The Grand Duchy of Warsaw (1807-1815): history

The Warsaw Duchy existed in 1807-1815. It was created by Napoleon, and although formally considered independent, in fact it was a satellite of France. In the event of a victory over Russia, Bonaparte was going to transform him into a kingdom, but these plans did not come true. After the defeat of France from the allied countries, the Warsaw Duchy was divided between its neighbors: Austria, Prussia and Russia.

Prehistory

At the end of the 18th century, after the partition of Rzeczpospolita, part of Poland was annexed to Prussia. The attitude of the local population towards the German authorities was extremely negative. Meanwhile, while in the east of Europe the Polish drama was played out, in the west of the Old World the Great French Revolution broke out. Soon Napoleon came to power in Paris. He led the struggle of the French against the rest of the European monarchies, who saw in the fall of the Bourbons a threat to their own existence. Napoleon won the campaign for the campaign. On the conquered European lands, he arranged a new order and established civil liberties by analogy with those that recently appeared in France.

Thus, for Poles who lived under the yoke of foreign rule, Bonaparte became a symbol of hope for swift changes. Representatives of the bourgeois class were waiting for French aid. This confidence had its bases, because Napoleon fought against Prussia, which meant that the two countries have a common enemy. With each defeat of the monarchist coalitions, nationalistic sentiments in Poland became stronger and stronger. In 1806 the army of Bonaparte entered Prussia.

Occupied French by the Polish lands Napoleon gave under the auspices of a special temporary Government Commission. Its leader was Marshal Stanislav Malakhovsky. The new authority was engaged in equipping and nourishing Polish and French troops. In addition, the commission abolished the Prussian laws and restored the old legislation of the times of the Commonwealth.

The creation of the Duchy

In 1807, the Tilsit peace was signed between France and its opponents . According to this document, the Duchy of Warsaw was independent of Prussia. This new Polish state received lands assigned to the Germans, according to the second and third sections of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, the Duchy remained without access to the Baltic Sea. Controversial Bialystok region, Napoleon gave the Russian Emperor Alexander I.

The area of the newly formed state was 101 thousand square meters. Km. It was home to 2.5 million people. Gdansk received a special status. He became a free city (by analogy with the era of the Holy Roman Empire) under the supervision of the French governor.

Project of Napoleon

The artificially created Duchy of Warsaw existed for only 8 years. This period fell on the period of Napoleon's greatest successes in the foreign policy arena. Of course, despite its apparent independence, the Duchy of Warsaw has always remained a satellite of France, like many other newly-formed states in Western Europe. Poland became the eastern bastion of the Napoleonic Empire. Its significance was extremely great in connection with the inevitably approaching conflict with Russia. Therefore it is not surprising that in 1812 the Duchy of Warsaw suffered huge losses. His army, sent to Russia, numbered about 100 thousand people. The status of the country as a military camp was also confirmed by the fact that Napoleon distributed part of the Polish state property to his French generals and marshals.

In July 1807 the Grand Duchy of Warsaw won its own constitution. The signing ceremony took place in Dresden. The new basic law recognized the importance of the Sejm and the dominant position of the Polish nobility. Thus, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw received a somewhat looser constitution, compared with the European states adopted in other Napoleonic states.

The French emperor removed the Jacobins from power in Poland. The consequence of his interference was that the Saeima had a preponderance in favor of the landed nobility and aristocracy. The key Polish politicians were Stanislav Pototsky (Chairman of the State Council), Felix Lubensky (Minister of Justice), Tadeusz Matuszewicz (Minister of Finance) and Józef Poniatowski (the organizer of the army and the Minister of War).

Power

Formally, the Duchy of Warsaw was a monarchy. It concluded a union with Saxony. Thus, the ruler of this German state, Friedrich Augustus, became the duke. The monarch had the right to change and supplement the constitution, to make corrections to the work of the Seim. He obeyed the government.

The Seimas had two chambers - the Ambassadorial izba and the Senate. Due to the historical tradition, this authority became the next stronghold of the influence of the nobility (gentry). It is interesting that the Warsaw Constitution contradicted other Napoleonic constitutions (for example, the Westphalian and Naples) in the sense that it enshrined the principle of not appointing, but electing a parliament.

Many of the state features of the Warsaw Duchy were adopted from revolutionary France. In the Senate, the voevods, bishops and kashtelyans sat. All of them were presented in equal proportions. The Senate, unlike the Ambassadorial hut, was replenished according to the appointments of the monarch. In municipal (volost) assemblies, the majority was mainly entrusted to industrialists and landowners who were not noblemen.

Slepkom of the French system in the Warsaw Duchy became the State Council. Its chairman was the monarch. Also on the council were ministers. This body drafted bills, resolved disputes between administrative and judicial instances. The State Council also served as advisory functions to the Duke.

The Sejm

The Saeima was responsible for taxes, criminal and civil law. Also in his charge was the coinage of the Duchy of Warsaw. The much more extensive powers of the monarch extended to legislation on administrative and political issues. Also the duke regulated the budget. Draft laws were written in the State Council. The Seimas could only reject or accept them. At the same time, the government worked a commission that proposed its own amendments to the laws, but in this case the decisive word was for the State Council.

For all time of existence the Diet collected only three times: in 1809, 1811 and 1812. The last session was extraordinary. It was then because of the decision of the Seimas that the Patriotic War began with the Duchy of Warsaw, which took the side of Napoleon. Bonaparte, traveling through Poland, himself initiated the convening of an extraordinary session. It is interesting that at that time the French emperor began the process of reviving the union with Lithuania. Relations between Vilnius and Warsaw disturbed Alexander I. The Russian emperor tried to drag the Lithuanians to his side, promising them the revival of the Grand Duchy. Anyway, the draft of the new Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not take place. The future of Poland was determined not by agreements, but by the war between France and Russia. The accession of the Duchy of Warsaw and the decision of the Congress of Vienna left in the past the idea of a Polish-Lithuanian union.

Government

The government of the Duchy consisted of six ministers: the interior, justice, religion, finance, police and the military. It was in Warsaw. At the same time, the Saxon prince lived in Dresden. For this reason, there was always a middleman between him and the government. In addition, when discussing especially important decisions in both domestic and foreign policy, the decisive word was left for the French residents.

Also, the activities of the government were under the control of the State Council. However, the ministers did not depend on the Seimas. Each department in the government was single-handed. In other words, the bureaucratic hierarchy made the minister a key figure in his field. His subordinates could not challenge the decisions of his boss. Of particular importance were the ministries of police and internal affairs. They had to monitor the maintenance of order in the state. In emergency situations, the Minister of Police could even use a special guard on his own.

Society

Together with the political changes, the formation of the Duchy of Warsaw gave Poland a fundamentally new legislation. According to the adopted constitution, the principles of equality of all citizens before the law were enshrined. Although the division into estates was not abolished, it was noticeably limited. Already the first elections to communes and the Seimas showed that the townspeople (petty bourgeois) were able to take advantage of the electoral rights they had just given.

At the same time, in 1808 a decree was adopted, which struck heavily on the situation of the Jews. They were temporarily (for 10 years) restricted in civil rights. Under the new rules, Jews were required to request an official permission to marry. The Jewish population was exempted from compulsory military service, but instead, it was taxed with high taxes.

As in many other European countries, the most important was the patient peasant question. The Duchy of Warsaw was established in Poland, when serfdom still existed there. The new government abolished the feudal dependence of the villagers. However, the peasants were actually deprived of land, which remained behind the nobles. The reform could not come to fruition. Constant Napoleonic wars have caused the destruction and impoverishment of many farms. The hostility between peasants and nobles only grew every year.

Victory over Austria

Moving in the wake of the Napoleonic policy, the Warsaw Duchy went to an inevitable conflict with the opponents of the French emperor. In 1809 the war of the fifth coalition began. This time France and its allies collided with Austria, Great Britain, Sicily and Sardinia. Most of the Polish forces joined the army of Bonaparte himself. In the Duchy the corps of Józef Poniatowski (about 14 thousand people) remained. The Austrian army attacked Saxony and the Warsaw Duchy, which, in conditions of dispersal of the Napoleonic forces, seemed easy prey.

A 36-thousand-strong army invaded Poland. On April 19, 1908, a general battle took place - the battle of Rashin. The Poles were led by Józef Poniatowski, the Austrians were Archduke Ferdinand Karl. The collision occurred on a crossed swampy terrain. The Poles fought hard, but finally retreated. Warsaw was soon surrendered. However, the general turn in the war of the fifth coalition was a blow to the Austrians in the back. Only a few weeks later the Poles crossed the counter-offensive, returned all the territories taken away and, in addition, captured Sandomierz, Lublin, Lviv and Krakow. At the end of the war, according to the peace treaty, the Warsaw Duchy annexed Western Galicia, thereby increasing its territory by one and a half times.

War with Russia

At the beginning of the war between France and Russia, the Warsaw Duchy (1807-1813) turned out to be a kind of buffer between the two main opponents. In June 1812, the Sejm, sitting in Warsaw, decided to take the side of Napoleon. The campaign of the French emperor in Russia failed. Departing to the east with a half-million army, he returned to his homeland with several thousand ragged and hungry officers.

Defeat of Napoleon meant a quick end, which awaited the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The war spread to Polish lands. On January 1, 1813, three columns under the command of Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov crossed the border river Neman and headed towards Polotsk. In the Duchy by this time there were a few Polish-Saxon troops who were not able to resist the Russian army that had gained momentum. In Poland began her famous trip abroad, ending with the capture of Paris.

On January 27, Warsaw was peacefully taken. In fact, the Duchy has ceased to exist. Part of the Poles, however, remained true to Napoleon. The 15,000-strong corps under the command of Józef Poniatowski went to Austria, hoping that the French will still defeat the Russians, and the independence of the state will be restored. In Poland, only the French units stationed on the Vistula resisted. However, they could not stop the enemy - the neutrality of Austria and Prussia decided to withdraw from the conflict.

Abolition

When Napoleon suffered a final defeat, the victorious powers gathered in Vienna in order to determine the future of the Old World. The French emperor redrawn all borders within the European continent - now other monarchs had to disentangle this political mess. First of all, the next section of Poland took place. It was neighboring with three powerful powers (Austria, Prussia and Russia), not interested in its existence.

May 3, 1815, according to the decision of the Vienna Congress, in Eastern Europe, new boundaries were set. There was a division of Poland - the Warsaw Duchy was abolished. Krakow, which was part of it, was proclaimed a free city with a republican state system. In this format it existed until 1846.

Most of the Warsaw Duchy became part of Russia. Emperor Alexander was proclaimed Polish king. He granted autonomy to the new territories and a liberal constitution. Thus, although the Duchy of Warsaw became part of Russia, its natives lived much more freely than the Russians themselves. The western lands of the abolished state were given to Prussia. They formed a new German province - the Grand Duchy of Poznan.