Polish-Prussian alliance

The Polish-Prussian alliance was an alliance signed on 29 March 1790 in Warsaw between representatives of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia tried to take opportunity of the Russian Empire's wars with the Ottoman Empire and Sweden and move the weak Commonwealth into its sphere of influence. Some factions in the Commonwealth deemed this as an opportunity to shake free from decades of Russian control.

Each country promised to aid the other in case of war, and in a secret clause, the Commonwealth was to cede Gdańsk and Toruń to Prussia. However, the Great Sejm in 1791 declared that Commonwealth territories could not be divided.Piotr Stefan Wandycz, "The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present", Routledge (UK), 2001, ISBN 0-415-25491-4, [http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&vid=ISBN0415254914&id=vdS_WBHGBcYC&pg=PA128&lpg=PA128&dq=Polish-Lithuanian+Commonwealth+%22constitutional+monarchy%22&sig=58rJw1kZ92r6M7GxqSSHZd6eAFo Google Print, p.128] ] The Treaty of Jassy in January 1792 ended the Russian war with the Ottomans, and in April of that year the First Coalition wars began, forcing Prussia to move the bulk of its forces west to deal with revolutionary France. Russia, angered by Poland's attempt to move out of its influence, invaded Poland in May. Prussia refused to aid Poland, and when in January 1793 a Prussian corps entered Greater Poland, it was not as a Commonwealth ally, but instead to guarantee Prussia's share of spoils in the Second Partition of Poland.

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