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During the War of the Polish Partitions, which Ogiński called the Polish Revolution, he fought under Kościuszko against the forces of Catherine the Great by leading a commando unit in northern Lithuania, where he wrought havoc with Russian supply lines. Ultimately, the war was lost, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria, and ceased to exist. Ogiński, who had earned a Russian price on his head, escaped to Vienna disguised a grand lady’s servant. He spent the next five years in penniless exile, travelling to Italy, Constantinople, the Balkans and everywhere else in Europe, ending up in Paris, seeking the restoration of the Polish state by diplomatic means. Ultimately he failed, but was able to rejoin his wife, Izabela, at her parents’ estate at Brzeziny, now in Prussia, where their two sons, Tadeusz and Franciszek Ksawery – known as Xavier – were born in 1800 and 1801 respectively. When Tsar Alexander I ascended the Russian throne that same year, Ogiński, whose marriage to Izabela had disintegrated and ended in divorce, sought his permission to return to whatever would pass for home. The Tsar readily agreed, and Ogiński was not only rehabilitated but was appointed senator at the Court of St Petersburg. He was able to reclaim his family estate at Zalesie, half was between Vilnius and Minsk in what used to be Lithuania. He settled there with his second wife, the Italian-born Maria Neri, lately widowed on the death of Ogiński’s former comrade-in-arms, Kajetan Nagurski.
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