Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess

by Adam Zamoyski

A brilliant excavation of the life of bestselling historian Adam Zamoyski’s 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 Napoleon’s 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 men’s affections, Zamoyski’s charming and engrossing biography will open up a stormy period of late eighteenth, early nineteenth century Polish history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Poland, Audiobook

289 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 20, 2024

About the author

A historian and a member of the ancient Zamoyski family of Polish nobility. Born in New York City and raised in England. He is Chairman of the Board of the Princes Czartoryski Foundation. On June 16, 2001, in London, England, he married the artist Emma Sergeant.

Reviews

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zamoyski is an engaging storyteller, and his portrait of his ancestor, the eighteenth-century princess Izabela Czartoryska, is no exception. Written for a popular audience, the book prioritizes a dramatic and often sensational account of Czartoryska’s storied life as the leading figure of the most consequential family at the end of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He highlights the energy and curiosity that animated her, qualities that garnered the attention of numerous suitors, enabling her to carry on a series of affairs in her youth. However, the narration glosses over many of her intellectual pursuits; virtually the entirety of her professional literary career—her formal publications—are dispensed within a few paragraphs. Zamoyski betrays little interest in her actual ideas or in setting them against the broader intellectual contexts of Enlightenment- and Napoelonic-era Europe (he has never been an intellectual historian, so this isn't a great surprise). While Zamoyski claims in his postscript that many historians—public and university—“have failed to recognise” some of Czartoryska’s greatest achievements (234), notably her collecting, he takes the importance of her collections as self-evident and, in glossing over her literary activity, unintentionally devalues her intellectual contributions to Polish culture (while the literary works have been more extensively discussed by Polish scholars, a popular English-language biography is a text precisely for the sort of reader who couldn’t access such materials).

While the book is based on an impressive array of archival materials, the book—as one may anticipate from a popular history—doesn’t reflect heavily on methodology and a great number of its conclusions and claims aren’t clearly supported by evidence presented in the text, and, because of the citation methods, would be difficult to assess without repeating all of the archival reading. To what extent, for instance, are the memoirs of Lauzun, a reliable text? Zamoyski only admits at the end of the book that they were sensational but relies on the heavily in several chapters. Finally, there is a great deal of inconsistency in which names and places Zamoyski explains which does to some disservice to the general reader, and even the name of the French historian Rulhière is misspelled every single time he is mentioned (except the entry in the bibliography).

I turned to this book to get a chronology of Izabela’s life after having read a number of her own texts and scholarship about her, and to see an analysis of the aspects of her life that most interest me set against the entirety of her life. For the first of these goals, this book was more than successful and it was a diverting read.

[David Trawinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another amazing biography by Adam Zamoyski. This time of the Polish Princess Izabela Czartoryska, the author’s great, great, great, great grandmother. I first came across the Czartoryski name on my first trip to Krakow when I walked to the Czartoryski museum to see the painting by Leonardo “Lady with an Ermine” only to be disappointed to learn it was on traveling exhibit across Europe. I did later see it on display in the Wawel Castle on a subsequent trip. I learned it once was a gift to Pricess Izabela from her son. Also, I learned that the Princess started the collection at her country residence of Pulawy that is today the museum permanent collection.

Princess Izabela lived in an incredible span of Polish history in which her immediate family was a driving force. It included the three rapes of the Motherland known as the Partitions, the 3 May Constitution of 1791, the Napoleonic Wars including the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and the November rebellion of 1831. She intermingled with Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Tsar Alexander and a slew of other dynamic leaders of European Countries. She had to suffer the demise of her country, the death of three children and the forced separation from her family at times. In fact, her life of ninety years is inextricably woven into the history of not only her beloved Poland, but that of Europe itself.

As an author of historical fiction myself, I could not resist the temptation to fictionalize the Princess in my Partitions of Poland/Napoleonic series, “The Life of Marek Zaczek”. She plays a pivotal role in the three volumes published to date, and thanks to the explicit research and sublime writing of Adam Zamoyski, she will continue to be represented in the four volumes to come.

David Trawinski
Book Review Editor for
The Polish American Journal

[Jane Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too hard for me. I'm sure the story is interesting to those who can keep up with all the polish names. Returned unfinished🙁

[E.J. J Doble · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, detailing the story of the author's long lost great great something grandmother, is a fantastic insight into the world of 18th/early-19th century Poland, amidst changing political climates and insurmountable social pressures. There is a real sense of identity in the book, especially surrounding Izabela, who takes pride in her country and honours it through her contributions to historical archives and the local education system. Detailing her family and her contact with numerous interesting characters, from a brief meeting with Chopin to an active relationship with Tsar Alexander I, we see a princess standing tall in the face of adversity, and Zamoyski does a lot of justice to her story and the truth of her character (even the promiscuous parts!).

With that being said, however, the book is rather overzealous with names - and, as these names are Polish, the language barriers that would naturally occur from reading such a history are exacerbated, and in many cases the names are written once and never again. This is in no way dismissive of the way Zamoyski has chosen to write his story - I am all for writers connecting with their historical heritage in every appropriate way - but as an English reader reading an English copy with a pathetic grasp of Polish, the excess of names beyond the core people made the reading - and listening - experience quite difficult. Again, I state this is my personal opinion, and I implore anyone with an interest in Polish history to pick up this book and embrace it, because the book itself is fantastic, even if the language barrier is high.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Izabela the Valiant is the biography of a Polish princess. Through her life, it becomes clear that the princely class of that time (not just in Polish lands) was filled with wastrels, self-absorbed individuals, and others who were able to live well through the exploitation of others. The reader gets a good overview of Izabela's life, with all its unconventionality and changes.

[Mathijs Loo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zamoyski weet in Izabela the Valiant een mooi beeld te schetsen over de Poolse aristocratie in een voor hen zeer verwarrende tijd. Verschillende elementen komen in het boek goed naar voren, terwijl anderen weer weggestopt lijken waarbij je soms ook een beetje kennis van het Napoleontische tijdperk moet hebben. Zamoyski kan beter dan dit.

[Cole · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much too bogged down by seemingly every detail the author could find. To the extent I got through the book before returning it to the library, there was no narrative arc and no real sense of Izabela as a person. With a more thoughtfully streamlined selection of characters and anecdotes, perhaps a stronger sense of her could have come through.

[Shoshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clever, at times vibrant, and engaging look at a key figure in Polish/European history of the late 18th and early 19th century. Probably helped in this instance to have the audiobook as I don't know if I could be sure of the name pronounciantion otherwise.

[Bea Marek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very detailed look at Izabella and the world around her. It felt like writer wanted to squeeze every inch of info but it simply didn't flow well. I felt like getting whiplash with barrage of names page after page.

[Bela Deren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably a 5 star book if you’re a historian. I’m not. My name’s just Izabela.