Chapter X: The Return to Paris (1)

THE MOUJIK’S PASSAGE--LITHUANIA--THE PRUSSIAN FRONTIER--KÖNIGSBERG--ARREST AND CAPTIVITY--BAIL--FLIGHT--ARRIVAL IN PARIS--THE END.

A passage in the steamer from St. Petersburg to Riga does not furnish a subject replete with many features of travel, not even when the traveller is a Siberian exile, flying from the _katorga_. Yet I had one little adventure, for ocean certainly was hostile to me. Thanks, I suppose, to the stupefaction caused by sea-sickness, I suddenly found myself in the first-class cabin--an intrusion which horrified and disgusted everyone. An elderly Russian lady in particular never ceased crying in French, ‘Oh, this peasant will give us the plague! He corrupts the little air we have to breathe!’ Some servants came, who brought me to my senses, and took me to my own quarters, where, squatting in a corner in the fore part of the ship, I kept to myself, and did not again see any of the passengers of distinction, unless their walk happened to bring them occasionally in my direction. Two Germans, seeing me making my breakfast on a bit of bread and an onion (which I did to keep up my part as a _moujik_, not less than also, alas! from motives of economy), said out loud, in their amiable language, ‘One can see that that is a Russian hog.’ Oddly enough, the only persons among the travellers who showed any interest in me, and who sometimes condescended to talk to me (without having a suspicion of my nationality), were two young men, both of them Poles. I often followed them with my eyes as they paced up and down the deck; how gladly would I have pressed their hands!

I shall pass rapidly over the rest of my journey from Riga, across Courland and Lithuania, as far as the Prussian frontier, and shall only say a few words about the new profession I assumed on quitting St. Petersburg. The character of a _bohomolets_ could not any longer serve me, now that I was going in a contrary direction from Novgorod, and I was also about to cross countries which, like Courland or Samogitia, were either of Catholic or Protestant beliefs. I therefore proposed to pass for a _stchetinnik_, for such is the name for the Russian peasants so often met in those districts as well as in Lithuania and in the Ukraine, who, going from one village to another, buy hog’s bristles on behalf of the merchants of Riga. This trade suited me admirably, for under pretence of inquiring whether my article was to be had or not, it allowed me to knock at many doors, and to ask my way. I went on foot, sleeping most frequently in the woods or in the cornfields, and the fine weather (it was July) was very favourable to me. I had likewise exchanged my winter trowsers for the summer suit of blue cotton which I had brought from Siberia; I renewed my linen and my boots, and I exchanged my pelisse with a tapster for a great-coat and a little cap, which, with a view to traversing Prussia, I carried with me in my bag, while as to my little bournouse of sheep-skin (_armiak_), that, like a true Russian peasant (_rouski tcheloviék_), I always wore, in spite of the warmth of summer.

My passage through Lithuania, across our _hallowed_ Samogitia, was not void of emotion, or of sufficiently diverting scenes. How often was I not tempted to reveal my nationality to some one or other of my own country people, and to ask their advice or assistance! But I resisted every temptation, and I never belied my character as a Russian _stchetinnik_. One day, at Polonga, I wanted to buy a cheese in the market from a Samogitian woman; we could not agree about the price, and my respectable countrywoman, strong in lungs as any woman of _la Halle_, delivered herself of a sentiment about ‘dogs of Muscovites,’ which was certainly not of a highly Christian description. Had I even been ignorant of the meaning of her words, their sense was sufficiently explained by gestures, patent even to a _moujik_, and I was obliged forsooth to pretend to uphold the honour of Muscovy against the outrages of a Polish woman...!

It was between Polonga and Kurszany that I determined to pass into Prussia. I had infinite trouble before I could procure, without betraying myself any information as to the way or the extent to which the Russians watched their frontier, my best source of knowledge being a soldier belonging to the customs. Seeing him take a bath in the little bay of Polonga, I followed his example, hoping thus to begin a conversation. As soon as he said that he was a native of Pultava, I declared myself his countryman. There is always one simple way of getting a Russian soldier to talk, which is to start him about his grievances, and the hardships of his lot. Once on this theme my companion informed me of all the precautionary measures which had to be taken, by day and by night, by the customs on account of smugglers and rebels (_bountovstchiki_), for so fugitives are called, with details as to the strength and the weakness of the watch thus kept.... I must give one expression used by the soldier, than which nothing could have been more characteristic. I had naïvely asked him why the Prussians did not help to keep the frontier and hunt down the _rebels_ and smugglers? ‘That,’ he answered, ‘is just the pity of it all! These cursed Prussians will not take any trouble at the frontier, and so _all the burden falls on our poor Tzar_...!’

The conclusion drawn by me from this valuable conversation was precisely contrary to what I had at first supposed, and I saw that it would be best that I should try to cross the boundary line in the day time; so, at two o’clock in the afternoon of that same day, having armed myself with my poignard, and commended my soul to God, I slipped into the corn. Then spying from the top of the rampart the moment during which both sentries on the station turned their backs on each other, I leapt the first of the three ditches which marked the frontier. No noise was made; I clambered through the brushwood, but as I reached the second ditch I was perceived. Shots were fired from guns on both sides, when, hardly conscious of what I was about, I slipped into the third ditch, then climbed up and leapt again. I lost sight of the soldiers, and was in a little wood. I was in Prussia!

Breathless and exhausted, I lay for many long hours bidden in the thicket without daring to stir; knowing the violence and eagerness of the Russians, I feared lest they should even pursue me into forbidden ground; but happily all was still, and a soft rain which began to fall tempered the suffocating heat of the day. It was time to think of a fresh disguise. The _moujik’s_ orthodox beard was not suitable in Prussia, where it would only have attracted attention; so at Polonga I had taken the precaution to buy a small mirror and a razor, which I got at a Jew’s stall, while, as to soap, a piece of what I had brought from Siberia remained still in my bag. I hung the mirror up on a bush, and, profiting by the rain and, above all, by the dew on the leaves for moistening the soap, proceeded in this way, though still lying and on my elbow, to perform the civilising operation of shaving myself. It was a slow and a painful one, particularly on account of my uncomfortable position; but I effected it at last, not, however, without sundry cuts made in my cheeks. About the middle of the night I got up and went on my way again, dressed in the great coat and the little cap, with my trowsers falling over my boots. I knew very well that I was by no means out of danger, for a convention between Russia and Prussia, a cartel as it was called, then obliged the two powers to deliver over their mutual fugitives; and more than one, alas! of my compatriots had been thus brought back to the Russian frontier, after having succeeded, in spite of many and great dangers, in leaving it behind them. Still I had confidence in my star, the great matter for me now being to avoid inns, and to keep clear of gendarmes, a task which, thanks to the summer season, was not very difficult. As to the direction of my journey, I had no longer any hesitation about it. I must gain the Grand Duchy of Posen, and there, among my fellow-countrymen subject to the Prussian rule, but whose safety I could in no way compromise, I hoped to find all the help which the rapid diminution of my finances demanded. I was then ignorant of the massacres which had recently desolated Galicia, and I did not even know that in this very Duchy of Posen a vast conspiracy had been discovered; for it was not in the solitudes of the Oural chain, nor yet among the lowest of the Russian people, that I could have learnt these heavy and sad tidings.

I reached Memel, Tilsit and Königsberg successively without any obstacles. I walked by day, and slept under the stars; I was nowhere annoyed about my passport, and to the unfrequent questions of merchants and travellers I replied that I was a Frenchman, a cotton-spinner, returning from Russia. At last on July 27th, having reached Königsberg, I saw in the harbour a vessel that was to sail on the following day for Elbing. Tired of constant walking, I wished to profit by a means of transport which could be had for a moderate price, and which would have taken me nearly to the Grand Duchy of Posen, and to my friends. I determined therefore to remain in Königsberg till the following day. While waiting in this way I sauntered about the town, and as evening fell I sat down on a heap of stones near a dismantled house, meaning at night to wander away and sleep in the cornfields, and to return next morning before the vessel sailed. Alas! I had not reckoned on my bodily fatigue any more than on the exhaustion of my strength, and a certain carelessness had been engendered by the last period of comparative security. Upon this heap of stones I fell asleep, and slept deeply. When I awoke, roughly shaken by the arm by some man, it was a dark night. A stranger stood before me, a night-watcher of the town, as they are called. He asked me who I was, and whence I came? Drunk with sleep, I muttered some incoherent words, and when a sense of my danger finally recalled me to myself, it was in vain that, in my infamous German, I offered any explanations as to who I was, and how I came to be there; all my answers seemed suspicious. My complete ignorance of the place and the darkness of the night prevented me from beginning to struggle with him, or attempting to fly; I did feel for my dagger, but luckily I could not find it. The constable took hold of my arm, called his comrades, and carried me off by force to the nearest office. I was arrested...!

The feeling which came over me when once more I found myself in a prison was one of shame, far more than of sadness or of despair. To have escaped from the _katorga_, to have crossed the Oural Mountains, to have slept for months in the snow in ostiak _earths_, to have endured so many sufferings and privations, to have leapt the Russian boundary line among the musket balls of soldiers, and now to be taken up by neither more nor less than a Prussian night constable! It really was too ridiculous, and I blushed for myself.

The next morning, about ten o’clock, I was taken to the Police office, and then commenced all the sad and abject necessities of simulation and dissimulation, which press on a man who has to elude the cognisance of the law. I pretended that I was a Frenchman, a cotton-spinner, who was on his way back from Russia, and who had lost his passport. I gave my addresses in both countries, but I could perceive that my declarations did not inspire any confidence. What hurt me most was to perceive in this first examination, and still more in some that followed it, that I was taken for a malefactor, who had some interest in concealing a crime. I demanded to be sent back to France, where I said I was ready to answer before public justice for all my actions, and to submit to the consequences of all and everything that could be discovered about me.

I was now remanded to the Blue Tower (Blaûer Thûrm), where for company I found a burger detained for fraudulent bankruptcy and other peccadilloes. The Blue Tower certainly was not horrible to a man who knew the insides of Russian prisons, not to speak of the _katorga_; but the uncertainty and the irritation caused by this sad interlude recalled some of the worst days of my existence during the last years. At last, after a month’s detention, I was again called before the police; it was signified to me that all the addresses which I had given had been found to be incorrect, and that I now lay under the gravest suspicions. Tired of making false pretences, and above all of passing for a criminal trying to hide his identity, I begged to have a private interview with one of the high functionaries who examined me, and for the presence at it of M. Fleury, a Frenchman, naturalised at Königsberg for the last thirty years. He was _interpréte-juré_, and had always assisted at the enquiries. When left alone with these two gentlemen I told them frankly who I was, and I left my fate in their hands. I cannot describe the astonishment, the stupor, and, I must also add, the consternation of my two examiners on learning that before them stood a Pole, a political criminal escaped from the _katorga_, and returned from Siberia! The official at first could not say a word; at last he cried, ‘But, miserable man! we must give you up; the convention is decisive! Oh, my God! why, why did you come here?’

‘I wished to spare you both embarrassment and remorse, so why did you not send me on to France as I asked you?’

They made me give all the details of my flight; then the Prussian official left the room. M. Fleury stepped up to me and said, ‘We cannot avoid giving you up to the Russians; quite recently several of your fellows have been sent back over the frontiers. There is only one likelihood of salvation for you, try to see the Count Eûlenberg, or at least to write to him. He is President of the government (Regierûngs Präsident), and almost everything depends on him. He is a good-hearted man--frank, generous, and beloved by all. Write to him, for Heaven’s sake! Oh, what a pity! what a pity!’

On my return to prison I did write to Count Eûlenberg and also to our Abbé Kajsiewicz, in Paris, to obtain an attestation of my identity, because I perceived that they questioned among themselves whether I was not an emissary who had taken part in the late affairs in Posen. Since my revelation they treated me better in my prison, but I was not the less the object of a very strict watch. After ten days I got an answer from Count Eûlenberg, which was polite but vague, although the advice at the close of it, ‘to have patience,’ seemed to me to be some encouragement. The principal point of all the investigations was, had I or had I not shared in the business in Posen? On that head I felt perfectly at my ease; but my anguish of mind, nevertheless, was very great, and very often I had to say to myself that perhaps my most certain hope of being saved lay in my own dagger.

One day a gentleman presented himself at my prison; he gave his name as M. Kamke, a merchant of Königsberg, and he begged to know if I would accept of his bail. Astonished as well as touched at this unexpected offer, I asked for an explanation of it, and then learnt that the report of a Pole who had escaped from Siberia being arrested in the town had spread, and caused a general and lively emotion. The honest townsfolk of Königsberg, who had more than once been irritated at the working of the cartel with Russia, were grieved at the idea of seeing a man given up who had succeeded in eloping from Siberia, and who had braved so many dangers. Several steps had been taken in my behalf, and they hoped to find means to liberate me under bail given for me! Ah, how much good these words did! The acceptance of securities for me met with some opposition; but when summoned anew, on September 1st, I found with the Police this excellent M. Kamke, who coming up to me embraced me, and told me I was free. It really was so, and the official in charge of the inquest repeated the assurance to me. He asked if I wished to remain some time longer in Königsberg, and I replied in the affirmative, for I wished to thank my benefactors, the many persons who had interested themselves in my fate, particularly Count Eûlenberg. It also seemed to me to be good policy not to appear to be too anxious to leave Prussia. Alas! how suspicious I had become!

M. Kamke took me home in triumph, and for a week, I found in his family an affectionate care, of which the remembrance can never be effaced. Suddenly, a week having barely elapsed since I had been allowed my liberty, I was again invited to attend at the police. I found there two functionaries whom I had met before. With a sad but kind manner, they informed me that orders had come from Berlin that I must be given up to Russia; they added that they had now nothing in their power but to give me time to fly from this danger at my own peril, and that they hoped God would protect my steps. I was profoundly touched by their generous proceedings, and I promised to do my utmost to save them any further trouble. I immediately informed M. Kamke and my protectors of this new incident, and my flight was speedily arranged. I took leave of my brave and true friends, and on the following day, September 9th, I was already on my way to Dantzig. I was furnished with letters to different persons in the German towns which I had to pass through, and everywhere the greatest zeal was shown to make my journey easy. I must be permitted to mention especially the good offices of the celebrated and generous bookseller of Leipsig, Robert Blûm, whom Prince Windischgrætz thought right to have shot at Vienna two years later. Thanks to Help which never failed me, I had speedily traversed the whole of Germany, and on September 22nd, 1846, I found myself again in Paris, in the city which I had left four years before.

Something more than a year had scarcely elapsed after my return to Paris, when the revolution of February broke out, and my country believed in a better future. But, alas! we soon saw our mistake. Once more I had hastened to my own land, and had just time to assist in Galicia at a fresh shipwreck of our hopes. It was during the leisure which expectations thus deceived had left to me, and while my memory retained the impression of what had recently passed, that I wrote down the greater part of these ‘Recollections.’ If I have not mentioned my poor brothers in misfortune, implicated in the affair at Kaminieç, it has certainly not been because I was then, or am now, indifferent to their lot; but because I have been able to learn very little of their fate, or of the nature of the sentences which were passed upon them. Some have already succumbed under their sorrows; others still groan in Siberia, in the Caucasus, or in the penal companies of Orenbourg.

May God have mercy upon the living, and upon the dead!

POLAND A CENTURY AFTER ITS DIVISION,

AND

THE AGITATION IN WARSAW.

MAY 1861.

POLAND

A CENTURY AFTER ITS DIVISION.

The world is full of victimised races, to whose ill-fortune it becomes almost reconciled, since the marvellous discovery has been made that, at some time or another, these people may have deserved their fate; as if the strong, for their part, did not also commit faults; and as if, too, Justice went evermore hand in hand with Fortune. But whence, then, those crises of anarchy which are apparent, not only in a solitary instance, but in the most general relations? Whence those convulsions which make us present, as it were, at a confused disorganisation of all political order, in one headlong annihilation of all combinations, and of all foregone conclusions? These take their rise, most frequently, in some original defect lying at the very roots of the situation, in some previous violations which, although they leave the people unarmed, do not the less affect the governments themselves--which compel the first to a system of indefatigable revolt, and the second to a system of repression, which is always fatally increasing in weight, till, at last, there ensues one of those struggles in which contend all the rights, principles, and accumulated wrongs--all the causes long thought to be dormant, but which, now reawakened, make their appeal to that public opinion which has started up as a new power. The whole history of Poland is before us, to prove how much violence it costs, how many perpetually recurring struggles it requires, to make the suppression of a whole race a public right, before the fact of its suppression can be forced into the vague and terrible list of ‘things that have been accomplished.’

It is now nearly a century since three Powers, united by the saddest and most dangerous of solidarities, laboured to this end. Frederick II. of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia rejoiced in the work as in an easy victory; but it carried remorse into the soul of Maria-Theresa of Austria, who called it ‘a blot upon her reign,’ to which she could not subscribe without casting a terrified glance into the future. Thrice was the partition renewed--in 1772, in 1793, and in 1795. It began by leaving us a shadow of independence, with the shadow of a king at Warsaw; and it finished by making everything disappear, even to the very name of Poland. At each dismemberment they believed that they had achieved success; each time, on the contrary, the injustice of the whole proceeding became more evident, till it was almost acknowledged to be so by the dividers themselves--each time the wound became more envenomed, and the struggle more serious between an always precarious domination, and the heroism of a race remodelled by misfortune. At the capital moment of the last dismemberment, in 1792, Poland did not yield without a struggle; she proclaimed her political aspirations in the Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791, and, led by Kosciusko, she reappeared upon the field of battle. The Polish hero was conquered at Macejowice, and the work, begun in 1772, seemed very nearly completed. Up to this time, however, it had only been an affair between Russia, Austria, and Prussia; and Europe had remained a stranger to this dismemberment of a nation.

At the end of the storms of the French Revolution, and of the Empire, in which the Poles had taken part with all their warlike humour, and during which, by the timid, ephemeral, and incomplete creation of a Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, they had for an instant believed that their country was reborn, the Congress of Vienna, after allowing hope to shine before the eyes of Poland, let her fall again under the triple yoke, and consecrated her dismemberment as an accomplished fact. This time, at least, success seemed sure--the partition had become a public right, and it formed a part of the constitution of Europe; yet, in reality, the question was very far from being set at rest. The treaties of 1815 only organised new strife, under new conditions; and a new weapon was placed in the hands of the Poles, by this species of homage paid to a nationality that no one ventured quite to kill, its titles being recognised, and stipulations being made in favour of its guarantees; while, at the same time, they dared not refuse its fragments to those who claimed them by right of prior occupation. The question, then, was so little settled, that at the first agitation it did not fail to come up again. In 1830, Poland made an immense effort for its own resurrection, an effort which for a moment sufficed to hold in check the power of Russia, and filled Europe with anxiety and emotion. Alone, and abandoned to her own resources, Poland must evidently succumb; she must sink under the weight of arms, still more under the weight of oppression. Then, surely, the last words had been said, the last resistance conquered, and all was really at an end. On the contrary, nothing was finished; and this is the curious point, the great moral, so to speak, of the events which for the last two months agitate Warsaw and all Polish countries. One hundred years after the first dismemberment, forty-five years after the treaties of 1815, thirty years after the revolution quelled at Warsaw by the arms of Russia, Poland rears her head, more agitated than ever, wounded but not tamed, and showing herself in two lights--the one, as regards her relations with the state of Europe; the other, as regards that internal labour, by which she has obstinately sought to remake for herself a moral life, and a new destiny, in spite of the darkest, and most painful trials.

What, then, really is the character of this situation, so suddenly revealed in Northern Europe by the strange drama of Warsaw, at the very moment when Italy has constituted herself anew, and when Hungary claims her old tradition of independence--when both in the West and in the East everything is in movement--when all questions of nationality, of public rights, and of universal balance, are making themselves heard at once? What is most strange in these events is, that all is spontaneous and unforeseen, though an eternal reason gives them being. This is the act of life in a people, which, finding itself one day united by one and the sane feeling, spreads itself peaceably through the town, and then demands, what even treaties have not denied to it, respect for its nationality, and its own religion, the guarantee of its existence in regular institutions, the preservation of its own language, the right of interesting itself in its own affairs, of occupying itself in agriculture, in the education of its own children; the right, it a word, to live and to breathe. Nothing assuredly can be more dramatic than the meeting which during the last two months has taken place in Warsaw. It is no longer one between two sovereigns, but between two nations, which for the first time for thirty years find themselves publicly face to face, which have suddenly brought their disagreement into the broad daylight of European conflict, and which are now interrogating each other in this mysterious pause; two peoples, of which the one has no arms but its rights and its prayers, and of which the other has no danger but in the very excess of its own powers.

This, then, really is the situation which has disclosed itself in the heart of Poland since the 25th of February, the day upon which this new, touching, and heroic adventure began for a population which, to a certain extent, thus returns to public life, and which goes out to pray for its country and its dead. At first, Russia appears to have been visibly surprised at this unexpected manifestation on the part of Poland, in which she believed, perhaps, that no such vitality existed, and she was divided between the inquietude caused by the movement, and by the sense that concessions must be made. She has not the gift of always making the happiest resolutions; she yields when it would be natural to resist, and resists when it would be just to yield. She begins by giving up some of those officials who are most compromised, and she ends in dissolving those popular corporations of which she not only herself sanctioned the existence, but of which she had availed herself for a month, in order to maintain order. This, by a series of enigmatical and contradictory acts, in which, doubtless, there is as much embarrassment as calculation, she sets all hopes and all fears fermenting together. Popular manifestations follow one after the other. The question assumes greater proportions, the movement becomes graved and more complicated, and in a short time the whole affair has changed its aspect. The pressure imposed becomes heavier than ever, when pitted against a moral agitation which has been throughout innocent of any violence, so that it requires but a few days and an evolution of Russian policy to bring the situation to one of those issues, which Prince Repnin characterised in his day with inexorable bluntness, when he said, ‘Unless we deny all sentiments of humanity, it is true that we cannot help recognising the right which the Poles have to complain. You would have full right to drive out the Russians, if you had the power; not having the power, you must submit.’

Such is the question truly stated by the victorious side, and certainly such is the question so often supposed to have been definitely settled, but which has never been resolved. After the bloody repression of the 8th of April, as after all those that went before, the problem of the destinies of Poland is not the less on foot. It springs out of these events, and is shaped by their character and their aims, in the midst of those conditions of universal transition in which the world of to-day finds itself placed.

What makes these new events so important, is that they form part of a European situation, at the same time that they are the outward and visible signs of a profound and inward work, of which Russian Poland is the centre (most active and most prominent at present), but which has also revealed, in the Grand Duchy of Posen, in Galicia, in short, everywhere, that, in spite of treaties and congresses, Polish feeling, the last and indestructible tie of a riven country, still lives. This question of Poland has its roots deep in the past, and I am not ignorant that it is so. Whether politically or diplomatically, it goes back, like so many more, to the transactions of 1815, and when the attempt is made to draw closer the knot of European affairs, whence come the crises of which this question has been the unhappy and the perennial source? Is it not because these treaties have manifestly been an immense and avowed violation of an imprescriptable right, or rather the fatal and complaisant consecration of all previous violations? One of the most essential causes of the tribulation and disorder in the politics of the time--a cause which now appears in all its distinctness--is the ever-growing contradiction between the dispositions of the solemn act of Vienna and the real state to which the different parts of Poland are reduced; so that, if there have been, if there shall again be, revolutionists, we must settle this in our minds, that it is not the Poles who are such. An example has been given them in this matter, and they have been left with this sad conviction, that, according to the rights of 1815, they have the right on their side. It is, indeed, a curious thing that the people of Poland have been the ‘last to step down into the arena of to-day at that name of “nationality” which serves as a watchword to all other revolting populations.’ Yet Poland was the first and the only country in whose favour such a word was hinted at by the Congress of Vienna, when it was inscribed in treaties, as if to render a marked homage to heroic misfortune, and, while tempering by guarantees the way in which Poland was abandoned, to maintain the mockery of an ideal ‘nationality,’ in spite of territorial division.

Still more curious was the sort of universal disavowal made of the partition of Poland, at the moment in which it was announced as a new public right. M. de Talleyrand, the representative of the French king, called it ‘the prelude to European convulsions;’ and of all the questions that were to come before the Congress, he considered the Polish one to be ‘the first, the greatest, the most eminently European, and, beyond comparison, before all the others in importance.’ The Emperor Alexander of Russia, professing himself the renovator of Poland, was actuated either by ambition or by the vanity of appearing as a liberal prince, and, doubtless, also by sentiments of generosity; but this renovation offered itself to his mind under the shape of a kingdom which should be a feudatory of the Russian crown, while it still preserved the integrity of Poland. Poland was a subject of remorse to Europe, and she inspired respect, without having strength enough to make herself truly and really respected. Hence the strange combinations adopted by the Congress of Vienna, which (while it delivered over the provinces of Poland to Austria, to Russia, and to Prussia) multiplied at the same time protecting guarantees, and laboured to maintain a national link between the different parts, by assuring to them a certain autonomy, as if the future could be secured by abandoning the present.

From one point of view, nothing can be stranger than the organised _whole_, of which the scattered elements are to be found in the final act of Vienna, and in the separate proceedings between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, under the sanction of Europe. In Galicia, Cracow, escaping the general shipwreck, is constituted ‘for all time coming’ (_à perpétuité_) a free, neutral and independent town. The transformation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw into the kingdom of Poland, under the Russian crown, leaves the name of the country still diplomatically existing, and it leaves it also as the nucleus of reconstruction, the centre of attraction. The Prussian division gets the name of Grand Duchy of Posen, that it may preserve a distinct character in the whole monarchy of Frederick II.; and the frontier on the Prussian side is defined, as well as on the Russian border. Finally (and here is the origin of the great debate in the eyes of diplomatic Europe), the three powers engage themselves, by their act at Vienna, to give to the Poles, their respective subjects, ‘representation and such national institutions, arranged according to their modes of political existence, as each of the governments shall judge to be useful;’ while, in order better to define the sense and meaning of these guaranteed institutions, the separate treaties add that these are intended to secure to the Poles ‘the preservation of their nationality.’

Nor is this all. In default of political unity and of real independence, Poland is at least to keep the unity of her interests. Full liberty of trading, of transit, and of navigation, is established in all and between all the divisions of ‘_ancient Poland_;’ and it must be noted that care was taken constantly to recall the old frontiers of 1772 as the natural frame for all combinations. The quality of ‘a mixed subject’ is recognised in those who have possessions in all the three provinces, and who, escaping all classification, remain, in spite of everything, _Poles_, as their civil individuality cannot be divided under three heads. Such, indeed, is the spirit which permeates this work (singular and incoherent as I do not deny that it is), that Austrians, Prussians and Russians, are qualified as _strangers_ or _foreigners_ in the article which treats of arrangements to be made for the regulation of commercial interests on Polish grounds; and by this title _they_ are excluded from such benefits as only the Poles are entitled to enjoy. I shall not proceed further. Considering the transactions of 1815 as a whole, and putting them together, what do we find? We find a free town, the last remaining image of former independence. We find the name of one common country consecrated by treaty, and resting upon the kingdom newly called into being. We see our right to a nationality made superior to all territorial demarcations. We read, in the first place, of the autonomy of the different provinces that have been dealt out to new masters, and that the map of old Poland is to be adopted and acted upon in material life; and we have a sort of _Zollverein_ of commerce and navigation, serving as the sketch for a confederacy. One would say that it looks as if Europe, not daring to be wholly just, had wished, at each step, to soften away by equity the violation of the independent existence of a nation; that, practically, she sought to reunite the national tie, which arbitrary right had recently broken; and that she was less occupied in resolving the question of the destinies of Poland, or putting an end to it by one act of sovereign power, than in leaving it in suspense, and handing it over to the future.

All that thus appears in some inert articles of the treaty, receives a sort of luminous and decisive confirmation from the interpretations of the times, from the commentaries of the sovereigns themselves, as well as from the first deeds done under the fresh impression of these events. No one knows what passed through the mind of the Emperor Alexander--through that mind at once so playful and so imperious, so full of liberal desires and of mysterious unrest, of generous instincts and of Byzantine duplicity; but he, at any rate, entered upon his part by not recoiling from such a beginning as would ensure his popularity. ‘In truth,’ he said to Lord Castlereagh, ‘though at this moment the object is not to re-establish Poland in its integrity, there is nothing to prevent that being done some day, if Europe should desire it. To-day, such a thing would be premature. That country needs to be prepared for so great a change; and there is no better way of doing it than to erect into a kingdom one part of its territory, and in this to place such institutions as will make the principles of civilisation take root and fructify; they will then spread through the whole mass.’ And, in truth, Alexander was the first who set to work, till he gave a charter to his new kingdom, the constitution of the 13th of May, 1815; and of this he himself expressed the sense, in a proclamation made to the Poles: ‘A constitution suited to your wants and to your characters; the use of your language preserved in public transactions; offices and employments bestowed solely on Poles; liberty in commerce and in navigation; facilities of communication with such parts of ancient Poland as are subject to other powers; a national army; all means guaranteed to perfect your laws, with the free circulation of knowledge in your country--_these_ are the advantages which you will enjoy under our rule, and under that of our successors; and _these_, also, you will transmit as a patriotic inheritance to your children and your children’s children....’

The reader will remark here, that this is strictly the meaning of the Treaty of 1815; and three years later, in 1818, Alexander, when opening the first Polish Diet at Warsaw, still held the same language. ‘Your restoration is defined,’ he said, ‘by the most solemn treaties, and sanctioned by a constitutional charter; and the inviolability of these exterior engagements and of this fundamental law henceforward assures to Poland an honourable rank among the nations of Europe.’ The Emperor, moreover, seems to have so little questioned the guarantees of Europe, that he boasted of having won them for Poland, as one wins a victory, by a brilliant charge. ‘I have made this kingdom,’ he goes on to say--‘I have established it on the most solid basis; for _I have obliged_ the Powers of Europe to guarantee its existence by treaty.’ At one moment, the successful autocrat had thoughts of going a step further, and of aggrandising the new kingdom by annexing to it the old Polish provinces incorporated with Russia, viz. Lithuania, Volhynia, and the Ukraine; for he had reserved the right of doing so, in his treaty with Austria, in these very words: ‘His Imperial Majesty reserves to himself the right of giving to this state, which enjoys a distinct administration, such _interior extension_ as he shall think proper;’ and this it was which, for a moment, gained over the heart of old Kosciusko to the policy of Alexander.

The King of Prussia, if he left a brilliant part, and the formation of great projects to the Tzar, did not act differently from him. He held the same language to the Poles of Posen. ‘You, likewise,’ he said to them, ‘have a country, and I esteem you because you have known how to defend her. You will be my subjects; but you will not, for that reason, be obliged to deny your own nationality. Your religion is to be respected, and your personal rights and properties are to pass under the guardianship of laws which, for the future, will be enacted by yourselves. Your language in all public affairs will be employed along with the German tongue. You will fill up all the offices of the Grand Duchy of Posen; and my Lieutenant, born among you, will reside with you.’

The formula of the oath imposed upon officials was peculiarly significant. It was conceived in these terms: ‘I acknowledge his Majesty the King of Prussia as the only legitimate sovereign of this country; and _I acknowledge that part of Poland which, in consequence of the Treaty of Vienna, has fallen to the lot of the royal House of Prussia, to be my country_, the which I am ready to defend against all persons whatsoever, and under all circumstances, at the price of my own blood.’ Such an interpretation long continued to be in use, since, in 1841, King Frederic William IV. engaged ‘to respect in the Poles that love which every heroic nation cherishes, for its language, its customs, and its historic past.’

As to the Emperor of Austria, he, in 1815, did nothing. With his cold temper, the Emperor Francis laughed a little at the restlessness, and the liberal proclivities of Alexander of Russia. He was, however, uneasy about them, and ended by saying, ‘I am not false enough for that,’ which, of course, did not change the _meaning_ of the arrangements of 1815. In recalling all these facts, it must not be supposed that I entertain the eccentric idea of making the last of the rights of Poland rest in the work of the Congress of Vienna; but still these treaties, such as they were, brought about a certain order of things. If it was not independence which they secured, at least they gave us a number of guarantees--the preservation of nationality even in partition, the autonomy of our institutions, and of our interests. Our name, our religion, and our language were all, under the sanction of Europe, saved from total shipwreck and loss.

But has experience shown us that this is the plan which has been followed now for nearly half a century? The truth is that, in accepting the situation created by the Treaty of Vienna (an order of events which had its conditions, its obligations, and its limits), Russia, Prussia, and Austria have shaped their practice after the spirit which presided at the _first_ partition--that is, after the idea of an assimilation so complete as to be equivalent to conquest. From these treaties of 1815, they have, to say the truth, reaped the benefit of having got a European sanction for the dismemberment of Poland; but they have troubled themselves very little about the guarantees which were designed to serve as a sad and impotent compensation for the partition; and each of these three powers has carried on its work after the fashion which has best suited itself, its politics, and its nature.

Not that the change was made suddenly, or openly visible. It has been developed by degrees, especially in the kingdom of Poland. Veiled at first, during the lifetime of Alexander, by constitutional forms, it was hastened, and no longer concealed, under the Emperor Nicholas, whose policy may be described in one word, the _denationalisation_ of Poland. To accomplish this was the dream, the intense, unbounded, ardent passion of a prince who was perhaps a great Russian, driven by continental revolutions to play an exceptional part, but who left dangerous traces upon European policy, and bequeathed a weight of formidable difficulties to his successor. Yet it must not be said that the Revolution of 1831 placed Poland at the mercy of this Tzar, or that it released him from all his obligations, and gave him all the rights of a conqueror; for, in the first place, that revolution was nothing more than a reprisal--a desperate attempt at self-defence; and, what is more, against any such policy there rise at once all the stipulations of the Treaty of Vienna, and even all the words of the Emperor Alexander--‘Your restoration is defined by solemn treaties.... I have obliged Europe to guarantee your existence by treaties....’ The Emperor Nicholas was, possibly, the fittest judge to determine what extent of liberalism he could put into the institutions of the kingdom of Poland; but he was not the only judge of what was, so to say, the European essence of these institutions--of that which concerned their spirit, according to treaty--of the preservation of the nationality of Poland. Diplomacy had placed that matter out of his power, by putting it beyond his reach. Now, this very nationality, placed under the guarantees of all Europe, became, unfortunately, a particular foe of Nicholas; and he persecuted it with all the inflexible vigour of his character, in our religion and our language, in the autonomy of our interests and institutions, in the independence of our hearths, in public instruction, in our manners, and in our very dress. This originated the system which, in 1831, substituted a new _statut organique_ for the Constitution of 1815, and which, we must say, has been followed far too long, and followed, also, in all the bitterness of a spirit irritated by the resistance which it has met with.

The organic statute of 1831 made no secret of it; it was an absolute and definitive incorporation of the Kingdom into the Russian Empire. Thenceforward the ceremony of the coronation of the king of Poland at Warsaw was also abolished. The separate army disappeared, and military recruiting for Russia spread over the kingdom. The magistracy ceased to be unremovable, and Russian functionaries replaced Poles in the administration; while the constitutional chambers gave place to provincial assemblies, which have, moreover, never even been convoked. Thus a policy was disclosed, of which the only aim seems to have been to dissolve all the ties of national life in the kingdom, as well as in the ancient provinces. The high schools, the university, the library, the museum, and the mint of Warsaw vanished, or were transferred to St. Petersburg. Education was reduced to technical studies; Latin was banished at last; and the children in every parish, to whatever class of society they might belong, were obliged to attend the government schools, and to learn Russian, under pain of corporal punishment on the children, and of a fine in the case of the parents. One day, 5,000 families of the lesser nobility of Poland were ordered to be transported to the crown lands, or to the Caucasian border; and in the order of execution it was added, that, ‘if the Polish gentry have no mind to be transplanted, you are authorised to oblige them, and to use force;’ while another day the Council of Administration at Warsaw adjudicated quietly on the transport of the _sons of noble Poles_ to St. Petersburg, at the price of 120 roubles (paper money). I do not speak here of other orphan children carried off to Minsk, or of the multitudes of Poles of all ages removed to Siberia. Where persons are not safe, religion is also infringed. Sometimes it is attacked through the police, sometimes it suffers by the expropriation of Catholic Churches, by persecution, by the forced conversion of the United Greek to the Orthodox Church. The national costume is the next subject of interference; there is a law against wearing the national colours, against using blue, crimson, or white, though green and red are not wholly forbidden to the women, and we are permitted to put on white shirts. The Russian costume of a brown hue being much the most economical wear, the government undertakes to open clothing shops in all towns and villages! The reward of one rouble is offered to those who display the greatest alacrity in donning the Russian dress, and those who oppose themselves are flogged. In short, a vast attempt is made to efface everything that has the stamp of our country, or that can recall her existence. This hapless nationality in the midst of the empire must be made to disappear, and it must be made subordinate to the intentions and the interests of Russia.

The design of bringing about a forced assimilation, and of making the Polish give way to the Russian element, is often shown in the most futile administrative details, in the simplest questions of trade, and other material interests. Having once entered on this system, Russia is condemned to fear everything, and to watch every event. Not very long ago, Prussia drew up a set of complicated rules with regard to the importation of cattle into its territories, and established such a quarantine as might preserve its herds from those epizootic disorders which ravaged the southern parts of Russia. Who suffered from these difficulties? Of course, the kingdom of Poland (a country essentially agricultural, but possessing in its cattle one element of wealth) could not but suffer. It was then timidly requested that, in order to have the restrictions, made for the sake of Prussia, removed, and in order to leave the trade between Germany and Poland free, such precautionary measures as had heretofore been in force at the Prussian frontier of the kingdom should also be put in practice on the marches of the Russian provinces in which the contagion obtained. But nothing of the sort was done; and for this reason, that the sanitary _cordon_ thus demanded must have been upon the old Polish boundary, and it would, oddly enough, have described the line of those frontiers which existed in 1792, and which the treaties of 1815 had laid down as the frame within which the commercial life of the different provinces of Poland was to exist. Russia was represented at Warsaw by a terrible man, a Director of the Interior, M. Muchanof, who could not bear to see Poland imaged even under the shape of a law of transit.

Another fact ought to be noticed. During the last years, a great question, from which the Russian Empire has much to fear, has been in agitation, I mean the emancipation of the peasantry; a problem of which the Emperor Alexander II. has attempted the solution. My business is not with the discussion of the subject in itself, but only to remark, that there is a great difference in regard to it between Russia and the kingdom of Poland. In the kingdom all the principles of the French civil code remain in full vigour. There is equality of persons in the eye of the law; but the constitution of property is a different thing. Thus, our peasants still pay, it is true, a feudal fine, or _corvée_, on the fields which they cultivate; but this fine is not a sign of personal servitude. The labouring man has his civil individuality. Thus, in the different countries his condition differs essentially; and yet when the question arose the other day, Polish proprietors were forbidden to do otherwise than follow the programme traced by the Russian government solely with a view to Russia.

My object in referring to this, is to point out in what a confusion of interests Polish autonomy now perishes by force; and yet that autonomy was placed under the sanction of the whole of Europe. In truth, must not Russian policy have passed all limits, if quite recently a permission to teach Polish in schools for _one hour_ in the day (as if it was English or Turkish) came to be considered as a sort of reparation, almost as a liberal measure?