The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-12 00:00:00

THE POLISH INSURRECTION.

(From the Snecial Correspondent of the Times.)
CRACOW, SEPT. 4

Several English travellers have arrived in Poland
lately, for the purpose of studying the Polish insur-
rection On the spot. Where, however, it can best
be studied, is a question not easy to answer. Which
part of the Polish theatre, to begin with, is the
stage, and which " behind the scenes ?" In a regular
war, the great thing would be to see the battles;
and the preparations for them and conversations
after them would be comparatively as nothing. But
in Poland, none but combatants can think of seeing
the battles unless they happen to be fought close to
the frontier ; and in that case it would be a mis-
take to judge of the military conduct of the insur-
gents in general by that of a particular baud of
insurgents in fighting with one leg in danger, and '
the other almost in safety. 'There are no camps to
visit important enough to be looked upon as in-
eurrectional centres. If one such were formed it
-would instantly be attacked, and then, it is true, by
the success cr failure of the attack some notion
might be formed of the strength of the insurrection
in general. According to the plan of the extreme
revolutionary party, the true theatre and scene of
the insurrection should be all Polish ground at pre-
sent occupied or disputed by the Russians; but at
the present moment, when the great object of the
Polish insurrection isto maintain itself until one or
more foreign Powers shall intervene, the insurgents
would seem to be only the carpenters and machi-
nists of the spectacle, the spectacle itself being
to the greatest effect in the Polish newspapers.
But between the Polish battles which it is im-
possible to see, and the Polish newspapers, which it
is impossible to believe, there is the society of well-
informed Poles, from which something like the
truth, at all events on a great number of points
connected with the insurrection, may really be
learnt. No one can by taking thought ascertain
how many insurgents are actually in the field, and
the stories published in the German newspapers
about the organisation :of ;insurgent " battalions,"
the number of battalions at present under arms,
and so on, are preposterous absurdities. In a Polish
insurgent battalion there are as many companies as
it may be possible or convenient to get together,
in a company as many men as may happen to be at
the captain's disposal. The sithemen, generally
speaking, are men who have been armed with sithes
because there were no rifles for them, and accord-
..
=gip there is no rule as to the number of sithe com-
panies included in each battalion. The sithemen
ere not peasants, and the sithes are of no use for
mowing hay. They are simply long poles with a
broad steel blade at the end, shaped like a Roman
sword, and sharpened at bath edges. Most of the
insurgent sithes that I have seen had been made at
Sheffield, and I thought did no credit to the place
of manufacture. I must add that I have no idea
what price had been paid for them. Probably they
Were cheap, and most decidedly they were nasty ;
indeed, no weapon more disagreeable to the Russian
at close quarters than the sithe has yet been dis-
covered.

If, bower, er, no visitor to Poland, nor any Pole
or number of Poles, can find out how many fight-
ing men are engaged in an insurrection which rises
and falls like the waves of the sea, and wears a
menacing aspect one day and another seems almost
to have died away, yet no visitor who spends
a short time in Cracow, or Lemberg, and uses
his eyes and ears, can fail to be struck by the
patriotic enthusiasm which animates all Polish
society, from the highest down to those unfathom-
able regions in which the degraded Galician boor
-wonders what patriotism and national independence
cen mean. One inquiring Englishman, unable to
understand the hestility of the Galician peacantry
te the Polish insurrection, proposed a short time
sulee to travel about the country and question the
:patients for himself, but was cautioned by a Polish
friend against doing anything of the kind. " The
peasant," said the Polish friend, " will probably not
understand you, he certainly will not answer you,
and more certainly still he will give you in charge
to the police, and you will be accused of trying to
get up a political agitation." A. Pole of my ac-
quaintance, who thought he might ultimately got a
,certain number of the Galician peasantry to join
the insurrection, broke down completely in a pro-
iiiminary attempt to convince them that they were
Poles. "'!'he Russians,'• said this missionary in the
cause of nationality, "speak Russian and are Rus-
eians, the Germans speak German and are Germans,
you speak Polish and what are you ?" " Imperial-
ists," they replied, and really could not be persuaded
that Galician proprietors, the antagonists of the
Emperor, and Galician peasants, the supporters of
the Emperor, were of the same race, 13 tic the great
folly of the Galician peasant consists in his belief
that because there were serfs in the independent
Poland of the eighteenth century, therefore there
would be serfs if an independent Poland were
created now. If the new generation of peasants
could be sufficiently educated to be brought by means
of books and newspapers into communication with
their superiors, and if the proprietors would be
friend them not only by establishing schools, but
also in other ways, this delusion would soon die out.
Every peasant in Poland who learns to read Polish
books becomes a Pole in the full sense of the
word. This he does not become when he merely
has land given to him, to which, legally, he has
no more right than every rent•paying householder
has to his house. I must add that some of
the rich proprietors in Galicia have already
schools on their estates. The Government does not
object to their being established, but imposes con-
ditions (such as the acceptance of a Government in-
spector), which it is sometimes disagreeable to com-
ply with. Disagreeable, however, or not, the Polish
proprietors know to a certainty how to increase and
strengthen Polish feeling in Galicia without fighting
and without spending much money, and it rests
With them to do so or to atandon the province de-
finitively to Austria.

If the visitor to Poland cares to ascertain for him-
Belf in a direct and practical manner what the sen-
timents of the Galician peasant are in reference to
the insurrection, he need only put on a Polish tunic,
a •-nsciuszko cap, and a pair of long boots, and walk,
`) still the better,ltt_o...,.ride, through one of the villages near
mines
_t's. oltsh frontier. An English friend of
up in ;11_.o had not taken the trouble to get himself
h attire at all, was arrested some weeks
ago as he
and taken t riding through a Galician village,
cause the pcZtine nearest post of Hussars simply be-
of his horse, Qr. ta did not like the look of him or
now of Westeriraps, of both. I am speaking
of the Catholic ratiVeial where the peasantry are
aware of it) of the ihr• and (though they are not
where they are maw:lel:race. In Eastern Galicia,
un4los, and under the influence
of Ruthenian Greek
merits with the PeuantryEtte,e Priests, such experi-
surgents and suspected ine!rnat safe, as many in-
only have been not
arrested, but also
I_l ages
let him keep on of tZ them.
However,
Penetrated civilisation has not yet where
arriving in Poland will not find and
onearole who
is not a patriot more or less ardent.
Let him
go to Cracow, Lemberg, Warsaw, or the polish
country • olish
country around the
city of
Posen and he will scarcely find a family that h._
not lost one or more relatives in the 'war. '
Inde-
pendently of the general mourning, almost every one
wears black now as a sign not of national but of
domestic affliction. Some few Polish ladies, it is
true, who are only grieving for the wrongs of their
country, allow themselves a certain liberty and va-
riety in the expression of their sorroW.
Thus mauve
and all shades of violet are held to be tolerably fune-
real colours, and coral ornaments and crimson
ribands, as signifying bloodshed, may be worn.
Nevertheless, the first impression one has on enter-
ing, not a Polish city where persons of all classes
and conditions are seen together, but say rather one
of the little watering places at the foot of the Car-
pathians, which are crowded with just the class of
persons who have suffired most in person as well as
in pocket by the insurrection—is certainly that
everybody has just returned from a burial; and the
literal truth is, that almost everybody has some re-
lation or intimate friend hanged, judicially shot,
killed in action, or exiled to Siberia to lament. It
must be remembered that Lithuanian, Polish-
Ruthenian, and pure Polish families are all linked
together by marriage, and that the atrocities coin-