Franciszek Ksawery Branicki

Count Franciszek Ksawery Branicki (1730, Barwałd Górny – 1819) was a Polish nobleman of the Korczak coat of arms, magnate and one of the leaders of the Targowica Confederation. He was designated the following: Great Crown Podstoli in 1764, Ambassador in Berlin in 1765, Master of the Hunt of the Crown in 1766–1773, Artillery General of Lithuania in 1768–1773, Ambassador in Moscow in 1771, Field Crown Hetman in 1773 and Great Crown Hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1774–1794.

Branicki was awarded the Order of the White Eagle in December 1764. He married Aleksandra von Engelhardt, a niece of Prince Potemkin, in 1781.

He opposed the reforms of the Great Sejm (1788–1792), and supported the Hetman Party and the Targowica Confederation. He escaped the sentence of death he received in absentia from the Supreme Criminal Court during the Kościuszko Uprising (1794). He also fought a duel with the infamous Casanova, in which both were wounded but survived.



Remembrance
He is one of the figures immortalized in Jan Matejko's 1891 painting, Constitution of May 3, 1791.