CZARTORYSKI, Adam Jerzy

Polish prince and politician, (1770-1861)

Czartoryski was born on 14 January, 1770 in Warsaw, the son of a great Lord and politician, Prince Adam Casimir. He received a good education, as all members of the high aristocracy did at the time and subsequently went abroad, only returning to the country in 1792 in order to take part in the war against Russia. After the insurrection of 1794, the Czartoryski family was threatened with the confiscation of their lands by Catherine II. They therefore sent their two sons to St Petersburg in the hope of gaining the trust of the Empress and of preserving their heritage. The young Adam, who had been enrolled in the Russian army, at first had difficulty accepting his “deportation”, but he settled down after having met the young tsarevich Alexander Pavlovich in 1796, who became a close friend and who shared his liberal opinions enthusiastically.

When Alexander became tsar, the prince became one of his closest advisers as a member of the “non-official Committee”; he also took part in the development of projects to reform the administration, civil law and public education system. As curator of the district of Vilna (that is, the overall supervisor of all education in eight western governments, within the Russian Empire, which had belonged to Poland before the partitions), he contributed to the development of a Polish education network and especially to the opening of the university of Vilna (1803). He was appointed deputy foreign affairs minister (the minister was chancellor Vorontzov) in September 1802, and in 1803 he presented Alexander I with an essay On the system Russia should adopt, in which he recommended opposing Napoleon's power to reinforce Russia's position in the Balkans and reuniting all Polish land under the Russian sceptre.

He became head of the Russian diplomatic service (but without an official nomination) at the beginning of 1804 and strengthened Russian policy towards France. After having severed diplomatic ties with Napoleon (September 1804) and despite strong opposition from the tsar's entourage, Czartoryski dedicated himself to preparing a new anti-French coalition. After having signed treaties of alliance with Austria and Sweden, he began negotiating with England in London through his (and the tsar's) close friend Nicolai Novosiltsev, but was unsuccessful. Pitt rejected projects to make changes favourable to Russia in the Balkans, to evacuate the island of Malta and to create a maritime code, only accepting the creation of a coalition whose sole aim was to fight Napoleon. The Anglo-Russian alliance was concluded in April 1805.

In autumn 1805, the political situation seemed to favour Czartoryski's Polish projects, and he suggested that the tsar impose a right of passage for Russian troops entering Prussia and, in the case of a refusal, that he take control of the Polish territory occupied by Berlin and turn it into the core of a future Polish State. Despite the Poles' hope, which was further increased by Alexander's visit to Pulawy – the Czartoryski's family residence -, this plan (which the Prussian historians called Mordplan gegen Preussen) failed to materialise. As Prussia had allowed Russian passage, the tsar went to Berlin to shake Frederick William III's hand over the tomb of Frederick the Great. The disaster at Austerlitz led to the fall of Czartoryski, who resigned in June 1806.

During the war of 1806-1807, the prince presented new essays to the tsar concerning the Balkans, but his main occupation became the development of projects which would oppose Napoleon's Polish policy by creating a constitutional Polish State made up of the territory occupied by Prussia and part of the territory occupied by Russia. The peace at Tilsit, the creation of the Duchy of Warsaw and the new Franco-Russian alliance confirmed the failure of Czartoryski's plans, who, even though he had withdrawn to Pulawy, presented the tsar with another essay in the summer of 1808 which envisaged Napoleon's future political plans and suggested ways to oppose them. In 1809, whilst Adam's brother and brother-in-law were organising (and financing) the Polish legions in Galicia to fight against Austria, the prince stayed in Vienna and at the end of the year he travelled (for the last time) to St Petersburg, where he stayed until April 1810. The deterioration of relations between Napoleon and Alexander led Czartoryski to increase his action, especially since the tsar, who was already contemplating war against France, attempted to win the Poles over to the Russian cause by once again taking up his “favourite idea” of restoring the Polish State under his own sceptre. At the beginning of 1811, Czartoryski undertook the task of building secret relations with the Duchy's elite and discussed his project with Prince Poniatowski. The latter's blunt refusal marked the failure of this discreet mission, and Napoleon was informed of it. The prince, keen to see Poland restored, opposed projects developed in 1811 by a group of Lithuanian aristocrats (of whom Michal Oginsk was a part) presented to the tsar which proposed the restoration of a Grand-Duchy of Lithuania with its own Constitution and army, that is to say, of a kingdom of Poland limited to the territory amassed by Russia during the partitions but with the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Czartoryski advised Alexander against these projects, as he saw in them a Lithuanian separatist movement which threatened the realisation of his dream – the restoration of a kingdom of Poland.

During the war of 1812, whilst in Vienna, he asked the tsar for permission to resign from his functions (as chair in the Senate and as State Council), but he did not join the Polish General Confederation of which his own father was Marshall. This prudent attitude gave him the chance in 1813 to act as an intermediary between the elite of the Duchy. The land was now occupied by the Russian army, and Adam turned to the tsar in the hope of achieving his Polish dreams. And during the spring of 1813, the prince once again tried to convince Poniatowski to abandon Napoleon's cause and to remain in the duchy to “conserve the army and national representation for any opportunity that could arise”. In Vienna, Czartoryski was able to weaken the anti-Polish attitude of Alexander's entourage, winning the tsar over to his projects. The partial result of this was the creation of the kingdom of Poland (1815) under the sceptre of the tsar and a clause in the treaty allowing the Russian emperor the right “to reunite to this territory the Polish lands which had previously been under the tsar's domination”. Czartoryski, author of the principles of the kingdom's future constitution, was one of the five members of a provisional government, and his career seemed to be set. To everyone's surprise, he was not appointed general lieutenant of the kingdom, the tsar preferring a docile opportunist (and former Jacobin!), general Zajonczek. The prince, disappointed and becoming more and more troubled by the unconstitutional policy of the Tsar's brother, the Grand-Duke Constantine, and of his old friend Novosiltsev in the kingdom, as well as by the abandon of the unification projects with Lithuania, retired from political life until 1823. In the summer of 1824, a few months after his last meeting with Alexander, he left his post as curator of Vilna, without relinquishing his position within the Russian State Council and the Senate.

The tsar's death (1825) freed him from all engagements imposed by their old friendship, and little by little he became head of the conservative opposition, using legal means to oppose Nicolas I's Polish policy. After the outbreak of the insurrection of 1830, Czartoryski was appointed president of the provisional government. He was, however, badly prepared for the insurrectional movement, but nevertheless tried to explain the events as a constitutional conflict between the tsar and his Polish subjects and attempted to find a compromise with St Petersburg. After the tsar's dethronement, which was voted by the Diet (29 January, 1831), he was no longer against military action but instead opposed any attempt to turn the insurrection into a popular revolution in order not to compromise the diplomatic action undertaken (unsuccessfully) with foreign powers. His vision consisted of restoring the constitutional freedom of the kingdom, under the sceptre of a Hohenzollern, a Habsburg or even a Romanov.

When he immigrated to France, Czartoryski took over a conservative party which aimed to restore a constitutional monarchy in Poland, dominated by the aristocracy and nobility and which would include modest land and social reforms. His party, called the “Hôtel Lambert” after the name of the prince's Parisian residence, wanted to free Poland, through pressure applied on Russia, Prussia and Austria by western powers, combined with a “national uprising launched at a favourable moment”. The ideal moment for this policy seemed to arrive with the Crimean War which momentarily re-animated the Polish question on the international front. The Hôtel Lambert Party even tried to organise the Polish legions at the service of the sultan, who was fighting the Russians, but the stipulations of the Congress of Paris (1856) definitively ended Czartoryski's foreign policy, who, for the last twenty years had also been trying to help national freedom movements of the Slavs in the Balkans (to prevent Russian pan-Slavism) and of the Romanians. His death, on 15 January, 1861, saved this great and unfortunate Polish politician of the 19th century from witnessing the disaster of the Polish insurrection in 1863.