Commonwealth. He was an implacable opponent of the reforms proposed by the Sejm in its Constitution of 3 May. In league with the Russian envoys in Warsaw, he co-founded the traitorous Confederation of Targowica. Branicki was included on Yakov Bulhakov's list, which included the names of people, mostly senators and deputies, on whom the Russians could rely and were keen to overthrow the latest Constitution, and possibly even the monarch himself. Throughout his career, Branicki had been one of the leaders of the pro-Russian political tendency. As a conservative, along with the founder of Bar confederation Bishop Kajetan Sołtyk, Branicki tried everything to keep his former Hetman privileges. Even as a determined counter-revolutionary, he supposedly refused to sign any treaty that sanctioned the partitioning of his homeland. However, due to his sympathies and cooperation with the Russians, Branicki was considered throughout the 19th-century as a national traitor, along with all the leaders and members of the Targowica Confederation, which was essentially a conspiracy against the state and led to second and third partitions of Poland. Branicki held several important posts in the Commonwealth, as Crown Hetman, then Great Hetman. Additionally, he was commander of the Lithuanian artillery. On 13 August 1793 he resigned from that position in order to become a general in the Russian army. The ownership of vast estates, towns and villages in Ruthenia (Polish Ukraine) made him one of the most powerful and wealthy Polish magnates. His enduring rival was Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł, a zealous patriot and one of the richest men in Europe. After 1775 Branicki took up residence in Biała Cerkiew near Kiev, where he spent the last years of his life, having retired from politics and military service. Family In 1781 already aged 51, Branicki contracted a strategic marriage with one of the leading members of the imperial court, Alexandra von Engelhardt, almost 25 years younger, the niece of Potemkin and, according to court gossips, his lover and even the illegitimate daughter of Catherine the Great. Though she most probably was not the daughter of Catherine II, the marriage sealed the Tsarina's foothold in the Commonwealth of Two Nations, already in the process of disintegration. The new Countess Branicka, who was inordinately close to Prince Potemkin until his death, became the Chatelaine of Biała Cerkiew amidst many other possessions across territories of modern Poland and Ukraine. Despite her extra-marital interest, the marriage was said