Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz

“ Would the safety of the Empress and her loyal subjects be compromised if a prisoner had the liberty of breathing fresh air, and seeing the daylight for a quarter of an hour? I ask a thousand pardons of the immortal Catherine's eulogists, but in the little cruelties which she exercised over us, I see nothing either great or immortal: it was the mere spite of an old woman, equally vain and vindictive. ”

“ Whilst foreign rulers undermine and destroy the foundations of our ancient national existence, persecute the faith of our fathers, efface from the soil our institutions, and proscribe even the language of our country, whilst the sanctuaries of our patriotic traditions, our libraries, our archives, become the prey of the conqueror, it behoves us exiles, unfortunate but free, to repair all these losses and spoliations. In order to contribute as much as possible to the accomplishment of this duty, we have just established at Paris a Polish Historical Committee. ”

“ In the year 1788, the Poles, seeing Russia engaged in a war both with the Porte and Sweden, a circumstance which had not occurred for the last sixty years, deemed it a favourable moment for raising their country from the humiliating degradation into which it had fallen. For the first time during the last sixty years, they dared to act as a free nation, and the more intolerable their yoke and degradation were, the longer their voice of indignation had been stifled, the more powerful and energetic was its outburst. ”

“ Loaded with the most cruel misfortunes, since the subjection of our country, persecuted, deprived of our fortunes, reduced to the extremity of living on the bitter bread of foreigners, scattered over the surface of the whole globe, if there is any consolation yet remaining to us, any energy in our adversity, any dignity in our misfortune, we owe it solely to the love of our country, to that guardian and consoling angel which animates our hearts, supports our efforts, and fortifies our hopes. ”

“ Severine Potocki, who was that day on duty, told me that this imperfect death of Catherine occasioned the courtiers the greatest perplexity; for they were in presence of two sovereigns; the one was, a few hours ago, mistress of their fortunes and life, and might, perhaps, yet recover, because she still moved; the other, in the vigour of life and health, was already touching with the end of his fingers the sceptre, which he would very probably hold firmly and long. Now, zeal or indifference for one or the other might equally compromise them, and prove equally dangerous. ”

“ A few trials were sufficient to convince us of the usefulness and the extent of such an undertaking; we resolved, consequently, to make an appeal to all our countrymen to participate in our labours. Paris, the capital of a nation powerful and friendly to Poland, offers, in this respect, inexhaustible treasures; thus our central association in this city is already in full activity. Now we invite all the Polish exiles, on whatever point of the earth misfortune has cast them, to establish similar associations, and to labour collectively or individually in the projected work. ”

“ It is, perhaps, to this school-boy exercise that I am indebted, not for having borne my captivity with less difficulty, but even for having survived it.
The kindness with which I treated my guards, and the compassion I showed for their condition, which was almost as much to be pitied as my own, won me, at last, their confidence and affection. One of my sufferings in this prison was to see every day the cruel treatment to which these poor fellows were condemned. Paul Iwanowicz, their commanding officer, was a brutal fellow, uniting the vices of a barbarian with those of an upstart. ”

“ But as it is not always in our power to serve her with arms in our hands, as political means are only accessible to the few, let us endeavour to be useful to her in a way open to every Pole: let us keep up, nourish, and strengthen this spirit, this national character, this sentiment of our imperishable rights, the glorious inheritance of our past, and the surest guarantee of our future. ”

“ If the prisoner is guilty, is it by torment that he can be corrected? Ah! how little these despots know human nature! It is not by exasperating man that he can be reformed. The tenderness of compassion, the voice of friendship and mildness; these are the means to bring man back to the path of virtue, from which he has had the misfortune to be led astray. But how much more odious those cruelties become when he who exercises them can appeal neither to civil nor international law in the indictment of his victim. ”

“ It is the invasion of Poland; it is the subversion of a monarchical constitution, established, however, upon the foundation of a rational liberty; it is the partition of our finest provinces, banishments, proscriptions, and oppression joined to insult, that have compelled the Poles to make this attempt to deliver themselves from so many evils. Not satisfied with having wrested from us three-fourths of our provinces, you have exercised over the rest of an unhappy kingdom a despotic authority. ”

“ Catherine had already rewarded their treason by gifts, honours and places, but as Paul I, at his accession to the throne, opened a new field for favours, those vile insects rushed first upon it, and scarcely had a few days of the new Emperor's reign elapsed when they had already secured villages and whole towns, to indemnify themselves for the losses they pretended to have sustained by their zeal and attachment to Russia. Our release, the kindness and generosity which the Emperor had shown to Kosciuszko and Potocki, excited not only their envy, but also their apprehensions. ”

“ It is true, however, that the corporal could sleep, and that the soldier only was obliged to watch me. When I became acquainted with my guards, I asked them why they watched me so strictly, even during the night, and when the prison was bolted on every side. “That you may not play any trick to your soul,” was their answer. Ah! it is in the silence and darkness of night, that the imagination of a poor prisoner works most actively; being deprived of all natural and possible means of escaping, he desires impossible ones. ”

“ Supposing Poland, torn in tatters, and that these, stitched to three different empires, and guarded by numerous armies, did not appear to them sufficiently sheltered from our intrigues, state reasons might bid them apprehend us, and shut us up in a fortress to prevent us from escaping; but what reason, what necessity had they for isolating and tormenting us, each separately, for depriving us even of the consolation of suffering together? Could seven prisoners, disarmed, crippled, weakened by sufferings and sorrows, and surrounded with guards, be dangerous in their prison? ”

“ Oppressed with grief, I turned my eyes and left the window, but the cries of these poor fellows followed me, and rent my heart. The punishment is not measured in Russia by the number of blows, but by the time. They flog a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, half an hour, and sometimes more. Anybody except a Russian would breathe his last under such a torture.
I often remonstrated with the Praporszczyk upon his barbarous conduct; I used all my arguments, and endeavoured to move his humanity and compassion, but it was preaching to a deaf man. ”

“ On Tuesday, I was told that General Kosciuszko had gone in a carriage to the Imperial palace, and had been admitted to the Emperor's presence, that my liberation had been decided upon, and that I should leave the prison immediately. Wednesday, nevertheless, passed, and nobody came to release me. Next night I became very uneasy, but I attributed these delays to the embarrassments and multiplicity of business of all the public officers, under the new reign, and whilst I was taking, as usual, my melancholy walks in the dark, I saw the Praporszczyk enter my cell. ”

“ Accustomed from my boyhood to an active and independent life; fond of pleasures, and feeling all the charms of society, the idea of being shut up in a dismal and solitary prison, without ever breathing the fresh air, seeing my fellow-creatures, or hearing their voice, obliged to tear with my fingers the food given me, constantly surrounded with soldiers and spies, as useless as intolerable, and above all, the idea of remaining in this state of suffering for ever, or at least for a long time, often baffled all my courage and philosophy. ”

“ The crowd of courtiers already filled the apartments, when I saw all at once this crowd moving, separating left and right, and opening before a man wearing five ribbons and a miniature of the Empress in his button hole, set with large diamonds. This was Zubow, the widowed lover of Catherine II, rather a pretty than a handsome man, with large black eyes, but an exhausted and excessively worn out countenance. This creature, who crawled rather than walked, was nobody now; such is, however, the force of habit, that the crowd of courtiers still bowed before Zubow as at the time of his grandeur. ”

“ They took up arms, not as rebels who rise against a legitimate authority, but as a free nation, provoked by encroachments a thousand times repeated. They fell, and the great Sovereign, who knows how to value noble actions, far from treating with severity an innocent nation, and its defenders who are in her power, will not, I am confident, refuse them that compassion and interest which unfortunate virtue always excites in a magnanimous heart. ”

“ Between four and five o'clock in the evening, we saw a detachment of soldiers approaching head-quarters, and carrying upon a hand-barrow, hastily constructed, a man half dead. This was General Kosciuszko. His head and body covered with blood, contrasted in a dreadful manner with the livid paleness of his face. He had on his head a large wound from a sword, and three on his back, above the loins, from the thrusts of a pike. ”