The False story of November Night

"November Night" is simply a celebrated drama by Stanisław Wyspiański (published in 1904), which is simply a compulsory reading in my school days. It describes the first hours of 1 of many "political madness" in the 18th and 19th centuries, called national uprisings, in this case the November Uprising of 1830.

The legend of this "act of independence" is that this is simply a group of patriotic military youth led by Lieutenant Piotr Wysocki (a low rank of officer), carried with patriotic feelings caused a national uprising, which resulted in the Polish-Russian War of 1930/31. Additionally, there is simply a belief that this uprising had a real chance of military and political success, as the Polish side had a nearly 100,000 well-trained army (Polish War as part of the Polish Kingdom), commanded mostly by Napoleonic generals (i.e. Polish officers fighting in Napoleonic wars on the side of France), and the Polish Seym and administration operated in the Kingdom.

What are the historical facts? First, as revealed Prof. Andrzej Nowak After the British archives were penetrated, at the time the JKM government issued a directive to the peculiar services to "Light the Russian Empire on the western border” (quoting from memory). This was due to the desire to make diversions in the Roman Empire, as the Russian army had been preparing (was already concentrated) to strike India (by Afghanistan), which India was a colony called "the pearl in the British Crown".

Secondly, The brave horsemen murdered six Polish generals last night from 29 to 30 November (Ignacy Blumer, Maurycy Hauke, Józef Nowicki, Stanisław Florian Potocki, Tomasz Jan Siemiatkowski, Stanisław Trębicki) and 1 Colonel (Filip Nereusz Meciszewski) for refusing to join the uprising. Therefore, the comparatively low rank soldiers of the Polish Army murdered their commanders, for the fact that they had a different view of the political situation in the Kingdom of Poland and its surroundings.

Third, belief that the well-trained and brave but comparatively fewer Polish troops could defeat the Tsar army, which had already destroyed the Napoleonic half-million-odd army eighteen years earlier, and the another (Prussian) and the 3rd (Austria) invaders would have passively watched (see the pact called the "Holy Covenant"), was more than naive. What were the consequences of this unprepared, unthought-out, and losing out? The full failure of comparative autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland, the “Great Emigration” of respective tens of thousands of the most valuable Polish element, the dissolution of the Polish Army and the request to accept for the maintenance of the business Russian troops, the confiscation of many Polish assets and many another repressions.

Was there a serious alternate at the time to the behaviour of the subjects? Historians, especially the Kakowski School, say that they do. Well... Gen. Ignacy Prądzyński – 1 of the most prominent strategists among the Polish generals in the first half of the 19th century – before the uprising he prepared a plan to hit the army of the Polish Kingdom to Austria, with the goal of taking distant the Polish lands of the first and 3rd partitions, and joining them in the Kingdom of Poland. The thought of integrating the erstwhile lands of the First Republic into the Kingdom of Poland established in 1815 under the patronage of the strongest possessor, i.e. the Russian Empire and active waiting (plan of industrialization of the country of Fr. All the more so, as the chance to enter into negotiations on the further extension of the autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland and the annexation of the alleged east Governorate (the land of the second and 3rd Russian partitions) appeared already in 1853 with the outbreak of the Crimean War.

But who there would conduct specified sophisticated analyses, since nearly 200 years ago Poles took a literary direction called romanticism (the assessment of its attractiveness remains a substance of taste) as guidelines for policy making. Therefore, it is not amazing to say HE Andrzej Duda – president of the Republic of Poland, delivered in the courtyard of the Presidential Palace to the military schools present there, that those subjects (i.e. those from 1830) should be a model to follow. The unfortunate 1 is unaware that if current officers' adepts had adopted this guideline for implementation, the president – as commander-in-chief of the Polish Army – would have been the first mark on the proscription list in case of any insurrection. And then, like the Grand Duke of Constanta, he would gotta hide under the feathers of his own wife in the Presidential Palace (formerly called Namestnikowski). But would anyone present respect women's chambers?

Ireneusz Jablonski

P.S.

Photo of the monument (pl. Saski) in honor of murdered officers, exhibited in 1841 and stripped in 1917.