Their bands under Ignaty Malchewsky, Michael Pac and Prince Charles Radziwill ravaged the land in every direction, won several engagements over the Russians, and at last, utterly ignoring the king, sent envoys on their own account to the principal European powers.
Its leaders, Stanislaw Malachowski, Hugo Kollontaj and Ignaty Potocki, were men of character and capacity, and its measures were correspondingly vigorous.
Before the opposition could remonstrate, the marshal of the diet produced the latest foreign despatches, which unanimously predicted another partition, whereupon, at the solemn adjuration of Ignaty Potocki, King Stanislaus exhorted the deputies to accept the new constitution as the last means of saving their country, and himself set the example by swearing to defend it.
The army was at once despatched to the frontier; the male population was called to arms, and Ignaty Potocki was sent to Berlin to claim the assistance stipulated by the treaty of the, 9th of March 1791.
The focus of Polish nationality was now transferred from Warsaw, where the Targowicians and their Russian patrons reigned supreme, to Leipzig, whither the Polish patriots, Kosciuszko, Kollontaj and Ignaty Potocki among the number, assembled from all quarters.