The Agricultural Society eventually settled on a project which commuted all labour-rents to money-rents with assured tenancy, to be followed by a conversion of tenancies into freeholds by negotiation between landlord and tenant. The country followed the course of the discussion and by 1860 the Agricultural Society had come to be regarded as the
In 1860 Wielopolski came up with a plan acceptable to the Tsar which was, in essence, a cautious return to the principles of the Congress Kingdom of the 1820s. Russia would concede a measure of administrative reform in the government of the Kingdom and permit the creation of consultative bodies; the clampdown on education would be eased and the peasant question would be solved by Wielopolski, who in 1862 became head of the civil government. In replication of earlier arrangements, Alexander’s brother Constantine was sent to Poland as viceroy. For his part, Wielopolski undertook to maintain order and keep Polish political ambitions under control.
This would not be easy. Wielopolski was disliked for his arrogance and apparent subservience to Russia. His rival Andrzej Zamoyski was a man of lesser intelligence but greater popularity who was beginning to be propelled by pressures from below. When summoned by Grand Duke Constantine he refused to collaborate, preferring to remain in opposition. The promise of liberalisation had acted like a tonic on the more radical elements of the population. Meetings were held, discussions raged in word and print on every aspect of reform, emancipation and autonomy, and the conclusion was drawn more often than not that any accommodation with Russia was impossible. The police listened, people were investigated, and the cells of the Citadel began to fill up with hundreds, then thousands.
On 25 February 1861, a meeting commemorating the 1830 rising was dispersed by police. Two days later a religious procession was fired on, leaving five dead. On 8 April a similar demonstration resulted in over a hundred deaths. Disturbances recurred in Warsaw and other cities in a climate of mutual provocation. Martial law was decreed and on 15 October Russian troops broke into a couple of Warsaw churches in which demonstrators had sought sanctuary, and some 1,500 were carted off to the Citadel. All churches and synagogues in the country closed in protest, leading to the arrest of bishops, priests and rabbis.
A group of radicals known as ‘Reds’ had founded a secret Warsaw City Committee, and this set up a countrywide provisional government to coordinate a mass rising in 1862. The military weakness of Russia demonstrated by the Crimean War, as well as the recent successes of Garibaldi in Italy, suggested that it might succeed. While liberals saw a Polish Cavour in Czartoryski, radicals saw a Polish Garibaldi in Mierosławski, who was a friend of Prince Napoleon, nephew of the Emperor of the French. The military commander appointed by the City Committee, Jarosław Dąbrowski, made contact with officers, both Russian and Polish, throughout the Russian army in order to cripple the military response at the moment of outbreak. Plans were well advanced when, in the summer of 1862, the Russian police got wind of the preparations and arrested many of the officers, including Dąbrowski.
Meanwhile, Wielopolski was trying to impose his own solution to the peasant question, which was similar to Zamoyski’s proposals of 1859. By now, however, Zamoyski and the Agricultural Society had shifted their position. In an attempt to outbid the Reds they pressed for more radical measures. Zamoyski was summoned to St Petersburg where he was given a reprimand by the Tsar and sent into exile. The Agricultural Society was abolished and Kronenberg’s City Deputation dissolved. It was now the turn of the moderates, known as the ‘Whites’, to go underground and start plotting.