...it gets off the ground in February…

...it gets off the ground in February only in Kraków (where a national government is proclaimed by the revolutionary leader Jan Tyssowski [1811-57] and others on February 18) and in the neighboring districts of western Galicia (ruled by Austria).

Austrian troops put down the rising in Kraków by February 29 and the city is annexed; elsewhere, Austrian officials channel peasant antagonism toward the Polish nationalist landowners against the mostly noble rebels.

The peasants, who remain loyal to Austria, receive a ten-florin bounty for capturing or killing a seditious landlord, regarded by the peasants as potentially worse oppressors than the Austrians.

A jacquerie (peasant revolt) develops, in the course of which many manors are burned down and landowners killed.

This comes as a shock to Polish democrats who have extolled the people (lud) as the backbone and the hope of the nation and to conservatives who have warned against a social upheaval.