Chapter 601: The Poor Man and the Great Victory

Chapter 602 The Poor Man and the Great Victory

There were still 40 minutes until the constitutional vote of the Polish Great Sejm.

Bishop Ignacy Massarski, another key member of the future Targowica Confederation, saw from the car window that the street in the distance was blocked by dozens of cavalrymen, and was checking the passing carriages one by one.

He had a bad premonition in his heart, and immediately asked the driver to go around the alley next to him.

Not long after, he changed into servant's clothes, put on a felt hat, and walked towards the parliament hall alone, while letting the carriage go around in Warsaw.

Sure enough, he saw his political allies Count Branicki, Archbishop Gorsakowski and others were stopped by soldiers along the way.

However, he successfully got to the vicinity of the parliament hall with his inconspicuous clothes.

Seeing the parliamentarians passing by the door of the parliament hall, he immediately felt confident. He took off his hat and strode towards the parliament, muttering:

"Damn Poniatowski, he actually wanted to stop me in this way. This stupid constitution will never pass!"

He didn't believe that Prince Poniatowski dared to let the soldiers entangle him here in front of the parliamentarians.

Suddenly, a young noble in the crowd on both sides pointed at him and shouted:

"Isn't this the archbishop who is loyal to the Russians?"

Someone next to him immediately shouted:

"Yes, it's him!"

"Why can such a person participate in the Great Sejm?"

"He should vote in front of the Tsar, not in Poland!"

The speech delivered by Stanislaw II in the Winter Palace had long been transmitted back to Poland through Russian newspapers. People were all indignant at the extent of his flattery, which caused the king's reputation to be ruined.

The Polish nobles who were "loyal to Russia" mentioned in the speech had a tenfold worse reputation - people would always subconsciously forgive the king and think that it was these nobles who had deceived the king and made him kowtow to Russia.

Two young men bravely stood in front of Bishop Massarski and asked him why he wanted to be a slave to the Russians.

The latter shouted at him, but attracted more people to surround him.

Soon, the bell for voting came from the Great Sejm. Bishop Massarski was only 50 meters away from the parliament hall, but was blocked by the "high wall" formed by the people, and seemed to be far away from the horizon.

In this way, more than 70% of the pro-Russian parliamentarians and most of the leaders of the extreme conservatives failed to participate in the vote.

The king's party, liberals, centrists, and conservatives had reached a compromise long ago.

At 3 pm, the Great Sejm finally announced that Poland's new constitution was successfully passed with 268 votes in favor and 31 votes against.

Thousands of citizens around were suddenly excited, jumping wildly, hugging each other tightly, and bursting into thunderous cheers:

"Long live the new constitution!"

"Long live Poland!"

"Thank God, it really passed..."

"This is a victory for the Sejm, a victory for freedom!"

King Stanislaw II did not show up much during the vote, and only then hurriedly signed the constitution and swore to Archbishop Felix Turski that he would always be loyal to the constitution.

After that, he left the Sejm very low-key and rushed to St. Petersburg almost without delay.

When the people saw the king's motorcade, they all showed disdain and whispered:

"This poor guy who only knows how to please the Russians!"

"Ha, he got the throne by fucking a Russian woman."

"Fortunately, Prince Poniatowski is in charge of the government, otherwise Poland would have fallen into the hands of the Tsar long ago."

"That's right, without the promotion of His Royal Highness, our constitution would not have been born!"

"Long live His Royal Highness!"

"I heard that His Royal Highness is recruiting troops. Who will sign up with me?"

"I'll go!"

"I'll go too..."

As the crowd began to flock to the Tin Dome Square to celebrate, Count Branicki, Bishop Massarski and others finally regained their freedom.

However, the vote was over and nothing could be changed. If they wanted to overturn the constitution, they had to get the support of more than two-thirds of the members of the Great Sejm, that is, 260 members.

This was obviously impossible.

These people cursed Prince Poniatowski and the untouchables who dared to surround them, and at the same time, they all rushed to Count Stanislaw Potocki's house.

That night, the Polish ultra-conservative nobles headed by Count Potocki gathered together, all shouting with anger on their faces.

"The king and his lackeys deceived us and the whole of Poland! Today's vote is invalid!"

"Yes! We can never accept such a result!"

"We must try to reverse the current situation."

Standing in the middle of the crowd, Count Potocki waved his hand and shouted:

"All Poles should not be blinded by the Prussians and those royalist gangs. It is certain that only Russia can save our motherland!"

In order to "balance" their pro-Russian color, the ultra-conservatives slandered the Patriotic Party and the Royalist Party as being controlled by Prussia-it just so happened that Poland was currently in an alliance with Prussia.

Interestingly, in the eyes of the Patriotic Party and the small nobles, the king stood on the side of the pro-Russian forces.

Until late at night, Count Potocki announced that he would summon all the conservative nobles in Poland to hold a secret meeting in the town of Targowica in half a month to discuss the future of Poland.

However, what Potocki and others did not know was that after Prince Poniatowski received Joseph's reminder, he instructed the Freedom and Security Committee to closely monitor these extreme conservatives.

At this time, there were two servants in Count Potocki's house, and there were five others outside the house. They had heard the conspiracy clearly.

...

Slavonia, a southern province of Austria.

More than 2,000 Serbian rebels and hundreds of Bulgarian troops finally advanced to the defense line of the Austrian and Polish coalition forces after suffering 300 to 400 casualties under intensive shooting.

The Serbian commander who saw all this in the telescope was overjoyed. His brave soldiers only needed one charge to make the cowardly Austrians flee in all directions - this was the experience he had summed up from more than ten battles with the Austrian army.

However, just as he was looking forward to a great victory, a group of red and white cavalry suddenly emerged from behind the hills on the east side.

To be precise, those people were dressed in bright red uniforms with two towering white wings behind them.

With a low trumpet sound, the cavalry quickly formed a team and rushed towards the right wing of the Serbian army.

The rebel commander hurriedly ordered his cavalry to reinforce, but it was obvious that his poorly trained cavalry was intimidated by the overwhelming momentum of the red "Winged Angel" in front of them, and it took a long time before they timidly rushed to the infantry flank.