Napoleon and Polish identity.

Poland is the only country in the world to invoke Napoleon in its national anthem. Andrzej Nieuwazny explains how Bonaparte has retained a hold over Polish imagination throughout the last two centuries.

Edouard Driault, the great historian of the Napoleonic period, used to say that Poland `is more Napoleonic than France'. Although this remark may seem to be exaggerated, the durability and the strength of the legend of Napoleon in Poland cannot be doubted. The Poles are the only people in the world to sing about Bonaparte in their national anthem.

Napoleon's rule in France lasted for only fifteen years, but it continued to shape the institutions and society of the country for almost two centuries. In Poland, or rather in the part known as the Duchy of Warsaw, the Napoleonic era lasted only from 1807 until 1815, and after 1813 the country was under Russian occupation. It is a short period of time, even if we treat the Kingdom of Poland created by Tsar Alexander I (sometimes called Congress Poland and which maintained a distinct identity until the suppression of the Polish rising in 1830), as a continuation of it. From 1874 (when, after another uprising in 1863, the residual Kingdom was fully absorbed into the Russian Empire) until 1918, the Polish people were again partitioned among Russia, Prussia and Austria and did not have their own state, even as a satellite of another power.

The heritage of Napoleonic Poland, though, is quite significant. The abolition of serfdom and overthrow of the feudal system; the foundations of a new, bourgeois society with a modern bureaucracy; the introduction of the Napoleonic Code; all these decisively affected the future development of Polish society. However, only the Napoleonic Code survived after 1831; the judicial system was modified in 1876, and social change was slow.

If Poland seemed `Napoleonic' to Driault, he was primarily thinking of the contribution of the Napoleonic legend, and its irrational elements embedded in the Polish psyche, more than of institutional change. This legend did not result from Napoleon's own attitude towards Poland, but emerged, as the historian Marceli Handelsman put it, `as the reflection in the national awareness of the short period of fight and hope, embodied in the formula centred upon the person of Napoleon'. Poles wanted to believe that the rest of Europe was interested in Poland, and maintained the delusion that Westerners would help them. Napoleon provided them with a role model on whom to pin their hopes.

Before Napoleon's intervention, Poland's existence as a separate kingdom had ended at the Third Partition in 1795. Only two years later the young General Bonaparte agreed to have Polish Legions created in Italy by Polish emigres, prisoners of war and deserters from the Austrian army. Their commander, General Jan Henryk Dabrowski, was immortalised in the Legion's song which, sung at home, in exile or in prison, became the Polish national anthem in 1926. For 200 years the Poles have sung at dramatic or ceremonious moments:

The Legions met a tragic end. Unwanted after France's treaty concluded with Austria in Luneville (1801), they were sent by Napoleon to Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to suppress the slave revolt of Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. There they perished. And although their sad end diminished Bonaparte's reputation, the Poles for the most part continued to believe in his star, to forget their function as his cannon fodder and to form new units fighting at the French Emperor's side.

After the Prussian defeat at Jena, the French invasion into the Polish lands in late 1806 and the treaties of Tilsit signed in July 1807, Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw from the Polish lands that had been seized by Prussia in 1793 and 1795. In Tilsit Napoleon dictated the constitution for the Duchy, combining the Polish tradition with the French model of the state. The Emperor did not fully restore Poland, but his offer was the only one available. The only alternative proposal was drafted by the former Russian minister and friend of the Tsar, Prince Adam Czartoryski, who wanted to unite the Prussian partition zone and the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania under the Tsar as the Polish king. This did not seem realistic.

The history of the Duchy of Warsaw (the territory of which expanded after the war against Austria in 1809 to 154,000 square kilometres, with 4 million inhabitants) was dominated by its war effort. The army, commanded by Prince Joseph Poniatowski, was almost the chief raison d'etre of the Duchy, and a symbol of national pride. There were 60,000 men under arms, and several thousand Polish recruits incorporated into the French forces, of whom over 10,000 were employed in the Peninsular War in Spain. Napoleon carefully avoided any declaration concerning the future of Poland, and when in 1812 he started the war against Russia -- a war he called the Second Polish War -- the Poles raised the largest foreign contingent of the Grand Army -- nearly 100,000 men, of whom 40,000 served in a separate corps under Poniatowski's command.

The Poles believed that the Russian war would result in the incorporation of Lithuania into a restored Poland, but Napoleon's defeat shattered these hopes. In February 1813 Russian troops entered Warsaw, effectively ending the Duchy's existence. The remains of the Polish army stayed with Napoleon as his only ally until he abdicated in 1814. Prince Poniatowski -- symbol of Napoleonic Poland and the only foreigner to be nominated a Marshal of the Empire -- died while guarding the French retreat at Leipzig on October 19th, 1813.

Despite the defeat, the Polish cause, considered to have been concluded in 1795, returned, thanks to Napoleon, to the international political agenda for the whole century leading to the Treaty of Versailles. Poland now commanded the attention of public opinion in European countries whose governments preferred to forget about the Poles. The attitude of the Polish army proved that the Poles were ready to fight to restore their state, and were even ready to die for a monarch who offered them the lowly status of satellite. Tsar Alexander I, who occupied the Polish lands, understood this and for this reason insisted at the Congress of Vienna that there could be no going back to the conditions prevailing in 1795. Two western administrative departments, Poznan and Bydgoszcz, were given to Prussia, and the Kingdom of Poland was created in the remainder of the Duchy of Warsaw's territory. It was a strange state in which the absolute ruler of Russia ruled his Polish subjects through the most liberal constitution in Europe. This kingdom inherited many of the institutions of the Duchy of Warsaw including its own Polish administration, an elected Diet and a national army (commanded by the Tsar's brother, the Grand Duke Constantine).

The Napoleonic Code, introduced in 1808 despite opposition from conservative gentry who wanted to restore the old Polish law, was preserved after 1815. The Church attacked the Code (even though in the period of 180818, a mere three civil marriages were contracted and seven divorces were obtained) and Prince Adam Czartoryski, still dreaming of the future union of the kingdom with the western provinces of the Russian Empire, wanted to adapt its stipulations to the legal system that had been in force in Lithuania for hundreds of years. The resolute stance of the Polish lawyers, and the Tsar's aversion to this increasingly unrealistic scheme, meant that the Napoleonic Code was maintained with only a few changes. After the constitution was abolished in 1832 and after the judicial system Russified in 1876, the Code became an important symbol of Polish separatism and was defended as a national law. It survived in the central Polish lands until 1946 when it was changed by the Communists.

The Napoleonic constitution of 1807 had not rejected the notions of estates and granted privileges for the gentry, but it made all citizens equal before the law. Article 4, which asserted that `slavery shall be abolished', was revolutionary in a country where peasants had no rights and where villeinage still existed. The new laws abolished serfdom but gave the peasants no title to property (it was said that the peasant's cuffs were removed together with his trousers). The freedom to conclude a civil contract between peasant and landowner paradoxically extended the villein service system. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, in Poland the Code was not a sanction for existing social conditions, but provided a model for the direction in which society was to adapt. It favoured and accelerated the trend towards capitalism. The Polish peasants now in Austria and Prussia, on the other hand, were subjected to the reforms carried out in these countries.

The most important legacy of the Napoleonic era, however, was the myth of national effort and the answer it provided to future generations, to the question -- to fight or not to fight? The Napoleonic legend flourished right across Europe, but on the Vistula and Niemen rivers the features of the Liberator were added to the profile of the Great Man. This myth had already grown up in the Kingdom of Poland, where the liberal, democratic attempt at Polish-Russian co-existence ended with defeat of the Polish revolution of 183031 and the Tsar's abolition of Polish autonomy. The myth of Napoleon was supported by the emigration of many members of the political nation to France, where the events of 1795-1815 had given rise to the stereotype of the Poles as faithful allies.

The legend was also spread by Romantic literature. The greatest Polish poem `Pan Tadeusz', written in 1834 by Adam Mickiewicz in exile in Paris, describes the entry of Napoleon's troops into Polish Lithuania in 1812. Whole generations of Poles memorised the poem and its verses:

Walerian Lukasinski, an officer and conspirator imprisoned by the Russians from 1822 until his death in 1868, presented in his diary a vision of the Napoleonic era, `We are told millions of times and in many different languages that Napoleon cheated the Poles to his own benefit. Let others believe that. Only the Poles, who have an interest, will never believe it'.

The Napoleonic myth in Poland was connected with that of two national heroes: Tadeusz Kosciuszko, leader of the 1794 national uprising, who in 1806 refused to collaborate with Napoleon, and Prince Joseph Poniatowski, the Emperor's most faithful ally. Two different figures, two contradictory attitudes, yet complementary to one another and personifying typical features of the Polish character. Prince Poniatowski was `a golden boy' of Warsaw, a brave soldier who symbolised the character of gentry and the myth of a Polish soul `wish no limits in good and evil'. Kosciuszko, the hero of democracy shaped by the ideals of the Revolution, epitomised the rigidity of manners and the ideal of `plebeian sentimentalism'. The first was a symbol of knightly honour, whereas the latter became the patron of Polish martyrs of the nineteenth century and then of the workers' movement. For decades the portraits of Napoleon, Poniatowski and Kosciuszko (a drawing of the liberation of Kosciuszko by the Tsar Paul in 1796 was popular in the Russian partition zone) were hung in Polish gentry homes.

In the late nineteenth century, the Romantic Napoleonic legend seemed to be declining in Poland. After the disastrous anti-Russian uprising of 1863, the fall of the Second Empire (with Polish regiments of the Prussian army contributing to the French defeat in 1870) dispelled any hope of French assistance or publicity for the Polish cause in the West. As criticism of the First and Second Empires mounted in France, and with the rise of positivism in Poland, the myth of Napoleon -- with all its insurrectional connotations -- fell into decline. The Franco-Russian alliance concluded in 1891-94, broke the sentimental ties which once had been so strong.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in the wake of the centennial anniversary of the partitions, Polish historians started a lively debate about the past. The `pessimists' from the school of positivism found the causes of the Polish decline in the internal weakness of the state and the gentry's low level of political consciousness. In their opinion the insurrections failed in the long run because they were ineffective and resulted merely in the loss of the best citizens. Proponents of this point of view suggested that the economic and cultural development of the Poles would best be served by awakening the national consciousness, while simultaneously maintaining a loyalist altitude towards the imposed authorities. The `optimists', on the other hand, blamed Poland's neighbours for the partitions and perceived the fight against them as a crucial means of fostering belief in independent action. Both groups pondered how to educate society. Was it better to find faults and weaknesses in order to make the Poles work and think about themselves, or was it necessary to remind them of the heroic past? The Napoleonic era exemplified the military effort admired by the three generations who had fought, lost, and were punished, so it was one of the most discussed periods in the national history.

A popular biography of Tadeusz Kosciuszko written in 1894 by Tadeusz Korzon on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the Kosciuszko uprising initiated a national discussion. Korzon praised Kosciuszko throughout 800 pages and supported his refusal in 1806 to collaborate with Napoleon, whom he saw as a bloody tyrant. The historian vehemently attacked Prince Poniatowski and General Dabrowski -- who was called the `commander of Bonaparte's mercenaries' -- and judged their joining Napoleon as harmful for the cause of Polish freedom.

However, the younger generation of the early twentieth century, who were growing up in a society full of resignation and tending to integrate with the social life of each of the three empires (German, Russian and Austrian), were searching for another ideal. Apprehensions about the great conflict looming, as well as the new philosophical and social theories, favoured the Neo-Romanticism of the movement called `Young Poland' -- Mloda Polska. Nietzsche's cult of individualism and activism as a panacea for the diseases of the world had a special influence upon the mentality of the young Polish intelligentsia. The Napoleonic era, often reduced to the tale of an outstanding individual in history, constituted a model for them, but the Neo-Romantics needed to build up Napoleon as a true super-hero, in order to claim Poniatowski as a hero in his own right. The Conqueror and Destroyer was indispensable for the existence of the First Knight of Poland. To this group, Poniatowski's fatal jump to the River Elster at the end of the battle of Leipzig, faithful and loyal to the bitter end, seemed the most important moment of his whole life. Here was a revival of the nineteenth-century myth of the `funeral hero', as Maria Janion put it, supplemented by a sense of duty to fight for the motherland.

Szymon Askenazy, another great historian, popularised this idea of Prince Poniatowski. He opposed Korzon and started the rehabilitation of Napoleon. In his opinion, the Emperor was the only great European to do anything good for Poland and he did all he could have done. Askenazy, though tendentious and believing in a Neo-Romantic vision to foster the nation's spirit, tried to find a happy medium between the optimists and pessimists. In his opinion Kosciuszko embodied the nation's virtues, while `legionary' Dabrowski was its saviour in a moment of crisis. Askenazy's biography of Poniatowski published in 1904 gave the public a model commander and hero, and became obligatory reading for several generations. It marginalised the `black legend' of Napoleon and strengthened the myth of Poniatowski in the Polish mind.

The centenary of the Napoleonic era, celebrated throughout Europe between 1900 and 1914, saw a great number of historic and literary works. Some 222 books, including 108 novels, were published in the three sectors of partitioned Poland. In 1902 Popioly (The Ashes), by Stefan Zeromski, was published, probably the best historic novel ever written in Polish. Zeromski did not idealise the past and he showed the complexity of the Napoleonic era in Polish lands including the peasant problem. Having acknowledged Polish support for Napoleon, he did not hesitate to present episodes painful for the patriotic legend, such as the suppression of the black rebellion in Haiti by the Polish soldiers, and the cruelties committed by Poles against the Spaniards struggling for their own national independence.

An independent Poland re-emerged in 1918 as a result of the collapse of all three partitioning powers, but for three years Poland had to fight to exist and to establish her borders. The Napoleonic legend, together with other heroic myths, found its place in the national pantheon that was used to unite the tradition of three parts which made up the new state. There was another role, a diplomatic one, to fulfil. As early as 1918 France proved to be the only member of the victorious Allies who was interested in creating a strong Poland, and France alone supported the Poles in their dispute with the Germans about Upper Silesia. As a result it was highly appropriate for the Poles to demonstrate a shared tradition and brotherhood in arms with the French. The hundredth anniversary of Napoleon's death, May 5th, 1921, was marked ceremoniously in the whole of Poland, the more so because the Polish Silesian uprising against German rule was in progress. In 1923 the French war hero, Ferdinand Foch, was awarded the honorary title of marshal of Poland. His visit coincided with the unveiling of Poniatowski's statue, returned by the Russians after a hundred years.

The Locarno Conference of 1925 drove the two countries apart (despite a formal agreement of mutual support) and the 1926 coup by Marshal Joseph Pilsudski, who was distrustful towards the French, did not improve the situation. Yet even Pilsudski, commander of the anti-Russian Polish legions during the First World War, victor in the 1920 war with the Bolsheviks and a supporter of strong executive power, never hid his fascination with Napoleon as a soldier and a politician. The cult of Marshal Pilsudski was often connected with that of the historical figures he modelled himself upon, especially Prince Poniatowski.

The Polish Napoleonic legend did not raise any excitement and its goal -- independence seemed now to have been achieved. However, this legend was still very vivid. In 1931 the censor deleted a statement in a historic film referring to Napoleon's conceit because, in his opinion, Napoleon `was a modest Emperor and it would be against the Polish raison d'etat to spread such opinions about him'.

The Second World War and Yalta agreement (which, as in 1815, forced Poland to abandon its links with the distant West in favour of an imposed union with Russia) started the epoch of Communism and the official `black legends' of the West, which had betrayed Poland in 1939, and of Napoleon, enemy of Russia. Yet the anti-Russian nature of the Napoleonic legend caused its popularity to revive in a society that could not be forbidden to read the national literature which had itself created the Napoleonic myth. The authorities eventually gave up -- in 1952 a new monument of Prince Poniatowski (the original one was destroyed by the Germans), was placed in a Warsaw park. It was finally installed in 1965 in front of the Polish government building.

The film Popioly (The Ashes), directed by Andrzej Wajda (1965) provoked the greatest discussion on national history in Communist Poland. The relationship between the film and the novel by Zeromski was discussed. Another topic of debate was `Napoleon, for and against'. However, behind the professors' discussions there were other, concealed questions: whether the West would, as before, take advantage of the Poles and then forget them? Was there still any room for such categories as honour, sacrifice and loyalty? Were the Poles more irrational than other nations? The Prague Spring of 1968, the students' riots and the anti-Semitic campaign in Poland deprived the Polish intelligentsia of any remaining illusions. Realism was now the watchword, and the bicentenary of Napoleon's birth in 1969 passed almost unheeded.

Until the end of Communist Poland in 1989, history was used as a pretext for contemporary disputes, and enjoyed a great social interest. Since decent and honest books on the twentieth century were not permitted, nineteenth-century works were read instead, and Napoleon was always a best-seller.

In Poland, the nineteenth century -- with its focus on the struggle for independence lasted longer than in other European countries. The interest in Romantic literature, and patriotic traditions connected with the struggle for independence, also lingered. The legend of Napoleonic Poland, which had begun as a legend of the gentry and intelligentsia, and only later was accepted by the rest of the society, was used in the twentieth century as a barometer of national sovereignty. The lack of sovereignty for many years explains the durability of this and other patriotic myths.

After 1989, the Romantic attitude in Poland entered a new crisis, linked with the transition into `normality' and acceptance of pragmatic values, and this has reduced the Napoleonic legend to that of a historic and colourful episode. The Poles, proud of their economic achievements and looking for the road back to Europe on integration, accept their national identity but do not enclose themselves in the national martyrology.

According to the polls of the weekly Polityka (a kind of Polish Newsweek) from late 1995, 75 per cent of Poles would like to be horn Poles again. Respondents were proud of their 104 national heroes; but apart from Joseph Pilsudski, symbol of the regained independence (33 per cent) and Tadeusz Kosciuszko, symbol of solidarity between the elite and the rest of society (26 per cent), only Copernicus, Chopin and Marie Curie (all figures who connected Poland with general European culture) got 10 per cent support. General Dabrowski, the hero of the Polish national anthem, excited the national pride of fewer than one Pole in fifty, and Prince Poniatowski, whose biography by Jerzy Skowronek sold 150,000 copies in the 1980s, did not find his place among twenty-five figures most often quoted by even one per cent of respondents. The 200th anniversary of the Dabrowski Legions and the national anthem recalled the first Polish soldiers of Napoleon but did not change the trend.

The admirers of the Napoleonic legend have some souvenirs: the greatest Polish epic, and the best historic novel both refer to Napoleon, and in moments of consolidation, a popular cake called `napoleonka'. But above all, they still hear Napoleon glorified in the national anthem sung before each international football match and can hope that the multimedia generation will want to know why Dabrowski marched `from Italy to our Polish land' and what Bonaparte's role in this old stuff was.

The Polish peasants now in Austria and Prussia, on the other hand, were subjected to the reforms carried out in these countries.

I don't think this is true, at least if we're talking about the immediate post-Napoleonic period, as serfdom existed in Austrian Galicia until 1848.

I don't think this is true, at least if we're talking about the immediate post-Napoleonic period, as serfdom existed in Austrian Galicia until 1848.

Napoleon never took Austrian Galicia as part of his empire. So, serfdom continued there even though it was abolished in the Russian and Prussian parts of the partitions of Poland. Since the Poles were so loyal to Napoleon, one can only wonder how history might be different had Napoleon liberated these lands before his disasterous campaign in Russia.

True, but the other made it sound as though serfdom was eliminated right after Napoleon, when it was not. It also continued r was reinstituted in parts of Germany. I believe one of the German philosopher Heidegger's grandfathers was a serf on a church estate.

In Quebec, a form of serfdom for the Church continued to exist into the 19th century. The last feudal rent was paid in 1970.

In Quebec, a form of serfdom for the Church continued to exist into the 19th century. The last feudal rent was paid in 1970.

In Habsburg Austria, which included lands in the Czech Republic, the Yugoslav countries, Poland and Ukraine, serfdom was not abolished, until 1848, and it took an uprising to force the issue. After that, peasants were no longer tied to the land, and could leave the estates of the nobility to live in local communities with some local self-government. Not all left, and up to the end of the Austrian empire, at the end of WWI, some still lived on the estates.

“they were sent by Napoleon to Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to suppress the slave revolt of Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. There they perished. “

Interesting. Usually, the Poles supported liberty. Sad that they were used like this. Napoleon planned to use Haiti as a base to grab Louisiana from Spain. That would have caused big trouble with the USA. The failure in Haiti and the need for funding his wars caused Napoleon to sell Louisiana to us.

Below item put up on YT 9 months ago.

Dschinghis Khan - Moskau (Starparade 14.06.1979) 4:28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyuFLU2Zqz0

@quietviolence7957
7 months ago
Someone once wrote: “A band named after a Mongol leader singing in German about Russia is Poland’s worst dream.” It still makes me laugh.

Moscow
Foreign and mysterious
Towers of red and gold
As cold as ice . . .

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/moskau-moscow.html#songtranslation

Poland teas not perished yet

So long as we still live.

Should read ”Poland has not perished yet...”

10 posted on 02/24/2025 10:18:23 AM PST by Albion Wilde (“Did you ever meet a woke person that’s happy? There’s no such thing.” —Donald J. Trump)

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