History
After the failed Kościuszko Uprising of 1794, Emperor Francis II of Habsburg agreed with Empress Catherine II of Russia to again divide and thereby completely abolish the remaining Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a decision which Prussia joined on 24 October 1795. The Habsburg monarchy, which had not participated in the Second Partition, now received a share that comprised territory north of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, whose territory was acquired in the First Partition of 1772. The Habsburg monarchy then occupied the whole of the region of Lesser Poland, which stretched along the upper Vistula River to the outskirts of Praga and Warsaw, with the tributaries of the Bug and the Pilica forming its northern border with New East Prussia.
In 1803, New Galicia was subsumed into the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, but retained some autonomy. It remained a territory of the Austrian Empire even when, in 1807, Napoleon I of France instituted the Duchy of Warsaw from territories in the region of Greater Poland that Prussia had annexed in the Second and Third Partitions and then renounced pursuant to the Treaty of Tilsit.
Austria lost New Galicia in 1809 as a result of the War of the Fifth Coalition, after a corps under Archduke Ferdinand Karl Joseph of Austria-Este on 15 April 1809 started the Polish–Austrian War by invading the Duchy of Warsaw. Despite the Archduke's plans to move in as a national liberator, he was challenged by the forces of Prince Józef Poniatowski at the Battle of Raszyn. Austria was finally defeated at the Battle of Wagram on 6 July, whereafter New Galicia was ceded to the Duchy of Warsaw pursuant to the Treaty of Schönbrunn.
With the Final Act of the Vienna Congress in 1815, the territory became part of Congress Poland, ruled in personal union by Emperor Alexander I of Russia, while Kraków nominally retained independence as the Free City of Kraków.
