Polish uprisings

“ 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. ”

“ Alone, and abandoned to her own resources, Poland must evidently succumb; she must sink under the weight of arms, still more under the weight of oppression. Then, surely, the last words had been said, the last resistance conquered, and all was really at an end. On the contrary, nothing was finished; and this is the curious point, the great moral, so to speak, of the events which for the last two months agitate Warsaw and all Polish countries. ”

“ They were bidden to seize upon any persons who instigated them to rebellion, and to bring them into the towns. A war of the peasants against the nobles forthwith broke out. Murder, pillage, and incendiary fires brought both the Polish insurrection and its leaders to a miserable end. The Polish nobles, unwilling to acknowledge the humiliating truth that their own peasants were their bitterest enemies, charged the Austrian Government with having set a price on their heads, and with having instigated the peasants to a communistic revolt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The people who vainly awaited liberation at the hands of their rulers will then free themselves. They will demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The sins of the past will be visited on the guilty with all the horrors to which the oppressed in time past have been subjected by them. Then the Polish revolution will be mere child’s play in comparison with the great drama on the day of vengeance, and that such a day will surely come is inevitable.
The Russian people will judge who insulted them, who mistrusted them, who enslaved them, who spilt their blood. ”

“ Such a new reign of clemency awakened hope in Poland that it too might share these benefits. First it was a Constitution such as had been given to Hungary for which they prayed. Then, as Italy was emancipating herself, they grew bolder, and, incited by societies of Polish exiles, all over Europe, demanded more: that they be given independence. Again the hope of a Polo-Lithuanian alliance, and a recovery of the lost Polish provinces in the Ukraine, and the reestablishment of an independent kingdom of Poland, dared to assert itself, and to invite a more complete destruction. ”

“ They had worked on the youth of the universities, they had penetrated the army and the navy, they had sprung up even in the garrets and in the country. The government had been obliged to capitulate before them. They were so strong at present, that it was hoped by the precipitation of the Polish insurrection to divert the public attention from the greater danger which threatened St. Petersburg and Moscow. Thus the poor Poles were unconsciously led on to their own destruction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the news of this Revolution of 1905 reached Warsaw, many Poles immediately joined in the demand for a constitution, adding to it a petition for the autonomy of Poland. Terror was the Russian answer—arrest, imprisonment, banishment to Siberia and the death sentence for thousands of the Polish nation. When three Poles assembled, the police called it "a crowd of revolutionists" and shot at them. Loud talk or a peal of laughter was considered a revolutionary symptom and sufficient grounds for punishment. ”

“ The vast majority of Poles, rich and poor, aristocratic and humble, lived their lives apart from the Russian Bureaucrats in their midst, who fattened on the country, reaping a harvest in peculation, drawing extra pay whilst there, on the lying legend that they carried their lives in their hands and slept with revolvers under their pillows for fear Polish insurgents should murder them in the night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus, we shall see, that the crisis of Poland was delayed, not by its intrinsic strength, but by the collision of foreign interests.
A consideration of the revolutions in Polish history is full of instruction for our nation. The inquirer finds, that the causes of the decline of that unhappy country were deeply rooted in its constitution; that it yielded to foreign aggression, only [Pg 460] because it had been reduced to anarchy by the licentious vehemence of domestic feuds. The Poles themselves struck the wounds of which their republic bled ”

“ The more the revolutionary and constitutional groups sought to strengthen their position, the more pronounced became the reactionary tendencies in the official world, and these received in 1863 an immense impetus from the Polish insurrection, with which the Nihilists and even some of the Liberals sympathised.* That ill-advised attempt on the part of the Poles to recover their independence had a curious effect on Russian public opinion. ”

“ I have regretted greatly this incomprehensible attitude of the Polish government. But that alone is not the decisive fact. The worst is that now Poland, like Czechoslovakia, a year ago, believes under the pressure of a lying international campaign, that it must call up troops although Germany, on her part, has not called up a single man and had not thought of proceeding in any way against Poland. ”

“ A Polish writer has well described the situation when he says, "Under a cruel government, it is Poland's duty to rebel against oppression; under a liberal government, it is her duty to rebel because she has the opportunity." ”

“ No idea could be more erroneous, for the struggle in Poland was to restore legitimate authority to its rightful holders, to a government truly liberal, representative, and Polish; while our revolted States sought to wrest authority from the legallyelected rulers, the Congress of the United States. The resurrection in Poland meant union, life; the rebellion, division and destruction. The one sought to bring about general emancipation, the other to prolong slavery.
But in the hands of Russia all facts are wax, which her political artists mould to serve their own purposes. ”

“ Ten days later a large number of Polish insurrectionists, ill-armed, and accompanied by a throng of even worse accoutred peasants carrying a red banner, flung themselves upon the line of march, and made a futile effort to break through the soldiers who guarded the exiles. The trained troopers of the Czar thrust them back and, as they broke and fled into the forest, chased and cut them down like sheep, till the snow turned to a crimson hue with their hearts' blood. ”

“ No more pitiful and abject picture does the terrible conflict present. Without part or lot in the European quarrel, with little to gain and everything to lose by it, having no such right of choice as gave glory to the martyrdom of Belgium, Poland has had nothing to do but to endure.
At the beginning of the war, when the battery of Gerrman hatred was directed chiefly against Russia, the world was told that the measure of her barbarity was to be seen in the condition to which the Polish people had been reduced under Russian rule. ”

“ The Governments of all the Allied countries are guilty of this war, by each supporting the Polish aggressor and robbers to a larger or lesser degree.
Workers of all countries! Soviet Russia will destroy the impudent bands of Polish imperialism just as she has destroyed those of Udenitch, Kolchak and Denikin whom your governments supported. ”

“ He might have learned that, after the downfall of the Polish insurrection, the Russian sword raged among the helpless victims without mercy; that every whisper against the victorious government was punished with death; that immeasurable chain-gangs of men and women were driven across thousands of miles of sterile country, to drag out their miserable lives in the snows of Siberia. ”

“ The revolution in France was the signal for a Polish rising, that began in an unsuccessful attempt of students and others to seize the person of the grand duke. The insurrection spread: men of talents and distinction, as well as Polish soldiers, joined the cause of the people. The Czar, Nicholas, would make no terms with the insurgents, and the Diet (Jan. 25, 1831) declared him to have forfeited the Polish crown. The Poles fought with desperate valor in a series of bloody battles, only to be overwhelmed by superiority of numbers. ”

“ Poles were appointed to nearly all official positions; elective district and municipal councils were formed, and also a Polish Council of State. But nothing short of independence would satisfy the inhabitants, and then came the revolution of 1863. It was suppressed, like its predecessor, and from that time the Russians have maintained such an iron rule in Poland that a revolt of any importance is next to impossible. All the oppression of which Russia is capable cannot destroy the spirit of independence among the Poles. ”

“ Through all the centuries of its existence Poland has never been a menace to anybody, not even to the Turks, to whom it has been merely an obstacle."
Nothing could be more true. The spirit of aggressiveness was absolutely foreign to the Polish temperament, to which the preservation of its institutions and its liberties was much more precious than any ideas of conquest. Polish wars were defensive, and they were mostly fought within Poland's own borders. ”

“ The city blazed into insurrection, two thousand Russians fell before the onslaught of the incensed patriots, and their general saved himself only by flight.
The outbreak at Warsaw was followed by one at Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, the Russians here being all taken prisoners. Three Polish regiments mustered into the Russian service deserted to the army of their compatriots, and far and wide over the country the flames of insurrection spread. ”

“ Concerning this the leading German newspapers, upon the basis of directions given out in the so-called ‘daily parole’ brought out the following publicity with great emphasis: (1) cruelty and terror against Germans and the extermination of Germans in Poland; (2) forced labor of thousands of German men and women in Poland; (3) Poland, land of servitude and disorder; the desertion of Polish soldiers; the increased inflation in Poland; (4) provocation of frontier clashes upon direction of the Polish Government; the Polish lust to conquer; (5) persecution of Czechs and Ukrainians by Poland. ”

“ When therefore the nobles of these provinces declared that Poland must be reconstituted with the limits of 1772, and subsequently took up arms in concert with the insurrectionary Government at Warsaw, the Russian people, from the Czar to the peasant, felt the struggle to be nothing less than one for the dismemberment or the preservation of their own country, and the doom of Polish nationality, at least for some generations, was sealed. ”

“ The Polish Government, unwilling to establish good neighborly relations as aimed at by me, want to force the issue by way of arms.
“The Germans in Poland are being persecuted with bloody terror and driven from their homes. Several acts of frontier violation, which cannot be tolerated by a great power, show that Poland is no longer prepared to respect the Reich’s frontiers. ”

“ Soon after a dictator was chosen, an army collected, and Russian Poland everywhere rose in revolt.
It was a hopeless struggle into which the Polish patriots had entered. In all Europe there was not a hand lifted in their aid. Prussia and Austria stood in a threatening attitude, each with an army of sixty thousand men upon the frontiers, ready to march to the aid of Russia if any disturbance took place in their Polish provinces. Russia invaded the country with an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, a force more than double that which Poland was able to raise. ”