Bullet Point #14 – Did Napoleon want to re-establish Poland?

Author(s) : LENTZ Thierry
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Each “Bullet Point” will confront a question related to the First Empire. My remarks are designed to form the basis for debate and, I hope, research.

(Thierry Lentz, June 2018, translation RY)

Bullet Point #14 – Did Napoleon want to re-establish Poland?
Marcello Bacciarelli: Granting of the Constitution of the Duchy of Warsaw by Napoleon

We sometimes hear or read that Napoleon had wanted to re-establish Poland, which had been a stateless nation since the partitions of 1772, 1792 and 1795 between Russia, Prussia and Austria. But the game is rather given away by the fact that the basis for the assumption of Napoleon’s “polonophilia” is not in fact hard-nosed geopolitics but rather sentimental references to the Polish national anthem – which is a revival of the song [written by Jozef Wybicki between 16 and 19 July 1797] in homage to the Polish volunteers who fought under the command of General Dombrowski during the Italian Campaign of 1796-1797. Indeed, that hymn still today calls upon the citizens of that country to “follow the path traced by Bonaparte”. References are also made to the fact that the Emperor was welcomed as a liberator during the 1807 campaign; that he had a famous Polish lover in the person of Marie Walewska and, above all, that he proclaimed the restoration of “Great Poland” at the beginning of the Russian Campaign, during which more than 70,000 Poles served in the Grande Armée.

Be that as it may, no historian today, whether French or Polish, still supports the idea that Napoleonic policy in Poland was underpinned by a generous and liberating principle. Napoleon, who as a statesman was no less cynical or cold than the others of his time, used the “Polish question” to serve his own foreign policy and for the creation and maintenance of his “system”. Poland was part of the system, playing an important role that varied according to the needs of the moment, over a period that can be roughly divided into three stages.

The first stage was the acceptance of some form of partition. French diplomacy had to appease the three powers concerned and then not alarm the one that was to be allied with it against the other two (successively, Russia after 1807, and Austria after 1810). Even during the so-called “Polish Campaign” in 1807, the Emperor continued to pour cold water on Polish enthusiasm, whilst at the same time playing a double game since he needed Polish volunteers to reinforce his armies.

Without ever abandoning this position of principle, the second stage was the creation of the Duchy of Warsaw, a vassal state and buffer intended to punish Prussia after its defeat in 1806 and to contain Russian ambitions on the continent. At this time, Napoleon refused, indeed even forbade, the use of the name “Poland”: he called the inhabitants of this duchy “Warsavians”.

The third stage, the creation, finally, of a Polish “confederation”, lasted only the time it took the Grande Armée to get to Moscow and back. We therefore do not know (and we will never know) how far the Emperor really would have gone since the structures which had been put in place in haste and out of necessity were simply swept away by the defeat, with the Congress of Vienna organising a fourth partition of Poland, from which Russia took the lion’s share.

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