Seweryn Rzewuski

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Seweryn Rzewuski (13 March 1743 – 11 December 1811) was a Polish nobleman, writer and military leader. He served as Field Hetman of the Crown (head of the royal army) and as Voivode of the Podolian Voivodeship. He was one of the leaders of the Targowica Confederation, which supported Russian influence in Poland.

Born in Podhorce, he was the son of Hetman Wacław Rzewuski and Anna Lubomirska, and had nine siblings. He studied in Warsaw and from 1754 was educated abroad by L. A. Caraccioli, traveling to Austria, Italy and France. He married Konstancja Małgorzata Lubomirska and had three children: Wacław, Izabella and Maria.

In politics, he helped elect Stanisław II Augustus in 1764 and later was an envoy to the Repnin Sejm. He clashed with the Russian ambassador, and in 1767, together with his father, was kidnapped by Russian forces and held in Kaluga; he returned to Poland in 1773. In 1775 the king awarded him the Orders of St. Stanislaus and the White Eagle, but this did not heal their quarrel.

At the Four-Year Sejm he led the Hetman faction and opposed reforms that would weaken hetman power. He was later stripped of the hetman title for not replying to the Military Commission. In 1791 he went to Russia and helped Catherine the Great present Russia’s view that it should interfere in Polish affairs only if asked. He helped found the Targowica Confederation and had earlier supported the Radom Confederation in 1767. After the Second Partition of Poland he withdrew from politics and moved to Galicia and Lodomeria (then Austrian territory).

During the Kościuszko Uprising he was condemned in absentia, with his property confiscated, and was symbolically executed in effigy on 29 September 1794. He died in Vienna in 1811.