GALICIA, OR AUSTRIAN POLAND.
EXTENT AND NATURE OF THE COUNTRY--BENEFITS RESULTING TO THE
PEOPLE FROM THE PARTITION OF POLAND--CRUELTY AND INJUSTICE OF
THE ANCIENT SYSTEM--SUPERIOR DEGREE OF SECURITY ENJOYED UNDER
THE AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT--MODE OF BUILDING--APPEARANCE OF A
POLISH VILLAGE--INNS-JEWS--UNCLEANLINESS OF THE POLES
The kingdom of Galicia is that part of Poland which, on the partition
of that monarchy among its more powerful neighbours, fell to the share
of the house of Austria. It contains upwards of fifteen hundred German
square miles, and not far short of four millions of inhabitants.
The country chiefly consists of a sandy plain situated at the northern
foot of the lofty mountains which separate it from Hungary,
Transylvania and the Bukowina by one of their secondary ramifications.
The soil of the plains of Galicia is nevertheless more irregular than
that of Hungary. It is infinitely diversified by hills of no great
elevation, but in some parts of extreme fertility.
Much as it has been the fashion to deplore the “fatal partition” of
Poland, and to execrate the powers concerned in it, we have now the
satisfaction to know that to the Poles themselves this measure has
proved one of the greatest blessings. Every individual has gained by
it, excepting a few selfish, pampered magnates, who abused their
overgrown power, and inflicted perpetual misery on the serfs whom
Providence had subjected to their rule.
If ever there was a country where “might constituted right,” that
country was Poland. The most dreadful oppression, the most execrable
tyranny, and the most wanton cruelties, were daily exercised by the
nobles on their unfortunate peasants. Dr. Neale in his Travels adduces
a few facts which prove but too clearly their miserable condition.
The life of a peasant was held of no greater value than that of one of
his horned cattle; and if his lord killed him he was merely fined a
hundred Polish florins, or two pounds sixteen shillings of our money.
If, on the contrary, a man of low birth presumed to raise his hand
against a nobleman, death was the inevitable punishment. If any one
dared to question the nobility of a magnat, he was required to prove
his assertion, or doomed to die: nay, if a powerful man took a fancy
to the field of his humbler neighbour and erected a land-mark upon it,
and if that land-mark remained three days, the poor man lost his
possession.
The atrocious cruelties habitually exercised almost exceed
credibility. A Masalki caused his hounds to devour a peasant who
chanced to fright his horse; a Radzivil had the belly of one of his
serfs ripped open, that he might thrust his feet into it, in the hope
of being cured of a malady with which he was afflicted. Still there
were laws in Poland, but how were they executed? A peasant, going to
the market at Warsaw, met a man who had just assassinated another: he
seized the murderer, bound him, and having placed him in his wagon
together with the body of his victim, he went to deliver him up to the
nearest Starost. On his arrival, he was asked if he had ten ducats to
pay for his interference, and on his answering in the negative, he was
sent back with his dead and living lumber. After this fact, the reader
will not be surprised to learn, that it cost a merchant of Warsaw
fourteen hundred dollars to prosecute to conviction and execution two
robbers who had plundered him.
To this injustice were joined the most barbarous ignorance and
superstition. In 1781, the Starost Potocki, in passing through a
village, learned that on the following day, a person accused of
sorcery was to be burned alive. He examined the accused, inquired the
hour at which the execution was to take place, and returned home to
make preparation for preventing this legal murder, by carrying off the
prisoner when on his way to the stake. The magistrates of the village
received intimation of his design, and hastened the execution, so that
when Potocki arrived, he had the mortification to find that the man
had already been sacrificed.
Nor were this ignorance and this superstition confined to any
particular class or order: in these respects people of the highest
rank were perfectly on a level with the meanest serfs. A Polish
baroness who had gained notoriety both at home and in France by her
spirit of intrigue and the wit of her correspondence, was in the habit
of burning frankincense and sprinkling her apartments with holy water
whenever a thunder storm approached her castle.--One day, when in
spite of these pious precautions the lightning struck and threw down
her chimneys, she had recourse to an expedient which she regarded as
infallible, namely, the burying round her house thirty copies of the
Gospel of St. John; a custom still piously practised on Christmas-day
in all the churches in Poland.
The morals of the people, were then, as they still continue to be,
nearly at the lowest point of debasement. Female chastity is a virtue
unknown in Poland. Among persons of all ranks, from the highest to the
lowest, with very few exceptions, the most dreadful licentiousness
prevails. The men are equally profligate; and debauchery of every kind
prevails among them to a degree unknown in other countries of Europe.
Education is in general much neglected, the lower classes being unable
to obtain the means of instruction: and among the higher, where no man
is assured of the legitimacy of his offspring, a total indifference
prevails as to the training of the doubtful brood. They are therefore
neglected from their cradles, and left to the indulgence of every
passion, undisciplined, untutored and uncontrolled. Endowed by nature
with great personal beauty, the young Polish noble makes the tour of
France and Germany, engrafts the vices of every capital that he visits
on his own native stock; and after dilapidating his revenues returns
to his paternal estate with a train of French cooks, valets, parasites
and all the paraphernalia of modern luxury, to wallow in sensuality,
and to die prematurely of acquired disease.
Such is the picture of the Poles drawn by Dr. Neale, who adds two
facts tending to show the superior degree of security enjoyed by the
humbler classes under the Austrian government to that afforded them
while under the Polish sceptre.
During the reign of Stanislaus Poniatowsky, a petty noble having
refused to resign his small estate to Count Thisenhaus, the latter
invited him to dinner as if desirous of adjusting the affair in an
amicable manner. While the knight, elated at such an unexpected
honour, was assiduously plying the bottle, the count despatched some
hundreds of peasants with axes, ploughs and wagons, ordering the
village, which consisted only of a few small wooden buildings, to be
pulled down, the materials carried away, and the plough passed over
the ground which the village had occupied. This was accordingly done.
The nobleman, on his return home in the evening, could not find either
road, house or village. The master and his servant were alike
bewildered, and knew not whether they were dreaming or had lost the
power of discrimination: but their surprise and agony were deemed so
truly humourous, that the whole court was delighted with the joke.
As a contrast to this story, related on the authority of Baron
Uklanski, himself a Pole, the reader is presented with the following
fact, which happened in Galicia, after the _cruel partition_:--
A peasant with his wife and children, belonging to the estate of the
Starost Bleski, having fled into Austrian Poland, the Starost
assembled a party of horsemen and carried off his serf, inflicted on
him a hundred stripes and threw him into a dungeon. The emperor
Joseph II., having been informed of this circumstance, caused his
ministers to demand reparation from the king of Poland, who replied,
that it did not depend on him, but on his permanent council. The
emperor, not satisfied with this evasive answer, sent a party of two
hundred dragoons to bring back both the Starost and the serf to
Zamoic, where they were taken before an Austrian court of justice. The
Starost was sentenced to pay a thousand crowns as an indemnity to the
peasant, and a fine of five thousand to the Austrian exchequer. The
hundred blows which he had inflicted on the peasant were repaid to him
on his own person, and he was sent back to his own estate with all due
respect.
Galicia, like Poland in general, abounds in wood, but stone,
particularly freestone, is very scarce. Hence log huts are the general
habitations of the peasantry. Architecture of course is still in its
infancy. Every peasant in fact is his own mason and carpenter.
Provided with a hatchet, he enters the nearest wood, fells as many
trees as he wants, carries them to the site of his future dwelling,
and splits each trunk into two beams. Four large stones mark the
corner of an oblong square, and constitute the base upon which the hut
is raised, by placing the beams in horizontal layers, with the flat
sides inward; a sort of mortice being cut in each about half a foot
from the end to receive the connecting beams. A kind of cage is thus
constructed, usually about twelve feet by six, and moss is thrust
between the logs to exclude the wind and rain. Two openings are left,
one for the door, and the other, with the aid of a few panes of glass
or a couple of sheets of oiled paper, forms a window. At one of the
corners within are placed four upright posts, round which are entwined
some twigs covered with mud or clay to form a square area, in which is
built an oven of the same materials; and this, when hard and dry,
serves the peasant for kitchen, chimney, stove and bed. The roof is
closed in with rafters and twigs bedaubed with a thick coating of
clay, and covered over with a close warm thatch extending over both
gable ends. To finish this rude hut, the walls are sometimes extended
a few feet in a still rougher style, to form a sort of vestibule,
which serves also for carthouse or stable, and occasionally a second
is added to serve as a barn. In the whole building there is perhaps
scarcely a bolt, lock, hinge or any article of metal. Yet this is the
dwelling of a Polish serf, and contains himself and his family and all
his goods and chattels.
If the proprietor happens to be a little more affluent, his hut may
contain an oven of glazed earthenware, and two bed-rooms with boarded
floors, the walls whitewashed, and the doors secured with locks. If he
be a Jew, the house is still larger; the roof better, and covered with
shingles instead of thatch; the windows are a degree wider; and if he
be an innkeeper, there is a long stable, with a coach-entrance at each
end, which serves for barn, stable and cow-house.
The gentry give to their wooden house greater capacity, and a form a
little more symmetrical. The walls within are perhaps stuccoed and
washed with distemper colours, and externally plastered and
whitewashed. The door of entrance occupies the centre and is covered
with a rude porch, raised on four posts, and the front may contain
three or four windows.
Such are the elementary parts of a Polish village, and nothing under
heaven can be more miserable, dirty and wretched, than the whole
assemblage externally as well as internally. All the inns in Galicia
are kept by Jews, and both these and the post-houses are always
situated in the public squares, which occupy the centre of every town.
These squares are also the market-places for horned cattle, and have
never been cleansed since their first formation: hence they are
absolute quagmires of filth, the putrid effluvia from which are almost
insufferable.
Happy, says Dr. Neale, is the traveller, the dimensions of whose
carriage admit of his occupying it during the night! what abominations
will he not escape! He relates, that though his companion and himself
carried with them into these Jewish inns fur skins of their own to
sleep on, yet the noisome smells from the damp earthen floors were
frequently so powerful and disgusting as to keep them awake; and
there were a thousand other nameless annoyances more easily imagined
than described.
From the centre of the roof of these houses is always suspended a
large brass chandelier, with seven branches: this is the sabbath lamp,
which is regularly lighted every Friday evening at sun-set, when all
the fires are carefully extinguished, and not re-kindled till the same
hour the next evening. Underneath it stands a long table soiled with
grease, occupying the middle of the apartment; around it are ranged
several wooden benches, with one or two rotten chairs, and a cushion
stuffed with hay. In the huts of the peasants a sort of shovel, slung
from the roof is loaded with tallow: a lock of flax is placed upon it,
and being lighted serves for a lamp.
The best food to be obtained at these inns is nearly as disgusting to
strangers as the lodging they afford; and the only thing to be
commended in Galicia is the state of the high-roads; these are
excellent, of a good breadth, well levelled, and kept in admirable
repair. But these, and every thing else that is not absolutely
abominable, are the creation of the Austrian government; for
previously to the first partition of Poland, in 1772, they were as
miserable as the inns.
In no country in Europe have the Jews obtained such firm footing as in
Poland, where Casimir the Great, at the instigation of his Jewish
mistress, Esther, took them, four centuries ago, into his especial
favour and protection. Enjoying privileges and immunities which they
possess in no other region, with opportunities of engaging deeply in
traffic and accumulating immense fortunes; masters of all the specie
and most of the commerce of Poland; mortgagees of the land, and
sometimes masters of the glebe--the Jewish interlopers appear to be
more the lords of the country then even the Poles themselves.
All the distilleries throughout Poland are farmed out to Jews, who pay
large sums to the nobles for the privilege of poisoning and
intoxicating their serfs. Mr. Burnett states, that when he was in
Poland, a company of Jews paid to Count Zaymoski the sum of three
thousand pounds sterling annually for the mere privilege of distilling
spirituous liquors on the largest of his estates, which, to be sure,
comprehends at least four thousand square miles. Hence some estimate
may be formed of the enormous quantity that is consumed.
When Joseph II. obtained possession of Galicia, that judicious prince
perceived the necessity of limiting the privileges of the Jews. He
took from them the power of cultivating the lands belonging to the
serfs subject to contributions, and prohibited them from keeping inns
and distilling spirits: but at his death these regulations ceased to
be enforced, and the Jews have since been silently regaining their
former influence.
The inns, as has been already observed, are now altogether in their
hands, as well as the fabrication of ardent spirits and liqueurs. They
have all the traffic in peltry, the precious metals, diamonds and
other jewels, and they are also the principal agents in the
corn-trade. Of late years many of these Jewish families who had
amassed great wealth by commerce, having affected to abjure their
religion and to embrace the Catholic faith, have been ennobled and
permitted to purchase extensive estates: still true, however, to their
own nation, they have built large towns and villages on these estates,
and peopled them exclusively with Jewish families; for from a singular
instinct the Poles seem to detest their fellowship, and generally herd
together in their own miastas.
The enjoyment of liberty and civil rights seems to have produced a
strong effect on the physical constitution and physiognomy of the
Hebrew race, and to have bestowed on them a dignity and energy of
character, which we may look for in vain in the Jews of other
countries. The men, clothed in long black robes reaching to their
ankles, and sometimes adorned in front with silver agraffes, their
heads covered with fur caps, their chesnut or auburn locks parted in
front, and falling gracefully on their shoulders in spiral curls,
display much manly beauty. In feminine beauty, the women are likewise
distinguished; but beauty is not uncommon among the Jewesses of other
countries. When looking at them, says Dr. Neale, seated, according to
their usual custom, on a wooden sofa, by the doors of their houses,
on the evenings of their sabbath, dressed in their richest stuffs and
pearl head-dresses, I have imagined that I could trace a strong
resemblance between their present head-ornaments and those sculptured
on the heads of the Egyptian sphynxes. Nor do I think it at all
improbable, that the dresses of the Hebrews of both sexes in Poland,
are at this day nearly the same as those of their ancestors when they
quitted the “house of bondage.”
Without having visited Poland, and had ocular demonstration of the
filth and abominable uncleanliness of the inhabitants, it seems
difficult to believe the accounts which have been given of them. The
floors of the houses of the lower classes consists of clay or earth
always damp, and from which the heat of the stove draws up a perpetual
vapour of the most offensive odour, which, as their windows are never
opened, circulates continually. Both sexes sleep together like pigs on
the straw or furs, upon the sides and tops of their ovens, without
undressing themselves. They eat few vegetables, and their diet
consists of every putrescent animal food, with bad bread, diluted
copiously with spirituous liquors. Such a diet necessarily predisposes
them to imbibe readily every contagious poison, which, when once
received, is propagated among them with the rapidity of combustion
itself. Thus it is related, that when the plague was brought into the
country in 1770, in consequence of the hostilities between the Turks
and Russians, all the peasants of a village belonging to Prince Adam
Czartoriski were swept off by it in one day.
Generally without medical assistance, the wretched creatures are
abandoned to their fate; and such is the callous selfishness of the
great majority of the Polish nobles, that instead of attempting to
meliorate the condition of their serfs, all their ingenuity is
exhausted in ministering to their debaucheries and increasing their
own overgrown incomes, by throwing the temptations of drunkenness in
their way. Bishops and nobles are joint proprietors of all the inns,
and the greater the drunkenness of the peasantry, the larger are the
returns to the lord of the soil.
THE END.