I'm the Dauphin in France

Chapter 622: Eastern European Chess Game
Potemkin tore off the hot towel covering his head and immediately began to cough violently.

He had contracted a serious fever in Iasi and had even seldom handled official business personally recently, but at this moment he forced himself to come to the table and picked up the quill with trembling hands.

As the de facto prime minister and defense minister of Russia, he saw at a glance what Stanislaw II was trying to do.

Poland has been integrating the country in the past two years, gradually sorting out the previously chaotic ethnic conflicts and political factions, and promulgated a constitution a few months ago, further enhancing its national strength.

If Poland is allowed to continue to develop, it will be difficult for Russia to conquer Poland in five years at most.

So he began mobilizing troops and preparing to launch a war against Poland more than half a year ago.

At this time, the King of Poland encouraged the Tsar to use military force against the Ottoman Empire in the south, and Poland even wanted to send troops to assist.

If the Tsar really agreed, then Russia's military focus would be on the Balkans for a long time.

At the same time, as an "ally" who had fought side by side with Russia, Poland made it more difficult for Russia to find an excuse to take action against it in the future.

This will seriously disrupt Russia's strategic deployment.

Of course, Stanislaw II did not have such great political strategies. Everything was fabricated by Zubov, who was familiar with Russia's strategic plans.

And for Potemkin, in addition to the issues at the national level, he personally hated Stanisław II.

Although he had not been in the bed with Catherine II for a long time, he was still the head of her harem. Any lover of the Tsar had to get his approval before he could have a stable job.

It would have been fine if this Pole had only sung for the Tsar before, but now he dared to climb into the Tsar's bed without his permission.

This is a complete challenge to his authority and must be punished!

More than an hour later, Potemkin finished writing two letters with great difficulty, handed them to his confidant Popov, and gave him detailed instructions.

One of the letters was addressed to Zubov, asking him to arrange for a young woman to approach and seduce Stanislaw II, and to have the Tsar see them being intimate. It didn't matter if the Pole didn't take the bait, as long as the woman kissed him at the right moment and then claimed to the Tsar that they were in love.

Given Potemkin and Zubov's control over the Winter Palace, it was not difficult to get the servants around Stanislaw II to confirm this matter.

Another letter was written to General Mikhail Kakhovsky, ordering him to speed up preparations for war and to be ready to attack Poland by the end of the year.

After Popov left, Potemkin began to cough violently again, and the blood spurting out of his nose dyed half of the bed sheet red.

Several servants rushed over to support him, but found that he had fainted.

……

Targowica, eastern Poland.

More than a dozen Polish conservative nobles, including Francisko Branicki and Gorsakowski, came out of Count Potocki's manor one after another, all with solemn expressions.

At the meeting just now, they unanimously agreed to secretly gather the troops loyal to them and jointly request Russia to send troops to intervene in the situation in Poland.

If Joseph had not reminded them, the Poles would never have thought that it was not the Polish Slavs who betrayed their country and brought in the Russian invaders, but these Polish and Lithuanian nobles with pure blood and long family heritage. In fact, they were already dissatisfied from the moment the Polish Constitution was promulgated.

The new constitution deprives them of their veto power and strictly prohibits political bribery, making both bribery and acceptance of bribes a felony.

Bribery was openly practiced in the past. In order to achieve their political goals, Russians or Prussians would often spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of zlotys to buy votes in their hands.

With the enactment of the Constitution, they can no longer make this kind of money.

In the following period, the Polish Parliament successively abolished the privileges of the nobles to execute serfs, recruit private soldiers, and levy taxes on trade activities within the territory on the grounds that they "violated the principle of harmlessness."

So, the angry conservative families, led by Potocki, decided to abolish the constitution with the help of Russia.

This is the notorious traitorous organization in Polish history - the Targowica Confederation.

However, under Joseph's advice, Prince Poniatowski had removed radical clauses from the constitution, such as "completely abolishing serfdom" and "collecting tithes from the nobility to strengthen armaments." This made the formation of the Targowica Confederation half a year later than in history.

This means Poland has half a year more time to prepare.

When Branicki returned home, he immediately gathered his family members and began to prepare for rebellion.

However, just as they were secretly recalling their former private cavalry and contacting close local troops, agents of the Committee for Freedom and Security arrested six core members of the Branicki family.

Due to the one-year-long preparation, the Polish intelligence organization had sufficient evidence. A week later, the six people were prosecuted by the Polish Prosecutor's Office for "organizing a riot."

At the same time, a large number of people from the Targowica Confederation, including the Potocki family, the Ankevich family, the Zabeło family, and Archbishop Massarski, were purged by the intelligence services.

There were more than seventy indictments on the desk of the Polish Supreme Court, and they were immediately busy like ants moving house before a heavy rain.

Of course, some members of the Targowica Confederation acted extremely cautiously, which resulted in the Freedom and Security Committee being unable to obtain any concrete evidence of their crimes.

For example, several members of the Reuski family immediately retreated to their estate in northern Ukraine after the incident, but they have been trying to send people to contact Russia.

Half a month later, three fanatical followers of the Bal Alliance broke into Reuski's house, killed all people with the surname Reuski, and then committed suicide by taking poison.

At this point, the Targowica Confederation, one of Poland's biggest hidden dangers, was basically wiped out.

However, one morning, two members of the Potocki family were kidnapped by a group of armed gangsters on their way from Warsaw Prison to the Polish High Court for trial, and their whereabouts are unknown.

In the British Embassy in Poland, west of Warsaw, Stanislaw Potocki looked at British Ambassador Daniel Jason with a pale face, and bowed with lingering fear:

"Thank you for your help. The Potocki family will always remember your kindness."

Jason handed two cups of tea to him and his second son respectively, and said with a sad and angry look:

"I cannot sit idly by and watch a witch hunt happen. Your family has inherited great honor, but now you are being accused of crimes by a group of lowly people."

(End of this chapter)