Chapter 621 Eastern European Chess Game

Chapter 622 Eastern European Chess Game

Potemkin tore off the hot towel covering his head and immediately started coughing violently.

He had contracted a serious fever in Iasi and had not even handled official business in person recently, but at this moment he forced himself to come to the table and picked up the feather pen with trembling hands.

As the de facto prime minister and defense minister of Russia, he saw at a glance what Stanislaw II wanted 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 strengthening its national strength.

If Poland is allowed to continue to develop, it will be difficult for Russia to bite off Poland in at most 5 years.

So he has been mobilizing troops since more than half a year ago to prepare for a war against Poland.

At this time, the King of Poland instigated the Tsar to use troops against the Ottomans in the south, and Poland even had to send troops to assist.

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

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

This would seriously disrupt Russia's strategic deployment.

Of course, Stanislaw II did not have such a powerful political strategy at all. Everything was fabricated by Zubov, who was familiar with Russia's strategic plan.

And for Potemkin, in addition to the national issues, he personally hated Stanislaw II.

Although he had not "slept" with Catherine II for a long time, he was always the head of her harem. Any lover of the Tsar had to get his approval before he could "take office" safely.

And this Pole had just sung for the Tsar before, but now he dared to climb into the Tsar's bed without his permission.

This was completely challenging his authority and must be punished!

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

The letter above was written to Zubov, asking him to arrange for a young woman to approach and seduce Stanislaw II, and to design a plan for the Tsar to see the two of 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 time and then claimed to the Tsar that they were in love.

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

The other letter was written to General Mikhail Kahovsky, ordering him to speed up the preparations for war and to be ready to attack Poland before the end of the year.

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

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

...

Targowica Town, 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 army loyal to them and jointly request Russia to send troops to intervene in the situation in Poland.

If it weren't for Joseph's reminder, the Poles would never have thought that it was not the Polish Slavs who betrayed the country and brought 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 deprived them of their veto power. And political bribery is strictly prohibited. Bribery and bribery will be felonies.

Bribery could be carried out openly in the past. In order to achieve their political intentions, Russians or Prussians often spend tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of zlotys to buy votes in their hands.

With the promulgation of the constitution, they can no longer make this kind of money.

In the following period, the Polish Parliament successively abolished the privileges of nobles such as killing serfs, recruiting private soldiers, and levying taxes on trade activities in the territory on the grounds of "violating the principle of harmlessness".

So, the angry conservative family, led by Potocki, made the decision to abolish the constitution with the help of Russia.

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

However, at the suggestion of Joseph, Prince Poniatowski has removed radical clauses in the constitution such as "completely abolishing serfdom" and "collecting tithes from nobles to strengthen armaments", which made the formation of the Targowica Confederation half a year later than in history.

That is to say, Poland has more than half a year of preparation time.

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

However, just as they secretly recalled their former private cavalry and contacted the local army with close ties, agents of the Freedom and Security Committee arrested six core members of the Branicki family.

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

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

There were more than 70 indictments on the desk of the Polish Supreme Court, and they were busy like ants moving before the rain.

Of course, some people in the Tagovica Alliance acted extremely cautiously, which led to the Freedom and Security Committee being unable to obtain tangible evidence of their crimes.

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

Half a month later, three fanatical believers of the Bar Alliance sneaked into Lewski's house, killed all the people named Lewski, and then committed suicide by taking poison.

At this point, the Tagovica Alliance, 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 gunmen on their way from a Warsaw prison to the Polish High Court for trial, and their whereabouts are unknown.

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

"Thank you for your help. Your kindness will be forever remembered by the Potocki family."

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

"I cannot sit back and watch a political persecution take place. Your family has inherited great honor, and now you are being charged with a crime imposed by a group of despicable people."