The January Uprising of 1863: Significance & Antecedents

felicjan_szczesny_kowarski_obraz_rzad_narodowy_z_1893_fot_irena_jarosinska_pap_19800101_0k9-s.jpg, default, The January Uprising of 1863: Significance & Antecedents, The National Government of 1863, painting by Felicjan Kowarski. From the left: Jan Jeziorański, Rafal Krajewski, Romuald Traugutt, Józef Toczyski, Rom, Polish uprisings that took place in the 19th century, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 of the greatest Poles died. The January Uprising cost the lives o, center, #000000

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The Bar Confederation (1768-1772) should be considered the First Polish National Uprising. Its participants were very cumbersome politicians. In fact, they were most likely not politicians at all, judging by the standards by which we think of politics nowadays. Torn away from the life they had led so far, internally divided, disregarding the potential power of the landowning class, they put their faith into alliances that never could have come to fruition.

They did not manage to save the Polish state. Nor did Kościuszko, who had led into battle all those from among the nobility, the Jewry, the peasantry, who considered themselves Poles. However, the commander was not concerned, according to Andrzej Walicki, with saving the existing state, but with restoring statehood as such. ‘In this respect, Kościuszko's ideological legacy may be considered a bridge between the era of modernisation reforms and the era of national uprisings’. It came as no surprise then that Kościuszko was later unequivocally referred to as the last knight of Europe and its first citizen. In turn, he himself wrote to Franciszek Sapieha that ‘the first step to throw off slavery is to dare to be free, the first step to victory - to appreciate one's own strength (...) Remember that our war has its own special character, which should be well understood; its successful outcome is based most of all on the propagation of enthusiasm and on the general armament of all the inhabitants of our land. For this it is necessary to arouse the love of nation among all those who had heretofore not even known that they have a homeland.’ He goes on: ‘I will not fight merely for the sake of the nobility - I want the freedom of the whole nation and for this alone will I lay down my life’. Kościuszko's words echo the difference - particularly easy to grasp today - between the national character of Poles and Russians.

The former are defined by freedom and the stubborn pursuit of it, the latter by the violence of command and submission. In other words, as long as Poland remains free and independent, the slavish Russian nation is threatened in its essence. This is how the words spoken by the Russian Empire's Foreign Minister Nikolai Rumiancev in a conversation with the French ambassador should be understood: "We will sooner sacrifice the last soldier than agree to expand the territory of the Polish state because it concerns our very existence". These words were conveyed to the Emperor of France, who immediately replied that: ‚He does not wish to disgrace himself by declaring that the Polish kingdom will never be rebuilt, nor to ridicule himself or stain his memory by putting his stamp on this act of Machiavellian policy, for to declare that Poland will not be rebuilt is more than to approve its partition’.

Napoleon was defeated, while the Congress of Vienna put an end to the Polish dreams of regaining independence through diplomatic persuasion. In 1815, the Russian-dependent Tsarist Republic of Poland (Russian: Царство Польское), nicknamed the ‚Kingdom of Poland’ for disguise, was established. French historian Henri Troyat (incidentally, the author of a succinct and interestingly written biography of Marina Tsvetaeva) even conjectured that it was intended to be a kind of ‚constitutional experiment’: first the constitution was to be introduced in the Kingdom of Poland, then the changed dynamics of statehood were to be assessed and only then it was to be grafted onto the organism of the Russian Empire. ‚Napoleon had made the Polish question a European issue, introduced it into European politics. The Congress of Vienna and the victors writing their histories made it a matter internal to Russia’, the Polish historian notes. 'What the Poles regarded as the core of the Vienna agreements, i.e., the constitutional-parliamentary system, the tsarist diplomacy treated as a unilateral act of favour by the tsar - an act which, just as it was granted to the Polish community, could also be just as easily unilaterally revoked by an arbitrary decision of the reigning monarch'. Since that time, that is since the end of the Napoleonic wars, independence uprisings would break out on Polish soil more or less once every generation.

The outbreak of the November Uprising was subsumed under the category of a 'French' revolt, similarly to the one in which the king was beheaded. There was no mercy for the conspirators. According to Nicholas I, the Poles had not only showed profound ingratitude towards the Russian authorities, but had also violated the Holy Alliance, which had been the guarantee of the post-Napoleonic order. Following the bloody pacification of the Polish insurrection, the tsar became the most important monarch in Europe, for it was now he who was to protect the order on the continent that had already been agreed upon in Vienna. However, such a brutally tightened screw also had an ensnaring effect on the tsar. Fearing the conspirators, he travelled around Europe in disguise and under false papers as Count Orlov. 'Verily, assassinations will begin in the Kingdom of Poland, but mainly before the January Uprising - as a response of radical operatives to the tightening of tsarist repression’.

The bloody suppression of the January Uprising and the repressive measures wrought upon the insurgents in 1863, 1864 and thereafter caused unfeigned indignation in Europe which at the time was a little more empathetic and coherent than it is today. It was understood at last that Russia was no Europe at all, that it belonged to, and perhaps even constituted, a separate continent with its’ own civilizational laws and customs, not quite coinciding with those of Europe. This was also understood by some Russians, such as for instance the true liberal Peter Vyazemsky, incidentally a poet and a true prince, whose ancestry can be traced back to the Rurikid Dynasty.

‘Poland cannot be executed’, he wrote in a letter to Pushkin dated September 14, 1931, ‘it cannot be hanged, therefore by force nothing permanent, nothing final will be accomplished. The first war, the first stirrings of Russia, will cause Poland to rise up against us, or it shall be necessary to hold a Russian Schildwach over the head of every Pole. There is one way: to abandon the Kingdom of Poland... Let Poland choose its own kind of life. Before our victory we could not have done it, after our victory - we surely can (...) Poland is alike to a disease that has shown us the defects of our own complexion. It is not enough to root out the disease, the defect must be eradicated. What use is it for Russia to be the internal guard of Poland? It is much better than to have an avowed enemy in her in case of an accident. Simultaneously, I am certain that the only way to preserve the Polish governorates is to abandon the Kingdom of Poland. I shall refrain from the mentioning the shameful role we play in Europe. Our actions in Poland will set us back 50 years from the European Enlightenment.

Whether we have subjugated Poland or not - our cause is lost’. ‚Whenever I return from Prussia, wanting to wash away the Germanness, / I fall into Soplicowo as if it were the center of Polishness / There man will have a drink, will breathe the Homeland!’ - as Bartek Prusak would say. It is curious to consider that anyone who was interested in politics had to wait for Bartek's visit in Soplicowo, or for the news to be distributed by the bursar Robak, to learn something about the military movements in Europe at the time. As a result, if we consider the speed with which the awareness of the basic facts was spreading, we can see that the people there - even the literate ones - lived in considerable ignorance of what was really happening. At the same time, everyone was somehow close to each other through the recognition of their common values: Christianity, the state hierarchy, Europe as a central and distinguished place in the world. This changed with the invention of the iron railroad and the increasingly rapid circulation of mass-published newspapers. Consequently, Europeans were able to perceive the internal differentiation of European states, as well as to grasp not only the geographical, but also the axiological distance of the Russian empire from the rest of the continent. Therefore, there is nothing peculiar in the fact that the First International, which had been formed in London, recognized the ‚Polish question’ as one of the most critical issues to be supported and thoroughly discussed. They debated not only the national independence of the Poles, but also the scale and bestiality of the repressions to which the January insurgents were subjected, unanimously condemning them.

The uprising itself - its significance and necessity - were also discussed by Poles. It was discussed as soon as it had broken out, and also discussed long after the fact. Roman Dmowski (born in 1864) supposedly said that it was imposed by children who were treating the struggle like a dangerous game. ‚Here the children instinctively indicate the direction to the nation, and the nation for its part follows the children - and the issue arises’ - Józef Ignacy Kraszewski no longer with irony. Dmowski was echoed - perhaps surprisingly - by Józef Pilsudski. He posed the question in a well-known 1924 lecture on the January Uprising about the rights of the insurgents to speak on behalf of the entire nation, assuring that none of them had it. Then again, the great Professor Stefan Kieniewicz, later an apologist of 1863 and a monographer of those times pointed to the ‚will of the people’ and ‚blind spontaneity’ in the organization of the uprising and its subsequent course. On the other hand, the political value of those incidents was denied en bloc by Stanislaw Stomma, who attributed positive significance uniquely to the figure of the ‚dictator’.

Traugutt bears no responsibility for the political decision leading to the uprising. He became its leader when the fighting had already ceased, and the uprising was beginning to collapse. He assumed the forsaken post with cold determination, and having assumed this tragic function, he began to show extraordinary organizational and military talent. Always poised, close-mouthed and reticent, he gave the impression of a completely dispassionate man. However, having taken command, he revealed temperament and passion - ‚Lightning began to fall from this autumn sky’ - says of Traugutt the Russian uprising biographer Berg.

The uprising was decided among the National Government, which included more or less thirty-year-olds: Oskar Awejde, Stefan Bobrowski, Agaton Giller, Józef Janowski, Jan Maykowski, Rev. Karol Mikoszewski, Zygmunt Padlewski. Only Giller was against it, the rest voted ‘aye’. Although Maykowski proposed at first to limit the execution of the sentence on Wielopolski, he was quickly shouted down by the rest claiming that ‘there is no way out,’ that ‘branka’ and that ‘the readiness of the people [should be considered most of all].’

The European press reported on the course of the January Uprising in gory detail. They wrote about insurgent partisans armed with scythes, hunting weapons and bear spades, who had to face a regular Russian army equipped with cannons. The outcome of this confrontation was easy to predict. The daily newspapers were also not without touches of humor, which the English titles in particular abounded in. In one of them, one could come across a description of a certain event, which illustrates quite well the thesis that the pursuit of independence, especially at that time, in January, was not the affair of all Poles. Some were only interested in their own farmyard, cow, possessions. As in Pushkin's phrase: the trough.

One peasant received a receipt from the insurgents for a requisitioned cow. The receipt was for the National Government. The peasant went to the capital and began to inquire about the address of the National Government. Unable to find out anything, he went to the Police Circuit. ‘We don't know...’ he was told, ‘but if you find out for yourself, tell us, and you'll surely get your reward!’.

The stubborn fellow wandered on and having met three serious gentlemen standing on the square under a chestnut tree, he approached them and asked for the hundredth time about the address of the National Government.

'And what is it?’ - asked one of the gentlemen. The peasant made his case clear. ‘Put a mark here brother...’ - said the unknown gentleman, slipping him a receipt. ‘And here is your money....’. The peasant, mindful of the promised reward returned to the Circuit. ‘I know where the National Government is!’ - he declared. ‘Talk! Where?’ - chuckled the Muscovites. ‘Over yonder, under the chestnut...’ - proudly proclaimed the peasant.

And yet, although the stakes of the January Uprising entailed the very existence of the nation, as noted by Professor Stanislaw Kościałkowski, a Siberian and a "saint" according to many assessments, it was also aimed at resolving the 'social question'. ‘It sought, namely, , to finally resolve the landownership issue outside the government of tsarist Russia (...) And this is why the insurgencies’ National Government, immediately in its first proclamation on January 22, proclaims the universal, unconditional and immediate enfranchisement of the rural population as the fundamental demand for which it is fighting. And that is why the tsarist government used all the military might at the disposal of the giant state to crush the uprising’.

The most valiant were felled in the national liberation struggle. Those whose interest did not extend beyond the farm, whether it was enfranchised or not, survived. In the three Polish uprisings that took place in the 19th century, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 of the greatest Poles died. The January Uprising cost the lives of an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 insurgents, and 40,000 of them were sent to Siberia. The question of whether it was worth paying such a salacious price and shedding so much great blood was answered much earlier by Professor Lelewels’ disciple, namely Adam Mickiewicz: ‘I have not heard of a nation being resurrected by treatises and diplomatic notes’. The poets’ thought was picked up and then excellently developed by Stefan Kieniewicz. Publicists comparing the three great Polish uprisings of 1794, 1830 and 1863 usually conclude that none had a chance of success, however, compared to the previous ones, the January Uprising was launched under the most difficult, basically hopeless conditions. This is because, unlike Kościuszkos’ and Novembers’ insurrectionists, the January insurgents had no regular army, and went against rifles and cannons with scythes, crows, at most hunting weapons. And yet the January Uprising was the one that lasted the longest, drew the greatest amounts of people into its orbit, found the most numerous foreign allies, and left the deepest and most lasting traces in Poland itself.

Translated from Polish by Michał Niedzielski

Language English

19th century history

january uprising