160 KOSCIOLcraftsmen, peasant or lord; for all people are brothers and should love each other like
friends... But whosoever desires your misfortune is your enemy...
Your enemies are not so many that you cannot prevail over them. Only the will is lack-
ing. If each defends the other from attack, you will prevail. If not, if each looks aside at
his neighbour's ills, you will all perish.
When you see and hear that your neighbour is being beaten on the demesne, do not
assist his tormentors but help and defend him. What he suffers today, you will suffer
tomorrow.
It is you who by your labour feed and clothe the lords; and in return they despise you,
and call you Hams, hounds, dogcatchers, and thieves. This should not be... What
should be is that every married man should have his own parcel of land ... his own
house, barn, cattle, and farm utensils... and that every person should read and write
You say, if you fail to do your duties, that the soldiers will come and force you. But the
soldiers, my brothers, should not coerce you. After all, who are these soldiers whom you
fear so much? They are your own children, your relatives, your friends... The soldiers
should depose the lords and kings as enemies of human kind, and should hold to the peas-
ants ...
Wars, my brothers, shall soon come to an end, and man shall no longer kill men. One
last war alone must happen, a war of justice, in defence of your families, of your loved
ones, of your Freedom, of your rights... This war will not be fought by peasant against
peasant, by the poor against the poor, but by the peasant against the lord, by the poor
against the rich, by the oppressed and unhappy against the oppressors and the affluent
... by Poles and Russians together against the kings and lords...
You know how a lord holds to a lord, and a Jew to a Jew. So must the poor and hun-
gry hold to the poor and hungry. Do not obey the lord or the priest who would persuade
you to side with the monarchs ... But good lords you should obey, and love, for they can
help you mightily.
You must believe, dear children, that I Pope Gregory, heartily desire your happiness.
For this reason I do enjoin you in God's name to do what I tell you: firstly, that you for-
sake all liquor until you have overcome your enemies... secondly, that one man at least
in every village should learn to read and write... thirdly, since kings, officials, landlords,
officers, and many priests do not wish for your freedom, that you should not read this
letter to any unknown person, to any drunkard, to any publican, flunkey, secretary,
bailiff, organist, elder, or mayor...
As I tell you, it is fitting that you all know and understand your own Good, your own
interest and your own happiness which you will only achieve when you all act on it
together...
My dear children, I expect that you will heed the advice that I have given you, and that
you will calmly and confidently prepare for the great change which will soon occur to
your advantage.^9
For his pains, Sciegienny was condemned to an indefinite term of hard labour in
Siberia (he eventually returned in 1871). Yet his reputation lived on. The peas-
ants of the Lublin area were still singing ballads about him in the twentieth cen-
tury.
Trapped between the ultra-conservative stance of the Vatican on the
one hand, and the radical tendencies of the lower clergy on the other, the Polish