They were the statesman and poet, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, one time Polish envoy to the United Kingdom and Karol Kniaziewicz, politician and brigadier general in Napoleon's Grande Armée.

The cemetery has become one of the national symbols of Polish resistance to all forms of oppression, and each Spring, it is the rallying place for Poles living in the Paris area, who go there to commemorate their historical leaders and artists.

However, the tyranny of tsar Nicholas I incited the Poles to stage a planned insurrection which began in November 1830, formed an interim Polish government under prince Czartoryski, and spread to all parts of the former Commonwealth under Russian rule well into the following year.

Many of the dissidents who managed to evade those outcomes, escaped to Western Europe, including the Italian and German states, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, with a majority settling in France where they were dubbed the Grande Emigration, with Czartoryski among them.

[2] While in the 19th-century resettled Poles conducted their political and intellectual lives in Paris, they favoured Enghien-les-Bains as a holiday destination and Delfina Potocka opened a second salon at the spa to entertain guests to Chopin's piano recitals and hear the works of poets such as Juliusz Słowacki and Zygmunt Krasiński.