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Poland The Napoleonic Period
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Europe had begun
to
feel the impact of momentous political and intellectual
movements
that, among their other effects, would keep the "Polish
Question"
on the agenda of international issues needing resolution.
Most
immediately, Napoleon Bonaparte had established a new
empire in
France in 1804 following that country's revolution.
Napoleon's
attempts to build and expand his empire kept Europe at war
for
the next decade and brought him into conflict with the
same East
European powers that had beleaguered Poland in the last
decades
of the previous century. An alliance of convenience was
the
natural result of this situation. Volunteer Polish legions
attached themselves to Bonaparte's armies, hoping that in
return
the emperor would allow an independent Poland to reappear
out of
his conquests.
Although Napoleon promised more than he ever intended
to
deliver to the Polish cause, in 1807 he created a Duchy of
Warsaw
from Prussian territory that had been part of old Poland
and was
still inhabited by Poles
(see
fig. 8). Basically a French
puppet,
the duchy did enjoy some degree of self-government, and
many
Poles believed that further Napoleonic victories would
bring
restoration of the entire commonwealth.
In 1809, under Józef Poniatowski, nephew of Stanislaw
II
Augustus, the duchy reclaimed the land taken by Austria in
the
second partition. The Russian army occupied the duchy as
it
chased Napoleon out of Russia in 1813, however, and Polish
expectations ended with the final defeat of Napoleon at
Waterloo
in 1815. In the subsequent peace settlement of the
Congress of
Vienna, the victorious Austrians and Prussians swept away
the
Duchy of Warsaw and reconfirmed most of the terms of the
final
partition of Poland.
Although brief,the Napoleonic period occupies an
important
place in Polish annals. Much of the legend and symbolism
of
modern Polish patriotism derives from this period,
including the
conviction that Polish independence is a necessary element
of a
just and legitimate European order. This conviction was
simply
expressed in a fighting slogan of the time, "for your
freedom and
ours." Moreover, the appearance of the Duchy of Warsaw so
soon
after the partitions proved that the seemingly final
historical
death sentence delivered in 1795 was not necessarily the
end of
the Polish nation. Instead, many observers came to believe
that
favorable circumstances would free Poland from foreign
domination.
Data as of October 1992
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