The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-13 00:00:00

THE INSURRECTION IN POLAND,

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
BRoDY, July 6.

With all the admiration which I sincerely feel for
the Lan giewiczs, Frankowskis, Narbutts, Padlew-
skis, Sierakowskis, Horodyckis, Gliszsinskis, and so
many other noble-minded soldiers who have given
dignity to the Polish movement, and who are now
for the most part in prison or in the grave, there is
one class of Polish insurgents which I confess I
cannot stand at all. These are the men and boys
who are the true patriots of the insurrection ; what
youths who enter regular armies for the sake of the
uniform are to true soldiers. For six weeks you may
see them strutting about the streets and talking
loud in the coffeehouses of Cracow and Lemberg,
proud of their martial bearing, very proud indeed
of their boots, and boasting of all sorts of things
that they are going to do but have not yet done.
Houses are open to them which at other times and
under other circumstances they would not be
allowed to enter ; they:have only to say that they
are going into the cavalry to have excellent horses
placed at their disposal, and there is scarcely any-
thing they may not get by asking for it or hinting
that they are in need of it. Then they are allowed
to pay and even themselves receive an undue
amount of attention from women, for the Polish
ladies look upon patriotism as the first virtue, and
are too patriotic thenasslves to imagine that those
insurgents who are the most ferocious when they are
100 miles from the frontier can be among the mildest
when they find themselves in presence of the enemy,
and that while the bravest and most pure-minded
men in Poland are literally sacrificing themselves
beneath the Russian sword in the supposed interest
of their country, "ces messiers bottes" (as I have
heard them called by their own sex) are sniffing the
battle a very long way off, and gracefully lounging
on the Austrian barrier at least a mile from the
scene of action. On the morning of the invasion of
Volhynia (it was all over by 2 p.m.) a Polish gen-
tleman who cannot well nor with any advantage
to the Polish cause join the insurrection in the field,
but who has rendered immense services to it, and
who has also stopped more than one flight of cowards
and forced them to return under fire to the great
body of their comrades, arrested in my presence
more than 20 of these faint-hearted patriots as they,
were hurrying from the rear of Wysocki's' detach
ment to the Galician frontier. They had not the
slightest idea who this gentleman was, but he
threatened to report them to the National Govern-
ment, took their names down, caught new fugitives
one by one as they came up, and did it all in such a
tone of decision and with such an air of authority
that when ho ordered them to form, and marched
them to a convenient little nook in the wood which
lines the right side of the road to Radziwilow, the
score of armed men obeyed their unarmed, self-ap-
pointed chief, and were forced to proceed like lambs
to the ambuscade from which, if the opportunity
presented itself, they, with some 80 more who after-
wards joined them, were to fire upon the Russians.
Then, finding that the Russians were not coming
(for Wysocki held his position until long after the
engagement had ceased), they were lions once more,
and boasted how they had been the last men to leave
the field of battle (the action, as could be seen,
had just begun), and how the rest of the detach-
ment had been cut to pieces and they alone had
lived to tell the story, which they certainly told in
the nursery sense of the word. One of these heroes
declared to me that he had brought down a Russian
at 500 paces, and I really believe, if he fired at all,
that it wes at a considerable distance. The general
opinion among the fugitives appeared to be that
Wysocki had engaged a force of 6,000 Russians
(" fear," according to a Russian proverb, which is
perhaps a Polish proverb also, "has large eyes"),
and I am sure they were convinced that they had
done great things, and that they had fairly paid for
their two or three months military glory, taken on
credit, by remaining five minutes before the enemy.
One man fainted away. He was thought to be
mortally wounded, but he had only ran too fast.
Another caused himself to be carried to the hospital
at Brody, whence one of the sargeons, after carefully
examining him and discovering no blemish on his
very sound and somewhat corpulent carcase, igno-
miniously kicked him out. I must now add that
among the nimble runners who were 20 hours mak-
ing their zigzag march from their encampment in
the woods near the frontier to the frontier itself, and
who were " back again" from Radziwilow to the
Austrian barrier in about 10 minutes, there was not
one who could, by any cunning process, have been
disguised as a gentleman, or who looked like a re-
spectable apprentice or an honest workman. The
men of these classes, or this class—for,in considering
its military merits, one need not divide it according
to ordinary social distinctions—are lying in num-
bers in the hospitals and churchyards of Brody while
the nimble runners are, no doubt, fighting their un-
fought battles over again in the taverns of Lemberg.
It must be sweet, if not altogether decorous, to
enjoy the reputation of being ready to die for one's
country without ever running the slightest risk, to
walk surrounded by a shade of glory while carefully
avoiding the substance of actual peril. But these
cunning dogs, who aim at the shadow and get it, and
keep to it, are often difficult to recognise before-
hand, for there are insurgents who brag and run
away, and insurgents who brag and make the enemy
run away. Indeed, the chaff of the insurrection can-
not always be .aifted beforehand from the corn; but
the wind of battle soon separates it, and, as a consi-
derable quantity of it was blown the other day just
before my eyes, I cannot help mentioning as a faith-
ful chronicler, that the chaff exists, and is very
dirty chaff indeed:for ces Messieurs bottes are, after
ail, not the worst members of the Polish insurrec •
tion, and, at least, the recruiting agents cannot be
blamed for accepting them. Some are as brave as
can be, others are as brave as ordinary men, and if
a certain number of the military street-walkers of
Cracow and Lemberg habitually run away when-
ever they have the least chance of escaping to the
Gallician frontier, it may be that they would not do
so if the insurgent regiments were better disciplined.
But what is to be said of the gentlemen who are not
bottes, because they have no boots, and who have