Exhibits

Background

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth formed under the Union of Lublin in 1569, the Commonwealth was a unique federal state in Europe, uniting the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under a common monarch and political system. In 1764, Stanislaw II August Poniatowski ascended the throne as the last monarch before the partitions, whose tragic culmination in 1795 brought an end to the state.

During his reign, the postal system was reorganized. Wax seals and ink handstamps were introduced, and postal rates were standardized through a document titled “Complete Postal Tariff for Letters, both to Foreign Countries, in the Crown as well as in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.” Military correspondence, under a decree issued by the Crown and Lithuanian Grand Hetmans in 1775, was exempted from postage. To confirm this privilege, official seals, unit handstamps, and handstamps inscribed “MILITARIA” were applied. Most of these covers are known today only from one or two surviving examples. During the Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, Warsaw saw for the first time the introduction of military censorship of correspondence, marked by distinctive wax seals bearing the inscription “Bezpieczeństwo” (“Security”).

Plan

This exhibit presents a unique collection comprising three wax seals and thirteen MILITARIA handstamps (twelve different types, out of sixteen recorded), representing one of the rarest markings applied to 18th-century military correspondence. On the final two display sheets, four covers are shown from among only six surviving examples. One is preserved in the Museum of Post and Telecommunications in Wroclaw, while another belongs to the private collection of Mr. Andrzej Kłosiński.

For the first time, it is demonstrated that during the Kościuszko Uprising military censorship of correspondence extended not only to outgoing but also to incoming mail – a valuable contribution to reconstructing the communication practices of that era. On Sheet 4, two covers are displayed from the royal chancery of King Stanislaw August Poniatowski, addressed to Tadeusz Kościuszko. Both bear the exceptionally rare ink handstamp of the chancery. The exhibit also illustrates two distinct methods of marking military correspondence exempt from postage: by means of MILITARIA handstamps and handwritten annotations of the same wording. This collection includes the overwhelming majority of all known surviving covers of this kind. Most items has known provenience (exRachmanow, exMikulski, exMikstein). Apart from the examples presented here, only eight others are known to the author (two in museum), making this one of the most comprehensive and valuable studies devoted to the military postal correspondence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.