Third Partition Erases Poland

October 24, 1795

Russia, Prussia, and Austria signed the final partition. Poland-Lithuania - a state that had been among Europe's largest for three centuries - vanished from the map. It would not reappear for 123 years. The Polish king abdicated and lived out his days in Russian exile, drawing a pension. Polish soldiers, poets, and intellectuals scattered across Europe, keeping alive a national idea that no partition could extinguish.