Resistance in partitioned Poland (1795–1918)
At the turn of the 19th century, Europe had begun to feel the impact of momentous political and intellectual movements that, among their other effects, would keep the "Polish Question" on the agenda of international issues needing resolution.
Volunteer Polish legions attached themselves to Bonaparte's armies, hoping that in return the emperor would allow an independent Poland to reappear out of his conquests.
[1] Although Napoleon promised more than he ever intended to deliver to the Polish cause, in 1807 (after the Wielkopolska Uprising (1806)) he created a Duchy of Warsaw from Prussian territory that had been part of old Poland and was still inhabited by Poles.
Moreover, the appearance of the Duchy of Warsaw so soon after the partitions proved that the seemingly final historical death sentence delivered in 1795 was not necessarily the end of the Polish nation-state.
For several decades, the Polish national movement gave priority to the immediate restoration of independence, a drive that found expression in a series of armed rebellions.
A conservative group headed by Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (one of the leaders of the November Revolt) relied on foreign diplomatic support to restore Poland's status as established by the Congress of Vienna, which Russia had routinely violated beginning in 1819.
Handicapped by internal division, limited resources, heavy surveillance, and persecution of revolutionary cells in Poland, the Polish national movement suffered numerous losses.
The movement sustained a major setback in the 1846 revolt organized in Austrian Poland by the Polish Democratic Society, the leading radical nationalist group.
The uprising ended in a bloody fiasco when the peasantry took up arms against the rebel leadership dominated by nobility and gentry, which was regarded as potentially a worse oppressor than the Austrians.
By incurring harsh military repression from Austria, the failed revolt left the Polish nationalists in a poor position to participate in the wave of national revolution that crossed Europe in 1848 and 1849 (although an insurrection occurred in German occupied Greater Poland).
The stubborn idealism of this uprising's leaders emphasized individual liberty and separate national identity rather than establishment of a unified republic—a significant change of political philosophy from earlier movements.
Increasing oppression at Russian hands after failed national uprisings finally convinced Polish leaders that the recent insurrection was premature at best and perhaps fundamentally misguided and counterproductive.
During the decades that followed the January Insurrection, Poles largely forsook the goal of immediate independence and turned instead to fortifying the nation through the subtler means of education, economic development, and modernization.
For some, the adoption of Organic Work meant permanent resignation to foreign rule, but many advocates recommended it as a strategy to combat repression while awaiting an eventual opportunity to achieve self-government.
The war split the ranks of the three partitioning empires, pitting Russia as defender of Serbia and ally of Britain and France against the leading members of the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary.
The newly created state initially consisted of former Congress Poland, western Galicia (with Lwów besieged by the Ukrainians) and part of Cieszyn Silesia.
