by Agnieszka Kaczyńska
Anywhere in Europe
freedom is trampled upon and we fight for it,
we fight for our country
and everyone must participate in the battle.
A. Mickiewicz, “The Book of the Polish Nation and Polish Pilgrims”
The year 2011 is special for Italians: they celebrate the 150th anniversary of the unity of their homeland. It is particular not only for Italians but also for us Poles because, as a great Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz said, “every man has two homelands: the first his own and the other Italy […], everyone is if not the children, at least the grandchildren of Italy.” This exceptional anniversary offers us a good opportunity to remember that close brotherhood of arms and ideas between Italy and Poland during the Italian Risorgimento. In 1795 Poland, dismembered by the European powers: Russia, Prussia and Austria, totally disappeared from the political map of the world. Without their homeland, Poles sought refuge in other European countries. Many of them found it in Italy, always very close to the Polish nation due to the ties that had united the two countries for centuries.
Even the Italian land was not free from foreign rule. The same goal united both nations; from now on the Poles would accompany the Italians in the heroic Risorgimento struggles fought in the name of national independence. They would have participated in all the revolutionary uprisings, bringing help to the Italians in the fight against the common enemy – the Austrian empire. They loved Italy as a second homeland and wanted to see it united and free, they desired the same fate for Poland, in the profound belief that “the future of the world lies in the alliance of free peoples”.
In January 1797, on the basis of an agreement with the provisional government of the Lombard Republic, the Polish Legions in Italy were born. The Legions were the work of Polish patriots such as General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, Józef Wybicki, author of the famous “Dąbrowski’s Mazurka”, the Polish national anthem, General Karol Kniaziewicz, General Antoni Amilkar Kosiński. Since then the Poles have been present on almost all battlefields to fight the common enemy, Austria. Fighting for their independence, they fought, at the same time, for the freedom of Italy, in the spirit of the slogan written on the shoulder pads “Free men are brothers”.
General Dąbrowski
The legionaries participated, alongside the French, in the battles against the imperial forces in Italy. Thanks to the Polish departments commanded by General Karol Kniaziewicz, who fought bravely in Civita Castellana in December 1798, the Neapolitans were forced to retreat from Rome. In the battles of Magnano, under the walls of Verona and Legnano against the Austrians the Poles suffered exceptionally serious losses: around 1750 men dead, wounded and prisoners. A cruel fate befell the Polish legionaries participating in the defense of the Mantua fortress – the commander submitted it to the Austrians and left the city with the French troops, handing the legionaries into the hands of the enemy. The Poles were forcibly incorporated into the Austrian troops. About 300 soldiers were saved. In the battle against the Austro-Russian armies under the command of Field Marshal Suvorov on the Trebbia river, where Polish losses were also very heavy, General Dąbrowski was wounded. With the fall of the myth of Napoleon, the activity of the Polish Legions also came to an end. However, it must be said that the Legions were not always used in a way that conformed to the idea that was the basis of their birth. Very often they were exploited to increase the dependence of the Italian territories on France. Instead of fighting for freedom they had to repress the riots of the population dissatisfied with the actions of the French. They helped the French army to suppress the insurrection in Verona in the spring of 1797, then participated in the blockade of Venice and witnessed the fall of the Republic. Over 6,000 Polish soldiers were sent to the island of Santo Domingo (Haiti) in the Caribbean to restore slavery and colonial domination by the French. They were decimated by heavy fighting and disease. About 300 soldiers returned home. This is the most tragic part of the long history of Polish troops abroad in the Napoleonic era.
At the time of the Restoration (1815-1830) it was not possible to stifle, either in Italy or in Poland, the ever-growing desire for freedom and independence. Although the two nations found themselves in very similar political conditions after the Congress of Vienna, there was no large-scale collaboration. The political action of the two countries went in different directions: for the Poles the main problem was Russian domination, while Italian politics was directed against Austria. Only the revolutions of 1830-1831 would bring essential changes in the relations between the two countries, making the common struggle against the “Treaties of Vienna” possible.
In the years of the Restoration (but also in the previous years) secret societies developed both in Poland and in Italy. Even if they followed different paths, there was no lack of mutual relationships between them. The clandestine patriotic associations in Poland took Italian organizations as a model. Polish patriots established relations with Italian conspirators through old Napoleonic officers. Members of the Warsaw National Freemasonry, an organization founded by Walerian Łukasiński, wished to go to the aid of the Neapolitan revolution of 1820. A Pole who actively took part in the Neapolitan revolution of 1820-1821 was Onufry Radoński, colonel of the Napoleonic army. Radoński was a warm supporter of the Carbonari movements. Upon returning to Poland he was sentenced to three years in prison by the Prussian government. The case of Colonel Radoński, although not very frequent in that period, nevertheless demonstrates that Polish revolutionaries, seeing a common interest in the struggle, reacted lively to political events in Italy.
In the pantheon of heroes of the Italian Risorgimento, an important place is also occupied by the Polish general Józef Grabiński, officer of the Polish Legions of General Dąbrowski (thanks to his courage the Polish legionaries together with the French defeated the Austrian enemy at Castelfranco in 1805), veteran of the Napoleonic campaigns , awarded the “virtuti militari” cross, the Iron Crown, knight of the Legion of Honour. When the insurrection broke out in Bologna in February 1831, General Grabiński, a sixty-year-old man, decided to join the revolutionary current of his adoptive homeland. Shortly before, in November 1830, a national uprising against the Russians began in Poland. The fact that Poland was also fighting for freedom would have influenced the general’s decision to embrace the cause of the Bolognese insurgents. He was appointed head of the Military War Committee (Committee of Three) together with Luigi Barbieri and Emilio Gandolfi; at the same time he was promoted to the rank of division general. The Bolognese relied heavily on French help and Grabiński maintained contact with General Marie-Joseph Lafayette, considered the leader of the fight against the reactionaries. Being the most experienced and highest-ranking officer, Grabiński was expected to assume the role of supreme commander of the armed forces in the event of war operations (in the imminence of the decisive clash with the Austrians, supreme command would have been entrusted to General Carlo Zucchi ). He renounced any reward because he wished to selflessly serve the idea of Italian freedom. He immediately set about forming the line departments with numerous volunteers. However, money, uniforms, weapons and ammunition were missing. General Pietro Armandi, Minister of War and Navy in the new Government of the United Italian Provinces, entrusted Grabiński with the task of defending the Po line, submitting to him approximately a quarter of the liberated territories with almost half a million inhabitants. In Forlì, where the headquarters was located, during the review of the troops and national guards, Grabiński addressed the soldiers with the following proclamation:
Józef Grabiński
[…] I called you around me, and you came. I’m old, and it’s been a long time since I’ve looked at magazines. Soldiers! Your military demeanor, your courage, made my early youth heart beat. Freedom is something that rejuvenates the old, strengthens everyone, animates everything. I am from Poland; but I have been Italian for a long time. Italy and Poland are similar in their misfortunes and valor. Poland won. Italy will win too. And who doesn’t win in the name of freedom? For now, be ready, be calm, be subordinate. If anyone dares to march against us I will call you to arms. The Italian war cry is this: freedom, or death! Long live Italy! Long live freedom!
But the victory, both for Poland and Italy, would come many years later. After the fall of Bologna, Grabiński took part in the battle of Rimini, commanding the right wing of the Italian defensive formation, avoiding, with his units, the encirclement of the fighters. Even if the clash at the gates of Rimini ended with the success of the insurgents, the general situation forced the insurrectionary government to capitulate. Shortly afterwards Grabiński left for France where he sought help from General La Fayette and the French government for the Italian insurgents.
The name and merits of General Grabiński were remembered in 1961, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the Unification of Italy. The authorities of Bologna, to honor his memory, erected a monument to him at the Certosa di Bologna: the monument represents him standing, in a Roman toga and laurel wreath, with the flag of freedom in his hand. In the Polish cemetery of S. Lazzaro di Savena there is a marble bust of the general in uniform and with medals and a street in Bologna has been named after him.
The years 1830-1831, both in Italy and in Poland, were the period of great hopes, the period of the struggles for independence of both nations which ended in crushing defeat. The fall of the November Uprising in Poland caused a diaspora of the most active members of the nation who went mainly to France. There, in the shelters for political exiles in Besançon and Châteauroux, they met the Italian patriots. Poverty and nostalgia for the homeland strengthened the collaboration between the Polish and Italian exiles, but what united them most was the common goal, the common desire to find the means to pull the homeland out of slavery, to rebuild Italy and Independent and united Poland. Finally it seemed to them that they had found such a means: the slogan of the mutual help of peoples in the struggle for freedom, proclaimed by the greatest Polish romantic poet Adam Mickiewicz in his work “The Book of the Polish Nation and Polish Pilgrims”, which constitutes the motto of this work.
Adam Mickiewicz
Almost all the exiles, both Italian and Polish, shared this belief and so did Giuseppe Mazzini. It was he who set himself the goal of implementing this slogan. He wanted to assure the revolutionaries of the help of all political exiles, including Polish ones, for the insurrectional movement in Italy. Mazzini realized the value of the help of Polish officers in the Italian fight for freedom and the commonality of ideas and tendencies of both nations. He spoke of the leading mission of the Poles among the Slavic peoples and of the Italians among the Latin peoples. He turned to Joachim Lelewel, president of the Committee of Polish exiles in Paris, with the proposal to collaborate in the fight against the Austrian empire. In one of his letters he wrote: “Now nothing can break the relations that have formed between Poland and Italy; the first to rise will hold out its arms to the other.”
On Mazzini’s initiative, the Poles actively participated in the expedition to Savoy in January 1834 against King Charles Albert. Polish volunteers made up more than half of all participants in the attack planned against the Savoy capital, Chambery. It was a unit of officers who abandoned Besançon in April 1833, upon the announcement of the Frankfurt revolution, and, when this proved to be an insignificant revolt, they remained in Switzerland and formed relationships with the Italian exiles and with Mazzini. Among them were: Karol Stolzman, Feliks Nowosielski, Franciszek Gordaszewski, Konstanty Zaleski. General Girolamo Ramorino, commander of the Polish insurrection of 1830-1831, was called to head the expedition. The Poles protested against this choice, because they considered him a traitor and one of those responsible for the defeat of the insurrection. Instead, they appreciated another participant in the November Uprising, General Giacomo Antonini, Italian by birth, colonel of the eighth line regiment of the Polish army. The fears of the Poles proved to be justified: appointed head of the expedition, Ramorino continually postponed it, without keeping his commitment to prepare the action and recruit volunteers; during the expedition he did everything to avoid the clash with the Sardinian troops and, in the end, after the volunteers’ review, having given a war speech, he immediately left the territory of Savoy and hid in Switzerland.
The defeat suffered in Savoy did not scuttle Mazzini’s plans, on the contrary, it increased his commitment to political activity even more. The expedition, although completely unsuccessful, was of great importance in the life of Mazzini and in the life of the Polish exiles and constitutes a very interesting episode in the history of the revolutionary movements of the first half of the 19th century. […]
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Agnieszka Kaczyńska, coming from the University of Warsaw on an Erasmus project and author of this contribution, carried out a three-month internship at the Casanatense Library, during which she cataloged and studied a part of Artur Wolynski’s Polish collection, with particular attention to the prints, from whose collection the images illustrating the editorial come.