Ignacy Potocki

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 Collegium Nobilium in Warsaw, where he was a student in the years 1761–1765.[1] From 1765 he studied theology and law in Rome, where he attended the Collegium Nazarenum, up to about 1769.[1][2] His parents intended for him to join the ranks of clergy, but he refused to follow this path.[1][2] After traveling through Italy and Germany, he returned to Poland around 1771.[1] On 27 December 1772 he married Elżbieta Lubomirska.[1] This marriage brought him close to the political faction of Familia.[1] Early on, Potocki made a major impression on many of his contemporaries, being groomed as the next leader of Familia.[1] From 1772 he was invited to the King Stanisław II Augustus' Thursday Dinners.[1]

As a member (1772–1791) of Poland's Commission of National Education (Komisja Edukacji Narodowej) – the world's first ministry of education – he was the initiator of and presided over the Society for Elementary Textbooks (Towarzystwo do Ksiąg Elementarnych, founded in 1775).[1][3] He presided over the renovation of the Załuski's Library (in 1774).[1] He was involved in the development of numerous projects, such as the history curriculum.[4] In 1781 he reviewed and endorsed Hugo Kołłątaj's work at the 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 freemasonry, and by 1780 he advanced to the head of a freemasonry lodge.[5] He became de facto head of the "Familia", and of anti-royal opposition (succeeding its previous leader, Stanisław Lubomirski, upon his death in 1783).[3] That year also saw the sudden death of his wife.[5] During a trip to Italy and France, in absentia, the influence of the Familia resulted in his appointment to the office of 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 Kingdom of Prussia instead.[6] Although this resulted in the split of the anti-royalist opposition, he was seen as the leader of opposition (the Patriotic Party) when the Great Sejm begun in 1788.[7] After some initial political manevrouving, the issues of a closer relation with Prussia (that would eventually grew into 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 Guard of Laws.[11] From March 1792 he also held the position of Minister of War.[11] During 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]

Following the victory of the Targowica Confederation and the abrogation 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 Kościuszko Uprising of 1794.[14] In early April he left Leipzig and arrived in Kraków.[14] He was involved in unsuccessful diplomatic negotiations with various foreign powers, in a vain attempt to gain support for the insurgents.[14] During the Uprising he served as a member of the Supreme National Council (Rada Najwyższa Narodowa), as a chief of its diplomatic department.[14] Upon suppression of the Uprising, instead of emigrating again, he took part in the surrender negotiations, which gained him respect in many quarters.[15] Eventually on 21 December 1794 he was imprisoned by 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]