The Sun.
London, England, 1861-11-21 00:00:00

POLAND.

(PROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
WARSAW, Nov. 12.
The Government account of the events of the
Koscinszko (iv has at last been published, after a
delay of more than three weeks. Of course it gives
the best appearance it can to what its own mem-
bers have been fain to confess was a very foul

transaction. The disgraceful outrages committed
by the Cossacks in every street it terms " dispersing
the crowds ;" the soldiers, it says, only entered the
Cathedral, after the people had shown their open
defiance of the authorities by their persistence in re-
maining in it, and only then slipped in with some
who had been sent out to get water ; no violence
whatever was used except what was necessary to
compel the people to leave the church, the soldiers
being without caps or arms; no blood was spilt,
and nothing was stolen. The evidence taken by the
Commission of Inquiry, officially sanctioned by the
Government, tells a very different story. The sol-
diers who entered without arms had caps on, and
admitted others with arms, and the latter used them
to good purpose. One person was wounded in the
head with a sword; another had his lips cut open ;
a third had his head pierced with a bayonet; and
so on. One witness declares that he saw an officer
pursuing a boy of fifteen in the church with his
sword drawn, and that when the boy fell, knocked
down by a cut in the head, a soldier ran up, pierced
him with his bayonet, and threw his bleeding body
on the grand altar. The cathedral was broken into
—not entered by stratagem. No one went out to
get water, simply because there were sentries all
round the building, and even on the roof, placed
there for the express purpose of preventing the
people inside from getting provisions ; and the bro-
ken gate still testifies to the violence used. That
the soldiery added robbery to their other outrages is
proved by several drawers-full of jewels and money
being broken open in the sacristy, and robbed of
their contents. All this, be it remembered, rests on
the evidence of accredited witnesses, who were ex-
amined on oath before the committee. The Govern-
ment have accordingly adopted the most effectual
means of preventing any further disclosures being
made by arresting the majority of the members of
this corn mittPe. and afterwards the Rev. Mr. Sick-
lucki, the president of another committee, subse-
quently appointed with the same object.
General Luders has at length been officially ap-
pointed acting Viceroy of the kingdom. Wielo-
polski is still at St. Petersburg, where it appears
he is most favourably received by the Czar. During
his absence his duties are divided between Messrs.
Hube and Dembrowski ; the former takes the De-
partment of Education and Religion, the latter that
of Justice. General Roznow has been prevented by
an accident from taking up his duties in the Inqui-
sitorial Committee at Warsaw. Generals Lowezyn
and Solszyn, both of whom have distinguished
themselves by their barbarity and blood-thirstiness,
are worthily filling his place for the time being.
Meanwhile the condition of the country has not
improved in the slightest degree. Anarchy and
violence are everywhere the order of the day. Not
satisfied with the results of the state of siege and
the disgraceful proceeding of the Kosciuszko day,
the Government are, I understand, about to adopt
even more rigorous measures than hitherto. A
system of coercion is to be adopted in all the depart-
ments ; and with this view the bishops have been
summoned to Warsaw, and the Council of State
ordered to meet to-day, the former to be compelled
to open the churches, and the latter the schools.
Undoubtedly, if there be any trath in the maxim :
Quos Deus mat perdere pinus dementat, the Govern-
ment of Poland must be tottering on the very
brink of destruction ; for the obstinate folly which
they have displayed during the late events can
only be ascribed to the unreasoning promptings
of insanity. In the face of the abhorrence and
disgust with which they have covered themselves
by their acts of cruelty and violence in the eyes
of Europe; of the considerable accession of strength
which their exhibition of brute force has given
to the passive opposition of the patriots ; of the
numberless instances which their own experience
has furnished of the impotency of police and the
military to control a people resisting with no
arms but the strength of one engrossing, universal,
national feeling; they yet go on in the fatal
course which has brought on them so many dis-
asters, and thinleito remedy the consequences of
violence and outrage by aggravating the very
evils which have produced them.
The streets and squares of Warsaw are busy with
preparations for a winter campaign. Wooden huts
are being built for the troops, who are suffering
much from dysentery, brought on by the fatigue
consequent on their incessant exertions. Hardly a
moment's rest is allowed them ; their services are
constantly in requisition to arrest peaceable citizens,
search private houses, and disperse funeral proces-
sions. Nine persons of the labouring class have
been condemned by the inilitary tribunals to exile
and enlistment as privates in the army—one of the
most dreaded of the punishments of this paternal
Government ; and its persecution has of late been
a good deal directed against traders and workmen
generally. The consequence is much misery and
poverty in the country ; several bankruptcies have
taken place, the labourers are without work, and
the tradesmen without custom.
Several persons who were injured by the soldiery
on the 15th have since died of their wounds ; among
them a lady who was struck in the forehead by an
officer with a sword, because she had a black veil
with a white border on. These outrages have now
become so common as hardly to excite remark. On
the 9th, a boy was sent by his mother after a run-
away dog. He whistled after the dog, and was
seized for whistling at the soldiery, taken to prison,
and only released because he was not of age. His
mother, however, was arrested as being answerable
for the act of her child, and is in prison still. The
unfortunate people who are shut up in the citadel
are treated in the most barbarous manner ; several,
the Rev. Mr. Otto, the Protestant clergyman, among
them, have fallen ill in consequence ; and Mr.
Hiszpanski, one of the most patriotic of the dele-
gates, is not evan allowed to see any member of
his family.
In the provinces, arrests and persecutions of every
kind continue. The authorities, nothing daunted by
the ill success of the profanation of the churches at
Warsaw, have repeated their achievement at several
of the provincial towns with more or less bloodshed
of the unarmed population. A young lady, Miss
Jonska, was arrested by a soldier at Wielun for
praying under a cross, and taken to Warsaw,
where she was so rigorously treated that she
became insane. At Kovno, in Lithuania, a
detachment of Cossacks fell upon a hunting party
of Frenchmen, and wounded three of them, but
not until several of their own body were shot down.
At Zytomierz, in Volhynia, the number of arrests
during the last month is almost incredible. After
the destruction by the Russians of the cross which
had been erected in this city to commemorate late
events, a great number of ladies went to the house
of the Rev. Mr. Drucki-Sokolinski, a priest who
enjoys the reputation of being a Russian Liberal,
to ask him to allow the cross to be replaced and the
people who were imprisoned on the occasion to be
liberated. He answered that he could not discuss
the matter with them all, but that if they would
elect deputies to represent them he would be happy
to hear what they had to say. Accordingly three
ladies, named Pietkiewiez, Bohomolec, and Slawek,
were chosen deputies, and entered the room where
the priest was ; but scarcely had they done so when
they were arrested. The first is to be sent to a
convent, and the two others senttothetrestateosf,
whore they ar© to remain under the surveillance
the police. Evidently the priest's proposal was
only a trick to get the most patriotic of the ladies
into the clutches of the Government. Mr. Piotrowski,
who had been in prison at Warsaw for having been
in one of the churches on the 15th ult., had scarcely
returned to his home in Volhynia, when he was
seized by the police and sent to Omsk, in Siberia;
and by a refinement of cruelty separated from his
wife, who was also sent to Siberia, but to another
part of the country. The ladies seem here to be
the particular objects of the persecutions of the
Government ; many of them are in prison, and
others on their way to Siberia. Miss Puslowoj tow,
the lady who was sent to Zytomierz from Lublin,
is now lying so dangerously ill that she is not
expected to live.

The Submarine Telegraph Company's cable be-
tween Dover and Ostend, a distance of about 70 miles, has
been broken by the recent gales, but will, it is understood,
be soon repaired. The traffic in no way suffers by the dis-
aster, being carried on by special direct wires through
k'rance,