The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations.

The term "Fourth Partition" in a temporal sense can also mean the diaspora communities that played an important political role in re-establishing the Polish sovereign state after 1918.

During the reign of Władysław IV (1632–1648), the liberum veto was developed, a policy of parliamentary procedure based on the assumption of the political equality of every "gentleman/Polish nobleman", with the corollary that unanimous consent was needed for all measures.

The Commonwealth had remained neutral in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), yet it sympathized with the alliance of France, Austria, and Russia, and allowed Russian troops access to its western lands as bases against Prussia.

Repnin also demanded the Russian protection of the rights of peasants in private estates of Polish and Lithuanian noblemen, religious freedom for the Protestant and Orthodox Christians and the political freedoms for Protestants, Orthodox Christians and Eastern Catholics (Uniates), including their right to occupy all state positions, including a royal one.

Resulting reaction among some of Poland's Roman Catholics, as well as the deep resentment of Russian intervention in the Commonwealth's domestic affairs including the exile to Russia of the top Roman Catholic bishops, the members of the Polish Senate, led to the War of the Confederation of Bar of 1768–1772, formed in Bar, where the Poles tried to expel Russian forces from Commonwealth territory.

Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire, the Bar confederation and its French and European volunteers were defeated by Russian forces and Polish governmental ones with the aid of Great Britain.

As Russia moved into the Crimea and the Danubian Principalities (which the Habsburg monarchy long coveted), King Frederick II of Prussia and Maria Theresa were worried that the defeat of the Ottoman Empire would severely upset the balance of power in Eastern Europe.

However, fighting continued as Bar confederation troops and French volunteers refused to lay down their arms (most notably, in Tyniec, Częstochowa and Kraków).

On August 5, 1772, the occupation manifesto was issued, to the dismay of the weak and exhausted Polish state;[1] the partition treaty was ratified by its signatories on September 22, 1772.

[1] Despite token criticism of the partition from Empress Maria Theresa, Austrian statesman Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg, was proud of wresting as large a share as he did, with the rich salt mines of Bochnia and Wieliczka.

By this "diplomatic document" Russia gained Polish Livonia, and lands in eastern Belarus embracing the counties of Vitebsk, Polotsk and Mstislavl.

When no help was forthcoming and the armies of the combined nations occupied Warsaw to compel by force of arms the calling of the assembly, the only alternative was passive submission to their will.

The so-called Partition Sejm, with Russian military forces threatening the opposition, on September 18, 1773, signed the treaty of cession, renouncing all claims of the Commonwealth to the occupied territories.

In 1772, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was invited to present recommendations for a new constitution for the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the Considerations on the Government of Poland (1782), which was to be his last major political work.

Arguing that Poland had fallen prey to the radical Jacobinism then at high tide in France, Russian forces invaded the Commonwealth in 1792.

Targowica confederates, who did not expect another partition, and the king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, who joined them near the end, both lost much prestige and support.

The partitioning powers, seeing the increasing unrest in the remaining Commonwealth, decided to solve the problem by erasing any independent Polish state from the map.

)[16]During the Napoleonic Wars and in their immediate aftermath the borders between partitioning powers shifted several times, changing the numbers seen in the preceding table.

In the Austrian sector which now was called Galicia, Poles fared better and were allowed to have representation in Parliament and to form their own universities, and Kraków with Lemberg (Lwów/Lviv) became centers of Polish culture and education.

In 1915 a client state of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary was proposed and accepted by the Central Powers of World War I: the Regency Kingdom of Poland.

After the end of World War I, the Central Powers' surrender to the Western Allies, the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the Treaty of Versailles finally allowed and helped the restoration of Poland's full independence after 123 years.

The term "Fourth Partition" was also used in the 19th and 20th centuries to refer to diaspora communities who maintained a close interest in the project of regaining Polish independence.

Solovyov specified the cultural, language and religious break between the supreme and lowest layers of the society in the east regions of the Commonwealth, where the Belarusian and Ukrainian serf peasantry was Orthodox.

[50][51] Jerzy Czajewski and Piotr Kimla assert that in the 18th century until the partitions solved this problem, Russian armies increasingly raided territories of the Commonwealth, officially to recover the escapees, but in fact kidnapping many locals;[50] Piotr Kimla noted that the Russian government spread international propaganda, mainly in France, which falsely exaggerated serfdom conditions in Poland, while ignoring worse conditions in Russia, as one of the justification for the partitions.