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November 29, 1830, attacking Russian cavalry
companies and assaulting the Russian grand
duke's residence in Warsaw. Polish army regi-
ments, citizens, and prisoners, joined the insur-
rection. Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich,
brother of Czar
NICHOLAS I
, fled the city. The rebels
set up General Jozef Chlopicki (1771-1854) as
Polish ruler with dictatorial powers. The Poles,
who had been formally ruled in a separate King-
dom of Poland with the Russian czar as their
king, increased the stakes of their revolt by
announcing the end of the Russian succession to
its throne on January 25, 1831. While Russian
troops rested in the winter and prepared for an
upcoming campaign, the Polish side began to
suffer from internal dissension. On May 26,
1831, Russian forces won the battle of Ostroleka,
moved westward, and seized Warsaw on Sep-
tember 8, 1831. The rebellion collapsed with its
leaders fleeing Poland. Russia, which had
quelled sympathetic uprisings in the Ukraine
and elsewhere, now fully incorporated its part of
Poland as a Russian territory. It also launched an
aggressive policy of Russification with the goal of
destroying all vestiges of Polish nationhood.
Temporarily defeated, the Poles in Russia would
rise again in 1863 in another ill-fated rebellion.
Instead there was an attempt on Konstantin's
life. The Russian administration in Warsaw
responded by trying to draft the young rebels,
mostly students, into the Russian army. Many
fled into the forests, where they formed a revo-
lutionary assembly. Open rebellion erupted on
January 22, 1863, spreading rapidly through the
country and into neighboring Lithuania. Bands
of poorly equipped and inexperienced youths
conducted guerrilla warfare against Russian sol-
diers for almost two years. British, French, and
Austrian attempts at mediation failed and
together with the rebellion itself contributed to a
nationalist and conservative backlash in St.
Petersburg, where Alexander's reformist impulse
had begun to slow down. The Polish rebels set up
a clandestine government in Warsaw and Lithua-
nia but they were suppressed by May 1864,
never having received the military aid promised
by Napoleon III of France. The Russians killed or
exiled the participants and confiscated their
property. Poland lost all vestiges of self-govern-
ment and was reorganized as a Russian province;
the Russian language became obligatory in Pol-
ish schools.
Poltava, Battle of
(1709)
A turning point in the Great Northern War
fought between Sweden and Russia from
1700-21, the Battle of Poltava also marked the
emergence of Russia as a major European power.
In 1708, after years of desultory fighting and
meddling in Polish politics, which followed the
important Swedish victory at the Battle of Narva
in November 1700, the Swedish king, Charles
XII, invaded Russia in the hope of bringing the
war to an end. Charles's somewhat unorthodox
strategy involved a detour through Ukrainian
lands, where he hoped to form an alliance with
the Cossack leader Ivan
MAZEPA
, before turning
to attack Moscow. Mazepa, however, was only
able to deliver about 2,000 Cossack troops, far
less than expected. In October 1708, at Lesnaya,
the Russians were able to intercept and defeat
15,000 Swedish soldiers traveling to reinforce
Polish Rebellion of 1863-64
Three decades after the November Insurrection,
Russian-occupied Poland rose again for its inde-
pendence in 1863. Known as the January Insur-
rection, it was also unsuccessful. Although Czar
ALEXANDER II
tried to implement a reformist pro-
gram with concessions to the Poles in education,
religion, and administration, the fundamental
issue of Polish autonomy remained unaddressed.
The authoritarian manner of the czar's viceroy in
Warsaw provoked both the moderate gentry and
the more radical youth to agitate for indepen-
dence in 1861. The czar's appointment of his
brother Konstantin Nikolaevich, a leading liberal
member in St. Petersburg court politics, as
viceroy of Warsaw in 1862 and his promise to
grant local voting rights did not mollify the Poles.
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