A brief history of Poland

Front matter

RAY WRN

\ Ay Wks SLAMS - SS eS

SAN

Preface

TuHis is not the book of an investigator. It is simply an attempt to present the results of much work already done by others on a difficult and complicated subject, in such a way as to reach and interest the many to whom Poland’s great past, as well as her present problems and their wide significance, are practically unknown.

It is impossible to mention all the many authorities whose work has contributed to the preparation of this book, but I must gratefully acknowledge my special debt to Répell and Caro’s Geschichte Polens, still the best general history of Poland for the period it covers; to the books and articles of Mr. R. Nisbet Bain on many Slavonic subjects; and to Mr. Robert Howard Lord, without whose authoritative and illuminating work, The Second Partition of Poland, much of this book could scarcely have been written.

Jutta Swirt Orvis

® we i . 7 ny 4 ance oa eb SY ory ae

Contents

SUPER RCSeC ee g ge er Ww a

VII.

VIII. . POLAND SINCE 1863

Introduction

ONCE again after a century of oblivion the problem of Poland has become a living question in European politics. The Great War and the rallying of Russia, England, and France to the cause of Serbia, Belgium, and Alsace- Lorraine have brought the whole question of the rights of small nationalities to the fore, and have aroused high hopes of national recognition and autonomous government in the breasts of many peoples, subjected during long generations to the arbitrary and galling rule of alien conquerors.

Nowhere are these hopes stronger than among the Poles. Perhaps also they are nowhere better founded. The Polish question is so much more than a merely Polish question, so much more even than a Prussian or a Russian or an Austrian question — as it is often erroneously considered; it is, in fact, a European question of such vital importance, that the Poles are probably right in thinking that, in mere self-defense and for her own purposes, Europe must, now, in her time of crisis, solve this age-long problem in the only possible way by recognizx INTRODUCTION ing Polish nationality and securing for the Poles an autonomous free government. For it is the simple truth that upon its solution depends in large measure the solution of the far greater problem whether the Slav peoples are to maintain an honorable place in the Europe of the future or be crushed out of existence by the advancing might of Pan-Germanism.

Five hundred years ago Poland was already an old state and one of the greatest in Europe, with territories stretching far to the north, east, and south of her homeland, the basin of the river Vistula. From the Baltic southwards to the Carpathians and the Black Sea, from the Oder eastward to the Bug she stretched, a great wedge of plain and river valleys separating eastern or Slavonic Europe from the west.

These possessions, which made her incontestably the greatest power in eastern Europe, were won and held by her only after a life-anddeath struggle against the great champion of Germanism in the Baltic lands, the Order of the Teutonic Knights. This semi-monastic military order— one of the many which came into existence during the Crusades — was engaged, under papal sanction, in conquering, colonizing, and forcibly Christianizing the Baltic seaboard. By 1386 the whole Baltic coast, from Pome-

INTRODUCTION x1 rania to the Gulf of Finland, was in its hands. Poland was thus cut off from the sea and her very existence threatened. In this crisis she turned to her neighbor on the east, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and offered the crown of Poland to the reigning Grand Duke, Jagiello, on condition of his marrying Hedwiga, the last of Poland’s ruling house. Hedwiga had made very different plans. She was, in fact, already betrothed to her cousin, a prince of the House of Habsburg, and it was only after her nobles had shut her up and threatened to starve her that she yielded to their wishes, and married Jagiello, who became King of Poland under the title of Wladislaus IT.

This union was of enormous advantage to Poland. Lithuania was a large and powerful state, which had come into existence for the purpose of preserving the Lithuanian tribes from extinction at the hands of the Knights. Occupying originally the valley of the river Niemen, Lithuania had taken advantage of the weakness of Russia under Tartar rule to overrun and annex the vast territories of southern and western Russia — Black, White, and Little Russia, including the great basin of the Dnieper River. Her Grand Dukes also at this time were rulers of exceptional ability, mighty xii INTRODUCTION in war and wise in peace, and under the leadership of Wladislaus II and his six successors Poland became and remained for two hundred years the mightiest state in Europe, both in territory and prestige.

Twenty years after the union, in 1410, the Knights received their death-blow in the great battle of Griinewald, near Tannenberg, and fifty years later their territories were divided, Poland annexing West Prussia, which gave her once more an outlet on the Baltic and control of the mouths of the Vistula, while East Prussia, the territory originally occupied by the Knights, was left to them only as a fief of the Polish Crown. Under the successors of Wladislaus, and especially as a result of the wise and prosperous reign of his second son, Casimir IV, the many different national elements making up the state were fused and consolidated into a homogeneous political unit. Under Sigismund II, the last of the race, Poland and Lithuania, hitherto two states under a common king, were united (by the Union of Lublin in 1569) into a single state, with a common Diet, a common religion, and a common nationality.

With the extinction of the Jagiellon dynasty in 1572 Poland started on the downward path. The monarchy, always elective in theory, now

INTRODUCTION xill became so in fact. A blind and selfish aristocracy, the ruling class in the country, obsessed with the ideal of individual liberty, guarded so jealously their medieval privileges of the liberum veto —the ridiculous and impossible right of each individual to kill legislation by his veto, and the Pacta conventa, a humiliating and paralyzing capitulary imposed upon the kings at election— that any governmental action became practically impossible, and Poland sank deeper and deeper into anarchy, inaction, and decay, and this at the very time when other European states all about her were rapidly ridding themselves of their medizvalism and building up strong centralized modern governments. Small wonder that Poland soon became the tool of foreign Powers working out their own aggrandizement! During the two hundred years of her elective kingship Poland had, among others, one French, one Hungarian, three Swedish, and two German (Saxon) kings, each one put upon her throne by the intrigues of their governments working upon the cupidity and poverty of the Polish nobility. That the kingdom remained territorially intact and outwardly powerful for so long was due almost solely to the fact that Poland’s neighbors were not quite ready to despoil her. That they would

X1V INTRODUCTION ultimately do so unless she changed her ways was clearly realized and frankly predicted by more than one of her rulers. Stephen Batory, the Hungarian King, who ruled from 1575 to 1586, said: ‘‘ Poles, you owe your preservation, not to laws, for you know them not, nor to government, for you respect it not; you owe it to nothing but chance.”

And again, nearly a century later, John Casimir, the last of the Swedish rulers of Poland, before he abdicated the throne in despair made the following remarkable prediction: ‘‘God grant that I may bea false prophet, but I warn you that unless you take steps to heal the diseases of the State, the Republic will become the prey of its neighbors. . .. The Powers will prefer to partition Poland rather than possess it as a whole under the anarchical conditions of to-day.’”’ And yet for something more than a century longer Poland preserved at least a nominal independence, and the gloom of the period of her sure decay was lighted up by more than one brilliant political episode. Such were King John Sobieski’s saving of Vienna from the Turks, and the Russian adventure of Sigismund III, as a result of which he reigned for two years as Czar of Muscovy.

By the end of the eighteenth century Poland’s

INTRODUCTION XV neighbors were ready to deal with her, and she was torn to pieces, her independence destroyed, and her territories divided among her assassins, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, Russia taking by far the larger share. But though her body politic was cut to pieces, the soul of Poland did not die. On the contrary, ever since her destruction as a state her feeling as a people has been growing stronger, until to-day, there is no national group where the national consciousness is stronger or where patriotism flames higher than among the Poles.

Until recently the Poles have regarded successful revolution against the Czar as the only path to freedom, but since the Revolution of 1863 — the last of a series which always ended in failure and were followed almost automatically and necessarily by ruthless repression — a wiser feeling has been evolved. The visionary and the idealist have given place as Polish leaders to practical statesmen who have seen and have taught their countrymen that the only possibility for Polish autonomy is through a friendly understanding with Russia. Moreover, they have believed for some time that such an understanding was not so remote a possibility as the existing relations between the two peoples would seem to imply.

XV1 INTRODUCTION

As the scope of the Pan-Germanist policy gradually revealed itself to Europe, and its menace to the whole Slav world began to be understood, Poles were among the first to recognize the importance of Poland in the approaching struggle of the Slav peoples against German hegemony. The location of Poland made it inevitable that on her territory must be fought the first battles of the German advance on Russia; in Poland must be erected the first lines of defense of the great Slav Empire against Pan-Germanism, and the Polish leaders realized that when the crisis came, Russia would pay a heavy price to have behind those defenses a loyal Slav population looking to the Czar as the leader of the Slav cause. They have, therefore, made it quite clearly understood during the past few years that a proper recognition of their autonomy within the Empire was the price they asked for reconciliation with Russia and loyal support of the Czar’s Government.

On the other hand, it has long been obvious to enlightened Russians that the Russification policy in Poland was not only a mistake, but also a failure, and that such ends as it achieved were to the advantage neither of Poland nor of Russia, but of Germany —a _ conviction

INTRODUCTION XVll strongly supported by the fact that for a hundred years German diplomacy at Petrograd has worked steadily against Polish autonomy and against the reconciliation of Poland and Russia.

These considerations make it understandable that when, in August of 1914, scarcely two weeks after the German declaration of war against Russia, the Grand Duke Nicholas issued a proclamation to the Poles, offering them friendship on their own terms of freedom in language, religion, and government, it was taken quite seriously in Poland, — though scoffed at suspiciously in other quarters, — and representatives of the leading democratic parties in Poland, the Democratic National Party, the Polish Progressive Party, the Realist Party, and the Polish Progressive Union, ' met in Warsaw and issued a manifesto in response to the Grand Duke’s proclamation in which they said: ‘‘The Representatives welcome the Proclamation ...as an act of foremost political importance, and implicitly believe that upon the termination of the war the promises uttered in that proclamation will be formally fulfilled, that the dreams of their forefathers will be realized. ... The blood of Poland’s sons, shed in united combat against

XVili INTRODUCTION the Germans, will serve as a sacrifice upon the altar of her Resurrection.”

What the real significance of these documents may be and what Fate holds in store for Poland are matters that the future alone can reveal. Meanwhile, however, the anti-German feeling that Poles and Russians shared before the war — almost the only feeling they had in common! — has been enormously increased by German policy since the war began. Austria also issued a proclamation to the Poles before her invasion of the Russian provinces, offering them independence under Austrian and German protection. But when the Polish territories came into German hands the promise was apparently forgotten, and a policy of Germanization of the harshest sort was immediately inaugurated.

But it is scarcely possible to expect Germany to do otherwise. Recognition of Polish autonomy in the Russian provinces would mean, not only abandoning the policy of Germanization pursued consistently and with heavy cost for a century in her own Polish provinces, but — also reversing the general policy by which, ever since the time of the Great Elector, the Hohenzollerns have amalgamated and absorbed alien populations and made Germany a unit. To-day

INTRODUCTION XIX as always, it is only by Germanizing the Slavs that Germanism can advance at their expense. If she cannot Germanize the Poles, not only can Germany not advance beyond them, but their nationalism constitutes a very serious menace to the loyalty of the Poles in her own provinces. The problem of Poland is thus a vital one for Germany.

It is no less so for Russia. Russia aspires to be the protector and leader of the great Slav race, the champion of the rights of Slav nationalities. Yet the most numerous of Slav nations, and the only one toward whom she has entire freedom of action, the Poles, have received nothing but repression at her hands. If Russian leadership of the Southern Slavs is to be in any sense a real leadership based on mutual confidence, she must show her good faith by first putting her own house in order and making her policy consistent by doing justice to the Poles.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF POLAND

Chapter I Origin And Early History The Era Of Beginnings, 962-1386

WHEN the light of history first dawned upon them, the Slav ancestors of the Polish people were dwelling in the valley of the Vistula. How they came there and where they came from are largely matters of conjecture. The real history of Poland in any proper sense begins with the tenth century. For the years before that date we have no reliable historical material, though legends abound as to the origin and early life of the Polish state.

From what scanty material we have it seems probable that the Slavs, an Indo-European people coming from Asia — we do not know when or why — were settled, about the second century A.D., on the Danube, were driven thence by some stronger people, perhaps the Romans, and were later at home for some centuries on the slopes and plateaus of the Carpathians. Once again they were driven out, this time by the Avars in the seventh century, and, fleeing north, south, and west before their conquerors, scattered themselves all over central and southwestern Europe. One large group, pushing westward, were stopped by the Germans on the Elbe, which thus marked their western boundary. They are known as the Western Slavs, for obvious reasons, and they occupied the territory between the Elbe and the Bug, the Baltic, and the Carpathians. The Poles were part of this group, while the Russians, or Eastern Slavs, their age-long foes, formed a group just next them on the east, in the valleys of the Dnieper and its tributaries.

In the ninth century the invasion of another Asiatic people, the Magyars, and their permanent settlement on the plains of Hungary, thrust a wedge right into Slavdom, effectively separated the Slavs of the north and those of the south, and resulted in an entirely separate historical development of the two regions. It is only in the last two centuries that the expan- — sion of Russia to the south and the revival of a strong race-consciousness, as shown in the Pan-Slavic movement, have brought the Southern Slavs once more into contact with their brethren of the north.

The Eastern Slavs, or the Russians, settled along the upper reaches of the Dnieper, very early opened up a vigorous trade with the Scandinavians to the north of them, and later pushed down the river to the Black Sea and traded with Constantinople. The great barren steppe or prairie bordering the Black Sea on the north, which formed Russia’s southeastern boundary, was a “‘No Man’s Land,” a great highway along which, through the ages, the Asiatic peoples followed one another in long procession to the west, and by which they returned east again. Over it had wandered, from time immemorial, nomads of all races and countries, and Russian trade needed constant protection against these peoples, all fiercer and more warlike than themselves. This protection was supplied by the Varangians, a band of Norsemen, who, under the leadership of their chief, Rurik, came into the Dnieper Valley in the ninth century, and, conquering the Slav people already there, built up the first Russian state, with its capital at Kiev.

The evidence for the origin of the Polish state is not so clear. The Western Slavs, spread over the country between the Elbe and the Bug, lived probably in separate, halfnomadic tribal groups until pressure from the

Germans on the west obliged them to combine for defense. The Poles, whose name signifies ‘‘Plain-dwellers’’ or ‘‘Lowlanders,’’ occupied the region of the Wartha, and according to the legends, it was a Polish peasant, Piast, who, drawing the tribes together, founded the Polish state and established a dynasty that ruled in Poland for five hundred years. The Poles have always claimed to be the purest of Slav peoples, but it is probable that in Poland as in Russia there was a strong Norse element. The Vikings were all along the Baltic seaboard at this time, sailing up the rivers, plundering and taking possession of the lands as they pleased, and there is at least indirect evidence of their penetration by way of the rivers into the Polish plain.

In the tenth century, when Duke Mieczyslaw I, the first non-legendary ruler of Poland, supposedly the great-grandson of Piast, emerges into history, his state comprised the greater part of the Slav tribes east of the Oder, west of the Bug, north of the Carpathians, and south of the Netze River. Though at different times in succeeding centuries the Polish state extended its rule far to the east and to the west of these lines, yet it is the territory within them that is properly Poland. Whenever there has been a Polish state this has been its nucleus, and, independently of political conditions, this territory has remained the permanent home of the Polish race. Here, in spite of all efforts at Russification and Germanization, the people are to-day, as always, predominantly Polish. Outside these lines this is not true. The Carpathians form a natural boundary to the south, beyond which the Poles never penetrated, and the marshes north of the Netze and in Masovia made advance in this direction difficult, too difficult to achieve in the face of steady German opposition. To the east and to the west, however, the land lies open and unprotected and has lured the Poles to conquest when they were strong, exposed them to German and Russian aggression when they were weak, and resulted in a constant shifting of their eastern and western frontiers.

In the tenth century the Germans were engaged in a great forward movement on their eastern frontier. As elsewhere, when directed against heathen people, this was a crusading as well as a conquering and colonizing movement. Christian missionaries preceded and accompanied the Imperial armies, and the men of the armies themselves were also soldiers of the Cross, who, sword in hand, compelled their

6 BRIEF HISTORY. GE, POLAND heathen brethren to believe and be baptized, and thus save their lives as well as their souls.

It was to oppose this advancing Germandom and Christendom that the union of the Poles into a single state had come about, but when Duke Mieczyslaw came to the head of the state, he found the odds against him in the struggle. That the Germans had gained a real influence in the country is seen by the fact that they had set up a bishopric at Gnesen, under the Archbishop of Magdeburg, and that Mieczyslaw held some of his lands under Imperial suzerainty. Unable to oppose both Germanism and Christianity, he became a Christian in the hope of saving his state from absorption by the Germans. Putting away his heathen wives, he married a Christian princess of Bohemia, the Princess Dobrawa, and set to work to bring his people to his new faith. As a good deal of preliminary work had probably already been done, and as Mieczyslaw had the help of Jordan, German Bishop of Gnesen, and of St. Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, Poland soon became a Christian state, at least outwardly.

With this same aim of maintaining the independence of Poland, the Duke made friends with the Germans. After the death of Dobrawa he married a German wife, and even took sides with the Empire against the Slavs west of the Oder. In return, in the latter part of his reign, he received German help in a war against Bohemian encroachment on his territories. At _ his death Poland had emerged from its heathen obscurity, and had become a recognized part of the Western Christian world. This is quaintly symbolized in the old legend which made Mieczyslaw blind until his seventh year, when he received full sight.

According to the Slavonic custom, Mieczyslaw divided his lands among his sons. But the eldest dreamed of a great, united Poland, and in order to realize his dream, drove out his brothers and ruled alone over the whole kingdom, as Boleslaus I (992-1025). His dispossessed brothers roused their neighbors against him, and he was obliged to fight on all his frontiers. The wars which filled his reign, however, were not all defensive. He desired to free Poland from all dependence on the Emperor, from whom as suzerain he held his lands west of the Wartha, and also he dreamed of conquering Bohemia and uniting it with Poland in a great Slav Empire. He thought the amalgamation of the two peoples would be easy, on account of the likeness of the two languages.

For fifteen years he fought the combined forces of Bohemia and the Emperor Henry II for these purposes, and in the end gained his freedom from Imperial control and annexed the Bohemian provinces of Moravia, Silesia, and Cracow to his territories. He was not able, however, to accomplish the union of Bohemia and Poland. For a year, indeed, he held and ruled Bohemia, but he was not strong enough to keep it without the Emperor’s sanction, and Henry would acknowledge his claim only on conditions of Imperial dependence which Boleslaus refused to accept. When this plan failed, he made his peace with the King of Bohemia, and tried to get him to unite with Poland in forming a league of Slav states against the Germans. This also failed, but this early attempt at Pan-Slavism shows that even in the eleventh century the sure instinct of a great Polish leader recognized in Germany the abiding danger to Slav independence, and saw in united opposition the only safety for Slavdom.

After he had finished his western campaigns, Boleslaus made an expedition into Russia, in order to replace on the throne of Kiev his son-in-law, Sviatopolk, expelled by the sons of Vladimir the Great. He was unable to accomplish it, however, as the country was against Sviatopolk. Shortly before his death, Boles-

THE ERA OF BEGINNINGS | 9g laus took the title of ‘‘ King,”’ which he was the first of his line to bear.

From the beginning of his reign, Boleslaus saw the importance of having the support of the Church in his project of independence from the Empire. He desired the independence of the Polish Church as at once a step toward, and a guaranty of, the independence of the Polish state. He made Gnesen a great shrine, by placing there the relics of St. Adalbert, the martyred Bishop of Prague, which relics he bought from the Prussians, by whom St. Adalbert had been murdered when he went among them to preach the Gospel. Shortly after, in the year 1000, the Emperor Otto III paid a visit of piety to the shrine of the saint, who was his old friend as well, and Boleslaus got him on this occasion to raise the See of Gnesen to metropolitan rank, with jurisdiction over the three bishoprics of Cracow, Breslau, and Kolberg, thus freeing these Polish sees from dependence on Magdeburg. In his internal as well asin his foreign policy, Boleslaus showed himself a great ruler. He founded churches, endowed monasteries and schools, built roads, and encouraged commerce with all the neighboring states. In order to increase the wealth and prosperity of the country, he settled prisoners of war on the land, gave them their freedom, and set them to work to clear the forest, plant the land, and make themselves into prosperous colonists. The King also protected the poor and the powerless from the oppression of the nobility, and exacted the strictest and most implicit obedience from high and low alike. Though genial and kindly with his friends and associates, he was stern to the evil-doer and to those who crossed his will. The strength of the ruler’s personality was the measure of good government in those primitive days. The great nobles struggled unceasingly for the right to rob and to exploit their peasants, and only the strong arm of a strong king held them back. The old chroniclers speak often of the warm affection in which Boleslaus was held by his people, over whom he spread the protection of his justice.

Because he made his kingdom really independent of German control both in Church and State, Boleslaus is often called its real founder. Though the Germans tried to ignore this independence, and for centuries continued to demand, and sometimes got, the recognition of their sovereignty over Polish lands, it was never really effective, and Poland remained for centuries what Boleslaus had made her, “the unconquered kernel of Western Slavdom.”’ Germany had indeed succeeded in Christianizing Poland, but she had failed to conquer her, which was the ultimate purpose of the conversion.

The political organization of the kingdom over which Boleslaus ruled was very simple. Class distinctions had already come into existence. All men except the slaves taken in war were free and equal before the law, but there was a distinction between the szlachta, or landed nobility, and the kmeten or simple freemen, who possessed no land, but worked the land belonging to some member of the nobility, and paid him for it both in service and in produce. Originally, in all probability, the kmeten also were landowners, and there was simply the one free class, but before the time of Boleslaus the natural inequalities among men and the pressure of economic necessity had created the difference. Military service was required of all, the sglachta on horseback and the kmeten on foot, and the constant wars, which were so impoverishing, depressed the poorer nobles oftentimes to the kmeten class. Each war meant more slaves and more kmeten, but in spite of this the nobles remained for centuries the most numerous as well as the most ‘important — the only really important part of the nation. All nobles were of the same rank, and all classes were governed by the king directly, and paid tribute directly to him. The feudal system with its divided sovereignty was never introduced into Poland. From the earliest times some nobles were more important than others, but they became so, undoubtedly, through that personal initiative which differentiates one man from another in even the most democratic society. Ability to lead in war was probably the basis of most early superiority, as war was their chief occupation and the main element in their lives. The influence of the Germans undoubtedly hastened this development of the higher nobility, the so-called magnates or pans of later centuries. The district, which was the unit of local goyernment in early Poland, and which, through its assembly of the inhabitants and its local magistrate, managed its own local affairs, was the oldest institution among the Poles, and was probably based on the original division of the land among the tribes. It was an institution far older than the princely power, was common to all Slav peoples, and was thoroughly demo- | cratic, as were all the early Slav institutions. Throughout the country, in the center of a district or of a group of several districts, strong places or castles were built for defense, and served as places of refuge in time of invasion, as well as administrative centers. Over each castle was a Castellan, who in time of war led the people of his district, and in peace dispensed justice and looked after the king’s interests, collecting his tribute, overseeing the cultivation of his lands, and other matters of a similar sort.

The great kingdom which Boleslaus had gathered together was not destined to last. His son Mieczyslaw II, a weak prince, reigned only nine years. Upon his death the government devolved upon his widow, Queen Rixa, as regent for their minor son Casimir. The Queen was a German, a relative of the Emperor, desirous of restoring the German influence in Poland, which country she neither liked nor understood. She gave all the important positions to Germans, and governed with such entire disregard of Polish customs and Polish interests that after a few years the nobles revolted, and she was obliged to flee to Germany, taking her son and the public treasure with her. The country, thus deprived of its leaders, fell into anarchy and civil war. Everywhere the peasants, oppressed and exploited by the nobles during the weak rule of Mieczyslaw and