The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-28 00:00:00

THE POLISH INSURRECTION,

(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
WARSAW, Oct. 20.

Th 5 great incident here of the last few days has
been the destruction of the Town•hall by a fire,
whit ;h these who saw it, as I did, from close by,
mus' e know to have been the work of incendiaries.
I ca nnot say who lighted the fire nor why it was
ligt eted, but the Russians made the greatest exer-
tio as to put it out as quickly as possible, saved the
ar chives, saved the furniture, and prevented the
fl E,mes from reaching a partof the building in which
a number of political prisoners were confined.
Twice during the last week the word has been
passed from mouth to mouth in Warsaw that " some-
thilng " would take place in the evening, and that
it would not be safe to be in the streets after seven
—the anti-curfew hour. Bat everything passed
off quietly, except that a few nights since a man
named Dombrowski was attacked by "national
gendarmes" and left for dead (though he is still
alive) in the street called " Long." On Sunday
morning, however, at twelve o'clock, the tramping
of infantry, the galloping backwards and forwards
of Cossacks, and the rushing to and fro of crowds
of excited men and women gave the thoroughfares
in which all this movement took place the sound
and aspect (so familiar to Continental travellers of
the last fifteen years) of a coming disturbance.
Insurrection in Warsaw at the present moment
could only mean the exposure of a portion of the
inhabitants to massacre,
and perhaps of the whole
city to bombardment from the citadel. Neverthe-
less, a rising, in the desperate position in which the
inhabitants of Warsaw and the Poles generally now
;
find themselves, is just possible a rising has
certainly been meditated, and though, owing
to the precautions of all kinds taken by the
Russians, it becomes more difficult every day to
carry out the plan, whatever it may have been,
there was some reason on Sunday for supposing
that it was on the point of being put into execution.
"Many persons here imagine that a cruel measi er f
n the present temper of the
repression, such as i
Russian soldiers would undoubtedly be the result
of any at tack, or of any organized resistance on the
part of the Poles, might lead to an expression of
indignation in France or England so decided as to
leave the Governments of these countries no option
but to declare war against Russia. This appears to
me the saddest of all political speculations, for, even
if deliberately provoked, the Russians could scarcely
do worse in Warsaw than they have already done,
and are now doing daily, in the provinces. The
Western Powers have shown that they can tolerate
—not with complacency, nor without the strongest
condemn ation—but that they can tolerate, never-
theless, scale acts of barbarism in Poland as might
have chlledjor their interference even if no distinct
right en their part to interfere had ever existed.
To be sure, one outrage in Warsaw does really cause
a greater outcry abroad than a hundred similar ones
committed in the country ; but, at the same time,
it is perfeetly well-known that states are devastated
peasants raised against proprietors, and proprietors
imprisoned, maltreated, and their property confis-
cated, (even when they are thought to have only
aided the insurrection, in which persons of all classes
are we It known to have taken an active part. If
the in dignation produced by the knowledge of such
facts .as these is not Efficacious, what advantage is to
be expected from a c I.tastrophe in Warsaw, about
whien the only thing certain is that it would show
us a defenceless city in the position of a city taken
by storm ?

No one not in the confidence of the National Go-
vern, nent can say with what object the Town-hall
of ';‘ -arsaw was set on fire. In the meanwhile it is
certr tin that it did not take fire by accident. The
official account of the affair simply sets forth that
thanes were first seen issuing from a room on the
setz.ond floor in which certain archives were stowed
away, and that some time afterwards they burst
forth from another part of the building in which
the police records were kept. lam also told by an
eye witness that after the fire had been partly sub-
dtv3d it broke out again in quite a fresh place. The
general rumour ira the town was that the fire had
begun in the roof and i a ssveral places at the same
time, and when I saw the building, the conflagra-
tion having then lasted about six hours, the whole
roof was in a bicz; though in many of the rooms
imml:diately beneath it there seemed to be no fire
except what proceeded from the embers that had
fallen from above. All the upper stories, however,
of the right and left wings, as seen from the front,
were in flames, and the left wing was also burning
at the back.

Let no one hasten to say that the Poles did not
set their own Town-hall on fire, for the National
Government may be preparing, at this moment,
some patriotic and sophistical justification of the
act. I heard !numbers of respectable Poles deny
'with indignation the accusation brought against the
National Government of having planned and di-
rected the attack against Gen. Hera, until at last
the National Government coolly assumed the re-
sponsibility of the crime.
Do not, above all, let it be said that the Russians
let the Town-hall on fire in order to have an excuse
or increasing their measures of severity against the
inhabitants of Warsaw. A similar unfounded
and ridiculous explanation of the attack on Gen.
Bergwas circulated for a few days—which, by
the
way, the Journal de St. Petersbourg, with its
lialithetierfoantery, has attributed to the limes.
arbi-
trary a. tt is the Russians rule Poland in so arbi-
of
theirmannermia that they want no excuses for any
taken to They have not, however, as yet
one portion efe\lburninT down Polish cities—as at least
on Sunday had 4rsaw might have been burnt down
Government firetheresn been a little more wind and no
the at hand.
The burning of
Warsaw Town-hall was not
the result of aceieehet.
have been the motive In considering what may
og tbis deliberate act of incen-
diarism,
as a I can only think that it may have been
tax—if not with the
meant proteat against
the
ir motive of burning
imposition of the new
was
the lists of taxpayers.
at the Town-hall that
the 8 per cent. income-tax
was to be paid, and I men-
tioned in a previous letter that from
who do
not pay before the end of the month those
12 per cent.
this
will be re quired. Some 20 persons who had already
settled with the Government on
publicly warned last week in a score were
pu
on
~per
Preclatee• 7>
issued by the "Chief of the Town." Their
mt.
published, and they themselves summoned were
before one of the " revolutionary tribal:ill's°,
on this question of the 8 per cent. income-tax for
war purposes that the great contest is now taking
place between the National Government and the
Government of Russia, and it will be curious to see
whether the inhabitants of Warsaw will positively
disobey the former or obey it, and by doing so ren-
der themselves liable to an extra payment of 50 per
cent. in favour of the latter. The only thing certain
about the matter is that, at least, no further pay-
ments will be made until the very last day, and that
for the next fewdays—as the
Town-hall is destroyed
---no payments will be mad© at all.
It was evident that the fire of yesterday caused
the Russians considerable alarm, and if they really
desired a rising in Warsaw they need only have
kept the troops in barracks for an hour and they
would have had it. The fire might have been a
but was apparently nothing of the kind ; or
it ma mignbuthzr ebeen lighted with the view of
ofdraw-
ing troops to one particular quarter of
the town so a
to leave the other quarters compara-
tively a20,,:i d
, or, without any notion of a re-
gular fight at all,
and simply
in the hop© that it
would lead to
bloodshed as
Would confusion,b disturbance, and such
e
the West. In any sure to be talked about in
case the Russians did right in
taking every possible '
Russians
All the soldiers
thewere
thi
be ot g
ghatr out
sin; t
aoPn:dvse
all day,
a"
night, and e treets, the squares, and
un-
til the next morning, the thor: of
the Townf4res leading to
the large cpen spice on ore side
Hail stands (its walls are standing
closed to the public, and the a still), were
approaches guarded
Lo
by :infantry d Cossacks.
It did not seem to be necessary, however,
that
the Cossacks should use their whipsagainst the
crowd, and even single oat quiet and perfectly
inoffensive persons for their assaults, as sometimes
happened. A Warsaw crowd under existing eire
cntostances would no doubt try the patience even