1) Lublin and Krakow are annexed by Austria and the bizarre Habsburgs in 1795 as part of the Third Partition of Poland. They are tacked onto the land that Austria stole in the First Partition, which is now called "Galicia". The area containing Lublin and Krakow are called "West Galicia" (despite the fact that they are in fact north of Galicia). Here's a picture of Galicia directly after the 1795 Partition
2) Napoleon sweeps through Eastern Europe in the early 1800's and takes over much of Poland. He carves out a huge chunk of it and creates an entity called the "Duchy of Warsaw", which includes Lublin and Krakow. The latter is right on the border of Austria and the new Duchy. The Duchy of Warsaw is run by Saxony, a German state that became independent briefly duing the Napoleonic Wars and sided with the French. Here's a map during this brief period lasting from 1809 till 1815:
3) So Napoleon gets beat by the Russians and they come storming West. They take over Duchy of Warsaw in 1813 and try to reaffirm their control during the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Congress of Vienna was essentially an enormous diplomatic summit that occurred in the wake of the Napoleonic wars where all of the winners got together and decided how they were going to divvy up Europe. Russia wasn't allowed to keep the entirety of the Duchy of Warsaw, but much of it (including Lublin) was included in yet a new entity named "Congress Poland", which was a semi-autonomous state essentially run by Russia. However, Krakow and it's environs got a measure of independence and was called the "Free City of Krakow". Here's a map of Poland after the Congress of Vienna (same one I posted yesterday):
4) These borders remain essentially static except that Russia and Austria eventually remove whatever semi-autonomy their respective areas of influence had. In 1830, Russia removed any independence from Congress Poland following an attempted uprising. In 1846 Austria did the same to Krakow after their own uprising.
Things remained this way right up until the end of World War I. I think I've finally got a handle on the shifting borders from 1795 through 1918. While this may seem a little in-the-weeds, it's nice to know which of the empires were ruling over my family during which periods. Was it the corrupt, oppressive, decadent and declining Austrian empire? Was it the brief but overwhelming French Empire, screaming across Poland, anxious to meet their doom in Russia? Or was it the corrupt, oppressive, totalitarian and ascending Russian empire? Now I (and you) know.
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