The Polish nobility and urban bourgeois circles longed for the semi-autonomous status they had enjoyed in Congress Poland before the previous insurgency, a generation earlier in 1830, and youth encouraged by the success of the Italian independence movement urgently desired the same outcome.

Russia had been weakened by its Crimean adventure and had introduced a more liberal attitude in its internal politics which encouraged Poland's underground National Government to plan an organised strike against their Russian occupiers no earlier than the spring of 1863.

In addition, Tsar Alexander II hit the landed gentry hard and, as a result, the whole economy, with a sudden decision in 1864 for finally abolishing serfdom in Poland.

[6] The ensuing breakup of estates and destitution of many peasants convinced educated Poles to turn instead to the idea of "organic work", economic and cultural self-improvement.

Despite the Russian Empire's loss of the Crimean War and weakened economic and political state, Alexander II warned in 1856 against further concessions with the words "forget any dreams".

One had patriotic stirrings within liberal-conservative usually landed and intellectual circles, centered around Andrzej Zamoyski and hoped for an orderly return to the constitutional status before 1830; they became characterized as the Whites.

However, estate owners tended to favour the abolition of serfdom in exchange for compensation, but the democratic movement saw the overthrow of the Russian yoke as entirely dependent on an unconditional liberation of the peasantry.

Ultimately, he agreed to the appointment of Aleksander Wielopolski to head a commission to look into Religious Observance and Public Education and announced the formation of a State Council and self-governance for towns and powiats.

However, Wielopolski's move to start conscription to the Russian Army in mid-January forced its hand to call the uprising prematurely on the night of 22–23 January 1863.

The uprising broke out at a moment when general peace prevailed in Europe, and although there was vociferous support for the Poles, powers such as France, Britain and Austria were unwilling to disturb the international calm.

The revolutionary leaders did not have sufficient means to arm and equip the groups of young men hiding in forests to escape Alexander Wielopolski's order of conscription into the Russian Army.

Undeterred, the CNC's provisional government issued a manifesto in which it declared "all sons of Poland are free and equal citizens without distinction of creed, condition or rank".

It decreed that land cultivated by the peasants, whether on the basis of rent or service, should become their unconditional property, and compensation for it would be given to the landlords out of State general funds.

[10] The historian Jerzy Zdrada records that by the late spring and the early summer of 1863, there were 35,000 Poles under arms facing a Russian Army of 145,000 in the Polish Kingdom.

The greatest setback was that in spite of the liberation manifesto from the KCN, without prior ideological agitation, the peasantry could not be mobilized to participate in the struggle except in those regions that were dominated by Polish units, which saw a gradual enrollment into the uprising of agricultural workers.

The secret Polish state was directed by the Rada Narodowa (RN, National Council) to which the civil and military structures on the ground were accountable.

For their part, Russian diplomats considered the uprising an internal matter, and European stability was generally predicated on the fate of Poland's aspiration.

The uncovering of the existence of the Alvensleben Convention, signed on 8 February 1863 by Prussia and Russia in St. Petersburg, to suppress the Poles jointly, internationalized the uprising.

Napoleon III of France, already a sympathizer with Poland, was concerned to protect his border on the Rhine and turned his political guns on Prussia with a view to provoking a war with it.

[4] With the threat of war averted, St. Petersburg left the door open for negotiations but was adamant in its rejection of any western rights to armed conflict.

In June 1863, western powers iterated the conditions: an amnesty for the insurgents, the creation of a national representative structure, the development of autonomous concessions across the Kingdom, a recall of a conference of Congress of Vienna (1815) signatories and a ceasefire for its duration.

Apart from the efforts of Sweden, diplomatic intervention by foreign powers on behalf of Poland was on the balance unhelpful in drawing attention away from the aim of Polish national unity towards its social divisions.

[13] Count Fyodor Berg, the newly appointed governor, Namiestnik of Poland, and the successor to Muravyov, employed harsh measures against the population and intensified systematic Russification in an effort to eradicate Polish traditions and culture.

On 2 February 1863, was the start of the first major military engagement of the uprising between Lithuanian peasants armed mostly with scythes and a squadron of Russian hussars outside Čysta Būda, near Marijampolė.

It also counted on the active support of Napoleon III, particularly after Prussia, expecting the inevitable armed conflict with France, had made overtures to Russia sealed in the Alvensleben Convention and offered assistance in suppressing the Polish uprising.

It was only after Polish General Romuald Traugutt had taken matters into his own hands on 17 October 1863 to unite all classes under a single national banner that the struggle could be upheld.

The most determined resistance continued in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, where General Józef Hauke-Bosak distinguished himself by taking several cities from the vastly superior Russian forces.

After he and the last four members of the National Council, Antoni Jezioranski, Rafał Krajewski, Józef Toczyski and Roman Żuliński, had been apprehended by Russian troops, they were imprisoned and executed by hanging on 5 August at the Warsaw Citadel.

All traces of former Polish autonomy were removed, and the Kingdom was divided into ten provinces, each with an appointed Russian military governor under the control of the Governor-General in Warsaw.

[22] Falling into the late romantic period, the events and figures of the uprising inspired many Polish painters, including Artur Grottger, Juliusz Kossak and Michał Elwiro Andriolli, and marked the delineation with the positivism that followed.