In his youth Czartoryski had fought against Russia in the Polish-Russian War of 1792 and would have done so again in the Kościuszko Uprising of 1794, had he not been arrested at Brussels on his way back to Poland. Subsequently, in 1795 he and his younger brother had been commanded to enter the Russian army, and Catherine the Great had been so favorably impressed with them that she had restored to them part of their confiscated estates. Adam Czartoryski had subsequently served Emperors Paul and Alexander I as a diplomat and foreign minister, during the Napoleonic Wars establishing an anti-French coalition. Czartoryski had been one of the leaders of the Polish November 1830 Uprising and, after its suppression by Russia, had been sentenced to death but eventually allowed to go into exile in France.