Mr. Fox has rolled up a rather phantastic picture of the foreign 
policy of the French Ancient Regime. According to his view, 
France allied herself with Sweden, Poland, and Turkey in order to 
protect Europe from Russia. The truth is that France contracted 
those alliances in the 16th and 17th centuries, at a time when 
Poland was still a powerful state and when Russia, in the modern 
sense of the word, did not yet exist. There existed then a Grand 
Duchy of Muscovy, but there existed not yet a Russian Empire. It 
was therefore not against Russia that France concluded those 
alliances with the Turks, the Magyars, the Poles, and. the Swedes. 
She concluded them against Austria and against the German 
Empire, as a means of extending the power, the influence, and the 
territorial possessions of France over Germany, Italy, Spain. I shall 
not enter upon details. It will suffice for my purpose to say, that 
France used those alliances in the midst of the 17th century to 
bring about the treaty of Westphalia,’*? by which Germany was not 
only dismembered, one part of it being given to France and the 
other to Sweden, but every little German prince and baron 
obtained the treaty right to sell his country and France obtained a 
protectorate over Germany. After the treaty of Westphalia, in the 
second part of the 17th century, Louis XIV, the true representa- 
tive of the old Bourbon policy at the time of its strength, bought 
the king of England, Charles II, in order to ruin the Dutch 
republic.'°* His system of vandalism and perfidy then carried out 
against Holland, Belgium, Spain, Germany and Piedmont—during 
about 40 years, cannot be better characterised than by the one 
fact, that in a memorandum, drawn up in 1837 by the Russian 
chancellery for the information of the present Czar,'” the system of 

war and diplomacy of Louis XIV from the middle to the end of 
the 17th century is recommended as the model system to be followed 
by Russia. 

Modern Russia dates only from the 18th century, and it is 
therefore from that time alone that resistance to Russia could have 
entered into the policy of France or any other European state. 

I proceed at once to the time of Louis XV which Mr. Fox has 
justly pointed out as the epoch when the French foreign policy 
was most favourable to Poland and most hostile to Russia. 

Now there happened three great events under the regime of 
Louis XV—in regard to Russia and Poland, 1) the so-called Polish 
succession war, 2) the Seven Years’ War, and 3) the first partition of 
Poland. I shall consider the attitude taken by the French 
government in regard to these events. 

1. The So-called Polish Succession War 

After the death of Augustus II (king of Poland and elector of 
Saxony), in September 1733, one party of the Polish aristocracy 
wanted to elect his son* as king. He was supported by Russia and 
Austria, because he had promised to the Czarina? not to reclaim 
Courland,' formerly a fief of Poland, and because he had 
promised to the Emperor‘ the guarantee of the pragmatic 
sanction.'*’ The other party, instigated by France, elected Stanis- 
laus Leszczinski, who had formerly been made Polish king by 
Charles XII of Sweden and who was at that time the father-in-law 
of Louis XV. There broke consequently a war out between France 
on the one hand, Russia and Austria on the other. This is the only 
war which France has ever professedly carried on behalf of Poland. 
France made war in Germany and Italy, but as far as her Polish 
protégé was concerned, limited herself to sending 1,500 men to 
Dantzick, then a Polish town. The war having lasted two years, 
what was its upshot? A treaty of peace (Peace of Vienna, October 
1735),'" by which the duchy of Lorraine, a German fief, was 
incorporated into France, and the Bourbon dynasty planted in 
Naples and Sicily, the same dynasty of which king Bomba‘ was the 
last lively representative. In all other respects this “war about the 
throne of Poland” ended in acknowledging the Russian candidate, 
Augustus III, as king of Poland, but securing to Louis XV’s 

a Frederick Augustus II (later King Augustus III of Poland).— Ed. 

b Anna Ivanovna.— Ed. 

© Charles VI.— Ed. 

d Ferdinand II (nicknamed “Bomba” for the bombardment of Messina in 
September 1848).— Ed. 

Draft for a Speech on France’s Attitude to Poland 313 

father-in-law the prerogative of being called king and a very large 
yearly pension to be paid by Poland. This war instigated and 
carried on. by France under false pretences, ended in the 
humiliation of Poland, the extension of the Russian power, and 
great disadvantages to Turkey and Sweden, which France had also 
driven into a false position and then left in the lurch. But I shall 
not enter upon these details. 

The conduct of the French government cannot be excused on 
the plea that the British government prevented it during this 
so-called Polish succession war of acting in the right direction. On 
the contrary. When the Emperor.Charles VI appealed to England, 
the latter clung to the Anglo-French alliance which had continued 
since 1716 and was barren of any good results whatever. At all 
events: this time the French government’s good designs for Poland 
were not baffled by England. 

Before leaving the subject, I. must mention that the peace between 
Turkey and Russia, brought about by French mediation ( Villeneuve, 
French ambassador) in 1739, was a great blow to Poland.”” I 
quote Rulhiere; he says: 

“it annulled the treaty of the Pruth, the only shield that remained to the Poles’ (‘cet 
unique bouclier qui restait a la Pologne’”’), et le nouveau traité, signé a Belgrad, in 

1739, déclara dans son dernier article “que toutes Jes conventions antérieures 
n’auraient plus aucune force” .? 

2. The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) 

I come now to the 7 Years’ War.?"! 

Mr. Fox has told you that that war was very unhappy for 
France, because it deprived her, to the benefit of England, of most 
of her colonies. But this is not the question before us. What we 
have to inquire into is, what part France played during that war in 
regard to Poland and Russia. 

You must know that from 1740 to 1748, during the so-called 
Austrian succession war,” France had allied herself with Frede- 
rick II of Prussia against Russia, Austria and England. During the 
Seven Years’ War she allied herself with Austria and Russia against 
Prussia and England, so that, at all events, during this war England 
was the. official enemy, and France the avowed ally of Russia. 

It was first in 1756 under the Abbé Bernis, and then again 
1758 under the duke of Choiseul, that France concluded her 
treaty with Austria (and Russia), against Prussia. 

a and the last article of the new treaty signed in Belgrade in 1739 declared 
“that all previous conventions will have power no more’. Cl. Rulhiére, Histoire de 
VAnarchie de Pologne, t. I, Paris, 1819.— Ed. 

Let us hear Rulhiére. (Histoire de l’Anarchie de Pologne etc. Paris, 
1819. 2nd edit.) 

“When Count Broglie arrived in 1752 as ambassador at Varsovie, France had no 
party in Poland. People thought of the promises which France had already so often 
failed to fulfil (auxquelles la France avait déja si souvent manqué). They had not 
forgotten that three times since a century, France had rallied around her powerful 
Polish factions... but that after having formed them with passion (ardeur), she had 
always abandoned them with levity (elle les avait chaque fois abandonnées avec 
légéreté). She had left in distress the majority of those who had trusted to the 
seductions of her pretended projects for the welfare of the republic” (t. I, 213). 
(“Elle avait laissé dans linfortune la plupart de ceux qui s’étaient livrés a la 
séduction de ces prétendus projets pour le salut de la république.”’) 

“The Duke of Broglie, after three years’ activity, had formed a counterparty 
against the Czartoryski,? won over the Polish court, put into motion the Swedes, 
the Tartars, the Turks, opened a connection with the Cossacks of the Ukraine” etc. 
“Frederick II contributed to call into life this formidable coalition against the 
had lost all influence at Warsaw. In one word, in the first months of 1756, at the 
moment when the hostilities between England and France, first opened in America, 
were on the point of embracing the whole of Europe, Count Broglie had it in his 
power to form in Poland a confederation which, supported by the subsidies of 
France, provided by her with arms and munitions, and protected by so many 
border nations would have altogether withdrawn Poland from the yoke of Russia 
and restored to that republic laws, government, and power. But France suspended 
all the help (secours) she had promised, and upset all the measures of her 
ambassador.” (Rulhiére, t. I; p. 225.) 

The levity with which France abused her influence may be 
seen—en passant—from the way in which she treated Sweden. 
First she goaded her into a war with Prussia against Russia (in the 
Austrian succession war), and then into a war with Russia against 
Prussia, Sweden being both times the victim of those French 
intrigues, and Russia gaining both times in that quarter. 

Well. What were the consequences of the Seven Years’ War 
which France carried on as the ally of Russia (and Austria) against 
Prussia (and England)? 

That the material resources of Poland were exhausted, that 
Russia founded her supremacy in Germany, that Prussia was made 
her slave, that Catherine II became the most powerful sovereign 
in Europe, and that the first partition of Poland took place. Such 
were the immediate consequences of the French policy during the Seven 
Years’ War. 

1) During the Seven Years’ War the Russian armies treated 
Poland as their property, took there their winter-quarters etc. I 
shall quote Favier: 

a Fryderyk Michat Czartoryski.— Ed. 
b Heinrich Gross.— Ed. 

Draft for a Speech on France’s Attitude to Poland 315 

“The peril was that Russia, improving the pretext of the war against the king of 
Prussia, enforced, on the territory of Poland, the passage of her troops, 
appropriated herself the means of subsistence, and even took her winter-quarters 
in Poland. By allowing her to employ anew those arbitrary means, that vast country 
was surrendered to the greediness of the Russian generals, the despotism of their 
court, and all the projects of future usurpations which Russia would be tempted to 
form, from the facility of exercising all sorts of vexations against a nation divided, 
insulated, and abandoned.” (Politique de tous les cabinets de l’Europe etc. 2nd edit. par 
L. P. Ségur, Ex-ambassadeur. Paris, 1801, t. I, p. 300.) 

France discredited herself by giving the Russians such free 
scope. 

“That weakness on her part seemed the less pardonable (excusable) because ... 
she was then in a position to make the law to Russia and Austria, and not at all to 
receive it from them.” 

Count Broglie had made in vain proposals to that effect... 
France allowed Russia to treat Poland like her own property... The 
Polish nation, from that moment, considered France as a mere instrument 
in the hands of the courts of Vienna and Petersburg. 

“This was the origin of our discredit, of our nullity at the time of the election of 
Count Poniatowski, and of the bad success of everything we attempted or favoured 
since that epoch”. (303, 304, |. c. Ségur.) (“la nation polonaise ne vit plus dés lors la 
France que comme un instrument des cours de Vienne et de Pétersbourg. [...] 
Voila Porigine de notre discrédit, de notre nullité etc.’’) 

France was bound, by the treaty of Oliva (1660)*” to protect the 
Polish Republic. 

2) During the 7 Years’ War the Russians used Poland, although 
she was ostensibly neutral,?* as their basis of operations against 
Prussia. This the Poles allowed under the diplomatic pressure of France. 
It was thus that the Russians were enabled during 7 years to 
devastate Prussia proper, Silesia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and 
even sack Berlin. They in fact ravaged the Prussian monarchy like 
wild beasts, while the French acted in the same style in Hanover, 
Westphalia, Saxony, Thuringia etc. Now, Poland was by the treaty 
of Wehlau (1660 or so)”°’ obliged to defend Prussia, against Russia. 
Frederick II insisted upon the fulfilment of this treaty. That he 
was right in asking the Poles to observe at least a complete 
neutrality, and not allowing the Russians to use their country etc., 
is proved by the fact that on all the diets kept in Poland since the 
opening of the Seven Years’ War, it was impossible to come to any 
resolution, because the patriotic party declared, the Poles could not 
deliberate as long as Russian armies occupied the Polish soil and 
acted against Prussia. In the last year of the war (1762) the nobility 
of Posen (Great Poland) had even formed a confederation against 
the Russians. 

If f. i. Belgium allowed Prussia to use it during 7 years, despite 
its neutrality, as a basis of warlike operations against France, 
would France not be entitled to treat’ Belgium as an enemy, and, if 
she could, to incorporate Belgium, or destroy its independence? 

3) The immediate upshot of the 7 Years’ War was a treaty 
between Prussia and Russia, by which the king of Prussia 
professed himself the vassal of Russia, Poniatowski king of Poland 
but was allowed, in compensation, to share in the partition of 
Poland. That the latter was already convened upon in the treaty of 
1764 between Russia and Frederick II?” is shown by the fact that 
in the same year Frederick II’s and Catherine II’s ambassadors at 
Warsaw* solemnly protested against that “calumny”, and that a few 
years later the English resident at Berlin? wrote to his court that 
Austria, although at first protesting, would be compelled by her 
proper interests to share in the partition of Pens. 

Mr. Favier says: 

“Our exclusive alliance with the court of Vienna deprived Frederick II of all 

hope, and reduced him to the necessity of joining that very court which had let 
loose France upon him, in order to destroy him.”¢ 

The same Favier avers that the secret of all the future successes 
of Catherine II and of the first partition of Poland is to be found 
in the infeodation to her of Prussia. (Frederick IT.) 

Such was the result of the French policy during the 7 Years’ 
War. It cannot be said that England this time prevented her good 
designs for Poland, because France was then the ally of Russia, 
while England stood on the other side. . 

[3.] First Partition of Poland 

Now I must say that even if France had acted more energetically 
during the Polish war which ended in the first partition of Poland 
than she really did, it would not have made up for the immense 
services she had rendered to Russia during the Seven Years’ War. 
The sending of some French officers and subsidies to Poland 
during the war of the Confederation of Bar*” could in the best case 
only prolong a useless resistance. It is true that France incited 
(1768) Turkey to a war against Russia, but only to betray Turkey 
as usually, and prepare for her the “treaty of Kudjuk Kainardji’” 
(1774),°" from which the supremacy of Russia over Turkey must 
really be dated. 

4 Gedeon Benoit and Heinrich Gross.— Ed. 
b Andrew Mitchell.— Ed. 
¢ L. P. Ségur, op. cit., t. I, p. 295.— Ed. 

Draft for a Speech on France’s Attitude to Poland 317 

1770. Russian Expedition into the Mediterranean. The then almost 
dying republic of Venice showed much more courage than France. 
In that year Choiseul still French foreign minister. It was only at 
the end of 1770 (beginning of 1771) that he was replaced by the 
Duke d’Aiguillon. 

“How,” says Favier, “did it happen that, while France was at peace with 
England, no step was taken for a convention of neutrality for the Mediterranean? 
Or why did France alone not oppose this Russian enterprise in a quarter so 
important for her interests?” 

The opinion of Favier is, that 

“the destruction of the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean by the French [which] might 
have been easily effected, would probably have changed the whole course of events 
both in Turkey and Poland, and would, moreover, have taught Austria to respect the 
French Alliance” (Ségur etc. Politique de tous les cabinets etc., v. I, p. 174). 

But France who had goaded Turkey into the war against Russia 
did not move one finger against the Russian expedition of 1770, 
the only one which was of any import. (The Turkish fleet destroyed 
in the narrow bay of Tschesmé.*”’) The same Choiseul had English 
bluster (Chatham himself) not allowed to prevent him a year ago 
from buying Corsica from the Genoese. You must not forget that 
at that time North was minister, and could only keep himself in 
office by keeping the peace at any price. He was one of the most 
unpopular ministers. At that time revolutionary, antidynasuc 
movement in England. It is true that in 1773 (the Russians made 
then a new naval expedition which, however, remained without 
any influence upon the war with Turkey) the duke of Aiguillon 
allowed himself to be prevented by the English Ambassador at 
Paris, Lord Stormont, from attacking the Russian fleet in the Baltic 
(and Mediterranean). At that time the first partition of Poland was 
already consummated. The true object of the French demonstra- 
tion was not Poland, but Sweden, and France so far succeeded, 
that Gustave III was not forced by Russia to rescind his coup d’état 
(1772)?! 

Moreover, what sort of fellow this d’Aiguillon was? 

Ségur says in his notes to Favier: 

‘When the rumour got first afloat as to the partition which was to give Prussia 
an increase of territory which Austria was afraid of, the court of Vienna warned 
France, and gave her to understand that she would oppose herself, if the court of 
Versailles would support her. Louis XV, at that time only occupied by his 
pleasures, and M. d’Aiguillon by his intrigues, the Austrian cabinet received no 
re-assuring answer and liked better to concur to the partition of Poland than to 
maintain alone a war against the Prussians and Russians combined.” ([t. I], 147, 

Note.) “Count Mercy—Austrian ambassador—has publicly given out” (répandu 
dans le public) “that the king of Prussia had communicated to the Austrian 

minister” the answers of the Duke of Aiguillon, by which that minister assured His 
Prussian Majesty that France was indifferent to all that could be done in Poland 
and that she would not consider a casus foederis” (case of war) “anything that might 
be agreed upon, in regard to that subject, by the courts of Berlin and Vienna” 
(243, Note). 

Now, although I do not put any confidence whatever in the 
assurances of the Austrian court, which was then acting with the 
utmost perfidy, the very fact, that a French ambassador of 
Louis XVI (Ségur), published this at Paris, shows the estimation 
Louis XV and his d’Aiguillon enjoyed—and were worth enjoying. 

[4.] French Republic 

From September 21, 1792 to November 11, 1799 (the day after 
19 Brumaire, when the Executive Directory?" was overthrown)” 

The second partition treaty between Russia and Prussia on 
4 January 1793< 

The first crusade against France 1792 had taken such an 
unfortunate turn, that already in the beginning of winter the 
Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) were occupied by the French. 
Prussia withdrew her troops from the field of action; the condition 
insisted upon by her on the Congress of Verdun’ for continuing 
her participation in the Anti-Jacobin war was that she should be 
allowed to make with Russia a second partition of Poland. Austria 
was to be compensated by indemnities in the Alsace. 

At the end of 1793 (September) Prussia again withdrew her 
troops to march them, under the king,“ to the Polish frontier (to 
“secure” his Polish possession), because some differences had 
broken out, in regard to some definitive stipulations, between 
Prussia and Russia, the latter seeming to turn against Prussia her 
influence over the expiring diet of the traitors of Targowicze.*”” 
The result of this second withdrawal of Prussia, to take real 
possession of her Polish provinces, forces the Austrians to withdraw 
from the Alsace. 

In the spring of 1794 KoSciuszko’s revolutionary rising. Prussia 
marched at once her troops against Poland. Beaten. In September 
1794, while forced to retreat from Warsaw, at the same time rising 

4 Gottfried van Swieten.— Ed. 

b The text in brackets is in French in the original.— Ed. 
© More accurately: January 23, 1793.— Ed. 

4 Frederick William II.— Ed. 

Draft for a Speech on France’s Attitude to Poland ; 319 

in Posen. Then the king of Prussia declared his intention to 
withdraw from the contest carried on against France. Austria also, 
in the autumn 1794, detached a body of troops for Poland, by 
which circumstance the success of the French arms on the Rhine 
and so forth was secured. Already towards the end of 1794 Prussia 
commenced negotiations with France.?’* Withdrew. Consequence: 
Holland succumbed to the French (conquest of Holland through 
Pichegru). 

Those diversions facilitated by turns the conquest of Belgium, 
the success on the Alps, the Pyrenees, the left bank of the Rhine, 
and, 1795, the conquest of Holland by Pichegru. In the very 
months October, November (1794) everywhere French successes 
when Kosciuszko succumbed, Praga was taken by Suvorov etc., 
immense murdering etc. 

Third Partition of Poland signed: 24 October 1795. 

By the outbreak of the French Revolution Catherine got the 
opportunity quietly first to carry on her war with Turkey,’” while 
all Europe was turned to the West. 

As the Pope has issued bulls for crusades against the infidels, so 
Catherine II against the Jacobins. Even while Leopold II chased 
the French Emigrés from his states and forbade them to assemble 
on the French frontiers, Catherine, through her agent Rumjanzev, 
provided them with money and quartered them in the frontier 
provinces, bordering upon France, and ruled by ecclesiastic 
princes. 

After the conclusion of her war with Turkey, Catherine II did 
not commence her hostilities against Poland before she had been 
informed that the National Assembly had declared war to Austria. 
This news arrived at Vienna on 30 April 1792, and on the 18 May 
the Russian ambassador Boulgakov presented a declaration of war to 
the Polish king Stanislaus The first in impressing upon England, 
Austria and Prussia the dangers of the revolutionary principles, 
Catherine steadily pursued her own separate interests (in Turkey 
and Poland) without furnishing a single Cossack or subscribing a 
single rouble for the “common cause”. 

Poland was blotted out under cover of the French Revolution and the 
Anti-Jacobin war. 

Rev. L. K. Pitt (a nephew or cousin of the English minister), 
chaplain to the British factory at St. Petersburg, writes in a secret 
document: ‘“‘Account of Russia during the Commencement of the Reign of 
the Emperor Paul’: 

@ Poniatowski.— Ed. 

“She” (the Czarina) “was not perhaps displeased to see every European power 
exhausting itself in a struggle, which raised in proportion to its violence her own 
importance ... the state of the newly acquired provinces in Poland was likewise a 
point which had considerable influence over the political conduct of the Czarina. 
The fatal effects resulting from an apprehension of revolt on the late seat of 
conquest, seem to have been felt in a very great degree by the combined powers 
who, in the early period of the revolution, were so near re-instating the regular 
government in France. The same dread of revolt deterred likewise the late 
Empress of Russia from entering on the great theatre of war.” 

The question is now: How behaved revolutionary France. 
towards this useful ally. 
Let us first hear a French historian, Lacretelle (t. XII, p. 261 

sqq.): 

“The Republic”, says he, “had shown itself very indifferent to the troubles and 
misfortunes of Poland. It was on the contrary a great motive of security for it to see 
the Empress of Russia occupy all the forces of her powerful empire for the conquest and 
dismemberment of that unfortunate country. Very soon the French Republic became 
aware that Poland freed it of its most ardent enemy, the king of Prussia etc.”* 

But republican France actually betrayed Poland. 

“The Polish agent Bars at Paris presented to the government”, says Ogiriski, an 
eye-witness, “the plan of the revolution which was preparing in Poland, and which 
was received with a general enthusiasm and approbation. He enumerated the 
"assistance of every kind which would _ be necessary for that important and daring 
enterprise. The Comité du Salut Public”’” found his demand very just and promised 
to do every thing possible; but to promises all the nefotiation was limited.” (Michel 
Oginski: Mémoires sur la Pologne etc., from 1788 to the end of 1815. Paris, 1826, t. I, 
p. 358.) 

“The comité of public welfare had promised to general Kosciuszko a sum of 
3 millions of livres and some officers of artillery; but we did receive neither one single 
sou nor one single officer’, 

we are told by an aide-de-camp of KoSciuszko, J. Niemcewicz: 
Notes sur ma captivité a St. Pétersbourg, en 1794-1796. Paris, 1843. 
(V. p. 90.)° 

On 5 April 1795 the directory (which had then replaced the 
comité du salut public) concluded with Prussia the Peace of Basel. 
By this peace Holland and the left bank of the Rhine were surrendered 
to France. The northern part of Germany, designed by a line of 
demarcation, was neutralised, Prussia to be indemnified by the 
secularisation of several German bishoprics. That treaty of Basel 

a Marx quotes Lacretelle’s Histoire de France, pendant le XVIII-éeme siécle from 
L. L. Sawaszkiewicz’s Tableau de l’influence de la Pologne sur les destinées de la 
Révolution frangaise et de l’Empire, 3rd ed., Paris, 1848, p. 37, note.— Ed. 

b Marx quotes both Ogiriski and Niemcewicz according to Sawaszkiewicz, op. cit., 
pp. 33-34.— Ed. 

Draft for a Speech on France’s Attitude to Poland 321 

“by guaranteeing the respective possessions of the two contracting powers, and 
including no clause whatever in regard to the newly invaded provinces of Poland, 
granted their possession to the king of Prussia”.@ 

Oginski tells us that when the Poles were informed of the 
peace-negotiations, their agent Bars addressed the members of the 
directory peculiarly friendly to Poland, and asked for a clause 
obliging the king of Prussia to renounce etc. 

“He was answered that the condition was not acceptable since it would retard 
the negotiations with Prussia, that France wanted to restore her forces, that the 
peace with Prussia would not last long, that the Poles should keep themselves ready 

for new efforts which would be asked from them in the cause of liberty and their 
country etc.” 

The same Oginski, t. II, p. 133 and 223, tells us: 

“The treaty concluded between the French Republic and the king of Prussia 
had made a very bad impression upon the Divan, which pretended that if France 
had been unable to obtain anything for Poland in her negotiations with the court 
of Berlin, it was impossible that the Turcs alone could act in favour of Poland.” 

After the third division Russia was forced to keep quiet for a few 
years. The Poles now participated in all the campaigns of the 
French Republic, principally in Italy. (See: -Chodzko: Histoire des 
Légions Polonaises en Italie, dé 1795 a 1802. Paris, 1829.) 

Before the conclusion of the Peace of Campo-Formio (17 October 
1797),°"’ after a plan mutually agreed upon, and with the consent 
of Bonaparte, General Dombrowski was to march through Croatia 
and Hungary, into Galicia, and thus make a diversion in favour of 
Bonaparte, who would have marched upon Vienna. Charles de la 
Croix, minister of foreign affairs (see Oginski, t. I], p. 272-278) 
proposed to Oginski “to insurge Galicia”. Oginski was afraid lest 
the Poles should be treated as mere tools thrown away after 
having been used. He therefore demanded a positive assurance 
that those sacrifices would earn for them French assistance for the 
recovery of their country. Lacroix played then the irritated bully. 
The French government did not want them; if they had no 
confidence, they might try their fortune somewhere else etc. He 
gave Oginski three days’ time for considering, after which they 
were to accept or [to] refuse, but without putting any conditions 
whatever. The poor Poles declared ready for whatever the French 
government wanted. But that government wanted only their 
formal acceptance in order to intimidate Austria by it and so to 
hasten the conclusion of peace. Armistice at Leoben, 18 April 1797. 

a Here and below Marx quotes Oginski’s Mémoires sur la Pologne in the free 
rendering given in Sawaszkiewicz’s book (op. cit., p. 40).— Ed. 

13* 

Treaty of Campo-Formio in which the Poles were again sacrificed in 
the same way as they had been in the treaty of Basel. 

In 1799 at last Suvorov, the effect of the disappearance of 
Poland made itself felt to the French republic. Russian armies 
appeared in Holland and in Italy. Suvorov penetrates to the very 
frontiers of France. 

When on 27 July? 1799 the French surrendered Mantua to the 
Russian general Vielhorski,”'* there was a secret article in the 
capitulation by which the Austrians got back their deserters, viz. 
the Austrian Poles who had entered the legions. After the 
surrender of Mantua, the 2nd legion fell into the hands of the 
enemy; the first legion, under Dombrowski, joined the Great 
Army,”'? and was almost entirely annihilated in the great battles 
against the Russo-Austrian armies. 

[5.] Consulate 

9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire) Consulate. Bonaparte authorizes 
the formation of new Polish legions, one at Marseilles under 
Dombrowski, one on the Danube under general Kniaziewicz. 
These legions assist at Marengo and Hohenlinden.*”’ See order of 
the day of general Moreau, where he renders justice 

“to the stern constancy of general Kniaziewicz and his Polish soldiers”’.» 

Treaty of Lunéville with Austria, 9 February 1801.’ No article 
relating to Poland. 

Treaty of Paris, October 1801, with Paul I of Russia.?” In this 
treaty Paul I and Bonaparte promised each other 

“not to allow that any of their subjects should be allowed to entertain any 
correspondence, whether direct or indirect, with the internal enemies of the actual 

governments of the two states, there to propagate principles contrary to their 
respective constitutions, or to foment troubles’’.4 

This article related to the Poles on the [one] hand, to the 
Bourbons and their partisans on the other. 

In 1801 there appeared in the Moniteur a series of articles 
written by Bonaparte himself and justifying the ambition of 
France, because her conquests were hardly an equivalent for the 
acquisitions which Russia, Austria and Prussia had made by the 
partition of Poland. (Thiers, Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire, 
t. IIL, p. 153.) 

a Inaccuracy in the manuscript: April 28.— Ed. 

6’ Quoted from Sawaszkiewicz, op. cit., p. 57, note.— Ed. 
¢ Inaccuracy in the manuscript: January 26.— Ed. 

d Quoted from Sawaszkiewicz, op. cit., p. 58.— Ed. 

Draft for a Speech on France’s Attitude to Poland 323 

During the peace the Polish legions were treated as an 
encumbrance. Part of them were, like Mamelucks, given by 
Bonaparte as a present to the queen of Etruria.* 

Treaty of Amiens. 27 March 18022 The first consul made 
embark, by force, for St. Domingo part of the Polish legions and 
made present of the other part to the new king of Naples? 
Threatened by the fire of artillery, they were embarked at Genoa 
and Livorno to find their graves in St. Domingo.” 

[6.] Empire 

May 1804 (crowned 2 December 1804) until 1815. 

1806-1807. During his war with Prussia, supported by Russia, 
Napoleon sent the remainders of the Polish legions under 
Dombrowski into Prussian Poland, where they conquered Dantzick 
for him, and insurged the country. 

18 December 1806. Napoleon himself in Warsaw, then Prussian. 
Great enthusiasm of the Poles. In his autobiography Thomas 
Ostrowski (Paris 1836), president of the Senate, narrates that 
Napoleon, at the first audience he gave to the members of the 
administration, received them with the words: 

“Gentlemen, I want to-day 200,000 bottles of wine, and as many portions of 
rice, meat and vegetables. No excuses; if not, I leave you to the Russian knout... I 

ees? 

want proofs of your devotion; I stand in need of your blood” (“j’ai besoin de votre 
sang”’). © 

He enrolled a Polish army. The campaign lasted until 6 May 
1807. 

25 and 26 June 1807. Fraternisation between Napoleon and 
Alexander on the Niemen. 

Treaty of Tilsit, signed 7 July 1807 (9 July with Prussia).?” 

Art. V of that treaty proclaimed the foundation of the duchy of 
Warsaw which Napoleon cedes 

“in all property and sovereignty to the king of Saxony,‘ to be ruled by 

constitutions, which, while securing the liberties and privileges of the duchy, were 
compatible with the tranquillity of the neighbouring states”. 

This duchy was cut out of Prussian Poland. 

a Marie-Louise-Joséphine, wife of Duke Louis Bourbon of Parma.— Eq. 

b Joseph Bonaparte.— Ed. 

¢ Tomasz Ostrowski’s account of Napoleon’s speech was rendered by Antoni 
Ostrowski in Zywot Tomasza Ostrowskiego, Paris, 1836. Marx quotes from Sawasz- 
kiewicz, op. cit., p. 66.— Ed. 

d Frederick August I.— Ed. 

Art. IX cedes to Russia a part of Poland, the circle of Byalistock, 
recently conquered from Prussia, and which 

‘shall be united in perpetuity to the Russian empire, in order to establish the 
natural limits between Russia and the duchy of Warsaw”’.@ 

Dantzic, on the pretext of being made a free town, was made a 
French maritime fortress. 

Many large estates in the new duchy were made a present of by 
Napoleon to the French generals. 

Lelewel calls this justly the Fourth Division of Poland? 

Having beaten the Prussians and the Russians by the assistance 
of the Poles, Napoleon disposed of Poland, as if she was a 
conquered country and his private property, and he disposed of 
her to the advantage of Russia. 

The duchy of Warsaw was small, without position in Europe. A 
large civil list; civil government by Saxony, military by Napoleon. 
Davout ruled like a Pasha at Warsaw. He made in fact of the 
duchy a recruiting place for France, a military depot. 

(Sawaszkiewicz, Tableau de l’influence de la Pologne sur les destinées 
de la Révolution frangaise. Paris, 1848, 3°" édit.) 

The duchy of Warsaw was for Napoleon not only an advanced 
post against Russia. Napoleon had possessed himself of those very 
points which would serve him as a basis of offensive operations 
against Prussia and Austria. Nicholas acted in his spirit when he 
fortified those points by a chain of fortresses. 

(By inserting at the head of the treaty of Tilsit the declaration 
that only out of courtesy for Alexander he restored to the king of 
Prussia‘ half of his old territories, Napoleon proclaimed that king, 
and Prussia, a mere appendage to Russia.) 

By the secret articles of the treaty of Tilsit the public ones were 
partly revoked. Thus f. 1. only to deceive Austria, the public treaty 
contained articles for the integrity of Turkey. By the secret articles 
Napoleon sacrificed Turkey and Sweden to the Czar who surren- 
dered to him Portugal, Spain, Malta, and the North African coast; 
promised his accession to the continental system, and the 
surrender of the Ionian islands to France.**° The partition of 
Turkey was only prevented by the opposition of Austria. All the 
arrangements for a partition of Turkey were beginning after the 
conclusion of the Tilsit treaty. In August 1808 Alexander handed 

« Articles of the Treaty of Tilsit are quoted from Sawaszkiewicz, op. cit., 
p. 68.— Ed. 

b J. Lelevel, Histoire de Pologne.— Ed. 

© Frederick William III.— Ed. 

- Draft for a Speech on France’s Attitude to Poland 325 

over to Napoleon the strong places of Dalmatia, also the 
protectorate over the Ionian islands; while the Danubian prin- 
cipalities were occupied by his troops, Napoleon ordered Marmont, 
the French commander in Dalmatia, to prepare the march upon 
Albania and Macedonia. The negotiations about the partition of 
Turkey were continued at Petersburg, whither Napoleon had sent 
Savary, the head of his gendarmes and mouchards. The Report on 
his negotiations with Rumjanzev, the Russian foreign minister, has 
been recently published. Even Thibaudeau, one of Napoleon’s 
senators and admirers, says about the negotiations of Savary with 
Alexander I and Rumjanzev: 

“Putting aside every diplomatical form, they transacted their business in the 
impudent and reckless way of robber-chiefs dividing their booty’’.4 

According to the negotiations between Napoleon and Alexander 
at Tilsit, Sweden and Denmark were to be forced to join the 
continental system. Napoleon ceded to Alexander Finland (which 
the Russians occupied in 1808, and have ever kept since), and 
besides Denmark was interested in the robbery of Sweden by 
making Norway over to her. Thus Napoleon succeeded in 
completely breaking down this old antagonist of Russia. 

27 September 1808. Napoleon and Alexander at the Erfurt Congress. 

Never before had any man done so much to exalt the Russian 
power as Napoleon did from 1807-1812. From 1808 to 1811 the 
Poles were consumed by Napoleon in Spain. For the first time in their 
history they were prostituted as the mercenaries of despotism. Of 
the army of 90,000, formed in the duchy, so many were 
despatched to Spain, that the duchy was denuded of troops when 
the Austrian archduke Ferdinand invaded it in 1809. 

1809, April. While Napoleon marched upon Vienna, the 
archduke Ferdinand upon Warsaw. The Poles invade Galicia, 
force the archduke to withdraw from Warsaw (1 June); the 
Russians, Napoleon’s allies, enter Galicia to assist in fact the 
Austrians against the Poles. - 

14 October 1809: The Polish provinces called by the Austrians 
“New Galicia”, together with the district of Zamojsk, was reunited 
to the duchy of Warsaw. Napoleon left to Austria old Galicia, after 
having separated from it, in order to make it over to Russia, the 
district of Tarnopol, part of old Podolia.’’ What we have to think 
of this Fifth Partition (Lelewel) may be seen from a satirical letter 
of Czar Alexander I to prince Kourakin, published at the time in 

a A.C. Thibaudeau, Le Consulat et l’Empire, ou Histoire de la France et de 
Napoléon Bonaparte de 1799 a 1815, t. 6 (Empire—t. 3), p. 222, Paris, 1835.— Ed. 

the gazettes of Petersburg and Moscow, d. d. Petersburg 1/13 November 
1809. The Czar writes: 

“The treaty is being ratified between France and Austria, and consequently our 
hostile movements against the latter cease simultaneously. According to the 
principles of that peace, Austria remains, as before, our neighbour by her 
possession of Galicia, and the Polish provinces, instead of being united into one 
single body, are divided for ever between the three crowns. Thus the dreams of a 
political revolution in Poland have vanished. The present order of things fixes the 
limits between Poland and Russia who has not only not suffered any loss in this 
affair, but on the contrary extends her dominion” (au sein de la Pologne) “in the 
very heart of Poland.” » 

The Poles now demanded the restoration of the name of Poland 
for the duchy. The Czar opposed. On October 20, 1809, 
Champagny, minister of foreign affairs, addressed a note, by 
order of Napoleon, to the Russian government, in which it was 
stated that he approved the effacing [of] the name of Pole and 
Poland, not only from every public act, but even from history. This was 
to prepare his proposal—after his divorce with Joséphine—for 
the hand of the Czar’s sister.‘ 

4 January 1810: Secret convention between Napoleon’s ambas- 
sador Caulaincourt and count Rumyjanzev, to this effect: 

“Art. 1. The kingdom of Poland shall never be re-established. Art. 2. The name 
of Poland and Pole shall never be applied to any of the parties that previously 
constituted that kingdom, and they shall disappear from every public or official 
act.” Besides “the Grand duchy shall never be aggrandised by the annexation of 
any of the old Polish provinces; the orders of Polish chivalry shall be abolished; 
and, finally, all these engagements shall be binding on the king of Saxony, Grand 
Duke of Warsaw, as on Napoleon himself.” (Thiers, Consulat et ’'Empire, X1, [357, 
358].) 

It was after the negotiations for that convention that Napoleon 
proposed for the hand of Alexander’s sister.**° Napoleon’s 
irritation and wounded self-love at the hesitation of the Czar (who 
delayed declaring himself from middle of December to middle of 
January, under various pretexts), and the repugnance of the 
Czar’s mother,“ made Napoleon look elsewhere for a wife, and 
break off negotiations. 

“The Emperor Napoleon,” says Crétineau-Joly: “Histoire de l’église Romaine en 

face de la Révolution”, “did not allow his policy to lose itself in a phraseology 
sentimentally revolutionary. With one stroke of the pen his minister effaced, even 

4 Sankt-Peterburgskiye vedomosti, November 9, 1809 and Moskovskiye vedomosti, 
November 17, 1809.— Ed. 

5 Quoted from Sawaszkiewicz, op. cit., pp. 82-83.— Ed. 

¢ Anna Pavlovna.— Ed. 

d Maria Fedorovna.— Ed. 

Draft for a Speech on France’s Attitude to Poland 397 

from history, the name of Poland, and a treaty, which subsequent events rendered 
null, struck out that name as if it were a geographical superfetation.” 

After his marriage with the daughter of the Austrian Emperor; 
Napoleon had a new opportunity for the restoration of Poland. I 
quote from a French author, whose history is an apotheosis of 
Napoleon. Norvins says: | 

“Napoleon was enabled, in 1810, to realise, at last, that noble project”, viz. the 
restoration of Poland, “because Austria offered him both the Galicias, but he 

refused, in order not to have a war with Russia who prepared war against him the 
very day after the conclusion of the treaty of Tilsit.”> 

After what has preceded, it is almost superfluous to say that 
Napoleon made his war of 1812 against Russia not out of any 
regard for Poland. He was forced into it by Russia who on 19/31 
December 1810 allowed the import of colonial commodities in 
neutral ships, prohibited some French commodities, hardly taxed 
others, and made not the least concession despite all the 
diplomatic efforts of Napoleon at preventing the war. He must 
either resign his continental system, or make war against Russia. 

28 June 1812. Day of entry of Napoleon at Vilna. On that day 
the existence of confederate Poland (that is Poland united to 
Lithuania) was proclaimed at the diet of Warsaw, and a national 
war. Napoleon told the deputies of Warsaw, that he did not want a 
national war. (Charras tells‘ us that by his hatred of such a war etc. 

100 days.) °°