A Sabre against the Bear, the November Uprising and Poland’s defiant soul
The November Uprising, and the stirrings of a Poland reunited
Poland in the late 1830s, didn’t exist, at least not in the legal sense. Instead, it was a vast cultural and linguistic bond between millions of people that spread across the Great Powers of Eastern Europe, divided politically, but united in all else. The artificial borders enforced by these nations, or rather the crucial lack in terms of cultural assimilation, have been some of the reasons that meant, (as well as the ties of the Polish people regardless) that Poland would never lose this individuality.
Of course, there’s a reason that Poland wasn’t able to keep it’s statehood, and one for why it was fully divided during the onset of the Napoleonic Wars. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as it was known as for over four centuries, was one of the most egalitarian and progressive of the monarchies in Europe. The Golden Liberty, as their Parliamentary system was known as, imposed a sort of constitution and enforced the fact that all nobles, regardless of background in Poland, would be entitled to the same rights regardless.
However this system of constitutional/elective monarchy led to a lot of problems within the governance in the many regions of the empire which spanned over 1,000,000 km2 at its height, in terms of organisation and just a general bureaucratic paralysis within the increasingly outdated system when compared with France or the United Kingdom of the 1800s. This also led the three authoritarian powers, Austria, Prussia and Russia, to become very interested in the land that separated them from each other, therefore in 1772 the Great Powers would convene and dictate to Poland exactly how they would avoid collapsing in war.
The First Partition of Poland still left the Commonwealth with a sizeable amount of land with the Russians seizing only up to the Daugava river in modern day Latvia. The other Great Powers took equally sized land, Austria all of Galicia, with its capital in Lemberg (Lwow) and Prussia connecting it’s eastern provinces across to Brandenburg with the seizure of Danzig and Bromberg (Bydgoszcz.)
The second and third Partitions in 1793 and 1795 respectively , would prove to be far more detrimental however, and would result in Poland’s collapse. Russia took up to the city of Vilnius and huge swathes of the empire’s southern portion. Austria took territories surrounding the cities of Lublin and Krakow, although the latter city remained a free city until it’s failed revolt in 1846 resulted in its annexation. Finally, Prussia took the western and richest regions of the Empire, with soldiers of the Königreich marching into Warsaw and seizing the last remnants of the government. This was the defining moment in 1795, when Poland would cease to exist as an independent political entity until about 1920.
The Polish idea of independence was resurrected by Napoleon very briefly during his wars waged in Eastern Europe, establishing the Grand Duchy of Warsaw with the territory seized from some of Prussia and Austria’s Polish land (and never returned,) in 1807. It would have it’s constitution rewritten to be liberally active in its administration based on the French model, and it’s regions would be organised on the basis of their capital cities rather than historical royal provinces. These revolutionary reforms would be quickly quashed in succession with Napoleon’s deposition and exile, but the mentality left behind would live on, and be exploited to garner support for the tzarist regime in Poland (which took over all of the Duchy’s territory in 1815.)
Therefore Congress Poland would be created the same year, and ironically both the Russian Elite and the Polish Aristocrats were thrilled, the Russian due to the possibility of placating Polish revolutionary thought, and the Polish due to the possibility of being able to have a distinct participation in the nation, rather than being ruled and sitting on wealth without power.
Congress Poland was far more liberal than their hegemon, it had its own constitutionally organised Diet and administrative system, independent of Russian politics, it’s own regulation of taxes, and even it’s own standing army of a peacetime size of around 30,000 men.
“I don't know if there ever will be a Poland, what I am sure of is that there will be no Poles.” -Tzar Nicholas I
The new tzar to come after Alexander I , Nicholas I, found that these “excessive civil liberties” needed to be quelled significantly, and would install many in the government of Congress Poland to target groups affiliated in part or whole with Polish nationalist groups or the Decembrists, who were a Russian pressure and “terrorist organisation” that had organised the Decembrist Revolt of 1825 in Saint Petersburg, fighting for a constitutional monarchy, of course unsuccessful.
These repressive governmental measures led to the police breaking up numerous rallies and gathering of Polish societies such as the National Patriotic Society, but in all honesty all it did was show the new Tzar’s hostility towards reform and pull the date of any sort of revolt far closer than he would’ve liked. Dozens of members from these secret societies would be sent into exile in Siberia to serve either labour or simple exile and most likely die in the frozen tundra.
Army protests gathered in Warsaw in November of 1830 and attacked the oppressive Grand Duke’s home, finding him and stabbing him, yelling out afterwards “The Duke is dead!” Although it wasn’t the Duke they had killed but the governor of Warsaw, Piotr Szembek, it shows the militance of these revolutionaries and the extreme reactions coupled with a nationalist fervour that would grow to be extremely common in the 1840s, 50s, and 60s.
The Russian response was to mobilize over 120,000 troops in the coming months, and Nicholas demanded this unacceptable disobedience to be crushed. This led to a series of comically embarrassing diplomatic talks where moderates of Poland would meet with Tzar Nicholas only to get his staunch face not willing to give an inch to the demands of the Congress. It culminated in January 1831 with Nicholas being deposed and King of Poland thanks to his evidently anti-Polish acts during the last decade, and the Diet declared full independence on the 24th.
The Poles fought hard, scoring many key victories in the war and accomplishing what the Decembrists couldn’t in Petersburg or 1830, gaining the support of the peasants to rise up against Russia as well. A key problem however for the Poles was of course the military might of Russia against the well organised yet small Polish forces, but also it’s geographical position making it far harder for any liberal nations, such as Britain or France, to support the Polish cause. The Austrians and Prussians, having Polish majority regions in their empires were definitely not coming to their aid, therefore they were left isolated and solely dependent on the comparatively small resources of Poland against the Russian Bear.
The revolutionary army was crushed at the battle of Ostroleka on the 26th of May, and in the subsequent months lost more and more territory to the vast Russian armies, ending with the capture of Warsaw in September, after 2 days of fierce fighting.
Nicholas of course, after the war, enacted his revenge on the Poles, which he viewed with unreserved disdain, thousands of men were sent to Siberia and the Polish armed forces were sent off to the Caucasus to serve in the Russian Army against the Ottoman forces in the wars to come. 254 men were executed as they were known to have ties with either the Decembrists, the Polish Diet, or the National Patriotic Society, certain constitutional rights were revoked and Poland was brought closer and closer to Russian domination, with the Polish Zloty being replaced with the Russian Rouble as well.
The Revolution sent thousands of Poles to exile themselves towards different more liberal nations, for example Frederick Chopin, the famous pianist, moved to Paris in 1831 never to return, and wrote..
“..Oh why could I not kill a single Muscovite!” -Frederick Chopin
These Poles helped to keep Polish culture and support of their independence alive in different nations. Thanks to the revolt of 1831, the House of Commons in the United Kingdom passed under popular demand the censure of the Tzar, sparking a long period of Russophobia that would affect the Great Game of the two Empires in Afghanistan and many alliances between Britain and France, United against Russia in the Crimean War to prevent their encroachment into the Mediterranean .
As you can see, the revolt has a fantastically international response that brought the populations of the world into interest in the plight of the Poles, much like the Philhellenes did in the decade previously.
Polish Nationalism survived, battered but still present, and would continue to stage much more resistance in the future. For example in the revolt of 1863 where the Kingdom once again revolted against Russian hegemony, to again be crushed but keeping Polish militancy just as present as 1831, and attracted far more criticism from the Western Powers. Poland would receive independence in 1919 officially in the Treaty of Versailles from Germany and Russia, and would beat back Soviet forces in the Soviet Polish war of 1920, securing a vast amount of their pre-1795 territory in the Second Polish Republic. The Poles’ story of resistance and failure time and time again, only to rise once again and continue the fight, is a period of history that deserve to be brought to far more light.
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