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The eighteenth century is far better served in western languages than its predecessors. The reader

should start with Jerzy Lukowski, Liberty's Folly: the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in theEighteenth Century, 16971795 (London, 1991). Jzef Andrzej Gierowski, The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the XVIIIth Century: from Anarchy to Well-Organised State(Cracow, 1996), provides a more optimistic interpretation, which is, however, less clearly

organized.

The Saxon period benefits from two of the more authoritative chapters on the Commonwealth in

the New Cambridge Modern History: J. A. Gierowski and A. S. Kamiski, The Eclipse ofPoland, vol. VI (1970), pp. 681715, and L. R. Lewitter, Poland under the Saxon Kings, vol.

VII (1963), pp. 36590. See also the last-named's Peter the Great and the Polish Election of

1697, Cambridge Historical Journal, XII (1956), pp. 12643. His Poland, Russia and theTreaty of Vienna of 5th January 1719, Historical Journal, XIII (1970), pp. 330, deals withperhaps the last opportunity for the Commonwealth to reassert its independence from Russian

tutelage. On the Polish-Saxon union, there are several articles by Gierowski. See his

Centralization and Autonomy in the Polish-Saxon Union, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, III/IV

(1979/80), pp. 27184, Die Union zwischen Polen und Litauen im 16. Jahrhundert und diepolnisch-schsische Union des 17./18. Jahrhunderts, in Thomas Frschl (ed.),

Fderationsmodelle und Unionsstrukturen. ber Staatenverbindungen in der frhen Neuzeit vom15. zum 18. Jahrhundert (Munich,1994), pp. 6382, his article in Fedorowicz's A Republic ofNobles, pp. 22338, and Personal- oder Realunion? Zur Geschichte der polnisch-schsichenBeziehungen nach Potawa in Gierowski and Johannes Kalisch (eds),Um die polnische Krone.Sachsen und Polen whrend des Nordischen Krieges 17001721 (Berlin, 1962), pp. 25491. Seealso Jacek Staszewski, Polen und Sachsen unter August II. Zur Soziotechnik der

Herrschaftsausbung, Berliner Jahrbuch fr osteuropische Geschichte (1996). On the 1717settlement and its aftermath see Gierowski, Reforms in Poland after the dumb Diet (1717), in

S. Fiszman (ed.), Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Poland (Bloomington, IN,1997), pp. 6585. For Polish-Lithuanian military performance, see Gierowski, The Polish-

Lithuanian Armies in the Confederations and Insurrections in the Eighteenth Century, in G. R.

Rothenberg, B. K. Kirly and P. F. Sugar (eds), East Central European Society and War in thePre-Revolutionary Eighteenth Century (New York, 1982), pp. 21538. On Augustus II, it isdifficult to recommend anything until Staszewski's biography (1998) is translated, and that

interpretation will itself no doubt be challenged by the research now being undertaken in Russian

archives. For the moment, see Gierowski, La France et les tendences absolutistes du roi dePologne August II, Acta Poloniae Historica, XVII (1968), pp. 4870. Deservedly translated isStaszewski, August III, Kurfrst von Sachsen und Knig von Polen. Eine Biographie (Berlin,1996). The process of foreign intervention and the failure of political and military reform under

Augustus III are explained in Michael G. Mller, Polen zwischen Preuen und Russland.Souvernittskrise und Reformpolitik 17361752 (Berlin, 1983).

Stanisaw August Poniatowski's reign has received more attention than any other. The best place

to start is the attractively written and intelligently argued biography by Adam Zamoyski, TheLast King of Poland(London, 1992). There is now a reasonable introduction available in Englishto the reforms of the late eighteenth century, in the essays contained in Samuel Fiszman (ed.),Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Poland: The Constitution of 3 May 1791(Bloomington, IN, 1997). Particularly relevant are the articles by Jerzy Michalski, Krystyna

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Zienkowska, Anna Grzekowiak-Krwawicz, Zofia Libiszowska and Zofia Zieliska. See also

Emanuel Rostworowski, La Grande Dite, 178892, rformes et perspectives, AnnalesHistoriques de la Rvolution Franaise, XXXVI (1964), pp. 30828. The constitution itself maybe read in the slightly incomplete English translation by Franciszek Bukaty, New Constitution ofthe Government of Poland (London, 1791) reprinted in the Annual Register for 1791, pp. 177

200.

Jerzy Lukowski's interpretative narrative, The Partitions of Poland: 1772, 1793, 1795 (London,1999), throws much light on the distribution of power within the Commonwealth between theking and successive ambassadors, and points out some of the limits of the Enlightenment. See

also his Towards Partition: Polish Magnates and Russian Intervention in Poland during the

Early Reign of Stanisaw August Poniatowski, Historical Journal, XXVIII (1985) for theproblems posed by Russian interference, and The Szlachta and the Confederacy of Radom,17641767/8 (Rome, 1977). H. H. Kaplan, The First Partition of Poland (New York, 1962) isbest read together with Jerzy Topolski, Reflections on the First Partition of Poland, ActaPoloniae Historica, XXVII (1973), pp. 3955. Ambassador Stackelberg's proconsulate is

covered fairly briefly by Daniel Stone, Polish Politics and National Reform, 17751788(Boulder, CO, 1976). The classic work of Robert H. Lord, The Second Partition of Poland: AStudy in Diplomatic History (Cambridge, MA, 1915), is highly critical of Stanisaw August'sactions in 179293. It is complemented by the same author's The Third Partition of Poland,Slavonic [and East European] Review, III (192425), pp. 48198. Michael G. Mller, DieTeilungen Polens: 177217931795 (Munich, 1984), stresses the primacy of external factors.

On the Enlightenment, the occasionally tendentious but nevertheless magnificent Jean Fabre,

Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski et l'Europe des lumires. tude de cosmopolitisme (Paris 1952)should be read in conjunction with Jochen Schlobach, Lumires en France, princes clairs et leroi Stanislas Poniatowski, Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, XII (1995), pp. 93107. RichardButterwick,Poland's Last King and English Culture: Stanisaw August Poniatowski, 17321798(Oxford, 1998) examines the role played by the king's Anglophilia in his efforts to bring about

political and cultural renewal, and devotes particular attention to his constitutional aims. Thesame author focuses on Stanisaw August's alternative to republicanism in Two Views of the

Polish Monarchy in the Eighteenth Century: the Polemic of Stanisaw August Poniatowski with

Stainsaw Leszczyski, Oxford Slavonic Papers, new series, XXX (1997), pp. 2139, andhighlights the question of civil and political liberty in Mickiewicz's Republican Heritage:

Trends in Polish Political Thought in the Later Eighteenth Century, in Ursula Phillips (ed.),National Identity and Mythology in the Making: Mickiewicz and Messianism (London, 2001).For an examination of some of the key external influences on Polish political thought in the same

period, see Jerzy Lukowski, Recasting Utopia: Montesquieu, Rousseau and the Polish

Constitution of 3 May 1791,Historical Journal, XXXVII (1994), pp. 6587.