GEOROE CZARTORYSKI, SOD of Prince Adam Cassimir, and perhaps the most eminent of the family, was born at Warsaw on the 14th of January 1770. Having received a careful education, for the completion of which he visited France and Eogland, he was intro duced into the public! service ; and on the second partition of Poland in 1792 he joined the Lithuanian army nnder Zabiello, in the campaign against Russia. On the destruction of that army and the division of the last remnant of the country between the three invading powers, Adam Czartoryeki MS, by command of Catharine, sent with his brother Constantine as hostages to St. Petersburg. Here he was attached to the Grand-duke Alexander Pavlovich, whose favour he obtained by his prudence and ability. So high a reputation indeed did be gain for these qualities, that iu 1797 the Emperor Paul appointed him ambassador to Sardinia. Alexander soon after his accession to the throne recalled Czartoryski, and in 1802 appointed him assistant to the minister of foreign affairs. He was present at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805, and in 1807 took part officially in the conferences at Tilsit. He withdrew afterwards from public life, but in 1813 accompanied the Emperor Alexander to Vienna and to Paris. In the various changes which occurred in Polish affairs during the following years Adam Czartoryski, when not an actor was an observant spectator ; hut entertaining feelings of strong personal friendship for Alexander, ho continued to repose confidence in his good intentions towards his country, and he did what he could to induce his country men to remain quiet. At the same time he appears to have laboured in secret to keep up a spirit of nationality. When the Academy of Wilna was raised into a university in 1803, Czartoryski was appointed curator of It. The students on more than one occasion showed symptoms of dissatisfaction with the Russian yoke, and the tyranny of the Grand-duke Constantine at length excited them to such a degree that it was easy for the Rimini police to establish a charge of sedition against them. Constantine directed the most severe measures
I to be adopted. A large number of the students were arrested and thrown into prison, others were sent to Siberia, or forced to serve as common soldiers in the army. Czartoryski indignantly protested against these proceedings, and finding his remonstrances disregarded, be threw up his office. His successor, Novossiltzoff stated in his report to the emperor on the condition of the university, that "the Prince Czartoryski by his occupancy during twenty years of the curatorship of the University of Wilna, has thrown back for at least a century the amalgamation of Lithuania with Russia." On the breaking out of the Polish revolution in 1830, Czartoryski entered with all his heart into the popular movement. As president of the provisional government he summoned a national diet in Decem ber 1830. The diet in January 1831 declared the throne of Poland vacant, and elected Adam Czartoryski president of the national government. The prince in accepting the office offered the half of his immense fortune to the public service. Under his direction vigorous measures were adopted, and for awhile success attended the Polish arms. But in addition to the insufficiency of the national resources for opposing the enormous power of Russia, and the covert aid which Prussia afforded to the Czar, there was the perhaps greater evil of internal dissension. This eventually broke out into open insur rection at Warsaw, August 15, 1831, and the government of Adam Czartoryski formally resigned its functions. The prince himself volunteered to serve as a private in the national army ; but the national cause was crushed. Adam Czartoryski was specially excluded from the benefits of the general amnesty, and his estates were con fiscated. But he escaped in safety to Paris, where on the proceeds of his Austrian property he has since resided, and where he and his wife, a member of the eminent Polish family Sapieha, have been foremost in every friendly service to the less affluent among their expatriated fell° w-coun trym en.