At his abdication Napoleon committed his Polish troops to the clemency of the Tsar, and Alexander was neither vengeful nor blind to the opportunities of the Polish question. His paramount position in 1814 permitted him to entertain hopes that he would be able to reunite most of the territory of the former Commonwealth in a kingdom under his own sceptre, and he brought Czartoryski as one of his negotiators to the Congress of Vienna. But the Tsar’s wishes were thwarted by Austria, Britain and France, which could not countenance Prussia being given swathes of Germany in compensation for those she would relinquish in Poland, nor indeed the huge westward expansion of Russian power attendant on the creation of a Russian-dominated Poland. The re-establishment of a fully independent Poland was mooted by Britain and France but never seriously considered, and for all his good intentions Alexander would never have been able to sell the idea at home, where opinion reacted to his Polish plans with indignation.
In the end, a Kingdom of Poland consisting of 127,000 square kilometres with a population of 3.3 million was carved out of all three partitions. In addition, Kraków and a tiny area around the city was turned into a republic. The Tsar of Russia was the King of Poland, and all three partitioning powers were the protectors of the Republic of Kraków. The remainder of the Polish lands held by Austria were administered separately, as the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, with the help of docile assemblies. The major share of the Polish lands retained by Prussia was given separate status as the Grand Duchy of Posen. All three partitioning monarchs made fulsome declarations pledging themselves to treat their Polish subjects with benevolence and to respect their institutions.
The new Polish state, usually referred to as the Congress Kingdom, was a curious entity. The constitution, drawn up by Czartoryski, was the most liberal in Central Europe. There was a bicameral Sejm of 128 deputies, seventy-seven of them elected by the szlachta and fifty-one by non-noble property owners, and sixtyfour senators. It lacked any legislative powers, and its function was
primarily administrative, regulatory and judicial. Foreign policy and the police were both run from St Petersburg; Alexander’s brother Constantine was installed in Warsaw as commander-inchief of the Polish army; the former legionary General Zajączek was Alexander’s viceroy; and the Russian Nikolai Novosiltsev was Alexander’s commissioner in the government of the Kingdom.
There was something unnatural about the close association between huge, autocratic Russia and the tiny constitutional Congress Kingdom. It was perhaps inevitable that either Poland would act as a springboard for the liberalisation of Russia or that Russia would gradually swallow up and digest its small satellite. At first, the former seemed the more likely. Large sections of Russian society had come under foreign influence as a result of the Napoleonic wars and appeared open to change. As a consequence of absorbing so much Polish territory, by 1815 no less than 64 per cent of the nobility of the Romanov realm was of Polish descent, and since there were more literate Poles than Russians, more people within it could read and write Polish than Russian. The third largest city, Wilno, was entirely Polish in character and its university was the best in the Empire.
In his speech at the opening of the Polish Sejm in April 1818, Alexander held out a succulent carrot to the Poles. ‘Live up to your duties,’ he exhorted them. ‘The results of your labours will show me whether I shall be able to abide by my intention of expanding the concessions I have already made to you.’ But his enthusiasm for liberalism waned, while Novosiltsev, who had no time for Polish aspirations and did not like Czartoryski, did all he could to undermine Polish autonomy. He exploited the incipient conflicts between Alexander and Constantine, and between both of them and various Polish statesmen, promoting the view, which gained acceptance in Russia, that the Poles were not grateful for the favours they had been granted. When, in 1820, the Sejm began to openly debate political issues and stood up in defence of the constitution, which had been infringed by Alexander and his officers, he dissolved it. When he opened the next session, in 1825, he insisted that its deliberations be held in camera and excluded all those deputies he deemed subversive.