Konrad Wallenrod

Mickiewicz wrote it, while living in St. Petersburg, Russia, in protest against the late-18th-century partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg monarchy.

[2] Though its subversive theme was apparent to most readers, the poem escaped censorship due to conflicts among the censors and, in the second edition, a prefatory homage to Tsar Nicholas I.

[1] The following six cantos tell the story of Wallenrod, a fictional Lithuanian pagan captured and reared as a Christian by his people's long-standing enemies, the Order of Teutonic Knights.

[2][3] Its encouragement of what would later be called "patriotic treason" created controversy, since its elements of deception and conspiracy were thought incompatible with Christian and chivalric values.

[1] The Polish author Joseph Conrad, who had been christened Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, may have selected the second part of his pen name as an hommage to the poem's protagonist.