the European Powers generally as conclusive, and it is on the ground of the violation of them by Russia that some of these Powers at present justify their diplomatic interference. In every subsequent attempt to settle the Polish question diplomatically, the provisions of the Congress of Vienna must necessarily have a very considerable, if not decisive, influence, and an acquaintance with them is indispensable to understand the negotiations to which this question will yet undoubtedly give rise. The following is a translation of the Article of the Treaty of Vienna (art. i.) relating to Poland:

"The Duchy of Warsaw, with the exception of the provinces and districts, otherwise disposed of in the following articles, is reunited with the Kingdom of Poland. It shall be irrevocably connected with that empire by its Constitution, to be possessed by his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, his heirs and successors, in perpetuity. His Imperial Majesty reserves to himself the right to give to this state, enjoying a distinct administration, such interior extension as he shall judge proper. He will, in addition to his other titles, assume that of Czar, King of Poland, in conformity with the protocol, used and hallowed by the titles attached to his other possessions.

"The Poles who are respectively subjects of Russia, Austria and Prussia, shall obtain a representation and national institutions regulated according to that mode of political existence which each of the Governments to which they belong, shall deem useful and proper to grant.'

The Constitution which the Emperor Alexander I. gave to the Kingdom of Poland on Nov. 27th, 1815, promised to the Poles a national representation in two Chambers, freedom of the press, independence of the courts, responsibility of the Ministers, and an independent administration, which during the absence of the Czar was to be conducted by a Viceroy. But soon the Russian Government began to restrict this Constitution. In 1819, the censorship of the press was again introduced; in 1825, the biennial representation and the publicity of the proceedings were abolished. On Nov. 29th, 1830, a revolution broke out against the Russian rule. But the insurgents were from the beginning divided into two parties: an aristocratic one, under the leadership of Czartoryski, Lubeczki, Chlopieki, Michael Radzivill, etc., and a democratic one, under the leadership of Lelewel, etc. The former made an attempt at a reconciliation with the Czar, which, however, failed, as the Czar demanded an unconditional surrender. On Jan. 25th, 1831, the Diet excluded the House of Manov forever from the Polish throne. The insurrection was virtually suppressed Sept. 8th, 1831, by the surrender of the City of Warsaw. The Russian Government maintained that the Poles by their insurrection had forfeited those rights which the Congress of Vienna had stipulated for them, and consequently by a ukase of Feb. 26th, 1832, abolished the Constitution of

Nov. 27th, 1815. In the place of the Constitution the Organic Statute of 14 (26) February, 1832, was issued. By it Poland was declared a Russian province, the National Polish Army dissolved, and the Polish recruits divided among the Russian divisions; a Council of State, whose members need not be Poles, and were appointed by the Emperor, was substituted for the Diet; the taxes were not used for Poland alone, but paid into the treasury of Russia; religious and personal freedom was again guaranteed. England and France protested against this measure of the Russian Government, as an infraction of the spirit, if not of the letter, of the treaties of Vienna.

The legislation which was inaugurated in 1832, continued substantially until 1861. Alexander II., who from the beginning of his reign had shown a disposition to mitigate the rigorous treatment Poland had received during the reign of Nicholas I., tried to allay the excitement which showed itself in the beginning of the year 1861, by issuing a ukase, on 14th (26th) March, 1861, which, beside conceding other reforms, reestablished the Council of State for the Kingdom of Poland, and ordered all future official acts to be in the name of the Emperor as King of Poland. This was followed by another ukase, of the 1st (13th) of January, 1862, which suppressed the special department in the Council of the Emperor for the affairs of Poland as being superfluous, since the reëstablishment of the Council of State for the Kingdom Poland. Other reforms followed in the course of the year. The Russian Government seemed to enter fully into the plan of the Polish Marquis Wielopolski, who in 1831 had been one of the heads of the insurrection, but had since completely changed his views, and for many years devoted his great talents wholly to bringing about a reconciliation between Russia and Poland. He had come to the conclusion, that not a severance from Russia could lead to a restoration of a Polish nationality, but that the only way to attain this result was to gain the sympathy and coöperation of Russia for uniting all the formerly Polish provinces into one kingdom under the supremacy of Russia. The Archduke Constantine, in particular, a warm partisan of all measures of Panslavic tendency, became the patron of this project, and was on May 27th (June 8th), 1862, appointed Namiestnik (Administrator) of the kingdom, to attempt a practical execution of the plan. In order to enlist, if possible, the Roman Catholic clergy in the scheme, the director of the Roman Catholic Seminary of St. Petersburg, Felinski, who was regarded as staunchly loyal to the Imperial Government, was appointed Archbishop of Warsaw. Yet, all these efforts remained fruitless. But few of the influential Poles could be gained over to this plan. On the contrary, the national, anti-Russian party displayed new strength. A large number of the Polish noblemen expressed their views on the reforms introduced by Russia, in an address to Count

Zamoiski, their leader. They demanded the restoration of the ancient rights of the nation. "We do not keep aloof," they said, "from making use of the institutions recently conceded to us, but we deem it a duty to declare, that the policy hitherto adopted has brought the country into a condition, in which neither military power, nor martial law, dungeons and exile, nor even sentences of death can quiet it; on the contrary, all such measures would only increase the excitement, and force the country upon a way equally disastrous to the Government and to the people. As Poles, we confidently support the Government only, when the Government shall be a national, Polish one, and when all the provinces of our country shall be united under free laws." Count Zamoiski was summoned to St. Petersburg, for having called forth this address, and as his defence was considered unsatisfactory, sent into exile. This and other measures neutralized all the effects, that some of the reforms of the Government might otherwise have produced. A revolutionary party extended its ramifications throughout the country, having its movement conducted by a Central Committee in Warsaw. The excitement ran to a fearful height, several attempts were made against the lives of Grand Duke Constantine and Marquis Wielopolski, and the year 1862 closed with forebodings of serious disturbances.

The agitation was not confined to the Kingdom of Poland, but extended to the Old Polish Provinces. In order to prevent patriotic manifestations, the Government interdicted or postponed the triennial assemblies of the nobility in these provinces. An exception was made in favor of that of Minsk, which was opened on November 22d, 1862. Never had a meeting of the nobility been more fully attended, the members considering this attendance a duty to their country. An address to the Emperor setting forth the wishes and wants of the country, was unanimously agreed upon. When the Governor forbade the sending of an address, it was resolved to insert the proposition for it in the minutes. The assembly renewed its former declarations in favor of the equality of all classes and all creeds, freedom of conscience, and institutions founded upon the spirit of the nation.

January, 1863, was inaugurated by the attempt of the Government to enforce a very rigorous conscription law in the towns, which were regarded as the seat of the revolutionary agitation. In Warsaw, the recruiting began in the night of January 14th. According to the Polish accounts, those indicated by the managers of the conscription were torn from their beds, and dragged to the citadel under a guard of Cossacks, gendarmes, and other armed men. When those for whom they were in search were not found, they seized married men, fathers of large families, and held them as hostages for their surrender. In a similar way, the conscription was enforced in the

country towns. Large numbers of the conscripts and other disaffected people assembled in the forests, in several parts of the kingdom, with the object of preparing for an insurrection. On January 16th, the Central Committee issued a proclamation stating that they had taken all the measures in their power to prevent the recruiting, but that they had been taken by surprise, and their calculations were upset by unforeseen circumstances, especially by the hostility of the French Government, which had retarded the introduction of arms into Poland. The committee proclaimed the whole country in an exceptional state, and declared the Marquis Wielopolski and his son, and all those who had taken part in the recruiting, to be outlaws. They also gave orders that the youth should quit the city to hide in the woods, in the neighborhood of Warsaw. A large number of secret societies met, on January 18th, at Perotsk, in the neighborhood of Warsaw, but they were dispersed by the military, who arrested about 50 persons. On the night of January 22d, several attacks were made upon the soldiers at Warsaw, and about 30 Russians killed, and three times that number wounded. The loss of the insurgents was very great. Simultaneously, serious conflicts took place at Block, Plonz, Radzin, Siedlie, and other places. Railway and telegraphic communication was interrupted at several points. The lower and middle classes, working men, and the proprietors of small estates, equally took part in the movement, while the great landed proprietors and the peasants kept aloof. On January 25th, the whole kingdom was placed under martial law.

At the beginning of February, several large bodies of insurgents had already been formed. The main body, consisting of about 5,000 men, was under the command of Langiewicz; and posted in the mountains of Krzyz. A second division, commanded by Count Jyskiewicz, took up a position near Rawa, on the river Rawka, in the district of Warsaw. The third division, commanded by Frankviski, was posted in the district of Lublin. The insurgents soon took possession of several towns, as Olkusz, on Feb. 1st; of Lodz, an important manufacturing town in the district of Masovia, where they took from the branch establishment of the bank, 18,000 rubles, and from the post office, 31,000 rubles. Skirmishes between the insurgents and the Russians were now of frequent occurrence. In some the Russians were defeated, and numbers of them fled into Prussian territory.

The Russian Government at once sent heavy reënforcements of troops into Poland; at the same time, the conscription was stopped, and the Council of the Empire received orders from the Emperor, to propose several bills having for their object the introduction of reforms into the government of Poland. The Prussian Government showed its sympathy with Russia, by escorting back the Russian

troops that had fled to Prussian territory, with military honors. Austria preserved an entire neutrality, and protested against occasional violation of the Austrian territory by Russian troops, in pursuit of the Poles.

On February 8th, a convention was concluded between the Governments of Prussia and Russia, by which Prussia engaged to prevent the insurgents from receiving rëenforcements and arms, or from taking refuge on the Prussian territory, and, if called upon, to accord to Russia all the facilities possible for crushing the insurrection. Additional articles regulated the mutual relations between the Prussian and the Russian armies in case of an armed intervention. This convention was severely and unanimously rebuked throughout Europe, and led to a coalition of France, England, and Austria. The Second Chamber of the Prussian Parliament, on February 28th, adopted by 246 to 57 votes, a motion of the deputies Hoverbeck and Carlowitz, recommending neutrality in the Polish question, and asking that both Russian soldiers and Polish insurgents entering Prussian territory should be disarmed.

No attempt was made at provoking an insurrection in the Prussian and Austrian portions of Poland; on the contrary, the Provisional Government of Warsaw expressly warned the inhabitants of those provinces against any revolutionary outbreak. This view was shared by nearly all the Polish exiles, and Gen. Dembinski, among others, declared him to be an enemy of Poland, who would seek to cause an insurrectionary outbreak in Austrian Poland. Still the warmest sympathy with the insurrection was generally manifested in the Polish prov. inces of Prussia and Austria. With the success of the insurrection, notwithstanding the strict guard of the frontiers, thousands of volunteers rushed to the seat of war. In the Kingdom of Poland, the movement became in the beginning of March a national one, in the fullest sense of the word. Even those classes, which had opposed and even strongly condemned the insurrectionary outbreak, regarded it to be their duty to show their sympathy with the cause of Polish independence, and to indorse the principal demands of the National party. In Warsaw, most of the members of the Council of State who were independent of the Government, tendered their resignation. The same was done by the Municipality. Even the Archbishop of Warsaw, Felinski, whom the Russian Government had looked upon as their most unflinching partisan, tendered his resignation as member of the Council of State. Subsequently, he even addressed a letter to the Emperor, advocating the claims of the Polish nation, in consequence of which he was exiled to the interior of Russia. In the eight provinces of Russia, which had formerly been parts of the Polish Empire, the national movement likewise showed itself. In Lithuania, all the marshals of the corpora

tions, all the judges and judicial officers, and all the independent public functionaries sent in their resignations en masse, basing these resignations upon a resolution not to receive any communication from the Government in the Russian language. The sympathy with the insurrection was not confined to the Polish inhabitants of these provinces, who form only a small minority of the total population (1,027,000 out of 9,849,000), but extended to the Litliuanians (1,645,000), who for centuries had been united with the Poles, and to a part of the Ruthenians, who had formerly belonged to the United Greek Church, and had been forced, in 1839, against their will, into a union with the Russian State Church. Corps of insurgents were formed in several of these provinces, especially in that of Grodno, though they never became so numerous and efficient as in the provinces of Poland Proper.

Among the Russians, the insurrection did not find as many friends as some of its leaders had expected. Alexander Herzen, Bakunin, and other chiefs of the revolutionary Russian party, openly took sides with the Poles; and through their influence a few Russian officers were induced to join the Polish insurgents; but the majority of the Russians regarded the struggle as a sacred cause of the Russian nationality, and not only supported but goaded on the Government.

The hereditary fault of the Poles, internal dissensions, showed itself among the commanders of the national forces immediately upon the outbreak of the insurrection. On February 19th, Gen. Mieroslavski, well known to the people, from the prominent part he had taken in former revolutionary plots in Poland, and in the European revolution of 1848, informed the insurgents that the Provisional National Government had appointed him commander-inchief of all the insurrectionary forces. began his operations on the frontier of the governments of Plocz and Kalish, but was signally unsuccessful. Soon after he had assumed the commandership-in-chief, his corps was dispersed, and he himself disappeared altogether from the seat of war.

He

Marian Langiewicz was more successful, and for some time was expected to become the Garibaldi of Poland. He was born on August 5th, 1827, at Krotoshin, in the grand duchy of Posen. He studied, in 1848, mathematics at the university of Breslau, and for some time the Slavic languages at the university of Prague. Being without means of subsistence, he for two years acted as a private teacher in the family of a Polish nobleman, after which he entered the Prussian army. In 1859 he was an officer of the artillery when, believing the prospects for a Polish revolution to be brightening, he resigned, and went to Paris, where Mieroslavski appointed him teacher at his new military school. This place he resigned, in order to join Garibaldi, upon his famous expedition for the annexation of Naples

and Sicily to the kingdom of Sardinia. After the conclusion of this campaign, he was appointed teacher of the artillery scholars at the Polish military school at Cuneo. When this school was suppressed, he spent some time at Warsaw, in organizing the secret societies of the revolutionary party; from there toward the close of the year 1862, he went to London. After the outbreak of the insurrection, he at once appeared upon the seat of war, and soon became the most distinguished of the insurrectionary leaders.

The scene of the operations of Langiewicz, was the governments of Radom and Lublin, in the southern part of the kingdom, and on the frontier of Galicia. There, in a short time, he organized the largest of any insurgent corps, consisting of more than 6,000 men, and provided with six cannon. By skilful marches and manoeuvres he several times surprised the enemy, and several times eluded their vigilance, when they expected to encircle him by overwhelming numbers. Polish accounts claim that he gained signal successes over the Russians at Malogaszezes, on February 26th, and March 4th at Skala.

On March 10th, shortly after the Provisional Government had appointed him general, Langiewicz assumed the dictatorship by the following proclamation:

Countrymen,-In the name of the Most High, the most patriotic sons of Poland have commenced a struggle caused by terrible abuses, and directed against the eternal enemies of liberty and civilization. Not withstanding the extremely unfavorable circumstances in which the enemy, by a great increase of oppression, hastened the armed conflict, the struggle commenced by an unarmed people has already lasted two months, gains strength, and develops itself with energy.

In presence of this war to the death, of the massacres, the pillage, and the conflagrations which mark the progress of the enemy, Poland feels painfully the absence of a visible central power, capable of directing the forces engaged in the struggle and of summoning

new assistance to the field.

Although the nation possesses more capable and worthy citizens than I, and although thoroughly conscious of the heavy duties of the office and the weight of responsibility which it involves, the gravity and necessity of the moment have decided me, after consulting with the Provisional Government, to assume the supreme power of Dictator, which I shall surrender to the representatives of the nation as soon as the yoke of the Muscovite is shaken off.

While retaining the immediate direction of military operations in my own hands, I recognize the necessity of establishing a civil government whose functions will be regulated by a special ordinance continuing the work of the Provisional Government.

I confirm the principle of liberty and equality to all citizens, granting land to the peasants, with indemnity to the proprietors..

Poles of all provinces beneath the Muscovite yoke, I summon you to the struggle against the domination of Russian barbarism. The concord of all citizens, irrespective of difference of classes and religious community, of sacrifices and unity of strength, will render our now scattered forces terrible to the enemy, and in

sure the independence of our country. To arms for the liberty and independence of our fatherland. (Signed) LANGIEWICZ.

This proclamation produced a great sensation. Gen. Wysezky at the same time was

appointed his military coadjutor, while the direction of the civil administration was intrusted to Bentkovsky, member of the Second Prussian Chamber. Langiewicz appointed the insurgent leaders Jezioranski and Waligorski generals, and accredited foreign agents to all foreign governments, to protect the interests of the insurrectionary government. On March 13th, the Dictator published a decree constituting the Civil Court of Poland, by the nomination of four directors and two secretaries.

The dictatorship of Langiewicz called forth a protest from Mieroslavski, dated March 11th, 1863. Mieroslavski claimed to have previously been invited to take the dictatorship, by the following act of the National Provisional Government: "The National Provisional Government, considering the insurrection of Poland, invites General Louis Mieroslavski to take the dictatorship and chief command of the insurrection. Warsaw, Jan. 23d, 1863." Mieroslavski further states that he had ordered a proclamation to be published, in order to be distributed at the proper time, but that from. prudential reasons the authorities only and the leaders of the insurgent detachments were informed of it. He charged Langiewicz with having "taken advantage in the most unjustifiable manner" of his prudence, seizing upon

the moment when a serious attack of illness compelled him to seek a quiet refuge, to proclaim himself second dictator of the Polish nation, over some thousand square miles of territory. Ladislas Danilovski, and Ladislav Jeska, by declaration of March 15th, certified that they, conjointly with Ladislav Janovski, had, as commissioners of the Central National Committee, taken to Paris the invitation to Mieroslavski to assume the dictatorship, and they, therefore, in common with Mieroslavski, protested "against the iniquitous attempt” of Langiewicz.

This internal dissension was soon followed by a fatal blow to the national cause. The Russians moved with overwhelming numbers against Langiewicz. On March 17th, they overtook him at Chrobrze, on the river Nida The left wing and the centre of the insurgents fought bravely, and even gained some advan tages; but the right wing, mostly consisting of raw recruits, was thrown into disorder. Russian cavalry seized the wagons in the rear of the Poles, who found it necessary to retreat across the Nida. On March 18th, the retreat was continued, and the bridge across the Nids destroyed by order of Gen. Langiewicz. But this delayed the Russians, who were com manded by Prince Schachovskoi, but little; and the insurgents were again defeated at Zagoscle and Novemiasto. On May 19th, a fresh detach ment of Russian troops advanced from Kielce: the Poles were attacked at Busk, from for sides, and were totally routed and dispersed. Langiewicz, together with three female siz tants, Misses Postorojtov, Voichiechovska, and Krasinska, the cavalry general Czapski, and