The Duchy of Warsaw existed in 1807–1815. It was created by Napoleon, and although formally considered independent, it was in fact a satellite of France. In the event of victory over Russia, Bonaparte was going to transform it into a kingdom, but these plans were not destined to come true. After the defeat of France from the allied countries, the Duchy of Warsaw was divided between its neighbors: Austria, Prussia and Russia.
Background
At the end of the 18th century, after the partitions of the Commonwealth, part of Poland was annexed to Prussia. The attitude of the local population towards the German authorities was extremely negative. Meanwhile, while a drama was being played out in eastern Europe, the Great French Revolution broke out in the west of the Old World. Soon Napoleon came to power in Paris. He led the struggle of the French against the rest of the European monarchies, who saw in the fall of the Bourbons a threat to their own existence. Napoleon won campaign after campaign. On the conquered European lands, he established a new order and established civil liberties by analogy with those that recently appeared in France.
So, for the Poles, who lived under the yoke of foreign rule, Bonaparte became a symbol of hope for a speedy change. Representatives of the bourgeois class were waiting for French help. This confidence had its foundation, because Napoleon fought with Prussia, which meant that the two countries had a common enemy. With each defeat of the monarchist coalitions, the nationalist sentiments in Poland became stronger and stronger. In 1806, Bonaparte's army entered Prussia.
Napoleon gave the Polish lands occupied by the French under the auspices of the special interim Government Commission. Its leader was Marshal Stanislav Malakhovsky. The new authority was engaged in equipping and feeding the Polish and French troops. In addition, the commission repealed the Prussian laws and restored the previous legislation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Creation of the Duchy
In 1807, the Tilsit Peace was signed between France and its opponents. According to this document, the Duchy of Warsaw, independent of Prussia, arose. This new Polish state received lands assigned to the Germans, according to sections II and III of the Commonwealth. However, the Duchy was left without access to the Baltic Sea. The disputed Belostotsky region Napoleon gave to the Russian emperor Alexander I.
The area of the newly formed state amounted to 101 thousand square meters. km 2.5 million people lived in it. Gdansk received a special status. It became a free city (similar to the era of the Holy Roman Empire) under the supervision of a French governor.
Napoleon's project
The artificially created Duchy of Warsaw lasted only 8 years. This period fell on the period of Napoleon's greatest successes in the foreign policy arena. Of course, despite the alleged independence, the Duchy of Warsaw has always remained a satellite of France, like many other newly formed states in Western Europe. Poland became the eastern bastion of the Napoleonic empire. Its significance was extremely great in connection with the inevitably impending conflict with Russia. Therefore, it is not surprising that in 1812 the Duchy of Warsaw suffered huge losses. His army, sent to Russia, numbered about 100 thousand people. The country's status as a military camp was also confirmed by the fact that Napoleon handed out part of the Polish state property to his French generals and marshals.
In July 1807, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw received its own constitution. The signing ceremony took place in Dresden. The new fundamental law recognized the importance of the Sejm and the dominant position of the Polish nobility. Thus, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw received a slightly freer constitution, in comparison with those adopted in other European states created by Napoleon.
The French emperor removed the Jacobins from power in Poland. The consequence of his intervention was that an advantage prevailed in the Sejm in favor of the land nobility and aristocracy. Key Polish politicians were Stanislav Potocki (chairman of the Council of State), Felix Lyubensky (Minister of Justice), Tadeusz Matuszewicz (Minister of Finance) and Jozef Poniatowski (Army Organizer and Minister of War).
Power
Formally, the Duchy of Warsaw was a monarchy. It entered into a union with Saxony. Thus, the ruler of this German state, Frederick Augustus I, became the duke. The monarch had the right to change and supplement the constitution, to make adjustments to the work of the diet. The government was subordinate to him.
The Sejm had two chambers - the Embassy hut and the Senate. This authority, by virtue of historical tradition, has become the next bastion of the influence of the nobility (gentry). Interestingly, the Warsaw constitution was contrary to other Napoleonic constitutions (for example, the Westphalian and Naples) in the sense that it enshrined the principle of not appointing, but electing parliament.
Many of the state features of the Duchy of Warsaw were adopted from revolutionary France. In the Senate, governors, bishops, and coughlings sat. All of them were presented in equal proportions. The Senate, in contrast to the Ambassadorial hut, was replenished according to the appointments of the monarch. In the commune (volost) assemblies, the majority were mainly assigned to industrialists and landowners who were not noblemen.
A cast of the French system in the Duchy of Warsaw became the Council of State. Its chairman was the monarch. The council also included ministers. This body worked out bills, resolved disputes between administrative and judicial instances. The Council of State also served as an advisory function to the duke.
Diet
The diet was responsible for taxes, criminal and civil law. Also in his charge was the coinage of the Duchy of Warsaw. Much wider powers of the monarch extended to legislation on administrative and political issues. The duke also regulated the budget. Draft laws were written in the Council of State. The diet could only reject or accept them. At the same time, the government worked with a commission that proposed its own amendments to the laws, however, in this case, the State Council had the final say.
For the entire time of its existence, the Seimas met only three times: in 1809, 1811 and 1812. The last session was extraordinary. It was then that because of the decision of the Sejm, the Patriotic War began with the Duchy of Warsaw, who spoke on the side of Napoleon. Bonaparte, passing through Poland, himself initiated the convening of an emergency session. Interestingly, at that time the French emperor began the process of reviving the union with Lithuania. Relations between Vilnius and Warsaw worried Alexander I. The Russian emperor tried to pull the Lithuanians to his side, promising them a revival of the Grand Duchy. One way or another, but the project of the new Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not take place. The future of Poland was not determined by agreements, but by the war between France and Russia. The accession of the Duchy of Warsaw and the decisions of the Vienna Congress left in the past the idea of the Polish-Lithuanian Union.
Government
The government of the Duchy consisted of 6 ministers: internal affairs, justice, religion, finance, police and military. It sat in Warsaw. At the same time, the Saxon prince lived in Dresden. For this reason, there has always been a mediator between him and the government. In addition, when discussing particularly important decisions in both domestic and foreign policy, the decisive word remained with the French residents.
Also, the activities of the government were under the control of the State Council. At the same time, the ministers did not depend on the Sejm. Each department in the government was a single one. In other words, the bureaucratic hierarchy made the minister a key figure in his field. His subordinates could not dispute the decisions of his superior. Of particular importance were the ministries of police and internal affairs. They had to monitor the maintenance of order in the state. In emergency situations, the Minister of Police could even use the special guard on his own.
Society
Together with political changes, the formation of the Duchy of Warsaw gave Poland a fundamentally new legislation. According to the adopted constitution, the principles of equality of all citizens before the law were enshrined. Although the division into estates was not abolished, it was noticeably limited. Already the first elections to the commune meetings and the Sejm showed that the townspeople (bourgeoisie) were able to take advantage of the electoral rights they had just given.
At the same time, in 1808 a decree was adopted, which hit hard on the situation of the Jews. They were temporarily (for 10 years) limited in civil rights. Under the new rules, Jews were required to request official permission to marry. The Jewish population was exempted from compulsory military service, but instead, it was taxed heavily.
As in many other European countries, the most important peasant question remained. The Duchy of Warsaw was created in Poland, when serfdom still existed there. The new government abolished the feudal dependence of the villagers. However, the peasants were actually deprived of the land that remained for the nobles. The reform could not be carried out to the end. The constant Napoleonic wars caused the destruction and impoverishment of many farms. The feud between the peasants and nobles only increased every year.
Victory over Austria
Moving in the wake of Napoleonic politics, the Duchy of Warsaw entered into an inevitable conflict with opponents of the French emperor. In 1809, the war of the fifth coalition began. This time, France and its allies clashed with Austria, Britain, Sicily and Sardinia. Most of the Polish forces joined Bonaparte's army. The corps of Jozef Poniatowski (about 14 thousand people) remained in the Duchy. The Austrian army attacked Saxony and the Duchy of Warsaw, which, given the dispersal of Napoleonic forces, seemed easy prey.
The 36,000th army invaded Poland. On April 19, 1908, a general battle took place - the Battle of Rashin. Jozef Poniatowski commanded the Poles, Archduke Ferdinand Karl commanded the Austrians. The collision occurred on rough swampy terrain. The Poles fought hard, but finally retreated. Warsaw was soon surrendered. However, the general turn in the fifth coalition war was a stab in the back for the Austrians. Just a few weeks later, the Poles launched a counterattack, returned all their territories and, in addition, captured Sandomierz, Lublin, Lviv and Krakow. At the end of the war, according to the peace treaty, the Duchy of Warsaw annexed Western Galicia, thereby increasing its territory by one and a half times.
War with Russia
By the time the war between France and Russia began, the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1813) turned out to be a kind of buffer between the two main opponents. In June 1812, the Sejm in Warsaw decided to take the side of Napoleon. The campaign of the French emperor in Russia failed. Traveling east with a half-million army, he returned to his homeland with several thousand ragged and hungry officers.
The defeat of Napoleon meant the imminent end that awaited the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The war spread to the Polish lands. On January 1, 1813, three columns under the command of Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov crossed the border river Neman and headed towards Polotsk. By this time, the Duchy had not numerous Polish-Saxon troops, which were not able to withstand the Russian army , which had gained momentum. In Poland, her famous Overseas trip began, ending with the capture of Paris.
On January 27, Warsaw was peacefully taken. In fact, the Duchy ceased to exist. Some Poles, however, remained faithful to Napoleon. The 15,000-strong corps under the command of Jozef Poniatowski went to Austria, hoping that the French would nevertheless defeat the Russians and the independence of the state would be restored. In Poland, only the French units stationed on the Vistula resisted. However, they could not stop the enemy - the neutrality of Austria and Prussia, who decided to withdraw from the conflict, affected.
Abolition
When Napoleon suffered a final defeat, the victorious powers gathered in Vienna in order to determine the future of the Old World. The French emperor redrawn all borders within the European continent - now other monarchs needed to disentangle this political mess. First of all, the next partition of Poland took place. It coexisted with three powerful powers (Austria, Prussia and Russia), not interested in its existence.
May 3, 1815, according to the decision of the Congress of Vienna, new borders were established in Eastern Europe. The partition of Poland took place - the Duchy of Warsaw was abolished. Krakow, a former part of it, was proclaimed a free city with a republican state system. In this format, it lasted until 1846.
Most of the Duchy of Warsaw became part of Russia. Emperor Alexander was proclaimed Polish king. He granted autonomy and a liberal constitution to new territories. Thus, although the Duchy of Warsaw became part of Russia, its natives lived much freer than the Russians themselves. The western lands of the abolished state were given to Prussia. They formed a new German province - the Grand Duchy of Poznan.