The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

It is an easy thing to 'speak for Buncombe,' as we say in America; it is an easy thing to proclaim measures when we take no thought of how they may be carried out; it is easy to excite the enthusiasm of the popular lecturer, always in search of novelty with which to feed his hearers; it may be pleasant to furnish venom to wounded self-esteem or disappointed and petty ambition—but it will be found an exceedingly difficult task to reconcile absolutism with freedom, czarism with liberalism, the division of men into appointed castes and classes with the existence of liberty and political equality. We are assured, not only by the writer of the letter in question, but by the sages of New York, that the Polish peasants were not willing to fight for Poland, that they called their countrymen now in arms against Rossia 'dogs of nobles,' and 'that it was really their duty to rise against and denounce their former masters to Rossia and Austria!'

If these assertions are true, who then filled the ranks of the Polish insurgents? Who furnished food to those who lived for months in the depths of forests, the haunts of mountain gorges? How was it possible that without the connivance of the peasants the insurgents should pass to and fro, or lie hidden in woods and fields? It was stated authoritatively that the insurgents, were composed principally of Hungarian refugees, about ten Frenchmen, a few strangers from other nations, but of the number of the lesser nobility, men, in short, in search of shelter and fortune. A strange fortune, a marvellous shelter indeed to reward the greed of the ambitious—exile, death, and torture! Were the testimony of such witnesses to be relied upon, we might well exclaim: 'Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.' Yet how is it that we find among the seven hundred patriots who were hung so many Poles, less than a half of whom were Catholics, many of whom were Jews, Protestants, and even Rosso-Greeks of various classes? Among the forty thousand known deported, torn ruthlessly away from their native homes for centuries, we find nearly five thousand Israelites, ten thousand peasants (known), and from four to six thousand of Greek and other creeds. The two villages near Lida, two in the government of Grodno, the hundreds of villages and thousands of huts near Dwina, Rzezyca, Mohilew, Witebsk, burned, razed to the ground by an excited and hired rabble of Muscovite Muziks, who had sought and found hospitality in Poland for hundreds of years—certainly all these villages and huts were not inhabited even by the 'lesser nobility.' And it is also certain that the dwellers were not so cruelly punished for denouncing the 'dogs of nobles'—an expression, if we are not mistaken, taken from the vocabulary of the corporal or subaltern officials, and which has never reached the fourteenth class—from which the Rossian begins to reckon humanity.

The allegation of the existence of unrooted feudalism in Poland, because such a system was known to the whole of Middle Europe, must be accounted for by the evident ignorance of Polish history; and we assure both teachers and readers, notwithstanding the evident wish to find it in Poland, that it was unknown to her, nor could it subsist in the presence of Polish institutions, habits, customs, and geography.

We can scarcely suppose it possible that our author means to insinuate that thousands of noble families bought and transported arms for the purpose of speculation. Notwithstanding the evidence he had of one such bad business transaction for the purpose of sustaining and upholding the insurrection, his frequent intimations of the incorrigible and unruly character of the few Poles left, would almost authorize us in believing that such was the intention of the writer when speaking of the aforesaid arms.

Oh, in the name of common sense, for the sake of the men whose country has been torn from them, who may not speak their mothers' tongue in the land of their fathers, who are forbidden to worship in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, whose sacred homes are desecrated by the presence of privileged spies, who cannot sit down in peace in the holy quiet of evening, because they know that the morrow may see them dragged off to unknown and inaccessible dungeons, or summoned before brutal judges without defenders, where they will find accusers, but will be allowed to cite no witnesses; subjected to witness the horrible anxiety endured every spring and fall by Polish fathers and mothers lest the sons of their love should be unexpectedly seized in the night and hurried off over the Caucasus, the Ural, or to the mouth of the Amour, to serve in the army of the oppressor for life, or longer than home memories in such young bosoms could be expected to last, with no prospect of reward save such as may be reckoned in the number of palkis and pletnis (whips and lashes); sons, whether rich or poor, to be exposed to cavil, cunning, and vindictiveness, to the practices of gambling judges and a profligate soldiery, to a venal police, to fraudulent employés, themselves badly paid for service, but whose extortions and abuses always meet with approval, a single complaint against whom would expose the complainant to be sent through that hopeless gate always open on the route to Siberia;—oh, for the sake of common humanity, say not that men placed in such situations have, in spite of their glorious history, no rights, no claims on human sympathy, no cause to sacrifice life even when it has become a haunting horror!

Believe not that such complaints are inventions: the facts are known to everybody who will look upon them. They are no slanderous stories, but occurrences renewed with every morning, taking place under all circumstances and with every transaction patent to the world. They were appreciated and described in Prussia, and even in Austria verified, not long before the last campaign. Under such circumstances, what must be thought of the discoveries and conclusions of writers who assert that 'the Polish nation is a mere chimera'? As no individual, mighty as he may be, can by a blasphemous word suppress the existence of the Eternal Father, so neither passion nor love, favor nor animosity, interest nor purpose of the most talented or ambitious, can erase at pleasure a nationality which has a history of over a thousand years of existence, a nationality proved by the last hundred years of incessant struggle for independence with three giants. This nation has marked its boundaries with graveyards toward the Dniester, Dnieper, Niemen, and Dwina, where rest the beaten hordes of Batu or Nogays. Can the record be erased of the power that broke the sword of the Osmanlis, and was it a chimera that preserved Western Europe from such sights as Polowce and Pietschiniegs, etc.? You may perhaps to-day designate as a chimera the Vienna saved in 1683, that very Vienna which in 1815 first conceived the idea of sowing the seeds of distrust between Galicians and Lodomerians—an idea soon after adopted, perfected, and publicly propagated by Rossians, who applied the practice to Lithuanians, Volhynians, Podolans, Polans, Radymicians, etc.—an idea now held in the fierce grasp of Muraview, Anienkow, and probably at no very distant period to be recalled to the mind of the originator.

The gentleman's knowledge of Russians (the true name is Rossians, the other being assumed to effect a certain purpose in Western Europe), Prussians, and Austrians, to the exclusion of Poles, proves only that his geographic and ethnographic researches in Poland went no farther than those of the 'reliable gentleman' who described the Bunker Hill monument under President Lafayette.

In addition to the above, let us consult simply the sound of the names of places, and we can form some idea of the extent of races and nationalities. Nowgorod, Kaluga, Pskow—are Rossian; Telsze, Szawle, Rosienie—Lithuanian; Winszpilis, Gielgawa, Libosie—Courland; Lublin, Ostrolenka, Plock—Polish; Wlodrimirz, Zytomirz, Berdyczev—Volhynian. In Austria, are the inhabitants of Venice, Prague, and Buda, Austrian? The name of Prussia is an old one of Slavonians living at the mouth of the Vistula, and has no etymology in the Teutonic language. Those of Galicia and Lodomeria are unskilfully disfigured from Halitsh (Halicz) and Wlodzimir. The name of Prussia was assumed by Frederic II., margrave of Brandenburg, when he took the title of king, at the same time giving solemn oaths never to pretend to the sovereignty of Dantzick (Gdansk), Thorn (Torun), etc.

The present empire of Alexander is not of Russia, but of Rossia, and the name of Russia is imposed on Polans near Kiow, on Radymicians near Nowogrodek, on Drewlans south of the river Pripec, etc.; and we must remember that Catharine II., in 1764, had solemnly declared by her ambassadors, Kayserling and Repnin, that she had no right to Russias or Ruthenias in Poland: 'Declaramus suam Imperatoriam Majestatem Dominam nostram clementissimam ex usu tituli totius Rossiæ, nec sibi, nec successoribus suis neque Imperio suo jus ullum in ditiones et terræ quæ sub nomine Russiæ a Regno Poloniæ magnoque ducatu Lithuaniæ possiduntur,' etc.

The prediction of the reëstablishment of serfdom as a result aimed at in the present Polish struggle, is not only rash but preposterous, and has no foundation except in a fixed purpose to direct all sympathy toward Rossia.

The true bondage that tied man in Poland to the soil, began with the introduction of police, passports, censors or skaski, recruiting, conscription, and taxation, introduced by Prussia, Austria, and Rossia, as so-called improvements. Poland had more free peasants, called Ziemianin, Kmiec, Kozak, than there were in France during the régime of the Gabeles or Leibeigenschaft in Germany. That they entirely disappeared after the fall of Poland was surely not her fault. The peasants on the estates attached to the clergy of all denominations, to public schools, to the crown, and to the nation, were in a much better condition, materially and morally, than are at present those in some parts of Hainault and Thuringen. Individual abuses by an unconscientious lord were to be seen as well in Connaught as near Debretschyn, near the Saone as on the Necker. Times—contemporary with independent Poland, and hence not very far back—beheld these sins against humanity committed on a larger scale, and in lands in otherwise happier conditions. The phrase bonded labor is known under the best institutions. But this excuses no one. Poland, without any compulsive cause, in 1764 and 1768, took these questions into consideration; in 1791, was even more explicit; and in 1792, Kosciuszko distinctly settled the condition of the Polish peasant, and that without opposition from the Polish nobility—a measure immediately overruled and suppressed by Prussia and Rossia, both accusing Poland of being a dangerous nest of Jacobinism. In 1807, in the grand duchy of Warsaw, after it was retaken from Prussia, the condition of the peasantry was far more clear and protected than even now promised by the Czar Alexander II., and was probably better preserved than it can be under the crowd of employés and magistrates, nominally elected by the peasants, but in fact imported from Saratow, Kazan, Penza, etc., for the purpose of teaching liberty and Siberian civilization in Warsaw and Wilna.

Common sense and the ordinary rules of logic force upon us the conviction that writings of the above stamp are gotten up to produce certain effects. Can any be found simple enough to believe that a whole people would be aroused, armed, and taught to what end and how to use the given arms, as was done by the manifesto of the Polish National Government, January 22d, 1863, only to be deceived and in the end deprived of that for which they had fought? By what right can bad faith be imputed to land owners whom experience, a sense of justice, and even interest, had already impelled to get rid of a useless and burdensome relation? These land owners, even under the Rossian Government (in 1818), had solemnly begged the uncle of the present czar, Alexander I., to allow them to be freed from the onerous responsibilities caused by serfdom under Rossian surveillance and severity.

The letter from Paris further states, on what authority we know not, that the condition of the peasant or serf in Poland was dreadful until the seventeenth century. This is going very far back, and probably at that period, if facts could be found to sustain the writer's allegation, the condition of bondmen—vilains regardants—boors, Lebeigenschaft, manans, etc., was not better elsewhere. But here again we must differ in opinion, and beg leave to state, not only to the author of the letter, but to all other self-constituted authorities, whose knowledge of Poland is derived from The London Times, Chambers's Magazine, M. Hilperding, Kattow, or M. Morny, etc., that, with all due respect to their social positions, we must deny them the title of well-informed historians and profound judges of Poland and the Slavonic races. Up to the seventeenth century, the peasantry (Kmiec, Ziemiamin) had its representatives in the diet, and could find entrance into the ranks of the nobility, which had no divisions into classes or titular distinctions. Said nobility had the right to serve their country during war, and a peasant providing himself with a horse and suitable arms, was not excluded from that class. They could also take orders among the clergy, and hence rise to high dignities in the church. Public schools in Poland were never shut to the peasants, nor were any distinctions therein authorized in favor of one or other class of pupils. In schools then they enjoyed all privileges in common, and these were great—a separate jurisdiction, and the facilities of reaching higher ranks. Kromer, Janicki, Poniatowski, great names in Polish history, can show no other origin than one nearer to the Ziemianin than to any other class.

If the current of fashion did not warp all judgments in favor of Rossia, the writers of 'Tardy Truths' from Paris and elsewhere would have reflected a little longer, and would soon have discovered that the ignorance and poverty of the Polish peasantry were not due solely to the Poles themselves. Polish schools were formerly all completely free, and each school even had funds for the poor, called purses, foundations, etc. Rossia, in the last fifty years, charged as high as $625 for inscription alone in the higher classes, and about $25 for elementary beginners. How could a poor family rise in prosperity if this school was often the first cause of losing the favorite son; if they did send the child to school they might lose him as a recruit for the army or navy, as designated by the whim of the treacherous teacher and recruiting officer; and this did not exempt from public burdens, as they were still obliged to pay taxes for him during ten years, and contribute to all public services, as stations (stoyki), wagons and teams (rozgony), repairing and making public and private roads, extra post service, besides innumerable services imposed for his own personal benefit by a spravnik, straptschy, zasiedatel, sotnik, etc. Add to this the thwarting of intercourse and commerce by every imaginable means under the system of the famous M. Kankrin.

Could the peasant or the master become wealthy when a measure called a ton, weighing about eight hundred and forty pounds, of wheat brought the enormous sum of $4.25? a load of hay, drawn by one horse, seventy-five cents when well paid, and nothing when wanted by ulans or hussars garrisoned in the neighborhood? A hen, with a dozen and a half well-grown chickens, hardly brought enough to pay the value of the commonest apron.

Such things as these were never known in ancient Poland, now so unanimously accused and condemned by fashionable philanthropy. Even eighty years ago such abuses would have been vainly looked for. We remember, in our younger days, when conversing with an old sowietnik (counsellor), to have heard him relate his bewildered astonishment at the comfort and well-being in Poland when sent under an escort of Cossacks to introduce Rossian improvements. 'What has become of them?' we asked innocently. 'Ha!' was his naïve reply; 'St. Petersburg has since then grown into a splendid city!'

Let us call the attention of Russo-maniacs to the fact that eighty years ago, soon after the second partition of Poland, flax in Riga brought eight hundred and seventy florins, while in 1845 it hardly brought two hundred and forty florins; and the famous wheat of Sandomir sold, at the first-named period, at sixty, while in 1856 it brought barely thirty-five. Yet money now is cheaper than before 1800.

Did the Polish nobleman, selfish and wicked as now seems the fashion to describe him, force the peasant of Samogitia to servile work, when the latter had an opportunity of drawing a good profit from the results of his labor in the neighboring marts of Memel, Liban, Riga, Mittau, Venden, etc.? No, must we answer to our readers. There might have been seen a boor's wife dressed in sky blue lined with fox fur, and drawn to church in a comfortable kolaska, by two excellent, plump, Samogitian ponies; and neither did the father of the family exhaust his strength in night watches or day labor, as he had twenty teams to dispose of, and could offer to an unexpected visitor a broiled chicken with milk sauce, and a couple of bottles of brown stout from Barclay, Perkins & Co., of London. Such prosperity, although then declining, was still to be found in 1830. Why does it not exist to-day? Let this question be answered by civilizers and democrats from Tambow, Saratow, or Penza, and their jealous apologists.

Our writer seems to think he has made a wonderful discovery when he exultingly exclaims: 'How surprised these pretended liberals would be to see that their efforts only tend toward reconstituting a monarchical Poland (was Poland really monarchical?—we may doubt) under the protection of a feudal and Catholic Church!' Such charges were also made in the eighteenth century, and were suggested by similar motives. I do not feel called upon to defend the Catholics of Poland. I would simply retort upon the authors of such suggestions, by referring to certain distinguished rabbis, as Heilprin, Meintzel, Jastrow, etc.; to Protestants, as Konarski, Potworowski, Kasaius, Krolikowski, Czynski, and hosts of others; and also to Mohammedans, as Baranowski, Mucha, Bielak, etc. I cannot condemn a man because he is a Catholic, because I have everywhere, and in every religious community, found both patriots and traitors to their country, to their origin, to principle, and to their religion. But this I must say, that of whatever denomination or sect be the minister or priest, he has a right to be a faithful son to his fatherland and race. It happened that in Poland the Catholic priest stood opposed to the Rossian pope. If the latter can be a Rossian patriot, why should a like sentiment render guilty a Polish priest? This animosity in certain circles proceeds from a partiality to the Rosso-Greek Church, which, some years ago, during the visit of the emperor Nicholas to England, certain ignorant or du. By way of parenthesis, we may add that the Rosso-Greek Church separated long ago from the Eastern Greek Church, preserving, however, all its outward forms. Peter I. abolished the patriarchate, introduced his own classes and reforms, and made himself head of the church. He gave the name of synod to a permanent council, nominated, appointed, dismissed, controlled, rewarded, and punished by himself, according to his own judgment, passion, or will. The Græco-Rossian Church is kept under the same discipline as the army, and an offending pope is sent, with the rank of private, to some remote regiment.

The author of the letter from Paris somewhat contradictorily asserts that the women, being superior in Poland, govern the men, but are themselves governed entirely by the priests. This scarcely tallies with strict logic; but, for the sake of truth and of a just respect for our mothers, who taught us to love our country and freedom, who gave us strength in exile, and faith through persecution, and who instructed us how to think, and inspired us with those noble sentiments, seemingly denied to the mothers of the 'fashionable civilization' (of St. Petersburg), among whom there is not one lady writer—we will thank this writer for the refutation offered by him to an impudent slander, emanating from a contributor to Chambers' Magazine, of January last. We repeat that we thank him for his just tribute to Polish women, however inimical he may be to the Polish cause, and however much he may depreciate our sex. Yet it seems strange that, while accusing Polish women of being entirely under the control of the priests, and hence to have been chiefly instrumental in fomenting the last insurrection, the author did not notice, or is purposely silent regarding, a fact which, as he appears to have been longer in a Galician chateau than elsewhere, must have fallen under his notice, namely, that in Galicia, the Polish priest was the most decided opponent to any insurrection. How, then, could the active Polish women-patriots be instruments of the action condemned by the apologists of the absolute government of Rossia?

The admonition to France, on the ground that, after the revolution of 1789, she is committing a contradictory error by showing sympathy toward a revolution gotten up by priests, is but a consequence of the first judgment, and we may leave to France and her sense of her own interests to do what she may think right and profitable. We will simply mention that, for French glory, and for this error, as the author calls it, two hundred thousand Poles were slain in Egypt, Italy, San Domingo, Spain, Germany, Holland, and on the plains of Mozajsk, Kraslaw, Boryssow, Eylau, Friedland, etc. The monument seen from the balcony of the Tuileries has the names upon it, which we scarcely can suppose to have been inscribed for the sole purpose of filling space.

The friends of Poland believe that they serve the cause of progress by aiding in the reëstablishment of the Polish nation. We presume there are plenty of men in France who know that during the last thirty years Rossia has spread her dominion in Asia over twice the area of Germany and France together, that she is only eighty miles from Peking, and as far from India as Vienna is from the Black Sea. Moreover, Asiatic people, always dreaming of plunder in Europe, once armed with European Minié rifles and rifled cannon, may repeat anew the incursions of Attila, Tamerlane, Battu, etc. The end to be gained and the booty will create the temptation, and offer superior inducements.

The effort to palliate Rossian cruelty, skilful as it is, by the alleged necessities of war, by denials, or by asserting it to be mere revenge for similar atrocities committed by Poles, must be appreciated according to the sources whence it emanates. What the letter writer or similar twelve-hour visitors saw in Poland, particularly in Kracow, of people sharpening knives or preparing deadly poisons, need here be merely referred to by saying that in times of general confusion we have no means to foresee or to control personal revenge, and also that we will not here cite the reports of Polish papers or accounts of Germans. We will take our data from the Moscow Invalid, the czar's Universal Journal at Warsaw, and the Journal de Petersbourg. From these we find it stated that the number of men hanged in three hundred and sixty-five days of insurrection was eight hundred and fifty, besides many others whose names were not given because it was simpler and more profitable to ignore their origin, class, and religion.

From Kiow alone Anienkow sent away fourteen thousand men, chiefly of Greek or other non-Roman-Catholic religion, over whom the Catholic priest had neither control or influence. From Warsaw, every Saturday during fifty-two weeks, an average of four hundred men, women, and children were deported, all separated from their natural guides and protectors. From Liefland, north of the Dwina, were sent off, in one month, thirty-five hundred of the better educated and comfortable class of people. A Government paper rejoices that Polish and Catholic principles, growing there during five centuries, were in a fair way of extinction, since, as it itself admits, forty-five thousand men had been transferred to the governments of Samara, Orenburg, Kazan, and similar localities. To burn the villages of Ibanie, Szarki, Hrodki, Smoloy, Zabolocie, etc., to destroy the furniture, horses, cattle, and all other property, to send the inhabitants on foot, only allowing for the aged and young children a few small wagons, far away into a cold, strange, savage country, without tools, means, etc.—was all this done merely as a military necessity, and was it excusable, or, at most, merely blamable?