The Sun.
London, England, 1863-03-31 00:00:00

THE POLISH INSURRECTION.

(From the limes' Special correspondent.)
CRACOW, March 24.

Po or Langiewicz, after asking in vain to be
allevsed to go and settle in England, was taken off
yesterday to Vienna—or, at least, to the terminus
of the Cracow and Vienna Railway,which is all that
is really known about the matter here. I happened
by some strange chance to be in the street leading
to the castle as early as a quarter to 8 o'clock in
the morning, and, seeing an empty carriage guarded
by four Hussars at the entrance to the church of
the district, waited a few minutes to learn who its
occupant was to be. Out came the General, gloomy
:and black. No one saluted him or noticed him,
because no one at the time was quite certain who
he was. It was evident, however, that he was a
State prisoner, that he had just come from the
Castle, and that he was starting on what he con-
ceivad to be a momentous journey. Langiewicz is
not an Austrian, but a Prussian subject, and he has
been making war, not upon Austrians, but upon
Missions. Accordingly Austria is in no way called
upon to sit in judgment upon him. She has, of
course, the right to send him oat of Austrian terri-
tory, but it is to be Loped that she will not deliver
him up to Prussia, as those who have the worst opi-
nion of the Austrian Government fancy she may be
tempted to do. There is not the slightest chance,
however, of Austria taking such a step as this, if we
may judge by her conduct to those Polish insur-
gents now in I,er hands who are subjects of Russia.
Not one has been surrendered to the Russians (as in
old times all would have been), and the best in-
formed persons here say that all are sure to have
their liberty before long, though in the meanwhile
they will be confined for a time at Olmutz or else-
where. All the Government has done to them
hitherto has been to shut them up in various public
buildings, where they sing, smoke, and enjoy them.
selves as best they can. O❑ the other hand, it has
saved many of them from dying of hunger, or by
the lances of the Cossacks, who would infallibly
have murdered them had they caught them un-
armed or sinking from starvation on Russian terri-
tory. If there were any Russian deserters among
them, Austria, by the terms of the extradition
treaty, would be obliged to give them up, but they
all wear the Polish costume, and the only cases of
desertion one hears of among the Russian troops arc
those in which soldiers left their regiments under
fire to go and plunder, and could only be induced to
return by the officers holding revolvers to their
heads, threatening to shoot them, and occasionally
doing so as an example. Infamously as the Russian
officers have in many cases behaved, I have heard
from eyewitnesses of some few who did their duty
and, disgusted at the excesses committed by their
men, and finding their orders utterly disregarded,
shot the worst of the malefactors with their own
hands. More than one house in the kingdom was
thus saved from pillage. I make the statement, not
on mere hearsay, but on the authority of the pro-
prietors of these houses, who, however, could not
remain on their estates, and took the earliest oppor.
tunity of flying to Cracow, now a city of refuge for
Poles from all parts of the ancient kingdom. As a
rule, whatever the Russian troops have done else-
where, I have been able to convince myself by the
best evidence that near the Galician frontier they
have behaved like hordes of savages. The night be-
fore last thousands of persons close to Cracow saw
villages in flames just on the otherside of the border,
and every one knew at once that the Cossacks had
been there. The Cossacks have even crossed into
Galicia, and a skirmish—of which the full particu
lars have not yet reached me—took place the other
day at Czulic, on this side of the frontier, in which
an Austrian officer was taken prisoner and an Aus-
trian soldier killed.

MARCH 25.

In spite of the great blow which the capture of
Langiewicz certainly has been to the Polish insur-
rection, no one here is at all downhearted about the
matter, except a few tourists, who have come a great
distance in order to see the Dictator and his camp,
and who will have to go away without seeing any-
thing
but the remains of his army attited in the
finest specimens of Polish costume ever witnessed
on or off any stage. Apart from the Polish costume,
which every one without exception now wears, if
the animated groups at the corner of every street, in
every coffeehouse, in every pastrycook's shop in
Cracow were to be seen anywhere in Russian Poland,
there would be constant occupation for the soldiers
and po ice. The Government which the Russians
love to insult hasleft the Government of Russia very
far behind. The natural excitement which now pre-
vails in Craw A', instead of being made an excuse for
nets of tyranny, as it would be in Russia or France,
is simply not noticed, any more than it would be in
England, and accordingly nothing comes of it.
One generally thinks of conspirators and insur-
gents as dark, mysterious, and malignant-looking
personages; but the insurgents who have just
returned from the army that was once that of Lan-
giewicz have a gay, contented, free•and-easy appear-
ance, which shows ac once that insurrection has be-
come the natural state of Poland, and that all these
young men have been simply following, and are
bent upon following again, what they have been
brought up to regard as their legitimate vocation,
and which they will take care shall be the vocation
of their children, as it has been that of their fathers
and grandfathers.

his not very easy to discover exactly what num-
ber of troops Langiewicz hai_i when he started from
Chroberz (the village and estate of the Marquis
'Wielopolaki) to meet the Russians at Ziposcie. As
far as I can make out from various statements by
persons who ought to know, there were about 700
cavalry (mounted, far the most part, on very indif-
ferent horses), from 400 to 500 Zauasas, nearly
2,000 sithemen, and from 2,000 to 3,000 infantry,
armed, latterly, for the most part, with rifles, but in
the first instance with old-fashioned muskets, fowl-
ing-pieces, revolvers, and whatever they could get.
Speaking generally, the insurgents, to whatever
corps they belonged, were armed anyhow, dressed
anyhow, and fought anyhow; that is to say, in
whatever order or disorder happened to suit them,
so long as they could manage to beat the enemy.
A Zouave was not necessarily dressed like a Zouave,
nor did every cavalryman necessarily carry the
weapons usually given to cavalry, but simply any-
thing that he could manage to strike a blow with.
I may here say a few words about the acts of
cruelty attributed to the insurgents by many of
the Russian journals. They have been delibe-
rately accused of mutilating their prisoners ; of
cutting off their noses, ears, and fingers, and (the
rest is almost too sickening to relate) forcing them
down their throats. I thought that this vile story
was without foundation from beginning to end—
one of those calumnies which the Russian Govern-
ment sometimes thinks it advantageous to publish,
and which, for that reason, it will not allow to be
Contradicted. There is just one grain of truth, how-
ever, beneath the superstructure of falsehood. The
Poles have cut off the noses, ears, and fingers of num-
b" of Russians. They have also cut off their arms
and heads ; but all this has been done with the sharp
sithes of the Rossaniere in fair fight. It is said that
there are Russians in the hospitals at Warsaw who
have lost their noses; but the Russian authorities
know perfectly well that these men wore never
made prisoners, and that the new kind of wound
has been occasioned by a new kind of weapon.
There is a terse untranslatable proverb of Souva-
roff which contrasts the capricious folly of the bullet
with the steady heroism of the bayonet. I believe
the soldiers of Russia have the credit of being able
to stand a bayonet charge as well or better than
those of any other nation except one, which need
not be particularised for the benefit of English
readers. But at close quarters the Ruoian shrinks
from the Polish scythe as from death itself ; and
whenever it has been found possible to get the Kos-
sanieri-1n however small a number—within some-
thing like reach of the enemy the latter has turned
and fled. This, after all, is not to be wondered at.
The Russian soldier, who is only a Russian peasant,
shaven, shorn, and half choked in a tight military
suit, is a creature of habit; he has learned that to
be skewered on a bayonet is the sort of thing he has
to expect, and to which the men in his regiment
have, in a collective sense, long been accustomed.
But to be slashed in the face by people who turn
their reaping-hooks into sabres, and their scythes