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By Root 2476 0

for the inhabitants, and a separate code of law from that used in Russia (the Civil Code was retained in full and there was no return to serfdom). Yet in the end all this turned out to be so much show. As Talleyrand wrote cynically, ‘Russia does not wish for the re-establishment of Poland in order to lose what she has acquired of it; she wishes it so as to acquire what she does not possess of it.’17 Real power in the kingdom was held by Alexander’s brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, who was commander-in-chief of the army, and the tsar’s special envoy, Novosiltsev; Poland was completely tied to Russia in terms of her foreign policy; the Polish parliament proved to have little real power; the constitution’s protection of civil liberties was ignored; and as the years passed it became clear that there was no intention of uniting Congress Poland with the eastern provinces. Also dishonoured were the vague references made in the treaty of Vienna to the notion of a Polish commonwealth: hopes for the establishment of a customs union that would enable people and goods alike to travel freely between the various zones of pre-partition Poland proved illusory and the Polish Church was deliberately split up into Prussian, Russian and Polish primatures. Clearly, the freedom on offer from Alexander amounted to very little. As the great resistance leader, Kosciuszko, wrote to Czartoryski as early as June 1815:

We must give thanks to the tsar for having revived the name of Poland, but the name alone does not constitute a nation. The extent of its territory and the number of its inhabitants also count for something. I do not see, unless it is our own desires, on what a guarantee of the promises he has made to us . . . to extend the frontiers of Poland to the river Dvina . . . can rest. By restoring a certain proportion in terms of strength and population between Russia and Poland, such an action would have made for a certain mutual consideration - a stable friendship even - between the Russians and ourselves. Meanwhile, possessed of a liberal constitution and the sort of autonomy for which they hoped, the Poles would have been happy to find themselves ruled alongside the Russians beneath the sceptre of so great a monarch. However, from the very beginning I have perceived a very different order of things. Russians, for example, are filling the leading places in the government alongside us. This certainly cannot inspire much confidence among the Poles: they foresee, not without fear, that over time the word ‘Pole’ will become a thing of scorn, and that the Russians will soon be treating us as their subjects. Still worse, how will a people so subjugated ever be able to extract themselves from their preponderance?18

This gulf between Alexander’s rhetoric and the realities of Congress Poland made for one of the weakest points of the Vienna settlement. Far away in London, Lord Liverpool summed up the situation admirably:

The conduct of the emperor of Russia has not surprised me. He is vain, self-sufficient and obstinate, with some talent, but with no common sense or tact. I am strongly impressed with the opinion that this business of Poland will ultimately prove his ruin. If he detaches the Polish provinces incorporated with Russia from that country for the purpose of forming a Polish kingdom, he will never be forgiven by the Russians. If, on the other hand, he annexes the Duchy of Warsaw to Russia, and considers the whole as a mere territorial question, the Poles will justly reproach him as having deceived them, and they will become his bitterest enemies. In short, I see nothing but future commotion out of this Polish arrangement, let it now end as it may.19

With Poland and Saxony out of the way, the Congress was able to proceed with other business. Belgium was joined with Holland in a new Kingdom of the United Netherlands (although Holland had to cede the Cape of Good Hope to Britain); the Rhineland was split between Prussia and Bavaria; Genoa added to a restored Piedmont; the Papal States given back to the Pope; and Hanover,