Polish nobility

“ He, too, like Sigismund I, wished to rule peaceably over the goats as well as over the sheep.
When we turn from the kings to the nation, we meet with the same broad-minded liberality and tolerance. The Polish nation of the sixteenth century loved liberty no less than at any other period of its history. Liberty constituted the foundation and was an essential characteristic of all its institutions, political and social. The Polish nobility worked and fought strenuously for its political rights and privileges, and having secured them, guarded them jealously. ”

“ You will render an account of your negotiations to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who will acquaint the Emperor with your progress; and you will send me abstracts of your reports.
“The misfortunes and weakness of the Polish republic were occasioned by an aristocracy, which knew neither law nor restraint. At that period, as at present, the nobility were powerful; the citizens oppressed; and the great mass of the people nothing. But, even amidst these disorders, a love of liberty and independence prevailed in Poland, and long supported her feeble existence. ”

“ In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Polish 109 princes, and following their example, the magnates and the clergy, in order to encourage colonization, offered special inducements to German colonizing entrepreneurs by allowing them for their services a certain amount of land free of charge and of all public burdens, and by granting them special rights and privileges, which placed them practically on an equal footing with the Polish nobility. ”

“ In this very property of a ruling people lies the basis of the aristocratic nature of the historico-political tradition of the Poles. This aristocratic quality has a more important foundation in the historical development of Polish society. The middle class in Poland declined very rapidly, and the nobility and the magnates dominated the entire political, social and intellectual life of the country, so that Polish society, in the last centuries of the existence of the Polish kingdom, was purely aristocratic, and was supported on the backs of the completely submerged peasant and middle classes. ”

“ That there is shameful despotism exercised by the present ruling powers all must allow; but that peace, individual liberty, and great commercial prosperity now reign in Poland is equally obvious. In the days which are popularly denominated those of Polish independence the nobility were always divided into bitter factions. Revolutions were as frequent as they are to-day in South America or Mexico, and the strongest party disposed of the crown, ruling amid tumult and bloodshed. ”

“ Economic prosperity strengthened the power of the nobility: they excluded from the Diet the representatives of the cities and reduced the free husbandmen to serfdom with the object of securing labour which they needed very much in the new conditions. From this time onwards the whole of Polish history is practically the work of the Polish landed nobility. ”

“ Even in our century whole regiments of infantry have been ennobled. There are thus at this moment in the different parts of Poland not less than 120,000 noble families. The nobility thus corresponds here most nearly to what elsewhere in Europe is the upper middle class. It must also be noted that the titles, prince, marquis, &c., are not originally Polish, but were first conferred upon the most important families by the foreign conquerors, for which reason they are not much used in the country. In Warsaw in speaking French they address a countess as madame and not as comtesse. ”

“ Rulhiere, and other more or less voluminous authorities, might be quoted; but, not to try the patience of the reader too much, I shall confine myself to transcribing a clenching remark of a Polish nobleman, who told our old friend, the English traveller, that although the name of Poland still remained, the nation no longer existed. "An universal corruption and venality pervades all ranks of the people. Many of the first nobility do not blush to receive pensions from foreign courts: one professes himself publicly an Austrian, a second a Prussian, a third a Frenchman, and a fourth a Russian." ”

“ A stock of the Western Slavonic family, originally dwelling between the Vistula and the Oder. In the tenth century Poland became an independent European Power, and remained an elective kingdom down to its partition in the eighteenth century between Russia, Austria and Prussia. The Polish peasantry have always been industrious and successful agriculturists, whilst the nobility were turbulent and warlike. The Poles who live under Austrian and German rule are fairly contented, but those of Russian Poland have carried on a long and often bloody series of struggles for liberty. ”

“ The king was elected by the whole body of the nobility and gentry in the plains of Warsaw, and before this choice they obliged him to sign whatever conditions they thought proper. The Polish armies were not paid by the king; every nobleman or gentleman gave his attendance in time of war, at the head of his vassals, and retired from the fatigues of the campaign when it suited his own inclination. In the year 1779, a singularly bold partition of this country was effected by Russia, Prussia, and Austria ”

“ Experience of disastrous interregnums periodically overturning the government, the obligation to safeguard every inhabitant of the Polish land, the sealing forever of avenue to the influences of foreign powers, the memory of the former grandeur and happiness of our country under continuously reigning families, the need to turn foreigners away from ambition for the throne, and to turn powerful Poles toward the single-minded cultivation of national liberty, have indicated to our prudence that the throne of Poland be passed on by right of succession. ”

“ But the Poles are not worthy to own their soil. What is Poland to-day? A race of slaves and peasants, without law or order, driven hither and thither by a lewd and corrupt aristocracy, who, instead of blushing for the degeneracy of their caste, hold their saturnalia over the very graves of their noble ancestors. And at the head of this degenerate people is their king, the minion of a foreign court, who promulgates the laws which he receives from his imperial Russian mistress. Verily, God has weighed the Polish nation in His balance, and they have been found wanting. ”

“ There is only one answer; the principal cause of this complete and irretrievable collapse is to be sought for in the folly, egotism and selfishness of the Polish gentry, whose insane dislike of all discipline, including even the salutary discipline of regular government, converted Poland into something very like a primitive tribal community at the very time when every European statesman, including the more enlightened of the Poles themselves, clearly recognized that the political future belonged to the strongly centralized monarchies, which were everywhere rising on the ruins of feudalism. ”

“ Therein lie the strength and the future of the thing so strictly forbidden no farther back than two years or so, of the Polish independence expressed in a Polish State. It comes into the world morally free, not in virtue of its sufferings, but in virtue of its miraculous rebirth and of its ancient claim for services rendered to Europe. Not a single one of the combatants of all the fronts of the world has died consciously for Poland's freedom. ”

“ A century and a half ago the living body of Poland was torn in pieces, but her soul has not perished. It lives on in the hope that the hour of the renaissance of the Polish nation, of its fraternal reconciliation with Great Russia, will come. ”

“ Had Poland’s resurrection as a nation been promptly proclaimed, had her crown been given to some born soldier, like Murat, Lannes, Soult, or Poniatowski, he would have drawn to his physical support every man of Polish blood, and to his moral support the active approval of every liberal in the world. ”

“ I have no faith in a Polish kingdom. There may be a Polish revolution to-morrow, perhaps, when the Russians shall meet defeat in eastern Asia, as the Russian patriots hope, but a Polish kingdom there will never be. ”

“ Under such circumstances, what must be thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that 'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor purpose of the most talented or ambitious, can erase at pleasure a nationality which has a history of over a thousand years of existence, a nationality proved by the last hundred years of incessant struggle for independence with three giants. ”

“ Poland’s independence springs up from that great immolation, but Poland’s loyalty to Europe will not be rooted in anything so trenchant and burdensome as the sense of an immeasurable indebtedness, of that gratitude which in a worldly sense is sometimes called eternal, but which lies always at the mercy of weariness and is fatally condemned by the instability of human sentiments to end in negation. Polish loyalty will be rooted in something much more solid and enduring, in something that could never be called eternal, but which is, in fact, life-enduring. ”

“ Every one sympathises with the Poles and hopes for the establishment of a really free and independent Poland, and not a Poland under the rule or protection of either Austria or Germany. It will be a great experiment, because in the past the great state of Poland, one of the greatest in Europe, was broken because of the incapacity of the Poles to rule themselves. Their armies showed great bravery, the Polish cavalry, winged like angels, terrified enemy cavalry horses and charged often to victory ”

“ This year was fatal to the liberty of Poland. Driven to insurrection by the faithless and tyrannical conduct of Nicholas, betrayed by France, deserted by England, and persecuted in their low estate by Austria and Prussia, the Poles, after heroically struggling with the armies of Eussia, were finally subdued. Warsaw was captured; the Polish armies disbanded; the nobles degraded; and thousands of every rank, age, and sex subjected to the most cruel punishments, and the nationality of the country destroyed, so far as human ingenuity could accomplish so fell a destruction. ”

“ You must communicate to the government of the Grand Duchy an impulse calculated to prepare the great changes which the Emperor proposes to make in favour of the Polish nation.
“It is necessary that the Poles should second the designs of the Emperor, and co-operate in their own regeneration. They must consider France only as an auxiliary power.
“The Emperor is aware of the difficulties he will have to encounter, in his endeavours to bring about the re-establishment of Poland. That great political work will oppose the apparent and immediate interests of his allies. ”

“ Every thing had had its day but the real nation; of them no notice had been taken; and though Poland was called a republic, it was a republic without a people. The royal power, the tumultuous patriotism of a nobility, the oligarchical feuds, the democracy of the nobility, the high aristocracy, downright bribery, the direct presence and interference of foreign troops, each had had its period; and is it strange that the anarchy of Poland had become complete? There was not only no government virtually, but even the forms did not exist, by which a government could be effectually set in motion. ”

“ There was never a history more free from political bloodshed than the history of the Polish State, which never knew either feudal institutions or feudal quarrels. At the time when heads were falling on the scaffolds all over Europe there was only one political execution in Poland--only one; and as to that there still exists a tradition that the great Chancellor who democratised Polish institutions, and had to order it in pursuance of his political purpose, could not settle that matter with his conscience till the day of his death. ”

“ It was owing to the virtues of this plebeian monarch, that the natives among the Poles, when elected to be kings, were called Piasts.
The German kings were zealous to diffuse Christianity beyond the Vistula; and Mjesko, who was baptized in 964, was the first of the Polish chiefs who embraced Christianity, and at the same time became the vassal of the German king. Yet it is hard to assign a fixed character to the government during this earliest historical period. As Poland is a plain, its natural aspect invited aggressions from all sides; and it was in its turn fond of war as a profession. ”

“ But brute violence only provokes resistance and gives permanence to the feelings it intends to destroy. Oppress a people, and you keep them together—banish a man, and you make him love his country—do as Russia is now doing with Poland, and Polish nationality can never perish. In the due course of time the present emperor will be gathered to his fathers. Another sovereign may ascend that throne of a less severe and unrelenting temper. He, perhaps, may deem another line of policy towards Poland at once expedient and just. ”

“ For the crime of patriotism Poland was decimated, thousands of its noblest citizens being transported to the Caucasus and Siberia. The remnant of separate existence possessed by Poland was overthrown, and it was made a province of the Russian empire. Even the teaching of the Polish language was forbidden, the youth of the nation being commanded to learn and speak the Russian tongue. As for the persecution and suffering which fell upon the Poles as a nation, it is too sad a story to be here told. There is still a Polish people, but a Poland no more. ”