The Duchy of Warsaw
Napoleon created a Polish state in 1807 and would not call it Poland. The country had been partitioned out of existence between Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1795, and Poles had been fighting in French service ever since — the Polish Legions in Italy from 1797, whose marching song is now the national anthem and contains the line that Poland is not yet lost so long as they live. After Jena and Friedland, Napoleon took the Polish provinces from Prussia and constituted them as the Duchy of Warsaw, with the King of Saxony as its ruler. The name was chosen deliberately. Calling it Poland would have announced an intention to undo the partitions and made peace with Russia impossible, and Napoleon had just made peace with Russia at Tilsit. The duchy nonetheless had what a state needs: a constitution abolishing serfdom and establishing equality before the law, the Napoleonic code, a Polish administration and, above all, an army — some 100,000 men by 1812, the largest contingent in the Grande Armée after the French. Austrian territory was added in 1809 after a campaign the Poles fought largely themselves. Poniatowski became a marshal of France and drowned covering the retreat at Leipzig in 1813. The Russians occupied the duchy in 1813, and the Congress of Vienna converted most of it into a kingdom of Poland with the tsar as king. The name and the code survived, and the risings of 1830 and 1863 came out of it. Poles have argued about the bargain ever since. Some 100,000 men died in French service for a state that lasted seven years and was never called Poland, and the alternative on offer from the partitioning powers was nothing at all.
- Year: 1807 CE
- Category: Political
