Napoleon made clever use of Polish aspira tions, but the hopes built on him came to nought. True, after a Polish legion of volun teers under Dombrovski had fought valiantly under his colors, he did create a grand duchy of Warsaw. This was done after the Peace of Tilsit, 1807, when he made the king of Saxony, Frederick Augustus I, its sovereign. But this fragment of ancient Poland, although by the Peace of Vienna in 1809 it was added to from Galicia, was merely meant to be a satellite of Napoleon's own ambitious schemes and after 1812 the whole so-called grand duchy of War saw went to pieces. By the Vienna Congress Russia again obtained by far the lion's share of Poland. This Russian share now was called the kingdom of Poland and received certain assurances, under international guarantee, and in especial a constitution and administration of its own. In 1818 the first Polish Parliament was opened, but in 1825 already freedom of the press and other privileges were curtailed or abolished. After the death of Alexander I of Russia Poland was again governed like a sub ject province. The consequence was the rising of November 1830 under the inspiration of Mickievicz and Lelewel. The whole of Poland rose. Under General Chlopicki a provisional government was formed, with Prince Adam Czartoryski at its head. The Polish Parlia ment pronounced the house of Romanoff as unworthy to rule Poland, 21 Jan. 1831. A Russian army of 120,000 under Diebitsch marched upon Warsaw. At Grokhov a battle unfavorable to the Polish cause was fought and the Polish forces had to retire toward Warsaw. Prince Radzivill, who had succeeded Chlopicki, resigned in his turn, but General Skrzynecki failed to beat the Russians at Ostrolenka and the cholera destroyed, besides, more Poles than the war. On 6 and 7 Sep tember the Russians took Warsaw by storm and that was the beginning of the end. An amnesty 1 Nov. 1831 contained many excep tions. The constitution was altogether abro gated and a systematic process of Russification was inaugurated. A new revolution was planned and in February 1846 it broke out, but was put down at once. Cracow now lost its autonomous position and was incorporated with Austria. In 1848 as part of the great liberaliz ing movement in Europe, another rising took place, but was drowned in blood. The move ment for a restoration of Poland continued, however, in secret. On 15 Oct. 1861 there were new disturbances in Warsaw. Thousands were incarcerated by the Russians or deported to Siberia and the estates of many nobles were confiscated. On 8 Jan. 1862 a brother of the Tsar, Grand Duke Constantine, became gover nor of Poland, with a great plan of reforms, and a Pole, Marquis Wielopolski, as coadjutor. But on 3 July an attempt was made to assassinate the grand duke and on 7 and 15 August similar attempts against the life of Wielopolski. On 15 Jan. 1863 the revolution broke out and on 22 January all Poles were called to arms. But neither Mieroslayski nor Langievicz or Czek hovski could make headway against the Rus sians. Wielopolski retired and General Berg, a Russian, was put in his place. The total failure of the revolutionary movement was, however, brought about by Russia's stratagem in winning the Polish peasantry over to its side, for Russia, by a simple stroke of the pen, made these, instead of serf-like toilers of the soil, freeholders of the land they tilled, freeing them of all forced labor (robot) and dues to their titled landlords. Thus, in 1864, the whole movement was dying off. Miliutine and Prince Tcherkaski did the Russifying in Warsaw and by a Russian ukase of 26 Dec. 1865 the entire property of the Catholic Church in Poland was taken over by the Russian government and all Catholic religious matters were decided by the Ministry of the Interior at Saint Petersburg. Lithuania was Russified by Muravieff and Russia likewise. On 22 Dec. 1865 all persons of Polish blood in the nine Russian western provinces were forbidden by an im perial law to acquire landed property. The University of Warsaw was entirely Russified and only Russian forcibly taught at school. Nearly every Polish civil and administrative in stitution was rooted out. After 1883 General Gourko more than followed the footsteps of his two predecessors, Albedynski and Kotzebue in stamping out Polish life. In July 1884 another conspiracy was discovered and 200 Poles were either executed or deported to the Siberian mines. To prevent the infiltration of Polish ideas a ukase of 21 Jan. 1885 interdicted the purchase of land by Poles in the 10 western provinces of Russia. All intercourse of Poles with the Pope was barred. While all this was going on in Russian-Poland, in the Polish provinces of Prussia things veered about a good deal, there being no settled policy pursued by the Prussian government toward the Poles. Generally speaking, under William I the Poles were treated far more liberally than was the case during the reign of the last kaiser, William II. In the main the weapons used were eco nomic and cultural. For sundry periods the teaching of Polish was rendered difficult in the Prussian provinces, and this caused deep dis satisfaction. But Bismarck's pet scheme was to create a huge state fund and to buy up Polish estates and, by breaking these up into smaller holdings, to settle Germans on these lands and thus gradually Germanize the whole of the Polish provinces, more especially Posen. In these efforts, though, he and his successors were but measurably successful. But, on the
other hand, Polish resistance grew and Polish counter-measures were taken which frustrated the attempts at Germanization. In a material sense, however, the Polish provinces of Prussia flourished more and more. Their economic wealth increased marvelously. In liquid capital there was, as to them, an iqcrease of 350 per cent between 1846 and 1900, and in immobile wealth the figures were similar. As to the Austrian portion of former Poland, i.e. Galicia, the Poles, owing to Austrian internal political requirements, were practically given a free hand. No repression of any kind was practised there. Polish, in fact, throughout Galicia, was the official tongue, to the detriment of Ruthen ian, or Ukrainian, although numerically the latter were slightly stronger than the former. At the University of Cracow, the Polish lan guage and literature were fostered and nur tured most carefully, and in the second univer sity of Galicia, that of Lemberg, although situ ated in the heart of the Ruthenian portion of Galicia, Polish likewise dominated, and Ruthen ian was suppressed as far as was feasible. Thus Galicia for a generation or more formed the intellectual rallying point and centre of Polish aspirations, mentality and achievements, and it was in no small part due to this that at the very outbreak of the war, in 1914, the Poles seized instantly upon the opportunity thus afforded them.
From 1914 till the Present the same the situation for the Polish race was by no means devoid of complications throughout the more than four years of actual fighting, nor even since the armistice of 11 Nov. 1918. Dif ferent currents of political thought just as much as different aims obtained in the three sections into which ancient Poland had been split. The largest and in every respect most important por tion, that absorbed by Russia, had as its most powerful political leader for many years prior to 1914 Roman Dmovski, chief of the so-called 'Russian democratic faction. This man and his party,— the biggest in Poland— were in favor of remaining under Russian suzerainty, but with far-reaching autonomy, and this mainly for economic reasons. He and his party con sidered the retention of the Russian market for the young industry and the °intelligentsia° of Poland as absolutely essential, and their goal was, therefore, the democratization of Russia, and a dose economic understanding between Russia proper and the new Poland that was to arise out of the ashes of the World War. On the other hand, the Poles of Galicia were, in their majority, in favor of the establishment of a united Poland, of which the most important nucleus was to be Galicia, the Russian and a small part of Prussian -Polish portions to be added, and the whole to be under the rule of the Austria* archduke Charles Stephen, a man of avowedly strong Polish sympathies and affili ations (two of his daughters married to Princes Czartoryski and Radzivill), either as a new and separate realm or else united to the Hapsburg crown. Over in Prussia minds were still more divided. In many of those districts where the men of Polish race were in the minority the latter inclined to the view that they ought to cast their lot with the rest of Prussia. • Mean while the three factions of the Polish race had to fight each other, as parts of either the Rus sian, Austrian or German contingents, on the field of battle. In Austria alone, at the very beginning of the war, Polish legions were formed, and these gradually were put under command of General PilstWski, an able com mander. Then came the Russian reverses, and finally the establishment of new °Poland° under the aegis of, first, Germany, and, next, Austria-Hungary, and the entire collapse of Russia and at last the forming of the Soviet government under Bolshevild control. From week to week, from day to day almost, at least during those crucial times, the views and pur poses of the Polish masses shifted and changed of necessity. That neither Austria nor Ger many meant to go as far as the most forcible and influential of the Polish patriots wanted to go became plain very soon. Jan Ignace Pade rewski, known to the whole world so far only as a master musician, then by skilful diplomacy, being, besides, at an early date convinced of the ultimate collapse of the two Central Powers, made himself master of the situation on Polish soil by the tremendous influence his word had with the Allied Powers and the United States government. By his strenuous labors and those of other Polish patriots, notably those of Dmov ski, the rejuvenation, or rather the rebirth, of Poland became a fact in an almost incredibly short space of time. The victorious powers that had vanquished Germany and Austria pledged themselves to the re-establishment of Poland with boundaries drawn wide enough to make her a formidable neighbor and potential foe of post-bellum Germany, and a resilient buffer state against the spread of Bolshevism. For the moment it is too early to describe or predict the economic future and the other essen tial features of the new Polish commonwealth.
See LITHUANIA; POLISH LANGUAGE; POLISH LITERATURE; RUTHENES; SLAVS; WAR, EURO PEAN.
W„ 'The Second Partition of Poland' (in Eng lish Historical Review 1891) • Balinski and Li pinski, 'Starozyna Polska' '(3 vols., Warsaw 1844-48) ; Brueggen, K., 'Polens Aufloesun?> (Leipzig 1878) ; 'Kulturgesch. Skizzen' (ib. 1878) ; Chlebovski, 'Slownik geogr. krol.