Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 3, 2005



The Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791 was instituted by the Government Act adopted on that date by the Sejm (parliament) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was Europe's first modern codified national constitution, and the world's second, after the United States Constitution, written in 1787, which began to function in 1789. It was designed to redress long-standing political defects of the federative Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The constitution instituted political equality between townspeople and nobility and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. The adoption of the May 3 Constitution provoked the active hostility of the Polish Commonwealth's neighbors. In the War in Defense of the Constitution, Poland was betrayed by its Prussian ally and defeated by Imperial Russia under Catherine the Great. Though overthrown in 1792 by the alliance of foreign invaders and internal traitors, the May 3 Constitution influenced later democratic movements throughout the world. It remained, after the demise of the Polish Republic in 1795, beacon in the struggle to restore Polish sovereignty in the next 123 years of Polish partitions.

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