THE END OF THE RUSSIAN PROTECTORATE 403Queries about a quorum were quashed. The King was persuaded to sign. The
soldiers and the crowd in the Castle Square greeted the news with cries of 'Vivat
Rex! Vivat Konstitucja!' It all seemed deceptively simple. The harmful practices
of the old Republic - the Liberum Veto, the right of resistance, the
Confederations, the 'free' elections - were to be abolished. Although the King
was a confirmed bachelor, the monarchy was to be hereditary. The 'Committee
of Two Nations' was to replace the separate offices of State of the Crown and
Grand Duchy. The Straz Praw (Guardians of the Laws), consisting of king,
Primate, and five ministers were to act as the supreme executive Cabinet. The
citizens of the towns were to enjoy the same rights and privileges as the noble
citizens of the Republic. The peasantry were to enjoy 'the protection of the law
and government of the country'. The Army was to receive its long-awaited
establishment of 100,000 men. The various local commissions of Law and
Order, and of Civil and Military Affairs, were to provide the basis for the terri-
torial organs of a centralized administration. Discussions on the details pro-
ceeded in the Sejm for a further twelve months.
To later generations, this Constitution of the Third of May assumed a sym-
bolic importance out of all proportion to its practical significance. It was the Bill
of Rights of the Polish tradition, the embodiment of all that was enlightened and
progressive in Poland's past, a monument to the nation's will to live in freedom,
a permanent reproach to the tyranny of the partitioning powers. Like many lib-
erals of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx expressed his fulsome admiration.
'With all its shortcomings', Marx wrote, 'this constitution appears against the
background of Russo-Prusso-Austrian barbarity as the only work of freedom
which Central Europe has ever produced of its own accord. Moreover, it was
created by a privileged class, the gentry. The history of the world knows no
other example of such generosity by the gentry.'^23 In 1918, when the Polish
Republic was restored, 3 May was adopted as the national holiday.
Needless to say, in the eyes of Tsarist officialdom, the Sejm had compromised
itself beyond repair. Its contacts with the French Assembly were taken as proof
of an international revolutionary conspiracy. It had to be suppressed, with all its
works. In this, the lead was taken by the Empress's principal Polish pensioners
— Stanislaw-Szczesny Potocki, the two unemployed Hetmans, F. K. Branicki,
and Seweryn Rzewuski, and the two Kossakowski brothers. These men assem-
bled in St. Petersburg over the winter, and, having synchronized their plans with
their Russian patrons, on 27 April 1792 signed an Act of Confederation designed
to overthrow the Polish Sejm and the Polish Constitution. For the sake of good
form, they concealed the existence of the Act until they had time to make their
way on to Polish territory at Targowica in the Ukraine. There, on 14 May, they
formally raised their standard, and were joined by a Russian Army only four
days later. The trial of strength, for which Kosciuszko and Poniatowski were
preparing, had arrived.
The Russo-Polish War of 1792-3, or the War of the Second Partition as it was
later called, lasted more than a year. Yet its outcome was decided by a couple of