Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess

Trawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Adam Zamoyski has revealed the dramatic life of his great-great-great grandmother, an uneducated, vulnerable girl cast into a man’s world.Trawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Adam Zamoyski has revealed the dramatic life of his great-great-great grandmother, an uneducated, vulnerable girl cast into a man's world. Her aristocratic position enmeshed her in high politics and close encounters with Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin, Rousseau, Joseph II, Marie-Antoinette and Tsar Alexander I, and earned her the enmity of Catherine the Great. She lived through revolution and no less than five wars, in which her cherished homes were devastated, her possessions looted and her children scattered. Caught up in tempestuous love affairs which led her to nervous breakdown and the brink of suicide, exploited by her lovers, she remained undaunted and liberated herself through education. And, unusually for her time, she became a caring mother devoted to her children. She learned much by travelling extensively around Europe at a time of political and ideological change, and her... A brilliant excavation of the life of bestselling historian Adam Zamoyskis great-great-great-great grandmother, a princess and pioneer of education who created the first museum in Poland. This is an unknown history brought to startling light for the first time. Izabela the Valiant is a story of a vulnerable but resilient women caught up in extraordinary events a story that must be told. In the late 18th century, Europe sat at a crossroads, the formerly rococo world shattered by the French Revolution and then transformed by Napoleons agenda. Social values, the religious landscape, the positions of royalty were morphing. Izabela is a fascinating route into this world; buffeted by conflicting forces, her life provides an insight into what these changes meant for real people living through them. Inherited values and conventional notions of honour and loyalty to the throne were challenged by the new doctrine of sacrifice in the service of the nation. The sentimentality and pragmatism of the eighteenth century morphed respectively into the Romantic movement and a new realpolitik. By following this creative, forward-thinking woman who sat at the centre of power and held many important mens affections, Zamoyskis charming and engrossing biography will open up a stormy period of late eighteenth, early nineteenth century Polish history.