THE POLISH FOURTH. 



his Jeffries' career. This commission condemned Lukasenski to nine 

 years' hard labour, Dobrogayski and Dobrzycki to six, and all three 

 to be degraded from their military rank the rest were acquitted. 

 The Emperor Alexander, in his inexhaustible clemency, commuted the 

 sentence of Lukasenski to seven years, and that of his companions to 

 four. The execution of the sentence took place at Warsaw, on the 1st 

 of October of the same year, in the presence of the Russian and Polish 

 armies. The condemned bore it with courage amid the general con- 

 sternation. Chained to a wheelbarrow, they were afterwards sent to 

 the fortress of Zamock, 



The limits of this paper will not permit us to detail the sufferings 

 he underwent in his confinement. Hope never forsook him; and, con- 

 vinced that it required but a man of head and execution to revo- 

 lutionize Poland one ready to sacrifice himself to the cause of in- 

 dependence he resolved to attempt this, and thought to succeed by 

 seizing the fortress of Zamock ; but the indiscretion of one of his ac- 

 complices betrayed the existence of this new plot. A court-martial, 

 assembled on the spot, condemned Lukasenski to death. This cir- 

 cumstance reawakened the slumbering hatred of the Grand Duke 

 against Lukasenski : he had long panted for an opportunity of again 

 bringing him to trial, for he was aware that he was yet in the dark 

 respecting the national freemasonry its object and its ramifications ; 

 the unsuccessful attempt at Zamock, therefore, furnished him with a 

 pretext for removing the inquiry. The sentence pronounced against 

 the unfortunate Lukasenski was commuted into imprisonment for life : 

 but what seemed a species of mercy became, in its execution, an 

 atrocious aggravation of the punishment. Once a week the wretched 

 prisoner underwent the punishment of the knout in the presence of a 

 military auditor, who interrogated him at the most poignant moment 

 of his sufferings. Despair, in fact, extracted some indiscreet words 

 from him, which led to the arrest of the members of the ancient 

 directing committee. This was at the moment of the death of the 

 Emperor Alexander, in 1825; and it is too well known how the bloody 

 accession of Nicholas to the throne compromised the celebrated Rus- 

 sian association. This circumstance soon led to the imprisonment of 

 the most distinguished members of that part of Poland who were in 

 correspondence with Pestel, Bestonjiff, and other Muscovite leaders. 

 A commission of inquiry was instituted by Nicholas, under the pre- 

 sidency of Count Haneslon Amoyski, president of the senate. It was 

 composed of half Russians and half Poles. Lukasenski, brought be- 

 fore it, was called upon to juridicially confirm what had escaped from 

 him before the military auditor. Showing his lacerated back, " Be- 

 hold, gentlemen," said he, " my body, and weigh well the value of a 

 deposition extracted in a moment of excruciating torture." This noble 

 firmness, and the high-minded independence of the Polish senate, led 

 to the acquittal of all the prisoners. 



In the glorious night of the 29th Nov., 1830, when the Fourth of 

 the line, the brave regiment of Lukasenski, acceded the first to 

 the revolution, and signalized their adhesion by the capture of the 

 arsenal, the people and the soldiers forced all the prisons, to de- 

 liver the victims of foreign tyranny. But it was in vain that they 



