Poland

by James A. Michener

  One morning she told Feliks: ‘I’m as bad as Poniatowski. I ought to have you arrested as a traitor—a Kosciuszko man … freeing the peasants and all that rubbish. But I love you, Feliks … By the way, how’s the little Orzelska, though God knows she’s not so little.’

  ‘She’s bigger now, Pani. She’s pregnant.’

  ‘Thank God! That’s what matters, Feliks. A family, a farm, a cradle, obedience up and down—that’s the soul of Poland and now you’re a part of it.’

  ‘Your nineteen castles, Pani? Should you be allowed to keep so many?’

  ‘Poland needs leadership, Feliks. Only the magnates can give it. And besides, I rebuilt my castles and palaces, and no one else would.’

  ‘Your hundred and fifty thousand peasants—the ones you own. Kosciuszko told me—’

  ‘Kosciuszko is a fool, and he will die in a Russian prison. The basic Poland will never change.’

  She encouraged him to see the Mniszech girl, and on the third day he went boldly to the door of Palais Princesse and demanded entrance. There was a scuffle, during which he forced his way in. Dashing upstairs, he threw open door after door until he located the sickroom, barging in just before Roman Lubonski could stop him.

  ‘Elzbieta!’ he cried, rushing toward her, but when he saw her dreadful pallor he realized that she was near death, and he halted some feet from her bed, standing with his head bowed.

  She was even more beautiful than he had remembered—a young girl on a sleigh, a young woman cheering the bear hunters on their trip into the mountains, a young bride kneeling before the priests, and now a young mother approaching death. He did not speak, but his heart called her name, this splendid Mniszech woman who stood in the grand line of czarinas and murderesses and ghostly figures dressed in white on castle turrets. Oh, Elzbieta, it was worth a lifetime to have kissed you once.

  Tears like the river at Niedzica rushing through the gorge came from his eyes, and after a while, without ever having spoken to the dying girl or without her having been aware that he had been in her room, he allowed Roman Lubonski to lead him away. All that day he stood in Miodowa, and at dusk, when bells inside the Palais Princesse began to toll her passing, he bowed his head and even his body, as if the weight of centuries lay upon him.

  * * *

  The end of Kosciuszko’s insurrection came with a force so terrible that all Europe shuddered. It was never known for sure who gave the order for the Pacification of Praga, or in what form General Suvorov received it; it was suspected that Catherine delivered it in person, but some believed that Fyodor Kuprin wrote it out as part of his grand design for the Final Partition: ‘You must teach these Polish pigs a lesson.’ No better agent for such a lesson than Suvorov could have been found, for on 1 November 1794 he threw his massive Russian army around the suburb of Praga on the right bank of the Vistula opposite Warsaw, where a last remnant of some 14,000 Polish patriots, including Feliks Bukowski, had assembled to try to protect the capital. Praga also contained about 10,000 civilians who were doing what they could to support the defenders of their little settlement.

  Against these Poles, Suvorov had brought up an army of nearly 40,000 professionals, and when the battle for Praga started he told them: ‘No mercy. No prisoners. We must teach these pigs a lesson.’

  The siege lasted only three days, the first, second and third of November, for on the fourth the Russians broke through, and then the terrible slaughter began. Of the 14,000 Polish troops, only 4,000 escaped to flee across the Vistula; the rest were gunned down, mercilessly. Those who tried to surrender were shot as they raised their hands in the air. Thousands more were bayoneted when they sought to submit. Those who tried to resist were clubbed to death with rifle butts. Groups of twenty and thirty Russians would chase down an alley after one Polish soldier and stomp him to death when they caught him. And the only ones who survived within the city were those few like Feliks who hid themselves in cellars until the fury passed.

  But it was the ruthless slaughter of the civilian population which stunned Europe, because Suvorov’s men rampaged through Praga, shooting everyone who moved and stabbing those who didn’t. Knifings, beheadings, shootings, castrations, rape and then piercing became the rule. It is said of such horrible affairs that ‘the gutters ran with blood,’ but that is ridiculous; however, in Praga blood did drip into the gutters, staining them forever with the hideous vengeance of the Russians.

  On the evening of the last day, a roving patrol of Russian soldiers heard a noise in a cellar, and when they inspected they uncovered Feliks Bukowski, two Polish peasants with scythes, and a woman whose infant child had made the noise. With the savage sweep of a rifle butt they silenced the child forever, and with two bayonets they slew the mother. The sight of the peasants with scythes infuriated them so that they stabbed each of the two men a score of times, and then, recognizing Feliks as a member of the gentry who may have encouraged insurrection against Catherine’s power, they kicked him to death, their heavy boots breaking most of his bones.

  The dream of real freedom was ended. The sham of Golden Freedom was restored.

  In early 1795, Baron von Eschl and Fyodor Kuprin met for the last time in the Granicki palace in conquered Warsaw, and now they were assisted by Count von Starhemberg from Vienna. With cold efficiency the three victors restudied the map already agreed upon at Niedzica, and only slight variations had to be made in the boundary lines that separated the territories of the three partitioning countries.

  Poland vanished, the new lands of Russia, Prussia and Austria meeting at a point not far from Brzesc Litewski, which the rest of the world would know as Brest-Litovsk. Each of the conquerors acquired lands he had long lusted after: Austria gaining Lublin and Pulawy; Russia picking up the Ukrainian estates owned by magnates like Lubonski and Granicki.

  There was no justification for this terrible rape of a free land. Such nations as Switzerland had long been encouraged to exist as buffers between larger powers, and there was no reason why Poland should have been denied this privilege, except that she had committed two fatal errors: she had evolved no way to defend herself with a stable government, regular taxation and a dependable army; and in her weakness she had endeavored to initiate freedoms which threatened the autocracies which surrounded her. Had her neighbors been England, France and America instead of Russia, Prussia and Austria, she would surely have been permitted to exist, for the innovations she was proposing were merely extensions of what that first trio had already accepted. To be both weak and daring is for a nation an impossibility.

  But it was what Baron von Eschl proposed during the final meeting that would shock the world when it was revealed; for many years his memorandum was unknown in foreign capitals, for it was not allowed to circulate, and there would always be some who would deny that it was ever promulgated, but it had been:

  It is the wish of my King, who is supported by the Empress of Russia, that from this day henceforth the word Poland never be used in any official document or spoken in any government circle. In our several portions every effort must be made to stamp out the language, the history and the observations.

  If a nation does not exist, the name does not exist, and we must never allow either to revive again. We have been patient. We have been compassionate. And we have been just. But as of this day a new order rules in eastern Europe, a final solution has been reached.

  With remarkable speed, peace and adjustment came to Bukowo. Jan of the Beech Trees was dead, but his widow would mind the fields until her son could assume charge. Their welfare deteriorated savagely, for with the defeat of General Kosciuszko and the imposition of foreign rule, rich landowners were encouraged to convert the hours their serfs owed them into cash taxes, which meant that Jan’s son now owed Lubonski not forty weeks of hard labor but a hundred and ten zlotys, which he could accumulate only by many hours of additional labor at wages established by the count. Life for the peasants of Bukowo became increasingly brutal, reverting to the days of 1250, but at the sa
me time the Lubonskis grew richer, and soon they rivaled the wealthiest families of Spain or England.

  Eulalia Bukowska was left a widow with a child about to be born, but she had grown to like the old manor house of Bukowo, appreciating what could be done with it if her dowry was wisely spent; her plans were both artistic and sensible, but they came to naught, because her father spirited her back to the new Warsaw, now in German hands, where his business was flourishing. In the city he found her a new husband, a member of the gentry slightly more elevated than Feliks had been, and as Lubomirska had predicted, his grandson would be eligible for membership in that gentry. So the Bukowskis lost all the Orzelski millions and the manor house reverted to its unkempt meanness. Ownership passed to Feliks’ younger brother, who suffered for some years because it was remembered that Feliks had participated in the insurrection.

  For Tadeusz Kosciuszko, immured in a Russian jail, the disappearance of Poland brought dramatic consequences: Catherine the Great, near death and seeing no possibility of further danger from the Polish hero, stayed the execution which he had expected, and at her death he was reprieved completely. Seeking voluntary exile in France, he refused an exalted appointment from Napoleon, whom at an early point he had interpreted correctly as a tyrant, and as the years rolled round he lived to see himself avidly sought after by the Russian czars as their representative and intermediary in government for their Polish holdings. But he, like the two Bukowskis, loved freedom as a tangible entity; it was good to be free, and it was good to bring freedom to others. So he chose exile in Switzerland, and one of the last acts this great man performed was to set free a group of slaves he had been awarded in America. General Suvorov, on the other hand, was rewarded for his famed Pacification of Praga by being given two thousand serfs as his personal property, some of them coming from the estate Count Lubonski held at Polz in the Ukraine, and he showed no signs at all of freeing any of them.

  The Lubonskis fared well under the new regimes, receiving additional estates and privileges as a reward for the army they had contributed to the alliance. They prospered politically, too, for when the Habsburgs realized that they had all of Galicia, and a good deal more, securely in their grasp, they looked about for reliable Polish leaders to rule the area, and Count Laskarz Lubonski was remembered for his long and faithful services. Appointed governor of the area he had been so instrumental in bringing into the Austrian fold, he took immediate steps to ensure that his son Roman would one day be appointed to the Vienna cabinet itself.

  But before this became practical, it was essential that Roman find a second wife, and especially one who had the potential for forwarding his career. There was an ugly little byplay with the Mniszechs, who insisted that title to the Palais Princesse, which, after all, they had built for their daughter, revert to their family, but Count Lubonski argued in the courts, with a battery of lawyers from Berlin, that under Polish law title had passed to the husband at the moment of marriage, and a bench of three judges, who took bribes from both families, decided finally in favor of the Lubonskis, who had paid the most. Palais Princesse, retaining its lovely name, was now the Warsaw seat of Roman Lubonski, who would soon be Count Lubonski of Vienna.

  Selection of his next bride took a curious turn, for one summer’s day his mother, the present Countess Lubonska, appeared alone at Lubomirska’s palace with a startling proposal: ‘Princess, I’ve been thinking about many things—Europe, Russia, especially the Habsburgs in Vienna. And if my son is to pick his way intelligently through the traps I can see looming ahead, he’s got to have a clever wife. My husband has never trusted your family—“Those damned Czartoryskis!” he calls you, always stirring things up. But as I grow older I see that the perfect wife for my son would be some able Czartoryski girl—someone exactly like yourself, as you were fifty years ago. Are there any?’

  Lubomirska was flattered; it had always been her task to keep track of the marriageable children in her extended family, so it was easy for her to rattle off four names of girls who were showing real promise: ‘You need someone who knows languages. Russian for the future. French for the past. German for power and English for common sense. Of course, she’d have to have Polish for singing.’

  ‘How many do you speak?’

  ‘Those five plus Italian. But she should also have had experience in the good schools of Switzerland, Italy and either France or England. Forget those of Germany, they train only policemen. Above all, as you Radziwills know, she must be clever.’

  ‘And attractive.’

  ‘If she’s all the rest, she’ll be attractive. My nephew Karolek at Pulawy has exactly the girl you seek, and may you be lucky enough to find her before someone else does.’ That evening she dispatched a rider to Pulawy with a simple message: ‘In the case of Moniczka, do absolutely nothing until the Count and Countess Lubonski arrive.’ And next day the Lubonskis traveled south to Castle Gorka to pick up their grieving son Roman for a casual visit to the great Czartoryski families at Pulawy, where a marriage was arranged.

  The final days of King Stanislaw August were mournful. During the siege of Warsaw his brother Michal Poniatowski, Poland’s leading Catholic clergyman and her primate, had been so eager to escape capture by revolutionaries that he wrote a secret letter to the King of Prussia, advising him how best to capture the city. Unfortunately, his message fell into the hands of Kosciuszko’s men, who were so outraged by it that they threatened to hang him. The distraught king, thinking only of his throne, presented his brother with a terrible edict: ‘Hang yourself, for if you wait for them to do it, the scandal will destroy the throne.’ Michal had obeyed, but his suicide accomplished nothing, for soon thereafter both the throne and the nation collapsed.

  Stanislaw August, no longer a ruling king, became an embarrassment to the victorious powers, who solved his case rather neatly: he was taken to Russia as a kind of state prisoner, and although he repeatedly petitioned his former bedfellow, Catherine the Great, for mercy, she refused to grant it or even to see him. Having found many lovers she liked better, she allowed him to rot in his comfortable prison, and there, in 1798, he died, an exile, a rejected lover, the unwitting architect of his nation’s suicide.

  VII

  Mazurka

  Two days before Christmas in the year 1895 the spacious steamboat that plied the Danube between Vienna and Budapest arrived at the former city in early afternoon, bringing with it a tall, slim man in his mid-forties. Since he was a nobleman and a member of the emperor’s cabinet, he was given special treatment; when the steamer docked in the canal, which had been dug to bring an arm of the Danube right into the heart of the city, all lesser passengers had to wait until this austere gentleman debarked into the cold, wintry town, his massive fur coat drawn tightly about him as protection from the snow which drifted down.

  He was Count Andrzej Lubonski, Minister of Minorities, whose mission to conciliate the Hungarian agitators had succeeded so conspicuously that he could expect commendation when he reported to the emperor. Hungarians were not easy to deal with; they demanded all and conceded nothing, but he had to respect their furious patriotism and would tonight give public evidence of that respect.

  Waiting for him on the quay were two liveried servants, one driving a curtained carriage drawn by two handsome gray Lippizaners, the other a footman who handled luggage and then rode perched beside the driver. Policemen monitoring the arrival area recognized the count’s carriage and gave it deference; other would-be politicians from the lesser provinces of the empire, places like Croatia and Tyrol, sometimes tried to make a splash when they came to Vienna, acquiring for themselves a team of four or six dazzling white Lippizaners, but such men were quickly perceived as being nouveau, a French word much used in the capital, and were ridiculed.

  Count Lubonski, with one of the richest holdings in the Austrian section of Poland, could have afforded sixteen Lippizaners had he so desired, but he felt that such display was best left to the royal family; he would be content to have his sober-g
ray carriage drawn by sober-gray Lippizaners, but he did have four matched teams.

  Acknowledging no one, he moved quickly from the gangplank to his carriage, where he said simply: ‘Ringstrasse.’ The footman busied himself with adjusting the bearskin robe that would protect Lubonski from the cold, then scrambled to his perch, and the carriage was on its way.

  It proceeded along the quayside for some distance, then left the Danube Canal, turning into that glorious chain of boulevards which encircled the ancient heart of the city. Thirty-eight years before, in 1857, the Emperor Franz Josef had decreed that the walls of Vienna, which had protected it so valiantly in centuries past, should be torn down, with the empty glacis which then separated the fortifications from the encroaching suburbs to be converted into a number of wide, tree-lined avenues, on each side of which were the great buildings of government. It had required nearly a quarter of a century to complete this grandiose plan, and some historians had objected to the demolition of walls which reached back almost a thousand years.

  ‘Let us retain in Europe one noble city which illustrates how our ancestors lived,’ these antiquarians argued. ‘Let the new Vienna proliferate on the other side of the glacis, and keep our walls as the symbol of our city’s history.’

  The emperor would not listen, and although Vienna lost an awesome medieval monument, it gained as noble a series of boulevards as the world provided. ‘Paris has better,’ some travelers claimed, but the French ones, named after Napoleon’s marshals, were not so intimately connected with the heart of their city, nor did they have that sequence of majestic buildings.

  On its Ring stood the great museums, the votive churches, the university, the theater, the Rathaus, the buildings of parliament and the stately opera. When Count Lubonski drove past these solid monuments he felt that he was at the center of the world, and he always rededicated himself to his assigned task of keeping the multiple minorities which comprised the Austrian Empire placated within the intricate system.