We may, in the first place, be permitted to remark that the removal of our army from Warsaw to Lowicz to meet the enemy there, does not appear to have been a fortunate disposition. By it, some twenty days were spent in indecisive manœuvres against a superior force. If, during that interval, in place of marching to meet the enemy, the army had been concentrated in the environs of Warsaw, and employed in constructing fortifications upon the great roads leading to Warsaw, from Blonie, Nadarzyn, Piaseczno, and Kalwaryia, as a first line of defence, and in strengthening the great fortifications of Warsaw:—then, leaving half of our force to defend these fortifications, we might have crossed the Vistula with the other half, and acted upon all the detached corps of the enemy on the right bank, and have, besides, intercepted all the reinforcements for the main army of Paszkewicz. Our communications, also, with the provinces, being thus opened, and their territory freed from the presence of the enemy, we should have again been enabled to avail ourselves of their co-operation. I cannot but think that if such a plan of operation had been adopted, for which, in fact, there was ample time in the interval above named, an altogether different turn would have been given to our affairs.
If the objection should be made that the delay which actually occurred could not have been reasonably anticipated, and that Paszkewicz might have immediately advanced to the attack of Warsaw, still, without entering for the present into more detailed considerations in support of my opinion, it will be enough to answer, that if twenty-four hours merely were to be had, those twenty-four hours should have been employed in fortification rather than manœuvring, for it was not at Lowicz, but under the walls of Warsaw, that the enemy were to be fought. As it was at Warsaw, then, that the decisive encounter must inevitably have taken place, would it not have been the most judicious course, to have confined our operations on the left bank of the Vistula, to the strengthening of the defences of Warsaw; to have in fact adopted in regard to the enemy, who had now transferred his strength to the left bank of the Vistula, the same course of operations which we had hitherto pursued against him while he was in occupation of the right; in short, to have made of Warsaw another Praga. Our course of operations should in fact have been just reversed, to correspond with the change which the enemy's passage of the Vistula had made in our relative positions. While he was on the right bank, the region on the left of the river was open to us, and there were our resources; but now that he was acting with his main army on the left bank, it should have been our aim, by annihilating his detached corps, to have opened to our operations the whole region of the right, which was far more extensive than the other, and which, besides, had the advantage to us of being contiguous to the insurrectionary provinces. In case of an attack on Warsaw, which of course could not be an affair of a few days only, that part of our forces operating on the right bank could be withdrawn in ample season to present our whole strength to the enemy in its defence.
Since I have allowed myself to make the above remarks in regard to the plans of the general in chief, I must also be permitted to add that, at that period of inquietude and distrust, the presence of the commander in chief and of the president of the National Government, at Warsaw, was of the utmost importance. That presence was continually needed to act on the minds of the people, to preserve union and tranquillity, and to discover and bring to exemplary punishment the traitors who had been plotting the ruin of their country; in short, to encourage the patriotic and to alarm the treacherous. If those two individuals so deservedly beloved and honored by the nation had been present, we doubt whether those melancholy scenes at Warsaw, on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of August, when some forty persons who were under conviction of treason, perished by the hands of the people, would ever have taken place. Revolting as those scenes were, we must yet consider whether the circumstances of the moment will not afford some palliation for them. Deserted by those who had been the objects of their profoundest attachment and confidence, haunted by the recollections of the terrible disasters which had been incurred, and which they could attribute to nothing short of treason,—seeing twenty days again sacrificed, during which the Russian corps from Lithuania were permitted to pass the Vistula, (that of Kreutz at Plock, and that of Rudiger at Pulawy,) and join their main army; in fine, seeing this immense Russian force approaching the capital, from which perhaps they were expecting a repetition of all the atrocities of Suwarow,—remembering the thousands of victims which these traitors had already sacrificed, and reflecting on the thousands whom they had plotted to sacrifice; can it be wondered that, in those moments of despair, that people should have yielded to their impulses of indignation and have chosen rather to sacrifice at once those convicted traitors, than permit them to live, and perhaps be the instruments of the vengeance of the conqueror. Abandoned thus by those who should have been near to tranquillize them, the people took that justice into their own hands which the government had neglected to execute, and with their suspicions operated upon by this accumulation of disasters, they went to the degree of demanding the removal from their posts of prince Czartoriski and the general in chief.
Such are, I think, the true explanations of those acts, so serious in their consequences, and which have created so much surprise. The removal of Skrzynecki from the chief command was certainly one of the most deplorable results of this disordered state of the minds of the people;—for who could so well meet the exigencies of the time as he, familiar with every detail, engaged in the midst of events, and possessing the entire confidence of the army? It was in this period of distrust and suspicion that the Russian army, which seemed to have been waiting only for such a moment, received the intelligence from some traitors, yet undiscovered, within the walls of Warsaw, that the time had arrived for their attack. It was undoubtedly directed by such intelligence, that they made their attack on Warsaw, at the moment when the greater part of our army had been sent by its new commander, Prondzynski, to act on the right bank of the Vistula against the corps of Golowkin, which was menacing Praga. The city thus defended by the national guard and a small part of the army alone, and distracted by the divisions which Russian intrigues had fomented, fell, after a bloody defence,[82] and the fate of Poland was decided.
We have stated our belief that the fatal events which hastened the catastrophe might have been prevented by the mere presence, at the capital, of the heads of the army and the National Government, at those trying moments which brought on that disordered state of the public mind. Of this error we cannot readily acquit them, upright and patriotic as we know their intentions to have been. But upon the other point—that mysterious inaction of our forces, for so considerable a period, there is an important light thrown, in the following extracts from the correspondence of the prince Czartoriski with the French minister of the Exterior, read in the chamber of deputies, on the 19th of September, by the venerable general Lafayette, and in the extracts from his remarks, and those of general Lamarque, made on that occasion, and which have probably before met the eye of the reader.
EXTRACT FROM THE LETTER OF PRINCE CZARTORISKI.
'But we relied upon the magnanimity and the wisdom of the cabinets; trusting to them, we have not availed ourselves of all the resources which were at our command, both exterior and interior. To secure the approbation of the cabinets, to deserve their confidence, and to obtain their support, we have never departed from the strictest moderation; by which moderation, indeed, we have paralyzed many of the efforts which might have saved us in those latter days. But for the promises of the cabinets, we should have been able to strike a blow, which perhaps would have been decisive. We thought that it was necessary to temporize, to leave nothing to chance—and we have at last seen the certainty, at the present moment, that there is nothing but chance that can save us.'
General Lafayette: 'If it be said that the promises here referred to might have been only an affair of the gazettes,—I answer, that I have demanded explanations of the Polish legation, and here is the reply which I have obtained.
'"In answer to the letter which we have received from you, general, we hasten to assure you—