POLAND 



273 



resigned his dictatorship, and Prince Czartoryski 

 was appointed president of the provisional govern- 

 ment. From January 1831 till 8th September of 

 the same year a series of sanguinary engagements 

 took place, in which the Poles were at first success- 

 ful. On the 8th of September, however, Paske- 

 vitch (q.v.), who had succeeded Diebitsch, took 

 Warsaw, and the insurrection was virtually at an 

 nd. The Poles had not succeeded in obtaining 

 any assistance from foreign powers. From this 

 time the independence of Poland was suppressed, 

 ami in 1832 it was declared an integral part of the 

 Russian empire, with a separate administration, 

 headed by a viceroy chosen by the czar ; the con- 

 stitution was annulled, and a strict censorship of 

 the press WHS established. Many of the literary 

 treasures were carried off to the public library of 

 St Petersburg. Slight outbreaks occurred in 1846, 

 which were severely repressed. Simultaneous dis- 

 turbances in the Prussian and Austrian portions of 

 Poland met with the same fate. Their leaders 

 in Prussia were imprisoned, but released by the 

 revolution of 1848 at Berlin. In no part of the lost 

 provinces has the work of denationalisation been 

 more complete than in Prussian Poland. It has 

 proceeded quietly, but thoroughly. In Galicia the 

 peasants at the same time massacred many of the 

 nobles. On the 6th of November 1848 the republic 

 of Cracow was incorporated with Austria. 



After the accession of Alexander II. in 1855 the 

 condition of the Poles was considerably ameliorated. 

 An amnesty brought back many of those who had 

 been expatriated, and various other reforms were 

 hoped for. On the 29th November, on the thirtieth 

 anniversary of the insurrection, many political 

 manifestations took place, both in the churches and 

 elsewhere. On these occasions riots took place, 

 and some persons were unfortunately killed. 

 Warsaw was now declared in a state of siege. In 

 .lime 1862 an attempt was made to assassinate 

 General Liiders, the governor, who was succeeded 

 by the Grand-duke Constantino, the brother of the 

 emperor, the Marquis Wielopolski being appointed 

 hief minister. Meanwhile Alexander U. had 

 made great concessions ; the public offices of the 

 country were to be filled by Poles; the Polish 

 language was to be the official one, and municipal 

 institutions were granted to Warsaw and the chief 

 cities. The people, however, received these over- 

 tures sullenly, and on the night of January 15, 

 1863, a secret conscription was held, and those 

 inspected of disaffection to the government were 

 NiM/ed in their beds to be enlisted. Attempts were 

 made to assassinate the grand-duke and other 

 Russian officials, and Lithuania and Volhynia were 

 also declared in a state of siege. The committee 

 of the National government issued its first pro- 

 clamation in February 1863 ; and a week after- 

 wards Mieroslawski raised the standard of insur- 

 rection in the north-east, on the frontier of Posen. 

 The committee (Rzcul) had secret sessions, and 

 was for a long time able to defy the Russian 

 government : its emissaries, called stiletcziki, put 

 to death many obnoxious persons and Russian spies. 

 It also issued proclamations from time to time ; 

 and many districts of Augustovo, Radom, Lublin, 

 Volhynia, and Lithuania were speedily in insurrec- 

 tion. It was a mere guerilla war, and no great or 

 li'cisive conflicts took place ; but the sympathy of 

 Europe was largely enlisted on behalf of the Poles. 

 Incendiarism and murder were rampant; and at 

 last, with the assistance of Prnssia and the secret 

 support of Austria, the czar's troops succeeded in 

 trampling out (1864) the last embers of insurrec- 

 tion. Liin^'iewicz, one of the leaders who had 

 directed the struggle, held out for some time, but 

 at length made his escape into Galicia. From the 

 time of the suppression of the insurrection the 

 382 



kingdom of Poland has disappeared from all official 

 documents. All education in the university and 

 the schools is now carried on in the Russian 

 language. 



Among histories may be recommended ffistoire de 

 Pologne, by Lelewel (Paris, 1844) ; Geschichte Polens, by 

 Ropell and Caro (vols. i.-vi., Gotha, 1840-88); Dzieje 

 Polskie to Zaryzsie ( ' Sketch of the History of Poland ' ), 

 by Bobrzynski. See also Count Moltke's Poland (Eng. 

 trans. 1885), and the present writer's Poland (1893). 

 For maps of Poland at various dates, see, besides that 

 given above, the historical maps of Europe, Vol. IV. p. 466. 



RUSSIAN POLAND. The so-called 'Kingdom of 

 Poland,' united to Russia in 1815, had its own con- 

 stitution till 1830, and a separate government till 

 1864, when, after the suppression of the revolt, the 

 last visible remnant of independence was taken 

 away. The administration was at first given to 

 eight military governors, and then to a commission 

 sitting in St Petersburg. Finally, in 1868, the 

 Polish province was absolutely incorporated with 

 Russia, and the ten governments into which it was 

 divided are grouped with the governments of 

 Russia proper. In 1867 the area of the ' kingdom ' 

 was alxmt 49,000 sq. m., with a population of about 

 5,700,000, of whom 4,330,000 were Roman Catho- 

 lics, 780,000 Jews, 260,000 Greek Catholics ( mostly 

 United), and the rest Lutherans or other Protest- 

 ants. In 1890 the ten Polish provinces Kaliscz, 

 Kielce, Lomza, Lublin, Piotrkow, Plock, Radom, 

 Siedlce, Ssuwalki, and Warsaw hod a collective 

 population of 8,105,000. The several areas and 

 populations of these governments will be found in 

 the table at RUSSIA. Al>out 10,000,000 still here 

 and in Prnssia and Austria speak the Polish 

 tongue. The surface and soil of the Russian 

 Polish provinces resembles that of the rest of old 

 Poland ; the commerce is still mostly in the hands 

 of the Jews. 



POLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. The 

 Polish language is one of the most widely-spread 

 branches of the Slavonic family ; it forms the west- 

 ern branch together with Bohemian and Sorbish or 

 Lusatian Wendish. Like all the Slavonic lan- 

 guages, it is highly inflected, having seven cases, 

 and, by means of the so-called ' aspects,' expressing 

 very delicate distinctions of meaning in the verb. 

 Like Russian, however, it lacks the imperfect and 

 aorist which are found in Bulgarian and Serbian. 

 It has a rich vocabulary and great power of com- 

 pounding words. It resembles the Old Slavonic in 

 having two nasals, like the French on and in; these 

 are found nowhere else among Slavs except in a Bul- 

 garian dialect. After the introduction or Christian- 

 ity Latin exercised a great influence on its vocabu- 

 lary and literature, and subsequent to the 14th 

 century it adopted into its vocabulary numerous 

 German words. Already in the 16th century 

 Polish was a highly cultivated language, and began 

 to supplant Latin, until then the language of the 

 state and of the learned. The best Polish gram- 

 mars are those of Malecki, Gramatylca Historyczno- 

 Pordwnaiveza Jczyka Polskieqo (' Historico-com- 

 narative Grammar of the Polish Language,' Lem- 

 lierg, 1879), and C. W. Smith, Grammatik der 

 polnischen Sprache (Berlin, 1845); the most com- 

 prehensive dictionary is that of Linde (new ed. 

 Lemberg, 1854-60); that of Bandtke (2 vols. 

 Breslau, 1806) is good, and so also is the English- 

 Polish dictionary published at Berlin in 1849. 



The history of Polish literature is divisible 

 into five distinct periods. ( 1 ) From the earliest 

 times to the middle of the 16th century, the epoch 

 of the Reformation. The Poles, unlike most of 

 their Slavonic kindred, are poor in legendary and 

 popular poetry, and much of their early literature 

 is in Latin. Casimir III. (q.v.), surnamed 'the 

 Great,' did more than any other early Polish 



