The November Uprising and the Great Emigration
Polish cadets attacked the Belweder Palace in Warsaw on the night of 29 November 1830, intending to kill the Grand Duke Constantine, and began a war that lasted ten months. Congress Poland had been created at Vienna in 1815 as a kingdom in personal union with the Russian Empire, with the most liberal constitution in Europe on paper — its own parliament, army, currency, courts and Polish administration. Alexander I and then Nicholas I hollowed it out. The Sejm was rarely convened, censorship was imposed, opposition deputies were arrested, and Constantine ran the army with a parade-ground brutality that produced suicides among the officers. The immediate trigger was the news that Polish troops would be used to suppress the revolutions in France and Belgium. Constantine escaped, and the rising spread. The Sejm dethroned Nicholas in January 1831, which turned a revolt into a war between states, and Poland put some 70,000 men into the field against a Russian army several times larger. They won at Stoczek and held at Grochów, and were beaten decisively at Ostrołęka in May. Cholera killed the Russian commander and tens of thousands on both sides. Warsaw fell in September 1831. The reprisals ended Polish autonomy entirely: the constitution was revoked, the army and the Sejm abolished, the universities of Warsaw and Vilnius closed, estates confiscated, and thousands deported to Siberia. Around 10,000 went into exile in France — the Great Emigration, which carried Chopin, Mickiewicz and the political argument with it. A second rising in 1863 was crushed as thoroughly, and Poland did not exist again until 1918.
- Year: 1830 CE
- Category: Political
