CHAPTER X.

THE RETURN TO PARIS.

THE MOUJIK’S PASSAGE--LITHUANIA--THE PRUSSIAN

FRONTIER--KÖNIGSBERG--ARREST AND CAPTIVITY--BAIL--FLIGHT--ARRIVAL IN

PARIS--THE END.

A passage in the steamer from St. Petersburg to Riga does not furnish

a subject replete with many features of travel, not even when the

traveller is a Siberian exile, flying from the _katorga_. Yet I had

one little adventure, for ocean certainly was hostile to me. Thanks,

I suppose, to the stupefaction caused by sea-sickness, I suddenly

found myself in the first-class cabin--an intrusion which horrified

and disgusted everyone. An elderly Russian lady in particular never

ceased crying in French, ‘Oh, this peasant will give us the plague!

He corrupts the little air we have to breathe!’ Some servants came,

who brought me to my senses, and took me to my own quarters, where,

squatting in a corner in the fore part of the ship, I kept to myself,

and did not again see any of the passengers of distinction, unless

their walk happened to bring them occasionally in my direction.

Two Germans, seeing me making my breakfast on a bit of bread and an

onion (which I did to keep up my part as a _moujik_, not less than

also, alas! from motives of economy), said out loud, in their amiable

language, ‘One can see that that is a Russian hog.’ Oddly enough, the

only persons among the travellers who showed any interest in me, and

who sometimes condescended to talk to me (without having a suspicion

of my nationality), were two young men, both of them Poles. I often

followed them with my eyes as they paced up and down the deck; how

gladly would I have pressed their hands!

I shall pass rapidly over the rest of my journey from Riga, across

Courland and Lithuania, as far as the Prussian frontier, and shall only

say a few words about the new profession I assumed on quitting St.

Petersburg. The character of a _bohomolets_ could not any longer serve

me, now that I was going in a contrary direction from Novgorod, and I

was also about to cross countries which, like Courland or Samogitia,

were either of Catholic or Protestant beliefs. I therefore proposed to

pass for a _stchetinnik_, for such is the name for the Russian peasants

so often met in those districts as well as in Lithuania and in the

Ukraine, who, going from one village to another, buy hog’s bristles on

behalf of the merchants of Riga. This trade suited me admirably, for

under pretence of inquiring whether my article was to be had or not, it

allowed me to knock at many doors, and to ask my way. I went on foot,

sleeping most frequently in the woods or in the cornfields, and the

fine weather (it was July) was very favourable to me. I had likewise

exchanged my winter trowsers for the summer suit of blue cotton which

I had brought from Siberia; I renewed my linen and my boots, and I

exchanged my pelisse with a tapster for a great-coat and a little cap,

which, with a view to traversing Prussia, I carried with me in my bag,

while as to my little bournouse of sheep-skin (_armiak_), that, like a

true Russian peasant (_rouski tcheloviék_), I always wore, in spite of

the warmth of summer.

My passage through Lithuania, across our _hallowed_ Samogitia, was

not void of emotion, or of sufficiently diverting scenes. How often

was I not tempted to reveal my nationality to some one or other of

my own country people, and to ask their advice or assistance! But I

resisted every temptation, and I never belied my character as a Russian

_stchetinnik_. One day, at Polonga, I wanted to buy a cheese in the

market from a Samogitian woman; we could not agree about the price,

and my respectable countrywoman, strong in lungs as any woman of _la

Halle_, delivered herself of a sentiment about ‘dogs of Muscovites,’

which was certainly not of a highly Christian description. Had I even

been ignorant of the meaning of her words, their sense was sufficiently

explained by gestures, patent even to a _moujik_, and I was obliged

forsooth to pretend to uphold the honour of Muscovy against the

outrages of a Polish woman...!

It was between Polonga and Kurszany that I determined to pass into

Prussia. I had infinite trouble before I could procure, without

betraying myself any information as to the way or the extent to which

the Russians watched their frontier, my best source of knowledge being

a soldier belonging to the customs. Seeing him take a bath in the

little bay of Polonga, I followed his example, hoping thus to begin

a conversation. As soon as he said that he was a native of Pultava,

I declared myself his countryman. There is always one simple way

of getting a Russian soldier to talk, which is to start him about

his grievances, and the hardships of his lot. Once on this theme my

companion informed me of all the precautionary measures which had to

be taken, by day and by night, by the customs on account of smugglers

and rebels (_bountovstchiki_), for so fugitives are called, with

details as to the strength and the weakness of the watch thus kept....

I must give one expression used by the soldier, than which nothing

could have been more characteristic. I had naïvely asked him why the

Prussians did not help to keep the frontier and hunt down the _rebels_

and smugglers? ‘That,’ he answered, ‘is just the pity of it all! These

cursed Prussians will not take any trouble at the frontier, and so _all

the burden falls on our poor Tzar_...!’

The conclusion drawn by me from this valuable conversation was

precisely contrary to what I had at first supposed, and I saw that

it would be best that I should try to cross the boundary line in

the day time; so, at two o’clock in the afternoon of that same day,

having armed myself with my poignard, and commended my soul to God,

I slipped into the corn. Then spying from the top of the rampart the

moment during which both sentries on the station turned their backs on

each other, I leapt the first of the three ditches which marked the

frontier. No noise was made; I clambered through the brushwood, but as

I reached the second ditch I was perceived. Shots were fired from guns

on both sides, when, hardly conscious of what I was about, I slipped

into the third ditch, then climbed up and leapt again. I lost sight of

the soldiers, and was in a little wood. I was in Prussia!

Breathless and exhausted, I lay for many long hours bidden in the

thicket without daring to stir; knowing the violence and eagerness of

the Russians, I feared lest they should even pursue me into forbidden

ground; but happily all was still, and a soft rain which began to fall

tempered the suffocating heat of the day. It was time to think of a

fresh disguise. The _moujik’s_ orthodox beard was not suitable in

Prussia, where it would only have attracted attention; so at Polonga

I had taken the precaution to buy a small mirror and a razor, which I

got at a Jew’s stall, while, as to soap, a piece of what I had brought

from Siberia remained still in my bag. I hung the mirror up on a bush,

and, profiting by the rain and, above all, by the dew on the leaves for

moistening the soap, proceeded in this way, though still lying and on

my elbow, to perform the civilising operation of shaving myself. It was

a slow and a painful one, particularly on account of my uncomfortable

position; but I effected it at last, not, however, without sundry cuts

made in my cheeks. About the middle of the night I got up and went on

my way again, dressed in the great coat and the little cap, with my

trowsers falling over my boots. I knew very well that I was by no means

out of danger, for a convention between Russia and Prussia, a cartel

as it was called, then obliged the two powers to deliver over their

mutual fugitives; and more than one, alas! of my compatriots had been

thus brought back to the Russian frontier, after having succeeded, in

spite of many and great dangers, in leaving it behind them. Still I had

confidence in my star, the great matter for me now being to avoid inns,

and to keep clear of gendarmes, a task which, thanks to the summer

season, was not very difficult. As to the direction of my journey, I

had no longer any hesitation about it. I must gain the Grand Duchy of

Posen, and there, among my fellow-countrymen subject to the Prussian

rule, but whose safety I could in no way compromise, I hoped to find

all the help which the rapid diminution of my finances demanded. I was

then ignorant of the massacres which had recently desolated Galicia,

and I did not even know that in this very Duchy of Posen a vast

conspiracy had been discovered; for it was not in the solitudes of the

Oural chain, nor yet among the lowest of the Russian people, that I

could have learnt these heavy and sad tidings.

I reached Memel, Tilsit and Königsberg successively without any

obstacles. I walked by day, and slept under the stars; I was nowhere

annoyed about my passport, and to the unfrequent questions of merchants

and travellers I replied that I was a Frenchman, a cotton-spinner,

returning from Russia. At last on July 27th, having reached Königsberg,

I saw in the harbour a vessel that was to sail on the following day

for Elbing. Tired of constant walking, I wished to profit by a means

of transport which could be had for a moderate price, and which would

have taken me nearly to the Grand Duchy of Posen, and to my friends. I

determined therefore to remain in Königsberg till the following day.

While waiting in this way I sauntered about the town, and as evening

fell I sat down on a heap of stones near a dismantled house, meaning at

night to wander away and sleep in the cornfields, and to return next

morning before the vessel sailed. Alas! I had not reckoned on my bodily

fatigue any more than on the exhaustion of my strength, and a certain

carelessness had been engendered by the last period of comparative

security. Upon this heap of stones I fell asleep, and slept deeply.

When I awoke, roughly shaken by the arm by some man, it was a dark

night. A stranger stood before me, a night-watcher of the town, as

they are called. He asked me who I was, and whence I came? Drunk with

sleep, I muttered some incoherent words, and when a sense of my danger

finally recalled me to myself, it was in vain that, in my infamous

German, I offered any explanations as to who I was, and how I came to

be there; all my answers seemed suspicious. My complete ignorance of

the place and the darkness of the night prevented me from beginning to

struggle with him, or attempting to fly; I did feel for my dagger, but

luckily I could not find it. The constable took hold of my arm, called

his comrades, and carried me off by force to the nearest office. I was

arrested...!

The feeling which came over me when once more I found myself in a

prison was one of shame, far more than of sadness or of despair. To

have escaped from the _katorga_, to have crossed the Oural Mountains,

to have slept for months in the snow in ostiak _earths_, to have

endured so many sufferings and privations, to have leapt the Russian

boundary line among the musket balls of soldiers, and now to be taken

up by neither more nor less than a Prussian night constable! It really

was too ridiculous, and I blushed for myself.

The next morning, about ten o’clock, I was taken to the Police office,

and then commenced all the sad and abject necessities of simulation and

dissimulation, which press on a man who has to elude the cognisance of

the law. I pretended that I was a Frenchman, a cotton-spinner, who was

on his way back from Russia, and who had lost his passport. I gave my

addresses in both countries, but I could perceive that my declarations

did not inspire any confidence. What hurt me most was to perceive in

this first examination, and still more in some that followed it, that

I was taken for a malefactor, who had some interest in concealing a

crime. I demanded to be sent back to France, where I said I was ready

to answer before public justice for all my actions, and to submit to

the consequences of all and everything that could be discovered about

me.

I was now remanded to the Blue Tower (Blaûer Thûrm), where for

company I found a burger detained for fraudulent bankruptcy and other

peccadilloes. The Blue Tower certainly was not horrible to a man who

knew the insides of Russian prisons, not to speak of the _katorga_;

but the uncertainty and the irritation caused by this sad interlude

recalled some of the worst days of my existence during the last years.

At last, after a month’s detention, I was again called before the

police; it was signified to me that all the addresses which I had given

had been found to be incorrect, and that I now lay under the gravest

suspicions. Tired of making false pretences, and above all of passing

for a criminal trying to hide his identity, I begged to have a private

interview with one of the high functionaries who examined me, and for

the presence at it of M. Fleury, a Frenchman, naturalised at Königsberg

for the last thirty years. He was _interpréte-juré_, and had always

assisted at the enquiries. When left alone with these two gentlemen

I told them frankly who I was, and I left my fate in their hands. I

cannot describe the astonishment, the stupor, and, I must also add, the

consternation of my two examiners on learning that before them stood

a Pole, a political criminal escaped from the _katorga_, and returned

from Siberia! The official at first could not say a word; at last he

cried, ‘But, miserable man! we must give you up; the convention is

decisive! Oh, my God! why, why did you come here?’

‘I wished to spare you both embarrassment and remorse, so why did you

not send me on to France as I asked you?’

They made me give all the details of my flight; then the Prussian

official left the room. M. Fleury stepped up to me and said, ‘We cannot

avoid giving you up to the Russians; quite recently several of your

fellows have been sent back over the frontiers. There is only one

likelihood of salvation for you, try to see the Count Eûlenberg, or at

least to write to him. He is President of the government (Regierûngs

Präsident), and almost everything depends on him. He is a good-hearted

man--frank, generous, and beloved by all. Write to him, for Heaven’s

sake! Oh, what a pity! what a pity!’

On my return to prison I did write to Count Eûlenberg and also to our

Abbé Kajsiewicz, in Paris, to obtain an attestation of my identity,

because I perceived that they questioned among themselves whether I

was not an emissary who had taken part in the late affairs in Posen.

Since my revelation they treated me better in my prison, but I was

not the less the object of a very strict watch. After ten days I got

an answer from Count Eûlenberg, which was polite but vague, although

the advice at the close of it, ‘to have patience,’ seemed to me to be

some encouragement. The principal point of all the investigations was,

had I or had I not shared in the business in Posen? On that head I

felt perfectly at my ease; but my anguish of mind, nevertheless, was

very great, and very often I had to say to myself that perhaps my most

certain hope of being saved lay in my own dagger.

One day a gentleman presented himself at my prison; he gave his name as

M. Kamke, a merchant of Königsberg, and he begged to know if I would

accept of his bail. Astonished as well as touched at this unexpected

offer, I asked for an explanation of it, and then learnt that the

report of a Pole who had escaped from Siberia being arrested in the

town had spread, and caused a general and lively emotion. The honest

townsfolk of Königsberg, who had more than once been irritated at the

working of the cartel with Russia, were grieved at the idea of seeing

a man given up who had succeeded in eloping from Siberia, and who had

braved so many dangers. Several steps had been taken in my behalf, and

they hoped to find means to liberate me under bail given for me! Ah,

how much good these words did! The acceptance of securities for me

met with some opposition; but when summoned anew, on September 1st,

I found with the Police this excellent M. Kamke, who coming up to me

embraced me, and told me I was free. It really was so, and the official

in charge of the inquest repeated the assurance to me. He asked if I

wished to remain some time longer in Königsberg, and I replied in the

affirmative, for I wished to thank my benefactors, the many persons who

had interested themselves in my fate, particularly Count Eûlenberg. It

also seemed to me to be good policy not to appear to be too anxious to

leave Prussia. Alas! how suspicious I had become!

M. Kamke took me home in triumph, and for a week, I found in his family

an affectionate care, of which the remembrance can never be effaced.

Suddenly, a week having barely elapsed since I had been allowed my

liberty, I was again invited to attend at the police. I found there two

functionaries whom I had met before. With a sad but kind manner, they

informed me that orders had come from Berlin that I must be given up to

Russia; they added that they had now nothing in their power but to give

me time to fly from this danger at my own peril, and that they hoped

God would protect my steps. I was profoundly touched by their generous

proceedings, and I promised to do my utmost to save them any further

trouble. I immediately informed M. Kamke and my protectors of this

new incident, and my flight was speedily arranged. I took leave of my

brave and true friends, and on the following day, September 9th, I was

already on my way to Dantzig. I was furnished with letters to different

persons in the German towns which I had to pass through, and everywhere

the greatest zeal was shown to make my journey easy. I must be

permitted to mention especially the good offices of the celebrated and

generous bookseller of Leipsig, Robert Blûm, whom Prince Windischgrætz

thought right to have shot at Vienna two years later. Thanks to Help

which never failed me, I had speedily traversed the whole of Germany,

and on September 22nd, 1846, I found myself again in Paris, in the city

which I had left four years before.

Something more than a year had scarcely elapsed after my return to

Paris, when the revolution of February broke out, and my country

believed in a better future. But, alas! we soon saw our mistake. Once

more I had hastened to my own land, and had just time to assist in

Galicia at a fresh shipwreck of our hopes. It was during the leisure

which expectations thus deceived had left to me, and while my memory

retained the impression of what had recently passed, that I wrote down

the greater part of these ‘Recollections.’ If I have not mentioned my

poor brothers in misfortune, implicated in the affair at Kaminieç, it

has certainly not been because I was then, or am now, indifferent to

their lot; but because I have been able to learn very little of their

fate, or of the nature of the sentences which were passed upon them.

Some have already succumbed under their sorrows; others still groan in

Siberia, in the Caucasus, or in the penal companies of Orenbourg.

May God have mercy upon the living, and upon the dead!

POLAND A CENTURY AFTER ITS DIVISION,

AND

THE AGITATION IN WARSAW.

MAY 1861.

POLAND

A CENTURY AFTER ITS DIVISION.

The world is full of victimised races, to whose ill-fortune it becomes

almost reconciled, since the marvellous discovery has been made that,

at some time or another, these people may have deserved their fate; as

if the strong, for their part, did not also commit faults; and as if,

too, Justice went evermore hand in hand with Fortune. But whence, then,

those crises of anarchy which are apparent, not only in a solitary

instance, but in the most general relations? Whence those convulsions

which make us present, as it were, at a confused disorganisation of all

political order, in one headlong annihilation of all combinations, and

of all foregone conclusions? These take their rise, most frequently,

in some original defect lying at the very roots of the situation, in

some previous violations which, although they leave the people unarmed,

do not the less affect the governments themselves--which compel the

first to a system of indefatigable revolt, and the second to a system

of repression, which is always fatally increasing in weight, till, at

last, there ensues one of those struggles in which contend all the

rights, principles, and accumulated wrongs--all the causes long thought

to be dormant, but which, now reawakened, make their appeal to that

public opinion which has started up as a new power. The whole history

of Poland is before us, to prove how much violence it costs, how many

perpetually recurring struggles it requires, to make the suppression

of a whole race a public right, before the fact of its suppression can

be forced into the vague and terrible list of ‘things that have been

accomplished.’

It is now nearly a century since three Powers, united by the saddest

and most dangerous of solidarities, laboured to this end. Frederick II.

of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia rejoiced in the work as in

an easy victory; but it carried remorse into the soul of Maria-Theresa

of Austria, who called it ‘a blot upon her reign,’ to which she could

not subscribe without casting a terrified glance into the future.

Thrice was the partition renewed--in 1772, in 1793, and in 1795. It

began by leaving us a shadow of independence, with the shadow of a king

at Warsaw; and it finished by making everything disappear, even to the

very name of Poland. At each dismemberment they believed that they had

achieved success; each time, on the contrary, the injustice of the

whole proceeding became more evident, till it was almost acknowledged

to be so by the dividers themselves--each time the wound became more

envenomed, and the struggle more serious between an always precarious

domination, and the heroism of a race remodelled by misfortune. At

the capital moment of the last dismemberment, in 1792, Poland did not

yield without a struggle; she proclaimed her political aspirations in

the Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791, and, led by Kosciusko, she

reappeared upon the field of battle. The Polish hero was conquered at

Macejowice, and the work, begun in 1772, seemed very nearly completed.

Up to this time, however, it had only been an affair between Russia,

Austria, and Prussia; and Europe had remained a stranger to this

dismemberment of a nation.

At the end of the storms of the French Revolution, and of the Empire,

in which the Poles had taken part with all their warlike humour, and

during which, by the timid, ephemeral, and incomplete creation of a

Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, they had for an instant believed that their

country was reborn, the Congress of Vienna, after allowing hope to

shine before the eyes of Poland, let her fall again under the triple

yoke, and consecrated her dismemberment as an accomplished fact.

This time, at least, success seemed sure--the partition had become

a public right, and it formed a part of the constitution of Europe;

yet, in reality, the question was very far from being set at rest.

The treaties of 1815 only organised new strife, under new conditions;

and a new weapon was placed in the hands of the Poles, by this species

of homage paid to a nationality that no one ventured quite to kill,

its titles being recognised, and stipulations being made in favour of

its guarantees; while, at the same time, they dared not refuse its

fragments to those who claimed them by right of prior occupation. The

question, then, was so little settled, that at the first agitation it

did not fail to come up again. In 1830, Poland made an immense effort

for its own resurrection, an effort which for a moment sufficed to

hold in check the power of Russia, and filled Europe with anxiety

and emotion. Alone, and abandoned to her own resources, Poland must

evidently succumb; she must sink under the weight of arms, still more

under the weight of oppression. Then, surely, the last words had been

said, the last resistance conquered, and all was really at an end. On

the contrary, nothing was finished; and this is the curious point, the

great moral, so to speak, of the events which for the last two months

agitate Warsaw and all Polish countries. One hundred years after the

first dismemberment, forty-five years after the treaties of 1815,

thirty years after the revolution quelled at Warsaw by the arms of

Russia, Poland rears her head, more agitated than ever, wounded but

not tamed, and showing herself in two lights--the one, as regards her

relations with the state of Europe; the other, as regards that internal

labour, by which she has obstinately sought to remake for herself

a moral life, and a new destiny, in spite of the darkest, and most

painful trials.

What, then, really is the character of this situation, so suddenly

revealed in Northern Europe by the strange drama of Warsaw, at the very

moment when Italy has constituted herself anew, and when Hungary claims

her old tradition of independence--when both in the West and in the

East everything is in movement--when all questions of nationality, of

public rights, and of universal balance, are making themselves heard at

once? What is most strange in these events is, that all is spontaneous

and unforeseen, though an eternal reason gives them being. This is the

act of life in a people, which, finding itself one day united by one

and the sane feeling, spreads itself peaceably through the town, and

then demands, what even treaties have not denied to it, respect for

its nationality, and its own religion, the guarantee of its existence

in regular institutions, the preservation of its own language, the

right of interesting itself in its own affairs, of occupying itself

in agriculture, in the education of its own children; the right, it a

word, to live and to breathe. Nothing assuredly can be more dramatic

than the meeting which during the last two months has taken place in

Warsaw. It is no longer one between two sovereigns, but between two

nations, which for the first time for thirty years find themselves

publicly face to face, which have suddenly brought their disagreement

into the broad daylight of European conflict, and which are now

interrogating each other in this mysterious pause; two peoples, of

which the one has no arms but its rights and its prayers, and of which

the other has no danger but in the very excess of its own powers.

This, then, really is the situation which has disclosed itself in the

heart of Poland since the 25th of February, the day upon which this

new, touching, and heroic adventure began for a population which, to

a certain extent, thus returns to public life, and which goes out to

pray for its country and its dead. At first, Russia appears to have

been visibly surprised at this unexpected manifestation on the part of

Poland, in which she believed, perhaps, that no such vitality existed,

and she was divided between the inquietude caused by the movement,

and by the sense that concessions must be made. She has not the gift

of always making the happiest resolutions; she yields when it would

be natural to resist, and resists when it would be just to yield. She

begins by giving up some of those officials who are most compromised,

and she ends in dissolving those popular corporations of which she not

only herself sanctioned the existence, but of which she had availed

herself for a month, in order to maintain order. This, by a series of

enigmatical and contradictory acts, in which, doubtless, there is as

much embarrassment as calculation, she sets all hopes and all fears

fermenting together. Popular manifestations follow one after the other.

The question assumes greater proportions, the movement becomes graved

and more complicated, and in a short time the whole affair has changed

its aspect. The pressure imposed becomes heavier than ever, when

pitted against a moral agitation which has been throughout innocent of

any violence, so that it requires but a few days and an evolution of

Russian policy to bring the situation to one of those issues, which

Prince Repnin characterised in his day with inexorable bluntness, when

he said, ‘Unless we deny all sentiments of humanity, it is true that we

cannot help recognising the right which the Poles have to complain. You

would have full right to drive out the Russians, if you had the power;

not having the power, you must submit.’

Such is the question truly stated by the victorious side, and certainly

such is the question so often supposed to have been definitely settled,

but which has never been resolved. After the bloody repression of the

8th of April, as after all those that went before, the problem of the

destinies of Poland is not the less on foot. It springs out of these

events, and is shaped by their character and their aims, in the midst

of those conditions of universal transition in which the world of

to-day finds itself placed.

What makes these new events so important, is that they form part of

a European situation, at the same time that they are the outward and

visible signs of a profound and inward work, of which Russian Poland

is the centre (most active and most prominent at present), but which

has also revealed, in the Grand Duchy of Posen, in Galicia, in short,

everywhere, that, in spite of treaties and congresses, Polish feeling,

the last and indestructible tie of a riven country, still lives.

This question of Poland has its roots deep in the past, and I am not

ignorant that it is so. Whether politically or diplomatically, it goes

back, like so many more, to the transactions of 1815, and when the

attempt is made to draw closer the knot of European affairs, whence

come the crises of which this question has been the unhappy and the

perennial source? Is it not because these treaties have manifestly

been an immense and avowed violation of an imprescriptable right,

or rather the fatal and complaisant consecration of all previous

violations? One of the most essential causes of the tribulation and

disorder in the politics of the time--a cause which now appears in

all its distinctness--is the ever-growing contradiction between the

dispositions of the solemn act of Vienna and the real state to which

the different parts of Poland are reduced; so that, if there have been,

if there shall again be, revolutionists, we must settle this in our

minds, that it is not the Poles who are such. An example has been given

them in this matter, and they have been left with this sad conviction,

that, according to the rights of 1815, they have the right on their

side. It is, indeed, a curious thing that the people of Poland have

been the ‘last to step down into the arena of to-day at that name

of “nationality” which serves as a watchword to all other revolting

populations.’ Yet Poland was the first and the only country in whose

favour such a word was hinted at by the Congress of Vienna, when it

was inscribed in treaties, as if to render a marked homage to heroic

misfortune, and, while tempering by guarantees the way in which Poland

was abandoned, to maintain the mockery of an ideal ‘nationality,’ in

spite of territorial division.

Still more curious was the sort of universal disavowal made of the

partition of Poland, at the moment in which it was announced as a

new public right. M. de Talleyrand, the representative of the French

king, called it ‘the prelude to European convulsions;’ and of all

the questions that were to come before the Congress, he considered

the Polish one to be ‘the first, the greatest, the most eminently

European, and, beyond comparison, before all the others in importance.’

The Emperor Alexander of Russia, professing himself the renovator of

Poland, was actuated either by ambition or by the vanity of appearing

as a liberal prince, and, doubtless, also by sentiments of generosity;

but this renovation offered itself to his mind under the shape of a

kingdom which should be a feudatory of the Russian crown, while it

still preserved the integrity of Poland. Poland was a subject of

remorse to Europe, and she inspired respect, without having strength

enough to make herself truly and really respected. Hence the strange

combinations adopted by the Congress of Vienna, which (while it

delivered over the provinces of Poland to Austria, to Russia, and

to Prussia) multiplied at the same time protecting guarantees, and

laboured to maintain a national link between the different parts, by

assuring to them a certain autonomy, as if the future could be secured

by abandoning the present.

From one point of view, nothing can be stranger than the organised

_whole_, of which the scattered elements are to be found in the final

act of Vienna, and in the separate proceedings between Russia, Prussia,

and Austria, under the sanction of Europe. In Galicia, Cracow, escaping

the general shipwreck, is constituted ‘for all time coming’ (_à

perpétuité_) a free, neutral and independent town. The transformation

of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw into the kingdom of Poland, under the

Russian crown, leaves the name of the country still diplomatically

existing, and it leaves it also as the nucleus of reconstruction, the

centre of attraction. The Prussian division gets the name of Grand

Duchy of Posen, that it may preserve a distinct character in the

whole monarchy of Frederick II.; and the frontier on the Prussian

side is defined, as well as on the Russian border. Finally (and here

is the origin of the great debate in the eyes of diplomatic Europe),

the three powers engage themselves, by their act at Vienna, to give

to the Poles, their respective subjects, ‘representation and such

national institutions, arranged according to their modes of political

existence, as each of the governments shall judge to be useful;’ while,

in order better to define the sense and meaning of these guaranteed

institutions, the separate treaties add that these are intended to

secure to the Poles ‘the preservation of their nationality.’

Nor is this all. In default of political unity and of real

independence, Poland is at least to keep the unity of her interests.

Full liberty of trading, of transit, and of navigation, is established

in all and between all the divisions of ‘_ancient Poland_;’ and it must

be noted that care was taken constantly to recall the old frontiers

of 1772 as the natural frame for all combinations. The quality of ‘a

mixed subject’ is recognised in those who have possessions in all the

three provinces, and who, escaping all classification, remain, in

spite of everything, _Poles_, as their civil individuality cannot be

divided under three heads. Such, indeed, is the spirit which permeates

this work (singular and incoherent as I do not deny that it is), that

Austrians, Prussians and Russians, are qualified as _strangers_ or

_foreigners_ in the article which treats of arrangements to be made

for the regulation of commercial interests on Polish grounds; and by

this title _they_ are excluded from such benefits as only the Poles

are entitled to enjoy. I shall not proceed further. Considering the

transactions of 1815 as a whole, and putting them together, what do

we find? We find a free town, the last remaining image of former

independence. We find the name of one common country consecrated

by treaty, and resting upon the kingdom newly called into being.

We see our right to a nationality made superior to all territorial

demarcations. We read, in the first place, of the autonomy of the

different provinces that have been dealt out to new masters, and that

the map of old Poland is to be adopted and acted upon in material

life; and we have a sort of _Zollverein_ of commerce and navigation,

serving as the sketch for a confederacy. One would say that it looks

as if Europe, not daring to be wholly just, had wished, at each step,

to soften away by equity the violation of the independent existence

of a nation; that, practically, she sought to reunite the national

tie, which arbitrary right had recently broken; and that she was less

occupied in resolving the question of the destinies of Poland, or

putting an end to it by one act of sovereign power, than in leaving it

in suspense, and handing it over to the future.

All that thus appears in some inert articles of the treaty, receives

a sort of luminous and decisive confirmation from the interpretations

of the times, from the commentaries of the sovereigns themselves,

as well as from the first deeds done under the fresh impression of

these events. No one knows what passed through the mind of the Emperor

Alexander--through that mind at once so playful and so imperious, so

full of liberal desires and of mysterious unrest, of generous instincts

and of Byzantine duplicity; but he, at any rate, entered upon his part

by not recoiling from such a beginning as would ensure his popularity.

‘In truth,’ he said to Lord Castlereagh, ‘though at this moment the

object is not to re-establish Poland in its integrity, there is

nothing to prevent that being done some day, if Europe should desire

it. To-day, such a thing would be premature. That country needs to be

prepared for so great a change; and there is no better way of doing it

than to erect into a kingdom one part of its territory, and in this to

place such institutions as will make the principles of civilisation

take root and fructify; they will then spread through the whole mass.’

And, in truth, Alexander was the first who set to work, till he gave

a charter to his new kingdom, the constitution of the 13th of May,

1815; and of this he himself expressed the sense, in a proclamation

made to the Poles: ‘A constitution suited to your wants and to your

characters; the use of your language preserved in public transactions;

offices and employments bestowed solely on Poles; liberty in commerce

and in navigation; facilities of communication with such parts of

ancient Poland as are subject to other powers; a national army; all

means guaranteed to perfect your laws, with the free circulation of

knowledge in your country--_these_ are the advantages which you will

enjoy under our rule, and under that of our successors; and _these_,

also, you will transmit as a patriotic inheritance to your children and

your children’s children....’

The reader will remark here, that this is strictly the meaning of

the Treaty of 1815; and three years later, in 1818, Alexander, when

opening the first Polish Diet at Warsaw, still held the same language.

‘Your restoration is defined,’ he said, ‘by the most solemn treaties,

and sanctioned by a constitutional charter; and the inviolability of

these exterior engagements and of this fundamental law henceforward

assures to Poland an honourable rank among the nations of Europe.’ The

Emperor, moreover, seems to have so little questioned the guarantees

of Europe, that he boasted of having won them for Poland, as one wins

a victory, by a brilliant charge. ‘I have made this kingdom,’ he

goes on to say--‘I have established it on the most solid basis; for

_I have obliged_ the Powers of Europe to guarantee its existence by

treaty.’ At one moment, the successful autocrat had thoughts of going

a step further, and of aggrandising the new kingdom by annexing to it

the old Polish provinces incorporated with Russia, viz. Lithuania,

Volhynia, and the Ukraine; for he had reserved the right of doing so,

in his treaty with Austria, in these very words: ‘His Imperial Majesty

reserves to himself the right of giving to this state, which enjoys a

distinct administration, such _interior extension_ as he shall think

proper;’ and this it was which, for a moment, gained over the heart of

old Kosciusko to the policy of Alexander.

The King of Prussia, if he left a brilliant part, and the formation

of great projects to the Tzar, did not act differently from him. He

held the same language to the Poles of Posen. ‘You, likewise,’ he said

to them, ‘have a country, and I esteem you because you have known how

to defend her. You will be my subjects; but you will not, for that

reason, be obliged to deny your own nationality. Your religion is to be

respected, and your personal rights and properties are to pass under

the guardianship of laws which, for the future, will be enacted by

yourselves. Your language in all public affairs will be employed along

with the German tongue. You will fill up all the offices of the Grand

Duchy of Posen; and my Lieutenant, born among you, will reside with

you.’

The formula of the oath imposed upon officials was peculiarly

significant. It was conceived in these terms: ‘I acknowledge his

Majesty the King of Prussia as the only legitimate sovereign of this

country; and _I acknowledge that part of Poland which, in consequence

of the Treaty of Vienna, has fallen to the lot of the royal House of

Prussia, to be my country_, the which I am ready to defend against all

persons whatsoever, and under all circumstances, at the price of my

own blood.’ Such an interpretation long continued to be in use, since,

in 1841, King Frederic William IV. engaged ‘to respect in the Poles

that love which every heroic nation cherishes, for its language, its

customs, and its historic past.’

As to the Emperor of Austria, he, in 1815, did nothing. With his cold

temper, the Emperor Francis laughed a little at the restlessness, and

the liberal proclivities of Alexander of Russia. He was, however,

uneasy about them, and ended by saying, ‘I am not false enough

for that,’ which, of course, did not change the _meaning_ of the

arrangements of 1815. In recalling all these facts, it must not be

supposed that I entertain the eccentric idea of making the last of the

rights of Poland rest in the work of the Congress of Vienna; but still

these treaties, such as they were, brought about a certain order of

things. If it was not independence which they secured, at least they

gave us a number of guarantees--the preservation of nationality even in

partition, the autonomy of our institutions, and of our interests. Our

name, our religion, and our language were all, under the sanction of

Europe, saved from total shipwreck and loss.

But has experience shown us that this is the plan which has been

followed now for nearly half a century? The truth is that, in accepting

the situation created by the Treaty of Vienna (an order of events

which had its conditions, its obligations, and its limits), Russia,

Prussia, and Austria have shaped their practice after the spirit which

presided at the _first_ partition--that is, after the idea of an

assimilation so complete as to be equivalent to conquest. From these

treaties of 1815, they have, to say the truth, reaped the benefit of

having got a European sanction for the dismemberment of Poland; but

they have troubled themselves very little about the guarantees which

were designed to serve as a sad and impotent compensation for the

partition; and each of these three powers has carried on its work after

the fashion which has best suited itself, its politics, and its nature.

Not that the change was made suddenly, or openly visible. It has been

developed by degrees, especially in the kingdom of Poland. Veiled at

first, during the lifetime of Alexander, by constitutional forms, it

was hastened, and no longer concealed, under the Emperor Nicholas,

whose policy may be described in one word, the _denationalisation_

of Poland. To accomplish this was the dream, the intense, unbounded,

ardent passion of a prince who was perhaps a great Russian, driven

by continental revolutions to play an exceptional part, but who left

dangerous traces upon European policy, and bequeathed a weight of

formidable difficulties to his successor. Yet it must not be said that

the Revolution of 1831 placed Poland at the mercy of this Tzar, or that

it released him from all his obligations, and gave him all the rights

of a conqueror; for, in the first place, that revolution was nothing

more than a reprisal--a desperate attempt at self-defence; and, what is

more, against any such policy there rise at once all the stipulations

of the Treaty of Vienna, and even all the words of the Emperor

Alexander--‘Your restoration is defined by solemn treaties.... I have

obliged Europe to guarantee your existence by treaties....’ The Emperor

Nicholas was, possibly, the fittest judge to determine what extent of

liberalism he could put into the institutions of the kingdom of Poland;

but he was not the only judge of what was, so to say, the European

essence of these institutions--of that which concerned their spirit,

according to treaty--of the preservation of the nationality of Poland.

Diplomacy had placed that matter out of his power, by putting it beyond

his reach. Now, this very nationality, placed under the guarantees

of all Europe, became, unfortunately, a particular foe of Nicholas;

and he persecuted it with all the inflexible vigour of his character,

in our religion and our language, in the autonomy of our interests

and institutions, in the independence of our hearths, in public

instruction, in our manners, and in our very dress. This originated the

system which, in 1831, substituted a new _statut organique_ for the

Constitution of 1815, and which, we must say, has been followed far too

long, and followed, also, in all the bitterness of a spirit irritated

by the resistance which it has met with.

The organic statute of 1831 made no secret of it; it was an absolute

and definitive incorporation of the Kingdom into the Russian Empire.

Thenceforward the ceremony of the coronation of the king of Poland

at Warsaw was also abolished. The separate army disappeared, and

military recruiting for Russia spread over the kingdom. The magistracy

ceased to be unremovable, and Russian functionaries replaced Poles in

the administration; while the constitutional chambers gave place to

provincial assemblies, which have, moreover, never even been convoked.

Thus a policy was disclosed, of which the only aim seems to have been

to dissolve all the ties of national life in the kingdom, as well as in

the ancient provinces. The high schools, the university, the library,

the museum, and the mint of Warsaw vanished, or were transferred to

St. Petersburg. Education was reduced to technical studies; Latin was

banished at last; and the children in every parish, to whatever class

of society they might belong, were obliged to attend the government

schools, and to learn Russian, under pain of corporal punishment on

the children, and of a fine in the case of the parents. One day,

5,000 families of the lesser nobility of Poland were ordered to be

transported to the crown lands, or to the Caucasian border; and in

the order of execution it was added, that, ‘if the Polish gentry have

no mind to be transplanted, you are authorised to oblige them, and

to use force;’ while another day the Council of Administration at

Warsaw adjudicated quietly on the transport of the _sons of noble

Poles_ to St. Petersburg, at the price of 120 roubles (paper money).

I do not speak here of other orphan children carried off to Minsk,

or of the multitudes of Poles of all ages removed to Siberia. Where

persons are not safe, religion is also infringed. Sometimes it is

attacked through the police, sometimes it suffers by the expropriation

of Catholic Churches, by persecution, by the forced conversion of the

United Greek to the Orthodox Church. The national costume is the next

subject of interference; there is a law against wearing the national

colours, against using blue, crimson, or white, though green and red

are not wholly forbidden to the women, and we are permitted to put on

white shirts. The Russian costume of a brown hue being much the most

economical wear, the government undertakes to open clothing shops in

all towns and villages! The reward of one rouble is offered to those

who display the greatest alacrity in donning the Russian dress, and

those who oppose themselves are flogged. In short, a vast attempt is

made to efface everything that has the stamp of our country, or that

can recall her existence. This hapless nationality in the midst of the

empire must be made to disappear, and it must be made subordinate to

the intentions and the interests of Russia.

The design of bringing about a forced assimilation, and of making the

Polish give way to the Russian element, is often shown in the most

futile administrative details, in the simplest questions of trade, and

other material interests. Having once entered on this system, Russia

is condemned to fear everything, and to watch every event. Not very

long ago, Prussia drew up a set of complicated rules with regard to

the importation of cattle into its territories, and established such a

quarantine as might preserve its herds from those epizootic disorders

which ravaged the southern parts of Russia. Who suffered from these

difficulties? Of course, the kingdom of Poland (a country essentially

agricultural, but possessing in its cattle one element of wealth) could

not but suffer. It was then timidly requested that, in order to have

the restrictions, made for the sake of Prussia, removed, and in order

to leave the trade between Germany and Poland free, such precautionary

measures as had heretofore been in force at the Prussian frontier

of the kingdom should also be put in practice on the marches of the

Russian provinces in which the contagion obtained. But nothing of the

sort was done; and for this reason, that the sanitary _cordon_ thus

demanded must have been upon the old Polish boundary, and it would,

oddly enough, have described the line of those frontiers which existed

in 1792, and which the treaties of 1815 had laid down as the frame

within which the commercial life of the different provinces of Poland

was to exist. Russia was represented at Warsaw by a terrible man, a

Director of the Interior, M. Muchanof, who could not bear to see Poland

imaged even under the shape of a law of transit.

Another fact ought to be noticed. During the last years, a great

question, from which the Russian Empire has much to fear, has been in

agitation, I mean the emancipation of the peasantry; a problem of which

the Emperor Alexander II. has attempted the solution. My business is

not with the discussion of the subject in itself, but only to remark,

that there is a great difference in regard to it between Russia and

the kingdom of Poland. In the kingdom all the principles of the French

civil code remain in full vigour. There is equality of persons in the

eye of the law; but the constitution of property is a different thing.

Thus, our peasants still pay, it is true, a feudal fine, or _corvée_,

on the fields which they cultivate; but this fine is not a sign of

personal servitude. The labouring man has his civil individuality.

Thus, in the different countries his condition differs essentially;

and yet when the question arose the other day, Polish proprietors were

forbidden to do otherwise than follow the programme traced by the

Russian government solely with a view to Russia.

My object in referring to this, is to point out in what a confusion of

interests Polish autonomy now perishes by force; and yet that autonomy

was placed under the sanction of the whole of Europe. In truth,

must not Russian policy have passed all limits, if quite recently a

permission to teach Polish in schools for _one hour_ in the day (as

if it was English or Turkish) came to be considered as a sort of

reparation, almost as a liberal measure?

I do not say that a similar policy, under like conditions, or with

similar measures, has been followed in Prussian Poland. There, at

least, so much of liberalism prevails that the right of complaining is

left. Our griefs are not lost in the silence of a boundless oppression.

Polish deputies have to this day a place in the parliament of Berlin,

where, inch by inch, they defend the privileges of their country. But

are the two systems, after all, so very unlike each other? The latter

is less violent in one way, but its object is at bottom the same; for

Prussia, like Russia, labours to denationalise Poland. M. de Flotwell,

a man who governed the Grand Duchy (Posen) for many years, explained

his views when he said, that she did so, by insensibly stifling Polish

manners, inclinations, and tendencies, and by introducing the German

element in their place. The work of infiltering the German element is

carried on in a thousand ways; by bureaucracy, by education, by the

compulsory substitution of the German for the Polish tongue; by the

transfer of land, with the connivance of the state, which sometimes

buys up Polish estates, and sells them to Germans at a loss. There is

not a single Polish notary in Posen. Justice is administered in German,

and he who appears before the public tribunals is often examined,

accused, nay even defended, in a language which he does not understand.

It is the same with public instruction: it has hitherto been found

impossible to establish a Polish high school (Lyceum), and where a

working-man’s college has been opened, the classes are taught and the

course is in German. Even in private institutions it is forbidden to

teach the history of Poland, and for this conclusive reason, ‘that this

history not being taught in the public schools, ought not any more

to be taught in private ones!’ The Prussian government, it must be

said, makes no secret of its intentions; for it has promulgated in the

parliament of Berlin, that ‘the province of Posen is neither more nor

less than a simple province of Prussia.’

We now come to Austria. As to that power, need I recall with what

sinister dexterity she one day succeeded in putting hatred into the

hearts of the peasants of Galicia, and in driving them upon the Polish

nobility? And is it not a strange irony of fortune which has made

Austria the guardian of the tombs of two heroes of Poland? The one is

the grave of Sobieski, who sleeps in a church now abandoned and in

ruins at Cracow; the other is that of Kosciusko. When Kosciusko died,

the students of Cracow obtained leave to erect a humble monument to his

memory on a height, at a little distance from the town. The Austrians

came, they did not certainly do away with the tomb, but they covered it

round with the works of a citadel, and placed by it an Austrian sentry!

Finally, there came a day--a day which has not been forgotten, when the

three powers were found united in the definite suppression of Cracow,

that town, ‘free, independent, and neutral to all perpetuity,’ and all

this with the sanction of Europe, which could do nothing but enter one

protest more.

What result is evident from this assemblage of facts, from this

eloquent demonstration of the lack of efficacy in European guarantees?

This--that in reality the stipulations of Vienna have been set aside

by the very powers in whose behalf they were made, by those who have,

except these treaties, no other titles for the possession of Poland.

But the stipulations have disappeared under a series of violations,

which have been systematically carried out, but which, while they

enervate or nullify the guarantees that protected our nationality, also

nullify the title of these governments, and give back their rights to

nationalities, whose energy has been increased by their conflicts, or

by the necessity of self-defence.

Further, it may be thought that these treaties created insoluble

difficulties, attempted to make things live together which were utterly

irreconcilable, viz., the contradictory rights and interests of the

conquerors and the conquered. It may be so; but this only goes to

prove that the Treaties of 1815 sowed the seeds of war and of disorder

by the Vistula as by the Po; and the disturbances of half a century

have grown up out of them, by the Po as by the Vistula.

Here we see what is most truly characteristic in these Polish matters.

Here is no natural and peaceful developement of an order of things

half constituted by the ruling power of public right. It is a history

full of dramatic mysteries, of ardent protests, of which one-half

only is known to the world, the other half being lost in dungeons, in

subterranean vaults, in mines, in Siberia, in the Ourals. Above all,

since 1831, it is the history of a dark and ceaseless conflict between

a power which, in order to remain mistress, is obliged at every turn to

exceed its rights, and a people which struggles, conspires and rebels,

and to whom the permanent contact of a hard and foreign rule with a

suffering nationality is a continual punishment--a people which passes

its time in believing in hope even against hope, whom oppression raises

more than it tames, and which even when conquered has the ingenuity to

feed on its own sufferings, and to relish them with a dark and bitter

delight.

Let any man represent to himself what that country is like, where to

have read such and such a book by a Polish poet has sent thousands

of young people to Siberia--a country where in the universities and

schools the students, even the children, secretly practised beating

each other with rods, in order to accustom themselves to tortures, and

to be ready to bear every trial without flinching! This familiarity

with pain, this sort of defiance to a hidden warfare, is one of the

traits of the contemporary genius of Poland; and it is the theme of

a song commonly sung in Poland to a slow and plaintive melody; an

ironical and bloody lesson for the use of Polish mothers! ‘Our Saviour,

when still a child at Nazareth, played with the cross, the future

instrument of his death; and thou, alas! oh, Polish mother, oughtest

to amuse thy child with the instruments of his future play. Early,

then, tie his hands with chains, fasten them to the infamous tumbril,

that he may not grow pale at the executioner’s axe, that he may not

blush at the sight of the noose; for he will never go, as did the

knights of old, to plant the cross triumphant at Jerusalem; nor yet,

like the soldiers of later times, to till the fields of liberty, and

to water them with his blood. He who will provoke your child will be a

secret spy; he who will contend with him will be a perjured judge. His

field of battle will be a dungeon underground; his sentence will be

pronounced in some implacable cave. When conquered, no monument awaits

him but the empty gallows tree; and for glory he shall have the stifled

sobs of women, and the midnight whispers of his brother men!’

Thus has Poland existed for nearly thirty years, struggling and

conspiring, trying both to interest Europe in her misfortunes, and to

accomplish within herself the great work of internal revolution--having

to bear the back blow of every event, and of all those catastrophes

which have crossed her efforts. In reality, perhaps Poland has suffered

by three occurrences within the last fifteen years (occurrences which

have had a conspicuous part in her fate) more than by any persecutions

carried on against her. These events were believed to have proved

fatal to her, but they have nevertheless been but as a new trial, a

mysterious and a bitter prelude to a more serious manifestation of

her powerful vitality. The first of these events was the massacre

in Galicia in 1846--the most terrible and bloody deception of all

Polish patriots! The revolution of 1831, when it died out before the

arms of Russia, had at least left this lesson, that for the future,

any and every attempt at national enfranchisement must form part of

such an internal transformation as should unite all classes, and

interest the masses throughout the country in one common work for the

emancipation of the peasantry, and for making them definitely holders

of property. As to the means of doing this, the two parties, namely,

the constitutional or aristocratic, and the democratic, differed. At

bottom they had the same end in view, and the project was cherished

more especially by the democratic propaganda, of which emigrants formed

the central body. But all of a sudden, Austria, taking a part in the

movement, turned the current of emancipative ideas against Poland, and

by unloosing against the nobility the fury of the Galician peasantry,

had taught the other dominant governments in Posen, and in the kingdom

(Warsaw), how to establish their own reign most securely, by inflaming

the minds of men, and by setting class against class. Thus ended the

labours of the democratic conspiracy of the year 1846; and the work

had to be recommenced, for this bloody act, brought about with most

sinister shrewdness, had at least for the time being disconcerted every

attempt in Poland, since action had lost its fulcrum in the masses who

had been thus fatally led astray.

The French Revolution of February, 1848, was another of those events

which, by deceiving Poland, have helped to weigh her down. It was

the hour at which a great explosion was expected, for, in a French

revolution, how could we do otherwise than see a movement affecting

the world? How could we help thinking that all nations would free

themselves from old claims, and that Europe would be transformed by

democracy? But what, on the contrary, was the result? Everybody knows

that this ill-starred revolution availed none of the nationalities.

Neither could it have been of help to any, since it obliged France to

concentrate her own forces, in order to save herself from dissolution.

But the Polish cause had the misfortune of being united with those

European commotions which were so much to be dreaded; and, what was

worse, that cause served as the banner of the agitators of May 15th,

1848, who menaced everybody, and everything. This was its crime. Having

become importunate and teasing, like some unpleasant recollection, its

popularity was immediately lost; and, what was still more curious,

it was Nicholas who became popular--that Emperor suddenly being

transformed into the high priest of order and civilisation.

Then came the war in the East, and, at the prospect of inevitable

complications in Europe, as at the sight of that strange

combination--viz. a liberal alliance between France and England against

Russia--the hopes of the Poles once more awoke. Had the Emperor

Nicholas lived, his obstinacy might have occasioned such European

complications as might have again given a place to Poland; but his

death facilitated peace. The name of Poland cannot be spoken; and,

inasmuch as the Revolution of February, 1848, deceived the democratic

party among us, so did the war in the Crimea dissipate the illusions of

these moderate politicians of the diplomatic party who reckoned upon

Europe.

It is, then, after this series of mistakes and of hopes deceived, that

Poland has retreated more and more into herself, and that she sits

mutely waiting, having seen how conspiracies, European revolutions, and

regular interventions, have all alike failed her. Poland feels that she

has become unpopular; that, as a Pole expressed it, ‘she is a bore,’

and she avoids being spoken of. No doubt, she could not help feeling

with secret bitterness, that liberal Europe takes interest in Italian

nationality, in Hungarian nationality, in Moldo-Wallachian nationality,

and forgets a little that there was a Polish nationality. But Poland is

silent, and she endures this punishment of silence and indifference,

which is more difficult to accept than war, more hard to bear than any

persecutions; for it has to be borne by a people which has spent its

life in seeking for a country, and which has filled the history of

to-day with its heroism, its protests, and its distress. No one can

imagine what an amount of suffering is inflicted on Polish hearts by

the moral isolation in which we are left, and that, too, in the middle

of the agitation occasioned by the revival of other nationalities. ‘I

see what it is,’ said a Polish peasant; ‘they will end in giving the

Tsigans a king, but no one will ever think of giving one to us.’ Poland

had at one time so completely disappeared, that she was supposed to be

dead; she was thought to be either resigned to her fate or conquered by

suffering; and Europe was ready to go to sleep, as over an accomplished

fact, thinking that now there was one question less in the world.

But Europe was wrong. These long years of silence and of loneliness,

far from being the dark and unnoted end of the nation, were, on the

contrary, but as the beginning of a new state, which late events

have disclosed; of a new order of things formed by degrees, having

its elements, its character, its personifications, and which, at a

given moment, has turned out to be the unexpected manifestation of an

energetic nationality, rallying to the cry of Dombrowski’s legion, ‘No,

Poland is not dead!’

It was the era of conspiracies and of democratic propagandism which, up

to 1846, furnished heroic men of strange intrepidity, such as Konarski,

Zaleski, and Dombrowski; and, of this period of strife, the campaigns

of 1846, in Galicia and Posen, were the bloody and mournful close. Ever

since that time, and especially throughout the last years, we have had

a work of practical renovation, which has used all means, which has

been inoffensive in appearance, but not the less persistent because it

was unobserved, and which has been accomplished, owing, in part, to

that very silence of which I have already spoken. They who laboured

felt deeply what danger lay in making their operations heard. ‘Speak

of us as little as may be,’ wrote one of the leading men in Poland;

‘speak, if you will, of our miseries, of our agonised state, but do not

speak of our vitality, or of those signs of life which you remark in

us, for that would be to kill us.’ To this work, Prince Léon Sapieka

greatly contributed in Galicia, as did Dr. Marcinkowski in Posen, up to

the time of his death; while, in the kingdom, none gave themselves to

it more than did Count Andrew Zamoyski.

Of what is that movement composed, which, thus suddenly disclosed, has

again brought Polish nationality face to face with Russian power?

Doubtless, it has its source in many elements. All have a share in it;

for there meet religious zeal heightened by persecution, the labours of

mind, and the efforts made to raise the morals of the people. There is

industrial enterprise, and there also are agricultural improvements;

but what is most characteristic in the movement is chiefly this,

that it has been born in some sort spontaneously from the soil, and

upon the soil itself, independent of the action of emigration, or

of the propagandism of parties. It has been the work of those who

were unwilling either to conspire or to give in, and who, among the

ruins of their native country, and after her violent struggles were

ended, have sought to bring together elements for a new solution of

the Polish question. It certainly was impossible for these patriots

to throw themselves into politics. They would have been instantly

arrested, if they had done so. Their only thought then was, how best,

morally and physically, to remodel the country, and how most to steer

clear of politics in doing so. They began by establishing Temperance

societies; and even this ground required wary walking, because they

ran against the Russian authorities, who protect drunkenness, in order

to protect the inland revenues, and who issued circulars against these

societies, declaring them to be contrary to law. One Governor-General

of Lithuania, M. Nazimof, showed his erudition by citing the marriage

in Cana of Galilee, as a proof that the Gospel was not averse to the

use of spirituous liquors.

Another institution has played a great part in the present movement:

I mean the Agricultural Society of Warsaw. It had a very humble

beginning. About 1842 an association had been formed for the

publication of a small newspaper, called ‘Annals of Agriculture,’ from

which all political questions and allusions had been strictly banished,

which did not relate either to the situation of Poland, to its

government, its foreign relations, or indeed to things that concerned

it. But this was the germ from which grew, during the first part of

the reign of Alexander II., in those first moments of liberality and

good will, a more serious institution, the Agricultural Society itself,

founded with the exclusive object of making physical improvements,

having correspondents in all the provinces, and being authorised to

hold two sittings yearly at Warsaw. However limited this institution

may have originally been in its object, still it formed a bond of

union, and it has ended by drawing together 4,000 landowners of the

kingdom.

So slowly did the work proceed--creating on one day an Agricultural

Society, on another day starting the navigation of the

Vistula--sometimes forming banks, at another establishing a Temperance

League--recalling the country to a sense of its own interests,

and drawing men together by making them co-operate in the same

undertakings. Now, let us observe what were the effects of a labour so

patient, so modest, so often crossed, and yet so efficacious. Instead

of conspiracies, we learnt the habit of acting in legal ways, and we

acquired a sense of the power which there is in regular, persistent,

and pacific action. Such questions as the emancipation of the peasants,

and others which have divided the public mind, and kept up divisions

even among emigrants--such questions, mischievous while only a strife

of theories, have now found their natural solution in practice; for

the Agricultural Society has taken the initiative in this matter, and

proposed a system by which the peasant is made an owner, and by which,

through an ingenious combination of credit given, an indemnity is

secured to the actual possessor; and this indemnity the peasant pays up

in successive and limited annuities, without having to give more than

he had formerly done. This may be called the Polish solution of the

difficulty, as opposed to the Russian one. Finally, and what is most

important, this secret regeneration of the country has done what we

have just seen. No longer are parties embittered against each other,

after a common defeat, nor do they dispute over a distant victory; but

we have a compact mass--a nation welded together by one thought--where

there is no distinction of classes, and of which the union has been

cemented by the bloodshed of the 27th of February, 1861--the day

on which Russia made the first attempt to put it all down. Those

intelligent Russian bullets did more than they were aware of; for they

helped to cement the alliance by striking, as they did, victims of

every rank, of every condition, of all religions, almost of every age.

One man, as I have said, personifies in himself all that is most

serious and practical in this movement, and he has left upon it the

stamp of his own character. This is Count Andrew Zamoyski, whom the

people speaking his language simply call ‘Monsieur André.’ He is not

the only one; but he has been, from the very first, one of the most

active promoters of all that could awaken the land. By birth he is

connected with one of the oldest Polish families--with the family of

that grand-constable, John Zamoyski, of the sixteenth century, who

laboured to constitute a body of lesser nobles, in the face of our

aristocratic oligarchy, and who was one of the greatest of Polish

captains. The family is one which has long been eclipsed, and which

only reappears at certain epochs. There was another Zamoyski, who was

Chancellor in 1772, but who laid down his office because he would not

set his seal to the first division; and of this Zamoyski, Count Andrew

is the grandson, as he is also the brother of the general who, at one

time, was to have headed a Polish legion, at the time of the Crimean

war. Count Andrew naturally found himself mixed up with the revolution

of 1831. He was first Minister of the Interior at Warsaw, and then was

sent on a mission to Vienna, to M. de Metternich, who, it was said,

was, at the time of the last battle, inclined for an intervention. When

that revolution was, at last, quelled by the Russians, he would not

leave the country. He remained in obscurity, cherishing no deceptive

hopes, but soon seeking how best to raise her, after her great defeat.

No very great career offered itself to him; but he turned to material

interests and pursuits, and he brought to the work an activity not

the less singular, because it was narrowed by conditions which were

strait and uncertain. He established breeding-stables (studs), helped

to introduce steam-navigation on the Vistula, which was a tie with

Galicia, and laboured to organise the ‘_Crédit foncier_.’ He it was

who started the little paper, ‘Annals of Agriculture,’ who afterwards

became the principal promoter of the Agricultural Society, and who, up

to the present time, has continued to be its President.

Count Zamoyski is characterised in all that he has done by his

practical sense, by the clearness of his views, and by a moderation

in action, which is joined to great natural dignity. The situation of

Count Andrew is, moreover, a sufficiently singular one; for, by his

moderation, he excites the suspicions of the more hot-headed among

the Poles, who expect nothing except from revolutions, and, by his

activity, he makes himself suspected by the Russians. The curious and

difficult problem, how to live between these two, is the one which he

has to solve. He has to be master over himself, and he cannot suffer

himself to be led away by useless rashness; while he must not, on the

other hand, sink the dignity and the name of a Pole. His secrets are

hid in his actions. He never revealed them to anyone; and, to speak

truly, is it perfectly certain that he had any secrets? He simply put

in practice the old word ‘laboremus;’ and though constantly obliged to

have dealings with the Government, he never yielded his ground; and

he kept up an obstinate struggle against the venality of the Russian

officials, to which he would not submit upon any terms. More than

once he has had to go through some very thorny trials; but he has

always acquitted himself well. On the day of the foundation of the

Agricultural Society, a dinner took place, at which, of course, the

Director of the Interior, M. Muchanof, was present. At last, the toast

in use at all Polish dinners, ‘Let us love each other,’ was given by

him. All eyes were immediately turned upon Count Zamoyski, who, calmly

and simply, and with scarcely a perceptible smile, replied, ‘Yes: but

at home!’ There was nothing more to be said. The spirit of this policy,

if policy it can be called, is to do all that it is possible to do,

to go as far as may be, and to measure one’s steps according to the

necessities of the day. It breathes no agitation; but it is to be an

activity according to the laws, taking advantage of everything, making

use of everything, and communicating life unawares to the country--this

is precisely what has appeared in the late events, and this remains the

character of the new crisis.

Are men aware of what it is that gives to this movement the weight of

a true national manifestation? It is that it has nothing in it which

is either artificial or evanescent. It is the work of the few, and

also the work of all. Like all deep movements, it is at once simple

and complex, it is sincere as is the passion of a whole nation; and

far from resolving itself into a mere series of efforts for physical

order, which have suddenly issued in a political question, it has a

moral side, which agrees wonderfully with what I have said of its

characteristics of practical and lawful action. One thing in these

occurrences at Warsaw, interspersed, as they are, with scenes of

bloodshed, is very striking, and that is, the passive attitude of a

people, which appears unarmed and offers no resistance--which persists,

and, though dispersed, constantly reassembles--which offers itself

as a defenceless victim, and which refuses the arms which are left

within its reach. And under such an attitude, there must be something

more than mere obedience to a watchword or to an order. No conspirator

could have been clever enough to have imagined it. It is the sign of a

thorough revolution in the minds and in the souls of men, a revolution

to which the mind of one poet was no stranger--I mean Krasinski,

whose works have appealed to all Polish imaginations, and which will

be imprinted on all hearts, even of the lowest orders of the people.

He is that _anonymous_ poet from whom we formerly had a few poems,

all full of deep meaning, all marked by gloomy and ardent mysticism.

Sigismund Krasinski is dead now; but he had endured the bitterest

trials of spirit, both as a patriot and as a son. He was born in

1812, and was held at the font of baptism by Napoleon, for his father

was that Vincent Krasinski (a descendant of one of the chiefs of the

Confederation of Bar) who, at the end of the empire, replaced Prince

Poniatowski in the command of the Polish army, and who subsequently

played a part in the Chambers of the kingdom of Poland, after the

Restoration. Unhappily, General Krasinski irritated public feeling by

the vote he gave in the Senate, in regard to the conspiracy of 1828;

and his son Sigismund received, in the public square, such a marked and

cutting insult from his school-fellows, that he was obliged to leave

the country. He travelled, and went to Rome. When the revolution of the

29th of November, 1830, broke out, he set out immediately for Poland;

but, at Berlin, he had to stop. His father had been taken, at Warsaw,

by the insurgents, and had only saved himself by promising devotion to

the national cause; and now he had fled to St. Petersburg. Sigismund

despaired; he never could bring himself to remain in his own land,

and the rest of his life, spent among strangers, was devoted entirely

to the composition of his poems, which he published without ever

acknowledging their authorship. Through him, Polish patriotism found a

fresh voice.

When Mickiewicz addressed the revolutionary and warrior youth of

Poland, he said, ‘Strong through union, wise through self-denial,

forwards! my young friends!’ Krasinski said, in a song now as popular

as once were Mickiewicz’s words, ‘No man can build with mud, and

highest wisdom still is highest virtue.’ These are the watchwords of

two different epochs.

The ruling inspiration of the whole of the poetry of Krasinski is

the abjuration of all hatred and of all vengeance--that force alone

will not enable us to contend successfully against force, but that

the weapons of our warfare must be superior powers of soul--that,

in order to conquer one’s enemy, it is not enough that we have the

right on our side, unless that right rests upon strong and pure moral

sentiments; that the most powerful levers are love, and the virtues

of self-sacrifice and of heroic patience. One of the heroes of his

‘Infernal Comedy’ is Pancrace, the type of that brutal strength which

yields and quails in helplessness before a superior power. The same

inspiration reigns in his Greek poem ‘Iridion,’ where the Christian

hero is a passive martyr, with a horror of vengeance, who triumphs

over Rome, and confounds the patriotism of Iridion, a man who had

no thoughts beyond revenge, and who makes shipwreck in spite of the

justice of his complaints and of his cause. This is also the thought

embodied in ‘Aurora,’ in the ‘Psalms of the Future.’ In all these songs

the Polish soul thrills with mystic ardour, glows with enthusiasm,

and with inexhaustible youth. ‘Lord!’ says Krasinski, in one Psalm,

‘what we crave is not hope, since she descends upon us like rain upon

flowers. It is not the death of our foes, since that death is written

in the clouds of to-morrow. It is not arms, since they are placed in

our hands by Thee. It is not help, for Thou hast opened a free path

before us; but we implore, put a pure spirit in our inmost hearts. O

Holy Spirit! who dost teach us that our great strength doth lie in

sacrifice, grant that we by love may lead the nations to the ends we

seek!’ But in a fragment of his ‘Aurora,’ Krasinski has still better

described this part of heroic expiation:--‘Is it then required that we

should be murderers with murderers, and criminals with criminals? Must

we lie, hate, slay likewise, and blaspheme? The world cries: At this

price you may have power and liberty; without it, nothing! but nay, my

soul! nay; not with such arms as these. The weight of sacrifice alone

can in its turn crush down the weight which crushes us. In the world’s

story, sacrifice is lionlike and unconquered still; but crime is as the

chaff which the wind in passing sweeps away.

‘No! my country; yours is rather the patience which doth show, how

stone by stone the building can be reared: yours rather the will

inflexible, which, abiding humbly, prepares for future victory. Rather

yours is calmness amid the storms, and harmony amid discordant cries:

rather yours, eternal loveliness amid abhorrent shapes: rather yours

to heap on cowards and Pharisees that mournful silence which doth

overwhelm. Be yours the strength which lifteth up the weak; and yours

the hope of those who cease to hope. For thy strife against this

world’s hell, be thine the peace and strength of love, against which

hell itself cannot prevail...!

‘The nations are all sought by God: all in Thy Grace, O Jesus, are

concerned! to each from high a calling Thou hast given; in each a

sense profound from Thee doth live, and weaves the woof of all their

destinies; but some among the nations Thou hast chosen to defend the

cause of Heavenly Beauty, and to give to the world an example, while

they bear, through the long day, a heavy cross, and walk the world’s

paths red with blood. These by their sublime strife shall at last, O

Lord, give to man a feeling higher and more divine, a holier charity,

and a larger brotherhood, in exchange for that sharp sword which men

have plunged into their breast. Such is this Polish land of thine, O

Jesu Christ! Our love of man has caused our death, and men have seen

the corpse of Poland carried to the tomb; but when the third day

comes, the light shall shine, and shine through all the ages yet to

be. Think you, that he who loves, in dying, disappears for evermore?

Yes, to our fleshly eyes; but the whole world, through the soul’s

eyes, beholds him still. He who in love expires, leaves in his hour

of martyrdom his soul to all his brethren. He abides in the sanctuary

of human hearts, and every day, every hour, he lives, though buried;

grows, though in the tomb!’

This thought of the power of sacrifice, and of passive heroism, has

filtered through our youth, and permeated even the masses; and this

it is which is visible in the Poland of to-day, for the inspiration

of the poet has become the feeling of the people. One other cause,

and it is a strange and curious one, has also helped, during the

last few years, to spread and to popularise these ideas, by suddenly

throwing a new element into Polish society. When the Emperor Alexander

II. ascended the throne, he signalised his accession by an amnesty,

which, however incomplete, opened the gates of their fatherland to a

multitude of exiles. Some came from the West, the others (and these the

most numerous) came from Siberia. Those who had lived in France, or

in England, naturally returned to their country embittered by thirty

years of sufferings, accustomed to a Western atmosphere, nourished with

all sorts of revolutionary ideas; in short, half strangers in their

mind and manners. But with that tribe of exiles, called in Poland

‘Siberians,’ it was not so. They returned hardened and strengthened by

habits of secret and solitary suffering. Calm and resigned, they were

mystics to a certain extent, but their mysticism was of that grave and

gentle kind, which has nothing fierce or hateful in its nature. It is

a remarkable thing that, among these exiles returned from Siberia,

the country has for the last years found its best men, the most apt

for journalism, for professorships, for the administration of private

and national establishments, such as the Agricultural Society. There

are writers of talent who could not, it is true, sign their works

with their names; but their names were not, therefore, the less well

known. One brought back from Siberia a translation of ‘Faust,’ and is

one of our most eminent critics; another has translated Shakespeare.

A newspaper in Warsaw published a series of sketches of Caucasus, and

of Asia, which were the work of ‘Siberians,’ and in which there was an

indefinable mixture of freshness and resignation.

These men spread over the country, and had a singular effect upon

it. Thence the serious and religious tinge of striking originality,

in all the popular demonstrations which have since happened, and

in all those manifestations which are so thoroughly free from the

revolutionary phraseology of the West. Theirs is, on the contrary,

a nervous and sober speech, and except in its religious accent it

has nothing exaggerated in it. The influence of the Siberians is

peculiarly visible in that strange address by the artizans of Warsaw:

‘Death is alike for all. Without sparing our persons, it is necessary

that we should go to the slaughter, and show to the world what it is

we wish. This is why we have walked in processions, and sung of the

constitution, and we will do so again whenever it shall be necessary;

if there are to be victims, it will be seen that that is according to

the will of God, if more is required we are ready to draw lots for the

one who is to be sacrificed--ready even to give our throats to the

knife, or to expire under the knout, as did those three victims whom

the waters threw up near Zakroczym, and which wrapped in straw were

flung from the castle into the Vistula. Only if then there is no pity

for our country, it will be ill!...’ Should one not say that this is

the same obstinate idea of sacrifice, which has passed through the

imagination of Krasinski, and through the action of the ‘Siberians,’

into the popular mind?

And now that all these elements are reunited, now that this union of

practical efforts extends over all interests, and this lawful impulse

has been communicated by Count Andrew Zamoyski, and instinctively

accepted by a whole population, now that a moral and religious sense

has been propagated in all minds, at once inflaming and satisfying

them, and a national sentiment has spontaneously reappeared in all

hearts, the movement is one, which, though imperceptible at first, and

existing silently for many years, has been facilitated by the change of

reign at a given moment, and it has ended in that brief but eloquent

dialogue which took place recently between the Lieutenant-Governor,

Prince Gortchakof, and the crowd assembled in one of the squares of

Warsaw. ‘What do you want?’ ‘We want our country!’

Evidently nothing has been accidental or unforeseen except the hour

at which the explosion took place. For the space of one year already

successive manifestations had revealed a sort of secret understanding

in the populace. First there was a funeral service celebrated all over

the country and at fixed epochs, in memory of the most eminent Polish

poets, Mickiewicz, Krasinski, and Slowacki. Then came the interview

which reunited at Warsaw the three Sovereigns of the north, and which

piqued the popular sense. It was in truth an odd idea which assembled

at Warsaw, for a conference in which it was suspected that designs

hurtful to Italy were to be discussed, the three masters of Poland.

Their reception from the populace was more than cold; and what is

most curious is that, impressed by this disagreeable circumstance,

they tried to ascribe to each other the blame of the annoyance

which they had received. The Russian papers avowed that it was the

Emperor of Austria who had earned this cold reception for the Emperor

Alexander, while the press of Vienna proved no less clearly that this

demonstration had been aimed at the Emperor of Russia.