We won’t forsake the land we came from,
We won’t let our speech be buried.
We are the Polish nation, the Polish people,
From the royal line of Piast.
We won’t let the enemy oppress us.So help us God!
So help us God!To the last blood drop in our veins
We will defend our Spirit
Till into dust and ash shall fall,
The Teutonic windstorm.
Every doorsill shall be a fortress.So help us God!
So help us God!
—Maria Konopnicka, “The Oath.”
As noticed last month, the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 left the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth a rump of what it had been. King Stanislaus II Poniatowski remained in the Royal Palace in Wasraw, but the Russian and Prussian occupiers ran most of the country. As might be guessed by anyone who knew the Poles, this was an arrangement doomed to fail. Riots began in the new year, and at last, on March 24, 1794, Tadeusz Kościuszko, a veteran of the American Revolution, took command of the Polish army. He declared a nationwide revolution against the occupiers: thus began the Kościuszko Uprising.
Kościuszko then issued an act of mobilisation. This required every five houses in Lesser Poland to field one able male soldier equipped with carbine, pike, or axe. His Commission for Order, based in Kraków, decreed the recruitment of all men between 18 and 28 years old. In addition, he decreed an income tax. The lack of firearms for the mobilised troops forced Kościuszko to form large units composed of peasants. Armed with scythes, there were called the “scythemen.”
Reaction by the Russians was swift. Catherine the Great ordered Major General Fiodor Denisov to attack Kraków. On April 4 the two armies met as the Battle of Racławice. In a bloody engagement, Kościuszko’s army defeated the larger Russian forces, who withdrew from the battlefield. But Kościuszko’s forces were too weak to pursue the enemy and push them out of Lesser Poland. Still, news of the victory diffused throughout Poland, and the revolution spread. By early April, the Polish soldiers in the lands of Lublin and Volhynia joined the ranks of Kościuszko’s forces.
Warsaw, on April 17, saw the Russians try to arrest supporters of the insurrection. They further wished to disarm Gen. Stanisław Mokronowski’s weak Polish garrison in the city by seising their headquarters and arsenal at Miodowa Street. All this effort accomplished was to spark a local rising led by Jan Kiliński, while the dispirited King Stanislaus II awaited results in his palace. The Russian ambassador and commander, Iosif Igelström, was a better diplomat than a soldier; moreover, the rising took place on Maundy Thursday, when many of the Russian soldiers went armed to the Divine Liturgy. In addition, Polish forces were aided by the civilian population. Having surprise on their side the Poles attacked many separate groups of soldiers at the same time; opposition to Russian forces quickly spread over Warsaw. Two days of heavy fighting cost the Russians; after losing between 2,000 and 4,000 casualties out of a garrison of 5,000, they were forced to leave the city. Jakub Jasiński led a similar revolt in Vilnius on April 23, and soon other cities and towns followed.
Kościuszko issued the Proclamation of Połaniec on May 7, which partially abolished serfdom in Poland, granting civil liberty to all peasants and offering them state assistance against abuses by the nobility. While this new law never fully came into effect and was effectively negated by much of the nobility, it brought many peasants into the revolution. It was the first time in Polish history the peasants were regarded as an official part of the nation.
Despite their success, the Poles still numbered only 6,000 peasants and cavalry, and 9,000 soldiers. May 10 saw 17,500 Prussian soldiers under General Francis Favrat crossing the Polish borders, joining the 9,000 Russians already in northern Poland. On June 6, they defeated Kościuszko in the Battle of Szczekociny by a joint Russo-Prussian force; two days later General Józef Zajączek was defeated in the Battle of Chełm. The Polish army withdrew towards Warsaw, fortifying the city under command of Kosciuszko. The newcomers joined the garrison of 16,000 soldiers, 18,000 peasants, and 15,000 burghers. The Prussian army captured Kraków unopposed on June 15. Warsaw in its turn on July 13 was besieged by 41,000 Russians under General Ivan Fersen and 25,000 Prussians under King Frederick William II of Prussia. On August 20 however, an uprising in Greater Poland began: the Prussians were forced to withdraw their forces from Warsaw. The siege ended entirely on September 6 when the Russians followed suit.
The rising in Lithuania was defeated by the Russians, with Vilnius besieged and falling on August 12. But the uprising in Greater Poland achieved some success. Jan Henryk Dąbrowski’s troops captured Bydgoszcz on October 2, entering Pomerania virtually unopposed. Dąbrowski evaded being encircled by the far less mobile Prussian army, disrupting the Prussian lines, forcing the Prussians to withdraw most of their forces from central Poland. However, the Poles could not stay long in Prussian territories, and soon retreated to Central Poland.
Russian General Aleksandr Suvorov moved to join his newly raised corps up with Ivan Fersen’s troops near Warsaw. Following the Battles of Krupczyce (September17) and Terespol (September 19), Suvarov’s army started its march towards Warsaw. Kościuszko, seeking to prevent Suvarov and Fersen from linking up, mobilised two regiments from Warsaw. With General Sierakowski’s 5,000 soldiers, he engaged Fersen’s force of 14,000 on October 10 at the Battle of Maciejowice. Kościuszko was wounded in the battle, captured by the Russians, and sent to Saint Petersburg. When he fell off his horse and was seized by his opponents, he was overheard to say Finis Poloniae!
This was a disaster. Without Kościuszko’s charismatic leadership, his successor, Tomasz Wawrzecki, could not control the increasing dissensions and spreading internal struggles for power. He became only the commander of weakened military forces; political power was held by General Józef Zajączek. The latter was left to struggle with both the leftist liberal Polish Jacobins and the rightist and monarchist nobility.
In the meantime, on November 4, the joint Russian forces started the Battle of Praga, in a right-bank suburb of Warsaw. After four hours of brutal hand-to-hand fighting, 22,000 Russian forces broke through the Polish defences. Suvorov allowed his Cossacks to loot and burn Warsaw. The result was the Praga massacre, in which 20,000 military personnel and civilians lost their lives. Zajaczek fled wounded, abandoning the Polish army. Finally, on November 16, near Radoszyce, Wawrzecki surrendered. So ended the uprising.
The reaction of Prussia and Russia was swift; they asked Austria to join them. Emperor Francis II agreed with Catherine II of Russia to completely divide and abolish the remaining Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Prussian, Austrian and Russian representatives met on October 24, 1795 to dissolve the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The three powers signed a treaty dividing the region on January 26, 1797. The Habsburg Monarchy received a share comprising the lands north of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria gained in the First Partition of 1772. The Austrians then occupied the entirety of Lesser Poland, stretching along the upper Vistula River to the outskirts of Praga and Warsaw, the tributaries of the Bug and the Pilica forming the northern border with New East Prussia. This gave the Habsburg Monarchy control of the Western Galicia and Southern Mazovia territories, with 1.2 million people; Prussia received Podlachia, the remainder of Masovia, and Warsaw, with 1 million people; and Russia received the remaining land, including Vilnius and 1.2 million people. Unlike previous partitions, no Polish representative was party to the treaty.
King Stanislaus’ plans had been ruined by the Kościuszko Uprising. Although not encouraging it, once it began, the King supported it, seeing no other honourable option. He did try to govern the country in the short period after the fall of the uprising. But in December 1794, Catherine demanded he leave Warsaw. He obeyed on January 7, 1795, leaving the capital under Russian military escort and settling briefly in Grodno. On October 24, 1795, the Act of the Third Partition of Poland was signed. One month and one day later, the King signed his abdication. He was taken as a prisoner to St. Petersburg, where he died of a stroke in 1798.
A great many Polish émigrés fled to France and elsewhere to join the enemies of the Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns, and Romanoffs – and indeed, one arose who briefly who would come to dominate not just France but all of Europe. As we shall see in the next chapter, he was not only assisted by many Poles, he would defeat their three major enemies and restore Polish independence of a sort. But in the meantime, as the three dividing powers dealt with their new subjects, they also prepared for the storm brewing in the West. The Polish refugees did their best to remind the French of the injustice done their country. We shall the results in our next instalment!
