Franciszek Ksawery Branicki (1730–1819) was a Polish nobleman, magnate, French count, diplomat, politician, military commander, and one of the leaders of the Targowica Confederation.

[1] In 1774, Stanisław August Poniatowski ceded to him, as mark of his confidence and esteem, the immense estate of Bila Tserkva in the Kiev Voivodeship.

During the Kościuszko Uprising (1794) he was sentenced by the Supreme Criminal Court, in absentia, to hang for treason, witness his decades long pro-Russian stance and anti-patriotic politics and plotting against the state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Between 1773 and 1775, he was a member of a newly established secret party, responsible for confiscating the assets of the Society of Jesus in the entire country.

For his "services", Stanisław Augustus rewarded him in 1774 by ceding to him the immense estate that was the county of Biała Cerkiew and appointed him Crown Hetman.

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.

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.

[7] 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.

In return, he spent even more money in creating Oleksandriya, an impossibly lavish summer palace and park in her honour, making it the epitome of Polish classicism.

During the Kościuszko Insurrection, the Supreme Court of the Kingdom of Poland sentenced him to death by hanging, to eternal infamy and to the confiscation of all his property and titles.

The portraits of Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki and Hetman Seweryn Rzewuski, who were not captured either, but were convicted for treason, were also hung the same day.

Branicki's reputation was subsequently immortalized as a symbol of national treason by Poland's leading writers and artists, most notably by Stanisław Wyspiański.

He liked to give the impression of a great military strategist and leader – but according to historians, he hardly equalled the ability of Russian cavalry colonels, despite his supposed bravery during the Seven Years' War.

In 1766, as a result of a pistol duel over an Italian actress in Warsaw with the adventurer and notorious predator, Giacomo Casanova, who happened to be in Poland at that time, Branicki sustained a serious wound to his stomach.