There has been a recent and rather heated discussion on whether the Poles were all enthusiasts of French rule as they felt they were better off than being under the Russians.
I felt that such a generalization needed some nuance. It is true that when you read accounts by generals and dashing cavalry officers, you tend to get the impression that all Poles loved Napoleon and hated the Russians with a vengeance. But the true picture is more complicated, especially in 1812.
First thing to note is that many Poles were unwillingly involved in that war, as conscripts or bystanders. No enthusiasm there for a war with Russia. Then, and importantly, the French armies did much to curb any Polish enthusiasm for French rule by behaving really badly. Not only in the Grand Duchy but in the regions they liberated as they advanced (some of which had belonged to Poland before the partitions). I copy below a passage on the conduct of the French troops as they advanced through those territories in the summer of 1812. These passages are by a Polish interpreter attached to IHQ, a Monsieur Krasicki.
"Monsieur Gzospky heard that the French would be coming by his estate in a few days’ time. He did everything he could to make sure they would be well-received, baking cakes, making pâtés, roasting meat and collecting ham and drinks in abundance. The long-expected day arrived and he was overcome with joy. He ran before the French offering them bread and salt (an old tradition in Poland and Russia, a greeting the serfs confer on a new master when he arrives in the village, the equivalent of the Greek’s earth and water). He invited them to come and dine and they accepted with pleasure. The officers found a banquet laid out in the house whilst the soldiers were well-received in the barns and the courtyard. He was an excellent host. They ate, they drank, they laughed. Then, suddenly, one of the officers remarked that he liked Monsieur Gzospky’s boots. He had him take them off. Another took his trousers and a third his coat and soon, despite begging them to stop, he was stripped so he was as naked as the back of his hand. The officers were in hysterics and retired whilst a great number of soldiers remained and began to pillage and sack the house. Fortunately, Madame Monsieur Gzospka escaped their clutches and made off into the neighbouring forest whilst her humiliated husband threw himself under the sofa and his whilst the pillaging continued. When the brigands left he set out to find his wife. Everything had been carried off. He was not left a shirt or a pair of breeches. He had a neighbour who was also an enthusiast of the French and had welcomed them the same way; he was treated in the same manner. He had also been stripped. How is it possible they asked themselves, anger in their hearts and tears in their eyes, that these are our friends?"
He cites other examples, including gang rape, some Bavarians throwing a baby into a fire, robberies and murders. He rails against the French and what they were doing to the people of Poland.
And he was a Pole in French service.
I only write this to show that not every Pole was an ardent enthusiast of French rule. This should be remembered when writing generalizations about Poles and their "traditional enmities".
Yes if English is your only language you have no choice - otherwise without reading French you cannot study the French army in depth.
And what did Napoleon say about Poniatowski, Poland's best hope? Hmm, he was not very nice, writing to Murat "I know Poniatowski better than you do. He is a lightweight and of little consequence, even more so than the Poles usually are, and that's saying something. Nobody trusts him in Warsaw. Still, you better look after him well and manage him."
We'll should agree to disagree on the Poles and their relationship with Napoleon. After all he did establish the Duchy of Warsaw and he footed the bill for much of the Polish war effort, even to the extent of taking some of the Polish units into his pay even though they were Duchy of Warsaw troops.No, I don't agree to disagree, Boney created to Duchy for political reasons and not of the goodness of his heart, foreign troops were always more expendable to him than his own French - in case Boney thought it was good for him to sacrifice the Duchy of Warsaw and the loyal service of Polish units - he tried to do so, it came back to him.
Those Poles who saw this - gave him the boot. And others - rightfully asked themselves what Polish interests they defended in the West Indies and in Spain.
I think Napoleon's attitude to the Poles is best summed up by what he did to the Polish Legions. Not only did he send them to Haiti, but, in 1797, he was even drawing up plans to send them off to Egypt and India. In both case that was because their presence embarrassed him when he was busy negotiating a peace with Austria.
Napoleon was a formidable soldier, but he was also ruthless when it came to making peace.
@Kevin F. Kiley Any more than I agree that a serving military officer should renounce his oath of allegiance and participate in the overthrow and usurpation of the government he was sworn to defend. It’s a trait Napoleon shares with many, all of which I find unattractive, from Oliver Cromwell to Muammae al- Gadaffi. But there you go, it’s all perspective I suppose.
@Kevin F. Kiley So Alexander succeeding to the throne by a plot was bad because it was patricide, whereas Napoleon creating a throne by a plot was okay because you judge the regime to be corrupt. Surely if honest meritocracy was your desire, isn’t the nepotistic establishment of your siblings on the thrones of puppet regimes somewhat at odds? Otherwise, what do Louis, Jerome or Joseph have to offer? At least Alexander was an heir and a Russian. Napoleon was an usurper and not even French. On the whole it appears that Alexander treated the Poles who fought for France reasonably well, although it is acknowledged that condition worsened later. Napoleon appeared willing to trade away his ‘loyal’ Poles to suit his own ambitions. In the murky world of 19th century empire building they both seem to come out with equally dirty hands, at least where the Poles are concerned. This makes the admiration that Poles exhibited to him in his lifetime, and that some still practice today, even more curious. That is why I’m driven to conclude that the common denominator is the personality cult of Napoleon himself.
It was of course Weider, who wrote that silly book: Napoleon, Man of Peace running the same sort of selective history that Kevin and others try to push. That was the point of my reference to Fawlty Towers, where the argument over who started it actually depended on what “it” was. Depending on your nationality, the Second World War started on several different dates in different areas. These arguments over why wars happen are extremely complex - AJP Taylor put WW1 down to German railway timetables - and do not depend on who actually declared war or other simplistic approaches. Indeed if you play the computer game Civilisation, you will get along fine until you are the biggest state and the others attack you in a Coalition, because they fear your power - enemy of my enemy etc.
Indeed, how can Napoleon be called one of history’s major personalities, if he was driven by events (Zamoyski) pushed by people few could even name now. Surely, the major figures drive the tides of history?
Kevin, most of the peasants in the army of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw were conscripts. They were not volunteers. You can't say they willingly fought anyone.
And, earlier, there are numerous complaints from French commanders in Italy in the 1790s or in Haiti complaining that the Poles did not fight hard enough. They weren't enthusiastic enough, even. Which undermines the idea that they were very willing warriors.
Before I close, I would ask, kindly, that you do not take to bad-mouthing all Russians writing things like "they are a predatory nation" and then listing those grudges you have with their current government.
If we continue like that we may just as well throw stones as enter into a debate.
But the nature of language is that it depends on it’s common use. When the usage changes, so does the definition. When a phrase is defined by the judgement of “excessive” then the common understanding of what constitutes a level of normal loyalty comes into play. For example, one of the diagnostic traits of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder was “excessive” hand washing. If we applied that to most of us today, many of us would have a frequency hitherto seen as excessive.
It should be remembered that the study of history is not a democracy. Majority opinions do not necessarily prove anything in history.
Some years back it was thought that the Flanquers-Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard were organized and formed in late 1811 and that the Flanquers-Chasseurs were formed in 1813. That was a majority opinion-one which Lachouque believed and Col Elting initially did. However, more research was done and it was found that the opposite was true. And Col Elting later stated that 'new' fact.
Thanks to all contributors to a fascinating debate, which has broadened my understanding immensely. The nuances of Poles and their service in foreign armies has only reinforced the impression that those who accompanied Napoleon to Elba were indeed caught up in a personality cult, rather than being anti-Russian.
That's the kind of comment that sparked my initial response. A kind of black and white generalization that does not make for good history. We don't live in the time of the Wars of Religion when believers smite heretics.
There is no way in 1815 that you can say the Poles were living on their knees. The Russians had had their land devastated by the French and their Polish allies, hundreds of thousands of their people were killed, thousands of their villages burnt. Their treasure looted, their women raped. By Poles, by the French. How did the Russians behave towards the Poles? By establishing a semi-autonomous kingdom and employing Polish soldiers in the new army. That really was the situation in 1815. Lesser leaders would have burnt Poland to the ground after looting it. The Russians did not.
Your idea that Russians and Poles are traditional enemies is a trope. In addition your comment that Russia is still an enemy of Poles is beneath that of the scholar you aspire to be.
This talk, one of the typical lies of Boney the Poles had to withdraw into France, there they wouldn't be involved in fighting and they would be fed and clothed as well as Boney himself.
Those who knew the true story - like Chlapowski - left in disgust.
After the death of Poniatowski (the only foreign marshal of the Empire), the Poles began to lost heart. Their new commander, General Jan Sulkowski, had definitely lost heart and asked Napoleon to send the Poles home.
Napoleon 'summoned all available Polish officers, to talk to them, the only Frenchmen being present besided the Emperor were Berthier and Caulaincourt. Napoleon told them if they wanted to they could go home, but as individuals and not as formed units because that could have a demoralizing effect on the Polish troops in the garrisons of Danzig, Modlin, and Zamosc. Further, they could be forcibly incorporated into the allied armies. The Polish officers overwhelmingly chose to stay with the Grande Armee and Sulkowski rode home nearly alone.
In 1815, in addition to the squadron of Polish Lancers of the Guard which became the 1st Squadron of the Guard Lancer Regiment, Napoleon planned a new 3d Etrangere of Poles along with a reactivated 7th Lancer regiment. The remaining Poles and Lithuanians still in France had dragged their feet about leaving, being reluctant to serve Austria, Russia, or Prussia. The 7th Lancers had not received their horses in time for the campaign in Belgium, but did take part in the defense of Paris, 'holding the Sevres Bridge, and St Cloud against the Prussians' fighting on foot.
If I recall correctly Napoleon tried to form a second Vistula Legion after Wagram from Polish soldiers in Austrian service and only got enough men to form one regiment. I believe he tried to do something similar from Polish prisoners captured at the Battle of Dresden with mixed results.
A few of the Westphalian memoirs from 1812 feature German soldiers feeling guilt at the way their comrades and the French/imperial forces in general treated the local Poles, who responded by doing everything they could to hide their food, supplies, and young women from the Grande Armée. There are multiple stories of wanton destruction as hungry soldiers, inadequately provisioned, ransacked local farms and storehouses.
One suspects that the locals had no love for ANY army occupying or moving through their land. Were they happy that serfdom had been abolished? I suppose they might have been, if it had meant that they were better able to feed and protect their families, but that's likely not how it turned out for most of them. 21st century people often forget that serfdom included benefits and not just duties. Your kids worked for two weeks in the lord's manor, but in return you got to hunt rabbits on his land, or whatever. Abolishing these arrangements left many people in economic limbo.
As for the Duchy of Warsaw being a case of Poles governing themselves, that is rather contradicted by their status as being under Saxon sovereignty (Articles 6-10) and under French command. Article 11 of their constitution made every Polish state minister and Articles 25-28 made their Senate all answerable to the King of Saxony, not to any Polish authority.
Some Poles fought with the French for several reasons: perhaps a group believed Napoleon and the French were the only real hope for resurrecting Poland from the Duchy of Warsaw to a pre-1772 kingdom; perhaps another group were actually attracted to Napoleonic ideals on a general sense and contrasted Napoleon as a head of state and a commander favorably to what was on offer in other European states; and perhaps some were younger sons of Polish nobles with time on their hands and a desire to go off on a crusade of sorts.
Whatever the reasons--and there were certainly plenty of them--the Polish attraction to and loyalty toward Napoleon and the French Empire was far from monolithic.
I don't recall any "universal" Polish pro-French/anti-Russian sentiment in play before or even after 1812. I also don't see any particular historical reason that the Poles should fear and dislike the Russians any more than Austria and Prussia, who also took part in the partitions from 1772 until 1795. In the last, rather delusional years of Alexander I's reign and definitely under Nicholas I's immediate and draconian policies toward Poland, the Poles had reason to resent Russia, and quite a few left--some for France but more for the US.
I'm simply not convinced of the theory that Poles as a [dismembered] nation loved the French in general and Napoleon in particular.
Thanks. Just checking. :)
Could you please point out in the previous thread where anyone stated 'the Poles were all enthusiasts of French rule'?
And perhaps you could also show/demonstrate that the Poles were better off being ruled by the Russians and not having the right or opportunity to rule themselves?