according to such forms of political existence as the governments to which they belong shall think fit to allow them.
Alexander, who had a sentimental regard for freedom, so long as it was obedient to himself, had promised the Poles a The New Polish Constitution, 1815. New constitution in April 1815 in a letter to Ostrovskiy, the president of the senate at Warsaw. His promise was publicly proclaimed on the 25th of May, and was reaffirmed in the Zamok or palace at Warsaw and the cathedral of St John on the 20th of June. The constitution thus promised was duly drafted, and was signed on the 30th of November. It contained 165 articles divided under seven heads. The kingdom of Poland was declared to be united to Russia, in the person of the tsar, as a separate political entity. The kingdom was the Congress Kingdom, for the vague promises of an extension to the east which Alexander had made to the Poles were never fulfilled. Lithuania and the Ruthenian Palatinates continued to be incorporated with Russia as the Western Provinces and were divided from the Congress Kingdom by a customs barrier till the reign of Nicholas I. The kingdom of Poland thus defined was to have at its head a lieutenant of the emperor (namiestnik), who must be a member of the Imperial house or a Pole. The first holder of the office, General Zajonczek (1752-1826), was a veteran who had served Napoleon. Roman Catholicism was recognized as the religion of the state, but other religions were tolerated. Liberty of the Press was promised subject to the passing of a law to restrain its abuses. Individual liberty, the use of the Polish language in the law courts, and the exclusive employment of Poles in the civil government were secured by the constitution. The machinery of government was framed of a council of state, at which the Imperial government was represented by a commissioner plenipotentiary, and a diet divided into a senate composed of the princes of the blood, the palatines and councillors named for life, and a house of nuntii elected for seven years, 77 chosen by the “dietines” of the nobles, and 51 by the commons. The diet was to meet every other year fer a session of thirty days, and was to be renewed by thirds every two years. Poland retained its flag, and a national army based on that which had been raised by and had fought for Napoleon. The command of the army was given to the emperor's brother Constantine, a man of somewhat erratic character, who did much to offend the Poles by violence, but also a good deal to please them by his marriage with Johanna Grudzinska, a Polish lady afterwards created Princess Lowicz, for whose sake he renounced his right to the throne of Russia (see Constantine Pavlovich).
The diet met three times during the reign of Alexander, in 1818, in 1820 and in 1825, and was on all three occasions opened by the tsar, who was compelled to address his subjects in French, since he did not speak, and would not learn, their language. It is highly doubtful whether, with the best efforts on both sides, a constitutional government could have been worked by a Russian autocrat, and an assembly of men who inherited the memories and characters of the Poles. In fact the tsar and the diet soon quarrelled. The Poles would not abolish the jury to please the tsar, nor conform as he wished them to do to the Russian law of divorce. Opposition soon arose, and as Alexander could not understand a freedom which differed from himself, and would not condescend to the use of corruption, by which the ancient Polish diets had been managed, he was driven to use force. The third session of the diet—13th of May to 13th of June 1825—was a mere formality. All publicity was suppressed, and one whole district was disfranchised because it persisted in electing candidates who were disapproved of at court. On the other hand, the Poles were also to blame for the failure of constitutional government. They would agitate by means of the so-called National Masonry, or National Patriotic Society as it was afterwards called, for the restoration of the full kingdom of Poland. The nobles who dominated the diet did nothing to remove the most crying evil of the country—the miserable state of the peasants, who had been freed from personal serfdom by Napoleon in 1807, but were being steadily driven from their holdings by the landlords. In spite of the general prosperity of the country due to peace, and the execution of public works mostly at the expense of Russia, the state of the agricultural class grew, if anything, worse.
Yet no open breach occurred during the reign of Alexander, nor for five years after his death in 1825. The Decembrist movement in Russia had little or no echo in Poland. On the death of Zajonczek in 1826, the grand duke Constantine became The Grand Duke Constantine. Imperial lieutenant, and his administration, though erratic, was not unfavourable to displays of Polish nationality. The Polish army had no share in the Turkish War of 1829, largely, it is said, at the request of Constantine, who loved parades and thought that war was the ruin of soldiers. No attempt was made to profit by the embarrassments of the Russians in their war with Turkey. A plot to murder Nicholas at his coronation on the 24th of May 1829 was not carried out, and when he held the fourth diet on the 30th of May 1830, the Poles made an ostentatious show of their nationality which Nicholas was provoked to describe as possibly patriotic but certainly not civil. Nevertheless, he respected the settlement of 1815. In the meantime the Patriotic Society had divided into a White or Moderate party and a Red or Extreme party, which was subdivided into the Academics or Republicans and the Military or Terrorists. The latter were very busy and were supported by the Roman Catholic Church, which did little for the Prussian Poles and nothing for the Austrian Poles, but was active in harassing the schismatical government of Russia.
The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1830 and the revolt of Belgium produced a great effect in Poland. The spread Polish Rising of 1830. of a belief, partly justified by the language of Nicholas, that the Polish army would be used to coerce the Belgians, caused great irritation. At last, on the 29th of November 1830, a military revolt took place in Warsaw accompanied by the murder of the minister of war, Hauke, himself a Pole, and other loyal officers. The extraordinary weakness of the grand duke allowed the rising to gather strength. He evacuated Warsaw and finally left the country, dying at Vitebsk on the 27th of June 1831 (see Constantine Pavlovich). The war lasted from January till September 1831. The fact that the Poles possessed a well-drilled army of 23,800 foot, 6800 horse and 108 guns, which they were able to recruit to a total strength of 80,821 men with 158 guns, gave solidity to the rising. The Russians, who had endeavoured to overawe Europe by the report of their immense military power, had the utmost difficulty in putting 114,000 men into the field, yet in less than a year, under the leadership of Diebitsch, and then of Paskevich, they mastered the Poles. On the political and administrative side the struggle of the Poles was weakened by the faults which had been the ruin of their kingdom—faction pushed to the point of anarchy, want of discipline, intrigue and violence, as shown by the abominable massacre which took place in Warsaw when the defeat of the army was known. The Poles had begun by protesting that they only wished to defend their rights against the tsar, but they soon proceeded to proclaim his deposition. Their appeal to the powers of Europe for protection was inevitably disregarded.
When the Congress Kingdom had been reconquered it was immediately reduced to the position of a Russian province. Poland a Russian Province. No remnant of Poland's separate political existence remained save the minute republic of Cracow. Unable to acquiesce sincerely in its insignificance and even unable to enforce its neutrality, Cracow was a centre of disturbance, and, after Russia, Prussia, and Austria had in 1846 agreed to its suppression, was finally occupied by Austria on the 6th of November 1848, as a consequence of the troubles, more agrarian than political, which convulsed Galicia. The administration established by Nicholas I. in Russian Poland was harsh and aimed avowedly at destroying the nationality, and even the language of Poland. The Polish universities of Warsaw and Vilna were suppressed, and the students compelled to go to St Petersburg and Kiev. Polish
