Kościuszko uprising

Kościuszko uprising

General Tadeusz Kościuszko swears the oath in the main market square in Krakow to liberate Poland from the invading powers

date	1794
place	Republic of Poland-Lithuania
output	Victory of the Russian-Prussian alliance
consequences	Third partition of Poland in 1795

Parties to the conflict
Russia Prussia	Poland-Lithuania

The Rzeczpospolita in the borders after the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 and the military actions of the warring parties: Poland (in yellow), Russia (in green) and Prussia (in blue)

The Kościuszko Uprising ( Polish Insurekcja kościuszkowska ) was a military uprising directed against the partitions of Poland by Polish patriots under the leadership of General Tadeusz Kościuszko in 1794.

prehistory

After the first division of Poland in 1772 between Prussia , Russia and Austria and the second division in 1793 between Prussia and Russia, Poland had a residual area of ​​around 230,000 km² and around 4.4 million inhabitants. The government had also been forced by the neighboring powers to reduce the troops to 15,000 men, which led to great dissatisfaction in the army. When the brigade of General Antoni Madaliński opposed the dissolution on March 12, 1794 in Ostrołęka and marched to Krakow , this was the signal for an uprising. A group of Polish patriots had prepared it from Saxony . The hope of getting help from revolutionary France , however, did not come true.

course

On March 24th, Tadeusz Kościuszko, who had rushed to Cracow, announced the uprising in the market square, no longer in a nobility confederation (such as the Confederation of Bar 1768), but as a popular uprising . Kościuszko, who had successfully participated in the American Revolutionary War , proclaimed himself a “dictator” until he could hand over power to a freely elected Sejm .

With the few regular troops and a contingent of quickly mobilized peasants who were armed with forged scythes , he forced a victory over a Russian detachment near Racławice on April 4 , but the breakthrough to Warsaw did not succeed. During the uprising in Warsaw on 17./18. April the Russian garrison there were destroyed and more than 4,000 Russian soldiers and civilians killed. But from June Russian and Prussian troops put the uprising on the defensive , and after Kościuszko's defeat on June 6 in the Battle of Szczekociny Krakow was occupied by Prussian troops. Disputes between the allied Prussians and Russians enabled Kościuszko to successfully defend Warsaw, which was besieged in mid-July, from which the Prussians even withdrew, but at the same time Vilna was lost, and with the approach of another Russian army under Suvorov , the rebels got into one hopeless situation. On October 10th, Kościuszko was defeated and captured in the Battle of Maciejowice, southeast of Warsaw. After the Battle of Praga , Warsaw capitulated to the Russians a month later.

consequences

The crushing defeat of the uprising was followed by the third partition of Poland in 1795, thus the end of the republic under constitutional law ( Rzeczpospolita ).

literature

• Erhard Moritz: Prussia and the Kościuszko uprising in 1794 - On Prussian Poland policy during the French Revolution . 1st edition. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1968.

Web links

Commons : Kościuszko Uprising  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Marian Kukiel: Kościuszko Uprising (Polish)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gotthold Rhode : History of Poland. An overview . 3rd edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (WBG), Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-00763-8 , p. 324.
2. ↑ Eberhard Zänker: Johann Gottfried Seume . Faber & Faber Verlag, Leipzig 2005, p. 139-143 .