Marriage, affairs and children
On 19 November 1761, in Wołczyn, she married her second cousin, Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, thus becoming a princess. Her son Adam Jerzy Czartoryski wrote in his memoirs that prior to the marriage, 16-year-old Izabela fell ill with smallpox and that his aunt, groom's sister Elżbieta Izabela Lubomirska, in horror at the bride's pockmarked face, tried in vain to prevent the marriage to her brother. Czartoryski had a vast estate, was known for his elegance, was a connoisseur of literature and art, wrote plays himself, spoke over a dozen languages, including Arabic, Turkish and Persian, and was a future commander of the Corps of Cadets. The real reason for the wedding, was to bind two influential families who were related to each other. Georg Detlov Flemming gave his daughter Izabela 800,000 zlotys and extensive estates as a dowry.
After the wedding, the young couple settled in Oleszyce (now in the Carpathian Voivodeship) and spent the winter months in the Blue Palace (pl. Pałac Błękitny, Palais Zamoysky) in Warsaw. The Princess felt uncomfortable there – her husband treated her disrespectfully, and she had to endure humiliation from her sister-in-law Izabela Lubomirska. However, she enjoyed the affection of her cousin, the future King of Poland Stanisław Poniatowski, who defended her and later became one of her lovers.
Feeling uncomfortable in her estates, the Princess traveled abroad with her husband, accompanying him disguised as a male page. This sometimes caused misunderstandings; for example, in Frankfurt am Main she was mistaken for a Danish prince, and in Mainz she even became the victim of sexual harassment by an older woman. These trips played a significant role in Czartoryska's intellectual development, which her husband also encouraged. Together they visited Jean-Jacques Rousseau and were also entertained in the salons of the French aristocracy.
She was rumored to have had an affair with the Russian ambassador to Poland, Nikolai Vasilyevich Repnin, who was alleged to have fathered her son Adam George Czartoryski. She had also an affair with the Armand Louis de Gontaut, Duke de Lauzun, who says himself in his "Mémoires" he fathered her second son Konstanty Adam.
In Paris in 1772, she met Benjamin Franklin, subsequently a leader of the American Revolution, and the French philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, who were bringing new ideas to the old order.
Even during the lifetime of Augustus III, who died in 1763, the Czartoryski party, the Familia, sought to seize power in Poland with Russian support. Prince Adam Casimir was initially proposed as the new king, and was also encouraged to ascend the Polish throne by Tsar Peter III during his visit to Saint Petersburg in 1762. Adam Casimir, who was more interested in literature, art, and science, declined, claiming that he did not feel capable of taking responsibility for a state sinking into anarchy. Empress Catherine II, who took power in Russia after the overthrow and murder of her husband Peter III, also rejected his candidacy. She feared that his wealth and intellectual talents would make him too independent; he also knew from his Warsaw envoy Nikolai Repnin and King Frederick II of Prussia that the Czartoryskis intended to abolish the liberum veto and introduce reforms that would threaten Russia's dominance in the state. Finally, in 1765, the new ruler was also Stanisław Poniatowski, a former favorite of Catherine, who belonged to the family and took the name Stanisław August after his coronation; husband Adam Kazimierz had to be content with the post of marshal of the convocation sejm.
After the election of the new ruler, Izabela and her husband continued their active social life in Warsaw. They performed together in amateur plays at the Théâtre de Société, which was held in the Kazimierzowski Palace (now the site of the University of Warsaw). Although the 19-year-old Czartoryska was not particularly striking in appearance, she often played love roles in these plays and also began a brief affair with the theater director Count Alojzy Fryderyk von Brühl. Despite this brief relationship, this period also marked, according to Gabriela Pauszer-Klonowska, the beginning of a genuine rapprochement and budding love between the couple, who had previously considered their marriage more of a business. The couple remained together until the end of Adam Kazimierz's life, although both continued to have numerous extramarital affairs.
In 1765, the Princess gave birth to her first daughter, Teresa. According to contemporaries, she became very beautiful after giving birth. Giacomo Casanova, who met the Czartoryskis that same year, wrote that "the prince married a very beautiful woman, but he has not yet had a child with her, because she is too thin for him", which would suggest that Teresa was perhaps the result of an affair. One of the memoirs of the time stated: "There was an indescribable grace in her gaze and movements", and according to Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz (adjutant to Prince Adam Kazimierz), "nothing could compare with the brilliance of her black eyes and the whiteness of her sex". From then on, Izabela became one of the magnets of Warsaw's social life.
Czartoryska herself assessed her physical condition quite highly later, at the age of 35, writing about it as follows:
I have never been beautiful, but I have often been pretty. I have beautiful eyes, and because they reflect all the feelings of the soul, my face can be fascinating. I am quite white, my forehead is smooth and flawless, my nose is neither ugly nor beautiful, my mouth is large, my teeth are white, my smile is pleasant, and my face is beautifully oval. I have enough hair to easily adorn my head; it is as dark as my eyebrows. I am rather tall than short, my waist is slender, my chest perhaps too thin, my hands are ugly, but my legs are lovely, and my movements are very graceful. My faces are similar in this respect – the greatest charm of both depended on the skill with which I was able to double their value. In my youth I was very flirtatious; I am less so every day, although my feminine gender sometimes still reminds me that pleasing others is a great charm in itself.
Probably around 1765, Czartoryska's affection for her cousin "Antoś" (i.e. King Stanisław August Poniatowski) developed into a deeper love. Izabela's relationship with Stanisław was widely known in Warsaw. Her husband also knew about it and tolerated the affair, even driving the duchess to the castle to meet the king, while she herself sought love affairs elsewhere. The fruit of Czartoryska's and Poniatowski's union was a daughter, Maria Anna, who later became a writer, born in March 1768 and was maliciously called "Ciołkówna" on the street (Ciołek was Stanisław August Poniatowski's coat of arms and also his contemptuous nickname).
At the same time, Izabela Czartoryska began an affair with the Russian envoy Nikolai Repnin, who represented Catherine II's interests in Warsaw and was tasked with thwarting Polish reform efforts at the time. Isabella gave in to Repnin, for whom she had no feelings, at the request of the king and her husband Adam, who hoped to curry favor with the envoy. On Ash Wednesday, 4 March 1767 Czartoryska and Repnin caused a widespread uproar in Warsaw when Repnin rented an entire theatre, which should normally have been closed that day, and ordered a French comedy to be performed for himself, Izabela, and the staff of the legation. Finally, on 14 October 1767, the Princess unwittingly contributed to one of the greatest crimes committed by Russia in 18th-century Poland. When the king learned of the plans of the Bishop of Kraków, Kajetan Sołtyk, to launch a crusade against the Dissenters, he asked Isabella to arrange a joint meeting with Repnin. As a result of this meeting, at the king's request, Kajetan Sołtyk, the Crown Field Hetman Wacław Rzewuski, his son Seweryn Rzewuski, and the Bishop of Kiev Józef Załuski were kidnapped and exiled to Kaluga in Russia.
Nikolai Repnin's humiliations and Russian interference in Polish internal affairs eventually led to the establishment of the Confederation of Bari in February 1768 and the outbreak of the uprising. Izabela and husband Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, wishing to avoid the threat of battle, spent part of this time traveling around Europe. At the same time, on 10 April 1769, Empress Catherine II dismissed Nikolai Repnin from his post. The reason for the separation was the Empress's dissatisfaction with the insufficient protection of Russian interests in Poland, but also the ambassador's relationship with Czartoryski. Repnin, who initially considered the relationship a fleeting fling, fell in love with Izabela. From this union, on 14 January 1770, the Princess's firstborn son, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, was born, who later became a politician and the leader of the Hôtel Lambert group in Paris.
In 1772, the Princess traveled with her husband to the Netherlands to settle the inheritance of her deceased father, Georg Detlev von Flemming, and to sell the county of Berkeloo that had belonged to him. In the autumn of 1772, she was in London, where Nikolai Repnin also traveled with her. There, she met, among others, Benjamin Franklin, later an American politician, who cured her of a momentary depression by playing the harmonium. In a London salon, she also met the French duke Armand Louis de Gontaut de Lauzun, often contemptuously called "the Duke of Lausanne" in Polish society circles, and with whom she experienced her most turbulent romance. Her first contact with Czartoryska made a strong impression on the Duke, even though he was married. He wrote about their meeting in his memoirs:
A woman entered the room, better dressed and with a better coiffure than English women usually are. I asked about her and was told that she was a Polish woman, Princess Czartoryska. Of medium height, but of a magnificent figure, with beautiful eyes, the most beautiful hair, the most beautiful teeth, lovely legs, and a very dark complexion, though aged and disfigured by smallpox. By her gentle manner and her movements of incomparable charm, Mrs. Czartoryska proved that one can be charming without being at all beautiful.
Since neither Izabela's husband Adam Kazimierz nor former lover Nikolai Repnin initially objected to her liaison with the Duke of Lauzun (Repnin was jealous only of Adrien Louis de Bonnières, Count de Guines, the French ambassador in London, who also admired Izabela at the time), the three of them went "to take waters" in Spa, in what is now Belgium, in the same year 1772. After Repnin's departure, the princess declared her love for the duke on her way from Spa to Brussels. In Paris on 5 November 1773, the lovers had an intimate encounter. The next day, torn by remorse, Czartoryska attempted to poison herself, but was saved. While in Paris with the duke, she experienced moments of increasingly intense passion and finally abandoned Repnin, who returned to Russia. Isabella herself returned to the country in April 1774 and confessed to Lauzun, as she was leaving, that she was in a different state with him. On 28 October 1774, she gave birth to a second son, Konstanty Adam, at the Blue Palace in Warsaw; the boy's real father, whom Isabella said was Armand Louis de Gontaut de Lauzun, was present at the birth, hidden in a wardrobe behind the bed.
The Duke de Lauzun's plans to settle down with Czartoryska ultimately failed. He was recalled to France; the lovers' relationship also began to deteriorate, with Isabella accusing de Lauzun of infidelity and having affairs with other men, including Franciszek Ksawery Branicki; eventually their correspondence was broken off. Duke de Lauzun was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution in 1793. After his death, while Czartoryska was still alive, his memoirs were published in 1821, causing a scandal in both Poland and France. In his memoirs, de Lauzun detailed his relationships with Izabela, other women of the English and French aristocracy, and women of the "communes". The families who were the victims of these misdeeds demanded that the diaries be recognized as forgeries, and in 1858, at the request of the Czartoryski family, mainly Izabela's son Adam Jerzy, they were confiscated. Their authenticity is now widely accepted by historians.
