Marie Walewska

Marie Walewska, Countess Walewska (née Łączyńska; ; 7 December 1786 – 11 December 1817) was a Polish noblewoman in the court of Napoleon I who used her influence to sway the emperor towards the creation of an independent Polish state. In her later years she married count Philippe Antoine d'Ornano, an influential Napoleonic officer. Early life Walewska was born as first child into a wealthy noble family in Kiernozia, to Count Mathieu (Mateusz) Łączyński, a landowner and starosta of Gostyń; and Eva Zaborowska, whose family was wealthy as well. Walewska had six siblings: Benedykt Jozef, Hieronim, Teodor, Honorata, Katarzyna and Urszula-Teresa. She grew up in her ancestral home, Kiernozia palace, where she received upper-class education. Nicholas Chopin, Frédéric Chopin's father, for instance, was one of her tutors. In 1794 her father participated in the military struggle for Polish independence and was mortally wounded at the Battle of Maciejowice, leaving behind a widow, seven children (five of them surviving into adulthood), and a dwindling livelihood. A year later Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy and the Russian Empire effectively ended the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth national sovereignty through the third partition of Poland, when the Łączyński lands were incorporated into Prussia.