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cahnBackground: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-11-30 05:49 am (UTC)France is not a neighbor, you point out?
This is true, but France 1) has a long history in Poland, going back to the very first elective monarch of Poland, who would subsequently become Henri III of France, and 2) has a foreign policy consisting of what they call "Barrière de l’Est": The barrier of the east. It was originally conceived to encircle the Habsburg empire, by turning Sweden, Poland, and Turkey into allies/areas of influence, but French ministers hung on to the idea as a way of countering Russia even after the Diplomatic Revolution meant anti-Habsburg policy was no longer needed.
Poland also has a liberum veto: any representative at the national diet, the Sejm, can veto any legislation. This on the one hand, it's very hard to get legislation you want passed, on the other hand, it's very easy for you, whether you're a member of an internal faction or a foreign power, to bribe a representative to veto anything you want. (Michael Müller says it's more complicated than that, but Michael Müller wrote his book in a combination of German, Polish, French, and Latin, and thus will have to deal with the fact that I haven't been motivated to force my way through it.)
In Poland, the nobles are basically in a state of anarchy where they have private armies, way bigger than the king's army, more money, more land, etc. They can carry out private feuds with each other, conduct their own foreign policy, etc. It's basically like the Middle Ages in other places in Europe. And like the nobles in those countries back then, most of the nobles in this country are very invested in keeping their "golden liberty", aka right to do whatever they want.
The most powerful family in our period is the Czartoryskis, known as the Familia (the "Family"). They have traditionally been pro-Russian (their opponents being pro-French). They are Poniatowski's family on his mother's side.
They do want reforms. They want to modernize the state by making these changes:
* abolish liberum veto
* limit the power of the senate by forming a supreme executive council
* military and fiscal reform
* abolish private armies
* increase taxes and tariffs
This is not selfless; the Czartoryskis think they can strengthen their own standing by driving these reforms. Once Poniatowski becomes king, they basically see him as an executive figurehead of the Family, not as an independent king.
Yes, Poniatowski has Catherine on the one side thinking he'll be a good puppet, and the most powerful family in Europe, led by his uncles, thinking he'll be a good puppet, and they both want opposite things. Truly, he was set up to fail.
Then there's Russia. Catherine's opinions are being represented by her envoy Repnin (abuser of Poniatowski) in Warsaw, but there's some disagreement internally in Russia amongst her ministers too. But to simplify:
When she puts Poniatowski on the throne, she's thinking:
* Get Poland in an alliance with Russia against Turkey.
* Keep it from getting too strong.
* Retain the liberum veto so she can use it against Czartoryski legislative attempts.
* Religious toleration.
I'll go into those in more detail in another post, but for now, these are her wishlist items.
The Czartoryskis don't want an alliance with Russia against Turkey, it will be costly and wildly unpopular in Poland. They're also trying to loosen ties with Russia, since Catherine's heavy-handed approach to putting a king on the throne and dictating policy is making them nervous. They're suspicious that instead of the old quid-pro-quo arrangement whereby they were the core of Russia's power base in Poland and got goodies from Russia, Russia is now moving toward relying on the Russian army plus Polish Protestants and Orthodox Dissenters to get things done in Poland. So the Czartoryskis start changing tack, aiming to consolidate their support among the rest of the country by presenting themselves as impeccably patriotic and not at all pro-Russian. This means the former reform party is now siding with the arch-Catholic party, on the grounds that "my enemy's enemy is my friend."
Poniatowski thinks an alliance could fit into his plans: get Catherine's support for reforms in Poland so that Poland can be a stronger, more modern country and therefore a better ally, and he can be her junior partner and be independent but valuable.
Catherine, though, is not down with "independent but valuable." It's "dependent satellite or else a personal betrayal of her trust."
But the most exciting part is the religious toleration issue.
Catherine: I'm widely suspected of having killed my husband. I definitely took over a throne I was supposed to hold in trust for my son. I need some good PR.
Catherine: I know! Religious toleration is a good, enlightened cause that will get the philosophe propaganda machine working in my favor.
Catherine: Poland! You are now to grant full rights to Orthodox and Protestant inhabitants, including rights to hold political office.
Conservative Poles: You mean, Poland? More-Catholic-than-the-Pope Poland? You have got to be kidding.
Czartoryskis: We are up for looking the other way and not persecuting Protestant and Orthodox Dissenters. But political office? No way.
Poniatowski: Uh, Catherine, I'm still head over heels for you, and I want to help you out here, like I really do, but that is *never* going to fly. But you're so wonderful and reasonable I'm sure we can work out a nice compromise!
Poniatowski (to an English visitor): My Catherine is soooo amazing and would never authorize any unjust use of force. I just trust her so much!
English visitor: Um. Hmm. How do I put this? You should see her in a crown.
Poniatowski: Lalalala! Catherine is the best. So anyway, no legislation allowing Dissenters to hold political office. I will lose my crown if I try to force this legislation down my subjects' throats. She'll understand.
Catherine: I see my ex has personally betrayed me. Men.
Catherine: Fritz! Fellow enlightened monarch of Europe and fellow ruthless meddler in Polish affairs to keep our mutual neighbor weak! You're with me on this, right? I *know* I can count on you.
Fritz: So I like playing defender of the Protestant faith as much as the next PR-hungry gangster, and yes to the enlightened religious tolerance thing, but...this particular idea is going to backfire. I'm nothing if not into realpolitik. Also, have you considered that Poland is *already* tied for most tolerant nation in Europe? Not even the Brits or the Dutch allow Catholics full rights, including political office. And if the French were to march into the Netherlands to insist that Catholics be admitted to office, all of Europe would be up in arms! I hate to say it, but you're going to have to moderate those demands.
Repnin (Russian ambassador in Warsaw): On that note, I have good news, Catherine! It's 1765, and Poniatowski and I have just put together a compromise treaty, in which the Dissenters can worship publicly, but we've put off addressing the political office question for the indefinite future. We're not saying no, mind you! We're just proceeding incrementally.
Catherine: OMG am I talking to a brick wall? You are to make the Czartoryskis accept the complete set of religious rights for dissenters, or you are to overthrow their government and form a new one out of their opponents.
Repnin: Has she lost her ENTIRE MIND? I'm her biggest supporter, and I even I think she's lost her entire mind!
Historians: *debate*
Some historians: She had no framework for understanding how strongly the Poles felt about religion. A child of the Enlightenment, she was willing to adopt and respectfully observe the local dominant religion so as not to alienate her supporters, but she had no emotional attachment to it. And in her country, Russia, the church was subordinate to the state (courtesy of Peter the Great). She had no experience with countries like England, where the monarch was the head of the church, or Poland, where the church was a strong governing force.
Other historians: Oh, she understood all right. This was her cunning plan to trigger a revolt in Poland so she'd have an excuse to intervene using armed force.
Mildred: Huh. I am agnostic about the issue, but the cunning plan is intriguing and not something I would have thought of.
Polish reformers: *try to pass a bill to get rid of the stupid liberum veto*
Catherine: I can let you have that, just not the religious tolerance issue. If we strengthen Poniatowski's position a bit, he can increase the Polish army and turn the country into a more useful ally for me. That'll help with the war with Turkey I'm expecting any day now.
Fritz: Red alert! Red alert! I do not want a Polish neighbor without a liberum veto. Even if we think we can manage Poniatowski, Catherine, you never know what a future king will do. Plus I do not like the sound of a potential war breaking out with you and Poland against Turkey that I might get sucked into. I veto the abolition of the liberum veto.
Catherine: I am so annoyed that you're my main ally and I have to let you have your way on some issues. Especially since you won't back me on the extreme religious tolerance position, ungrateful bastard. FINE. The liberum veto stays.
Repnin: Attention, Poles, you will block this bill abolishing the liberum veto or Russian troops will tear down Warsaw stone by stone.
Benoit, Prussian minister in Warsaw: And the Prussian troops will help.
Poniatowski: We should hold out! Stand our ground!
Czartoryskis: Look, we used to want to get rid of the liberum veto too. But if you haven't noticed, Poland has a much bigger problem now, and her name is Catherine.
Czartoryskis: Fine, Catherine, we will not die on this hill. We'll keep the liberum veto.
Poniatowski: *face in hands*
Poniatowski: Okay, new idea! We can all agree on the fact that Poland needs some minor bureaucratic reforms, though, right? Boring stuff about the budget? Great! Vote on this bill, please.
Maria Amalia Mniszchówna: Hi, I'm Brühl's daughter, and I'm only going to show up for this one line, but it's going to be a corker of a line. Repnin, I have some inside info, and you might want to have a closer look at the fine print in Poniatowski's latest bill.
Repnin: OMG, the fine print's got a clause that's tantamount to abolishing the liberum veto in most cases! Vetoed!
Poniatowski: It is a miracle I am not clinically depressed. Okay, Catherine, we gave you what you wanted. The liberum veto stays. Now you can compromise with us on the dissenter issue!
Repnin: Per Catherine's instructions, I am now kidnapping and arresting senators and bishops who oppose the full extent of her reforms around dissenter toleration, up to and including public office. We are going to pass this legislation!
Madame Geoffrin, Poniatowski's Madame Camas, aka surrogate mother, visiting from France, in a letter to d'Alembert: "It is a terrible condition to be king of Poland. I dare not tell him how unhappy he seems to me."
Mildred: Clinically depressed, would you say?
Poniatowski: My faith in Providence and predestination will keep me going through the bleakest moments.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-02 12:48 pm (UTC)With the liberum veto, how did Poland have ANY legislation at all?
Poniatowski (to an English visitor): My Catherine is soooo amazing and would never authorize any unjust use of force. I just trust her so much!
English visitor: Um. Hmm. How do I put this? You should see her in a crown.
Heee!
Repnin: OMG, the fine print's got a clause that's tantamount to abolishing the liberum veto in most cases! Vetoed!
I can't believe he didn't read the actual bill himself! That's his job, right?
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-03 06:44 am (UTC)Yay, I'm glad! The bad news is that the installments are not all this consistently entertaining; I made more of an effort with this one in hopes that retaining the basic structure of events helps everyone navigate the political complexities that are to come. The good news is that there are 4 installments on Sweden coming!
With the liberum veto, how did Poland have ANY legislation at all?
That's exactly what historian Michael Müller wants you to know, but he wants you to *work* for that information. He's not going to make it easy for you. The thing that finally defeated me was not the German, French, Polish, and Latin, it's that in the 17th and 18th centuries, Poles threw a lot of Latin words and phrases into their writing, so there isn't even a solid block of Polish I can ask Google to translate; it's all a mishmash. And that's when Google and I gave up. I may go back if my German and French become effortless enough to compensate for the large chunks of Polish+Latin I don't understand. (Latin by itself I could handle; I have a Classics background. But 18th century Polish plus Latin is WHY??)
The gist of what I got from Müller's book before giving up was that for most of its history, the liberum veto was not used arbitrarily. There was an honor system to only use it for proposed legisation that you believed violated the constitution, not just because you didn't like the law. Supposedly only during August III's time did the Sejm get paralyzed. If you used the liberum veto (or liberum rumpo) before that and it was suspected you were acting in a self-serving manner, there were social consequences.
I am unable to assess this argument due to aforementioned linguistic problems, but it seems plausible enough. (I mean, the country did survive a few centuries this way.)
I can't believe he didn't read the actual bill himself! That's his job, right?
Repnin: The fine print will get you every time! I swear that bill looked extremely innocuous and boring.
More seriously: yes and no. He was officially an ambassador, and it's not the ambassadors' job to review legislation. But unofficially, he was Catherine's satrap, and she did think it was his job to make sure all the legislation she wanted got passed, and none of the legislation she didn't want didn't.
What I suspect happened was underestimating Poniatowski again. He went out of his way to bury it in legalese in a bill that looked like it was about something else.
Poniatowski: *sigh* I tried.
ETA: Also, I should point out that Poniatowski was smart enough not to write "abolish the liberum veto in most cases." It was more like "introduce majority voting in these cases," where if you think about it, "these cases" works out to be most of the cases we care about. But he really made it look innocuous and boringly bureaucratic.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 07:14 pm (UTC)The gist of what I got from Müller's book before giving up was that for most of its history, the liberum veto was not used arbitrarily. There was an honor system to only use it for proposed legisation that you believed violated the constitution, not just because you didn't like the law.
Huh, interesting! Also, did they actually have a constitution?
Extremely understandable that you gave up on Müller's book...
Poniatowski: *sigh* I tried.
Great try! Actually I recently spoke to someone who follows EU legislation on the environmental front, and apparently sometimes you get 500-page documents that you have to get through and extract relevant information from in a short time, so maybe it was understandable that Repnin missed it...
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 07:46 pm (UTC)The bad news is
Huh, interesting! Also, did they actually have a constitution?
Not a single document (not until 1791), but much like England/Britain, a series of documents that limited what the monarch could do. To quote some passages from Liberty's Folly (the "szlachta" is the Polish nobility):
The szlachta rejoiced in their freedom from taxation imposed without their consent, first secured in 1374. By 1505, under the terms of the statute popularly known as Nihil Novi, the monarchy accepted that it could enact no major legislation without their consent. The monarchy’s elective character was firmly established even under the Jagiellonian kings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The creation of two Tribunals, or supreme law courts, for the Crown in 1578 and for Lithuania in 1581, designed to reduce the enormous pressures on the royal courts, irrevocably placed much of the monarch’s juridical power in the hands of elected noble deputies.
The extinction of the direct line of the Jagiellonian dynasty in 1572 enabled the szlachta to confirm and extend their gains. Their rights and privileges were codified in the ‘Henrician articles’, so called because they were originally conceded by the first elective successor to the Jagiellons, Henri of Anjou, king for a few months in 1573–4, before he fled to France to reign as Henri III. Every subsequent monarch-elect had to swear to observe both them and an additional set of conditions, the pacta conventa, specifically drawn up for each new king. His failure to observe these agreements gave the nobility the legal right to renounce their allegiance.
In theory at least, the poorest noble proprietor could feel constitutionally and legally secure, for his rights and privileges were no less than those of the mightiest magnate. In the eyes of the law, the two were equal.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-03 06:46 am (UTC)That was a typo for "in Poland", but upon reflection, there were not many non-royal families that held as much power in their countries as the Czartoryskis did in Poland during the anarchy period.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-03 09:50 am (UTC)Btw, most of the dialogue is made up, but this line is is taken from Jerzy Lukowski's book Liberty's Folly:
Repnin bluntly warned the king that Russian troops would tear Warsaw apart, stone by stone, if he did not give way.
Because Catherine, like Fritz, really was a gangster with good PR.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 10:00 am (UTC)The most powerful family in our period is the Czartoryskis, known as the Familia (the "Family").
When I first read that in the Poniatowski family, it cracked me up because it really makes them sound like a Mafia clan.
Conservative Poles: You mean, Poland? More-Catholic-than-the-Pope Poland? You have got to be kidding.
Literally more Catholic than the Pope in terms of top clergy and (still) ruling party, though not necessarily population, in our days. Seriously, the Polish bishops are very anti-Francis from a conservative angle. Mind you, so are some of the American bishops and Cardinals. Now, in Germany, German bishops and Cardinals are under fire from their congregations for not pushing the synod process and reforms enough in Rome, and the Francis criticism is also about him not being reform oriented enough. There was much rejoicing when he finally kicked out Strickland the Texan Trump supporter of his bishopry and stripped Burke the creepy Cardinal of his privileges. Meanwhile, Twitter tells me that some American Catholics see not only German Catholics but also Francis himself as an apostate, which really brings into early medieval Pope and Anti Pope territory. I could totally see the Polish bishops and some US bishops do their own thing and engineer a schism by now.
English visitor: Um. Hmm. How do I put this? You should see her in a crown.
:) :) :)
Fritz: So I like playing defender of the Protestant faith as much as the next PR-hungry gangster, and yes to the enlightened religious tolerance thing, but...this particular idea is going to backfire. I'm nothing if not into realpolitik.
So he was. Mind you, later Prussian monarchs as far as I dimly remember totally abused the tolerance card in their arguments as to why partitioning Poland even further and wiping it off the landscape is a good thing for mankind.
Some historians: She had no framework for understanding how strongly the Poles felt about religion. A child of the Enlightenment, she was willing to adopt and respectfully observe the local dominant religion so as not to alienate her supporters, but she had no emotional attachment to it. And in her country, Russia, the church was subordinate to the state (courtesy of Peter the Great). She had no experience with countries like England, where the monarch was the head of the church, or Poland, where the church was a strong governing force.
Other historians: Oh, she understood all right. This was her cunning plan to trigger a revolt in Poland so she'd have an excuse to intervene using armed force.
Mildred: Huh. I am agnostic about the issue, but the cunning plan is intriguing and not something I would have thought of.
I could see both as well - that because changing her religion had been expected of her and something she had no problem with in order to win over support, she could not emotionally understand the Polish mindset, or that she was in fact counting on it as an excuse to intervene. I mean, part of the reason why she was more popular than her late husband in Russia despite both of them starting out as German Protestant foreigners was that she did play into the "Russian Orthodoxy is the one true religion yay!" from her teenage years onwards, and sure, Peter the Great had tamed the clergy, but religion was still a huge, huge factor in Russia.
Poor Poniatowski. And he had years ahead in a golden cage. And was being blamed by many of his people.
Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 12:50 pm (UTC)Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 12:52 pm (UTC)Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 04:10 pm (UTC)Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-06 06:55 pm (UTC)Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-08 01:10 am (UTC)Re: 1764-1772 Foreign policy: Poland: 1764-1767
Date: 2023-12-08 01:09 am (UTC)Poniatowski: Uh, Catherine, I'm still head over heels for you, and I want to help you out here, like I really do, but that is *never* going to fly. But you're so wonderful and reasonable I'm sure we can work out a nice compromise!
Poniatowski (to an English visitor): My Catherine is soooo amazing and would never authorize any unjust use of force. I just trust her so much!
Oh Poniatowski :( (but also, <3 )
Historians: *debate*
Oh, this is interesting! Knowing the least of anyone in salon about this, I would plump for the "not understanding" hypothesis, just because in my experience this is much more common than cunning plans. Even for reasonably smart people :P
Poniatowski: Okay, new idea! We can all agree on the fact that Poland needs some minor bureaucratic reforms, though, right? Boring stuff about the budget? Great! Vote on this bill, please.
Awww, Poniatowski, you're the best! <3
Poniatowski: My faith in Providence and predestination will keep me going through the bleakest moments.
Have I mentioned lately: awwww Poniatowski <3333