Poland: The End of a Nation
Wedged between Russia, Prussia and Austria, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth faced partition and extinction in the 18th century.
Above a small town on the right bank of the Dnieper, once Kaniów in south-eastern Poland, now Kaniv in central Ukraine, is a hill, the Moskiewka (Little Moscow). At about 9pm on 6 May 1787 it erupted. Among those who witnessed the spectacle was a young man, Omelek Derevianka. He recalled that ‘the moon and the stars, flaming sheaves, columns or crosses shone above the town’. His memories were of a simulated eruption of Vesuvius. Thousands of rockets roared into the sky, while fires lit in ditches suggested the flow of lava down to the river. Illuminated on the summit was a tall obelisk with the cipher of the Empress of Russia, Catherine II, ‘the Great’. It was in her honour that this entertainment had been laid on by the king of Poland. Stanisław August Poniatowski had crossed his realm in order to meet her as she sailed south to tour Russia’s latest annexation: the Crimea. She may have watched the display from her galley, moored in the middle of the river, which divided her empire from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Perhaps she had already muffled her ears and gone to bed.
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