Jakub Krzysztof Jasiński of Rawicz Clan was a Polish general, and poet of Enlightenment. He participated in the War in Defence of the Constitution in 1792, was an enemy of the Targowica Confederation and organized an action against its supporters in Vilnius. He participated also in the Kościuszko Uprising, during the course of which he was killed in the Battle of Praga in 1794.

The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment in Poland were developed later than in Western Europe, as the Polish bourgeoisie was weaker, and szlachta (nobility) culture (Sarmatism) together with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth political system were in deep crisis. The period of Polish Enlightenment began in the 1730s–40s, peaked in the reign of Poland's king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, went into decline with the Third Partition of Poland (1795) – a national tragedy inspiring a short period of sentimental writing – and ended in 1822, replaced by Romanticism.