CZARTORYSKI AND EUROPEAN UNITY 1770-1861 POLAND'S MILLENNIUM SERIES OF THE KOSCIUSZKO FOUNDATION Czartoryski AND EUROPEAN UNITY 1770-1861 BY M. KUKIEL If we wish to progress we must have an object we have not yet attained. And in order to be always in progress we must be capable of conceiving an object which will never be attained. —CZARTORYSKI, 1803. PRINCETON NEW JERSEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 1955 Copyright, 1955, by Princeton University Press London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press L. c. CARD 54-6076 Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey PREFACE IT WAS A VERY LONG LIFE—it lasted more than ninety years—and from Czartoryski's early youth until his death it was constantly devoted to the cause of his country and to the still greater cause of the freedom and unity of Europe. It was continuously con­ nected with the most important events of 19th century European history. Czartoryski was born before the First Partition of Poland, when the Commonwealth was still intact and, despite its weaknesses and ordeals, still a great power. He appeared on the political scene at the time of Poland's internal regeneration and the con­ stitutional reform of the Great Diet. After Poland's catastrophe he was a hostage at the court of Catherine II; a Russian dignitary, he became a friend of the Grand Duke Alexander and, after some dramatic adventures, the young Emperor's mentor and closest confidant. He was a member of the "Secret Committee" (the real government of Russia), Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, re­ sponsible for an entirely new policy of the Empire and for plans for the reshaping of Europe that would ensure to its nations free­ dom and security and lay the foundation-stones of a European union. He obstinately championed the idea of rebuilding Poland in dynastic or personal union with Russia. He was Curator of the University of Vilna and of the educational district covering the Polish eastern provinces annexed by Russia in all the three partitions, and was therefore responsible for the momentous progress Polish civilization achieved in those territories during the first three decades of the 19th century, progress which strength­ ened the Polish national consciousness in Lithuania and Ruthenia for generations. He was Tsar Alexander's closest collaborator at the Congress of Vienna, and together with him the founder of the Kingdom of Poland—the so-called Congress-Kingdom—as well as the organizer of the new state. Shortly after, he became a defender of its constitution and of the rights of its people against arbitrary acts of violence and autocracy. { ν } Preface After the outbreak of the revolution of 1830, it was Czartoryski who became the president of the Polish national government. He was largely responsible for the stubborn perseverance of fighting Poland as well as for the extension of the struggle beyond the frontier of the Kingdom to the provinces of Lithuania and Ruthenia. Afterwards, as outlaw and exile for the next thirty years, he ceaselessly championed not only the rights of his people, whose spokesman he became, but also the freedom of Europe. Very many of his countrymen recognized him as their "chief," as did many Serbs and Bulgars; the Circassian insurgents looked to him as their leader and the protector of their cause. He was recognized as king de facto by a strong political faction in exile and by many people in Poland. He survived Tsar Nicholas and defied his successor's point de reveries. After thirty years of inex­ orable struggle against the Russian impact on Europe, when new hopes for Poland were stirred, his own life was nearing its end. Still, his were the instructions which determined the political attitude of most of the Poles. He fought as a soldier in 1792, in the first of the series of wars for his country's independence; then, when the period of armed struggle was nearing its close, he gave his last blessing to his people. He was the contemporary of five Russian sovereigns. His part­ ners and adversaries included Vorontsov, Rumiantsev, Nesselrode, and Gorchakov; Talleyrand, Guizot, Thiers, Lamartine, Walew- ski, and Drouyn de Lhuys; Pitt, Fox, Castlereagh, Grey, Palmers- ton, and Russell; Cobenzl, Metternich, Buol, and Goluchowski. He was an adversary of the great Napoleon and became a friend of Napoleon III. His activities as statesman started at the time of Jefferson's presidency and ended at the time of Lincoln's. Czartoryski's political life was a long and difficult one; and it is not easy to write his biography. More than a thousand volumes and portfolios of his records were carefully preserved by his son and transferred from his Paris residence, the Hotel Lambert, to the Czartoryski Museum at Cracow where—for fifty years —they were freely accessible for historical research. The se­ lection of his correspondence with Emperor Alexander I was published shortly after his death by his son, and a more extensive volume, together with his French memoirs in 1887, by Charles Preface de Mazade; an English edition (not quite identical) was pub­ lished a year later. But until recently there was no detailed his­ torical monograph on Czartoryski. The large biography by B. Zaleski (1881) remained unfinished; it ended with the beginning of the Prince's political career. In the first two decades of this century, monographs and essays by the great historian Szymon Askenazy helped considerably to elucidate Czartoryski's activities up to the November revolution of 1830, and some other historians, mostly of Askenazy's school, supplemented his research with their detailed studies. But no one undertook the task of writing a com­ plete biography of Czartoryski, and the second half of his political life (1830-1861) remained largely neglected by historians; even Askenazy saw it as a period of unrealistic political romanticism. The facts of Czartoryski's policy in exile were elucidated only after the First World War by Marceli Handelsman and his school, and many of its problems were analyzed in a series of detailed studies. Handelsman became more and more impressed by the immense scope of Czartoryski's diplomatic activities in exile, by the diversity and continuity of his efforts, by the fertility of his ideas and his tenacity in adversity. He became aware that Czartoryski's policy was a constant challenge to Russian pressure on Europe and that it prepared the ground for future anti-Russian coalitions; that its aims were not negative, but directed at the integration of Europe. He strove for better understanding and more solidarity among the nations of Western Europe; for the liberation of the countries of the Middle Zone of Europe between Germany and Russia; for bringing them closer together by allay­ ing their mutual hostilities; for uniting efforts and paving the way towards a future federation of free peoples. Shortly before the Second World War, Handelsman published a short biographical essay on Czartoryski, and started to write a comprehensive biography. In wartime, under German occupa­ tion, he continued that work in ever-present danger of arrest, often in hiding to avoid prison or death; he interrupted it later in order to write a detailed monograph of Czartoryski's policy during the revolution of 1848 and the Crimean War. This he managed to finish before he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944; he died in a concentration camp shortly before the liberation. Preface The typescript of his work was preserved, and the first volume containing the biography of Czartoryski up to 1846 was published in Warsaw in 1948. A second followed in 1949. It contains a de­ tailed study of Czartoryski's policy in the crucial period 1847-1849. The third, published in 1950 in two parts, gives a full political history of the Crimean War and brings the biography to its con­ clusion. But the whole work was written under appalling condi­ tions, and the author's profound knowledge of Czartoryski's papers and his great learning could not appear at their best, in complete scholarly form. There remain many points open to con­ troversy or demanding further elucidation; nor is it possible to endorse all the author's judgments. The present book was written under very different circum­ stances, in the liberty and security of exile on friendly British soil; I enjoyed the hospitality of the British Museum, of the Public Record Office, of the Polish Research Centre in London, and also of the Bibliotheque Polonaise in Paris. The Polish corre­ spondence of Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart in the Collection of Harrowby Manuscripts at Sandon Hall proved of paramount value, the more so because the Polish collections, and especially the archives from the Hotel Lambert, well known to me from my long period of work in the Czartoryski Museum at Cracow, re­ mained at the time beyond my reach. This book is therefore but an essay, a sketch of a historical portrait of the statesman as I perceive him after having lived several years among his relics and his papers, and after a study of his political ideas and activities. Czartoryski was an ardent patriot, but he never confined himself and his activities to Polish affairs. His outlook was that of a European and a Westerner, his views were worldwide and ex­ tended far beyond his own generation. In many respects he seems nearer to us now than ever before. There was a great deal of fore­ sight in his ideas and deeds, and many of the problems he dealt with have reappeared in this century. His ideas on European free­ dom and unity would in these days meet with more understand­ ing than they did a hundred years ago, and his various political concepts present answers even to essential problems of today.