Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/955

Rh recruits were distributed in Russian regiments, and the use of the Russian language was enforced as far as possible in the civil administration and in the law courts. The customs barrier between Lithuania and the former Congress Kingdom was removed, in the hope that the influence of Russia would spread more easily over Poland. A very hostile policy was adopted against the Roman Catholic Church. But though these measures cowed the Poles, they failed to achieve their main purpose. Polish national sentiment was not destroyed, but intensified. It even spread to Lithuania. The failure of Nicholas was in good part due to mistaken measures of what he hoped would be conciliation. He supported Polish students at Russian universities on condition that they then spent a number of years in the public service. It was the hope of the emperor that they would thus become united in interest with the Russians. But these Polish officials made use of their positions to aid their countrymen, and were grasping and corrupt with patriotic intentions. The Poles in Russia, whether at the universities or in the public service, formed an element which refused to assimilate with the Russians. In Poland itself the tsar left much of the current civil administration in the hands of the nobles, whose power over their peasants was hardly diminished and was misused as of old. The Polish exiles who filled Europe after 1830 intrigued from abroad, and maintained a constant agitation. The stern government of Nicholas was, however, so far effective that Poland remained quiescent during the Crimean War, in which many Polish soldiers fought in the Russian army. The Russian government felt safe enough to reduce the garrison of Poland largely. It was not till 1863, eight years after the death of the tsar in 1855, that the last attempt of the Poles to achieve independence by arms was made.

The rising of 1863 may without injustice be said to be due to the more humane policy of the tsar Alexander II. Exiles were allowed to return to Poland, the Church was propitiated, the weight of the Russian administration was lightened, police rules as to passports were relaxed, and the Poles were allowed to form an agricultural society and to meet for a common purpose for the first time after many years. Poland in short shared in the new era of milder rule which began in Russia. In April 1856 Alexander II. was crowned king in the Roman Catholic cathedral of Warsaw, and addressed a flattering speech to his Polish subjects in French, for he too could not speak their language. His warning, “No nonsense, gentlemen” (Point de réveries, Messieurs), was taken in very ill part, and it was perhaps naturally, but beyond question most unhappily, the truth that the tsar’s concessions only served to encourage the Poles to revolt, and to produce a strong Russian reaction against his liberal policy. As the Poles could no longer dispose of an army, they were unable to assail Russia as openly as in 1830. They had recourse to the so-called “unarmed agitation,” which was in effect a policy of constant provocation designed to bring on measures of repression to be represented to Europe as examples of Russian brutality. They began in 1860 at the funeral of the widow of General Sobinski, killed in 1830, and on the 27th of February 1861 they led to the so-called Warsaw massacres, when the troops fired on a crowd which refused to disperse. The history of the agitation which culminated in the disorderly rising of 1863 is one of intrigue, secret agitation, and in the end of sheer terrorism by a secret society, which organized political assassination. The weakness of the Russian governor, General Gorchakov, in 1861 was a repetition of the feebleness of the Grand Duke Constantine in 1830. He allowed the Poles who organized the demonstration of the 27th of February to form a kind of provisional government. Alongside of such want of firmness as this were, however, to be found such measures of ill-timed repression as the order given in 1860 to the agricultural society not to discuss the question of the settlement of the peasants on the land. Concession and repression were employed alternately. The Poles, encouraged by the one and exasperated by the other, finally broke into the partial revolt of 1863–1864. It was a struggle of ill-armed partisans, who were never even numerous, against regular troops, and was

marked by no real battle. The suppression of the rising was followed by a return to the hard methods of Nicholas. The Polish nobles, gentry and Church—the educated classes generally—were crushed. It must, however, be noted that one class of the measures taken to punish the old governing part of the population of Poland has been very favourable to the majority. The peasants were freed in Lithuania, and in Poland proper much was done to improve their position. The Russian government has benefited by their comparative prosperity, and by the incurable hatred they continue to feel for the classes which were once their oppressors. The national history of Poland closes with the rising of 1863.

.—The best general history of Poland is still Józef Szujski’s monumental History of Poland according to the latest investigations (4 vols., Pol., Lemberg, 1865–1866), a work which has all the authority of careful criticism and easy scholarship. It adopts, throughout, the conservative monarchical standpoint Szujski’s book has superseded even Joachim Lelewel’s learned History of Poland (Pol., Brussels, 1837), of which there are excellent French (Paris, 1844) and German (Leipzig, 1846) editions. The best contemporary general history is August Sokolowski’s Illustrated History of Poland (Pol., Vienna, 1896–1900). The best independent German history of Poland is, on the whole, Roepell (Richard) and Caro’s (Jakab) Geschichte Polens (Hamburg and Gotha, 1840–1888). Scholars desiring to explore for themselves the sources of Polish history from the 11th century to the 18th have immense fields of research lying open before them in the Acta historica res gestas Poloniae illustrantia (1878, &c.), the Scriptores rerum polonicarum (1872, &c.), and the Historical Dissertations (Pol., 1874, &c.), all three collections published, under the most careful editorship, by the University of Cracow. To the same order belong Ludwik Finkel’s Fontes rerum polonicarum (Lemberg, 1901, &c.), and the innumerable essays and articles in The Historical Quarterly Review of Poland (Pol., Lemberg, 1887 &c.). The soundest history of Lithuania, before its union with Poland, is still Lelewel’s History of Lithuania (Pol., Leipzig, 1839), of which a French translation was published at Paris in 1861. Proceeding to the earlier history of Poland, Lelewel’s Poland in the Middle Ages (4 vols., Posen, 1846–1851) is still a standard work, though the greatest authority on Polish antiquities is now Tadeusz Wojciechowski, who unites astounding learning with a perfect style. His Historical Sketches of the Eleventh Century (Pol., Cracow, 1904) is a very notable work. Karol Szajnocha’s great monograph, justly described as “a pearl of historical literature,” Jadwiga and Jagiello (4 vols., Lemberg, 1861), the result of twelve years of exhaustive study, is our best authority on the first union between Poland and Lithuania. On the other hand, his Boleslaus the Bold, &c. (Lemberg, 1859) would now be considered too romantic and picturesque. The relations between Poland, Prussia and Livonia are adequately dealt with by two sound German books, Theodor Schiemann’s Russland, Polen und Livland bis ins xviii. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1885–1887) and Max Perlbach’s Preussisch-polnische Studien (Halle, 1886). A good guide to the history of the Jagiellonic period, 1386–1572, is also Adolf Pawinski’s Poland in the 15th Century (Pol., Warsaw, 1883–1886). Of the numerous works relating to the reign of the heroic Stephen Báthory, 1575–1586, Ignaty Janicki’s Acta historica res gestas Stephani Bathorei illustrantia (Cracow, 1881), and Paul Pierling’s Un arbitrage pontifical entre la Pologne et la Russie 1581–1582 (Brussels, 1890) can be recommended. The best Polish work on the subject is Wincenty Zakrzewski’s The Reign of Stephen Báthory (Pol., Cracow, 1887). Of the books relating to the Polish Vasas the most notable is Szanocha’s Two Years of our History, 1646–1648 (Lemberg, 1865), which deals exhaustively with the little-known but remarkable attempt (the last practical attempt of its kind) of Ladislaus IV. to abolish the incurably vicious Polish constitution. Another first-class work, relating to the same period and dealing specifically with the mode of warfare of heroic Poland, is Józef Tretiak’s History of the War of Chocim (Pol., Lemberg, 1893). For works relating to the Sobieskian, Saxon and Partitional periods of Polish history, the reader is referred to the bibliographical notes appended to the biographies of John III., king of Poland, Michal Czartoryski, Stanislaus II., Tadeusz Andrzej Kościuszko, Józef Poniatowski, and the other chief actors of these periods. But the following additional authorities should also be noted. (1) Lelewel’s History of the Reign of Stanislaus Augustus (Pol., Warsaw, 1831; Fr. ed., Paris, 1839); the book is important as being based on unpublished memoirs in the exclusive possession of the author’s family. (2) Materials for the History of the last century of the Republic, by S. Korwin (Cracow, 1890). (3) Die letzte polnische Königswahl, by Szymon Askenazy (Cracow, 1882–1886). (4) The extremely valuable Prince Repnin in Poland by Aleksander Kraushar (Warsaw, 1900), one of the most thorough of contemporary Polish historians innumerable are the works relating to the Partitional period. Perhaps the best of all is Walery Jan Kalinka’s great work in four volumes, Der vierjährige polnische Reichstag (Berlin, 1896–1898). Kalinka is, however, far too severe upon the patriots and much too indulgent towards