Wincenty Budzyński

Who was Wincenty Budzyński?

Wincenty Budzyński was a Polish politician agent and Polish–French chess master.

Born into a Polish noble family in Volhynia, he graduated from the Liceum Krzemienieckie. Then he fought against Russians in the November Uprising in 1831. After being injured in a battle, he went to Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, where was arrested by Austrians and expelled two years later. He arrived in England, then in Belgium, and finally in France. He became a political agent of Adam Jerzy Czartoryski - a prominent Polish-émigre political figure, head of a political faction accordingly called the Hôtel Lambert - in the 1840s. After a collapse of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, he married a French woman in 1850, and withdrew from political activity.

He played chess at the famous Café de la Régence in Paris, where - among others - lost casual and formal matches to Lionel Kieseritzky in 1850, Serafino Dubois in 1855, Paul Morphy in 1858 and in 1859, and beat Daniel Harrwitz in 1859.