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

THE POLISH INSURRECTION.

(Front the Special 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
gage, 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 Lab.
take to judge of the military conduct of the insur-
. gents in general by that of a particular band 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-
surrectional centres. If one such were formed it
would instantly be attacked, and then, it is true, by
the success or 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 is to maintaisi 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
troth, 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-
ingly there is no rule as to the number of sithe com-
panies included in each battalion. The sithemen
are 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, howeNer, no visitor to Poland, nor any Pole
or number of Poles, can find out how many fight.
ing men aro engaged in an insurrection which rises
anti 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
can mean. One inquiring Englishman, unable to
understand the hostility of the Galician peasantry
to the Polish insurrection, proposed a short time
since to travel about the country and question the
peasants 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 ho might ultimately get a
certain number of the Galician peasantry to join
the insurrection, broke down completely in a pre-
liminary attempt to convince them that they were
Poles. " The assians,', said this missionary in the
cause of nationality, "speak Russian and are Rus-
sians, the Germans speak German and are Germans,
you speak Polish and what arc 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 sacs, 13ut 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 ou'

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 ho 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 COlll

ply with. Disagreeable, however, or not, the Polish
proprietors know to a certainty how to increaf e and
strengthen Polish feeling in Galicia without fighting
and without spending much money, and it rests
with them to do so or to abandon the province de-

finitively to Austria.
If the visitor to Poland cares to ascertain for him-
self in a direct and practical manner what the sen-
timents of the Galician peasant arc in reference to
the insurrection, he need only put on a Polish tunic,
a icoeniuszko cap, and a pair of long boots, and walk
better, ride, through one of the villages near'
13thr etltillasbes
„eine, 0. olish frontier. An English friend of
up in wholioiillad not taken the trouble to got himself
ago as he vi attire at all, was arrested some weeks
and taken ridingthe through a Galician village,
petZtentnearest post of Hussars simply be-
cause the
of his horse, or, a did not like the look of him or
now of Western
amps'l
of the Catholic relit rll' where the peasantry are
aware of it) of thellojie and (though they are not
race. In Eastern Galicia,
where they are Ruthenili
ate priests, such
of Ruthenian Greek talus, and under the influence
milts with the peasant experi-
-17 are
surgents and suspected - not safe, as many in-
insurgents h
only arrested, but alsohave been not
wounded h theme
However, let him keep out or Y --M.
th
civilisation has not yet penetrated
villages where
, „a a foreigner
arriving in Poland will not find
one Pole h
is not a patriot more or less ardent. w o
l:
olish
Let him
go to Cracow, Lemberg, Warsaw, or th
country around the half-Germanised city of
Posen and he will scarcely find a family that has
not lost one or more relatives in the war. jade.
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 suffered 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 arc all linked
together by marriage, and that the atrocities cam•