ...
As usually, and this applies not only to the Poles, conversation is primarily about those who mattered because those who did not matter … well, did not matter. However, those who do matter would not matter without support of those who did not matter so, and this is, again, not just about Poland, we usually talk in generalities, assuming that a “mass” was supportive of the minority on the top. Of course, the “mass” is never completely uniform so we are talking about statistical majority that was defining the situation.
To be fair, there were people of principle even among those who did matter but in the 1760s in their principles Catholic intolerance and Golden Liberties had been the main driving ideology, aka, the very issues that were putting the PLC in its desperate situation so the question is should they be applauded for having some principles or blamed for having the wrong ones?
But let’s ignore what they were fighting for, just write it down to the good intentions. How about the brains? The Bar Confederacy was just Old Fritz’s wet dream, providing him with a valid argument for the 1st Partition and allowing eventually to attract Emperor Joseph and then CII on his side. Not to mention a general destruction caused by the confederates and the Russian troops fighting them. So before the Bar Confederacy the PLC was territorially intact and had the laws most of the nobility insisted upon except for the enforced upon them religious freedom and equality (was that a bad thing?) and Russian guarantee of its territorial integrity, which was a clear infringement upon the PLC independence. However, this bad thing was the only factor preserving the PLCs territorial integrity and as soon as it was removed from the table, the 1st Partition happened. MICHAŁ BOBRZYŃSKI in his book on the Polish history put it quite well saying that before getting rid of a dependency the PLC needed to get strong enough by implementing reforms. But the whole thing was done other way around and rejection of the reforms was its cornerstone.
Of course, it can be argued that strengthening of the PLC could led to the scenario triggering 2nd Partition but, without jumping into the future, before the Bar CII was supporting an idea of the military alliance against the Ottomans and increase of the PLC army even if Fritz was against this.
Yeah, it is amazing how inexpensive they were… Can it be that, with all their incomes, their expenses were higher leaving them in debt? This was often the case with their Russian counterparts.
21. Time to relax?
21. Time to relax?
Bar Confederacy. Confirmation of the Golden Liberies, being a measure pushing Poland back into the state of an anarchy, could not but please majority of the szlachta but even a notion of the guaranteed religious rights for the dissidents and the Russian guarantees were a completely different issues. The same goes for another fundamental item: the members of the pre-Sejm Radom Confederacy wanted King Stanislaw-August deposed [1] and expected the the Russians, who at that time were their protectors (and financiers) will accommodate their demand. However, at the Sejm the Russians rejected this specific demand turning from the desirable allies into the despised oppressors. And, to add insult to the injury, they pushed through a law allowing the non-Catholics to repair their churches and protecting them from being physically harmed by the religious reasons. What’s worse, the new law even permitted marriages between the Catholics and non-Catholics, which was an absolutely horrific. Small wonder that the blood of the true patriots was boiling.
The Sejm’s decisions caused the loud protests headed primarily by Bishop Adam Krasinsky of Kamenets (who actually was known for his religious tolerance) and on February 29, 1768, the Waretsky warden Casimir Pulaski in a small fortress of the Bratslav Voivodeship Bar founded a confederation against domination by Russia, as well as in defense of the former religious and political system, which soon covered all provinces. Krasinski in October 1768 went to Paris where he was received by Louis XV of France who promised support for the confederates, which was taken more seriously that it deserved.
Pulaski issued the proclamation which was quite remarkable on a number of accounts: patriotic zeal, xenophobia, and a complete absence of a grasp upon the realities around him.
“Finally, thanks to you, brave Poles, treacherous allies of Poland became obvious enemies. …
The Republic has been subjected to violence, religion is insulted; the supreme power of the country is under the yoke, justice has become a deception, our rights are broken with their feet, senators languish in chains.
Only cowards can tolerate all this.
The whole world will admire the efforts of our uprising. But who is this tyrant who oppresses us? Who is this impudent people who despise us?
Let's remember that there was a time when this heinous people always fled before our ancestors; that their tsars bowed before our kings; that their provinces became ours… [2] Let's remember that our simple militias from the peasants turned the Tsar and his army into flight [3] and that a few years later our fathers kept the hostile efforts of the whole people against them in the Russian capital and left this capital only after turning it into ashes.
Nowadays, you will say, the Russians have experienced officers, soldiers accustomed to battles, harsh discipline, numerous artillery, and this is their terrible superiority? Well, my brave compatriots, you will not say this; you feel in yourself all the advantages of personal courage and honor, the name of which is not even familiar to our opponents and which is not supported by discipline…
We are all equal, all brothers... We, whom the fatherland calls for his liberation, consider everything we undertake to protect to be the common and personal heritage of everyone.” [4]
Of course, those who is not going to raise to his call are the cowards and traitors, especially if they start asking the preposterous questions about the means and allies “Do we need help or advice to know our desire to be free or die?”
The rebels couldn’t match the Russian troops in open battle, just like they couldn’t catch up with the modern world and, being repeatedly humiliated on the battlefield, they made themselves feel better using moral and genetic (Sarmatians vs. the lower race) superiority. They were, for a while, quite lucky because there was not too much in the terms of the “Russian armies” around and, even before the confederacy started part of these troops, especially those in a geopolitically sensitive Southern part of the PLC, had been scheduled for a withdrawal per Russian-Ottoman agreement.
On March 27, the Senate decided to ask the Empress as a guarantor for freedom, laws and rights of the republic to turn its troops in Poland to tame the rebels. Of course, the withdrawal was cancelled when the upraising started but the upraising which initially started on the South, had been spreading throughout the PLC. The Russian troops amounted to less than 10,000, had been spread in relatively small units and, while the confederates did not have any coherent command structure, the Russian operations had been seriously handicapped by the fact that their top commander on Ukraine, major-general P.N.Krechetnikov had been predominantly busy with the extortions and looting rather than the military operations.
Repnin was sending complaints about his behavior to St-Petersburg but reaction was slow because he was Chernyshov’s protege. It took a while (and a mounting evidence) before Catherine recalled him:
“This general, apparently, has completely gone out of the limits of office and respect for the glory of our weapons and blinded by vile contemptuous covetiousness, produces, as they say, such huge robberies on the land there that he has already sent many wagons with the loot from there. We found to relieve him from the command to be the right thing.” He was replaced by Prince Prozorovsky but the damage was done both in the terms of the locals’s attitudes and in some troops following the bad example of their commander.
However, most of what was coming from St. Petersburg was not good at all because, following Elizabethan tradition, the government was trying to micromanage situation in Poland with the predictable results. As Repnin wrote to Panin, “Military orders send here are such that they cannot be carried out in any way, because they are contradictory.” Understandably, he requested help from those whom he was saving, Stanislaw-August and his government. The military commission, rather reluctantly, decided, not without dispute, to send the crown army, led by the general-regimentary Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, against the Confederates.
But Stanislaw-August was taking a rather peculiar position. While complaining to his “maman” in Paris about ignorance and intolerance of the confederates, he was refusing to declare a confederacy of his own even after they declared his deposition as their goal and Krasinski even called for his assassination. Most probably this was because he believed in the bishop’s political flexibility and because Stanisław August and the Czartoryskis had been hoping to create a ‘national front’ against Russia and already secretly tried to establish contacts with the confederates through the French court. As a result, Branicki got a secret order not to act too energetically against the Poles.
In Lithuania Pane Kohanku was playing a rather bizarre game being formally on the Russian side but at the same time providing the fleeing confederates a refuge in Neswiz claiming that he can’t see the brotherly blood being shed.
In a meantime, the Russian detachments had been generally victorious but this was not helping too much because they were not acting energetically enough and the bands of confederates had been been roaming over the country “Seizing state money, robbing a friend and enemy, a Catholic and a dissident, spiritual and secular.” The peaceful population, especially the peasants and the Jews, had been squeezed on both sides. So was poor (literally) Stanislaw-August because the confederates had been looting the crown estates depriving him of the means to support himself and his court.
Geopolitics. Of course, the seemingly obvious course for Catherine would be to send enough troops to squash the confederates but geopolitical situation was not allowing this.
First of all, so far, Austria was “coquetting” with the Confederacy allowing it to establish the headquarters of its rather dysfunctional council on its territory and permitting the beaten confederates bands to escape there. This, of course, did not mean that at the moment Austria was contemplating a war on the Polish behalf but a major Russian invasion could change the situation because MT&JII were playing with an idea of substituting the Russian “influence” with one of their own.
What was more important, the Ottoman Empire had been growingly unhappy with the situation fearing strengthening of the Russian strategic position. Russian representative in Constantinople, Obrezkov, was in a very difficult position being forced to keep assuring the Porte that the events in Poland have no consequence whatsoever but now the Porte was jumping into a bandwagon of the defenders of Polish liberties and whatever else it could defend. With a promised withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Polish-Ottoman border area being postponed by the ongoing events, this diplomatic dance was getting more and more complicated. For a while the Grand Vizier and Reiss-Effendy had been willing to listen to the Obrezkov’s arguments backed by a solid facts [5] but they were under the increasing pressure from the Khan and local ulemas stirring the crowd. The French diplomacy also was at its usual game and Frederick, who considered the developing situation as a potential opening to grab a part of the PLC while Catherine will be busy elsewhere, was not inclined to use his influence with the Ottomans to try calming them down. Catherine was inclined to avoid war with the Ottomans or at least to postpone it but she also did not want to abandon her Polish project even if so far it was producing nothing but trouble: it already was quite clear that the PLC is not going to be Russian ally against the Ottomans. Finally, “under the public pressure”, the Vizier and Reiss-Effendy had been replaced with more hawkish persons who were openly looking for casus belli.
As a result, the affairs in the PLC got a much lower priority than what started looking as the inevitable major war to which Russia was speedily preparing. The troops operating in the Southern Ukraine had been given the strict orders not to operate close to the Ottoman border but not everything could be controlled because the additional players came to the scene.
_________
[1] Quite a few, including some members of the top nobility, considered it to be humiliating to have as a king not just a Pole (one of the top level magnates or high ranking officials would be OK) but a person who was just a notch above being a social nobody and penniless.
[2] Strictly speaking, if somebody outside the PLC bothered to take his ramblings seriously, the “noble intentioned” fool just provided a perfect excuse for the 1st and 2nd Partitions: if it is OK to conquer foreign territories just because you are stronger, then the same can be done to you.
[3] Puławski's words about the militia of Polish peasants, which turned the Tsar into flight, do not sound quite serious. Is it about Zholkevsky's hussars at Klushino? Well, the history was not exactly his strong point… 😂
[4] Of course, this brotherhood applied strictly to the nobility.
[5] Of course, a bribe amounting to few thousands rubles was not in a single solid piece but each gold coin definitely was solid.
“Now it's time for us to enjoy calm.”
Panin after the Sejm of 1767
"I'm glad that I helped the republic to get a constitution that is permanent, unchanged and beneficial for all classes."
Catherine II, early 1768
“It is necessary to scatter the cloud gathering in the Bar before it spreads around the country.”
Panin, 1768
“It's very boring to live all the time with a fire pipe in your hands and always walk on warm ashes.”
Stanislaw-August, 1768
"There are a lot of fools around, and we all try to coexist together, fools are dangerous only when they unite.”
S. S. Musanif, ‘And go into the sunset’
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Patton
Panin after the Sejm of 1767
"I'm glad that I helped the republic to get a constitution that is permanent, unchanged and beneficial for all classes."
Catherine II, early 1768
“It is necessary to scatter the cloud gathering in the Bar before it spreads around the country.”
Panin, 1768
“It's very boring to live all the time with a fire pipe in your hands and always walk on warm ashes.”
Stanislaw-August, 1768
"There are a lot of fools around, and we all try to coexist together, fools are dangerous only when they unite.”
S. S. Musanif, ‘And go into the sunset’
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Patton
Bar Confederacy. Confirmation of the Golden Liberies, being a measure pushing Poland back into the state of an anarchy, could not but please majority of the szlachta but even a notion of the guaranteed religious rights for the dissidents and the Russian guarantees were a completely different issues. The same goes for another fundamental item: the members of the pre-Sejm Radom Confederacy wanted King Stanislaw-August deposed [1] and expected the the Russians, who at that time were their protectors (and financiers) will accommodate their demand. However, at the Sejm the Russians rejected this specific demand turning from the desirable allies into the despised oppressors. And, to add insult to the injury, they pushed through a law allowing the non-Catholics to repair their churches and protecting them from being physically harmed by the religious reasons. What’s worse, the new law even permitted marriages between the Catholics and non-Catholics, which was an absolutely horrific. Small wonder that the blood of the true patriots was boiling.
The Sejm’s decisions caused the loud protests headed primarily by Bishop Adam Krasinsky of Kamenets (who actually was known for his religious tolerance) and on February 29, 1768, the Waretsky warden Casimir Pulaski in a small fortress of the Bratslav Voivodeship Bar founded a confederation against domination by Russia, as well as in defense of the former religious and political system, which soon covered all provinces. Krasinski in October 1768 went to Paris where he was received by Louis XV of France who promised support for the confederates, which was taken more seriously that it deserved.
Pulaski issued the proclamation which was quite remarkable on a number of accounts: patriotic zeal, xenophobia, and a complete absence of a grasp upon the realities around him.
“Finally, thanks to you, brave Poles, treacherous allies of Poland became obvious enemies. …
The Republic has been subjected to violence, religion is insulted; the supreme power of the country is under the yoke, justice has become a deception, our rights are broken with their feet, senators languish in chains.
Only cowards can tolerate all this.
The whole world will admire the efforts of our uprising. But who is this tyrant who oppresses us? Who is this impudent people who despise us?
Let's remember that there was a time when this heinous people always fled before our ancestors; that their tsars bowed before our kings; that their provinces became ours… [2] Let's remember that our simple militias from the peasants turned the Tsar and his army into flight [3] and that a few years later our fathers kept the hostile efforts of the whole people against them in the Russian capital and left this capital only after turning it into ashes.
Nowadays, you will say, the Russians have experienced officers, soldiers accustomed to battles, harsh discipline, numerous artillery, and this is their terrible superiority? Well, my brave compatriots, you will not say this; you feel in yourself all the advantages of personal courage and honor, the name of which is not even familiar to our opponents and which is not supported by discipline…
We are all equal, all brothers... We, whom the fatherland calls for his liberation, consider everything we undertake to protect to be the common and personal heritage of everyone.” [4]
Of course, those who is not going to raise to his call are the cowards and traitors, especially if they start asking the preposterous questions about the means and allies “Do we need help or advice to know our desire to be free or die?”
The rebels couldn’t match the Russian troops in open battle, just like they couldn’t catch up with the modern world and, being repeatedly humiliated on the battlefield, they made themselves feel better using moral and genetic (Sarmatians vs. the lower race) superiority. They were, for a while, quite lucky because there was not too much in the terms of the “Russian armies” around and, even before the confederacy started part of these troops, especially those in a geopolitically sensitive Southern part of the PLC, had been scheduled for a withdrawal per Russian-Ottoman agreement.
On March 27, the Senate decided to ask the Empress as a guarantor for freedom, laws and rights of the republic to turn its troops in Poland to tame the rebels. Of course, the withdrawal was cancelled when the upraising started but the upraising which initially started on the South, had been spreading throughout the PLC. The Russian troops amounted to less than 10,000, had been spread in relatively small units and, while the confederates did not have any coherent command structure, the Russian operations had been seriously handicapped by the fact that their top commander on Ukraine, major-general P.N.Krechetnikov had been predominantly busy with the extortions and looting rather than the military operations.
Repnin was sending complaints about his behavior to St-Petersburg but reaction was slow because he was Chernyshov’s protege. It took a while (and a mounting evidence) before Catherine recalled him:
“This general, apparently, has completely gone out of the limits of office and respect for the glory of our weapons and blinded by vile contemptuous covetiousness, produces, as they say, such huge robberies on the land there that he has already sent many wagons with the loot from there. We found to relieve him from the command to be the right thing.” He was replaced by Prince Prozorovsky but the damage was done both in the terms of the locals’s attitudes and in some troops following the bad example of their commander.
However, most of what was coming from St. Petersburg was not good at all because, following Elizabethan tradition, the government was trying to micromanage situation in Poland with the predictable results. As Repnin wrote to Panin, “Military orders send here are such that they cannot be carried out in any way, because they are contradictory.” Understandably, he requested help from those whom he was saving, Stanislaw-August and his government. The military commission, rather reluctantly, decided, not without dispute, to send the crown army, led by the general-regimentary Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, against the Confederates.
But Stanislaw-August was taking a rather peculiar position. While complaining to his “maman” in Paris about ignorance and intolerance of the confederates, he was refusing to declare a confederacy of his own even after they declared his deposition as their goal and Krasinski even called for his assassination. Most probably this was because he believed in the bishop’s political flexibility and because Stanisław August and the Czartoryskis had been hoping to create a ‘national front’ against Russia and already secretly tried to establish contacts with the confederates through the French court. As a result, Branicki got a secret order not to act too energetically against the Poles.
In Lithuania Pane Kohanku was playing a rather bizarre game being formally on the Russian side but at the same time providing the fleeing confederates a refuge in Neswiz claiming that he can’t see the brotherly blood being shed.
In a meantime, the Russian detachments had been generally victorious but this was not helping too much because they were not acting energetically enough and the bands of confederates had been been roaming over the country “Seizing state money, robbing a friend and enemy, a Catholic and a dissident, spiritual and secular.” The peaceful population, especially the peasants and the Jews, had been squeezed on both sides. So was poor (literally) Stanislaw-August because the confederates had been looting the crown estates depriving him of the means to support himself and his court.
Geopolitics. Of course, the seemingly obvious course for Catherine would be to send enough troops to squash the confederates but geopolitical situation was not allowing this.
First of all, so far, Austria was “coquetting” with the Confederacy allowing it to establish the headquarters of its rather dysfunctional council on its territory and permitting the beaten confederates bands to escape there. This, of course, did not mean that at the moment Austria was contemplating a war on the Polish behalf but a major Russian invasion could change the situation because MT&JII were playing with an idea of substituting the Russian “influence” with one of their own.
What was more important, the Ottoman Empire had been growingly unhappy with the situation fearing strengthening of the Russian strategic position. Russian representative in Constantinople, Obrezkov, was in a very difficult position being forced to keep assuring the Porte that the events in Poland have no consequence whatsoever but now the Porte was jumping into a bandwagon of the defenders of Polish liberties and whatever else it could defend. With a promised withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Polish-Ottoman border area being postponed by the ongoing events, this diplomatic dance was getting more and more complicated. For a while the Grand Vizier and Reiss-Effendy had been willing to listen to the Obrezkov’s arguments backed by a solid facts [5] but they were under the increasing pressure from the Khan and local ulemas stirring the crowd. The French diplomacy also was at its usual game and Frederick, who considered the developing situation as a potential opening to grab a part of the PLC while Catherine will be busy elsewhere, was not inclined to use his influence with the Ottomans to try calming them down. Catherine was inclined to avoid war with the Ottomans or at least to postpone it but she also did not want to abandon her Polish project even if so far it was producing nothing but trouble: it already was quite clear that the PLC is not going to be Russian ally against the Ottomans. Finally, “under the public pressure”, the Vizier and Reiss-Effendy had been replaced with more hawkish persons who were openly looking for casus belli.
As a result, the affairs in the PLC got a much lower priority than what started looking as the inevitable major war to which Russia was speedily preparing. The troops operating in the Southern Ukraine had been given the strict orders not to operate close to the Ottoman border but not everything could be controlled because the additional players came to the scene.
_________
[1] Quite a few, including some members of the top nobility, considered it to be humiliating to have as a king not just a Pole (one of the top level magnates or high ranking officials would be OK) but a person who was just a notch above being a social nobody and penniless.
[2] Strictly speaking, if somebody outside the PLC bothered to take his ramblings seriously, the “noble intentioned” fool just provided a perfect excuse for the 1st and 2nd Partitions: if it is OK to conquer foreign territories just because you are stronger, then the same can be done to you.
[3] Puławski's words about the militia of Polish peasants, which turned the Tsar into flight, do not sound quite serious. Is it about Zholkevsky's hussars at Klushino? Well, the history was not exactly his strong point… 😂
[4] Of course, this brotherhood applied strictly to the nobility.
[5] Of course, a bribe amounting to few thousands rubles was not in a single solid piece but each gold coin definitely was solid.
Attachments
So far pretty much nothing. More or less a routine anarchy, cruelty and general mess. Could not skip the Bar Confederacy because it was an important trigger of the greater events worthy of tweaking. Or rather it was a trigger of the quite terrible (even comparing to what was going on) events which triggered the greater events.
I guess that counterproductiveness isn't a bar to political schemes starting in Poland.
Rather a springboard. 😂
I’m hard pressed trying to figure out how to avoid some of them while still maintaining a tangible contact with a reality: concentration of an idiocy and incompetence (on all sides) in OTL was plain staggering. Probably I’ll be forced to use the help of these nice wings-flapping creatures from the other space: as I understand, only their physical involvement is prohibited but there is nothing against their ability of a mind control from a great distance. 😂
I guess it would take proxy bats of sorts to make Polish politics in this time rational.
Nah they're being rational they're trying to display enough manliness(or stupidity, both works) to attract Catherine enough to go through with that polish-russian marriage after all
Ah. That explains it. Cathy playing hard to get, so they're wooing her. Smart!
Probably. If they can do brain washing for pretty much all noble class. To be fair, the OTL Russian “leadership” was only marginally saner (*) but I assume, perhaps rather optimistically, that it will be possible to deal with some of their problems without an extraterrestrial intervention: unlike the basket case, the insanity was concentrated on a narrow top level and most of the rest did not give a s—t. 😉
_________
(*) I may be accused in being excessively optimistic in the assessment of the Russian side of the equation. Take, for example, OTL project to turn the Crimean Khanate into enlightened monarchy. To think about it, the whole idea of the Northern Concert was worthy of a serious attention from the mental institution and the same goes for the PLC policy.
This would be too rational: in OTL they were adamantly against this idea and even issued a law forbidding S-A to marry anybody but a Polish girl. 😜
No wonder Poland got partitioned, and as a result never got into space.
22. Things are getting messy
22. Things are getting messy
The Powder Keg.
In the right bank Ukraine religious situation was much more explosive than in the Poland proper. There were Catholics (Poles - all landowners and administration), Uniates (Ukrainians), Orthodox Christians (Ukrainians), Old Believers (Ukrainians) and Jews. Unlike other regions, the Orthodox Church was quite strong and directly linked to one on the Russian left bank. Besides a purely spiritual aspect, there also was a material one: local military class, the Cossacks, both on state and private service, were overwhelmingly Orthodox and so was the “wild card”, Zaporizhians. While being a reasonably privileged category, the Cossacks often had been treated with contempt by szlachta, which under the circumstances was not a smart attitude.
In the 1768 there was a perfect storm. On the Orthodox side the overly zealous Orthodox priests spread a forged manifesto from CII inciting peasants to rebel and kill their landowners, uniates and Jews while at the same time the local administration started squeezing additional money to equip the troops it was raising for the Bar Confederacy.
Predictably, there was an unrest and detachment of the Cossacks had been sent to suppress it [1] but they went on the other side and the s—t hit the fan. For a couple months the rebels had been killing the Catholics, Uniates and Jews and when they took town of Uman they were also killing the Orthodox Christians suspected in sympathies toward the Catholics (total numbers of killed there are assessed between 12 and 20,000).
Of course, from Catherine’s perspective, they were just rebellious serfs raised against their owners so the Russian troops had been ordered to suppress them and this was the only case when the Polish crown troops under Branicki really participated in the action. To Branicki’s credit, he was resisting the demands to completely exterminate the whole villages implicated in the rebellion but, being under the pressure, proposed to the king a much more moderate plan of actions: “I intend to do this: I will order some Haidamaks to be executed for the pleasure of the landlords, while I will send the rest (and there will be more than a thousand of them) to perform servitude and urban works in Kamyanets, Lviv and your royal residence in Uyazdov.” To which the enlightened monarch replied that he liked an idea but there are no money to guard and feed these workers and proposed an alternative solution: “The idea of turning captives to the performance of public and my private works is beautiful, but it is possible under more favorable circumstances, not now... if you come across prisoners from rebellious peasants, then order to one of the ten to cut off one leg and one hand and let everyone free. This measure will intimidate them more than the death penalty; as proof of its usefulness, there are examples in the past.” Eventually, Branicki released many of his prisoners stated that he think it unjust to execute people just because the state is short of money. He even went as far as ordering to scale down execution of a captured rebels leader: instead of initially planned 14 days it would last only 3 days.
Anyway, one of the bands of the rebellious Cossacks had been chasing confederates, who fled across the border to the Ottoman town of Balta, and looted it. The Russian excuse was that these people were either not the Russian subjects or the people not in the Russian service. The captured Russian subjects had been punished (but not executed) on a border in presence of the Ottoman representatives but it was too late: the Ottoman military machine already started moving and could not stop.
Declaration of war. Russian ambassador was arrested and placed into Yedikule Hisari, which was the standard Ottoman way to declare the war.
After this happened, France moved from words to actions. Bishop Krasinsky, who came to Versailles to "throw Poland into the arms of France," as he put it, went to Saxony, having received 200,000 livres from the French court and a promise that in winter this amount would be increased to three million. Krasinsky, without entering Poland, had to help through his emissaries to overthrow of King Stanislav, create the general confederation, choose Prince Condé or the Saxon Prince Albert as king, and the newly elected king should marry the Austrian Archduchess. In France, officers were recruited to go to various Polish confederations to train the rebels in military art. This Grand Plan was more than a little bit on a fantastic side because it was based upon three rather questionable assumptions:
On a positive side, the active French engagement on the Ottoman side and their activities in Sweden and Denmark automatically resulted in warming up of the Russian-British relations. The Brits were still reluctant to pay subsidies to Sweden, to prevent pro-French party from prevailing, but they were not against some kind of a cooperation with Russia, providing it would not get them directly involved in a war.
Preparing for war. At the news about the Ottoman declaration of war Catherine wrote: “The Turks and the French desired to wake up the cat that was sleeping; I am this cat who promises to let them know the consequences, so that the memory will not disappear soon.”
Catherine’s first step was seemingly in the right direction but implementation was really stupid. Following example of Elizabeth and her Conference she decided to create a military Council, which looked as a reasonable thing to do (her definitely being ignorant in a warfare) but during the 7YW the Conference was micromanaging all military operations depriving the commanders of a freedom of actions and issuing the orders which usually were plain stupid or too late. So far, this style of handling operations in the PLC proved to be a total failure and now she wanted to introduce it for a much more serious conflict. And, to make things even more interesting, she asked Panin’s opinion regarding the Council’s composition. Panin was true to himself starting with a statement that such a council may not even be necessary, at least for an year, but then naming Zakhar Chernyshov (de facto Minister of war), the generals who could get command of the armies, Prosecutor-General Prince Vyazemsky because he was overseeing finances, himself, vice-chancellor Prince Golitsyn, general Golitsyn and Razumovsky because he was a fieldmarshal (without any military experience). Catherine added to the list general Peter Panin and, probably in a hope that he will be useful at least for something, her former favorite Grigory Orlov (or perhaps it was expected that he is going to communicate some ideas of his brother Alexey who was on medical leave in Italy). As a result, majority of the Council were people with zero or close to zero military experience and those who had, with the exception of Chernishov, never held a serious independent command. The two most prominent figures of the 7YW, fieldmarshal Saltykov and general Rumyantsev, were not invited.
Man in charge. Now, the most military prominent out of that rather pathetic lot was Chernishov who, besides having experience of commanding a separate course, was President of the Military Collegium. In this capacity he accomplished some improvements in the military administration and creation of the General Staff as a permanent institution. But the good news ended there. The General Staff was a small group of the officers from a former quartermaster service who were given the much greater tasks to which they were not prepared either by education or experience.
As President of the Military Collegium Chernyshov was responsible for issuing the military charters, which he did. Under the leadership of Chernyshev, a new field charter was issued in 1763. This charter almost completely confirmed the provision of the previous Shuvalov Charter of 1755. The same linear combat orders, the same one-sided fascination with "fire production", the bayonet charges are forgotten, the same Prussian style in all forms and manifestations... The experience of the seven-Year War just passed away in vain. Fortunately, in 1764 Rumyantsev was invited back to the service and issued regimental instructions for the infantry in 1764 and cavalry in 1765. Which, did not produce the warm feelings between these two and one of the Chernyshov’s top priority tasks was to move Rumyantsev aside as much as possible.
The next problem was that, due to his position, he was expected to produce a plan for the war and this was a task well above and beyond his strategic abilities. While there was no danger from the friendly Sweden and it would be enough just to keep the garrisons in the fortresses along Finnish border, he wanted to keep additional few regiments there plus at least two regiments in Estonia, fire regiments in Livonia, five in Smolensk, etc. On October 1768, it was ordered to raise one recruit from 300 souls from all over the state; on November 14, a decree was made to make the second recruitment call on the same base. It was also necessary to take unoccupied sons of clergy and clerics as soldiers.
There was a general agreement to Panin’s statement that the war has to be carried in an offensive manner and that for this purpose the Russian forces have to be concentrated but his …er… “strategic insight” (one more military genius) was rather enigmatic: “It is necessary to try, to exhaust the enemy army and thereby force it, so that it would produce the same action in the capital towards peace as it required war.” To everybody’s surprise Grigory Orlov made an absolutely reasonable statement that, as the first step, it is necessary to define a purpose of the war. An idea was so novel that nobody could immediately come with a meaningful formula and it was decided to discuss it on a latter session after all other important issues are clarified.
They divided the army into three parts: an offensive corps of up to 80,000 people; a defensive, or Ukrainian, up to 40,000 and an observation corps from 12 to 15,000.
At the end of the meeting, Orlov, surprising everybody, proposed to send several ships to the Mediterranean Sea and from there to sabotage the enemy, but that this should be done with the consent of the English court. This proposal was left until future reasoning.
The next meeting was more productive in formulating a strategy. Which, of course, did not mean that this strategy was a good one. In a contradiction to the first session’s decision that the war must be an offensive one, the initiative was left to the enemy:
Only at that point Catherine proposed to discuss an issue regarding an intended purpose and desirable results. The agreement was that it will be good to get a freedom of sailing on the Black Sea and establish such borders with Poland that the peace would be guaranteed.
The commanders had been appointed: the 1st Army - Prince A.M.Golicyn, 2nd - Count P.A. Rumyantsev, 3rd - general Olitz. In this appointment, Golitsyn was seen as the triumph of Chernyshev, who thus managed to remove the unloved generals: Peter Iv. Panin at all, and Rumyantsev in the background.
The issue of a Mediterranean expedition was brought up again with the overly optimistic expectations that at the sight of the Russian ships the Greeks will revolt and perform, based upon the written assurances of the agents secretly sent there in 1763, all types of not clearly identified military miracles that will clear the whole Morea of the Ottoman presence. Catherine went from a skepticism into an excessive enthusiasm and wrote to Ivan Chernishov (the naval one) “I have a fleet in excellent care now, and I will truly use it like that, if God commands, as it has not yet been; and I have already prepared to send it, I will not say where…” It is rather strange that she tells the top honcho in the navy (after her son) that the fleet is in a good condition when he was supposed to know that this is not the case and even stranger that she was playing “grand coquette” not telling a person responsible for preparation of the naval operations about destination of the expedition.
So far, one unquestionably good byproduct of these preparations was that, with the army troops leaving the major cities, finally started creation of the police forces, financed by wealthy residents.
Another was of an equal or probably even greater significance: Catherine established order of St. George for the military feats. It was rather unique because it could be awarded only for performing beyond the call of duty.
“Neither the high birth nor the wounds received before the enemy, give the right to be granted this order: but it is given to those who not only performed their position in everything required by oath, honor and their duty, but moreover distinguished themselves with a special courageous act, or the wise, and for our military service useful advice... This order should never be removed: for the merits are acquired.”
There was also an opportunity to get the lowest, 4th, degree for 25 years of service as an army officer or 18 campaigns (with at least one battle) in the navy but these awards looked differently.
_______
[1] Impaling was seemingly the most popular method of a persuasion. The lucky ones could get away with simply being hanged but sometimes those in charge were getting creative and, time and means permitting, could go for cutting skin off the back, breaking on the wheel, mutilations, etc. So it should not come as a big surprise that the local peasants felt certain dislike of their Polish masters.
“He who defends everything, defends nothing.”
“Diplomacy without arms is like a concert without a score”
“The people say what they like and then I do what I like”
Frederick the Great
“I have no fear, I have only ambition, and I want mine to be the greatest empire in the world.”
“I am one of those who never take no for an answer.”
“A wise ruler knows when to delegate and when to take charge.”
Catherine II
“Everyone was offending mice in the forest. Finally, they came to the wise owl for advice on what to do. The owl advised: "Turn from mice into the hedgehogs." - "But how do you do it?" the surprised mice asked. To which the owl replied: "You have to figure this out on you own. I'm not a tactician, I'm a strategist."
“A very basic strategy — if your enemies know where you are, then don't be there.”
The mess in the PLC kept going on without any visible results to a great degree due to the Catherine’s and Panin’s policy of being a little bit pregnant and not committing any serious force there. As a result, the successful military actions mattered little and both internal and external players were getting time and opportunities for strengthening their positions and inventing their own plans. It was more or less clear even to the confederates that their chances to win on their own are quite slim and their hope was upon help from one of the Great Powers. So far France was just making the vague promises and Austria was sympathetic but extremely reluctant to get committed to any action so the only remaining options were the Ottomans. Which was somewhat ironic for the self-declared protectors of the Catholic Faith. The Ottoman Empire had been for a while quite reluctant to get into the war but the Bar Confederates, as befitting the true patriots, promised to the Ottomans Podolia and Volyn thus creating a huge incentive. Now the Porte was just looking for a plausible excuse and it was found.“Diplomacy without arms is like a concert without a score”
“The people say what they like and then I do what I like”
Frederick the Great
“I have no fear, I have only ambition, and I want mine to be the greatest empire in the world.”
“I am one of those who never take no for an answer.”
“A wise ruler knows when to delegate and when to take charge.”
Catherine II
“Everyone was offending mice in the forest. Finally, they came to the wise owl for advice on what to do. The owl advised: "Turn from mice into the hedgehogs." - "But how do you do it?" the surprised mice asked. To which the owl replied: "You have to figure this out on you own. I'm not a tactician, I'm a strategist."
“A very basic strategy — if your enemies know where you are, then don't be there.”
The Powder Keg.
In the right bank Ukraine religious situation was much more explosive than in the Poland proper. There were Catholics (Poles - all landowners and administration), Uniates (Ukrainians), Orthodox Christians (Ukrainians), Old Believers (Ukrainians) and Jews. Unlike other regions, the Orthodox Church was quite strong and directly linked to one on the Russian left bank. Besides a purely spiritual aspect, there also was a material one: local military class, the Cossacks, both on state and private service, were overwhelmingly Orthodox and so was the “wild card”, Zaporizhians. While being a reasonably privileged category, the Cossacks often had been treated with contempt by szlachta, which under the circumstances was not a smart attitude.
In the 1768 there was a perfect storm. On the Orthodox side the overly zealous Orthodox priests spread a forged manifesto from CII inciting peasants to rebel and kill their landowners, uniates and Jews while at the same time the local administration started squeezing additional money to equip the troops it was raising for the Bar Confederacy.
Predictably, there was an unrest and detachment of the Cossacks had been sent to suppress it [1] but they went on the other side and the s—t hit the fan. For a couple months the rebels had been killing the Catholics, Uniates and Jews and when they took town of Uman they were also killing the Orthodox Christians suspected in sympathies toward the Catholics (total numbers of killed there are assessed between 12 and 20,000).
Of course, from Catherine’s perspective, they were just rebellious serfs raised against their owners so the Russian troops had been ordered to suppress them and this was the only case when the Polish crown troops under Branicki really participated in the action. To Branicki’s credit, he was resisting the demands to completely exterminate the whole villages implicated in the rebellion but, being under the pressure, proposed to the king a much more moderate plan of actions: “I intend to do this: I will order some Haidamaks to be executed for the pleasure of the landlords, while I will send the rest (and there will be more than a thousand of them) to perform servitude and urban works in Kamyanets, Lviv and your royal residence in Uyazdov.” To which the enlightened monarch replied that he liked an idea but there are no money to guard and feed these workers and proposed an alternative solution: “The idea of turning captives to the performance of public and my private works is beautiful, but it is possible under more favorable circumstances, not now... if you come across prisoners from rebellious peasants, then order to one of the ten to cut off one leg and one hand and let everyone free. This measure will intimidate them more than the death penalty; as proof of its usefulness, there are examples in the past.” Eventually, Branicki released many of his prisoners stated that he think it unjust to execute people just because the state is short of money. He even went as far as ordering to scale down execution of a captured rebels leader: instead of initially planned 14 days it would last only 3 days.
Anyway, one of the bands of the rebellious Cossacks had been chasing confederates, who fled across the border to the Ottoman town of Balta, and looted it. The Russian excuse was that these people were either not the Russian subjects or the people not in the Russian service. The captured Russian subjects had been punished (but not executed) on a border in presence of the Ottoman representatives but it was too late: the Ottoman military machine already started moving and could not stop.
Declaration of war. Russian ambassador was arrested and placed into Yedikule Hisari, which was the standard Ottoman way to declare the war.
After this happened, France moved from words to actions. Bishop Krasinsky, who came to Versailles to "throw Poland into the arms of France," as he put it, went to Saxony, having received 200,000 livres from the French court and a promise that in winter this amount would be increased to three million. Krasinsky, without entering Poland, had to help through his emissaries to overthrow of King Stanislav, create the general confederation, choose Prince Condé or the Saxon Prince Albert as king, and the newly elected king should marry the Austrian Archduchess. In France, officers were recruited to go to various Polish confederations to train the rebels in military art. This Grand Plan was more than a little bit on a fantastic side because it was based upon three rather questionable assumptions:
- That the Russians would be either beaten by the Ottomans or at least forced to concentrate all their resources against the Porte.
- That the confederacy will be able to grow up into a comprehensive military force.
- That as a result King Stanislaw-August is going to be overthrown, an idea which even Maria-Theresa was not supporting: removal of a legitimate king could be a very bad precedent.
On a positive side, the active French engagement on the Ottoman side and their activities in Sweden and Denmark automatically resulted in warming up of the Russian-British relations. The Brits were still reluctant to pay subsidies to Sweden, to prevent pro-French party from prevailing, but they were not against some kind of a cooperation with Russia, providing it would not get them directly involved in a war.
Preparing for war. At the news about the Ottoman declaration of war Catherine wrote: “The Turks and the French desired to wake up the cat that was sleeping; I am this cat who promises to let them know the consequences, so that the memory will not disappear soon.”
Catherine’s first step was seemingly in the right direction but implementation was really stupid. Following example of Elizabeth and her Conference she decided to create a military Council, which looked as a reasonable thing to do (her definitely being ignorant in a warfare) but during the 7YW the Conference was micromanaging all military operations depriving the commanders of a freedom of actions and issuing the orders which usually were plain stupid or too late. So far, this style of handling operations in the PLC proved to be a total failure and now she wanted to introduce it for a much more serious conflict. And, to make things even more interesting, she asked Panin’s opinion regarding the Council’s composition. Panin was true to himself starting with a statement that such a council may not even be necessary, at least for an year, but then naming Zakhar Chernyshov (de facto Minister of war), the generals who could get command of the armies, Prosecutor-General Prince Vyazemsky because he was overseeing finances, himself, vice-chancellor Prince Golitsyn, general Golitsyn and Razumovsky because he was a fieldmarshal (without any military experience). Catherine added to the list general Peter Panin and, probably in a hope that he will be useful at least for something, her former favorite Grigory Orlov (or perhaps it was expected that he is going to communicate some ideas of his brother Alexey who was on medical leave in Italy). As a result, majority of the Council were people with zero or close to zero military experience and those who had, with the exception of Chernishov, never held a serious independent command. The two most prominent figures of the 7YW, fieldmarshal Saltykov and general Rumyantsev, were not invited.
Man in charge. Now, the most military prominent out of that rather pathetic lot was Chernishov who, besides having experience of commanding a separate course, was President of the Military Collegium. In this capacity he accomplished some improvements in the military administration and creation of the General Staff as a permanent institution. But the good news ended there. The General Staff was a small group of the officers from a former quartermaster service who were given the much greater tasks to which they were not prepared either by education or experience.
As President of the Military Collegium Chernyshov was responsible for issuing the military charters, which he did. Under the leadership of Chernyshev, a new field charter was issued in 1763. This charter almost completely confirmed the provision of the previous Shuvalov Charter of 1755. The same linear combat orders, the same one-sided fascination with "fire production", the bayonet charges are forgotten, the same Prussian style in all forms and manifestations... The experience of the seven-Year War just passed away in vain. Fortunately, in 1764 Rumyantsev was invited back to the service and issued regimental instructions for the infantry in 1764 and cavalry in 1765. Which, did not produce the warm feelings between these two and one of the Chernyshov’s top priority tasks was to move Rumyantsev aside as much as possible.
The next problem was that, due to his position, he was expected to produce a plan for the war and this was a task well above and beyond his strategic abilities. While there was no danger from the friendly Sweden and it would be enough just to keep the garrisons in the fortresses along Finnish border, he wanted to keep additional few regiments there plus at least two regiments in Estonia, fire regiments in Livonia, five in Smolensk, etc. On October 1768, it was ordered to raise one recruit from 300 souls from all over the state; on November 14, a decree was made to make the second recruitment call on the same base. It was also necessary to take unoccupied sons of clergy and clerics as soldiers.
There was a general agreement to Panin’s statement that the war has to be carried in an offensive manner and that for this purpose the Russian forces have to be concentrated but his …er… “strategic insight” (one more military genius) was rather enigmatic: “It is necessary to try, to exhaust the enemy army and thereby force it, so that it would produce the same action in the capital towards peace as it required war.” To everybody’s surprise Grigory Orlov made an absolutely reasonable statement that, as the first step, it is necessary to define a purpose of the war. An idea was so novel that nobody could immediately come with a meaningful formula and it was decided to discuss it on a latter session after all other important issues are clarified.
They divided the army into three parts: an offensive corps of up to 80,000 people; a defensive, or Ukrainian, up to 40,000 and an observation corps from 12 to 15,000.
At the end of the meeting, Orlov, surprising everybody, proposed to send several ships to the Mediterranean Sea and from there to sabotage the enemy, but that this should be done with the consent of the English court. This proposal was left until future reasoning.
The next meeting was more productive in formulating a strategy. Which, of course, did not mean that this strategy was a good one. In a contradiction to the first session’s decision that the war must be an offensive one, the initiative was left to the enemy:
- If the Ottomans will join with the confederates and invade the PLC then commander of the Russian offensive corps would have to avoid a decisive battle and concentrate upon protection of the Russian borders and parts of Poland and Lithuania to both preserve his strength and provide security of the Russian friends; he would have to keep enemy exhausted by the marches (disregarding destruction caused to the part of Poland), impeding his ability to get the supplies and, when the time comes, use his exhausted condition.
- If the Ottomans will not immediately invade Poland, took Kamenets fortress, establish magazines there and remain near it. If the Ottoman force will be small, advance and take Khotin.
Only at that point Catherine proposed to discuss an issue regarding an intended purpose and desirable results. The agreement was that it will be good to get a freedom of sailing on the Black Sea and establish such borders with Poland that the peace would be guaranteed.
The commanders had been appointed: the 1st Army - Prince A.M.Golicyn, 2nd - Count P.A. Rumyantsev, 3rd - general Olitz. In this appointment, Golitsyn was seen as the triumph of Chernyshev, who thus managed to remove the unloved generals: Peter Iv. Panin at all, and Rumyantsev in the background.
The issue of a Mediterranean expedition was brought up again with the overly optimistic expectations that at the sight of the Russian ships the Greeks will revolt and perform, based upon the written assurances of the agents secretly sent there in 1763, all types of not clearly identified military miracles that will clear the whole Morea of the Ottoman presence. Catherine went from a skepticism into an excessive enthusiasm and wrote to Ivan Chernishov (the naval one) “I have a fleet in excellent care now, and I will truly use it like that, if God commands, as it has not yet been; and I have already prepared to send it, I will not say where…” It is rather strange that she tells the top honcho in the navy (after her son) that the fleet is in a good condition when he was supposed to know that this is not the case and even stranger that she was playing “grand coquette” not telling a person responsible for preparation of the naval operations about destination of the expedition.
So far, one unquestionably good byproduct of these preparations was that, with the army troops leaving the major cities, finally started creation of the police forces, financed by wealthy residents.
Another was of an equal or probably even greater significance: Catherine established order of St. George for the military feats. It was rather unique because it could be awarded only for performing beyond the call of duty.
“Neither the high birth nor the wounds received before the enemy, give the right to be granted this order: but it is given to those who not only performed their position in everything required by oath, honor and their duty, but moreover distinguished themselves with a special courageous act, or the wise, and for our military service useful advice... This order should never be removed: for the merits are acquired.”
There was also an opportunity to get the lowest, 4th, degree for 25 years of service as an army officer or 18 campaigns (with at least one battle) in the navy but these awards looked differently.
_______
[1] Impaling was seemingly the most popular method of a persuasion. The lucky ones could get away with simply being hanged but sometimes those in charge were getting creative and, time and means permitting, could go for cutting skin off the back, breaking on the wheel, mutilations, etc. So it should not come as a big surprise that the local peasants felt certain dislike of their Polish masters.
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