Bem, Jozef, a Polish general, born at Tarnow, in Galicia, in 
1795," died Dec. 10, 1850. The passion of his life was hatred of 
Russia. At the epoch when Napoleon, by victories and proclama- 
tions, was exciting a belief in the resurrection of Poland, Bem 
entered the corps of cadets at Warsaw, and received his military 
training at the artillery-school directed by Gen. Pelletier. On 
leaving this school, he was appointed lieutenant of the horse- 
artillery; served in that capacity under Davout and Macdonald in 
the campaign of 1812; won the cross of the legion of honor by his 
cooperation in the defence of Dantzic'*; and, after the surrender 
of that fortress, returned to Poland. As the czar Alexander, 
affecting a great predilection for the Polish nation, now reorgan- 
ized the Polish army, Bem entered the latter in 1815, as an officer 
of artillery, but was soon dismissed for fighting a duel with his 
superior. However, he was subsequently appointed military 
teacher at the artillery-school of Warsaw and promoted to the 
rank of captain. He now introduced the use of the Congreve 
rocket into the Polish army, recording the experiments made on 
this occasion in a volume originally published in French and then 
translated into German.” He was querulous and insubordinate, 
and, from 1820 to 1825, was several times arraigned before 
courts-martial, punished with imprisonment, released, imprisoned 
again, and at last sent to Kock, a remote Polish village, there to 

vegetate under strict police surveillance. He did not obtain his 
discharge from the Polish army until the death of Alexander, and 
the Petersburg insurrection ' made Constantine lose sight of him. 
Leaving Russian Poland, Bem now retired to Lemberg, where he 
became an overseer in a large distillery, and elaborated a book on 
steam applied to the distillation of alcohol.’ 

When the Warsaw insurrection of 1830 broke out he joined it, 
after a few months was made a major of artillery, and fought, in 
May,” 1831, at the battle of Ostrolenka, where he was noticed for 
the skill and perseverance with which he fought against the 
superior Russian batteries."°° When the Polish army had been 
finally repulsed in its attacks against the Russians who had passed 
the Narev, he covered the retreat by a bold advance with the 
whole of his guns. He was now created colonel, soon after general, 
and called to the command-in-chief of the Polish artillery. At the 
storming of Warsaw by the Russians he fought bravely, but, as a 
commander, committed the fault of not using his 40 guns, and 
allowing the Russians to take Vola, the principal point of defence. 
After the fall of Warsaw he emigrated to Prussia with the rest of 
the army, urged the men not to lay down their arms before the 
Prussians, and thus provoked a bloody and unnecessary struggle, 
called at that time the battle of Fischau. He then abandoned the 
army and organized in Germany committees for the support of 
Polish emigrants, after which he went to Paris. 

His extraordinary character, in which a laborious fondness for 
the exact sciences was blended with restless impulses for action, 
caused him to readily embark in adventurous enterprises, whose 
failure gave an advantage to his enemies. Thus having in 1833, on 
his own responsibility, undertaken without success to raise a Polish 
legion for Don Pedro,’ he was denounced as a traitor, and was 
fired at by one of his disappointed countrymen, in Bourges, where 
he came to engage the Poles for his legion. Travels through 
Portugal, Spain, Holland, Belgium, and France, absorbed his time 
during the period from 1834 to 1848. 

In 1848, on the first appearance of revolutionary symptoms in 
Austrian Poland, he hastened to Lemberg and thence, Oct. 14, to 
Vienna, where all that was done to strengthen the works of 
defence and organize the revelutionary forces, was due to his 
personal exertions. The disorderly flight in which, Oct. 25, a sally 
of the Viennese mobile guard,'** headed by himself, had resulted, 

wrung from him stern expressions of reproof, replied to by noisy 
accusations of treason, which, in spite of their absurdity, gained 
such influence that, but for fear of an insurrection on the part of 
the Polish legion, he would have been dragged before a 
court-martial. After his remarkable defence, Oct. 28, of the great 
barricade erected in the Jagernzeile, and after the opening of 
negotiations between the Vienna magistrates and Prince Windi- 
schgratz, he disappeared. Suspicion, heightened by his mysterious 
escape, dogged him from Vienna to Pesth, where, on account of 
his prudent advice to the Hungarian government, not to allow the 
establishment of a special Polish legion, a Pole named Kolodjecki 
fired a pistol on the pretended traitor and severely wounded him. 
The war in Transylvania, with the command of which the 
Hungarian government intrusted Bem, leaving it, however, to his 
own ingenuity to find the armies with which to carry it on, forms 
the most important portion of his military life, and throws a great 
light upon the peculiar character of his generalship. Opening the 
first campaign toward the end of Dec. 1848, with a force of about 
8,000 men, badly armed, hastily collected, and consisting of most 
heterogeneous elements—raw Magyar levies, Honveds,'? Vien- 
nese refugees, and a small knot of Poles, a motley crew reenforced 
in his progress through Transylvania by successive drafts from 
Szeklers,* Saxons, Slavs and Roumanians—Bem had about 2 
months later ended his campaign, vanquished Puchner with an 
Austrian army of 20,000 men, Engelhardt with the auxiliary force 
of 6,000 Russians, and Urban with his freebooters. Compelling the 
latter to take refuge in the Bukovina, and the two former to 
withdraw to Wallachia, he kept the whole of Transylvania save the 
small fortress of Karlsburg. Bold surprises, audacious manoeuvres, 
forced marches, and the great confidence he knew how to inspire 
in his troops by his own example, by the skilful selection of 
covered localities, and by always affording artillery support at the 
decisive moment, proved him to be a first-rate general for the 
partisan and small mountain warfare of this first campaign. He 
also showed himself a master in the art of suddenly creating and 
disciplining an army; but being content with the first rough sketch 
of organization, and neglecting to form a nucleus of choice troops, 
which was a matter of prime necessity, his extemporized army was 
sure to vanish like a dream on the first serious disasters. 
During his hold of Transylvania he did himself honor by 
preventing the useless and impolitic cruelties contemplated by the 

Magyar commissioners. The policy of conciliation between the 
antagonist nationalities aided him in swelling his force, in a few 
months, to 40,000 or 50,000 men, well provided with cavalry and 
artillery. If, notwithstanding, some admirable manoeuvres, the 
expedition to the Banat,’ which he engaged in with this 
numerically strong army, produced no lasting effect, the cir- 
cumstance of his hands being tied by the cooperation of the 
incapable Hungarian general,” must be taken into account. 

The irruption into Transylvania of large Russian forces, and the 
defeats consequently sustained by the Magyars, called Bem back to 
the theatre of his first campaign. After a vain attempt to create a 
diversion in the rear of the enemy, by the invasion of Moldavia, he 
returned to Transylvania, there to be completely routed, July 31,” 
at Schassburg, by the 3 times stronger Russian forces under 
Liiders, escaping captivity himself only by a plunge into a morass 
from which some dispersed Magyar hussars happened to pick him 
up. Having collected the remainder of his forces, he stormed 
Hermannstadt for the second time, Aug. 5, but for want of 
reenforcements soon had to leave it, and after an unfortunate 
fight, Aug. 7, he retraced his steps to Hungary, where he arrived 
in time to witness the loss of the decisive battle at Temesvar.'*' 
After a vain attempt to make a last stand at Lugos with what 
remained of the Magyar forces, he reentered Transylvania, kept 
his ground there against overwhelming forces, until Aug. 19, 
when he was compelled to take refuge in the Turkish territory. 

With the purpose of opening to himself a new field of activity 
against Russia, Bem embraced the Mussulman faith, and was 
raised by the sultan‘ to the dignity of a pasha, under the name of 
Amurath, with a command in the Turkish army; but, on the 
remonstrances of the European powers, he was relegated to 
Aleppo. Having there succeeded in repressing some sanguinary 
excesses committed during Nov. 1850, on the Christian resi- 
dents by the Mussulman populace, he died about a month later, 
of a violent fever, for which he would allow no medical aid.