Born Into Betrayal

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Portrait of Pelagia Sapieha neè Potocka, 1794, Royal Castle in Warsaw

Vienna, 1794. A hastily arranged painter's studio — Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, former portraitist to Marie Antoinette, now in exile and living off aristocratic commissions, has set up wherever she can. She is at work on a canvas that will eventually hang in the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The woman posing is nineteen years old, born Pelagia Potocka, recently become Pelagia Sapieha. She holds a shawl open behind her shoulders and is caught in movement, as if surprised first by the painter's gaze and then, across the centuries, by ours. Behind her, Vigée Le Brun has painted a landscape carried from her months in Naples: a darkened bay, a distant shoreline, and in the lower right corner, Vesuvius quietly smoking — the same volcano that once buried an entire city whose inhabitants had ignored every warning. The painter placed it there perhaps as a record of her own travels, perhaps as a symbol of changing times. Either way, it was behind Pelagia. She couldn't see it.

When the French Revolution started in 1789, Vigée Le Brun fled Paris with her daughter and a portrait of the queen tucked under her arm. She watched her beloved Marie Antoinette go to the guillotine, went through a divorce so her husband could try to protect what remained of their shared property, and saw her name placed on the national traitors list. She arrived in Vienna through a chain of aristocratic introductions, moving from one salon to the next, trying to rebuild her career across a continent rearranging itself into something unrecognisable.

Pelagia's presence in the same city is the consequence of a different unravelling. She is the daughter of Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki — the marshal of the Targowica Confederation and the most hated man in Poland and whole Commonwealth— the nobleman who invited foreign armies into his own country to crush the Constitution of May 3rd. She is also, by recent marriage, a Sapieha — a family whose most prominent member had co-written the very Constitution her father destroyed. While she posed for the portrait in Vienna during her honeymoon, the Kościuszko Uprising, the last armed resistance against the partition, was being crushed in the Battle of Praga.

No one knows who commissioned the portrait or why, and we will never know what the two women talked about while Le Brun painted it. All that is left is the portrait itself, made in a city that was not Pelagia's home and in a year the world she grew up in was about to stop existing. To understand how she ended up in Vienna, her story has to be traced back to where she came from.

The Paradise and Its Price

Depending on who you were in the Commonwealth, you could experience a completely different reality. For the magnate class, the great families who controlled its vast estates and its parliament, it was genuinely a paradise. For the peasants who worked their land it was a life of serfdom, bound to the estate and unable to leave without the lord's permission. For the urban class it was purgatory — they had no seat in parliament, no vote, but they could move freely and depended entirely on their own work to survive. The noble paradise existed because everyone else was excluded from it and were below it, and the magnates had every reason to keep it that way. So when the moment came to choose between saving their paradise and saving their country, they chose the paradise. It took some time for them to see that a country is not the same as the property of its richest people. When the magnates sacrificed the Commonwealth to protect their estates, they believed they were saving themselves but they were not. They were simply the last ones to realise it.

The Potocki family were the system's most extreme example. They owned hundreds of towns, over a million hectares, entire river systems, countless palaces and their gardens. Their seat at Tulczyn in today's Ukraine was not an estate — it was a private empire, with its own military base, its own court and even its own theatre. Pelagia's grandfather was called the King of Ruthenia without any irony. When she was born there in the mid-1770s, she entered a world that operated by its own rules and answered, in practice, to no authority except itself.

The instrument that enabled so much autonomy was the liberum veto — the right of any single deputy in the Sejm to block all new laws. In theory it was meant to protect the nobility from tyranny and absolute rule, but in practice any foreign power that could pay or convince a single parliamentarian could stop the entire government from functioning indefinitely. And that was very common — in the eighteenth century the Commonwealth had not passed any important laws in decades. Its army was small, its treasury empty and its borders left unprotected. The magnates who had the wealth and the men to change all of this preferred the system as it was, because a weak central government meant that — not any king, not any parliament — but they were the ones in control. To make the country stronger meant taxing the magnates, calling their peasants away from the fields to serve in the army and cutting their privileges. A weak and hollow country could not do any of that.

The First Partition happened a few years before Pelagia's birth. Three of the Commonwealth's neighbours divided between themselves roughly a third of its territory, a seizure dressed in the name of "European order". The magnates absorbed this shock and continued: their estates in the remaining Commonwealth were intact, their privileges untouched, the country had shrunk but their share of it had not, and that was what mattered most to them. A weakened, foreign-supervised Commonwealth was in some ways more convenient than a strong one. So they kept it weak, and called it freedom. But not everyone saw it that way. A smaller group within the nobility understood that the Partition was not an ending but a warning — that a country which could not defend itself once would not be able to defend itself again. They were right, but in the years that followed, their arguments were not yet strong enough to be heard by others.

The Trap

France had been the Commonwealth's closest patron for over a century — culturally, diplomatically, dynastically. It happened when a Polish princess, Marie Leszczyńska, became the wife of Louis XV. Since then French agents had worked for decades to maintain influence over Commonwealth affairs and keep St. Petersburg at a distance, but through two completely separate channels — one official, visible to the French foreign ministry, and one secret, known only to the king and his private network of agents. Both were working to protect French interests in the Commonwealth, but with completely different ideas of how to do that, and neither knew what the other was doing. Speaking with two contradictory voices at the same time, France could never be taken seriously as a unified opposition by the three partitioning neighbours, who were able to coordinate and act while France was essentially talking to itself. That confusion had influenced the First Partition and yet the relationship between France and the Commonwealth had continued. Then Louis XVI was guillotined, and with him was cut the last thread connecting France to its Commonwealth obligations. The new French rule that followed had no interest in defending European aristocracies, had no dynastic loyalty and no memory of Polish queens at Versailles. For decades the Commonwealth had looked to France as both its cultural model and its political protector, but when it needed France the most, France was no longer there.

The French Revolution changed the Commonwealth in two completely opposite ways at the same time. On one side, it distracted the great powers and gave the Commonwealth's reformers a brief window to act: in 1791 the Commonwealth passed Europe's first constitution — hereditary monarchy replaced the destructive elective system, the liberum veto was removed, the urban class gained political rights and peasants came under government protection for the first time. On the other side, the French Revolution gave the Commonwealth's enemies a reason that sounded justified: a country that was reforming itself, writing a constitution and limiting royal power, looked very similar to what was happening in revolutionary France. By the surrounding neighbours, especially those in the east, and the conservative magnates, it was seen as a weapon against their interests. They called the May 3rd law not a reform but a revolution, not a domestic political change but a dangerous foreign idea that would spread eastward. It was partly cynical and exaggerated and partly genuinely supported. Either way it worked and destroying the document was seen as a responsible act rather than what it actually was: a greedy grab for land and an attempt to take over control. The destruction of the May 3rd law had nothing to do with protecting Europe from revolutionary ideas — it was about a certain eastern neighbour's interest in having control over the Commonwealth, the other two partitioning neighbours using the opportunity to fulfil their territorial ambitions, and the Polish magnates who cared only about protecting their privileges.

The response came through the Targowica Confederation. A group of conservative magnates gathered in St. Petersburg and drafted a proclamation denouncing the constitution as a conspiracy and a dangerous spread of democratic ideas following the examples set in Paris, and invited Catherine’s armies to restore order. The marshal of the Confederation and its public face was Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki. He was the wealthiest man in the Commonwealth and he was Pelagia's father.
His main argument was simple: the properties belong to the magnates, the Constitution threatens their interests and the tsarina will protect their rights to ownership. He believed in Catherine's promise not to take any more Commonwealth territory, that the 1772 partition was a one-time event that would not repeat itself, and that the eastern empire could be used as a tool to restore their privileges without ever becoming a master over them.

In 1792 Catherine's armies crossed the Commonwealth's border. The Constitution's defenders — led by Prince Józef Poniatowski, the king's nephew, and General Tadeusz Kościuszko, who had already gained military experience in the American Revolution — fought back successfully. Then the king made a decision that would define his legacy: believing that giving in was the lesser evil and that some of the reforms could still be saved through negotiation, he joined the Targowica Confederation himself. His decision was seen as a betrayal by the reformers and the army, many of whom felt they had been winning militarily and were abandoned politically at the last moment. That destroyed the will of those still fighting to resist and the resistance eventually collapsed.

By the end of the same year Potocki understood what he had actually done: the Confederation had become a puppet in the eastern empire's hands. Catherine's demands escalated quickly. She demanded war payments as compensation for the military campaign, she stationed permanent military troops throughout what remained of the Commonwealth turning it into an occupied territory, and she claimed the right to veto any decision the Commonwealth's government made, removing the last traces of its independence. In 1793 the Second Partition followed and the Commonwealth was reduced to one third of its pre-partition size. Potocki had not anticipated this. He had thought himself the user of the eastern empire for his own good, but discovered he was the used one. He tried one last time — travelling to St. Petersburg in early 1793 hoping to negotiate, only to find himself dismissed and set aside. Later that same year he retreated to Vienna, taking his family with him.

The Other Side

The same year Pelagia married Franciszek Sapieha — General of Lithuanian Artillery, who had started his political life on the same side as her father, joining the Targowica Confederation in 1792, before switching to the resistance movement the following year. He was then invited by Kościuszko personally to command the entire uprising in Lithuania. The letter was tracked and seized by the eastern imperial agents, read, and then allowed to reach Franciszek through another route. The occupiers knew he had been approached and chosen, and now they were watching what he would do. Shortly after, for unknown reasons Franciszek declined the invitation, declaring himself unqualified for the role, which was likely a pretext, and as a consequence he withdrew from the army. After the uprising collapsed he took a survival strategy and signed a written promise not to fight against the eastern empire ever again, in exchange for amnesty and the right to keep his estates. Though eventually pressed by debts, they were forced to sell the Sapieha palace and its properties. It can only be speculated what dynamics were between Pelagia and Franciszek and what were the reasons for the marriage and its eventual divorce in 1806, but either way this connection with the Sapieha family absorbed her into its environment.

Before the partition, the Sapiehes were, in Lithuanian terms, what the Potockis were in Polish ones — the defining magnate dynasty of the Grand Duchy, holding the chancellorship for over a century, supplying hetmans and senators and marshals across two hundred years. They were the second wealthiest family in the Grand Duchy after the Radziwiłłs. Despite that they had their low moments too: in the early 1700s they lost their dominant position in a civil war within the Grand Duchy itself, their titles and privileges stripped by other noble families who turned against them, and it took them nearly a century to rebuild it all back.
The most prominent Sapieha of the era was Kazimierz Nestor Sapieha. He started as a conservative, aligned with the magnate opposition that wanted to preserve the old privileges and resist any reform — his uncle, Hetman Branicki, was its leader. Then he changed sides influenced by the reformers around him. He came to understand that they were not threatening Lithuanian interests but could actually protect them — he personally negotiated the terms that ensured Lithuania's equal standing within the new constitutional structure. He became one of the Constitution's creators, elected Marshal of the Lithuanian Confederation — one of the two presiding officers of the parliament that produced it. When the king joined Targowica and the resistance collapsed, Kazimierz refused to accept it. He left Poland in protest, returned to fight in the Kościuszko Uprising, and after its defeat died in Viennese exile. The opposite direction from Szczęsny Potocki, and from Franciszek, who faced the same choice that same year and stepped back.

By 1793 the Targowica disaster was already visible and Potocki was beginning to understand that he had been used and that his name had become synonymous with betrayal. A marriage to a Sapieha — a dynasty with reformist credentials, standing among the constitutionalist camp — was most likely his attempt to protect his position as the ground collapsed beneath him. Despite it all, Pelagia's own thoughts on this union have not survived.

The Silence

The world Pelagia knew was changing beyond recognition, and not only in the outside world. Inside her family, things were falling apart too — by the time she sat for the portrait in Vienna, her parents had been separated for years and divorce proceedings were already underway. The same year the divorce was finalised, Pelagia's father married Zofia Glavani, who was considered an extraordinary beauty of her time, as well as Potemkin's — tsarina’s favourite —former lover and a secret agent working under the occupiers' request. Zofia was born into a poor Greek merchant family and at the age of seventeen was sold by her mother to the Polish ambassador in Constantinople. From there she was passed from one man to another until she ended up in Potemkin's arms, and this is when she became his agent. She was a woman who had survived entirely on her beauty and her intelligence. During the marriage with Pelagia's father she had an affair with Pelagia's own brother, and the child born from that affair became her strongest argument when Szczęsny died — she sued Pelagia's branch of the family and won, securing the Potocki estates for her own children. It was not the last time Pelagia would find herself on the losing side of someone else's decision.

Her second husband Paweł Sapieha was fifteen years old when the Commonwealth stopped existing. Like most young noblemen living on estates that were occupied territory, he entered the empire's military service — not out of loyalty but out of a calculation. The options for the Commonwealth nobility were limited and none of them were good: serve the eastern empire and keep your estates and your title; retreat into exile and lose everything material; withdraw to your land and wait; or resist and risk losing it all to confiscation. Those who integrated into this system generally kept their social position and land, those who resisted lost both. Paweł chose to serve, was commissioned as a lieutenant, and waited. Then in 1807 Napoleon defeated Prussia and Catherine's empire and created the Duchy of Warsaw from the ruins of the Prussian partition — and Poland appeared on the map again for the first time in twelve years. Paweł switched sides without hesitation: he left military service, joined the French as a lieutenant colonel, became Prince Józef Poniatowski's personal military assistant, and committed everything he had to the Napoleonic cause. In 1812 he raised at his own expense an entire regiment of Lithuanian cavalry and led it into the occupiers' territory. He was not fighting for Napoleon but for the hope — shared by Polish and Lithuanian soldiers alike — that a French victory would restore at least part of the Commonwealth as an independent state under French protection. But as the story tells, this hope would not survive the cold occupiers' winter.

During that time Pelagia was in the recovered Duchy of Warsaw, the nearest form of independent country that could have existed since the last partition, from there following the Napoleonic campaign news. The Duchy had a government, a flag and a constitution, although it was a French client state, ruled by a Saxon king and dependent entirely on Napoleon's goodwill and not the sovereign country. But it was something, and for a generation that had grown up only with stories about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth it was enough to believe in. Then in 1812 Paweł led his regiment east and Napoleon's campaign ended in catastrophe and soon after the Duchy of Warsaw collapsed. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 redrew the map once more — what little had been restored disappeared again, replaced by the Kingdom of Poland — constitutional on paper, in practice — under eastern control, again.

What happened to Pelagia in the years that followed is mostly silence. The November Uprising of 1830 briefly brought back the hope — and just as quickly extinguished it. By the early 1830s Paris had become the capital of Polish and Lithuanian exile. The displaced nobility of the former Commonwealth gathered in its salons speaking their languages and keeping the idea of their country alive in the only way left to them. Pelagia most likely arrived with that wave and Pawel decided not to follow her. She died in Paris in 1846, buried at Montmartre, among those who had lost their homeland.

Paweł's destiny ended where it had begun: he was not punished for raising a regiment against the empire because Tsar Alexander I offered an amnesty to all officers who had served Napoleon, absorbing them into the new Kingdom of Poland's army rather than making martyrs of them. It was a calculated move — the empire had learned that co-opting its opponents was more effective than crushing them. Paweł accepted it, was given his rank, and served. The same logic that had brought him into the occupiers' service at fifteen came back to him at the end. It is unknown why he didn't follow Pelagia to Paris — whether it was the estates, the rank, the amnesty, or something else. He finished his life in Warsaw in 1855, under the same empire he had once led cavalry against.

The Portrait

The portrait hangs today in the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The castle was destroyed by the Germans in 1944 and rebuilt by the Poles between 1971 and 1984, stone by stone, from memory and archive photographs. In a rebuilt castle hangs the portrait of a woman who left no words of her own. She left no letters, no diary, no recorded word about any of it. What she thought of her father, of Vienna, of Warsaw, of Paris — nothing. What she felt standing in that studio while she was painted — nothing. How she coped with the feeling of being in exile, knowing she might never see in her lifetime any of the Commonwealth territories as independent — all of it remains unknown.

Perhaps the silence was itself the answer — the only response available to someone who had inherited a catastrophe she did not cause and could not undo. Either way this silence is hers — the only thing that remained entirely her own in a life where everything else had been decided by someone else.

Vesuvius is still smoking in the lower right corner, quietly, as it has been since Vigée Le Brun painted it there. And Pelagia, caught in movement, looks back at the viewer — unaware that the most turbulent times had already begun.

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