A YEAR OF AGITATION IN POLAND.
(April 1861-2.)
For some years past we have witnessed one of the most affecting and instructive sights—the breaking up, if we may say so, of an order of events, where the confused and dispersed elements join again, as from some mysterious and invincible unity in themselves. That which once appeared impossible becomes a startling reality, and perspectives suddenly open themselves such as our generation would hardly have allowed itself even to think of.
We have seen public right itself, or that which, at least, bears its name, giving way, and leaving a passage for those national and popular causes which agitate the world, and which are the harbingers of a new way of thinking. It is vain now to attempt to divide those national causes which appeal so strongly to public opinion—vain now to grant everything to one and deny everything to another—to limit justice to opportunity or to fitness of time or place. Policy may have its seasons, its measures, and its predilections, but at bottom right must exist everywhere, or it exists nowhere; and, from its one source, it must apply to all those peoples who aspire to the purest and the most legitimate of conquests—the conquest of themselves—as also to all those movements which, arising at one and the same time, form parts of a general situation, intimately and profoundly characterised by one universal work of transformation.
We must guard against mistakes. What we behold is no vulgar crisis, which may end in an ordinary peace: it is a warfare between two orders of things, between two principles; and it was proclaimed the other day, in a French Assembly, to be the new right—the right of peoples—and, when opposed to this, old political combinations are reduced to act laboriously and uneasily on the defensive. It is the question which agitates the modern world: the problem which, in the East as in the West, in the North as in the South, shows itself under a thousand different and startling shapes.
Certainly one of the most curious of these episodes—one of the most moving of these contemporary spectacles—is that dramatic tête-à-tête which, for the space of a year, has been carried on in Northern Europe between those two very unequal powers, Russia and Poland; where the one is embarrassed by its strength and its political traditions, and where the other makes an impregnable buckler of its rights, and of its very weakness. Nothing has been wanting to the play. Unforeseen events, passionate originality in demonstrations, tragic scenes—all have been supplied, together with those mysterious fatalities which so often make a perfect drama out of the affairs of men. This drama is laid in the heart of a country: it has its colours and its catastrophes; and across its stage there passes, like some chorus of old, a whole nation, which sends up to heaven its supplications and complaint. For a whole year has the spectacle been seen of a moral movement, perfectly new in its character, confronting a policy which is astonished to find itself so weak that, while possessed of so many means of physical power, it resorts to all expedients of apparent concession and of inefficacious repression, and uses both measures alike without conviction. After a year all seems again to have settled into silence. Outward manifestations certainly have ceased, but still the demonstration has been made. That which had been supposed to be dead was found to be still full of life. That assimilation of Polish provinces, which Russia believed to be accomplished, was found to be not even begun; and Europe suddenly saw that Polish question arise which brings in its train such prodigious difficulties, and in which are involved at once the fate of a nation, the policy of a great empire, and the balance of power in the West. By some vague instinct, Europe felt that she had not yet got rid of that problem which is, doubtless, so strangely complicated by the multiplicity of rules and of régimes spread over Poland; which changes its shapes according to the chances of dismemberments and of treaties; which is not the same in Posen as in Cracovia, at Warsaw as at Wilna, in the Kingdom, in Lithuania, or in the Ukraine; but to which one national sentiment, identical and vital in all the parts, has communicated an indissoluble unity. This character truly belongs to a question at once so energetic, so simple, and so complex, which sums up in itself the strifes of to-day, which is too often believed to have been stifled under the weight of impossibilities, and which comes to light again at a time when any palpitations of oppressed patriotism was least to be expected. I wish to set forth this question in its most recent explosion, in its elements, and in its progress, as well as in its relation to all that is in motion or in preparation in Europe, and even in the very heart of Russia.
An event which dates back to no very remote period is the source of many results which belong to the present day. I mean the Crimean war, which doubtless did nothing directly or ostensibly for Poland, but was very near (nearer than perhaps is supposed) doing a great deal for her. At the time when that great strife ended, the name of Poland, as we are now aware, ought to have been heard in the Congress of Paris, along with that of Italy. France and England were agreed, and the day was fixed, but the dexterity of the Russian plenipotentiaries, and of Count Orlof in particular, eluded this inconvenient call. They made it the interest of the West to be silent, and they promised far more than ever was asked of them, on condition that Europe would leave the Tzar at liberty to make none but spontaneous concessions to the Poles. This is no longer a secret; for Lord Clarendon said one day in Parliament, in reply to Lord Lyndhurst (that old champion of liberal causes), ‘We had serious reasons for believing that the Emperor of Russia was, with regard to Poland, generous and kind. We were obliged to admit that the Emperor was not only disposed to publish a general amnesty, but even to give back to the Poles some of their national institutions; and while they received guarantees for the exercise of their religion, public education in Poland was also to be established on a more liberal and national footing. We also believed that we were warranted to hope that Russia was about to renounce for ever the severe system which she had hitherto pursued; and, moved by these convictions, we ceased for the future any discussion of the question.’ Count Orlof gave promises, the Congress of Paris kept silence, and scarcely one month had passed before the Emperor Alexander II., while promulgating an amnesty which was nothing more than a cruel deception (according to Lord Clarendon’s own expression), addressed, at the same time, two allocutions to the Polish nobility at Warsaw, wherein he harshly said, ‘I expect that the order established by my father is to be maintained: so, gentlemen, above all, we will, if you please, have no dreams—no dreams! The happiness of the Polish people depends on its entire fusion with the people of my empire; what my father did, was well done, and I will maintain it: my reign shall be the continuation of his. In preserving to Poland her rights, and her interests, such as my father granted her, I have the unalterable wish to do good, and to favour the prosperity of the country. It rests with you to make this last possible for me, and you alone will be responsible if my intentions fail, on account of your chimerical resistance.’ When one of the Marshals of the nobility seemed about to reply, the Emperor turned and said, ‘Have you understood me? It is pleasanter for me to reward than to punish; but know this, once for all, gentlemen, that when it is necessary I shall know how to keep down, and to punish, and it will be seen that I punish severely.’ This happened in the month of May 1856, immediately after the Congress of Paris.
It is not without reason that I recall to-day a vain attempt at negotiation broken off by an illusory promise. It determines the events which have since arisen, in the same way that the debate at the Congress of Paris has governed events in Italy; it also in some sort puts on the recent crisis in Poland a mark of European sympathy, and proves an intelligent wish, while it shows further how Russia had conducted herself up to the time that this crisis arrived. ‘What my father did, he did well!’ an expression which was perhaps highly filial on the part of the Emperor Alexander II., but which was certainly an imprudent and impolitic dictum. What was really that order established by Nicholas which he promised to maintain?
I do not refer now to the guarantees by which the treaties of Vienna had striven to surround a nationality which they abandoned; I do not speak of the constitution of 1815, the work of the Emperor Alexander I., but of the statut granted by the Emperor Nicholas himself in 1832—a statut which was as a punishment, the penalty of a defeat sustained by Poland; and what had become of that? It was M. Tymowski, a Russian Minister of State, who last year, at the commencement of the affair, told us what had become of it. In a private report he stated that this statut had never been either abrogated, or put into execution. Of all the new authorities which it created, councils for towns, councils for palatinates and provincial assemblies, ‘with the right of deliberating on questions of general interest in the kingdom,’ not one has ever existed. There ought also to have been a Council of State, but that probably was held to be either too revolutionary a measure, or too visible a sign of autonomy. So in 1841 this Council of State was quietly replaced by two new departments of the directing Senate of St. Petersburg, which were called the ninth and tenth departments, and were transplanted to Warsaw. ‘In a word,’ added M. Tymowski, ‘it may be said that since 1831 the kingdom of Poland has been given up entirely to bureaucracy, and that without any regard to the statut of 1831, it has also remained under the exclusive influence of officials, without the participation of any of its inhabitants, who are in this manner rendered incapable of sharing in the Government.’
It would, indeed, be useless to tell how bureaucracy and officials have for the last thirty years swayed the Government of Poland: and I shall content myself with reminding my readers and the public, that one day the Emperor Nicholas did ‘with his own hand and with a quiet mind’ (adds his minister) order the transplantation to the Caucasus of forty-five thousand families, all ‘formerly Polish gentry, but bearing henceforward the name of freemen and burghers,’ as it is phrased in this strange Government language. We have often heard that a painful yoke is laid by their rulers on the people of Lombardy, of the pontifical States, or of the old kingdom of the two Sicilies: nor is this said without reason; but we must also remember that there is a country where, in the daylight of this present century, it has been possible to transplant forty-five thousand families guilty of no other crime than of being suspected of patriotism, and of ‘exciting the suspicion of the Government.’
From this specimen we may understand how unintentionally cruel and how mournfully deceptive were those words of Alexander II.—‘All that my father did, he did well’—words which were also, at least, an unfortunate answer to that expression of European sympathy which had been checked at the threshold of this Congress of Paris in 1856. It has been the mistake of all Russian policy for the last thirty years, to believe that an absence of all law means order, and to suppose that the omnipotence of force is at once illimitable and undefined. No doubt for the moment such policy succeeds. It can command silence, it can veil difficulties, and adjourn the discussion of them to another day. But it brings affairs at last into that impossible situation, of which illegality is the essence, and where we find a new nation, independent of all organisation and of all hierarchies, rising in spite of a monstrous system of repression—a nation which, as M. Tymowski expresses it, ‘is undistrainable and yet ingenious in making arms for itself out of everything, even out of its own contempt of death.’ Poland, though beyond the bounds of the law, has a profound sense of law, and this M. Tymowski again acknowledges. Having no public representation she has arranged one for herself, for she had that Agricultural Society, which at a given day proved itself to be a sort of national representation. No regular outlet was provided for the utterance of her wishes, instincts, or wants, but she has thrown herself into a passionate worship of her traditions, her popular festivals, and religious rites. Indeed, the time has come in which she has occupied herself for a year in reviewing her anniversaries and her recollections. She could not, certainly, dream of engaging in an armed strife, but she retired into herself; she appealed to moral power, and opened her soul to the strangest of all sentiments—that of voluntary sacrifice—till a whole nation adopted that terrible argument in Descartes’ fashion, ‘we die, ergo, we live;’ and is it not a new and a surprising piece of reasoning, if we understand it aright? By all this Russia is placed in an extraordinary dilemma; this unexpected resurrection brings all her errors before her. She is obliged to punish a sedition which is not illegal, to make war upon peaceful manifestations, on religious services and hymns, on mourning apparel and inoffensive emblems; she has nothing to oppose to them but force, and feels therefore all the powerlessness of force itself. The same causes have impressed this movement: for though European events may have hastened it, though the accession of Alexander II. and the internal disorders of Russia may have favoured it, it is not less the result of a past of thirty years, not less the effect of a policy of which the whole fatality has not yet perhaps been exhausted.
The movement is extremely characteristic in this respect—that it is born in the heart of the country, and that it is independent alike of complicity with her emigrant children, or of any impulse from without. Immediately after the Congress of Paris, the Emperor Alexander held this language to the Polish nobility—‘No dreams, gentlemen! no dreams!’ and from that moment did the national sentiment of Poland begin gradually to expand, till it broke out in February 1861. Several symptoms indicated the unexpected awakening that was to follow. When the sovereigns met at Warsaw, in 1860, the Emperor Alexander, before returning to St. Petersburg, wished to show himself to the five German princes who accompanied him in all the brilliancy of Polish popularity. He was to be in Wilna. Now in Lithuania, the first manifestation for the enfranchisement of the serfs had taken place, and the Emperor had returned thanks for it to the Lithuanian nobility. These circumstances all seemed auspicious, and the Governor of Lithuania was ordered to get up a ball. It was, as far as its externals went, simply a ball; but no one knows what an official ball is to the Poles, where the splendour of the fête covers so many hurts, so many thousands of secret wounds. In his ‘Aieux,’ Mickiewicz has introduced an official ball into that circle of Hell in which he paints all the sufferings of the Poles. General Nazimof made the most heroic exertions, and spared no persuasions among the Lithuanian nobility; but nevertheless he completely failed. The ladies declined the invitations; the gentry said that, though willing to pay the expenses of this Russian festivity, they should not appear at it; and there was nothing left for the Emperor but to refuse to go to the ball upon which General Nazimof had lavished so much useless zeal; and he hardly made any stay in Wilna.
At Warsaw, where the three crowned heads held a meeting which seemed to personify all the disasters of the land, things looked even worse. It must be said that, to choose Warsaw as a place of meeting between these three masters of Poland—the Emperor of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and the King of Prussia—and to choose it, too, just when all Europe was ringing with the enfranchisement of Italy, was to throw a challenge to our unhappy nation; nor was it long before popular feeling took up a challenge which was the second it had received from Alexander—his first having been that address to the nobility of Warsaw which he made after the Congress of Paris.
After this, demonstrations increased.
One religious service followed the other, in memory of the patriot-poets, Mickiewicz, Krasinski, and Slovaçki; and on November 29th, 1860, that song was heard, for the first time, which for a year has been the impassioned watchword of the multitude, which has echoes in cathedrals, and which has gone up from the humblest country churches—that ‘Boze cos Polske’—‘Give us our country! Oh, Lord! give us our liberty!’ In a short time, the whole face of affairs had changed, and an electric thrill ran through the country. Perhaps it ought to be called a revolution; it certainly was a moral revolution, and it revealed that which had hardly as yet been suspected—the existence of a nation, unimpaired by suffering and by trial. To be a revolution, it had a strange beginning. There was no violence, no bloody intentions, no insurrections; but there were psalms, and prayers, and manifestations, at once enthusiastic and regulated; and there was an outburst, as energetic as it was unexpected, of that irresistible force which is called the soul of a nation.
Everything converges to that month of February 1861; and then it was that this Polish insurrection really assumed the character of a passionate drama, full of startling originality. The 25th was the anniversary of that formidable battle of Grochow, in which the Poles, in 1831, disputed for the mastery with Russia during three whole days. Since the 21st, the Agricultural Society, founded by Count Andrew Zamoyski, and so rapidly popularised throughout the country, had held a session to deliberate on the definitive accession of the peasantry to property. From other quarters, the Polish students—who had come from Kiev, from Moscow, and from Dorpat, as to a secret rendezvous—might be heard agitating, and demanding a national university. To ask for a more liberal education, to effect the union of all classes by the abolition of the last vestiges of serfdom, and to commemorate mournful and patriotic anniversaries—these were the subjects which preoccupied all minds. No doubt other thoughts mingled with them. The idea of presenting an address to the Emperor asking for a constitution began to be ventilated; and, oddly enough, it was warmly advocated by a man who was soon to play a part in these events—the Marquis Wiélopolski. He became excessively excited, and went to Count Zamoyski to beg him to take the initiative in this manifestation; but Count Andrew refused. He was the firm and vigilant guide of his society, and he would not consent to alter its nature. Moreover, it was repugnant to him to place, as the Marquis proposed to do, the claims of his country under the auspices of the treaties of 1815.
What was Russia about all this time? Quite disconcerted, and more astonished than enlightened by what she saw happening under her eyes, she waited, and day by day the movement seemed to slip away from her. At that time she was represented in Warsaw by Prince Michael Gortchakof, the Lieutenant of the Tzar—a man who was a good soldier, and who had shown a great deal of vigour in the defence of Sebastopol. He had lived fear many years at Warsaw, when head of the Staff to Prince Paskievitch; he knew Poland, and he liked living in it. To his soldierly nature extreme measures of repression were repugnant, and it troubled him to have recourse to them. But unfortunately, in the heart of the administration of which he was the ostensible chief, one man was, under shelter of the Prince’s name, omnipotent—M. Muchanof, Minister of the Interior, of public instruction, and of religion. He was a Russian of the old school of Nicholas the Tzar—a vulgar instrument of that inflexible system which had no other object but the denationalisation of Poland. The dismissal of Count Skarbek, the Minister of Finance, had been effected by him, because the Count was an enlightened man, an author of celebrity, who had entertained the revolutionary notion of asking (as for a right) for a college at Warsaw. M. Muchanof was at war, in short, with everything that looked like an awakening or an act of individual life in the country—with Temperance Leagues, with the Agricultural Society, and with a taste for a more liberal style of education. The only exception he could make was in favour of the School of Arts. ‘Let them paint, by all means,’ he would say, ‘and then they will not think.’
Between the gradually excited population of Poland and Russia, when thus represented and thus divided in her councils, a dialogue was to be commenced, which, stretching over a year, was to be furnished with such bloody interludes that the very Russian generals themselves seemed to grow weary, and to feel a secret aversion to the parts given them to act.
Nothing, at such a conjuncture, was wanted but one spark. The morning of February 25th dawned dark and misty. They were to go that day to pray for the slain of the battle of Grochow, and, from an early hour, the populace, impelled by one spontaneous passion, thronged the streets. An immense procession was soon formed; they marched without disorder, and with torches in their hands. Before them went a banner, with the white eagle. As they walked they sang the hymn, ‘Swiety Boze’—‘Holy Lord God Almighty, have pity upon us; be pleased to give us back our own country. Holy Virgin Mary, Queen of Poland, pray for us.’ Up to this time, the Government had done nothing to stop the manifestation (it had not even been prevented), when suddenly Colonel Trepow, the head of the Police, appeared, and threw two squadrons of the armed police upon this dense crowd. The multitude fell on their knees, and continued their psalm, while being cut down by the troops. More than forty persons were wounded. At this moment the Agricultural Society happened to be sitting, and a violent emotion was produced there by the intelligence that an inoffensive mob had been massacred. Count Zamoyski, the President, mastering his own emotion, endeavoured to preserve calmness, and, putting an end to the sitting, he repaired to Prince Gortchakof, who seemed surprised, and certainly showed conciliatory intentions. The Russian officers were indignant at the tasks assigned to them, and one of them, General Liprandi, went so far as to say that, as long as he commanded the infantry, he would not permit them to be marched upon unarmed men. The truth is, that one more such victory as that of February 25th would have made everything look very doubtful for Russia. The work of thirty years vanished, before the apparition of a people ready to die undefended. The whole town was in inexpressible anxiety, and on the following day mourning was worn for the victims of the previous day.
But it must not be supposed that any signs of weakness entered into the popular emotion. On the contrary, a curious excitement filled all hearts; and, by the 27th, arrangements were made for a new funeral service, in honour of some patriots hung by the Russians, and of Count Zawisza in particular. In the Church of the Carmelites and its vicinity more than 30,000 persons assembled; and, when mass was said, this immense procession unrolled and marched to the palace of the Agricultural Society, which, for the last two days, had been besought to sign an address to the Emperor. This Count Zamoyski always resisted; and he certainly showed more intelligent heroism, above all, more patriotic foresight, by this resistance, than by yielding to any premature haste. He did not wish to compromise an institution which might again do effectual service to the national cause, and which was the only representative body of his nation. So, on the approach of the crowd, Count Andrew took the plan of closing a session which had been so strangely agitated. But just round this point the whole affair centred, while, outside, squadrons of Cossacks drove the multitude before them at the point of their swords, and pursued them into the very churches. Hardly had the members of the Agricultural Society left their palace than a murderous fire was opened upon them; also a strange execution, for which the order had been given by General Zabolotsky, and in which there probably was no preconcerted design, since, in the Russian opposition of that day, every measure seemed disunited, and the work of chance. But the result of this attack was not the less fatal; ten persons were killed, and more than sixty were wounded.
A curious scene then took place. The exasperated crowd seized upon one of the corpses—one which was still warm—and they carried it to the house of Count Andrew Zamoyski. A feeling of reproach probably entered into this popular act. It meant, ‘Why do you abandon us at the moment in which we are slain?’ But this was a popular error. If Count Zamoyski, in his capacity of a public character, and when invested with a title which was almost official, had refused to compromise an institution which, in his eyes, represented the only lawful power in the country, not the less did there live in him a patriotism which could be both firm and manly. He received the body thus brought to him, and, in a voice of great emotion, he replied to the crowd, ‘I thank you for the mark of esteem which you have given me. Bring in the corpse of this martyr, and I shall know how to honour it.’ He had a chapelle ardente arranged in his house, and there, for two days, the body lay in state. By the incidents of his past life, by his name, by his active devotion to all his country’s interests, by the attitude he preserved towards the Russians, so proud and so noble, and yet ever so moderate, Count Andrew proved himself to be the true chief, the wise and energetic guide of a movement, which found in his character its highest personification.
In this, the second day of bloodshed, which side had conquered? Russia certainly had not, for never, perhaps, did any power suffer such complete eclipse, while boasting of such apparent strength.
After the events of the 27th, Prince Gortchakof called his officers and chief functionaries together. The Archbishop soon appeared, complaining of the violation of the churches; and there came also several dignitaries of the town, who had held a meeting at the house of one of the principal bankers, M. Kronenberg. There was likewise Count Zamoyski himself, with two other delegates of the Agricultural Society, MM. Ostrowski and Poloçki, all holding discourses, of which the tenor was mournful and proud. Prince Gortchakof did not disguise from himself either the gravity of the situation, or the odium of the part assigned to the army. What is more, he absolutely denied having given the pitiless orders which had just been executed, and he let fall a curious expression as he did so. ‘Do you,’ he said, ‘take me for an Austrian? I have given one order, and one only, and that is, that even on the production of an order signed by my own hand, the citadel is not to be given up to you.’ What was most essential at this moment was to appease wrath, to calm men’s minds, and to efface the late bloodshed. Prince Gortchakof showed himself ready for the most important transactions. He was ready to dismiss the head of the police, Colonel Trepow; ready for an enquiry into the conduct of General Zabolotsky; to withdraw the military to their barracks till the victims of the 27th had been buried; and also to create a Commission of Public Safety, under the auspices of Count Zamoyski, with the concurrence of a Russian much esteemed and honoured in Warsaw, Marquis Paulueri. He accepted the offer of the students to act as the police of the town; and by that evening an address to the Emperor was in general circulation. Thousands of signatures were rapidly affixed to this document, which was the energetic expression of the griefs and of the wishes of the Polish nation. ‘Our nation,’ it declared, ‘which used to be governed by liberal institutions, has, for the last sixty years, endured the cruellest sufferings. Without any organ for sending up to your throne the expression of our pains and of our need, we are forcibly constrained to have no other utterances than the cries of those martyrs which are daily offered as a holocaust. A country, once the centre of civilisation to its neighbours of the West, cannot, also, develope itself, either morally or physically, while its Church, its legislature, its public education, and its whole social organisation, do not bear the stamp of its national genius and of its historical traditions.’ The signatures of the Archbishop and of the Grand Rabbi headed this address; and those Poles who were in Government offices, as well as the Marshals of the nobility, tendered their resignations, in order to join in the manifestation.
To tell the truth, the whole face of affairs had altered in a very short space of time. Two days had sufficed to show a nationality, fresh born and full of energy, pitted against a government which seemed struck with paralysis. Poland, that phantom which had not been allowed to appear at the Congress of Paris, and which the Emperor Alexander, during the interview of the sovereigns at Warsaw, had banished as an inopportune vision, was now suddenly alive, and become palpable to all. Henceforward, all distinctions of classes were to be effaced by one profound feeling of solidarity; and the very bullets of February 27th had cemented this union by striking, as they did, persons of all classes, of all religions, of all ages, and of every sex.
With what weapons did this reviving nation arm itself? Poland had no arms: she would not have any; or rather she had them but of one kind. She had a passive heroism which amounted to enthusiasm. She had a fanaticism of self-sacrifice, as might be seen in that address to the workpeople of Warsaw. The mark by which her sons recognised each other was mourning array; and from the first days of the month of March 1861, a proclamation throughout the whole country declared black to be the national colour. ‘In all the parts of ancient Poland,’ ran the notification, ‘mourning will be put on, and worn for an indefinite time.... For nearly a century our emblem has been the Crown of Thorns! That coronal adorned the coffins of our brethren, and you have all understood its meaning. It signifies patience under suffering, self-sacrifice, pardon, and deliverance. We invite every Pole, whatever be his creed, to spread these words in countries even the most remote.’
A population like this, when for a moment its own mistress, had a pride in avoiding riot and excess; and it even respected the Russian soldiers in Warsaw. It was the students who on March 2nd kept the peace during the funerals of those who had fallen victims on February 27th; and at these obsequies, where patriotism acted for the police, more than 100,000 persons were present. On the other side, it was quite the contrary: everything among the Russian authorities was in confusion, and they appeared to be the discomfited spectators of a movement which they could not check, and which was wholly incomprehensible to them. Prince Gortchakof himself was visibly affected by this extraordinary situation, and he was divided between astonishment and the strange recurrence of a soldier’s instinct who feels himself to be powerless, because he seeks an adversary but cannot find him. Nothing can better pourtray both the character of this Polish movement and the embarrassment of the Russian power, than a conversation which took place between Prince Gortchakof and Count Zamoyski, on the 3rd of March, the day after the interment of the victims of the 27th of February. The Prince Lieutenant began by thanking the President of the Agricultural Society, with really good grace, for the order which, during the ceremony of the previous day, had been maintained in the town.
‘The whole town obeys you,’ he said. Then suddenly becoming animated, and having changed his train of thought, he continued, ‘This cannot go on; and besides, I have now got troops, and I am not afraid of you.’
‘We are ready to receive your bullets,’ replied Count Andrew.
‘No, no, we will fight!’
‘We shall not fight; but you may murder us if you please.’
‘If you want arms, I will give you some!’
‘We will not use them.’
There, in truth, lay the secret of this movement, which was intangible from its moral nature, and which was terrible because it was vague. The address from Warsaw reached St. Petersburg; the Emperor Alexander read it out loud before several members of his family.
‘But these Poles ask for nothing,’ remarked one.
‘That is just what is so serious about it,’ replied the Emperor; and his retort was that of a sensible man.
If this perilous situation was not to continue, only one course could be pursued by Russia. She must arrange a termination, and reply to this passive revolution in Poland by sincere, efficient, and ready concessions. Russia did not do this, and she lost a month in delay. As to her sincerity, it was doubtful, to say the least of it. What was most obvious was her embarrassment; and by the confusion in which she moved, her policy allowed this embarrassment to be only too well perceived. At Warsaw, while Prince Gortchakof made some concessions, Count Zamoyski was challenged, but did not reply. A marvellous unity of wills kept order in the town, and the authorities waited for a solution of the difficulty to be sent from St. Petersburg. M. Muchanof, still master of the Ministry of the Interior, was inspired by the melancholy policy which Austria had followed in Galicia, and he did send out a clandestine circular, urging the peasants to rise upon their landlords. The Jews discovered this circular, and so much indignation was excited by it, that Prince Gortchakof was soon obliged to dismiss M. Muchanof from his office, and he left Warsaw amidst the yells and hisses of the populace. The affair, considered in all its bearings, is a strange mark of the persistent contradictions which distinguished Russian measures, and distinguished them at a time when to be sincere would have been to be judicious.
Even in St. Petersburg no one knew what to do. Time was gained, and then it was lost; and when the Emperor Alexander did, on the last day of March, resolve to send to Warsaw a plan for new reforms, the movement had by that time become too consistent; the minds of men were too strongly excited, and too much made up, to be contented with such timid and equivocal concessions as ill befitted the gravity of the case. For of what did the offered reforms consist? It is true, that they suppressed those two departments of the Senate which sat at Warsaw, and which were the signs of the complete assimilation of Poland with Russia. They promised the election of provincial councils, of district councils; they offered a new organisation of public instruction, with a creation of a Faculty of Rights, and with more respect for the Polish language. Finally, they summoned the Marquis Wiélopolski to the direction of public education; the Marquis being a Pole. This was always something, although it did not even entirely come up to the statut of Nicholas. And what at bottom was wanting, was a guarantee for the sincere adoption of a really liberal policy, which should be carried out by men truly devoted to their country, and animated by a national spirit. Unfortunately, to the suspicions of the Poles (suspicions which were only too well founded) Russia replied by a system of permanent contradictions, one which for the last year has shown itself to be never nearer to reaction than when there was a talk about concessions. Concessions so offered were for the edification of Europe, which looked on. The facts remain the same, or rather they become worse, and in appearing to yield to this all-powerful movement of public opinion, it was the object of the Russian Government to stain it, and to represent the movement as the work of a few incorrigibly factious persons. But they seemed to wish to treat with this reviving nationality, and on the 1st of April the plan of reform arrived from St. Petersburg was published; six days later, however, they dissolved, without any warning, that Agricultural Society in which the country beheld its image, which had never interfered except to make peace, which Prince Gortchakof had himself thanked, and which was now done away with, on the strange pretext ‘that, under the present circumstances, and in consequence of the position which it had latterly assumed, it had ceased to answer its original purpose.’ Of all those bodies of constables and delegates which had existed, and by means of which for a whole month peace had been maintained in the town, not one was allowed to remain. All, with a sort of impatience, were swept away, while proclamations were multiplied and troops were hastily advanced to Warsaw.
What was the result?
Public opinion resented as a provocation the dissolution of the Agricultural Society, and the minds of the people rose with indignation, not against the reforms, which might, perhaps, have been accepted, but against that double-faced policy in which they could see nothing but menaces; and peace thenceforward became more and more impossible between Russia and a people which, as M. Tymowski said in his secret report, was ‘full of life and of obstinacy, and deeply penetrated by a sense of law. Everything,’ he added, ‘depended on the good faith observed with them.’ On the 7th of April, 1861, an immense crowd went to the cemetery to pray for the slain of February. Later in the evening they marched to the square at the castle, which was occupied by troops, and there with loud cries demanded the repeal of the order by which the Agricultural Society had been dissolved. But this crowd was so far from threatening any violence, that the military did not continue to keep the ground, and they dispersed at last, promising to reassemble on the following evening. Accordingly, in the evening of the 8th, a still larger assemblage repeated the manifestation of the preceding day, in front of the castle. The Prince Lieutenant himself came down and mixed with the crowd in order to appease it. He asked them what they wanted; and the response was unanimous, being contained in these significant words, ‘We want our country.’
For the rest, nothing in this excited concourse of men, women, and children betrayed any aggressive thoughts, or any intentions of strife. They were warned that they must disperse; but with dark passion they replied, ‘You may kill us, but we will not move;’ and before the troops drawn up in order of battle, they remained impassive, till suddenly a post-chaise happened to pass, and the postilion played on his horn the air of Dombrowski’s legions: ‘No, never shall Poland perish!’ Immediately an enthusiastic cry burst from every breast, and as the populace fell on their knees, a movement was perceptible through the whole crowd. Did the troops believe that they were about to be attacked, or did they obey a command? Were they decided by the plain and conclusive reason, that a resolution to fire had been adopted the evening before, because a stop must be put to this state of affairs?
However it may have been, an instantaneous fire was opened. While some squadrons of cavalry received orders to charge, fifteen volleys from the infantry made many bloody openings in the mass of defenceless beings, who now found themselves hemmed in on every side. While being cut down, the crowd continued to kneel, and to pray. The women and the children were grouped together on their knees round an image of the Virgin, at the extreme end of the square, and there the people remained till late into the night; so late that the troops had been previously drawn off the ground. It is certain that more than fifty persons had perished, and that the number of the wounded was immense; but darkness has always been allowed to hang over the numbers who fell on that night. An eye witness wrote with emotion: ‘Never shall I be able to make you understand this unparalleled contempt of death, which is so enthusiastic that it animates men, women, and children. Old soldiers, accustomed to being under fire, assure me that never, when so close, have the most solid troops preserved a heroism as calm and invincible as this crowd has displayed when furiously charged by cavalry and under fire.’
It was, indeed, a strange insurrection. The authorities in Warsaw had no difficulty in quelling it; but it rendered every future transaction more difficult, for it had placed between Russia and Poland a barrier of invincible suspicion. It was a misfortune for Russia, that, while gaining these melancholy victories, she added nothing to the security of her rule, and she certainly added nothing to her strength. Her difficulties were, however, greatly increased by them, and she remained weighed down by the weight of her own policy. It is true, indeed, that even after the 8th of April she maintained the reforms which she had already promulgated; but the logic of her situation was, that she was at war with the most intangible thing in the world, with the soul of a nation. Russia could not lay her finger upon any conspiracy, but not the less did everything seem to threaten her, and she was constantly obliged to invent new plans for putting down she hardly knew what. At night no one was to go out without a lantern, and it was forbidden to be seen walking in certain localities. Against wearing mourning the rules were peculiarly stringent. Indeed, at one moment it was necessary to have permission from the police to wear black. Yet the genius of the police was at fault, and it was baffled by the provoking obstinacy in favour of universal mourning, and of the black dresses which the Polish ladies had adopted.
To do the Russian authorities justice, they did not feel their consciences at ease in the matter of this war. Even when using repressive measures they seemed to be agitated by a secret disquiet—a feeling which declared itself in a very striking manner during the last days of Prince Gortchakof, whom death overtook in the middle of this conflict, only two months after the scene of the 8th of April. It would seem almost as though the tragedies of Poland had something fatal in them to the Russian officials. Already, they tell us, that Prince Paskievitch, when on his death-bed, had been troubled by a sinister apparition; for everywhere before him rose a shade, that of the mother of Count Zawisza, who had lain at his feet to implore pardon for her son, and who had implored it in vain. The last moments of Prince Gortchakof were disturbed in the same way. In Warsaw it was said, that ever after the bloody scenes of February and of April he had been vexed by sudden hallucinations, as well as by fits of gloomy irritation. A few days before his death, he went to the railway-station to meet his wife, Princess Gortchakof, who was to arrive from a journey. He saw one of the principal bankers of Warsaw, and, running up to him, he began: ‘Oh, you there! so you play the patriot, do you? But I know how to crush you! I shall soon make an end of your d——d students! I will make dust of you!’ During the last days of his life, he fancied that he constantly saw women in black, who followed him, or walked beside him. ‘Oh, the women in black! oh, the women in black! send them away,’ he would cry. If such were the sufferings of the Prince, there were to be others who, as we shall see, came to a yet more terrible end. The same secret trouble was betrayed by the words of General Souchozanett, the immediate successor of Prince Gortchakof, when, before leaving Warsaw, he said: ‘You may accuse me of being an unsuccessful blunderer; but you cannot say that I am a cruel man, for I have never fired upon a single creature.’ There was a strange fatality about this system, for it weighed upon those who carried it out, as well as upon those who were its victims; and such as it was, after the 8th of April, it stood complete, before the eyes of an angry and seething populace.
Throughout these events, one man made a great effort to procure a reconciliation. His figure is not the least original, or the least characteristic of those who meet in this drama, and I have already named him, for he is the Marquis Wiélopolski. Ever since the 1st of April, 1861, he had taken a preponderant place in the Councils of the Government, and, no doubt, his part is not yet played out. During February, as I have already said, the Marquis Wiélopolski resided in Warsaw; and he suggested that an address should be sent to the Emperor, wherein a constitution was to be demanded, but which should open with an act of submission, and with a testimony of their contrition; for it was to disallow, in some measure, the Revolution of 1830. Not having been able to make good this idea, he refused to sign the address that was sent to St. Petersburg, and held himself aloof from the movement. Very shortly after, the Emperor called him to the Direction of Public Education, and from that time he took a decisive part in all the measures that followed. Before long, and by the dismissal of the other directors, which was consequent upon the 8th of April, the Marquis Wiélopolski found himself alone in the Council, and associated with all its most rigorous proceedings. He is, perhaps, one of the most curious types of our times, for he is a proud, contemptuous, eloquent man, a scion of the family of the Gonzagas; and for this reason, perhaps, he exhibits, at times, traces of the old Italian policy. He is a great landed proprietor, and, by his different estates, is connected with all the provinces of Poland; and he is devoted to Russia, not by servility or interest, but by a passion of revenge which he nourishes against the West; and his system is the result of calculation, and of a line of policy which is powerful, although strange. In 1846, after the massacres in Galicia, the Marquis Wiélopolski wrote that ‘Letter to Prince Metternich, by a Polish Gentleman,’ which rang with such fiery eloquence, and which being, as it were, a new revelation, echoed throughout Europe. The author there advised Poland to embrace a resolution of heroic despair—to renounce, for the future, all help from the Western Powers, all deceitful and calculating sympathy, all cheap eloquence, all those guarantees which men have decorated with the pompous title of ‘rights of peoples,’ and then boldly to give herself to Russia. ‘Go to the Tzar, and say to him: We come to you, as to the most generous of our foes; hitherto, we have belonged to you, as slaves, by right of conquest, and from terror; to-day, we come to you as free men, who have the courage to acknowledge that they have been conquered.... We do not stipulate with you about conditions—to yourself we leave it to judge when you may relax towards us the severity of your law. We make no reserve; but in our hearts, in letters of fire, you will read our silent prayer, this single petition, “Do not leave unpunished the crimes which strangers have committed; and in the blood of our brethren which has been shed, hear the Slave blood, which cries for vengeance” ...’
In words like these, one can recognise a theorist, who is inflamed with panslavism, and whose revenge anticipates the day, when by this fusion, this sacrifice of the idea of national independence, this moral suicide, the Polish race may revive in the Empire, and again, through their intelligence, find an ascendency in the Council.
What the Marquis Wiélopolski had thought in 1846 he still thought in 1861; and he therefore kept himself apart from all attempts to warm up the thought of nationality, as also from all the practical labours which were to bring about a patient and invisible reorganisation of his country; and he never would become a member of the Agricultural Society.
The Marquis now entered on his official career distinguished by all the inflexible vigour of a character which was lofty and proud enough to brave unpopularity among his countrymen; and, while he consented to serve Russia, he did not the less preserve a haughty attitude towards her. In the month of February, while agitating for the adoption of his proposed address, he got a message from Prince Gortchakof, warning him to take care of what he was about; he proudly replied, ‘Tell the Prince that my boxes are filled, and that I am quite ready to start for Siberia.’ To his compatriots he would say, ‘You are not at the height necessary for understanding me.’ To the Russians he certainly appeared an enigma; for they could not comprehend this Polish gentleman, who, while a nobody in the ranks of the administration, suddenly became a minister, who refused all interposition, and who treated directly with the Emperor. What could such a man mean? What was the clue to his thoughts? But it can be believed how, between Poles and Russians, he occupied a solitary and difficult post; for the first had the greatest antipathy to his ideas, and the second looked upon him as a phenomenon rather more extraordinary than consolatory.
That it was possible to organise a lawful régime, the Marquis firmly believed. For the present he had no doubt of it, and he directed all his efforts to this end. But there is nothing that Russians understand so little as proceeding according to law; and, upon the death of Prince Gortchakof, this prepossession of the Marquis proved the origin of those quarrels with the new Lieutenant-General Souchozanett, in which the Polish gentleman was apt to have the better of the Russian, although he also was soon to be carried away by the current of a still more violent reaction.
This reaction was the system which Russia adopted, and which she followed, without ever perceiving that, instead of calming and mastering the movement, every instance of repression so added to its energy and depth, that when, three months later, the wishes of the government seemed to incline to a more conciliatory method, the movement was then found to have gained head greatly.
Above all, it was found to have spread, and to have reached the provinces which formed the ancient Poland of 1772. Scenes similar to those of Warsaw were enacted at Wilna; and, by the application of a uniform plan of repression, Russia, by her own acts, set a seal upon that unity of the old Polish fatherland which it was her object to abolish.
One of her official proclamations spoke of Lithuania, as of a province which had always belonged to the Empire, and which had only been for a short time subjugated by Poland. Some French papers even lent themselves to help Russia at this juncture, and they undertook to represent to Lithuania, to the country of Mickiewicz, of Kosciusko, and of the Czartorynski, that it was not in any way Polish, and ought to have nothing in common with Poland. And this it was which provoked one of the most curious scenes of the whole strange drama—a protestation on the part of Lithuania, under the form of a pilgrimage to Horoldo.
Horoldo is a little village beyond the river Bug, and there, more than four centuries ago, the union of Lithuania with Poland was accomplished. Of this union the 10th of October was the anniversary. As early as the month of September, circulars were sent into all the parts of the ancient Polish realm, and delegates of the people were chosen in every place, even in Western Prussia. Everything was done that could be done to stop these strange travellers. Those who came from beyond the Bug were prevented from crossing the river, and those who came from Cracow were in the same way brought up at the passage of the Vistula. But the concourse of people was, notwithstanding these precautions, really immense; and the roads were lined with men on horseback, with foot passengers, with carriages of all sorts, heavy carts, tarantasses from Podolia, and phaetons from Léopol. On the eve of October 10, the houses, the villages, and the country seats round Horoldo, were filled with unknown guests, who were met everywhere with the readiest hospitalities. ‘Enter, and welcome,’ was said to all, while no one even asked their names.
On the following day, at six o’clock in the morning, an immense procession was formed, and when it reached the little village of Kopylowa (half a mile from Horoldo), the crowd fell into their ranks, and marched along in columns, singing as they went; for, though strangers to each other’s names and faces, these men were all bound together by the one feeling which they had in common. Now arose a momentary doubt. Were they to go on, and so risk meeting with a bloody reception? A cry rose, ‘We came to pray at Horoldo, let us go to Horoldo!’ and the procession continued its march, headed by an advanced guard of more than 200 priests and monks. But as they drew near to Horoldo, it became apparent that a large military force was drawn up in a half circle round the town. A feeling of inexpressible anxiety then prevailed. No one knew what was going to happen, but not the less they pressed steadily forward, because everything that could be called arms had already been thrown away. The violence of a commander might at once have turned the scene into a massacre; but, happily, General Chrustef, the Military Governor of Lublin, who was entrusted with the defence of Horoldo, was a humane and pacific man. At the head of his staff he advanced to meet the procession. He bowed deferentially to the clergy, and said, ‘I have received strict and formal orders not to allow any manifestations to take place, and the choice of means has not been left to me, if any manifestation is attempted. Do not, therefore, oblige me to use forcible measures; for you would surely not wish to lay on your own consciences the responsibility of bloodshed.’ A Canon then stepped out of the ranks, and said that the multitude had come from far, and that they could not be expected to retire without at least having heard mass. The General thought for a moment. His own anxiety was visible, and a terrible silence prevailed. At last, Chrustef addressed the priest: ‘If you will pray, do it now, and here, in the fields before the town; my orders do not go so far as to forbid this.’ Preparations began immediately, and a rustic altar was soon reared upon a rising ground. When all was ready, forty banners, representing all the provinces of ancient Poland, were unfurled, and above them all floated a great flag, with the united arms of Lithuania and of Poland.
The scene was a splendid one, and it was lit by a glorious sunshine. When mass had been said, a Basilican priest (of the United Greek Church) rose, and thus addressed the crowd: ‘Behold to-day, assembled for the first time, the mutilated members of our beloved Poland! In our national history there is no better festival, and no memory more pure, than that which we have met to celebrate to-day. Look at that forest; count its trees; and for each tree that you count you may find upon the Polish soil the grave of a hero, of a martyr who has given himself for our liberty. Here, as everywhere in Poland, all are ready to sacrifice their lives; but the hour is not yet arrived. Let us pray, and, as we pray, not one of us will be found wanting when the summons comes. Let us not wish any evil to our enemies. See them to-day, how silent and motionless they stand! They look at us, and they now comprehend what we are, and what we may become. With one gesture they might crush us, they might knock us over, bleeding on the soil; but they are silent. They know that behind us there is a whole people, and that a nation cannot be slain.’ Then, turning to the fluttering standard, the priest said, as he concluded, ‘Stainless bird, white eagle! that wast wont to distribute crowns to others, and art so crownless to-day, float above thy brothers, and cry to the four quarters of the globe that thou art living still! Call together thy children, thine emigrants, and thy defenders of old, and point, still point the way! Thou must suffer, thou must suffer much; but one day thou shalt rise, rise higher than in the past, and spread thy wings over a people which, at last, is free.’ After planting a wooden cross on the spot where mass had been said, the crowd dispersed, and they carried away with them the solemn memory of a scene which was passing strange.
But the real question had not ceased to live in Warsaw, the centre of Polish agitation; it had existed there before the manifestation of Horoldo, and from thence it had influenced that episode in the great movement, of which the spirit seemed to be as contagious as a passion. And here I must notice the diverse phases of Russian policy, and the fatality which seemed to attend upon its decisions. Let this be remarked, that in the last days of March, Russia showed herself ready for concessions, and promulgated some reforms. Then and there a reaction occurs which reaches its height on April 8th, and the reforms of March go for nothing, or, at least, are, like everything else for the time being, in abeyance. By the month of August, and after a period of repression and severity, which was also distinguished by a marked antagonism between Marquis Wiélopolski and General Souchozanett (the successor of Prince Gortchakof), the sky appears again to clear. To the kingdom of Poland, a new lieutenant is given, General Count Lambert, who starts for Warsaw on a conciliatory mission. He is to carry out new institutions, to call together ‘enlightened and well-intentioned men,’ and to ‘find out the real wants of the country.’ What was to be the result of these tactics, adopted again under an aggravated condition of affairs? Unfortunately in this as in every such attempt made in Poland by the Russian government, there was something unsound. Count Lambert, as far as his own qualifications went, doubtless did unite in himself all the conditions which were most favourable for a mission of peace. He was a gentleman of courteous and affable manners, of French origin, and by religion a Roman Catholic; his temper was candid and moderate, and he enjoyed the peculiar flavour of the Tzar; but at the same time he had men placed under him, who were understood to represent the old Russian party; and these men were there to watch him, and keep him to the point if the occasion should require it. These were General Gerstenzweig, the Military Governor of Warsaw, Minister of the Interior, Krijanowski, the head of the staff, and the senator Platonof, a member of the Council of Administration. In spite of everything, Count Lambert, on his arrival at Warsaw, was received with favour, and looked upon as a plenipotentiary of peace; his first acts being indeed marked by a conciliatory spirit. With the heads of the national party and with the bishops the Count held conferences, and even received a confidential memorandum from M. Wyszinski, a Canon of note in Warsaw, whose paper pointed out the conditions under which peace might be possible; namely, conditions which meant a constitution for the kingdom, and an organisation founded upon the national autonomy of Lithuania and Ruthenia. Finally, Count Lambert bestirred himself to put into practice the new institutions which had been talked of, namely, elections in districts and provinces, and a reformed organisation of the Council of State.
It was important for the country and for the national party to know what steps it ought to take when these elections were impending; and when affairs under the new lieutenant had assumed a new aspect, several meetings took place. To reject everything and to hold their own hands, was as yet the opinion offered by those who formed the advanced party, and whose votes were for action. The moderate party, however, had more practical sense, and seeing the necessity of not rejecting any legal means, they combatted this idea of not participating in any way in the forthcoming elections. The moderate party carried the day, but one combination was devised as a rallying point for opinions of every shade. Two petitions were to be signed at the same time—the first, addressed to the Council of State, was to demand the complete emancipation of the Jews; the other, addressed to Count Lambert, was to claim a national representation, as being the only institution proper for seeking out and making known the wants of the country, as it was expressed in the imperial rescript. These two petitions, it was intended, should be signed by all the electors when they gave their votes; and thus at the end of September they came to the ballot. In spite of some attempts made by the most hot-headed partisans, great unanimity prevailed; the peasants in particular showed a vast amount of zeal, and the two petitions thus agreed upon were signed by the electors throughout all the districts of the country. One circumstance of this transaction is a curious one, and that is the secrecy with which the signatures were affixed. So well indeed was the secret kept, that of one of the addresses the text has never transpired. In all the elections the moderate party had a great advantage, and thus a new character was given to the movement, for, instead of mere agitation, it assumed the nature of a legal claim, and it was settled that all manifestations were to terminate in a religious fête, in honour of Kosciusko, on October 15th, while the addresses were to be sent up by a deputation on the 18th.
On the 17th, however, the city was suddenly declared to be in a state of siege. What had happened?
No fear of possible troubles and tumult on the 15th had driven the authorities to this step, but they had become aware of that new plan of action which I have just described as adopted by the national party.
Some of the bishops, taking the initiative, had sent a paper to Count Lambert, which he had refused to receive, while in another way the business about petitions signed at the elections had got wind, and had occasioned the greatest uneasiness, above all, in St. Petersburg.
This was, moreover, the very moment at which the disturbances among the students had broken out in Russia. Such a complication of symptoms in the political world terrified the government, and a state of siege was proclaimed; certainly, less with the view of interrupting the Kosciusko fête than of stifling the petitions which were to be presented four days later. Once more the face of affairs was altered; from having been a matter of politics and of legal claims, it went back to the old dramatic aspect, and the scenes of October 15th were a new tragedy. The era of reaction had recommenced, and this reaction swept everything before it.
Of the many heavy days which had succeeded each other, the morning of October 15th was perhaps the saddest that ever dawned. From an early hour the populace had crowded into the churches, to take part in the funeral services which invoked and hallowed the memory of Kosciusko. The troops, employed in the military occupation of the town, offered no hindrance to the faithful at the doors of the sacred edifices; and it was not till the churches were filled, that the army had orders to surround them. From some of the buildings escape would have been easy, and these were the last to be encircled. The cathedral of St. John and the church of the Bernardines had the honour of being really besieged; while at the same time hordes of Cossacks, spread all over Warsaw, committed every sort of excess, and spared neither the women nor the strangers within the gates. An Englishman (Mr. George Mitchell) was a sufferer and an eye-witness of this day’s work, and he wrote, ‘troops of infuriated Cossacks and Circassians swept the streets, and they cut down men and women without any distinction whatever. They entered into the dwellings, they maltreated the inhabitants, and they sacked the houses.’
When the order was given to surround the churches, it had most certainly not been anticipated that the crowd would embrace the strange resolution of refusing to quit them as long as the troops were on the ground, and that it would be necessary to drive them out. Thus, one rash and ill-considered resolution led, a little later, to the most disastrous consequences. During the whole day things continued on this wise; the crowd was in the churches, breathless, excited, hungry, but unalterable; and still the soldiers camped before the doors. At eight o’clock in the evening, a General appeared, and he offered pardon to the crowd, if they would surrender at the mercy of the Lieutenant of the Kingdom. The reply was, that the people knew what mercy meant, and that as long as the troops were not withdrawn they should not stir. Tapers were now lit round the catafalque which had been reared the night before for the late archbishop, and hymns were chanted from time to time.
At two o’clock in the morning a new envoy came to parley with the multitude, who answered as before, that they did not ask for pardon. Two long mortal hours now passed away, when at seven o’clock, that is to say, after a siege of seventeen hours, the soldiers were ordered to force their way into the churches and to drive out the occupants. More than two thousand persons were seized, and carried to the citadel. But this was not all; and here again appears that fatality which I have said attended upon the Russian officials. Count Lambert, it would appear, had in no way anticipated or intended either this invasion of the churches or these wholesale arrests. Both had been executed in obedience to the commands of General Gerstenzweig, the Chief of the state of siege, and thence arose an altercation between the two generals, which was tragical enough in its close. Count Lambert vehemently reproached Gerstenzweig for all the horrors of the day, and Gerstenzweig retorted with equal violence. What next? It seems a fact no longer to be doubted, that General Gerstenzweig then took a pistol, and blew out his brains, while Count Lambert quitted Warsaw without any warning.
The results of the scene which was played out on the 15th of October were soon felt. The administrator of the diocese ordered all the churches in Warsaw to be closed, and the leaders of the other religious bodies soon followed his example; for the same thing was done by the grand rabbi, and by the head of the Protestant Church. For the last year, every school in Poland had been locked, and the theatres were in a like case; and it was now the turn of the churches to be shut.
Thus and then did Russia inaugurate a new period of reaction, which has not yet come to an end (April 1862).
Of a drama which has lasted for a whole year, we behold the sad and eventful epilogue. And yet all that happened on the 15th of October, bad as it was, was simply a revision of all that had gone before—of all the punishments which, since February 1861, had been indiscriminately applied by martial law to all classes, all religions, and all professions. Let us see, whom do we find, among this crowd of men, punished, deported, or confined in prisons?
There is M. Szlenker, the Provost of the Merchants of Warsaw, himself the richest and the most honourable merchant of the kingdom.
There is M. Hiszpanski, the head of the Shoemakers’ Guild (the grandson of that Kilinski who was so loved and influential in Warsaw), a member of the delegation formed in 1861, and elected, in September of that same year, a member of the Municipal Council.
Poles who, by reason of the amnesty, had returned from Siberia have since been sent back, ‘by way of precaution’—so run the terms of their sentence; and of this number is M. Ehrenberg, the celebrated poet, and M. Krajewski, one of our most eminent critics, the most moderate and sensible of writers, the author of the translation of ‘Faust.’
An immense number of students and artizans have been sent to the Caucasus and to Orenbourg. The Grand-Rabbi Meiselz, and the Rabbis Kramstuk and Jastrow have been expelled; and Otho, the Evangelical pastor, has been sentenced to deportation. The Chapter of Warsaw alone has lost ten of its members, among whom the most conspicuous were M. Stecki and the Canon Wyszinski, from whom General Lambert once asked for memoranda. Last and worst, have we not seen M. Bialobozeski, the very Administrator of the diocese of Warsaw, an old man of eighty years of age, condemned to death because, after the 15th of October, he ordered all the churches to be shut. By way of favour, his sentence was commuted to imprisonment in a fortress, where he languished, and where his character was aspersed by the publication of a retractation. If we can ever suppose it to have been made by the victim himself, it only renders his sentence of death more inexplicable than it had been before.
On seeing such a multitude of punishments, it is not unnatural for the reader to inquire, what are the crimes and the offences of which they are the reward? In the government publications, and in the sentences of the sufferers, he who runs may read, that they were awarded for prayers, hymns, processions, for doubtful gestures made when perusing official handbills, and for wearing national emblems and black clothes. Only (and this is perfectly true) they were so inflicted because under songs, prayers, and mournful apparel, there lay the soul of a people, of a whole nation, which has been saddened by excess of tyranny, which has been terribly tried, but which, even now, is not disheartened.
At this period of agitation in Europe, when new problems complicate her political life, the true importance of the events of the last year must be seen to lie in their suddenness, and in the fact that Poland is not discouraged. Judge of the last twelve months as we may, we cannot but allow that they have shown us a people which, though often stricken, is again on foot (though how this is so we cannot tell); that this nation has found within itself the secret of an indestructible life; and that, so far from being dead, she lives with a new and more abundant vitality.
The drama which has been enacted before us, coloured, though it may be, by the tender and excited imagination of her sons, and, at times, seeming more like a legend than a page of history, cannot be mistaken for the convulsions of a nationality that is dying, and which, in expiring, utters one last and piercing cry. It is the expression of a force which, during thirty years, has been purified, tempered, and trained afresh, and which now appears to prove itself at once passionate and calm.
What are the signs by which any true nationality is to be recognised? Must a nationality have genius, intelligence, and true imagination? Then Poland, during the last hundred years, has had a legion of poets, all singularly gifted and inspired, and she still possesses a flourishing and varied literature; for her language has remained, although she has not had the freedom of her schools. Is the love of the past and its traditions required? Then that feeling has been both evident and rampant for the last year. Must there be originality of life and manners? Polish manners have preserved all the savour of their nationality, and, most assuredly, have not been influenced by Russia. Is it by unity among all classes, and by social peace, that a nationality approves its integrity and its strength? The present movement has demonstrated precisely that there is a unity, a fusion of all classes, and that this fusion is sealed by the abolition of the last traces of serfdom, by the definitive acquisition of property by the peasants—a measure which the landlords themselves favoured in a practical and liberal manner; for if, in this agitation, we have seen only its moving and dramatic externals, we must not forget that under all this passion lies a spirit of political sagacity, which is patent, and which has been enlightened by all the faults, and by all the history of the past. Lastly, is religion one of the signs of a truly deeply-living nationality? In this Polish awakening, religion has been prominent, showing itself in the hymns of a people which assembles and takes refuge in churches. I have no doubt but that, by some great democrats, Poland is suspected on account of her religious fidelity. Men of this stamp do not see that there is something in suffering which opens the sources of religious feeling, till they rise to passionate mysticism. Moreover, in a country like Poland, the Church is the only organised power—the only body which has its own laws and independence. Catholicism is truly one of the shapes of Polish nationality; only, into her Catholicism a great sense of toleration is now admitted; and we have seen priests, bishops, rabbis and Protestant pastors, all joined in the same manifestations, and suffering under the same measures of repression. Thus, Polish Catholicism realises the phenomenon, unhappily so rare, of a profound and intimate alliance between religion and all the instincts of liberty and nationality. Thus, also, this union renders Polish agitation something very different from any of those ephemeral fevers of revolution which give way before sharp measures of suppression.
For the same reason, the Polish problem remains a threatening one to Russia; for it engages Russia in a conflict as ungrateful as it is impotent. It compromises her in the eyes of Europe; it occupies her politicians, and it lies a weight upon her own internal developement. I do not know what is to happen; no one, indeed, can tell. She may again be stern, or again she may relent in her rule; but the problem is the same, and, without any compensation to set it off, it becomes more and more serious in the empire of Tzars. Doubtless, when, a hundred years ago, Russia, realising the dream of Peter the Great, marched upon Poland, rent it, and carried off its spoils, she then violated all the principles of justice; but she had a reason for it. She wished to draw towards the West, and, through her western possessions, to enter among European affairs. But everything has changed since then. Does Russia now require Poland to give her a place in the world, and among European powers? Russia now approaches the western world, less by her presence at Warsaw, than by that multiplicity of communications, that mixture of interests and ideas, and by those iron lines which, bringing all countries together, have made distances disappear. And what happens now?
This: that in order to maintain a supremacy, which is always precarious, and always contested (because lawful wishes have not been responded to), Russia is obliged to compromise her whole policy. At every turn, in each combination or alliance, she is tied and bound, because evermore between her and those who might be her allies, there rises the phantom of Poland. But not only is her external policy hampered and entangled, but her internal rule is affected by the necessity for incessant tyranny. The great Lord Chatham once said, ‘If the English government subjects America to a despotic rule, so surely will England herself be obliged to submit to it.’ And herein exactly lies the bond which connects Polish agitation with those liberal aspirations which at the present time appear in Russia. It is no longer a secret that throughout all classes of Russian society sentiments of sympathy with Poland are being rapidly propagated, and that Russians begin to foresee, without disturbing themselves, that a separation of the two countries is really possible. A newspaper, which is published secretly in St. Petersburg, the Welicorus, expressed this very distinctly not long ago. ‘In order to maintain our rule in Poland, we are obliged to keep there a supplementary force of 200,000 men, and annually to disburse 40,000,000 of our money over and above those revenues which we draw from Poland. Now, our finances will never be better as long as we squander our resources in this way.... We must let Poland go, in order to save ourselves from destruction.... We can no longer conquer Poland, as in the time of Paskievitch, because there are now no internal discords in Poland; and in spite of the efforts of our government to sow division between the two classes, her patriots have consented to deprive themselves of a part of their own estates, and have settled them on the peasants.... For us Russians, it is a question whether we are to wait till we are ignominiously expelled from Poland, which, self-emancipated, will be our enemy, or whether we will be wise enough voluntarily to renounce a ruinous ascendency, and thus make the Poles faithful friends of Russia.’ Such is in very truth the question now in agitation; and Europe looks on attentively.
And as regards Europe herself, we must say, that this question of the relations of Russia with Poland, after the terrible drama of last year, is by no means an indifferent matter. The western world is at present passing through one of those crises, during which everything is experienced, where everything is renewed, and everything alters in appearance. That which forty years ago was called the order of Europe no longer exists; nor have the peoples alone violated it. The governments themselves have so far lent a hand to the work, that, piece by piece, the fabric has fallen away.
The public order of 1815 is on the eve of disappearing, and what may be the new order which shall be brought forth by the labours of to-day assuredly no one can tell; but simply because we live at a time in which everything is recast, and re-elaborated, it is our first and best interest to watch the elements of this vast and universal movement, and carefully to consider every serious manifestation of the conscience of the nations. We must notice what dies and what lives. Russia, it has been said, ‘has a certain fear of the opinions of Europe.’ This opinion, most surely, has nothing in it hostile to Russia. On the contrary, Europe cannot but feel an interest in such labours as the emancipation of the serfs, of which the initiative was taken by the Emperor Alexander II., as also in that liberal work which is at present, day by day, evidently pursued in the heart of the Russian nation; but not the less, at the same time, is the eye of Europe upon that black spot at Warsaw. She sees and weighs both faults and misfortunes, and she says to herself, that, if faults have consequences, which follow them inevitably, there is not the less a fixed limit to a people’s misfortunes, and to a nation’s pangs.
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