In the spring of 1871, when Adolphe Thiers’ government fled to Versailles and the capital was engulfed in the flames of revolution, between four and six hundred Polish émigrés volunteered to fight under the red banner. Most of them had already experienced the smell of gunpowder, so they became the elite of the communard army…
Of all the Polish insurrections in the 19th century, the January Uprising is still an emotional topic. There are many reasons for this – not only was it the largest of the Polish uprisings, but also the most significant in terms of its long-term results. On the one hand, the January Uprising is very symbolic…
For months, he fought fiercely to restore his homeland to the European map, but his heroic death cut short his efforts. His bravery and death became symbols of the January Uprising. by Piotr Bejrowski On the night of April 10-11, 1864, Romuald Traugutt, the leader of the January Uprising, was arrested by the Russian…
During the partitions of Poland, St. Petersburg recognized that it was impossible to erase Polish culture or to turn Poles into Russians. However, a few Russian officials (or tsars) thought that Poles/Catholics could never be fully loyal. That was the paradox of russification – says Professor Theodore Weeks. Nowadays, Poles and Russians are both…
On January 22, 1863, the Polish ‘Central National Committee’ proclaimed the outbreak of an uprising and issued a manifesto whereby it proclaimed itself the Interim National Government. The document appealed to all the inhabitants of the former Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita (Commonwealth), within its pre-partition borders, to fight against tsarist rule for liberty. The manifesto heralded the…
The organizers of the January Uprising, which broke out in the Russian partition in 1863, tried to win the peasant masses over to the national cause. The Insurgent National Government had drawn conclusions from the people’s insignificant support for the November Uprising and from the tragic Galician Slaughter. In the absence of a regular army,…
