The Castle of Bialystok, 1794
The Margravine of Baireuth—The Margrave of Baireuth—The Last King of Poland—Bialystok—Madame de Cracovie—April 18, 1794—The Ladies in Kosciuszko's Camp—Massacre of Praga, November 4, 1794.
Location: Prague; Bialystok
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Memoirs of the Countess Potocka by Anna Tyszkiewicz, Edited by Casimir Stryienski, 1901.
It was in the year 1812. I had lately been reading the Margravine of Baireuth's curious memoirs, whose publication, according to Napoleon, was the equivalent of a second battle of Jena to the house of Brandenburg, such pettiness and such turpitude did they disclose.
I was very young then, and a desire seized me to write down my memories and impressions as I advanced in age. At that time memoirs were not manufactured by the dozen. People wrote—with more or less honesty—their own. It seemed to me—this I can say without boasting—that I was able to bring more interesting facts together than those which built the good Margravine's fame, and so I set to work.
Not every one can be the sister of a great man. That sometimes disturbed me. I knew very well that it was Frederick II. who was sought for under a heap of coarse anecdotes.
Although issued from royal blood, I had never had my ears boxed, to speak in Margravian terms; I had never found hairs in my soup, and I had never been put under lock and key. Instead of a wretchedly meagre principality, we inhabited one of the finest castles on the continent, a fact which is neither as novel nor as spicy as those which the Margravine tells us about her place of abode. But, living in the Grand Century, I founded my hopes on the interest attaching to those glorious days.
To write one's memoirs without mentioning one's self seems scarcely possible to me; if one wants to inspire confidence, ought one not to begin by introducing one's self?
My father was Count Louis Tyszkiewicz. My mother was a niece of the last of our kings, Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. This monarch's noble visage, his dignified manner, his gentle and melancholy gaze, his silvery hair, and his beautiful, slightly perfumed hand—all this is still present to my memory. The time to which these recollections belong is that of our last misfortunes.
My mother followed the king to Grodno, whither, upon the Third Partition, the Russian faction had compelled him to go. There, from a tiny chamber in which I had been lodged with my governess, I saw the royal train of slaves every morning. The Russian guards, with their flat, sallow faces, whom the knout turns into moving machines, frightened my juvenile fancy to such a degree that all my father's authority was needed to make me cross the threshold of the door, and never without resistance and tears, at that.
Dismal silence reigned in the castle where the family had gathered to say a last farewell to the unfortunate, whom, after having crowned, Catherine had burdened with chains. Carried off to St. Petersburg, he there expiated the errors he had committed at the empress' prompting, which she had exploited with a Machiavellan astuteness that has few parallels in history.
Under other circumstances Poniatowski might have occupied his throne worthily. His reign was epoch-making in the annals of science. He revived the taste for art and letters in Poland, which the rule of the Saxon electors, whose brutishness had brought a fateful reaction upon the country, had extinguished.
When Augustus drank Poland was drunk!
Stanislaus, on the other hand, took pleasure only in noble and useful occupations. His leisure hours were in large part devoted to men of science and to artists. In addition to a sound and varied education, he possessed a delightful mind and exquisite taste. Speaking the dead languages, as well as the languages of the countries in which he had travelled, with fluency, he had in him the capacity to a high degree of captivating his audience, and the art of addressing words to his hearers which would most flatter the national pride or personal vanity of each one of them. He had a large, generous heart; he forgave without reserve, and his beneficence often went a little too far. But nature, so prodigal to the man, had refused the monarch the only things which make a ruler: strength and will.
When the king had gone we returned to Bialystok—it was there that my aunt lived, Madame de Cracovie. She was the widow of Count Branicki, Governor of the Castle of Cracow, and sister to King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. Her husband had played an important part at the Confederation of Bar, and in 1 764 he was entered on the list of claimants to the throne. But his brother-in-law's party showing itself the stronger, he retired to his estates, where he lived as king.
I saw the Castle of Bialystok when it was still fitted out with rare splendour. French upholsterers, brought there at great expense, had purveyed furniture, mirrors and panellings worthy of the Palace of Versailles. Nothing could surpass the magnificent proportions of the saloons and vestibules, adorned with marble columns. The castle had seen the passage of all that Poland had to show in the way of great lords and the most eminent travellers. The Emperor Paul, when still grand duke, and his wife had stopped there a few days while undertaking the memorable journey that all Europe talked about.
The arrangement of the gardens and parks, the wealth of the different hothouses, the beauty and profusion of the orange trees—all these things made this place a right royal abode. In the lifetime of M. de Cracovie, two theatrical troupes, French and Polish, as well as a company of dancers, maintained at his expense, shortened the long winter evenings by a variety of performances. The theatre, which was decorated by an Italian artist, could hold from three to four hundred people. This building, entirely separate from the castle, was situated at the entrance to the deer park. I saw it in fairly good condition.
Such was then the mode of life that the great lords of the opposition led at home. In my day nothing was left but the reminiscences which I made centenarian servants tell me.
Count Branicki's widow, simple and quiet in her tastes, though noble and great in her actions, spent as large sums in charity as her husband squandered on festivities and amusements of all kinds. Sustaining with dignity the rank assigned her by birth and fortune, she secretly diverted from superfluity the liberal relief which she never refused indigence or misfortune.
No one on this earth has ever given better hope of the possibility of perfection, so universally disputed. Pious without bigotry, good without weakness, proud and gentle, decided but sensitive, charitable without ostentation, disinterestedly generous, she possessed all of those qualities that constitute a love of virtue. Perhaps she would not have been thought clever enough by some, but no one could have written more gracefully, expressed herself with more distinction, done the honours of the house more grandly, and bestowed more active kindness on all her surroundings.
My children, when you shall pass through Bialystok I ask a thought of her and a recollection of myself. There my marriage was decided upon, and there I saw death for the first time! My mother hardly ever left that beloved aunt and I was brought up under her eyes. We spent the winters at Warsaw, and in the summer we returned to the beautiful residence I have been describing; but dating from the day when the king was dragged to St. Petersburg, his sister established herself in the country and never left her castle again. So the winter of 1794 was the last we spent in town.
I perfectly remember the revolution which put an end to our political existence. By common accord the command was conferred upon Kosciuszko, who ardently defended the holiest of causes.
On April eighteenth we were awakened by cannon shots and a sharp fusillade. My father being absent, and the servants having at once rushed to arms without troubling about our safety, a female council had to be called, who decided that the safest course to pursue was to hide in the cellars. We passed the morning there without any news of what was happening. Towards three o'clock in the afternoon, the fusillading having ceased in our region, the king sent us word to try to reach the castle, where he resided. We found neither coachmen nor lackeys, and anyhow a carriage would have moved with difficulty through streets encumbered with corpses. We were obliged to walk across the whole suburb of Cracow, where the fighting had been going on for several hours. The sight of this battlefield, where the Russians lay strewn about by the hundred, froze me with horror! But that was the only painful impression I felt: the spent balls that whistled above our heads did not disturb me in the least.
From that day until the massacre of Praga we never left the castle, the town being in a perpetual ferment. All that occurred in this interval has completely faded from my memory. I only recollect vaguely having accompanied my mother to Kosciuszko's camp, where five ladies, their little caps on their ears, were drawing wheelbarrows full of earth to be used for the erection of the ramparts. I envied their lot, and my childish heart already throbbed at the tales of our victories.
Morning and evening a nurse made me pray piously to God to bless our arms. I entered with all my heart into what she told me to do, only I did not exactly understand what was happening, and why one was supposed to be so cross with those handsome Russian officers, whom I had more than once watched with pleasure caracoling on beautiful horses.
The massacre of Praga taught me, and very early my heart was opened to sentiments which I have transmitted to my children. Nine thousand defenceless people were slaughtered in one night, with no other refuge nor tomb but their own dwellings reduced to ashes! The king's castle being situated on the banks of the Vistula, which was all that separated us from the suburb of Praga, we distinctly heard the groans of the victims and the hurrahs of the butchers. It was even possible to distinguish the shrieks and the laments of the women and children, and the howls and imprecations of the fathers and husbands who were dying in defence of the dearest that man has. Profound darkness added to the horror of the scene.
Against whirlwinds of fire exhaling a whitish smoke stood out infernal silhouettes of Cossacks, who, like devilish phantoms, tore hither and thither on horseback, their lances poised, with awful hisses urging themselves on in their murderous work. Several hours passed in this way, after which nothing was to be heard but the noise of posts and beams falling in. No more screams nor wailing; no more clash of arms nor stamp of horses. The silence of death reigned over the suburb of Cracow—and the name of Souwaroff was dedicated to execration!
Tyszkiewicz, Anna. Memoirs of the Countess Potocka, edited by Casimir Stryienski, Doubleday & McClure, 1901.
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