The organizers of the January Uprising, which broke out in the Russian partition in 1863, tried to win the peasant masses over to the national cause. The Insurgent National Government had drawn conclusions from the people’s insignificant support for the November Uprising and from the tragic Galician Slaughter. In the absence of a regular army,… Continue reading The Golden Writ
On January 22, 1863, the Polish ‘Central National Committee’ proclaimed the outbreak of an uprising and issued a manifesto whereby it proclaimed itself the Interim National Government. The document appealed to all the inhabitants of the former Polish-Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita (Commonwealth), within its pre-partition borders, to fight against tsarist rule for liberty. The manifesto heralded the… Continue reading Manifesto of the Interim National Government
Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s victorious campaign against Prussia and Russia in 1806-1807 ended with the Treaties of Tilsit, which laid the foundations for the revival of the Polish state as a rump Duchy of Warsaw, ruled by Saxon king Fryderyk August (Frederick August I), grandson of the Polish king August III and a descendant of Jan… Continue reading Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw
Also known as the Połaniec Manifesto (Polish, Uniwersał połaniecki), the Proclamation was issued by Tadeusz Kosciuszko on May 7, 1794 near the city of Połaniec on the upper Vistula, on behalf of the ‘Country’s Government for the Commonwealth of the Two Nations’. A few weeks earlier, on April 4, 1794, Kościuszko’s troops had defeated the… Continue reading Proclamation of Połaniec
