“If my home burns down, if the cattle die, I will be ruined and starved, while in Poland my master will rebuild my house, and if I die a cattle or a pig, he will give me others. He cares about my life, while the fresh master [in Galicia], for whom I mean nothing, will let me die without taking care of me.”[1]
He heard the Frenchman, Alphonse Fortia de Piles, from Polish peasants who fled Austrian Galicia to the inactive existing Republic. The French amazed and even appalled due to the fact that it did not fit his view of the world. He knew that in Austria, which in 1772, took part of the Polish lands, Emperor Joseph II of Habsburg gave the peasants individual freedom. O large triumph of the enlightened monarch! Nothing but praise him for that decision! Alphonse Fortia de Piles considered this a large advance, as we see from his attention:
“Happy [are those] Poles whose destiny [after the first partition of Poland] threw under Prussian rule, especially Austrian!”[2]
But the same Frenchman besides saw what Polish peasants did to their freedom:
“However, what is hard to believe [...] the emperor was forced to set up a cordon of troops on the border, in order to prevent the escape of Poles who were discouraged from recently acquired freedom, flocked back to Poland to sale themselves to the nobility and resume the yoke of slavery.”[3]
Alphonse Fortia de Piles did not completely understand, so his observations concluded:
“Here is an argument for those who claim that men are created to be free.”[4]
The people of our age seem to be like this Frenchman, so giving the peasants individual freedom, that is, the release from the serfly dependence, appears to them as progress. However, they do not realize that it was not a change for the better. due to the fact that their knowing of advancement did not come down to whether they could change their place of residence without your permission, but whether they could better fill their stomachs and their families. In a new, "better" world, it became more difficult. For the existing connection between the peasant and the master, who served them both, was broken. That is why it was the freed peasants who sought to return to their erstwhile relations, that is to say, "sell themselves to the nobles and resume the yoke of slavery," which they could do only by emigrating to the Republic.
And what did this “slave” look like in practice?
Take, for example, the year 1740, that is, the time erstwhile violent and prolonged cooling affected Europe erstwhile people were dying in Ireland. In that year the parish priest Jazowska noted:
"The winter was very heavy, cold, in the snow besides abundant, so far distant that it was hard to miss. This winter lasted for a long time with a large hoarding of people, for the slaughter of cattle, whose many and many places from famine died. [...] For a long winter, people feeding the cattle with grain, then themselves as sowing, so they had nothing to eat.
The peculiar only grace became this year [...] Adam Komorowski [...] being the owner of the village of Jazowska, in supplementum the clusters gave zp. 2000. Of this money, then, many of the subjects were left to sow.”[5]
The above text is simply a fragment of the article by Dr. Radosław Sikora published in the Quarterly of PCh24.pl
Click HERE – download the Quartet and read more
The Republic of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a country to which, throughout its lifetime, more peasants were arriving than they left. Even at the end of the 18th century, a period that is seen as the time of the top feudal oppression, this trend has been observed. For example, Jan Potocki, during the 4 Year Sejm wrote:
“Who, erstwhile he saw our peasants abandon their country for the transition to the recently taken provinces, and everyone knows it well, how many rights of the 3 neighbouring powers [Austria, Prussia, Russia] constantly print against their countries migrants.”[6]
Similarly, Tadeusz Morski, in his “Notes about peasants” of 1789, stated that “there are even frequent examples now that [he is boyning from outside Poland to that Poland] are oppressive, though into captivity [...]”[7].
That's right. Who saw the peasants moving from the Republic? They did, but the scale of this phenomenon was incomparable to the other – the escape of peasants from the lands taken by Austria, Prussia and Russia to the Republic. It was not Poland that defended itself against the large emigration of the owners, but the possessor states! So it's time to halt repeating nonsense about the fact that the reforms of the possessive states improved the destiny of the Polish peasant. They surely changed it. But in the eyes of the peasants themselves, it was a change for the worse. And it wasn't just about surviving issues.
The Republic, by an excellent majority of its existence (1569–1789), was a country where there was no compulsory conscription to the military. It was passed only during the Four-Year Sejm (December 1789), but even then it covered a minimum amount of property (1% in private goods, 2% in royal and clergy goods), and the service time was comparatively short (6–8 years)[8]. Meanwhile, in the Austrian election:
"Army service for peasants was introduced. Initially, it lasted for life and was then shortened to 20 years. In the Austrian Army, about 100,000 Polish peasants served during the Napoleonic Wars.”[9]
It was as much as 13–14% suitable for carrying a weapon to the men. If 1 of them had “luck,” he would come home as a cripple. The bad guys were buried in roadside ditches. I'll admit, it's not a happy prospect...
Not only Polish peasants from occupied lands fled to the Republic – while it inactive existed. I have already mentioned that throughout the period of its existence, this country was an immigrant country. How diligently counted:
"In Wielkopolska itself, which was the main site of this [olęder] settlement, about 800 settlements were created in the 18th century. They were populated about half by German and Polish peasants coming to Poland.”[10]
Thus, during the period of the top feudal oppression, in only 1 Wielkopolska, about 400 fresh villages were created, populated by German peasant immigrants. How is it even possible that peasants from western Europe emigrated to Poland to enter into agreements of dependence on Polish masters – landowners? This is completely impossible for those who look at the erstwhile Republic as a country of peasant slaves. And yet...
Apart from a tiny group of peasant deserters from the army of neighbouring states (it is worth to add that although the then military drell was highly brutal in Prussia, Austria and Russia maintained discipline among conscripts highly brutal methods), the basic reason why they emigrated to Poland was economical considerations. It was in the Republic that there was more land than people to grow it. For the starving peasant population of overcrowded European states, this meant that it could find adequate land to feed itself and its families. In short – Germans, Dutch, Scots and another nations emigrated to the Republic, behind the proverbial bread. And their hopes of improving their destiny must have coincided with reality, due to the fact that although no 1 defended them back together, yet they settled here, lived and prospered. Often, densely, even better than a large part of the Polish nobility, as can be seen even after the homes in which they lived. As Fr Jędrzej Kitowicz wrote, in the 18th century in Mazowsz:
“The tiny nobility of meat was no different from the peasant huts, with sheeps frequently sewn [with straw roofs]. In this only difference was that before the noble manor there had to be necessarily advanced gates, though the yard was full fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fenced fence, and the second that the nobleman manor home had 2 chambers by corners, and the court in the middle, while on the contrary, at the cottage of the peasant court is from the forehead, behind it a chamber, and behind a chamber. But this difference between noble manors and peasant huts only served in Mazury [in Mazowsze], for in the provinces of Greater Poland peasants, solstice and Olendry [boy immigrants from western Europe and their descendants] have more decent manors than tiny Mazowsze nobility.”[11]
Many peasants lived better than nobles? What a heresy! And yet...
[THE full ARTICLE YOU CAN FIND IN THE 2nd NUMBER OF THE PUCH24.PL QUARTER]
[1] Alphonse Fortia de Piles, Boiseglin de Kerdu, The Journey of 2 Frenchmen, [in:] Poland Stanislawowska in the eyes of foreigners, op. Wacław Zawadzki, t. II, Warszawa 1963, p. 724.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5]Yearbooks for the past of Podtatrze and Szczeż from 1680–1748 written by XX Jan and Stanisław Owsiński, parish priest of Jazowska, op. Józef Jerzmanowski, Kraków 1858, pp. 43–44.
[6] Jan Potocki, Ne quid detrimenti Res Publica capiat, [in:] Materials for the past of the 4 Year Sejm, op. Janusz Woliński, Jerzy Michalski, Emanuel Rostwarowski, Wrocław 1955, p. 9.
[7] Tadeusz Morski, Notes on peasants, [in:] Materials for the past of the 4 Year Sejm, op. Janusz Woliński, Jerzy Michalski, Emanuel Rostwarowski, Wrocław 1955, p. 109.
[8] Catherine Bucholc-Srogosh, Military Department of the Continuing Council from 1775 to 1789 and 1793 to 1794, Poznań 2007, p. 104.
[9] Andrzej Jezierski, Cecilia Leszczyńska, Economic past of Poland, Warsaw 1999, p. 100.
[10] Jerzy Topolski, Poland in modern times. From Central European Power to failure of independency (1501–1795), Poznań 1999, p. 734.
[11] Jrzej Kitovich, Description of customs during August III's reign, op. Zbigniew Goliński, Warsaw 2003, p. 270.
The above text is simply a fragment of the article by Dr. Radosław Sikora published in the Quarterly of PCh24.pl
Click HERE – download the Quartet and read more
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