Posted on 05/09/2023 3:06:57 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1794, four members of Poland’s pro-Russia Targowica Confederation were convicted of treason by a revolutionary court, and promptly hanged before a jeering mob in Warsaw.
This spectacle unfolds in a revolutionary age, which finds the first constitution in Europe* written … in Polish?
There was good reason.
The once-proud empire had been reduced to a pliable rump state under a sclerotic aristocracy.
The Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791 aimed for national rebirth with a constitutional monarchy and circumscribed nobility. This nationalist ferment was opposed equally by the Russian monarch Catherine the Great, and by a league of those circumscribed, sclerotic nobles which constituted itself the Targowica Confederation and immediately “invited” Russia to invade. Russia was happy to oblige.
This launched the countries into a war whose predictable outcome further reduced Polish territory in 1793.
There’d be one more hurrah for independent Poland, however: a 1794 national uprising under the leadership of war hero** Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
In Warsaw, that uprising drove the Polish King Stanislaw August Poniatowski† into Warsaw Castle as it overwhelmed the Russian garrison....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
“...dance the hemp fandango... “
I like it...has a nice ring to it like “the Tyburn Jig” or “Devil’s Dance on the air”.😎
“Suspended animation” was always one of my favorites.
Should every retired Polak take his nest egg there? They’ve been dominated always. I think they’d fight harder than Ukraine. JMHO.
Not something I ever gave any thought to, but sure, why not.
I’d take it to Kherson when the fighting ends. Plenty of women left behind.
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