The Sun.
London, England, 1836-03-18 00:00:00

REPUBLIC °OF CRACOW.

Cracow was proclaimed a free town in 1815, and a little
territory cribbed for it between the Silesian frontier, that
of Galicia, and the territory of the Russian kingdom of
Poland. The whole covers a surface of 64 square leagues.
The town has a population of 25,000 inhabitants ; and the
population of the whole territory amounts to about 60,000
souls.
The creation of a free and republican town by the three
Powers which had partitioned amongst them the ancient
republic of Poland, is a curious phenomenon, and one which
deserves some explanation.
In ancient Poland, Cracow was the capital of the palati-
nate which bears its name. On the first partition in 1773,
it was not included in that part of the palatinate of Cracow
which was ceded to Austria. It remained Polish, and in

1791 became the focus of that insurrection, the object of
which was to re-unite to Poland the limbs which had been
severed from it by Prussia, Austria, and Russia. It was
within the walls of Cracow that Kosciusko was proclaimed
Generalissimo of the insurrection. The Russians marched
upon the town in 1792, took possession, and were after-
wards driven out of it. The Prussians returned there in
1794; and seized it, with the intention of retaining it for
themselves in the new scheme of partition then contem-
plated.
The town of Cracow was then very imperfectly de-
fended by art ; but its position on the left bank of the Vis-
tula, at the confluence of that river with the Rudawa, ren-
dered it capable of performing a part of great military im-
portance in the rival-ship of the royal houses of Austria
and Brandenburgh. Cracow, by the strength of its situa-
tion, is at once the key of Silesia and Gallicia ; it joins
these two provinces one to the other, in some sort, by their
opposite extremities, and serves as a point of passage from
one to the other. Prussia having occupied Cra63w be-
fore the second treaty of partition, endeavoured to avail
herself of the fact of that occupation to procure the cession
of Cracow to herself, leaving to Austria the greater part
of the Palatinate ; but Austria, supportad by Russia, car-
ried the day against her rival, and acquired with Cracow
the salt mines of Wclitzka, the richest in the world.
Prussia, however, received full compensation :—she had
acquired Thorn and Dantiic in ; in the second par-
tition she got Warsaw.
During the fourteen years which elapsed from 1795 to
1809, Cracow and its territory belonged to Austria. In
the latter year, in consequence of his victories at Essling
and Wagram, Napoleon took away Cracow with a part of
Gallicia from Austria, and re-united them to the Grand
Duchy of Warsaw, which he had constituted two years
before by the treaty of Tilsit out of the territories recovered
by him from Prussia and Russia. The events of 1814 and
1815 did not re-establish things on the footing on which, as
we have seen, they had been placed by the second parti-
tion of Poland. Prussia did not recover Warsaw. This
time, however, she had influence to prevent the cession of
Cracow to Austria ; and no means could be more found to
accommodate the rival pretensions of the two Powers but
by elevating Cracow to the rank of a free town, and mark-
ing off a small neutral territory around the town. This
territory is separated from Gallicia by the Vistula, and
from Silesia by the Brinica.
In fixing the Constitution of the new State, the Repro.
sentatives3f the three despotic Governments seemed to
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hitherto subsisted without giving rise to any intestine
troubles. At the present moment it is not the Constitution
of the Republic of Craco;V, but its neutrality, guaranteed
by treaties, that is infringed upon by the Holy Alliance.