Stanisław August Poniatowski in the context of "Catherine the Great"

The Kingdom of Poland (Polish: Królestwo Polskie; Latin: Regnum Poloniae) was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed intermittently from the coronation of the first king, Bolesław I the Brave, in 1025, to the collapse of the state as a result of the partitions and the abdication of the last monarch, Stanisław August Poniatowski, in 1795.

Until 1320, only a few of the most powerful princes of the Piast dynasty managed to have themselves crowned as kings, due to the division of the realm among members of the ruling dynasty and the absence of a single strong center of power. For a brief period between 1300 and 1306, the Kingdom of Poland was ruled by the Bohemian kings, creating a situation of personal union between the two states. In 1320, following the coronation of Władysław the Elbow-high, subsequent Polish rulers were crowned as kings.

The Dnieper–Bug Canal (alternatively the Dnepr-Bug Canal), or the Dneprovsko-Bugsky Canal, is the longest inland ship canal in Belarus. It connects the Mukhavets River (a tributary of the Bug River) and the Pina River (a tributary of the Pripyat River). It is managed by Dneprobugvodput.

The artificial channel dug between Kobryn and Pinsk was originally named the Royal Canal (Polish: Kanał Królewski), after the King of Poland Stanisław August Poniatowski (r. 1764–1795), who initiated its construction. It forms an important part of the transportation artery linking the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. The total length of the canal system from Brest to Pinsk is 196 km (122 mi), including the 105 km (65 mi) long artificial waterway.

The Constitution of 3 May 1791, titled the Government Act, was a written constitution for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that was adopted by the Great Sejm that met between 1788 and 1792. The Commonwealth was a dual monarchy comprising the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; the new constitution was intended to address political questions following a period of political agitation and gradual reform that began with the Convocation Sejm of 1764 and the election that year of the Commonwealth's last monarch, Stanisław August Poniatowski. It was the first codified, modern constitution (possessing checks and balances and a tripartite separation of powers) in Europe and the second in the world, after that of the United States.

The Constitution sought to implement a more effective constitutional monarchy, introduced political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the government's protection, mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. It banned pernicious parliamentary institutions such as the liberum veto, which had put the Sejm at the mercy of any single deputy, who could veto and thus undo all the legislation adopted by that Sejm. The Commonwealth's neighbours reacted with hostility to the adoption of the Constitution. King Frederick William II of Prussia broke the Prussian alliance with the Commonwealth, joining with Imperial Russia under Catherine the Great and the anti-reform Targowica Confederation of Polish-Lithuanian magnates, to defeat the Commonwealth in the Polish–Russian War of 1792.

The Bar Confederation (Polish: Konfederacja barska; 1768–1772) was an association of Polish nobles (szlachta) formed at the fortress of Bar in Podolia (now Ukraine), in 1768 to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russian political influence and against King Stanislaus II Augustus with Polish reformers, who were attempting to limit the power of the Commonwealth's wealthy magnates.

The founders of the Bar Confederation included the magnates Adam Stanisław Krasiński, the bishop of Kamieniec, Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł, Casimir Pulaski, his father and brothers and Michał Hieronim Krasiński. Its creation led to a civil war and contributed to the First Partition of Poland. Maurice Benyovszky was the best known European Bar Confederation volunteer, supported by Roman Catholic France and Austria. Some historians consider the Bar Confederation the first Polish uprising.

The Polish–Russian War of 1792 (also, War of the Second Partition, and in Polish sources, War in Defence of the Constitution) was fought between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth on one side, and the Targowica Confederation (conservative nobility of the Commonwealth opposed to the new Constitution of 3 May 1791) and the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great on the other.

The war took place in two theaters: a northern in Lithuania and a southern in what is now Ukraine. In both, the Polish forces retreated before the numerically superior Russian forces, though they offered significantly more resistance in the south, thanks to the effective leadership of Polish commanders Prince Józef Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kościuszko. During the three-month-long struggle several battles were fought, but no side scored a decisive victory. The largest success of the Polish forces was the defeat of one of the Russian formations at the Battle of Zieleńce on 18 June; in the aftermath of the battle the Polish highest military award, Virtuti Militari, was established. The Russians' greatest success in this war was the Battle of Mir on 11 June (O.S. 31 May). The war ended when the Polish King Stanisław August Poniatowski decided to seek a diplomatic solution, asked for a ceasefire with the Russians and joined the Targowica Confederation, as demanded by the Russian Empire.