Historical calendar: the anniversary of Tadeusz Kościuszko's solemn oath on the marketplace in Krakow, which marked the beginning of an armed revolt against Russia.
Today in our calendar we will look at the origin of this event.
After the surrender of the Warsaw government, which went to the Targowice Confederation website and Russia, Hugo Kołłątaj, Ignacy Potocki and another supporters of reforms of the large Sejm, left for Saxony. There, while in Dresden and Leipzig, they began their efforts to trigger an armed uprising in the country. Saxony was a natural place to establish specified plots, as it was a country independent of the partition powers, lay comparatively close to Poland and became a habitat of a immense number of secret societies during the 18th century, among which it was easy to hide.
The inspection was prepared as early as December 1792, and its main axis was the erstwhile members of the Assembly of Friends of the Constitution, both home and foreign. The conspirators divided into 2 camps – the right and the left. The right, whose representatives were Ignacy Dziazyński, Józef Wybicki, Hugo Kołłątaj and Ignacy Potocki, sought to carry out the uprising with troops and nobles, without mass engagement of townsmen and peasants.
The Left, whose faces were Józef Zajączek and Jakub Jasinski, saw the triumph of the rebellion only with the usage of all national forces, i.e. all states of the Republic. Eventually, a mixed concept prevailed. In addition, the request to establish a military dictatorship and entrust it to a one-man presidency was found to be a compromise. The thought of the charismatic figure of the commander was a strong organization to the conspiracy, but besides entailed a considerable hazard of breaking the insurgent plan, as a consequence of the death or capture of that person.
The commander was yet appointed, with universal respect and position as a hero from Dubienka, Tadeusz Kościuszko.
At the beginning of 1793, Kościuszko went to Paris, where he presented to the French government the plan of the uprising in Poland, aimed mainly at Russia and Prussia. The plans for French aid were handed over to the Russian embassy and caused its protest, so the French government did not make any circumstantial commitments to the Poles, although in the Kuluaras nevertheless encouraged the start of the revolution.
France, in which the girondists ruled at the time, was experiencing another aspect of the crisis. The emergence in Wandea grew stronger, and General Dumouriez's defeats in Belgium and his transition to the Austrian side were bad for the future. The uprising in Poland could have effectively relieved the French side, or at least led to weakening of the attacking Habsburg armies and not being helped by the Prussians.
Interestingly, even before Kościuszko arrived in Paris, he met Dumouriez himself in Belgium, who had revealed the insurgent plans. He, after his betrayal, revealed everything to the Prussians, who in turn immediately gave information to the Russians. Thus the possessive powers knew almost everything about the planned rebellion and that no 1 would come to the Poles' aid.
September 11, 1793 Kościuszko in disguise returned to the country and met with representatives of national conspiracy in Podgórze close Krakow. He discussed any of the uprising issues there, but was skeptical of his imminent explosion. In the absence of French aid, he assumed that he would shift it over time to an indefinite period.
Meanwhile, the outbreak of the uprising was a substance for both Prussians and Russians, who did not take seriously the longer functioning of the hull of the Polish state between them. In St. Petersburg, the Zubov brothers (Platon, Walerian and Nikolai) were active, who obtained crucial earthly donations in the territories taken from Poland as part of the Second Partition and wanted to grow their estates. In the regulation of them and their like imperial rulers, the Polish royals were commissioned as part of the partition.
The hold in fighting the insurgent side, about which Berlin and Petersburg were very well informed, caused both courts to decide to provoke. The first step to accelerate the outbreak was to trigger the banking crisis in February 1793. It was then that abroad banks, mainly Dutch, abruptly withdrew their capital from Poland. Piotr Ferguson Tepper – Calvin and Mason, who loaned to Stanisław August and the Treasury, demanded the abrupt repayment of all liabilities and closed the business.
The collapse of his Warsaw bank brought 4 another large financial institutions down. As a consequence of their liquidation, there has been a gigantic economical crisis, which has become a social ground for the uprising, especially by the surge in food prices (the motive is the genesis of the French Revolution). Interestingly, immediately after the closure of Tepper's bank, the Tsarist ambassador Jakob Sievers had it sealed in view of the information on customers and their transactions.
Later, it turned out that the bank had collaborated with the Russian embassy and participated for a number of years in lending traitors and transferring pay to Tsar's agents and sellers.
Another component of the provocation was the introduction of censorship, a list of banned books by the marketholder and ordered by the Grodzieński Sejm, a simplification of the Polish army, combined with the forced incarnation of parts of Polish troops into the Russian and Prussian army. Interestingly, plans for the simplification were written by General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, who joined Targowice and took PLN 2,000 salary, for which the insurgents later refused to accept him.
King Stanislaus besides joined the increase in the insurrectional moods, among another things by issuing a ban on the Virtuti Militari Orders and demanding their return on the hands of the resurrected Council. At the turn of 1793 and 1794, mass arrests of conspirators began by the chief commander of the Russian army in Poland, Osip Igelström.
The military's downsizing was resisting. any troops were dissolved by commanders to their homes with orders to return to the unit on demand, and any wealthy conspirators, held the battalions under their command in their private possessions, awaiting the imminent outbreak of fighting.
The uprising began erstwhile the commander of the Wielkopolska National Cavalry Brigade Antoni Madaliński did not comply with the order to disband the branch and began on 12 or 13 March 1794, a celebrated march southward towards Krakow.
It is interesting in this past that the Prussians passed it through the partitioned territory almost without fighting. After the uprising, Madaliński was arrested in Przemysl by Austrians and handed over to the Prussian government, and this later released him and then leased him the nationalized property of the Claric monastery in Kostrzyn. This may be, but it does not gotta mean his agential work for Berlin; in any case, it undoubtedly requires deeper research.
In connection with Madaliński's march, Russian troops left Krakow. Kościuszko hastily arrived at the city's enemy-free, where on March 24, after the Holy Mass, he made a solemn vow and then assumed the chief command of the insurgent forces. It was the authoritative beginning of the uprising, later called Kościuszkowski.
The chief ordered the concentration of the surrounding Polish troops and due to the deficiency of firearms, a collection of peasants armed with spades and scythes of alleged Cossacks was carried out in the surrounding villages. At the head of about 6,000 soldiers, Kościuszko moved towards Warsaw. The road was blocked by Tsar general Alexander Tormasov, who wanted the fame of the insurgent, attacked a stronger opponent.
The fates of the conflict weighed for respective hours until yet the consequence was decided by the attack of the mowers, who occupied the Russian cannons and cut into a trunk counterattacking the infantry squad. The Russians' arrival in the form of a Fyodor Denis ward, whose approach decided to retreat Kościuszko, saved them from a complete disaster.
The triumph at Racławice had a strong influence on the morale of the troops, but it had no strategical importance as it did not open the way for insurgents to the capital. On 7 May, the dictator of the uprising issued a universal in the camp under Połaniec, in which he promised to abolish the serfdom of any peasant who would enter the fight. Meanwhile, the Prussians openly joined the war...
Previous entry from our calendar is available Here..
