CHAPTER VII
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Entrance of the Russian forces into the Kingdom.--Proclamations of Marshal Diebitsch.--Their effect.--Disposition of the Russian and Polish forces.--Plan of operations of the Poles.
The Russian forces, simultaneously with the Polish, began to concentrate themselves on the frontiers of the kingdom, (_See Plan No. 1_) particularly at Bialystok (11) and Grodno (10). Four general points were designated for the entrance of this enormous force, viz. Zlotoria (12), Ciechanowiec (9), Brzesc (8), and Wlodawa (7).
Marshal Diebitsch, on entering the kingdom, published a proclamation to the Poles, a copy of which is given in the note.[32]
[Illustration: _I_]
Those proclamations were published in the latter part of January. The people were disgusted with their promises and their menaces, and rejecting all idea of reconciliation on such terms as these proclamations set forth, they entreated to be led to the struggle in which they had once decided to engage, preferring every sacrifice to so degrading a submission. They demanded that an answer should be sent to Diebitsch, informing him that they were ready to meet him, and called upon the government to commence hostilities without a moment's delay.[33]
The Russian forces, [_See plan No. 1_, (_a_)] consisting, as we have already mentioned, of about 200,000 men and 300 pieces of cannon, had, on about the 5th of February, passed the Polish frontier at the four general points above named (7, 8, 9, 12). Their different commanders, besides the marshal Diebitsch, were, the Grand Duke Constantine, generals Rosen, Pablen, Geismer, Kreutz, prince Wirtemberg, and Witt. The chief d'etat major was general Toll, the most skilful of the Russian generals. The space designated for the entrance of the different detachments of the Russian corps embraced an extent of ninety-six English miles. This space was almost wholly occupied by either small or large detachments. General Diebitsch, meaning to attack our centre at Siedlce with a part of his army, intended to outflank us with the rest, and to march directly upon Warsaw, and thus, following the plan of Napoleon in the campaign of Prussia, in 1806, at Jena and Auerstacdt, to cripple our front, and to put an end to the war in a moment. The plans of this renowned commander were well understood by our general officers, and to resist them, it was determined to contract our forces (_b_) into a line of operations, narrow, but concentrated and strong; a course which our inferiority of force seemed to require. This line was posted as follows. Our left wing, consisting of the fourth division of general Szembek and a division of cavalry under general Uminski, was in the environs of Pultusk (14). This wing sent its reconnoissances towards Ostrolenka (4). In the environs of the town of Jadow (16) was the division of general Krukowiecki; and in the environs of Wengrow (15), the division of general Skrzynecki, with the division of cavalry commanded by general Lubinski. The centre of our position was about half way between the two latter places. Our right wing was at Siedlce (2), and was composed of the 2nd division of infantry under general Zymirski, and the 2nd division of cavalry under general Stryinski. To cover the right wing, a small corps under the command of general Dwernicki was posted at Seroczyn (17). That corps consisted of 3,000 infantry, 800 horse, and three pieces of cannon. Different patrols of cavalry were employed in observing the enemy along the whole space between Sokolow, Miendzyrzec, and Parczewo. The rivers Narew (N), Bug (B), and Liewiec (L), covered the whole line of our operations, and made it sufficiently strong. Our centre, especially, was well posted between Jadow (16), Wengrow (15), and Siedlce (2). It was protected by the great marshes formed by the river Lieviec (L). Excepting in a few points, which were well fortified, these marshes were wholly impassable. It is to be regretted that this position was not made still stronger by more ample fortifications. Besides making the passage of this point cost a more severe loss to the enemy, such fortifications would have enabled us to spare one whole division for other purposes. Fortifications of positions should always be the more freely combined with tactics, in proportion to the inferiority of a force.
In the above mentioned position we were to await the first shock of the enemy, after which the army was to retire slowly towards the environs of Praga, and in such a manner that each corps should always be on the parallel with the rest. In this retreat each corps was required to profit by every opportunity, to cause the utmost loss to the enemy, and to harass him as much as possible. By a retreat of this nature, it was intended to draw the enemy on to the walls of Warsaw, and, having weakened him during such a retreat, to give him a decisive battle there.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 32: _Proclamation of the Field Marshal Count Diebitsch Zabalkansky to the Poles._
POLES! His Majesty the Emperor and King, our august sovereign, has confided to me the command of the troops destined to put an end to the deplorable disorders which afflict the kingdom of Poland. The proclamation of his majesty the Emperor and King has already apprised you that the Emperor has wished, in his generosity, to distinguish his faithful subjects who have respected their oaths, from the guilty instigators of disorder who have sacrificed to their odious ambition the interests of a happy and peaceful community. Nay, more, he wishes to extend his benevolence and his clemency to the unfortunate persons who through weakness or fear have lent themselves as the accomplices of a deplorable enterprize. Poles! Hear the voice of your sovereign and your father, the successor of the august restorer of your country, who like him has always desired your happiness. Even the guilty will experience the effects of his magnanimity, if they will trust to it with confidence. Those only who have dipped their hands in blood, and those who still more guilty perhaps, have excited others to do this, will meet the just punishment to which the law condemns them.
1. At the moment of entering with the troops which I command into the kingdom of Poland, I wish to convince you of the principles which will guide all my steps. A faithful soldier, and a conscientious executor of the orders of my sovereign, I will never depart from them. The peaceful inhabitants who shall receive us as friends and brothers, will find their friendly dispositions reciprocated by the troops placed under my orders. The soldiers will pay a fair price for every thing which shall be furnished to them, and if circumstances require that the troops shall be provisioned by the inhabitants, or if we shall be forced to make requisitions (which we shall endeavor to avoid as far as possible,) in such cases the inhabitants will receive payment in printed certificates, which will be taken as money at the offices for the payment of imposts. Prices will be established for the provisions furnished according to the current value of the articles in the different districts.
2. On the approach of the Russian troops, the inhabitants of the towns and villages, who have taken arms in obedience to the orders of the government which has been illegally instituted, will be required to surrender their arms to the local authorities, if those latter shall have returned to their duties. In other cases, they will be required to give up their arms upon the entrance of the troops of his majesty the Emperor and King.
3. Every inhabitant, who, forgetting the duties which he owes to his sovereign, shall persevere in the revolt, and shall be taken with arms in his hands, will have to meet the utmost rigor of the law. Those who shall attempt to defend themselves against the troops, shall be delivered over to a council of war. The towns and villages who shall dare to resist his majesty the Emperor and King, will be punished according to the degree their resistance shall have been carried, by an extraordinary contribution, more or less heavy. This contribution will be principally levied upon those who shall have taken part in a criminal defence, either by carrying arms themselves, or by exciting others to that crime. In case of relapse from a return to duty, and of rebellion in the rear of the Russian army, the insurgent places shall be treated with the utmost military rigor. The principal instigators shall be punished with death, and the others exiled; but the greatest care will be taken to distinguish and protect those who shall have had no part in the crime.
4. To prevent such evils, I invite all the authorities, civil as well as military, who may be in the towns and cities, to send deputies to the commanders of the Russian forces, when these forces shall arrive. Such deputations will bring with them as a sign of submission to their legitimate sovereign, a white flag. They will be expected to announce that the inhabitants submit themselves to the benevolence of his majesty the Emperor and King, and that their arms have been deposited in some place which shall be designated. The Russian commanders will then take the necessary measures of security. They will maintain the civil authorities, which existed before the revolt, as well as those which shall have been instituted afterwards, if they have taken no
## active part in the rebellion. The sedentary guard of veterans will
be continued, if they have not engaged in the resistance, or given manifest proofs of treason towards their legitimate sovereign. All those authorities, civil as well as military, will be required to renew their oaths of fidelity. Conformably to the orders of his majesty the Emperor and King, an amnesty and pardon for the past will be given to all of those who shall submit without delay, and shall comply with the conditions which have been above mentioned.
5. The Russian commanders shall organize, as circumstances may require, in the places where no Russian garrisons may remain, a civil and municipal guard, who shall be chosen from among the most faithful of the veterans, and the inhabitants shall be entrusted with the interior police, as far as may be necessary to secure order and tranquillity.
6. The organization of the administration of the palatinates, arrondissements, and communes, will remain upon the footing on which it was before the insurrection. It will be the same with all the direct and indirect taxes. The authorities will remain in their places after they shall have complied with the above conditions. In other cases, new authorities will be established by the choice of the commanders of the Russian forces. That choice will fall principally upon the individuals who may unite, with the necessary capacity, an established moral character, and who shall have given proofs of their fidelity to their legitimate sovereign. All those will be excluded who shall have taken any part whatever in the rebellion, as well as those who after the entrance of the Russian troops into the kingdom shall persist in an organized opposition against legal order. The proprietors of land and houses who may remain tranquil in their habitations, and shall submit to the conditions above announced, will be protected in their rights, as well by the local authorities as by the Russian troops. In other cases, the property of all those who shall remain in the revolutionary ranks will be sequestered, as well as that of those who shall have continued to exercise the functions entrusted to them by the illegal government, or in some who shall have openly taken part in the revolt. Such are, Poles, the principles which will direct the army which his Majesty has deigned to confide to my command. You have to choose between the benefits which an unqualified submission to the will of our magnanimous sovereign assures to you, and the evils which will be brought upon you by a state of things without object as well as without hope. I hold it an honor to have been called upon to make known to you these resolutions, emanating from the generous intentions of the Emperor and King. I shall execute them scrupulously, but I shall not fail to punish criminal obstinacy with inflexible severity.
(Signed) The Marshal Count Diebitsch Zabalkansky.
_Proclamation of the Count Diebitsch Zabalkansky to the Polish troops._
GENEROUS POLES! Twenty-five years since, your country was implicated in the wars which the gigantic plans of a celebrated conqueror had kindled. The hope, often awakened, and always disappointed, of an illusory regeneration, had connected you with his fortunes. Faithful, although unfortunate, you answered those deceptive promises by the sacrifice of your blood. There is scarce a country, however distant it may have been, that has not been wet with that blood which you have prodigally shed for interests altogether foreign to the destiny of your country. Great events brought at last, at a remarkable epoch, an end to your misfortunes. After a contest, forever memorable, in which Russia saw you among the number of her enemies, the Emperor Alexander, of immortal memory, obeying only the impulse of his magnanimous heart, wished to add to all his other titles to glory, that of being the restorer of your country. Poland recovered her name, and the Polish army a new life. All the elements of national welfare, of tranquillity, and of prosperity, were miraculously united, and fifteen years of uninterrupted progress prove, to this day, the greatness of the benefits for which your country is indebted to the paternal solicitude of the sovereign who was its restorer, and to the no less earnest concern of him who has so nobly continued the work of his predecessor.
POLISH WARRIORS! His Majesty the Emperor and King has trusted to your gratitude and your fidelity. A short time since he gladly did justice to your devotedness and your good will. The exemplary conduct of all the Polish officers, without exception, who partook with our armies the fatigues and the glory of the Turkish war, had given a high satisfaction to his Majesty. We accepted with pleasure this fraternity of arms which became a new bond between the Russian and Polish troops. The best hope of reciprocal advantages should connect with that union, which was founded upon all that is sacred in military honor. Those hopes have been cruelly deceived. A handful of young men, who have never known the dangers of battle, of young officers who had never passed through a campaign or even a march, have shaken the fidelity of the brave. The latter have seen committed in their ranks the greatest of crimes, the murder of their commanders; they have not arrested the revolt against their legitimate sovereign. What unhappy blindness, what criminal condescension has been able to induce these veterans to permit the consummation of the greatest of offences, and to join themselves with those whose hands were stained with blood! Can it be possible that the design of rendering a service to their country has been made for a moment a pretext for such conduct? That country can answer that for a long period she had never enjoyed so much happiness. She had attained much, and she could still hope much from her fidelity, and the support of public order. She exposes herself to the loss of all these advantages by engaging in an unequal struggle, in revolting against a sovereign whose firm and energetic character is well known, and in braving a power which has never been defied with impunity.
Polish Warriors! Rebellion would stamp upon your front the stain of dishonor. Put away from you such an ignominy. History will one day relate, that, in the hope of serving your country, you have been faithful and devoted to the man who promised you every thing, and kept his promise in nothing. Shall it also say that, paying with ingratitude and perjury, the sovereign who has generously granted you every thing which you had any right to hope for, you have drawn down upon your country new misfortunes, and upon yourselves an indelible disgrace? If some grievances existed, you should have had confidence enough in the character of our august sovereign to have laid before him your complaints, in a legal manner, and with that frankness which characterizes the true soldier. And I too, Poles, I speak the sincere language of a soldier; I have never known any other. Obedient to the orders of my sovereign, I reiterate, by his wishes, all the propositions which, in his clemency, he has already made to you by his proclamation of the 17th of December. Our august sovereign has witnessed, with marked satisfaction, the fidelity of the brave light-cavalry of the guard, of the greater part of the grenadiers of the guard, and of the sub-officers of the cavalry. He does not doubt that the greater part of the troops cherished the desire to remain faithful to their oaths, and that many others were hurried away only by the impulse of the moment. Let each one hasten to execute the orders which are contained in the proclamation of his majesty. But if unforeseen circumstances do not permit you to follow the course which has been pointed out to you; at least, on the approach of the faithful armies of our common sovereign, remember your duties and your oaths. It is not as enemies that the troops placed under my command enter the kingdom of Poland. It is on the contrary with the noble object of re-establishing public order and the laws. They will receive as brothers all persons, either in civil or military life, who shall return to their duties; but they will know how to subdue, with the constancy and courage which they have ever manifested, the resistance which evil-minded men may attempt to oppose to them,--men who, trampling under foot the sacredness of their oaths and the laws of honor, sacrifice to their ambitious and even criminal projects the dearest interests of their country. It is to you especially, generals and colonels of the Polish army, that I address myself with confidence; to you, whom I have been accustomed to regard as my worthy brothers in arms. Return from the momentary error to which you have been capable of surrendering yourselves, that you may, in joining the rebellious, bring them back to their duties, and serve your country without violating your oaths. Experience will have disabused you of your error: return to the path of fidelity, and you will by that restore the happiness of your country. You know the clemency of our august sovereign: return to him. Weigh well the immense responsibility which you will take upon your heads by a criminal obstinacy. Join yourselves to your brothers in arms. Show that you are still worthy to be the commanders of the troops which your sovereign has entrusted to you. You will be received as brothers. An amnesty of the past is assured to you. The troops which I command will fulfil with loyalty the intentions of our sovereign, and the gratitude of your country, restored to tranquillity, will be a delightful reward for your return to your duty. But if there are found among you men hardened in crime, who cannot be persuaded to trust in magnanimity, because they know not the elevated sentiments in which it has its origin, let all the bonds of military fraternity between you and them be broken; the all-powerful hand of God, the protector of the good cause, will bring down upon their heads the punishment due to their crimes.
(Signed) The Marshal Diebitsch Zabalkansky.]
[Footnote 33: To the proclamations of general Diebitsch, one of our countrymen made a reply, in the form of a letter, which was published in the gazettes, and which, as far as my memory serves me, was in nearly the following terms: 'General, your proclamations, which breathe the spirit of injustice, arrogance, and cruelty--the menacing tone of which is backed by the colossal force you have led to the invasion of our territory, and which you are to wield as an instrument for establishing a new tyranny and inflicting new sufferings upon a country of freemen,--these proclamations, general, prove that the favorable opinion which Europe entertained of you was ill-grounded, and that you too, like the rest, are willing to lend yourself an easy and vile instrument in the hands of the oppressor. Diebitsch! Can it be you who so recently passed the Balkan, to deliver a nation from the yoke of barbarism,--an action which gained for you so great a name in history?
'Do you remember the proclamations which you published on that occasion, how different from these, filled with noble thoughts, and in which you felicitated yourself on being placed in command of an army destined to deliver the unfortunate Greek nation from the barbarism which was oppressing it. What a contrast! There you went to deliver the unfortunate; here you come to increase the sufferings of a nation which has for fifteen years been oppressed in a manner which was well known to you, and which it is horrible to think of. General, have you forgotten how you were received at Warsaw, after your return from the campaign of Turkey? Have you lost the recollection of those looks of welcome and of joy at the sight of the man who had effected the deliverance of an unfortunate and oppressed nation? You were then touched, for the sentiments of the Polish nation were in harmony with those which you yourself then entertained. All those recollections you have turned away from. Dazzled by false ideas of greatness, arrogance has driven from your heart those noble sentiments which would have made you truly great. Diebitsch! Poland once had confidence in you. Many Poles had hoped that you would act as a mediator between your monarch and us. No one could be in a more favorable situation than yourself to set before that monarch the nature of our sufferings, and the claims which we had upon his justice. You would have been in a situation to persuade him that the time had come to aid the cause of civilization, and to promote his own happiness, by conceding to a nation those rights which are essential to its happiness and prosperity. Poland had such expectations of you. You alone, who are so near the person of the monarch, and to whom his character is so intimately known, you could have done this. Such conduct would have added indeed to the glory you had already acquired. Who then would have equalled you? But, for your misfortune, you have chosen another course, and by acting as a servile instrument of tyranny you have tarnished all your former glory. Know then, Diebitsch, that the Poles despise you. Spare both your promises and your menaces; for with neither will you effect anything. They long for the approach of your colossal masses, that they may give you an example of what freemen can do.']
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