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Meanwhile, somewhere in Poland...

 ...co kurwa?  Where does Poland begin and end?  The border has shifted all over the place!

In the 18th century, there is a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  Its borders encompass Lithuania, much of Latvia, Belarus, a good chunk of Ukraine and much of the Poland we know and love.  Prussia has left teeth-marks on the Baltic coast and the western border wiggles around a bit and is generally a little further east.  Słupsk, Koszalin, Szczecin, and Wrocław fall outside the border, but Gdańsk, Piła, Poznań and Katowice are within the Commonwealth.  

One administrative area of the Commonwealth, of culinary and linguistic interest to me, is: województwo ruskie, the Ruthenian Voivodeship.  It's capital was Lwów, or Lviv as we know it today, and much of it is now in Ukraine.  The dumplings filled with potato, cheese curd and onion, take their name from wój. ruskie, so pierogi ruskie were named after this area of the commonwealth and have nothing to do with Russia.  The only connection is a tenuous linguistic one, in that ruskie no longer makes people think of the voivodeship of the 18th century, but has become a term to mean Russian in common usage of Polish.  This is why, after the second unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Kremlin forces in the 21st century, many Poles now call the dumplings pierogi ukraińskie.


For Poland, the Age of Enlightenment, began around the 1730s-40s, a little later than in Western Europe, but far from being a delayed copy of earlier western European enlightenment, Poland had its own ideas, which had significant impact abroad.  The period of Enlightenment dimmed with the Partitions of Poland, ending with the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.  Poland, torn up by its neighbours, lost its sovereignty.  A national tragedy.  It would be more than a century before the Second Polish Republic rose from the aftermath of the First World War.

But back to the 18th century: Which monarch reigned in the Commonwealth?

Augustus II the Strong was elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania up until 1706 at which point his cousin, Sweden's King Charles XII (after Augustus had ganged up with Denmark and Russia against him) gave Augustus a bit of a spanking, militarily speaking, and replaced him on the Polish throne with Stanisław Leszczyński whose daughter, Maria, would go on to marry the young King Louis XV of France.  A bit of regal tennis ensued with Augustus being sent back to the Polish throne with a strong backhand from Russia, but when the no ball of death befell Augustus, France lobbed Stanisław back into play.  After all, Stanisław's son-in-law was King Louis XV of France.  At this point all Hell seems to have broken loose in the form of the War of the Polish Succession (Wojna o sukcesję polską) where several European powers sought to expand their own interests.

1709 Augustus II Mocny again

1733 (September) Staniław I Leszczyński again to 1736

1733 (October) August III Sas (bit of an overlap) to 1763

1764 Stanisław II August reigned to 1795 and the Third Partition of Poland.



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