Mnishek, Ursula

The daughter of the ordinate of Zamoysky and the governor of Podolsk, Jan Zamoysky (1716-1790) from his marriage with Ludwika Maria Ponyatovskaya (1728-1808), the elder sister of the Polish king. She received good home education, studied painting, was interested in literature and played in amateur performances.

In 1773 she married her cousin, the rich man Vincent Potocki (1740-1825). The marriage was unsuccessful and childless. On January 20, 1777, Pototsky preferred to divorce his wife, giving her the compensation of Lublin County , and went to Paris . According to the reports of British diplomats, at one time the Potemkin party in Warsaw was busy with the arrangement of his marriage with Countess Ursula, thereby trying to introduce the brightest member of the Polish aristocracy. Zamoyskaya herself was not averse to entering into a new alliance beneficial to herself, but all the efforts of the Polish supporters of Potemkin ended in nothing ^[3] .

On February 19, 1781, Ursula Zamoyskaya became the wife of his other cousin Count Mikhail Mnishek (1748-1806), who was “Lithuanian marshal” at the Polish court. The wedding took place in Warsaw in the church of the fathers of the Theatins and papal permission was required to marry.

Being the beloved niece of the Polish king, Countess Mniszek was one of his closest associates and often played the role of mistress at official receptions. It was said that it was for her that Poniatowski instructed the architect Dominico Merlini to reconstruct the palace in Demlin . In October 1781, in the residence of Count Mnishek in Vyshnevets, during his overseas trip, Grand Duke Pavel and his wife visited for several days. In honor of the heir, a grand dinner was arranged and a ball was attended by a large number of guests. In the spring of 1782, Ursula Mnishek and her husband first visited St. Petersburg, where she was presented to the court and allowed to small exits. In the capital's society, she gained a reputation not only as a beauty, but was also known for her painful pride and inaccessibility. At the same time, her famous portrait of D. G. Levitsky was executed.

In March 1787, the Mniszek couple escorted King Stanilaw Augustus to Kiev to meet with Catherine II . There, the empress admitted Countess Ursula to her bedroom and personally entrusted the imperial order of St. Catherine to her ^[4] . On the way back to Kherson, Mnisheki were introduced to Emperor Joseph II . In June of that year, Countess Ursula, in company with Madame Witt and at the head of twelve brave Polish ladies, boarded the merchant ship Catherine the Great in Kherson and sailed to Constantinople . Outwardly, their trip to the East, which lasted two months, was entertaining. Travelers brought musicians and tents with them, and on the way they rehearsed the tragedy of Racine . However, most historians are convinced that their mission was more of a reconnaissance than a tourist one, and was arranged by one of the European courts ^[5] .

On the eve of the Russo-Polish war, Countess Mniszek went to her mother in Vienna. Her departure caused a lot of disapproving reviews in Polish society. In 1793, she accompanied her husband to the Grodno Diet , where Count Mniszek refused to sign acts on the division of the Commonwealth and resigned as the great crown marshal. After the suppression of the Kosciuszko uprising by the highest rescript of November 21, 1794, Grodno was chosen as the main residence of King Stanislav-August. At this time, Countess Ursula and her family were in Warsaw. Having no means to live in the capital, she tried to get a passport for departure, but each time she was refused. The Little Men were almost ruined, the only thing left for them was the significantly devastated headquarters of Lublin, where they thought to go, losing their estate to Vishnevets to their creditors. Caring for the material well-being of his relatives, King Stanislav-August helped them as best he could and asked the empress for permission to live with him in Grodno. Having received permission, on June 12, 1795, Mnisheki arrived in Grodno and, together with numerous other relatives, settled in the royal castle ^[6] . In November 1795, Ponyatovsky refused the Polish crown.

Against the background of the idle life of Grodno, Ursula Mnishek and her mother tried first of all to preserve their condition. At court, they made up the Russian party and, in the struggle for influence on the king, intrigued much against the marshal of the royal court, Count Moshinsky and his chamberlain, Onufry Kiki. The little ones belonged to a small group of people who were allowed to travel with the king in mid-February 1797 to St. Petersburg. They were housed in the Marble Palace , where they were allocated a room. At the request of Emperor Paul I, in April 1797, Mnisheki was present at the coronation in Moscow, where Countess Ursula was granted the status of lady of the court. In the capital, the couple led a secular, extremely wasteful lifestyle, which seriously burdened the royal finances. After the death of Poniatowski in 1798, the Mnisheks returned to Poland and settled in Vyshnevets, where they were engaged in the improvement of the estate.

Widowed, Countess Ursula moved to the estate in Demblin, where, according to Prince A. B. Kurakin , she lived in complete solitude and could not be comforted after losing her husband ^[7] . In 1808, she and her daughters lived in Vienna, and then two years in Paris. Countess A. Pototskaya left many interesting words about her in her memoirs. According to her, very kind, but very short-sighted and ridiculously conceited, Countess Mnishek considered herself entitled to insist on the prerogatives of the blood princess. She almost never parted with the Order of St. Catherine, which is why in Vienna society she was nicknamed the Countess Star. In Paris, she gave magnificent, but very boring evenings, at which she invited seedy nobles and unknown authors, but even those, at the slightest opportunity, disappeared from her salon. And she did not even suspect what a ridiculous position she often put herself in. In the last years of her life, Countess Mnishek was wholly engaged in maintaining the splendor of her origin with the help of luxury and wealth ^[8] .

The exact date and place of her death is not known. The year 1808 indicated in the genealogy of the murals seems dubious. There is evidence that Countess Mnishek died in Lviv in 1816. Left a vast epistolary heritage ^[9] and memories. She was devoted to several Latin poems by Cardinal Angelo Durini and the famous song of Celestine Chaplik.

She had four children in marriage:

• Michael (1785-1785)
• Isabella (1790 / 92-1852), the heiress of the estate in Demblin, was married to Prince Dominic Radziwill on February 3, 1807, but was left by him for Theophila Moravian four weeks after the wedding. The divorce proceedings ended on January 15, 1809 and cost the prince 2 million gold. In 1814, she became the wife of Baron Augustus de Canon, the Marquis de Ville (1774-1857), who received the Polish name and title of Count Demblinsky from Emperor Alexander I.
• Karol Philippe (1794-1846), studied in Kremenets, a member of the judicial educational commission, heraldry, collector and bibliophile. His son is the artist Count Andrei Mnishek (1823-1905).
• Paulina Constance (1798-1863), was born in St. Petersburg, the godson of Emperor Paul I, from September 29, 1818 the wife of Prince Anthony Yablonovsky (1793-1855).