Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"By the mid-18th century, the once mighty Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was in a state of political paralysis, at least in part because of the law of liberium veto, which enabled any single Polish nobleman to prevent the passage of any law that failed to meet his approval. . . . The partition agreement--known as the 'alliance of the three black eagles' from the national symbol of all three powers--was signed in Vienna on February 19, 1772. . . . Troops of the three powers entered Poland in August, and although Polish resistance was fierce, it ended with the fall of Kraków in April 1773 to the Russian General Suvorov, who deported the entire surviving garrison to Siberia. Some 100,000 Poles died resisting the occupation. . . . Poland lost 30% of its territory and some 4 million people--but the partition sparked a revival in Polish national patriotism that would cause problems for the conquerors for centuries to come." [Furtado: 1001 Days] "Thus in Poland the French Revolution made a profound impression. France had long been the chief foreign power in whom Poles hoped to find backing against the joint greed of the Prussians, Russians and Austrians . . ." [Hobsbawm: Revolution, p, 80]