Chapter XXVI

Operations of general Dembinski's corps.--He traverses the country between Szawla and the Niemen without being observed by the enemy.--Attacks and disperses a brigade of Russian infantry.--Passes the Niemen and throws himself into the forest of Bialystok.--After leaving that forest, is joined by the corps of general Rozycki.--Reaches Warsaw.--His reception at Warsaw.--View of the exposed situation of Paszkewicz after his passage of the Vistula.--Examination of the plan of operations of the Polish commander.--Morbid state of the public mind at Warsaw.--Skrzynecki and Czartoriski deprived of their trust.--Capture of the city.--Documents showing the influence exercised by the cabinets in discouraging active operations.--Conclusion.

The corps of general Dembinski had been more fortunate than those of Chlapowski and Rohland. That general, quitting Kurszany on the 9th of July, returned, in obedience to the orders which we have detailed, by means of the forests, to the environs of Szawla, leaving the enemy upon the right, and without being observed by him;--he having advanced with his whole force in the direction of Worna, under the belief that our undivided forces were in that position. This corps traversed the country between Szawla and Rosseyny, and arrived during the night of the 15th at Janow, where they dispersed a squadron of the enemy's cavalry and took fifty prisoners, and passed there the river Wiliia without interruption. From thence they left for the environs of Kowno, where, not far from Rumszyski, on the 16th, they met a brigade of Russian infantry which was on the march from Wilno to the frontier of Poland.

General Dembinski attacked this brigade with such impetuosity, that they were thrown into the greatest consternation. Two cannons and several prisoners were taken. The great forests, by which the Russians were able to effect their escape, alone saved this brigade from entire destruction. Having thus opened their road, they took the direction of the town of Lida, passing the Niemen not far from that place. Afterwards they threw themselves into the forests of Bialystok, and in these forests the corps was reinforced by a considerable number of Lithuanian insurgent cavalry, which had been acting with great advantages over the enemy, by cutting off his transports of ammunition and other modes of harassing him, during the whole of our campaign. This force was under the command of colonel B***. General Dembinski quitted the forests in the environs of Orla, and leaving the town of Bielsk on his right, passed through the town of Bocki, near which he surprised and dispersed a regiment of cossacks, and took several prisoners, and among them a number of officers. In the environs of Siemiatycze, where the corps arrived on the 20th of June, they were arrested by the sudden appearance of a large body of troops. General Dembinski halted and placed his forces in order of battle, sending his flankers in advance. On the other side the same movement was made. The flanking parties of the opposite forces approached each other, but what was the astonishment of the two corps at seeing the tirailleurs, in place of firing upon each other, rushing into each other's arms, and rending the air with patriotic exclamations. The corps which was thus met by that of general Dembinski, was the corps of general Rozycki, which had been sent from our grand army to reinforce the corps of general Gielgud. The reader will now call to mind the plan of operations proposed by colonel Valentin after the battle of Wilno; and the arrival of this reinforcement at the very spot which was to have been the point of concentration aggravates the regret that his plans were not adopted. Nothing could exceed the satisfaction of the two corps at thus meeting. General Rozycki, learning the disastrous circumstances which had occurred, changed his plan of operation, and decided to unite himself with the corps of general Dembinski, and to return with it to the grand army. The junction of these two corps had scarcely taken place, when a cloud of dust, in the direction of Bielsk, announced the march of another body of troops. A small reconnoissance, sent in that direction, returned with the intelligence that it was the Russian corps under Golowkin. Our generals, considering all circumstances, determined not to engage with them, and continued their march towards Poland, passing at night the river Bug. They then took the direction of Wengrow and Kaluszyn, and by that route arrived at Warsaw, toward the end of the month of July.

The corps of general Dembinski, which had traversed more than four hundred miles in about twenty days from its departure from Kurszany, in the midst of detachments of the enemy, was received by the nation with the greatest enthusiasm. The president of the senate, prince Adam Czartoriski, the generalissimo Skrzynecki, with all the officers of government, followed by an immense body of citizens, met him at the distance of a half league from the city; and he was greeted with an address expressive of the thanks of the nation for his courageous and persevering exertions. It ended in the following terms:--'Dear general, and brethren in arms, you will be a living reproach to those who, forgetting their sacred duties, have, by their misconduct, forced their countrymen to lay down their arms, and seek the protection of another nation.'

To commemorate the brave exertions of this corps, and to transmit these events to posterity, the address above referred to was ordered to be enregistered in the volumes of the public laws. A printed copy was also given to each soldier of the corps. At the same time a commission was appointed to inquire into the conduct of generals Gielgud and Chlapowski.

When we consider the manner in which the Russian army, after their passage of the Vistula, passed the interval between the 27th of July, (the day of their arrival at Lowicz) and the 15th of August, we shall be at a loss to account for their inaction.

If general Paszkewicz was in a condition to take Warsaw, he could gain nothing by this repose. Nay, every moment of delay might increase the difficulties he would have to overcome. Why then all this delay? What could have prevented us from reinforcing our ranks, strengthening the fortifications of Warsaw, and even sending another corps, however small, into Lithuania, to support a new insurrection? Such a corps could have easily made its way even in the midst of the Russian detached corps remaining on the other side of the Vistula, and indeed those corps, so imprudently left there, could have been beaten in detail by our forces. If these circumstances are well considered, the reader will be satisfied that this manoeuvre of passing the Vistula, though in appearance so threatening to us, was in reality a most imprudent step on the enemy's part, and exposed him to the most imminent danger. Many detailed considerations might be given upon this point, but as they would occupy much space, and would withdraw us too far from the purpose of this narrative, we must leave them to abler pens. The general view, however, which we have taken of the position of the enemy, will be enough to awaken the astonishment of the reader that the event of the contest should have arrived so suddenly and so fatally to us. We are, therefore, led to present some reflections upon what seems to us to have been the true causes of the disastrous issue of the struggle.

We may, in the first place, be permitted to remark that the removal of our army from Warsaw to Lowicz to meet the enemy there, does not appear to have been a fortunate disposition. By it, some twenty days were spent in indecisive manoeuvres against a superior force. If, during that interval, in place of marching to meet the enemy, the army had been concentrated in the environs of Warsaw, and employed in constructing fortifications upon the great roads leading to Warsaw, from Blonie, Nadarzyn, Piaseczno, and Kalwaryia, as a first line of defence, and in strengthening the great fortifications of Warsaw:--then, leaving half of our force to defend these fortifications, we might have crossed the Vistula with the other half, and acted upon all the detached corps of the enemy on the right bank, and have, besides, intercepted all the reinforcements for the main army of Paszkewicz. Our communications, also, with the provinces, being thus opened, and their territory freed from the presence of the enemy, we should have again been enabled to avail ourselves of their co-operation. I cannot but think that if such a plan of operation had been adopted, for which, in fact, there was ample time in the interval above named, an altogether different turn would have been given to our affairs.

If the objection should be made that the delay which actually occurred could not have been reasonably anticipated, and that Paszkewicz might have immediately advanced to the attack of Warsaw, still, without entering for the present into more detailed considerations in support of my opinion, it will be enough to answer, that if twenty-four hours merely were to be had, those twenty-four hours should have been employed in fortification rather than manoeuvring, for it was not at Lowicz, but under the walls of Warsaw, that the enemy were to be fought. As it was at Warsaw, then, that the decisive encounter must inevitably have taken place, would it not have been the most judicious course, to have confined our operations on the left bank of the Vistula, to the strengthening of the defences of Warsaw; to have in fact adopted in regard to the enemy, who had now transferred his strength to the left bank of the Vistula, the same course of operations which we had hitherto pursued against him while he was in occupation of the right; in short, to have made of Warsaw another Praga. Our course of operations should in fact have been just reversed, to correspond with the change which the enemy's passage of the Vistula had made in our relative positions. While he was on the right bank, the region on the left of the river was open to us, and there were our resources; but now that he was acting with his main army on the left bank, it should have been our aim, by annihilating his detached corps, to have opened to our operations the whole region of the right, which was far more extensive than the other, and which, besides, had the advantage to us of being contiguous to the insurrectionary provinces. In case of an attack on Warsaw, which of course could not be an affair of a few days only, that part of our forces operating on the right bank could be withdrawn in ample season to present our whole strength to the enemy in its defence.

Since I have allowed myself to make the above remarks in regard to the plans of the general in chief, I must also be permitted to add that, at that period of inquietude and distrust, the presence of the commander in chief and of the president of the National Government, at Warsaw, was of the utmost importance. That presence was continually needed to act on the minds of the people, to preserve union and tranquillity, and to discover and bring to exemplary punishment the traitors who had been plotting the ruin of their country; in short, to encourage the patriotic and to alarm the treacherous. If those two individuals so deservedly beloved and honored by the nation had been present, we doubt whether those melancholy scenes at Warsaw, on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of August, when some forty persons who were under conviction of treason, perished by the hands of the people, would ever have taken place. Revolting as those scenes were, we must yet consider whether the circumstances of the moment will not afford some palliation for them. Deserted by those who had been the objects of their profoundest attachment and confidence, haunted by the recollections of the terrible disasters which had been incurred, and which they could attribute to nothing short of treason,--seeing twenty days again sacrificed, during which the Russian corps from Lithuania were permitted to pass the Vistula, (that of Kreutz at Plock, and that of Rudiger at Pulawy,) and join their main army; in fine, seeing this immense Russian force approaching the capital, from which perhaps they were expecting a repetition of all the atrocities of Suwarow,--remembering the thousands of victims which these traitors had already sacrificed, and reflecting on the thousands whom they had plotted to sacrifice; can it be wondered that, in those moments of despair, that people should have yielded to their impulses of indignation and have chosen rather to sacrifice at once those convicted traitors, than permit them to live, and perhaps be the instruments of the vengeance of the conqueror. Abandoned thus by those who should have been near to tranquillize them, the people took that justice into their own hands which the government had neglected to execute, and with their suspicions operated upon by this accumulation of disasters, they went to the degree of demanding the removal from their posts of prince Czartoriski and the general in chief.

Such are, I think, the true explanations of those acts, so serious in their consequences, and which have created so much surprise. The removal of Skrzynecki from the chief command was certainly one of the most deplorable results of this disordered state of the minds of the people;--for who could so well meet the exigencies of the time as he, familiar with every detail, engaged in the midst of events, and possessing the entire confidence of the army? It was in this period of distrust and suspicion that the Russian army, which seemed to have been waiting only for such a moment, received the intelligence from some traitors, yet undiscovered, within the walls of Warsaw, that the time had arrived for their attack. It was undoubtedly directed by such intelligence, that they made their attack on Warsaw, at the moment when the greater part of our army had been sent by its new commander, Prondzynski, to act on the right bank of the Vistula against the corps of Golowkin, which was menacing Praga. The city thus defended by the national guard and a small part of the army alone, and distracted by the divisions which Russian intrigues had fomented, fell, after a bloody defence,[82] and the fate of Poland was decided.

We have stated our belief that the fatal events which hastened the catastrophe might have been prevented by the mere presence, at the capital, of the heads of the army and the National Government, at those trying moments which brought on that disordered state of the public mind. Of this error we cannot readily acquit them, upright and patriotic as we know their intentions to have been. But upon the other point--that mysterious inaction of our forces, for so considerable a period, there is an important light thrown, in the following extracts from the correspondence of the prince Czartoriski with the French minister of the Exterior, read in the chamber of deputies, on the 19th of September, by the venerable general Lafayette, and in the extracts from his remarks, and those of general Lamarque, made on that occasion, and which have probably before met the eye of the reader.

EXTRACT FROM THE LETTER OF PRINCE CZARTORISKI.

'But we relied upon the magnanimity and the wisdom of the cabinets; trusting to them, we have not availed ourselves of all the resources which were at our command, both exterior and interior. To secure the approbation of the cabinets, to deserve their confidence, and to obtain their support, we have never departed from the strictest moderation; by which moderation, indeed, we have paralyzed many of the efforts which might have saved us in those latter days. But for the promises of the cabinets, _we should have been able to strike a blow, which perhaps would have been decisive_. We thought that it was necessary to temporize, to leave nothing to chance--and we have at last seen the certainty, at the present moment, that there is nothing but chance that can save us.'

_General Lafayette_: 'If it be said that the promises here referred to might have been only an affair of the gazettes,--I answer, that I have demanded explanations of the Polish legation, and here is the reply which I have obtained.

'"In answer to the letter which we have received from you, general, we hasten to assure you--

'"1. That it was the Minister of Foreign Affairs who engaged us on the 7th of July, to send a messenger to Warsaw, whose travelling expenses were advanced by the Minister: that the object of this messenger was, as his Excellency the Count Sebastiani told us, to induce our government to wait two months longer, for that was the time necessary for the negociations.

'"2. That the circular of our Minister of Foreign Affairs, dated the 15th of August, signed by the Minister ad interim, Audne Horodyski, and also another circular of the 24th of the same month, signed by the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Theodore Morawski, came to our hands by the post of the 14th current; that they are the same circulars which we at first officially communicated to the Count Sebastiani, on the 15th of September, and which we immediately after addressed to the journals, where they appeared on the 17th and 18th, and that those two circulars in fact explain the effect which the mission of the above envoy produced at Warsaw.

'"Le Gen. Kniazewiecz--L: Plater."'

_Paris, the 20th November, 1831_.

_Gen. Lamarque_: 'Poland! Can it be true that this heroic nation, who offered her bosom to the lance of the Tartars only to serve as a buckler for us, is to fall because she has followed the counsels which France and England have given her! Thus then is to be explained the inaction of her army at the moment when it ought to have taken a decisive step. Thus is to be explained the irresolution of the generalissimo, who from the first moment had showed so much audacity and skill. We may now know why he did not profit by the passage of the Vistula, which divided the army of the enemy, to give him battle either on one bank or the other. The minister rejects with indignation this imputation of complicity. He declares formally that he had made no promise, that he had given no hope, that he had fixed no date.--Honorable Poles, whom I have seen this morning, affirm the contrary. Our colleague, M. Lafayette, will give you details, almost official, on this subject.'

SESSION OF THE 13th SEPTEMBER.

_Gen. Lafayette_: 'I will ask this, without the least expectation of receiving a reply, but only to render a just homage to the conduct of the Poles, and of their government,--I will ask, if it is true that the Poles were urged by the French government, by the English ministers, and by the French ambassador at London, to use moderation, and not to risk a battle, because the measures which those powers were to take in behalf of Poland would not be delayed but for two months, and that in two months Poland would enter into the great family of nations.--Those two months have expired; and I state this here to render justice to the conduct of the Polish government, the Polish army, and its chief, who may have thought that on his giving a general battle, to prevent the passage of the Vistula, they could thwart the good intentions of the French and English government in this respect. I think that this will be considered a fair procedure towards Messieurs the Ministers, to whom the questions shall be addressed on Monday, to apprize them that this is one of those which will be then submitted to them.'

* * * * *

These documents will be for the present age and for posterity an explanation of the true causes of the ruin of Poland. She fell not by the enormous forces of her enemy, but by his perfidious intrigues. We cannot accuse France or England, and indeed no Pole does accuse them; for, although we may have some enemies in those countries, yet we cannot conceive of the existence of any causes of hostility towards us, by which those nations can be actuated.[83] They were blinded by the promises of Russia,--by the solemn assurances[84] which she gave, that she would soon arrange every thing in the most favorable manner for Poland. In this web of intrigue were those cabinets entangled, who would else have followed the common dictates of humanity in succoring Poland. While she was thus deceiving the cabinets, Russia was doing her utmost to sow distrust and disunion among our people. It was her intrigues, through the instrumentality of the traitors whom she had gained for her accomplices, that caused the estrangement of the nation from Skrzynecki, who, having a true Polish heart, had repelled all her vile attempts to shake his integrity, and who, by his talent and energy, had so often defeated and might still defeat the enormous masses which she had sent against us. Those intrigues succeeded, and Russia gained her end in overwhelming Poland with misery; not reflecting that by so doing she was bringing misfortunes upon her own head. Russia, by a liberal concession to Poland of her national rights, could have been truly great. Not to speak of the influence of the Polish institutions upon the happiness of her own people; her true stability and strength could in no way be so well secured as by the independent existence of Poland. They who have labored for our destruction were not then true Russians; they were the enemies of their country and of humanity;--heartless calculators, acting with a single view to their own personal aggrandizement;--men, in fact, who have no country but self. Equally the enemies of the monarch and of the people, they make the one a tyrant, and sport with the misery of the other.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 82: As the author was attached to the Lithuanian corps, and as he was actually in a Prussian prison at the time of the capture of Warsaw, he cannot undertake to give any details upon so important an event with the limited information at present at his command.]

[Footnote 83: Appendix No. III, IV.]

[Footnote 84: Appendix No. IV.]