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

Born near Nowogrodek (Navahrudak in modern Belarus) in historic Lithuania and educated at the university of Wilno (Vilnius), Mickiew iez spent most of his life in exile, first in Russia and later in France. His poetry, as well as his lifelong commitment to the cause of liberty, profoundly shaped the Polish Romantic mind. With his fellow Romantic poet Juliusz Stowacki he lies buried next to the kings of Poland in the cathedral of Wawel in Krakow. He is also highly regarded as a national poet in Lithuania and Belarus. Mickiewiez's patriotic sentiments (evocatively expressed in his epic Pan Tadensz) were associated with the former multilingual Grand Duchy of Lithuania and would be alien to the narrow ethnic nationalisms, whether Polish or Lithuanian, that emerged after 1 86^-4.

two very different political temperaments but now acting together to save Poland’s limited gains of 1815, even urged Constantine to use force against the rebels. To their dismay he refused, and left the restoration of order to the Polish authorities. Desperate to avoid a breach with Nicholas and to tame the fires of the insurrection, the government co-opted the respected Czartoryski and the popular Napoleonic veteran General Jozef Chlopicki. Against it arose a new self-styled Patriotic Society, led by the radical Lelewel and the fiery orator Mochnacki, committed to widening the insurrection. In Warsaw the situation was getting out of control while more units outside the city joined the rebels. Further government reshuffles and Constantine's departure from Warsaw failed to restore order, and the government felt obliged to summon the Sejm.

Any hope that the Sejm would restrain public opinion failed; moved by a wave of patriotism, it endorsed the insurrection as ‘an act of the Nation’ and on 20 December appointed the reluctant Chlopicki ‘dictator’. Paradoxically, Chlopicki hated all disorder and was eager to achieve a reconciliation with the tsar-king, but Nicholas refused to negotiate or to make any concessions that might have appeased Polish opinion. On 17 December he offered an amnesty but demanded unconditional capitulation. Unable to deliver what Nicholas wanted and unwilling to crush the rising, Chlopicki resigned on 18 January 1831. Little could now prevent an irrevocable break with Nicholas. On 25 January, after two months of indecision, the Sejm deposed Nicholas by public acclamation. By this act the Sejm broke with legality and defied the treaty of Vienna which had sanctioned the Kingdom’s union with Russia. Polish claims that Alexander’s and Nicholas’ violations of the constitution justified the deposition were essentially flawed.

There now ensued an internal struggle over the nature, methods and aims of the insurrection. To prevent the ultra-patriots and the radicals of the Patriotic Society from seizing power, moderate conservatives like Czartoryski felt that they had no option but to assume the leadership of the insurrection. The five-man National Government elected on 30 January by the Sejm included Lelewel but was presided over by Czartoryski, who acquired special responsibilities for foreign policy. Furthermore, on 8 February, the Sejm declared that Poland would remain a hereditary constitutional

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