The Private History of a Polish Insurrection, from official and unofficial sources

Front matter

THE PEIYATE HISTORY OF A POLISH INSURRECTION FROM OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL SOURCES. ET H. SUTHERLAND EDWARDS LATE SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF 'THE TIMES ' IN POLAND. ' Remember, I pray thee, whoever perished being innocent, or where were the righteous cut off.' — Eltphaz the Temanite. ' I have heard many such things I also could speak as ye do. If your soul were in my soul's stead I could heap up words against you and shake mine head at you. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and my words should assuage your grief.'— Job. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : SAUNDEKS, OTLEY, AND CO. 66 BROOK STREET, W. 18G5. [All rights reserved."] LONDON FEINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUABE

Preface

. The point of view from which I look upon the Polish insurrection of 1863 is, perhaps, altogether wrong ; for if Poland is destined some day to recover her independence, that result might have been retarded by even a temporary reconciliation between Poland and Russia. This was the argument of the extreme democratic party when Russia was making concessions, and Poland was divided as to whether they ought to be accepted or not. Nor is this party dissatisfied with the general result of the insurrection. It has always held that until every trace of the corvee, even in the form of rent, was abolished, the peasants could never be got to take part in a struggle for national independence; and the peasants are now freeholders. The farms were A

PREFACE.

. made over to them, first of all, by the Polish National Government, with the view of gaining their support ; and the transfer was maintained or renewed by the Russian Government with precisely the same object. But whether the endowment of the peasants with the land, for which they formerly paid rent, or performed task work, be attributed to revolutionists or to the agents of despotism working with revolutionary weapons, in either case their position is much improved ; and it is hoped that now, under more favourable circumstances than ever existed for them before, they will gradually become ani mated by the same spirit of patriotism which is so strongly felt by all classes above them. The insurrection, too, 'has, of course, had the effect of keeping up and intensifying the national hatred of the Poles for everything Russian.

As for destroying Poland — a country like Poland, with an independent and for the most part glo rious existence of eight centuries * to look back * Those who repeat the common assertion, that the ancient form of government in Poland was intrinsically and

PREFACE.

. V to, is not destroyed so easily. If to insure its final ruin it were only necessary to execute its inhabitants by hundreds, massacre them by thousands, and exile them by tens of thousands ; to confiscate the estates of its principal nobles, plunder its libraries, abolish its ancient places of education, and seek to impose upon its population the use of a foreign tongue, — then Poland would have ceased to exist long ago. The last PoUsh insurrection was in some respects more formidable than any that have preceded it. For the first time, the working classes in the Polish towns took up arms of their own accord, without any active personal encouragement from the aristocracy- — indeed, in the first instance, in spite of the aristocracy. For the first time, the irremediably bad, should remember that the Polish Re public lasted from the tenth to the eighteenth century, when the crown, from elective, was made hereditary by the Poles themselves.

It was this all-important change that caused the second partition, which, being followed by Kosciuszko's insurrection, led to the complete dismember ment of Poland. VI

PREFACE.

. Poles, though not assisted, and though greatly injured by the diplomatic intervention of France, England, and Austria, seemed really at one period to have a fair chance of obtaining help from abroad. For the first time, moreover, a rising in Poland, in stead of cementing the union between the three partitioning Powers, caused a breach between two of them — or, if the breach already existed, made it strikingly apparent, and widened it. It "Was a good sign for Poland, that while Prussia took part with Russia, Austria sided at once with France and England. On the other hand, Poland has now no chance of regaining the complete administrative auto nomy which the Marquis Wielopolski obtained for the kingdom just before the insurrection broke out. The insurrection may also be said to have cost Poland a considerable amount of territory.

A great many estates in Lithuania and Ruthenia, which, though they had been confiscated by the Emperor Nicholas, were still administered for the Government by Polish agents, have now passed

PREFACE.

. VII definitively into the hands of Russian proprietors. It is, nevertheless, improbable that Russia will ever be able to establish a Russian landed aristo cracy in any part of the Poland of 1772. With regard to myself, after spending four months in the 'Kingdom,' Galicia, and Posen, during the agitated period which preceded the insurrection, I revisited Poland after the insurrection had broken out, arriving in Cracow just as the greater part of Langiewicz's disorganised army was hurrying to the Galician frontier. I saw in Galicia how the civil business of the insurrection was conducted, and how the detach ments were formed ; and I accompanied one de tachment on an expedition against the Russians. From Galicia I went to the Kingdom of Poland ; and remained as long as I was allowed to do so at Warsaw.

From Warsaw I went through Grodno and Wilna (neither of which towns I was per mitted to visit) to St. Petersburg; from St. Petersburg, through Moscow, to Kieff; and from Kieff, through the Ruthenian provinces (where I

PREFACE.

. VIII found the peasants armed and empowered to stop and search all travellers, and to make ' domi ciliary visits' at the houses of the landed proprietors), back to Galicia. Two days after my arrival at Lemberg, the state of siege was established throughout Austrian Poland, and the passage of detachments to the Russo-Polish frontier ren dered impossible. This, together with the political diversion caused by the invasion of Denmark, put an end to the PoUsh insurrection of 1863, and to all interest in affairs of Poland. I must add, that nearly the whole of my second volume is made up of letters addressed to the ' Times ' from Poland and Russia while the insurrection was going on, and that these letters are now republished by permission of the proprietors. In the first volume, which is entirely new, man}' statements are made, and several conversations reported, for which it may appear, at first sight, that I ought to have quoted my authorities. I can only say that, in all these cases, I have obtained my information from the best possible sources.

PREFACE.

. IX Those who take a particular interest in the organisation of conspiracies and rebelbons, on the modern PoUsh, Italian, and Hungarian system, may be referred to Nos. 28 and 29 (August, 1865) of the Moscow political and literary journal entitled Sovremennyi Letopis, for an account of the formation of the Polish National Govern ment or ' Junta ' (Rzond), written from a Rus sian point of view, and based on Russian official documents. In my own account, which I consider to be be written from an English point of view, I have been careful to mention no names except those of persons who are now beyond the reach of harm ; but there was of course no reason why the Moscow journal should take any such precautions. I had intended to spell the Polish names in these volumes systematically, as they ought to be spelt, but, on consideration, determined to spell the names of well-known personages as they are usually spelt in England.

The Poles themselves, in writing their names for foreign eyes, frequently misspell them, in the vain hope that foreigners may not mispronounce them. CONTENTS ciF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER PAGE I . . . GENERAL VIEW . . . 1 II . . . OPINIONS AND MANŒUVRES OF THE REVO- LUTIONARY AND OTHER PARTIES IN POLAND 21 III . . . EVENTS FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE EM- PEROR ALEXANDER TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WARSAW DEMONSTRATIONS 39 IV . . . LIFE AND DEATH OF THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 65 V . . . THE ARRIVAL OF THE GRAND DUKE CON- STANTINE AND THE EXILE OF COUNT ANDREW ZAMOYSKI .... 91 VI . . . THE MARQUIS WIELOPOLSKI AND THE CON- SCRIPTION . . . . .128 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER PAGE VII .. . DIFFICULTIES AND HESITATION WITHIN. ENCOURAGEMENT FROM WITHOUT . . 162 VIII . . . EVENTS WHICH LED TO THE DICTATOR- SHIP OF LANGIEWICZ . . .182 IX . . .

THE FRIENDS OF POLAND . . . 206 Errata. Page 30, line 2, for last autumn read in the autumn of 1863. „ 154, ,,'22, ,, February „ January. 158, „ 4, „ firstly „ finally. „ 188, „ 17, „ Russian „ Prussian. ,, 228, „ 11, ,, creating „ erecting. » 281, „ 7, „ establishment of the Uniate read reunion of the Uniates to the Orthodox. THE PEIYATE HISTORY OF A POLISH INSUEEECTION.

Chapter I. General View

The Polish Insurrection of 1863 originated as an armed movement, in the resistance of a portion of the population to the execution of a measure of recruitment, which had all the charac ter of a proscription, and was directed against the younger inhabitants of towns, as against a class bent at all hazards on subverting the Russian dominion in Poland, and already, to a great extent, leagued together for that purpose, and bound by oath to a secret governing committee. vol. I. * B THE OUTBREAK. Nevertheless, the Russian official accounts repre sent the Poles as the aggressors; and, putting aside the military kidnapping as a detail without importance, say that the origin of the actual con flict was a treacherous massacre of peaceable Russian soldiers by fanatical Polish revolutionists. In fact, on the night of the 22nd January, eight days after the recruitment had been effected at Warsaw, and when it was about to be carried out in the provinces, the Poles in several villages and small towns rose by order of the central insurrec tional committee, fell upon the Russian troops in their cantonments, killed some, disarmed others, and, in one place, set fire to a house from which three soldiers were defending themselves, who, refusing to come out and surrender, perished in the flames.

This is the one 'atrocity' mentioned in the Russian official accounts of the outbreak* — unless the attempt made throughout the country to surprise the Russian troops be regarded in itself as such. * See extracts from the Journal de St. Petersbourg, given in the Correspondence on Polish Affairs, laid before Parliament. THE OUTBREAK. 3 In the histories of the insurrection fabricated for the benefit of the Russian people, and distri buted gratuitously, or sold at nominal prices, in the villages and at the large fairs in Russia, great stress is laid upon this so-called massacre, without any mention whatever being made of the odious measure by which the attempt at a general rising was immediately provoked. The Russian government, moreover, the better to excite the hatred of the Russian peasantry, and of the Ruthenian peasantry belonging to the Russian Church, against the Poles, attributed to the Polish movement on behalf of national independence a special religious and propagandist character. ' Oh, what orthodox blood was shed that night by men calling them selves Christians ! ' says a passage, describing the first outbreak, in an address to the Ruthenian peasantry issued from Kieff;* while a pamphlet, published at Moscow under the title of ' Russian Truth and Polish Lying ' t (the title printed in Church-Slavonian characters, with ' Lord have mercy upon us ! ' as an epigraph), sets forth that the intention of the Poles was to re-establish * Appendix, No. 1. t Appendix, No. 2.

B THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION. serfdom*, to convert the Russians by force to the Roman Catholic religion, and to introduce into the Russian Churches ' the abomination that maketh desolate, predicted by Daniel the pro phet.' The Russian journals, all tuned to the same official note, cried with one accord that the true object of the Poles in rising against the imperial government was to regain exclusive privileges for the Polish nobility, and to re establish the authority of the nobibty over the peasantry. The Russians cannot believe, or, at least, will * The students of the university of St. Petersburg and Moscow were accused, in the same manner, of wishing to re-establish serfdom, when, in the autumn of 1861, they objected to some new regulations introduced by a minister of instruction, who seemed to have mistaken his functions for those of minister of police.

The device did not answer at St. Petersburg, probably because the authorities were afraid to press the execution of their plan in a city in habited by so many foreigners and by a foreign diplomatic body. At Moscow, where less ceremony is observed, peasants were armed with sticks, placed in ambush, and at a given signal, and immediately after a cavalry charge, fell upon the students and beat them unmercifully. I was myself at St. Petersburg, and afterwards at Moscow, during these disturbances. A RUSSIAN THEORY. 5 not admit, that the Poles suffer from being sub jected to the rule of a foreign and, in many respects, barbarous power, which year after year has marked out and seized all their most promising 37oung men in the schools and gymnasiums, to bury them in the Russian army ; which has closed their universities, carried off their libraries, forbidden the establishment of every useful and necessary institution, and, in a word, has syste matically impeded the development of their country, with a view of rendering it too feeble for resistance ; but they consider it quite natural that the Polish proprietors should wish to keep their peasants in a species of serfdom, and that the whole civilised population, or, at least, members of every class belonging to it, and especially the working men, should fly to arms, with death or exile as their reward in case of defeat— not to free Poland from Russian dominion, but simply to prevent any improvement being effected in the position of the Polish peasantry.

After circulating such a detestable calumny as this, what pity do the Russians deserve, when they complain that the West of Europe accepts all the SERF EMANCIPATION IN RUSSIA. 6 accusations brought against them by the Poles, without listening to anything they may have to say in self-defence ? The West of Europe knows that Russia is obliged to give a very bad character to the Poles in order to justify her occupation of Poland; and it naturally doubts the sincerity of those who attribute vices to an enemy, and then plunder him by way of punishment. As to the emancipation of the serfs, that measure, whatever may be said about it now, when it is too late to protest any longer, met, when it was first proposed, with strenuous opposition from a large portion of the Russian proprietors ; * and the reproaches on the subject addressed by the Emperor to the nobility of Moscow were recorded at the time in the * Nevertheless, it was not to the personal liberation ot the peasant that so many of the Russian proprietors objected, but to the cession of land by which it was to be accompanied.

The proprietors of the Russo-Polish pro vinces mayalso have objected to the arbitrary apportionment of their land by the government. But they at once ac cepted the principle of emancipation, with whatever con sequences it might entail. Moreover, they were opposed to the insurrection until, by the force of circumstances, they were drawn into it. RUSSIAN CONSTITUTIONALISM. Russian official journals, and republished in every newspaper in Europe. On the other hand, the thanks addressed by His Majesty to the nobles of the Polish provinces incorporated with the Russian empire, for their immediate and spontaneous assent to his proposition, have been recorded and republished in a similar manner. The nobles of Moscow, when the emancipation scheme had become law, evinced their profound irritation by voting, with scarcely a dissentient voice, an illegal address to the crown, demanding, in pressing terms, a complete change in the system of government, and the immediate publication of a constitution, in the utility of which few beyond those who actually proposed it were suspected of believing.* The Russians seem to imagine that the more serious opposition offered soon afterwards by Poland, as a nation, proceeded, in a similar man ner, from a wish to avenge upon the Russian government the benefits it had conferred upon * The movement among the Russian nobility in favour of a constitution commenced three years ago (at the be gining of 1862).

It ceased for a time when the Polish Insurrection broke out. REAL CAUSES OF THE RISING. the Polish peasantry ; and that if the first object of the Poles was to liberate their country from foreign domination, their second was to replace their peasantry in a state of slavery. Although, if this argument be maintained at all, it must be maintained in the teeth of facts, it is much employed, both by Russians who are really ignorant of the facts, and by Russians who wil fully ignore them. Now, as to the real cause and also the real ob ject of the insurrection. Lord Russell — unable in a diplomatic despatch to state the simple fact that the Poles rise from time to time against the governments imposed upon them, because they abhor foreign rule* — was obliged, in hi3 corre- * There is not, and never has been, any party in Poland in favour of linking the fate of their country permanently with that of Russia, Austria, or Prussia. ' The Poles in general,' says the Hon. P. Lamb to Lord Castlereagh, in a letter dated Vienna, June 25, 1814, ' are pleased at the idea of becoming a kingdom attached to Russia for the present, in the idea that it will lead to their future independence.

Some of the most reasonable look upon this as illusory, and flatter themselves that the day will come when Austria will espouse their cause, in order to wrest Poland from Russia. But it is remarkable that among all the Poles whom I see (and I see a great many) there is not one REAL CAUSES OF THE RISING. 9 spondence with the Russian government, to argue that the insurrection of 1863 was caused by the government of the Emperor Nicholas from 1831 to 1855. But the execrable system of Nicholas alone, without the relaxation of that system by which the accession of the present Emperor was followed, could not — whatever other evils it may have produced — have caused an insurrection ; for no one dared rise against it. The peaceful at titude of the Poles during the Crimean war, when, for the first time, they found England and France united in arms against Russia, has been accounted for in various ways — by the material prosperity of the country,* most remarkable just individual who is attached either to Russia or to any other power, but as they think that power may ultimately favour their views for the independence of Poland.' ( Castle reagh Correspondence x. 59).

I have myself conversed with hundreds of Poles, of all classes and conditions, on this subject, and I can say positively that the views of the Poles now are precisely what they were in 1814. Sometimes, however, they do incline towards Russia, sometimes towards Austria ; and it seemed to me that their only hope in 1861 lay in accepting peaceably from Russia whatever concessions they could obtain. * A report from a former consul at Warsaw, written im mediately after the Crimean war, and of which a few copies POLAND DURING THE CRIMEAN WAR. 10 then ; by the fact that the Poles were quite un prepared for war ; and finally, by a belief that the time of action had not arrived, and that if Poland waited, she would be appealed to and terms would be proposed to her by the allies. In fact, the chief of the Polish emigration teas sounded on the subject, when he informed the French government that the Poles would not stir unless the allies formally engaged to obtain a certain minimum of concessions for them as one of the conditions of peace.

At the same time orders were sent to Warsaw to keep quiet — rather unnecessarily, I fancy, for Warsaw swarmed with police agents and spies, and was occupied by a large army. Russia, pressed as she was on the Baltic and on the Black Sea, yet found means to keep one hundred thousand men in Poland during were printed for private circulation, calls attention to the in creasing resources of Poland and expresses a belief that a new era of material prosperity has commenced for that country. This may account, to some extent, for the Poles having soon afterwards commenced their agitation against Russia. It should never be forgotten that material prosperity is only valued in Poland as a means towards an end. The ultimate object of the Poles is not to grow rich and fat, but to gain their independence.

NICHOLAS I. AND ALEXANDER II. 11 the Crimean war. This seems to have been the chief reason why Poland gave no sign of life at a time when, had she risen, France and England could scarcely have avoided making her cause to some extent their own. She had been terrorized by the Emperor Nicholas to such a degree that she feared Russia, even when Russia had France, England, Turkey, and Piedmont to contend with. The Emperor Nicholas being dead, and a sovereign of quite a different character having ascended the throne,* a reaction took place, and the Poles gradually proceeded from an attitude of defiance and menace to open insurrection ; and without * But the Poles, it may be said, have suffered as much from the government of the Emperor Alexander as from that of the Emperor Nicholas. Probably at this moment they have suffered even more.

Nevertheless, when Alexan der II. ascended the throne, if he did little to improve the legal position of the Poles, he at least rided them with a light hand. This was not and ought not to be enough to satisfy the descendants of a free people ; but the fact re mains that the Poles were stifled during the last twenty five years of the reign of Nicholas, and that they were able to breathe during the first five years of the reign of Alex ander and until the regular organisation of the Warsaw demonstrations. 1830. 12 any promises, without any reasonable expectations even of foreign assistance, and almost entirely unprovided with arms and ammunition, engaged single-handed in a struggle with the whole force of the Russian empire. In 1830, when they had thirty thousand of the best troops in Europe to begin their insurrection with, and when they had the whole country in their hands, with a peasantry to whom the Russians were really foreigners, and who had never, in a direct manner, felt the force of Russian rule, they adopted a dignified and, as much as possible, a conciliatory tone towards the Russians, and assured them that their war was with the Russian government, but that they had no hatred for the Russian people, who are Slavonians like1 ourselves.' For some months the insurrection of 1830 had purely a political character ; nothing was said about sepa ration from Russia, the Russians were spoken of as fellow-subjects, and the government of the country was carried on in the name of the Em peror Nicholas.

At that time the Poles of the ' kingdom ' had only been fifteen years under the Russian sceptre, and, though, they had an 1830. 13 Emperor of Russia for their constitutional king, and a Russian Grand Duke for the comtnanderin-chief of their national army, they retained the complete direction of their own internal affairs. Indeed, in spite of many cases of individual persecution, the national life of the Poles had been very little interfered with, even in Lithu ania and the other provinces (Volhynia, Podolia, and Kieff) acquired by Russia at the partition of the eighteenth century. After the suppression of the insurrection of 1830, however, the Poles had to pass through a quarter of a century of unexampled and almost inconceivable oppression; and in 1863, though the Russians had certainly improved since the time of Nicholas, and, at least, had established a national administration and an excellent system of national education in Poland, the Poles rose with a feeling of intense national hatred, declared war against the Russians as a people, and lost no opportunity of representing them as savages, incapable by race and from their very nature of being civilised.

The system of Nicholas, then, if it did not 1863. 14 produce, at least prepared the way for the in surrection of 1863, which, however, was caused above all by a belief that Russia was exhausted, and that the power which had helped Italy to gain her independence would not abandon Po land in a similar struggle. The Russians argue now that the concessions made to the Poles by the Emperor Alexander encouraged them to rise, and that but for the national administration introduced at the urgent solicitation of the Marquis Wielopolski the or ganisation on which the insurrection was based would have been impossible. The fact is, the reforms, whether sufficient or insufficient, were introduced at a time of great excitement, when it was too late to give them a fair trial, and when a small but desperate party had already resolved, at all hazards, to take up arms.

It was an evil resolution. It was not merely the vœ victis character of the struggle that had to be dreaded, but also the terrible means by which alone it could be carried on. In 1830 the war was in one sense a civil war; but all Poland was in arms against Russia, the contest was above-ground, and every Pole was the avowed enemy of every Russian. In this last insurrection many of the chiefs fought under assumed names, and had deserted the Russian army — which, however, they had in the first instance been forced to enter. Numbers of insurgents were the sons of proprietors, who could not openly defy the government, or their estates would have been confiscated, and who had to plead compulsion when they were charged with having furnished supplies to their own countrymen. In the same family one brother would be fighting in the woods, while another would be working in some government office — unable, it is true, to leave his post, for the very fact of doing so would have exposed him to suspicion at a time when suspicion, accusation, and exile followed one another in close succession without the existence of proof being at all required.

Officials nominally in the service of the Russian government were actually helping the insurrection — at the peril no doubt of their lives, but in violation also of their oaths. In short, thousands of Poles who had not only not declared 1863. 16 war against the government, but who still wore the government uniform, were fighting against it in secret, and could scarcely do otherwise; for how could they refuse to help their own country men against the Russians? The timid peasants, threatened, maltreated, and put to death if they assisted the insurgents, had to be treated with at least equal severity by the insurgents to prevent them from leaning too much to the Russian side. Then, as the Russians maintained spies, it was absolutely necessary to kill the spies, or the secrets of the anonymous government would have been discovered.

We all know that the Poles have no objection to opeD war when open war is possible ; but what were they to do without arms, without a single town to themselves, and with their enemies spread over the whole face of the country ? All that need be said is, that they were placed in most trying circumstances by a deplorable in surrection, which was not, and could not be, an insurrection of the whole country, though all the townspeople, together with every educated man in the rural districts, and every man habitually OBJECT OF THE INSURRECTION. 17 brought into relations with educated people, prayed for its success. But for those daring reckless spirits who were ready to risk an appeal to arms there were no arms to be had. The peasantry, who had their scythes, were for the most part neutral, and were even inclined here and there to take the side of the government, which they felt was the safe side in the long run.

The great proprietors, though by no means neutral, had the fear of confisca tion before their eyes, and could only aid the insurrection cautiously, secretly, and by means of money, which, when they had once joined the movement, they gave abundantly. If, however, the Poles engaged in a desperate struggle, with the certainty of incurring the most terrible losses in case of failure, it must also be remembered that they had a great prize in view They were fighting for the independence of their country as it existed before the partitions of the eighteenth century, and for the immediate Hbera tion of all Russian Poland, as a first step towards that end. Unfortunately the educated class is very small c VOL. I. THE TOLISH PEASANTRY. 18 in Poland, and in those provinces where the peasantry, intent only on cultivating their fields in peace, are very numerous, and where the pro prietors and the inhabitants of towns are but few, no movement on behalf of national independence, unless supported by a regular army, can meet with even a momentary success.