The Poles are a Slavic people once known as “the dwellers of the plains,” as the country has few natural boundaries. Long ago, it was a republic presided over by an elective chief called the king. While Europe was feudal, Poland stood for independence and liberty.
Poland adopted Christianity in the 9th century. Bolesław the Great is considered the founder of the kingdom of Poland in the 11th century. Nonetheless, it remained a land through which rival armies marched, and the Germans, in particular, expanded their control. It was “the Polish clergy which saved Polish nationality, history, and language, and in the midst of the general chaos and anarchy maintained order, morality, and unity.” Casimir the Great, in the 14th century, took important steps to reform and unify the country, including recognizing the status of the Jews. A royal marriage led to the creation of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth a century later. In the 17th century, the Cossacks, committed to the Orthodox religion, rebelled and launched the country into a civil war in which they succeeded in transferring their loyalties to Russia. Wars with Sweden and Russia, combined with the plague, depopulated the country. When the Turks invaded in 1672, Poland sent John Sobieski into battle, and he defeated them, leading to his coronation as king. Sobieski pushed Poland to the apogee of its international fame a decade later when he rode to Vienna at the head of an army, lifted the siege, and defeated the Ottomans. Praise poured in for “the Liberator of Christendom.” When he died in 1696, the Austrian emperor said that “such a great king should never die.”
He was succeeded by a Saxon line that drove the kingdom into ruinous wars and depopulation. The weakening of the state and the monarchy in the late 18th century aroused the ambitions of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Endless wars allowed them to advance their boundaries deep into Poland, initiating the first partition. Some dissenting nobles asked Catherine II to help them, leading Russia to invade and occupy Warsaw and resulting in the second partition. A rebellion against the Russians, led by Kościuszko, valiantly fought the superior army but eventually succumbed. The Polish nation disappeared.
The occupiers dismantled the language, institutions, and culture of the country. Prussia and Austria Germanized their lands, while the Russians worked to incorporate their portion into their empire. When Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw, the Poles joined his cause and his invasion of Russia. The Congress of Vienna considered reestablishing Poland but did not. A rebellion against the Russians in 1830 failed. Throughout the 19th century, the seeds of independence rested in people’s hearts as Russia crushed the language and made Poland a portion of its empire. Thus ends this century-old book, without reaching the painful chapters of the 20th century.
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