Czartoryski family

Czartoryski family, the leading noble family of Poland in the 18th century, eclipsing the rival Potocki family in both power and prestige.

Although the members of the Czartoryski family trace their lineage back to the 14th-century noble Gedymin (Gediminas) of Lithuania, they first achieved widespread power through the efforts of Michał Fryderyk Czartoryski and his brother August Aleksander during the reigns of Kings Augustus II and Stanisław I in the early 18th century. The family, which sought the enactment of such constitutional reforms as the abolition of the liberum veto, attained the height of its influence in the mid-18th century in the court of Augustus III. The Czartoryski brothers possessed a very powerful ally in their brother-in-law, Stanisław Poniatowski, whose son became the last king of independent Poland, as Stanisław II, at the end of the century.

Although the Czartoryski family estate at Puławy was confiscated in 1794, during the Third Partition of Poland, the family continued to wield significant cultural power, notably through the princes Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski and Adam Jerzy Czartoryski.