Concept

Congress Poland

Overview

Congress Poland, or the Congress Kingdom of Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It was established when the French ceded a part of Polish territory to the Russian Empire following France's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1915, during World War I, it was replaced by the German-controlled nominal Regency Kingdom until Poland regained independence in 1918.

Following the partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, Poland ceased to exist as an independent nation for 123 years. The territory, with its native population, was split among the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire. After 1804, an equivalent to Congress Poland within the Austrian Empire was the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also commonly referred to as "Austrian Poland". The area incorporated into Prussia initially also held autonomy as the Grand Duchy of Posen outside of the German Confederation, but was later demoted to a mere Prussian province (the Province of Posen), which was subsequently annexed in 1866 into the North German Confederation, the predecessor of the German Empire.

The Congress Kingdom of Poland was theoretically granted considerable political autonomy by the liberal constitution. However, its rulers, the Russian emperors, generally disregarded any restrictions on their power. It was, therefore, little more than a puppet state in a personal union with the Russian Empire. The autonomy was severely curtailed following uprisings in 1830–1831 and 1863, as the country became governed by viceroys, and later divided into governorates (provinces). Thus, from the start, Polish autonomy remained little more than fiction.

The capital was located in Warsaw, which, towards the beginning of the 20th century, became the Russian Empire's third-largest city after Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The moderately multicultural population of Congress Poland was estimated at 9,402,253 inhabitants in 1897. It was mostly composed of Poles, Polish Jews, ethnic Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and a small Russian minority. The predominant religion was Roman Catholicism and the official language used within the state was Polish until the failed January Uprising (1863) when Russian became co-official as a consequence. Yiddish and German were widely spoken by their native speakers.

The territory of Congress Poland roughly corresponds to modern-day Kalisz Region and the Lublin, Łódź, Masovian, Podlaskie and Holy Cross Voivodeships of Poland as well as southwestern Lithuania and a small part of the Grodno District of Belarus.

The Kingdom of Poland effectively came to an end with the Great Retreat of Russian forces in 1915 and was succeeded by the Government General of Warsaw, established by the Germans. In 1917, part of this was renamed as the short-lived Kingdom of Poland, a client state of the Central Powers, which had a Regency Council instead of a king.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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Christianity did not get footing in Russia and the other countries of the North, till very late. It is said, that a princess, named Olha, first introduced it, about the end of the tenth century, as Clotilda, niece to an Arian prince, did among the Franks; the wife of Miceslaus, duke of Poland, among the Poles; and the sister of the emperor Henry II. among the Hungarians. Women are naturally easily persuaded by the…
Voltaire, The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia
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The ordinary protection of Poland is in the hands of a force which the State is obliged to support. It is composed of two bodies independent of each other under two different generals. The two generals are independent of each other, and though they are nominated by the king, are responsible to the State alone and have supreme authority over their troops. The colonels are absolute masters of their regiments, and it…
Voltaire, Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden
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The first pamphlet we lay before the public is called _The Northern Crisis_. It was printed in London in 1716, and relates to the intended Dano-Anglo-Russian _invasion of Skana_ (Schonen). During the year 1715 a northern alliance for the partition, not of Sweden proper, but of what we may call the Swedish Empire, had been concluded between Russia, Denmark, Poland, Prussia, and Hanover.
Karl Marx, Secret Diplomatic History of The Eighteenth Century
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Congress Poland

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