1914 - Polish Legion
The inspiration of the idea of a Polish military force and the most active and indefatigable worker in this direction was Joseph Pilsudski. Pilsudski was a born leader of men, admired by all who come in contact with him. He is worshipped by his soldiers who will do anything at his command. Everywhere he is esteemed for his high principles, exalted conception of duty, generous heart, bravery and modesty.
Joseph Pilsudski was born in Lithuania in 1867, and a scion of an ancient princely family, distinguished for its patriotism. For its active participation in uprisings the family was deprived of many of its estates. When Joseph was a small boy his father was impoverished by the fire which destroyed his home and the adjoining properties. His mother gave him his early education at home, instilling in him exalted feelings of patriotism. Later, when he entered a Russian school, his sensitive nature revolted against the abuse and insult heaped upon Poland, her history and her people. In 1885 he entered the University of Kharkov and joined the student revolutionary society. Two years later he was arrested and exiled to Siberia. In a dying condition from consumption, he was released in 1892.
During the years spent in exile he acquired a great deal of knowledge and worked out the daring plan for redeeming his nation from bondage. He preached his gospel in season and out of season and enthused a great many men and women in all walks of life. Believing that only by an armed uprising could Poland throw off her shackles, he devoted many years of study to military art, of which he became a master. In Russian Poland and Galicia he organized secret military schools where officers for the future Polish army received instruction.
He won great distinction as a general and strategist, and acquired wide popularity among the people as the country's redeemer. His name has already become almost mythical in Poland. When he came to Warsaw in the fall of 1916, great throngs were awaiting him at the railroad station. He was deluged with flowers. The horses of his carriage were unhitched and he was drawn through the streets by the populace. "Elected by nobody, appointed by no one," says one writer, "he came as the lightning out of the darkness of the night and the nation acclaimed him as their Chief." Only a few years ago denounced by some as a dangerous agitator and impractical idealist, Pilsudski is to-day the generally recognized leader of Poland.
It was his popularity and the masterful stroke of resigning his position as Brigadier-General of the Legions in the autumn of 1916, which, probably more than anything else, was responsible for the recognition of Poland's independence on the part of the Central Powers. Seeing that all the negotiations of the Supreme National Committee and other political organizations were powerless to secure this recognition, he determined to force the issue. Many months prior to this step he discouraged recruiting for the Legions and a secret organization was formed at his behest. It enlisted tens of thousands of well trained military men, to be used in an uprising against Germany should she bargain with Russia for a separate peace.
It was a dramatic way of serving notice on the governments of the Central Powers that the Polish people had ceased to believe in the sincerity of the indefinite promises made on various occasions and that they did not propose to be duped any longer and to be used as a stake in a possible separate peace-bargaining with Russia. It served its purpose. The two governments became more willing to negotiate. "
As a result of the negotiations came the manifesto of November 5th, 1916, read in the name of the two emperors by the military representTatives at Warsaw and Lublin. The manifesto declared that: "Inspired by firm confidence in a final November 5, victory of their arms and prompted by a desire 1916 to lead the Polish territorities, wrested by their armies under heavy sacrifices from Russian domination, toward a happy future, His Majesty the German Emperor and His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Austria and Apostolic King of Hungary have resolved to form of these territories an independent State with a hereditary monarchy and a constitutional government. The exact frontiers of the Kingdom of Poland will be outlined later. The new Kingdom will receive the guarantees needed for the free development of its own forces by a union with the two allied Powers. The glorious traditions of the Polish armies of the past and the memory of the brave Polish comrades in arms in the great war of our days shall continue to live in your own national army. The organization, instruction and command of this army will be arranged by common agreement."
The proclamation was received with great enthusiasm in Poland but it failed to include certain of the points insisted upon by the Poles. This probably explains the reserve of Poland's official reply to it.
A serious clash came over the question of the organization of the army. The Central Powers proposed that recruiting stations be set up immediately all over Poland to raise an army. Pilsudski and the majority of the political leaders of the country objected to such a procedure, pointing out that Poland alone and only through a properly and legally chosen Diet can decide this question.
The Polish Legions, which were released by the Austrian Emperor from their former oath of allegiance, swore fealty to the Provisional Polish Government and became the nucleus of the Polish army. They were then stationed in the various cities to replace the troops of the Central Empires, which had hitherto garrisoned the country.
The Polish demands were finally granted by the Central Powers. A Polish Provisional Regent, known as the Marshal of the Crown, was appointed in the person of Waclav Niemoyowski, a grandson of Bonawentura Niemoyowski, the last president of the Polish government of 1831. This choice was made to emphasize the illegality of the annexation of the Congressional Kingdom by Russia in 1831 and to recognize the status of Poland as it existed from 1815 to 1831 by virtue of the Treaty of Vienna. Pending the convocation of the Diet, a Council of State was organized, composed of twenty-five representatives from all parts of the country. Fifteen representatives were chosen from the part of Poland occupied by Germany and ten from the part occupied by Austria. All political parties, religious creeds and social classes are represented. The State Council is presided over by the Marshal of the Crown, and constitutes the provisional government of the country. Germany and Austria each have ex-officio representatives in the Council. On January 15, 1917, the Council met for the first time.
Pilsudski incarnated his idea in the Fighting Squad of the Polish Socialist Party which was very active in the fight on Russian autocracy during the revolution of 1905-1907. Having been forced to flee from Russian Poland in 1907, Pilsudski had taken refuge ia Galicia, where he had utilized the sokols (athletic clubs) and shooting clubs for the purpose of organizing an efficient military force to use against Russia in case of war. After the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909, -when Austria was preparing for war against Russia, he came into contact with the Austrian staff and offered to raise a volunteer legion on their behalf. He began to organize this in 1911, three years before the outbreak of the present war. It consisted mainly of Socialistic emigrants from Russian Poland, many of whom were trained as officers with the help of the Austrian military authorities.
When the war broke out, the legion was put on an official basis. Pilsudski was appointed to its command, and both his staff and the rank and file were Polish Socialists, largely young men studying in Galicia, who had come under the influence of Pilsudski's propaganda, but a considerable number of Austrians joined it also. At the outbreak of war be mobilized his forces, as the Polish Legion, and, advancing across the border, seized Kielec. The actual military result was of no great importance, but it soon became clear that his bold decisive action had powerfully impressed the national mind. He was recalled, as leading an "irregular body," and in order to regularise that irregular body, the Austrian command found it somehow reasonable to embody him and his legions in their regular army.
As a military leader Pilsudski shewed marked ability; politically, his inspiration was his wholehearted hatred of the old Russian regime of Tsarism, and thus owing both to his qualities and their defects he could not analyse the peculiar difficulties of the Polish question generally, or see that Germany was just as strong an opponent of Polish liberty as Russia, and infinitely the more insidious. To this patriotic Pole living in territory grabbed by Russia from the ancient Republic, Russia was the obvious enemy. He had no sympathies for any powers either on the side of the Central Empires or on that of the Entente: his only motive was to fight the enemies of Poland. Poland was encircled by foes, and it really mattered little to Pilsudski what segment of that circle he originally "went for," provided only that he hurled himself, like a wild cat, at something hostile.
By the end of 1915 the Germans had taken possession-though largely with Austrian troops-of the territory of the Kingdom of Poland, and had seen the potentiality of Pilsudski in the way of raising a Polish army, consisting not merely of the legions, who were a body of a very few thousand men, but of a Polish force, consisting, so they hoped, not of a few thousand men, but of at least 700,000, to fight in the interests not of Austria nor of Poland, but of Germany. With this in view Germany managed, without detaching the Polish legions from the Austrian army, to include them in the general advance to the Stokhod front in December, 1915.
There they served till the late summer of 1916, when Pilsudski, after constant friction with Bernhardi, who was the German commander of that section, suddenly refused to serve there any more, and, by flat mutiny, withdrew on August 28th a number of his troops from the front and marched them back to Warsaw. By the beginning of 1916 the Polish Legion was well equipped and in June the brigades totalled 18,000. When the Polish independence parties at Warsaw asked for the nomination of Pilsudski as the commander in-chief of a Polish army all the concessions previously granted by the Germans were withdrawn. The Austrians' ideas with regard to Poland had undergone a slight change, and though suspicious of Pilsudski and his legionaries, the Government decided to encourage them in the hope that a union might be effected of the Polish kingdom and Galicia under Austrian protection. In July Pilsudski felt himself in a position to appeal for concessions regarding the substitution of Poles for Austrians as officers in the legion and for the use of the Polish uniform and colours.
In September, 1916, just after his mutiny and retirement with his troops, it was announced from Vienna (Wiener Korrespondenz Bureau) that the Polish legions were going to be transformed into a Polish Auxiliary Corps. So far from being shot as mutinous they were recognised as the cadres of a Polish army, to guard the State which the Central Empires were proposing to create. Instead of having their badges torn off them and being laid in nameless graves they were given a Polish uniform with the ancient Polish badge of the White Eagle.
In fact, the nucleus for a Polish army refused to help the Central Empires in any way until they had got their Pilsudski again. Next month, accordingly (November, 1916) he was rested and reappeared. His mutiny had been completely successful: he had forced the Central Empires to promise to let him form an army of the Polish State. But at that point there broke across the common path an unbridgeable chasm, for the Germans wanted a Polish army to help Germany, and Pilsudski never contemplated such a thing. If he was to raise a Polish army, that army would be raised for Poland and Poland alone.
On the eve (literally the eve) of the German and Austrian declaration of the "State of Poland," Pilsudski declared in favour of the breaking up of the Polish legions, and of the using of them as cadres for the formation of a Polish army. He professed himself able to raise an army of 700,000 men, but this would depend on the nature of the imminent declaration of independence. Here again, now that Germany and Austria were in possession of Poland, he was "up against" the occupying Powers. A great inauguration ceremony for the new army was arranged, and on its being handed over at Warsaw in April, 1917, to the Governor, General von Beseler, as cadres for the new Polish army, von Beseler addressed the troops in the most gratifying terms.
When the Polish legions were taken over to form the nucleus for an army, they were absolutely unimportant in point of actual numbers. They consisted at this time of three full brigades, i. e. six regiments of infantry, with nine batteries of 8 cm. quick-firing guns, one regiment of cavalry, and complete equipment of wireless, ambulance, doctors, etc. But Germany, quite correctly, saw in them the potentiality of a much larger force. If they, and in especial if their creater Pilsudski, could be brought to see themselves "as others saw them," Germany would get her projected army of 700,000 to 800,000 men fighting for her. But again the insuperable difficulty was Pilsudski
In March 1917 came the Russian revolution, and to Pilsudski's frank and filibustering mind, the new Russia, since it too was revolutionary and the foe of tyrants, became his spiritual brother, and when the offer was made him to command the Polish army in Russia he did not refuse it, though he seems not to have accepted it. Upon which, the German authorities, at last despairing of getting him to throw himself into German schemes arrested him for conspiracy. His last public declaration was that Germany had created a Polish state in order to raise a Polish army for herself.
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