After the death of Prince August Aleksander Czartoryski in 1782, King Stanisław II Augustus appointed him the Voivode of Ruthenia.

His scheme was to divide Poland into an oligarchy of autonomous grandees exercising supreme power in rotation (in fact a perpetual interregnum).

After attempting fruitlessly to persuade the Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor to take up arms against the reformers, he proceeded with his co-conspirators to St. Petersburg in March 1792 and, with the connivance of the Empress Catherine II of Russia formed the Targowica Confederation allegedly for the maintenance of the ancient and lax institutions of Poland (14 May 1792), of which he had been marshal, or rather the dictator.

There finding himself duped and set aside, he again went to Vienna until 1797, when he retired to Tulczyn and devoted himself to the improvement of his estates and large wealth for the remainder of his life.

After the signing of the Targowica Confederation: "Each true Pole, not blinded by the Prussian and royalist cabal, is convinced, that our Fatherland can only be saved by Russia, otherwise our nation will be enslaved".

After Stanisław August Poniatowski's abdication and the destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: "About past Poland and Poles [I don't want to talk anymore].