(Cambridge Concise Histories) Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki - A Concise History of Poland-Cambridge University Press (2006)

The disenchantment with Republican France and the consequent return to Poland of many exiles (although not of Košciuszko) only strengthened the hand of those who saw better prospects for preserving Polish national identity through legal cultural activity. The Warsaw Society of the Friends of Learning, established in 1800, gathered some of Poland's leading scholars and writers; it aimed at making Polish a major language of scholarship and one of its leading lights, the lexicographer Samuel Bogumil Linde, was to publish between 1807 and 1814 the first modern dictionary of the Polish language. At the same time in Pulawy Princess Izabela Czartoryska founded a museum devoted to the glorification of Poland’s past.

The greatest Polish hopes, however, came to be associated with Alexander I, Russia’s tsar since March 1801, who privately condemned his grandmother’s treatment of Poland, and professed ‘liberal’ political views. At Alexander’s side was his close friend Prince Adam Czartoryski who had been sent to Russia to recover his family’s estates. Confident that an honourable Russo-Polish reconciliation, underpinned ideologically by sentiments of Slavonic solidarity, was possible under Alexander, Czartoryski accepted high office from his imperial friend. As curator of the Wilno (Vilnius) educational district from 1803, Czartoryski presided over the reform of the university of Wilno which stood at the apex of an extensive network of Polish-language secondary schools in Russia’s ex-Polish gubernii. Tsar Alexander’s recognition of the supremacy of Polish nobiliary culture in his western territories militated against the russification of this area but also of course did nothing to promote the literary development of the local non-Polish tongues; this role was left to individual patrons, such as Jozef Giedroyč (Giedraitis), the bishop of Samogitia, who with his circle promoted the use of the Lithuanian language as a literary vehicle. The university of Wilno became a beacon of Polish academic life and by far the largest university in the Russian Empire. Within its walls were to study many eminent figures in Polish culture, such as the Romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz and the historian Joachim Lelewel. Little wonder that for many Polish-Lithuanian noblemen Russia appeared the most tolerant of the three partitioning powers.

More controversial was Czartoryski’s record as director of Russia’s foreign policy from 1804 to 1806. His vision of Alexander as a crusader for a new just and moral European order, in which Poland would be restored in dynastic association with Russia, appealed to the young tsar’s vanity and idealism, but collapsed in the face of harsh political realities and the tsar’s own indecisiveness. Russia’s attempt in 1804-5 ^t0 draw Austria and Prussia into an anti-Napoleonic coalition could hardly be reconciled with Czartoryski’s scheme of despoiling those states of their Polish provinces.

The defeat of the Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz in December 1805 undermined Czartoryski’s influence in St Petersburg and brought about the end of his ministerial career. And by the end of .1806 the situation in the Polish lands was dramatically reversed by another twist of fate: Napoleon’s victorious campaign in 1806 against Prussia which brought the French army into Prussian Poland.

As the Hohenzollern state collapsed under Napoleon’s blows, Berlin’s Polish provinces erupted in a widespread national uprising. The appearance of the former legionaries Dqbrowski and Wybicki in the van of Napoleon’s army revived earlier hopes of French assistance that had been so cruelly dashed in 1801. Tsar Alexander joined the fray on Prussia’s side, and the war dragged on. Napoleon therefore authorized the creation in Prussian Poland of an administration run by local Poles that would maintain social order and provide him with additional fighting men and supplies. After much soul-searching, Prince Jozef Poniatowski was persuaded by Murat to accept the command of a resurrected Polish army to fight alongside the French. Prince ‘Pepi’, the playboy of Warsaw, had taken the first step that would turn him into a national hero and the most chivalrous symbol of Polish military valour in the Napoleonic period.