Fryderyk Michal Czartoryski

Background

Michał Fryderyk Czartoryski was born in 1696 in Poland

Education

After a careful education on the best French models, which Michał Fryderyk Czartoryski completed at Paris, Florence and Rome, he attached himself to the court of Dresden, and through the influence of Count Fleming, the leading minister there, obtained the vice-chancellorship of Lithuania and many other dignities.

Career

Of small means and no position, Michał Fryderyk Czartoryski owed his elevation in the world to extraordinary1 ability, directed by an energetic but patriotic ambition.

Czartoryski was one of the many Polish nobles who, when Augustus II was seriously ill at Bialyvostok in 1727, signed the secret declaration guaranteeing the Polish succession to his son; but this did not prevent him from repudiating his obligations when Stanislaus Leszczynski was placed upon the throne by the influence of France in 1733.

For the next forty years Czartoryski was certainly the leading Polish statesman.

His palace was the place where the most promising young gentlemen of the day were educated and sent abroad that they might return as his coadjutors in the great work.

His plan aimed at the restoration of the royal prerogative and the abolition of the liberum veto, an abuse that made any durable improvement impossible.

Czartoryski's philo-Russian policy had by this time estranged Briihl, but he frustrated all the plans of the Saxon court by dissolving the diets of 1760, 1761 and 1762.

In 1763 he went a step farther and proposed the dethronement of Augustus III, who died the same year.

He died in the full possession of his faculties and was considered by the Russian minister Repnin " the soundest head in the kingdom. "

His foreign policy, moreover, was very vacillating, and he changed his " system " more frequently perhaps than any contemporary diplomatist.

Achievements

• But when all is said Michał Fryderyk Czartoryski must remain one of the noblest names in Polish history.

Connections

Michal Czartoryski married Countess Elenora Monika Waldstein on 30 October 1726 in Prague. They had four children (three daughters, one son).

Spouse:

Elenora Monika Waldstein

nephew:

Stanislaus

In 1755 he sent his nephew Stanislaus Poniatowski to St Petersburg as Saxon minister, a mission which failed completely.