The oath of the members of the secret organisation managed by Szymon Konarski

Karolina — Wed, 11 May 2022 10:40:06 +0000

The establishment of the Kingdom of Poland, which covered most of the territory of the then split Duchy of Warsaw, by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and its integration into Russia was believed by the empires to solve the Polish question. Unfortunately, the tsar started to violate the Constitution. In November 1830, an uprising broke out in the Kingdom in defence of the rights of its inhabitants and in the name of the independence of Poland. After it had been put down, the Kingdom met with repression from Russia and limitation of its autonomy, to which both emigrants and inhabitants of the Kingdom responded with creating secret organisations to prepare another uprising. One of them was established in 1835 by Szymon Konarski and his friends from the Young Poland. It was called the Association of the Polish People (Stowarzyszenie Ludu Polskiego) and was active in all of the Polish lands under the partitions. Its main aim was to liberate Poland in political terms and remove social divisions. The radicalism of its principles was an outcome of the Romantic fascination with the people as well as political calculation which assumed that in order to be successful the uprising needed the involvement of peasant masses.

As a result of the rivalry between the liberal and the democratic fraction within the Association, the radicals, dominated by the liberals, established a new organisation called the Universal Polish Nation Confederation in 1837. Soon afterwards, the Association of the Polish People was dismantled. Szymon Konarski was arrested by the Russians in 1838 and executed a year later.

Portrait of Szymon Konarski / Polish Army Museum

Parliamentary resolution re. dethronement of Nicholas I

Karolina — Wed, 11 May 2022 10:39:09 +0000

In 1815 the Congress of Vienna, convened after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, decided to create a Kingdom of Poland. Through the person of the Tsar, it was joined in a personal union with Russia. The Tsar and King in a single person, Alexander I, guaranteed the new Kingdom its own constitution, along with a separate government, Sejm, army, and treasury. However, the Tsar soon began to suppress the freedoms awarded to the Polish people. Nor did his younger brother and successor, Nicholas I, crowned King of Poland in 1828, intend to honour those freedoms. These developments led to an insurrection that broke out on November 29, 1830 – the November Uprising. Because the initiative to launch the November Uprising came from the milieu of officer cadets of the Kingdom of Poland’s army and it was ill-prepared politically, during the first phase of the Uprising power was held by people connected with the existing regime who saw no chance for success in the clash with Russia. Thus, they endeavoured to resolve the conflict through negotiations with Tsar Nicholas I and thereby to extinguish the Uprising.

Influenced by the radical patriotic sentiments sweeping the streets of Warsaw, the deputies to the Sejm resolved unanimously on January 25, 1831 that Nicholas I be removed from the throne of Poland. This was tantamount to severing the personal union between the Russian Empire and Poland, declaring the Kingdom’s independence, and continuing the war against Russia. All the attempts made by the Uprising’s interim authorities in December 1830 to agree terms with Russia thus came to naught.

Following the collapse of the November Uprising, the act on dethronement was whisked away to France and safeguarded there from the Russians, who sought to obtain and destroy it.

Document from the collection of Polish Library in Paris

November Uprising – Polish Freedom

The oath of the members of the secret organisation managed by Szymon Konarski

Parliamentary resolution re. dethronement of Nicholas I