Demonstrators in Warsaw clash with Russian troops…

Demonstrators in Warsaw clash with Russian troops on February 27, 1861, the year of the peasant emancipation decree in the Russian Empire, and several are killed or wounded.

The Russians, determined to be firm with the radicals, seek a dialogue with the upper classes, but Polish aristocrat Andrzej Artur Zamoyski, worried lest he appear subservient to the Russians, had demanded a return to the guarantees of the 1815 constitution.

Such demands had been rejected, and Zamoyski had eventually been ordered to leave the country.

The Russian viceroy has turned to Zamoyski's rival, Margrabia (margrave) Aleksander Wielopolski, whose program of limited concessions (Polonization of education, restoration of local self-government, transformation of the peasants into tenants, and emancipation of the Jews) is acceptable to St. Petersburg.

Wielopolski's contempt for public opinion and high-handed methods—especially the disbanding of the Agricultural Society and a showdown with the Roman Catholic church—estranges him from the Poles.

Tension grows after the massacre of demonstrators near the castle square.