Patent of the Order of the White Eagle 1791 - for General Ignacy Wodzinski, adjutant to King Stanislaw August Poniatowski

Patent for the awarding of the Order of the White Eagle to Ignacy Wodzinski, Major General and adjutant to King Stanislaw Poniatowski, Knight of the Order of St. Stanislaus dated 1790, dated Warsaw, December 23, 1791. Autograph "Stanislaus Augustus Rex", great crown seal. Bifolium, 23.5 x 39 cm.

General Ignacy Wodziński

Ignacy of Wodzin Wodzinski of the Jastrzębiec coat of arms was born in 1745, as heir to the village of Kunki near Tomaszow Lubelski. On November 20, 1765, he joined the Regiment of the Crown Horse Guards with the rank of ensign. Two years later he was promoted to brigadier with the rank of captain, and on October 31, 1774 he was promoted to major. On August 30, 1775, he became adjutant to the head of the Cadet Corps with the rank of lieutenant colonel and, from September 8, 1783, with the rank of colonel. On September 18, 1793, he received the rank of major general.

He participated in the Kosciuszko Uprising. He must have distinguished himself by his honesty and trustworthiness, because from July 9, 1794 he presided over the court for officers of the foot guard. During the siege of Warsaw by the Russian and Prussian armies, he stayed in the city and took an active part in the fighting, commanding, among other things, on July 18, 1794, "from over the Vistula to the Pow±zkowska turnpikes."

Previous sources stated that Wodziński, from the time of the Kosciuszko Uprising, served as de facto commandant of the Cadet Corps, popularly known as the Knights' School. However, according to the latest findings (J. Piłatowicz, Szkolnictwo wojskowe na ziemiach polskich do 1795 roku, Siedlce 2018, p. 253), he was also formally appointed as such on November 30, 1794.

The king wrote in an order published in Gazeta Warszawska No. 62 of 1794: "When the fatal fate has destroyed all means of maintaining a further Corps of Cadets, since both the public treasury and my treasury are deprived of all income, when all national governmental authorities to which the Corps of Cadets was pertinent have disappeared, I am compelled to see, yet with my most heartfelt regret, to give this ordinance to the born Ignacy Wodziński, Major General of the crown army, command in the said Corps."

After the liquidation of the Cadet Corps, in January 1795 Wodziński, as fliegeladiutant (personal adjutant) of King Stanislaw August, went with him into exile in Grodno. He died in 1815.

Patent of the Order of the White Eagle

The nomination patent bears the date of December 23, 1791*, so it dates from the year of the adoption of the May 3 Constitution. On the same day, the king also conferred Poland's highest order on Tadeusz Rostocki, a supporter of its introduction, and Kajetan Wyleżyński, regent of the greater crown chancellery. Although Stanislaw Loza points out that the distinction for the trusted general was sought by chamberlain Onufry Kicki, it can also be linked to the king's personal affection. The Order of the White Eagle for Wodzinski arrived a year after the award of the Order of St. Stanislaus, which was typical of the time of Stanislaus Poniatowski.

During the royal Polish period, there were about a thousand and one hundred awards of the Order of the White Eagle, but only a negligible number of patents attesting to such an award have survived to the present day. The authors of the fundamental work For the Fatherland and the Nation. 300 Years of the Order of the White Eagle, Warsaw 2005 reached only five such patents in public collections (items 182, 237-240), while in parallel they reached forty-five order stars. According to my findings, there are at least two other patents in public collections for Marshal Waclaw Zakrzewski and Marshal Michal Giełgud.

The rarity of such patents on the collector's market is similarly shaped. The patent of theOrder of the White Eagle is known to me only from the former collection of Helena and Tadeusz Kwiatkowski, now in a private collection in Poland (R. Wielińska, Collection of Helena and Tadeusz Kwiatkowski in the United States, Lodz 2006). The patent of the Order of the White Eagle was not even listed in the famous collection of manuscripts of Prof. Tomasz Niewodniczański!

At the same time, according to the findings of the preparer of this study, the patent of the Order of the White Eagle was offered on the auction market only once, at the 50th anniversary Lamus auction. The document was issued to Antoni Count Krasicki (1736-1800). It bore the signature of King Stanislaw Poniatowski, but did not bear the crown seal. As a result, the document did not reach the Crown Metrics, and the grant was not recognized and included in later inventories. Despite this, the document was offered at auction as a rarity.

Unlike orders, documents are characterized by much less permanence. Despite the large number of awards of the Order of the White Eagle during the royal period, the number of surviving patents is small. The handmade paper on which the patents were drawn was easily degraded, soggy and damaged. Not without significance were also the numerous wars that passed through the Polish lands. In view of the above, documents stored outside the archival collections most often did not survive the more than two hundred years that separate us from the times of royal Poland. The patent offered in the current auction concerns a valid and undoubted grant. It represents an exceptional rarity and it is not out of the question that the present offering will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase this type of memento for your collection.

*M. Męclewska, Chevaliers and Statutes of the Order of the White Eagle 1705-2008, Warsaw 2008, item 1066 gives the date of the order as December 23, 1794. In doing so, she cites S. Łoza, History of the Order of the White Eagle, Warsaw 1922. However, this one lists four awards under 1794 (p. 54), among which Wodziński's name does not appear. A similar discrepancy in the date of the patent and the date given by S. Łoza concerns the document for Teodor Szydłowski. It bears the date of November 18, 1780, while Loza gives the year 1778 (cf. For the Fatherland and the Nation. 300 lat Orderu Orła Białego, Warsaw 2005, p. 330, item 182). In view of the above, the information about the awarding of the order in 1794 should be considered a simple mistake in the date.

The description was prepared by Julian Skelnik