The government of Tsar Alexander II had…

The government of Tsar Alexander II had enacted a series of liberal reforms following Russia's disastrous defeat in the Crimean War, including liberation of the serfs throughout the empire.

High-handed imposition of land reforms in Poland has aroused hostility among the landed nobles and a group of young radical intellectuals influenced by Karl Marx and the Russian liberal Alexander Herzen.

Wielopolski decides to break the Reds by drafting large numbers of them into the Russian army.

But those designated for conscription secretly flee from Warsaw (January 14-15, 1863), seek refuge in the nearby woodlands, and on January 22 issues a manifesto calling for a national insurrection, calling on the peoples of Poland, Lithuania, and Rus (Ukraine) to rise, decree peasant emancipation, and appeal for support from the Jews (”Poles of Mosaic faith”).

Thousands respond to the call, including volunteers from the portions of Poland under Prussian and Austrian rule; however, because the insurgents fail to capture any town or compact territory, the National Committee, transformed into the National Government, must operate anonymously underground in Warsaw.

Although they are greatly outnumbered, badly trained, poorly equipped, and successful in only a few engagements against the regular Russian army of three hundred thousand men, the rebels gain support among the artisan, worker, lower gentry, and official classes in the cities and stimulate peasant revolts against the large landlords in rural areas.

In the spring the Whites join the uprising, contributing finances and international contacts but also seeking to control the movement.

Fighting extends into Lithuanian and Belarusian lands but not into Ukraine.

In some instances the peasantry participate in the struggle, in others they cooperate with the Russians.

France proffers encouragement and hints that the blood of the insurgents will mark the boundaries of an independent Poland.

But in practice France, Britain, and Austria do not go beyond joint diplomatic démarches in St. Petersburg.

Prussia sides with Russia.

As moderates assume dominance in the insurgent government (by July) and delay the enactment of promised peasant reforms, they lose mass peasant support for the rebellion.

By the time Romuald Traugutt emerges to provide strong leadership for the revolutionary movement (mid-October), the rebellion has lost its dynamism.

The new viceroy in Poland, Teodor Berg, imposes a harsh regime in Warsaw; ...