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Map I did for a timeline I've been working on recently. Writeup:

Poland in the 18th century was the victim of a vicious decline. No longer could it hope of turning the tide in Europe, being a great power who’s might was to be feared and respected from Sublime Porte to Viennese café- now they were well past their prime and seemingly unwilling to wash off the rust that had taken hold at the centre of state. Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, was knwon throughout commonwealth for his lackadaisical attitude towards his Polish crown: numerous attempts to overthrow him marred his reign while the Twin Black Eagles of Russia and Prussia rallied to keep Poland as close to their spheres as possible (and as far away from the Wittelsbach emperor), only being forced to calm down after the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximillian III, stepped in to defend his allies’ ambitions, a deal that Prussia was forced to begrudgingly accept. The Saxon elector barely scraped by to the Polish throne by 1735, but he seemingly did not appreciate this stroke of luck and diplomatic victory: between cozying up to the emperor in an attempt to get a lion’s share from the mediatization reforms he was introducing and making greater overtures towards seizing other lines of the house of Wettin there was little time to pay attention to the by now irrelevant Polish territories.

However, by the 1760s, Europe was much, much different. Bavarian control of the HRE, already quite loose, was crumbling under the weight of international pressure, internal conflict between the Wittelsbach dynasty and the combined forces of Prussia and Austria, and the Ecclesiastic Crisis, leaving the Saxons with even less time to deal with the affairs of Krakow or Vilnius. This left the nobles, who had been left to deal with the King’s stupidity for the last 30 years (and were quite frankly sick of him), the perfect opportunity to strike. Angered at both sides of the conflict- considering the Saxons foolish and inept while fearing the Russian interference which had been much more restrictive than even the King’s whims. Taking advantage of Prussian victories in Saxony proper, many prominent Szlachta (nobles) declared they would be pulling support for their king and instead would rule by themselves as a group from the Sejm. Aided by the Prussians (who were really just hoping for any way to break the gridlock in Bohemia) this group swept through much of central Poland and southern Lithuania and were quite successful at destroying the legitimacy of their king, who was too busy desperately attempting to pipe water out of the sinking ship that was the Holy Roman Empire to take care of his rebellious subjects to the east. Things looked good for the Szlachta’s nascent Confederation, with international support from the French and Austrians having begun to arrive and Saxon loyals losing skirmish after skirmish, forcing Augustus to effectively abandon his post, it seemed as if Polish liberation would come once again- and it seemed as if it was possible, even if unlikely, that the century of decay the nation had suffered would be reversed.

But Prussia was not the only adversary of the Saxons. Indeed, Prussia had received quite considerable support from the Russian Empire- and this support was far move valuable to Berlin than some random nobles from a nation far past its prime. As such, all that was needed to reverse the successes of the Szlachta was a soft wind to blow through their house of cards. Luckily for the rebellious nobles, no wind would come.

The Russians would not be satisfied with mere wind to crush their enemies.

Russian diplomats had been working hard behind the scenes to secure a tripartite alliance, of both Black Eagles and Austria, that would come crashing down on the hapless Szlachta and subdue them. Both the negotiations and the invasion ended remarkably quickly with victory for the Russians, though other terrorist acts committed by Polish nationals would continue to ravage the partitionists (especially Prussia) long after the killing blow was dealt. Thanks to general tolerance to the rebellious petty nobles and the continuation of a Polish state (though with significantly fewer freedoms than the rebels hoped), very little of this resistance came from the actual aristocracy or power brokers in the new country, with most of it being bourgeois revolutionaries or the peasantry whose way of life was consistently whittled down during the administration. This lack of conflict between the state and its overlords allowed it to keep its head down throughout much of the 19th century. Not all of the Commonwealth was brought with Poland, however, as most of the other territories, such as Lithuania and Ruthenia, were brought under the control from of Russians, imposing their own puppet states in these territories instead of handing it over to the Sejm.

The territories directly annexed into the Twin Eagles (South, West, and New East Prussia to the Prussians; Courland, Daugavpils, and Vitebsk to the Russians) fared the worst from nationalist insurrection, as unhappy nobles, too, came against the new government and faced severe crackdowns. In both of these areas, Germanification and Russification were heavily promoted: the Polish language was banned in schools, Polish festivities and national celebrations were heavily curtained, while those suspected of resistance were deported to the Confederation, where they were closely watched to make sure they did not resume their nationalist resistance- in one of the more revolutionary Voivodships, Sieradz, a regiment of Prussian soldiers remained 30 years after the Confederation’s establishment to make sure no funny business would continue in the country’s now-easternmost region.

While it may have seemed like a stable regime to us in hindsight, to its contemporaries partition Poland’s continued stability was never guaranteed and most major powers had plans in place for what would come after. Despite not being treated quite as poorly as some other historically discriminated nationalities, Poles living under this regime ranged from displeasure towards the affair to hatred of the Confederation (the latter being especially common in the regions undergoing Germanification or Russification) and it was clear that the balance that kept all three foreign powers and the population of the country tolerant of the status quo could be tipped with as little wind as was needed to establish it in the first place.

Description

Map I did for a timeline I've been working on recently. Writeup:

Poland in the 18th century was the victim of a vicious decline. No longer could it hope of turning the tide in Europe, being a great power who’s might was to be feared and respected from Sublime Porte to Viennese café- now they were well past their prime and seemingly unwilling to wash off the rust that had taken hold at the centre of state. Augustus II, Elector of Saxony, was knwon throughout commonwealth for his lackadaisical attitude towards his Polish crown: numerous attempts to overthrow him marred his reign while the Twin Black Eagles of Russia and Prussia rallied to keep Poland as close to their spheres as possible (and as far away from the Wittelsbach emperor), only being forced to calm down after the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximillian III, stepped in to defend his allies’ ambitions, a deal that Prussia was forced to begrudgingly accept. The Saxon elector barely scraped by to the Polish throne by 1735, but he seemingly did not appreciate this stroke of luck and diplomatic victory: between cozying up to the emperor in an attempt to get a lion’s share from the mediatization reforms he was introducing and making greater overtures towards seizing other lines of the house of Wettin there was little time to pay attention to the by now irrelevant Polish territories.

However, by the 1760s, Europe was much, much different. Bavarian control of the HRE, already quite loose, was crumbling under the weight of international pressure, internal conflict between the Wittelsbach dynasty and the combined forces of Prussia and Austria, and the Ecclesiastic Crisis, leaving the Saxons with even less time to deal with the affairs of Krakow or Vilnius. This left the nobles, who had been left to deal with the King’s stupidity for the last 30 years (and were quite frankly sick of him), the perfect opportunity to strike. Angered at both sides of the conflict- considering the Saxons foolish and inept while fearing the Russian interference which had been much more restrictive than even the King’s whims. Taking advantage of Prussian victories in Saxony proper, many prominent Szlachta (nobles) declared they would be pulling support for their king and instead would rule by themselves as a group from the Sejm. Aided by the Prussians (who were really just hoping for any way to break the gridlock in Bohemia) this group swept through much of central Poland and southern Lithuania and were quite successful at destroying the legitimacy of their king, who was too busy desperately attempting to pipe water out of the sinking ship that was the Holy Roman Empire to take care of his rebellious subjects to the east. Things looked good for the Szlachta’s nascent Confederation, with international support from the French and Austrians having begun to arrive and Saxon loyals losing skirmish after skirmish, forcing Augustus to effectively abandon his post, it seemed as if Polish liberation would come once again- and it seemed as if it was possible, even if unlikely, that the century of decay the nation had suffered would be reversed.

But Prussia was not the only adversary of the Saxons. Indeed, Prussia had received quite considerable support from the Russian Empire- and this support was far move valuable to Berlin than some random nobles from a nation far past its prime. As such, all that was needed to reverse the successes of the Szlachta was a soft wind to blow through their house of cards. Luckily for the rebellious nobles, no wind would come.

The Russians would not be satisfied with mere wind to crush their enemies.

Russian diplomats had been working hard behind the scenes to secure a tripartite alliance, of both Black Eagles and Austria, that would come crashing down on the hapless Szlachta and subdue them. Both the negotiations and the invasion ended remarkably quickly with victory for the Russians, though other terrorist acts committed by Polish nationals would continue to ravage the partitionists (especially Prussia) long after the killing blow was dealt. Thanks to general tolerance to the rebellious petty nobles and the continuation of a Polish state (though with significantly fewer freedoms than the rebels hoped), very little of this resistance came from the actual aristocracy or power brokers in the new country, with most of it being bourgeois revolutionaries or the peasantry whose way of life was consistently whittled down during the administration. This lack of conflict between the state and its overlords allowed it to keep its head down throughout much of the 19th century. Not all of the Commonwealth was brought with Poland, however, as most of the other territories, such as Lithuania and Ruthenia, were brought under the control from of Russians, imposing their own puppet states in these territories instead of handing it over to the Sejm.

The territories directly annexed into the Twin Eagles (South, West, and New East Prussia to the Prussians; Courland, Daugavpils, and Vitebsk to the Russians) fared the worst from nationalist insurrection, as unhappy nobles, too, came against the new government and faced severe crackdowns. In both of these areas, Germanification and Russification were heavily promoted: the Polish language was banned in schools, Polish festivities and national celebrations were heavily curtained, while those suspected of resistance were deported to the Confederation, where they were closely watched to make sure they did not resume their nationalist resistance- in one of the more revolutionary Voivodships, Sieradz, a regiment of Prussian soldiers remained 30 years after the Confederation’s establishment to make sure no funny business would continue in the country’s now-easternmost region.

While it may have seemed like a stable regime to us in hindsight, to its contemporaries partition Poland’s continued stability was never guaranteed and most major powers had plans in place for what would come after. Despite not being treated quite as poorly as some other historically discriminated nationalities, Poles living under this regime ranged from displeasure towards the affair to hatred of the Confederation (the latter being especially common in the regions undergoing Germanification or Russification) and it was clear that the balance that kept all three foreign powers and the population of the country tolerant of the status quo could be tipped with as little wind as was needed to establish it in the first place.