The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-10 00:00:00

THE INSURRECTION IN POLAND,

(From the limes' Correspondent.)

BRODY, July 4.
The preparations made for the 7 or 8 hours' fight-
ing which took place last Wednesday before Rsdzi-
wilow had occupied the Poles ever since the end of
March. Some of the insurgents who were present
had had considerable trouble in getting to Cracow,
.and found it still more difficult to continua their
journey to Lemberg, while the general advance
from Lemberg to Brody (on the Volhynian frontier)
was
made on a system of zigzsg approaches almost
after the model of siege operations. Lemberg was
so full of insurgents a month ego that
a circus was
'
opened for their special benefit, when scenes from
" Mtz-ppa" were performed for the instruction and
amusement of men who were themselves bound for
the Ukraine, but who never, I may add, had the
smallest chance of getting there. As the Ruthenian
peasants around Lemberg were known to be even
worse disposed towards "the Poles" than the Polish
peasants of Western Galicia, all sortof s precau
tions had to be taken in bringing the insurgents
nearer and nearer to the frontier. Every country
house between Lemberg and Brody, for many
miles on each side of the main road, has served
as a halting-place, and many proprietors have had
20, 30, and in one instance that I know of as many
as 100 insurgents staying in and about their houses
and grounds for periods varying from three days to
two months. It is not from any want of kindness
on the part of their entertainers that soldiers of the
national army in concealment are sometimes put to
sleep in trees. If the word " revision" is whispered
in the morning or afternoon everyone is on tha look-
out for the soldiers in the evening, and as soon as
they make their appearance on one side the objects
of their search disappear on the other. If when the
household retire to rest the revision has not taken
place there is nothing for the insurgent guests to do
but to take to the woods, by which every manor-
house in Eastern Galicia is surrounded.

One wretched night, when a general revision was
expected in a certain district, and all the hiding-
places were full, I went with a poor fellow who was
destined to fall in Wysocki's affair before Radziwi-
low to half a dozen houses, each a mile or two apart,
before he could find a place to sleep in or shelter of
any kind from the terrible storm which was raging
outside. Such trouble as this enthusiastic young
man took to get shot through the heart— in a glo-
rious cause, no doubt, but in a somewhat inglorious
battle—can scarcely be imagined, and is worth de-
scribing. Stanislas Gliszainski, an officer on Gen.
Wysocki's staff, as I mentioned in my last letter,
was actively employed in bringing up and placing
the companies of tirailleurs, until, after having had
two horses shot under him, he wkls struck down
by almost the last bullet that was fired. Stanislas
. ,
Gltszainskt tour months ago was a pupil of the ar-
tillery school of Metz, where he had just com-
pleted his military studies when the Polish insur-
rection first began to assume an important
character. He was acquainted with Langiewicz, was
an intimate friend of Padlewski, and as he had only
entered the Academy of Metz (where, as a special

favour, a certain number of Poles can gain admit
ante) in order to qualify himself for serving his
country in an efficient manner, he thought at the
beginning of March that the time had arrived, and
hastened to Cracow to place himself at the disposi-
tion of the Central National Committee. He was
anxious to fight in his own part of the country—that
is to say, in the province of Kalisch, where he had
an estate, but being appointed to the Volbynian ex.
pedition (or rather the Galician expedition to Vol-
hynia), he started soon after Langiewicz's disaster
for Lemberg, where he was arrested as he stepped
out of the train. He had committed no illegal act,
even in a technical sense, and his passport was in
proper order, but there may have been something
about his look which the Austrian authorities did
not like (on his side he certainly did not like them),
and the result was that he was thrown, tmaccused,
into a damp cell, and left there with met society,
without books, and without exercise, until he be-
came seriously ill, In fact he never recovered from
his prison illness. He was in great pain when he
started for the camp, and asked for some soothing
medicine to be brought on to him, little thinking
that before it could reach him he would receive from
the Russians that which would quiet him for ever.
He told me that during his confinement at Lem-
berg, when he asked for a book the gaoler gave him
a volume of sermons, of the kind which men may
be forced to listen to but cannot read. He was also
offered a child's story-book. His application for a
Bible, several times repeated, was met by a positive
refusal, and indeed the sacred writings inculcate the
virtue of patriotism in too many places to allow of
their being placed with advantage in the hands of a
Pole. At the end of April Glitz sineki, after hav-
ing been subjected to manyunavailing interrogations
was ordered to be removed to Olmutz. At Oderberg,
however, where the Cracow-Vienna Railway
branches off into Moravia, he ran out of the station,
was fired upon by the guard, but was not hit, and
succeeded in escaping into the woods, where he
passed the first of many similar nights. At day-
break he went into the hut of a Moravian peasant,
and made a hopeless attempt to explain to the poor
man who the Poles were, why they were fighting
the Russians, and why in particular he, Gliszainski,
was afraid of falling into the hands of the police. At
first all the peasant could understand was that a
hungry and wild-looking man, without a farthing
of money (Gliszeinski's purse had been taken charge
of by the prison authorities), and, by his own con
fession, an escaped prisoner, bed come out of the
forest and wanted assistance. At last, however, lo-
understood that he had to deal with an honest man
in distress. A Polish peasant would have sold bib
countryman to the Government ; the Moravian
brought out food, and sent for a functionary wbo
he had heard was a Pole, and who turned out (like
nearly all the Poles who can read and write) to be
also a good patriot. Ultimately Gliszainaki, now
without a passport, and under a false name, d
with a false residence-card, contrived to get to
Cracow, and thence to Lemberg in a lu_Plogrne
train. From Lemberg he moved forwh.asird Ir
an to
house to house, one proprietor sending
another, until about three weeks agoon:yl
afonfenwa
myself in the same place with him, at i
miles' distance from the Volbynian
d all his activity;
frontier.
During the battle he regainde.
and at the close of
the fire seemed to do him
irregular line
the action, when the skirmgioefob
ae;svaerdyietribated in all
sorts of positions in front of
perfectly well, and
of wood, were called in bAelni
ost the last ball that
had not been touched.
the Chief of
was fired carried off one of the
lisped
teedfficors and one
of the most amiable and accornp 1
11. men that the
of the service
pesnoga s 1,
Polish army possessed.
had scarcely
the Staff, or, more propeffrlyhisspeaking,
p, get 0 horse and raised the
of aides-de-cam
the ground ; and h©
h he was himself
dying man from
no idea that Glis-
mounted again ween
leg. wounded (for
I had •
in the
the thlrd time)
zainski had been in the least hurt until I saw him
stretched out dead in the hospital at Brody,
could not help thinking as I looked at his and I
s lifeless
body that he might have been put to some better
Purpose than to serve as a sort of political
the Russians, whom the Poles - target to
of conquering ia the provinhad no more chance
ces
and the Ukraine than the N of Volhynia, Podolia,
of conquering England, Normans of France have
conquer-
ing Norman m not speaking of rights, but
dv,, 1e or
the English of
only of a matter of fact.
The Russians will call the
Galician expedition
an invasion of brigands. It,
was an invasion of patriots ; but of so hopeless a
character that one
I (for as to that there may question, not the prudence
ere can be ne question), but the
propriety, in a moral point of view, of having
organised and sent •it forth. There certainly is a
point at which insurrecti- •
on becomes something
mere horrible than madness and something more
pitiable than folly, and it seems to me that this point
is reached when a few handfuls of untrained men
are encouraged to march against a strong army, in
immense provinces, where the vast majority of the
inhabitants are bitterly hostile to the cause the as-
sailants wish to assert and defend. Indeed, in such a
case as this at tack upon. the governing power in the
Polish provinces of the southe •ast I do not see how
the word " insurgent" can with any justice he used
at all ; for in Volhynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine
there has been no insurrection, but only alight