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

THE POLISH INSURRECTION.

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(lion the limes' ;Special Correspondent.)
CRACOW, March 24.

Poor Langiewiez, after asking in vain to be
allowed 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 abon• 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 I
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-
ceivA 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
Russians. Accordingly Austria is in no way called
upon to sit in judgment upon him. She has, of
course,! the right to send him out of Austrian terri-
tory, bat it is to be hoped 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 her 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. On 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 bad 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 are
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, no
on mere hearsay, but on the authority of the pro.

prietors of these houses, who, however, could no!

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, wl.atever 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 other side 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 attired 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 pastry-cook'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 has left the Government of Russia very
far behind. The natural excitement which now pre-
vails in Craco,v, instead of being made an excuse for
ucts 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 at 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.
It is not very easy to discover exactly what num-
ber of troops Langiewicz hati when he started from
Chroberz (the village and estate of the Marquis
Wielopolski) to meet the Russians at Zaposcie. As
far as I can make out from various statements by
persons who ought to know, there were about 700
cavalry (mounted, for the most part, on very indif-
ferent horses), from 400 to 500 Zouaves, 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.
Speakitg 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-
bers of Russians. They have also cut off their arms
and heads ; but all this has been done with the sharp
si thee of the Kossaniere in fair fight. It is said that
there are Ituesians in the hospitals at Warsaw who
have lost their noses; but the Russian authorities
know perfectly well that these men were never
made prisoners, and that the new kind of wound
has been occasioned by a new kind of weapon.
There is a t 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

'Which need
those of any other nation except one,

not be particularised for the benefit of English

readers. But at close quarters the Russian shrinks
from the Polish scythe as from death itself; and
whenever it has been found possible to get the Kos-
slnieri—iu hovever 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 collectivs sense, long been accustomed.
But to be slashed in the face by people who turn
their reaping-hooks into sabres, and their scythes

two-edged swords, is more than he ever bar-
gained for, and he won't stand it:
On the other hand, the scythemen are said to have
become quite unmanageable when they were ex-
posed for any length of time to the fire of the Rus-
' sians, to which they were of cours3 unable to
reply. Accordingly, as a general rule, they have
been kept out of sight—either in ambush or behind
ordinary infantry—until the moment arrived for
' them to rush forward and strike terror into the
ranks of the Muscovites. All the victories gained
by the insurgents under the command of Langie-
wicz (and I cannot think of one instance in which
they were really beaten) have been decided by the
sithemen, or the Z3uaves, or the sithemen and
Zouaves in combination, and generally by the sithe-
men alone. At Skala Langiewicz not only led the
sithemen in person, but himself carried a sithe,
which he took up at the last moment before giving
the order to charge.
In spite of the success which attended the efforts
of the Kossanieri, almost invariably the general
opinion seems to be that the corps was too nume-
rous, and that in reforming it only picked men must
be included. The perfect sithemen must be strong,
or he will not be able to wield his weapon. He
must be skilful, or, in making a downward cut, be
runs the risk of burying his sithe in the ground, and
exposing his head and neck t 3 the blows of the
enemy. He must, moreover, possess not only cour-
age enough to rush to the charge under a fire to
which he cannot possibly respond, but also, under
certain circumstances, the courage to remain under
fire until the moment arrives for him to be called
into action.

However, under the new system of organization
—or rather the old system, to which it has now been
determined to return—it is not likely that any corps
of 2,000 men will be formed either of sithemen or of
any other arm. Every one is convinced that Langie-
wicz made a great and fatal mistake in attempting
to create a regular army, though, of course, every
one thought it a very fine thing to do, until the utter
impossibility of keeping it in the field was demon-
strated by facts. It is said now, with much reason,
that the Russian Empire, though weak, was sure
to be able, sooner or later, to overpower a force
of 6,000 men, ill clothed, ill fed, ill armed, and
without any means of procuring ammunition; while,
on the other hand, 6,000 men, divided into bands
of 500 each, might have kept 20,000 Russians in
a perpetual state of anxiety, and have so harassed
and " dea.oralized" them as to have secured fre-
quent opportunities of cutting them off in detail.
Probably, however, the Russians are quite right in
saying that Langiewicz's plan was to gain posses-
sion of some town, and that he desired, above all
things, to establish his headquarters at Czensto-
chowa, the site of a celebrated monastery which
has served more than once as a fortress, and has
played the same part in the history of Poland that
the Laura of the Troitza, near Moscow, has in that
of Russia. Czenstochovva is but a small town, but
at certain festivals it feeds as many as from 50,000
to 100,000 pilgrims; and all Langiewicz really
wanted for his army was food. He could have had
as many men as he wished, and they could have
taken their arms and ammunition from the Russians
as they have already done on several occasions.
As to the mode of obtaining arms it appears, at
first sight, not a very practicable one ; but if the
Polish cavalry do not mind going into action with
only sticks in their hands, and taking their chance
of being shot, or of riding down a certain number
of Russians and disarming them, such a manoeuvre,
executed without hesitation, is sure to meet with
some amount of success. Many of the students of
the Cracow University (which furnished Langie-
wica with about 250 men and boys) are known to
have obtained their weapons in no other manner.
Most of the accounts that I have read of Lan-
giewicz's army as it stood at Goseza are not only
highly coloured but painted in false colours. The
numbers, the strictness cf the discipline, the ex-
cellence of the organisation, the brilliancy of the
music, the richness of the banners, have all been
exaggerated, not to say entirely invented. One
thing which has been noticed but not sufficiently
dwelt upon, and which it would be impossible to
exaggerate or to describe fairly without being
suspected of exaggeration, is the enthusiasm which
animated this army of farm servants, house ser-
vants, workmen, students, schoolboys, and a cer-
tain number of the young nobility. Thousands
of volunteers were sent back by Langiewicz,
not because they were unfit to serve, but because he
knew that it would be impossible to arm them or
e.en to feed them, Numbers of young men, too,
werk kept back by their parents. I am told that all
who did join went with the full consent of their
families, and were regularly equipped by them for
the camp. One lady of my acquaintance had four
sons with Langiewicz, she herself with her daughters
superintended the preparations for their departure;
and the mother aid sisters did all they could for the
young men, by seeing that they were armed to the
teeth when they left their home. There are hun-
dreds of boys of 15 and 16 now walking about the
streets of Cracow in their:fighting costumes who had
money given them by their fathers and mothers to
enable them to go and fight the " Muscovites ;"
just as in England boys of the same age have money
given them to buy cricket-bats.
,They are now
" home for the holydays," but it is certain they will
not remain long, and that they are burning with
desire to get back to their appointed tasks. One
party starts to-morrow, before this letter will be
confided to the care of the post-office authorities.
Seventeen were arrested last night to prevent them
starting. They declare that they will all be off be-
fore another week.
I should like some one who believes in the story
of the insurgents having been routed at Busk, and
afterwards driven P cross the frontier by the Russians
to have just a glimpse of these insurgents, either
those who are at liberty or those who are in con-
finement. Without looking at the map, without
listening to the statements of honourable men who
took part in the recent battles, and who know
whether these battles were won or lost, it is suffi-
cient to see those who are said by the German and
Belgian papers to have been beaten to know at
once that they were victorious. Such a test as this
cannot, without doubt, be always depended upon.
Nevertheless, people who are just returning from a
funeral do not generally wear the same expression
as people who are just returning from a wedding ;
and the insurgents who came over the frontier the
other day of their own accord (because they had no
chief, and because they had no head) look very like
the former, and not at all like the latter, If these
Poles were beaten, they must enjoy being beaten.
It puts them in excellent spirits, and they will cer-
tainly go and get beaten again as soon as possible.
" If they were not worsted, shy did they come
away ?" is a question which has no doubt been
already asked.
They came away because they had fired off their
last cartridge, and eaten their last loaf, and worn out
the soles of their boots, and lost Langiewicz and
Rochebrune, and the other officers who in so inex-
plicable a manner deserted them. The insurgents
were hungry enough at the battle of Busk (other-
wise of Grochowitza) on the 18th, and many of them
from that time had scarce anything to eat until
they crossed the frontier early on the morning of the
22d. In fact, if they can be said to have been
beaten at all it was not the arms of the Russians,
but the famine caused by the new frontier regula-

tions of the Austrian Government, that van-
quished them. Without getting supplies from
Galliciu, or gaining possession of some town, it
was impossible that Langiewicz could tnainttin an
army of 6,000 men. The 6,000 men found them-
selves more than once in want of 6,000 loaves in a
village which at most could only supply 1,000.
' There was, to be sure, Langiewicz's train, which the
Russians pride themselves on having cut off, and
which, in fact, was left behind when the bridge
over the Nida was burnt after the passage of Roche-
brune'e Zonaves. But this was about as clever and
as important an operation (if it can be said to have
been performed at all), as it would be to stop the
banking account of a merchant who had a balance
of Bd. at his bankers. Langiewicz carried scarcely any
supplies, and when he captured artillery from the
Russians was oblige to abandon it, that nothing
might impede the rapidity of his movements. The
artillery which he did drag about with him may now
be seen in the Castle of Cracow, and is certainly light