In 1795, Poland disappeared from the political map of Europe. After the Third Partition of Poland, the international situation in Europe was marked by a deep-rooted instability, and political configurations underwent rapid changes. Conflict with regards to the distribution of Polish lands immediately turned Russia and Austria against Prussia. The coalition led against revolutionary France fell apart in 1795, when Prussia concluded peace with France at Basel. From then on, the whole war effort was led by Austria. Military efforts continued on the Rhine and in Italy where the young general Bonaparte was named head of the Armée d'Italie. After a series of brilliant victories, Napoleon became master of Italy. These brutal and radical changes with regards to the balance of power and the conditions on the European political front led to the belief that the disappearance of the Polish state would not last. Whilst a part of the aristocracy and the nobility accepted the partitions de facto, as the partitioning powers had allowed them to keep their feudal privileges – the old prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski used to say that “when the homeland is no more, one must save the homeland's heritage” -, the patriotic circles attempted from the start to re-establish political independence, either by legal activities or by conspiring to mount an insurrection.
In the years following the partitions, the possibility of legally working towards a nation was slim. In this context, it was in the part of Poland annexed by Russia that conditions were most favourable. The tsar Alexander I, keen to appease the Polish nobility, allowed many institutions to continue and favoured the development of Polish education. His Polish friend Adam Jerzy Czartoryski, who had been attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1802 and who was its Minister from 1804-1806, came up with the conception of a new system of international relations, which aimed to create a vast federation of Slavic countries under Russian hegemony. Poland would be a distinct state closely linked to Russia, with a political system based on the principles set out in the Constitution of 3 May, 1791. This federation was conceived to counterbalance French hegemony in Western Europe.
At the same time, all over the former Polish territory, clandestine organisations were springing up, vast conspiracies with a view to fight for the restoration of independence. Their members were recruited from among former officers, who had fought in the Kosciuszko uprising, from the intelligentsia – a new social layer which was emerging at the time -, from nobility and from the bourgeoisie. These conspiratorial organisations did not affect either the rural poor or common people in the towns. Political emigrants in France grouped together into two poles according to their convictions. One, called the “Agency”, represented a conservative orientation which wished to see a return of the regime established by the 3 May Constitution and was led by Franciszek Barss, who had formerly been sent to France by Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The other pole was the “Deputation” and represented more radical views.
In 1797, the general Jan Henryk Dombrowski created Polish military formations in Italy – the Polish Legions – in the hope that Polish participation in the fight against the common enemy would speed up the freeing of the country. The peace concluded with Austria at Campo-Formio (1797), then the peace of Lunéville (1801), and finally the sending of a part of the Legions to Saint-Domingue in the following years to fight the insurrection of the Blacks successively shattered such hopes.
The French army would not enter Polish territory until 1806, after having defeated Prussia and as a continuation of the war against Russia. In November, from his headquarters in Berlin, Napoleon sent for Dombrowski and Josef Wybicki, an emigrated politician who was linked to the Legions, and asked them to issue a proclamation to their countrymen, calling them to arms. He would also have liked Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who had great moral authority in Poland, to sign this Proclamation. However, the old republican, suspicious of the Emperor, imposed impossible conditions to Napoleon. Always determined not to bind himself, Napoleon encouraged the Poles to revolt, but made no promises in return; the words of the Proclamation included: “I will see whether the Poles are worthy of being a nation”. This, however, was sufficient. General Dombrowski quickly managed to form an armed force of 30,000 men. The first Polish units entered the campaign against Prussia from February 1807. A Polish local administration was created on liberated Polish territory, and was submitted to French command. In January 1807, Napoleon set up a government commission made up of aristocrats and moderate nobles, who were for the most part former members of the Four Year Parliament. After the difficult campaign of 1807 in occidental Prussia, the peace Treaties were signed in Tilsit on 7 and 9 July, after which a new state appeared on European maps: the Grand-Duchy (the term Duchy would be more exact) of Warsaw, entrusted to the King of Saxony, Frederick-Augustus.
Geographically this state, whose total surface area covered 104,000 km2, was artificial. Its borders stretched from the Warta to the Niemen, but the border with Austria was very close to the capital and, in its oriental section, the Duchy's territory was so reduced that the distance between the Prussian border to the north and the Russian border to the south was no more than twenty kilometres. The Duchy did not have access to the sea, as Prussia had retained Pomerania; Gdansk (Danzig) became a free city, with a French garrison. The Duchy of Warsaw was not a sovereign state, but rather a Slavic stepping-stone in the Great Empire. Its dependence with regards to France could be seen on many different fronts. The monarch, Frederick-Augustus, as a King of Saxony belonged to the Confederation of the Rhine, which was under the protectorate of Napoleon. As a result, this protectorate extended indirectly to the Duchy. The dependence could be observed more directly in military and economic domains: the Continental Blockade was imposed here, as in all vassal states. The Duchy did not have diplomatic relations with other states; only France had a resident in Warsaw who was not simply a diplomatic agent, his extensive powers allowed him to interfere actively in Polish affairs.
The solutions adopted in Tilsit did not satisfy national aspirations. The fact that the name “Poland” had not been officially restored was painfully felt. The uncertainty regarding the organisation of the state, its future institutions and the nature of its relation with Saxony were also a source of concern. Napoleon increased the general discontent by giving Polish property worth twenty million francs to French generals who had distinguished themselves in the last campaign.
Napoleon however proceeded with his usual rapidity, without overly worrying about the state of spirits, undertaking to create institutional structures which conformed to his vision of Europe. He convened the members of the governmental commission in Dresden where he outlined the principles of the constitution he was to implement. This fundamental law, which was subsequently written by Maret according to Napoleon's instructions, was signed by the Emperor on 22 July. Whilst the members of the commission had very little power over the writing of the constitution, it took into account, to a large extent, Polish political traditions. This constitution proclaimed the abolition of slavery, equality before the law and freedom of conscience. However, it did not change anything in terms of relationships regarding property. Nobles continued to be the owners of their land and to farm it, through the means of statute labour; the nobility was equally privileged in their electoral right. The constitution created a strong executive power, which in theory lay in the hands of the monarch. Legislative initiative belonged to the king; ministers were named by him and responsible before him. Foreign politics were reserved for him alone.
Frederick-Augustus, who lived in Dresden and only rarely travelled to Warsaw, abandoned a large part of his duties to the Council of Ministers. This Council was in fact closely controlled by the French resident in Warsaw. The first resident was Etienne Vincent, a young auditor in the Conseil d'Etat. Authoritarian and brutal, he opposed both his Polish and Saxon partners and was soon replaced by the Genoese Jean-Charles Serra, who remained in this position until 1810; his successor was the diplomat Edouard Bignon. Another important factor is that until 1808, a French corps commanded by Marshall Davout was stationed in the Duchy: the Marshall was also the supreme commander of the Polish armed forces and was extremely influential in all questions concerning the governing of the country. Ministers were chosen from the aristocracy and the rich landed nobility, social classes which Napoleon was keen to win over. Only one member of the bourgeoisie – the State Councillor, Stanislas Staszic – managed to attain the position of senior politician. Left-wing supporters, former “Jacobins”, were dismissed, even though they were the primary defenders and ideologists of the new regime, using the press to defend the conclusion of the Tilsit treaties and calling for the introduction of French codes. Despite Marshall Davout's pleas, Napoleon opposed the participation of a government led by Hugo Kollataj, leader of the left, whom Bignon was still describing in 1811 as “the only man capable of occupying the Ministry of the Interior with the skill and the vigour that such a position requires”. Among the Ministers, who were for the most part mediocre, the Justice Minister, Felix Lubienski, stood out. Whilst he was opposed to the introduction of French legislation at first, he soon realised that it did not threaten either the interests or the predominance of the landed nobility and so worked vigorously to implement the Code civil in the Duchy rapidly. Prince Josef Poniatowski, the nephew of the last king of Poland, was named Minister of War, even though Dombrowski's merits and talents as an organiser had seemed to destine him for that post.
A parliament, made up of the Diet and the Senate, had little power, which was limited to civil and penal legislation, taxation and budget, and also to the monetary system. The structure of the parliament restored the political customs from before the partitions: the Senate housed the bishops and voivodes chosen by the king; within the Diet, 60 nuncios were elected by the Diet to represent the landed nobility, whilst the district area assemblies only elected forty members. The system based on a tax qualification limited the number of voters to 83,000 members of the communal assemblies. After the aggrandizement of the Duchy as a result of the war of 1809, the number of voters was raised to 104,000, a high figure for the time (under the regime of the Charte de 1815 in France, a country with thirty million inhabitants, the number of voters was not much higher than 100,000). Le principle of equality was not applied in the Duchy of Warsaw in terms of political laws; the nobility was in this way in a very privileged situation. In practice, the dominance of the nobility was even more marked: since a noble could be elected member of the parliament and a commoner could not become a nuncio, the proportion of nobles was very high. The Diet members' temperament, as well as the fresh memory of former parliamentary traditions made it hard to take on the rigors of the procedure and limited freedom in deliberations. Little by little the new motions came into being after the closure of official deliberations, which the Diet continued to chair officiously and to discuss freely, all the while abstaining from criticising the king and the constitution.
Territorial administration was based on the French model: the country was divided into six departments administered by prefects who were assigned sub-prefects to direct the districts. Municipalities were created in cities, and rural communes were administered by the wojt; the Interior Minister recommended that town Lords be named to these positions. In this way, nobility's power over ordinary-folk was reinforced: as they exercised police authority, Lords could easily maintain obedience. The system in the Duchy, whilst it introduced important modernising elements into the state and society, clearly favoured the nobility, and more especially nobility with land; it is on this social layer that the new regime wanted to build itself on.
This social layer was quite significant and made up about 7% of the population. According to censors at the time, the grand-Duchy's population included 2.6 million people, although historians estimate that in reality there were more than three million inhabitants. However, there were fewer big landowners – those who owned at least one village with rural poor submitted to statute labour – who formed a social group that represented less than 5% of the total nobility. Another category close to that of the landowners was that of farm holders, who were in possession of national or private property, and the “leasehold owners”. These two groups often overlap: a landowner could lease a neighbouring property and his son could be a farmer whilst he was waiting for his father's inheritance. Landed nobility were the most conservative social group, attached to the old social order which they had defended relentlessly and successfully. On the other hand, the small rural nobility, which had once made up the political clientele of the magnates, was beginning to assert itself as a politically independent element. 40% of nobles lived in the city, deriving their resources from liberal activities, taking on careers as officials, ecclesiasts, or as military men and even going into commerce or craft. These people were recruited to posts with middle management responsibilities within the new administration. Statistics from the time show that there were 800,000 inhabitants in the cities (18.6% of the total), but this figure has little to do with the reality, as the majority of the 633 “cities” were only semi-agrarian towns, with at least a thousand inhabitants, most of whom lived off the land. Apart from Warsaw, with its population of 78,000 people, only three other cities had more than 10,000 inhabitants. The rural bourgeoisie, few in number and barely active politically, did not play a huge role in the Duchy. The stratification of the peasant population varied according to the regions: it is nevertheless certain that the rural proletariat, who either did not own land or only only had enough to support a family with, made up at least 50% of the population in the countryside. No more than 1% of the peasant population owned their own land. A higher percentage than this was able to pay a monetary charge to their Lord. The agrarian structure of the country was founded on rural poor submitted to statute labour. They would run farms that varied in size (up to 75 hectares) but would have to pay a tax, either of money or of work to the Lord's domain. The high level of statute labour placed a heavy burden nearly everywhere and the farmers who owned land were forced to pay farm hands with the sole aim to work on the Lords' lands. About half of all cultivated lands were farmed on behalf of the Lords.
Article 4 of the Constitution proclaimed the abolition of serfdom. The article was too vague however and so Frederic-Augustus made it more explicit in a decree on 21 December, 1807. The freedom accorded to the rural poor was limited, and only allowed them to roam freely within the Duchy. Rural holdings – that is land, buildings, livestock and even seeds – were recognised as Seigniorial property, with the exception of rarer cases in which by an earlier Act, a farmer had acquired the productive area. The decree forbade, but only for a year after it became effective, the expulsion of rural poor, as long as they fulfilled all their obligations towards their Lord. After this time, the Lord was free to dispose of his peasant holdings as he saw fit. It was in their interests, however, to keep the rural poor in order to have a workforce: thus, peasant expulsions were not frequent. The decree of 21 December was dictated by landed-nobility interests: it gave Lords a new reason to call for statute labour, which had been compromised for a while by the abolition of serfdom; it also eliminated state intervention between Lords and the rural poor and opened the prospect of land expansion by direct farming, to the detriment of the peasant holdings.
The constitution also stated that the French Code Civil must be adopted, and it was solemnly introduced in 1808. The aristocratic circles at first viewed it with suspicion, but they quickly realised that the provisions concerning property, if interpreted adroitly, could become a useful instrument to strengthen their privileged position. The Code did not protect the rights of the rural poor, which had previously been protected by ancient customs, such as forestry servitude and grazing on seigniorial lands. The fact of maintaining statute labour was contrary to the Code, which did not allow forced employment; the ancient feudal rules were therefore maintained under the pretext that they were not part of civil law, but rather came from the administration. As a consequence, administrative means of coercion were permitted in order to force the rural poor into statute labour. On the other hand, Lords could make use of the Code principles when it suited the interests of a higher power, that is, the Lord. When contracts were signed with the rural poor, the principle of freedom of agreements was especially relied on to arbitrarily increase peasant charges which the law did not protect. Thus, paradoxically, the Code Napoleon, when transplanted into another social reality, actually strengthened the existing feudal structures.
On the subject of social structures of the Duchy, it is worth mentioning the problem of Jews, who made up an important proportion of the population (7% of the overall population, 28% of the urban population). They were a group discriminated by the law: in 1808, political and civil rights which were granted to citizens of the Duchy were refused to them for a period of ten years. Soon, Jews were even forbidden from living in the main streets of Warsaw: in other cities, specific areas were designated where they could live (these restrictions did not concern rich families or the assimilated Jewish intelligentsia). In 1812, Jews were not allowed to lease national property, and they could be exempt from military service in exchange for a high pecuniary contribution. They also had to pay special taxes; this discrimination was justified by arguing that Jews were not assimilated into Polish society and that they had different customs and traditions, without realising that their integration would thus be delayed, if not prevented.
The economic situation of the Duchy was difficult. The Continental Blockade had closed the traditional markets for Polish wheat, which was the country's main export. Prices fell very low, but at the same time, by preventing the import of British industrial products, the Blockade stimulated the development of national industry. The increase in cloth production in Greater Poland led landowners to enlarge their sheep farming. The metal industry was also forced to increase its production to satisfy the needs of the army. Military supplies led to the creation of huge assets in Warsaw. The commercial balance, which had been negative to start with, began to improve. Despite these signs of an economic recovery, the Duchy's Treasury was constantly in trouble. Not only was the new administration costly, but even more so, the cost of equipping and maintaining the army weighed heavily on state finance. Following the Treaties of Tilsit, the army included 30,000 men; after the war in 1809 there were double this number and just before the campaign of 1812, the number had risen to 100,000. Recruitment was based on conscription, with service lasting six years. There were many volunteers – young Poles, Russian or Austrian subjects who came to the Duchy to enrol in the ranks. The officers who had served in the Polish Legions formed the core framework of the army and set the tone. In order to continue the tradition of the Legions, the soldiers were given a civic education. The army was a school of democracy where caste prejudices were erased, where abilities and zeal were enough to lead to promotion for those of modest means. As an object of special attentions and of national pride, the army was seen as a sign and as a promise of independence, and military careers became more prestigious than they had ever been before. At Napoleon's request, part of the troops were sent to serve France, namely the famous regiment of light horses of the imperial Guard and the Legion of the Vistula which took part, along with three of the best regiments of Polish infantry, in the Spanish war. The Duchy of Warsaw in this way paid its tribute of blood to Napoleon.
Despite the Treasury's eternal difficulties, the Duchy made a large effort to develop education, led by the Ministry of Education, a collegial authority which continued the work of the pre-partition national education commission. To ensure that modernised administration and justice were run by qualified individuals, a law school was created in Warsaw, which was supplemented in 1811 by a faculty of administration.
Only two years after the Duchy's creation, its army was forced to defend it against an Austrian invasion. Whilst the war of 1809 took place for the most part in Bavaria, the Austrian government decided to cause a diversion by occupying the Duchy. This mission was entrusted to the Archduke Ferdinand who commanded a corps of 32,000 men; it seemed simple enough as Napoleon had removed his troops and part of the Polish ones, not expecting his territory to be attacked by enemy forces. On 14 April, the Archduke crossed the border and made his way towards Warsaw. Prince Josef Poniatowski only had 16,000 men at his disposal to defend the capital, men who nonetheless demonstrated courage and endurance during the battle of Raszyn, near Warsaw. Whilst the Austrians suffered colossal losses, Poniatowski, aware of the weakness of his troops, abandoned Warsaw to enemy occupation, retreating to Galicia with his small army. Surprised by this manoeuvre, the enemy only put up a feeble resistance. In very little time, Poniatowski occupied Lublin, Zamosc, Sandomierz and Lwow and was welcomed everywhere as a liberator. The Galician nobility spontaneously offered him their support, and there was a huge surge of volunteers. Poniatowski set up a temporary government on the occupied territory, the Central Government.
Archduke Ferdinand was forced to abandon Warsaw in order to defend Galicia. The Austrians managed to recapture Sandomierz and Lwow, and Poniatowski once again found himself in a difficult position. The Russian troops which supposedly came to Galicia to aid him were in fact keen not to let Galicia fall into Polish hands. On 15 July Poniatowski, taking the initiative of the operations again, entered Krakow. It is there that he found out about Napoleon's victory at Wagram and about the armistice signed in Znaïm on 12 July, ending the hostilities. The peace signed with Austria at Schönbrunn granted western Galicia to the Duchy, that is, the territory annexed by Austria at the time of the third Partition of Poland, as well as the district of Zamosc. These acquisitions were divided into four new departments: twelve new senators, forty nuncios and twenty-six members of parliament represented them at the Diet. The Duchy now covered 157,000 km2 and had five million inhabitants. This aggrandizement angered Russia, and Alexander's fears further grew when, in 1810, Napoleon refused to ratify a convention negotiated at St Petersburg by Caulaincourt, which stipulated that the Kingdom of Poland would never be re-established.
The new territory was, from an economic point of view, less developed than the rest of the Duchy. There were fewer cities, the countryside was poorer, and the interior market was less developed. It was here that the magnate latifundia such as the Zamoyski and Czartoryski families lived. The Lords of Galicia, who were against the introduction of the Code Napoléon, demanded a revision of the constitution, and Stanislas Zamoyski went to Frederick-Augustus in an attempt to do something about it. The king refused, and Galicia was forced to accept all of the Duchy's legislation. As a consequence of the decree of December, the legal position of the Galician rural poor sharply deteriorated. Previously, Austrian laws had assured the stability of their possessions and had defended them against arbitrary tax increases. The annexation of Galicia also changed the balance of power on the political front and reinforced conservative positions; Tadeusz Matuszewic, Czartoryski's representative, became Minister of the Treasury. The poor economic situation, the public finance deficit and the requisitioning to satisfy army needs – the population had doubled since the annexation of Galicia, and the troops had also needed to be doubled – created a climate in which the opposition from the nobles was gaining strength. This was particularly evident at the Diet in 1811 when the government was violently attacked. The opposition forced a project aiming to adopt the French Code Pénal to be rejected, criticizing the administration, which it considered to be too powerful but at the same time inefficient and expensive. Property tax paid by landed nobility was reduced, and to eliminate the deficit, the indirect contributions which most affected the poorer classes were increased.
The war of 1809 and the events which followed had offered the chance of one last burst of activity from a small group of radicals, whose ideology was also undergoing a deep crisis. Since they did not have popular support, were incapable of developing an independent political line and had had their hopes dashed regarding the establishment of a Napoleonic system, they turned to the conservative opposition in order to fight this same system together. A group of former-Jacobins actively set about organising a Polish administration in the conquered Galicia. They approached the head of the central government in Galicia, Stanislas Zamoyski, in the hope of benefitting from the conflicts opposing him and the Duchy Ministers. In the same way, during the Diet of 1811, certain radicals collaborated with the opposition, helping write criticisms against the government. The severe judgements they made about the faults of the system were often accurate but in this critical situation, all it did was to provide ammunition for the conservative nobility, who were hostile to the modernisation of social and state structures and who wished to a large extent to return to former institutions. It seems – though this has not been established with certainty – that there were feeble attempts to establish contacts with the Republican opposition in France. It is more likely however that a large part of the former left was starting to envisage collaboration with pro-Russian politicians.
Just one year after the conclusion of the peace at Schönbrunn, a new conflict appeared. Europe would once again find itself in a war opposing the two great continental powers, the Napoleonic and Russian Empires. Alexander I attempted to draw the Poles to his side, but his propositions were swept aside by Prince Poniatowski, who informed Napoleon of them. The French Emperor was determined to make the most of all the human and material resources he had at his disposal in the Duchy, and so he mobilised all of Europe's forces for a war against Russia. Knowing that the restoration of the country's independence would unleash a wave of national energy, he offered the Poles the prospect of re-establishing Poland according to its old borders. At his request, Frederick-Augustus, by a decree on 26 May, 1812, authorised the Council of Ministers to be able to exert all of his own powers within the Duchy, with the exception of the changes in the Council and the naming of judges. On the eve of the outbreak of hostilities, France's diplomatic mission in Warsaw was elevated to the rank of Embassy. The Ambassador Mgr de Pradt, archbishop of Mechelen, arrived with so much power that he already considered himself lieutenant-general of the Duchy. In accordance with Napoleon's orders, an exceptional Diet was convened; it revived Polish traditions by proclaiming the creation of a general Confederation and the restoration if the kingdom of Poland. The old prince Adam Czartoryski became president of the Confederation Council. This Council, which had no judicial authority or real importance, did not nothing other than admit individuals, such as various public institutions, into the Confederation. All this merely served as propaganda, to which the ambassador, who wanted to direct and control everything, added to by writing addresses and proclamations which supposedly came from the Confederation.
The harsh economic reality was a steep contrast with the grandiloquence of the proclamations. The Treasury was empty due to the military costs; the Grande Armée troops, as they travelled back across the Duchy, ruined the countryside with their requisitioning and extortion. “The resources of the city and of the Duchy are running out, observed the ambassador soon after his arrival in Warsaw. There is a necessary irregularity in applications and supplies which are increased one by the other. Overnight one demands to find what only time and research can achieve. This leads to ambushes and violence which dries up our resources and dampens spirits. Of this we have daily proof.”
“The second war of Poland has started”, stated the Emperor's proclamation on the eve of the crossing of the Niemen. Although he was as ever anxious of not binding his hands for the future, he was careful to spread a significant part (nearly 100,000 soldiers) of the Duchy's forces among different corps in the Grande Armée. Only a third – 37,000 men – formed the 5th corps commanded by Prince Poniatowski. The Polish troops, who strongly resembled the other units of the Grande Armée, consisted largely of young recruits who had been insufficiently trained and who were unable to cope with the tiring journeys of this campaign, which was unlike any of Napoleon's previous wars. The 5th corps, as they pursued Bagration's army across Belarus, lost a third of their men in the first two months of the campaign. They joined Napoleon's main forces near Smolensk and distinguished themselves during these conflicts for having taken the city. The Poles fought at Borodino and entered Moscow alongside Napoleon. They shared the horrors of the retreat, fighting in the rearguard, spilling their blood during the battles of Taroutino, Winkono and Berezina. At the beginning of November, Poniatowski, heavily bruised after falling from his horse, was forced to pass on the commandment of his corps to general Zajonczek. The debris of the 5th corps, of which only a handful of 2,000 men remained, returned to Warsaw with almost all the artillery and eagles. More than 70,000 Poles lost their lives during this campaign.
News of Napoleon's defeat in Russia, and even more so, the sight of the decimated Grande Armée returning to the Duchy caused a profound shock. The ambassador resigned and left Warsaw in December; in January, the Russian army entered the Duchy. The pro-Russian politicians within the government attempted to create contacts and to reach an agreement with Alexander I; Alexander, however, only made vague promises, without giving precise assurances. In February, the government left Warsaw and retired to Krakow. Prince Poniatowski, who had managed to raise an army of 20,000 men, followed the government. In April, it became clear that they could not remain in Krakow any longer. The government therefore joined Frederick-Augustus in Dresden, and the prince led his army, via Silesia and Bohemia, to Saxony in order to join Napoleon there. In the Duchy, the fortresses at Zamosc and Modlin did not capitulate until December.
The Duchy, created by Napoleon, could not survive the fall of the Empire. Its brief existence was nevertheless of immeasurable importance for the history of the nation. It proved that the partitions of Poland had not been definitive and that the Polish people would not cease to fight for their independence. Its existence had stimulated national energy, had accelerated the process of social modernisation and the forming of a national conscience. The political and legal institutions that Napoleon had created remained for a long time: the political institutions were maintained until 1831 in the Kingdom of Poland, the administrative institutions until the 1860s, the general legal organisation until 1876 and the Code Civil until 1946.
Author: Monika Senkowska-Gluck, trans. L.S.
Dictionnaire Napoléon, 1999, Fayard
Reproduced and translated with the authorisation of Editions Fayard. All rights reserved.
Poland through the ages
Author(s) : SENKOWSKA-GLUCK Monika