(^198) WOJSKO
The Army of the Congress Kingdom extended French ideas into formations
remodelled in the Russian image. The imposition of Russian practices on to the
conduct of the General Staff and in the merciless discipline of the ranks,
undoubtedly supplied an important factor in the political crisis of 1830. At the
same time, the thorough schooling of officers, and the extension of the con-
scription period to ten years, enabled the Polish Army to enter the lists against
the Russians with some reasonable confidence. The Russo-Polish war of 1831
provided one of two occasions in modern history when the Poles have faced the
Russians on an equal footing.^4 (See Chapter 13.)
From 1831 to 1914, no formal Polish army of consequence existed. Polish mil-
itary enterprises, whether in the risings of 1846,1848, and 1863; in Mickiewicz's
Legion in Italy, or in the Polish Cavalry Division in the Crimea, lacked any
potential for concerted and consolidated action. They belonged to that roman-
tic world of amateur and partisan warfare, where it is more important to play
the game, and to stay in the field, than to think of winning.^5
Throughout this long period of over eighty years, the participation of the
Poles in the armed services of the partitioning powers represented an experience
of prime importance. The presence in the Polish provinces of huge Russian,
Prussian, and Austrian garrisons, and the organization of permanent military
districts dependent on St. Petersburg, Berlin, or Vienna, had important conse-
quences for the social, economic, and cultural life of the entire region. Whole
generations of young Poles were conscripted to the ranks. There they were
instilled with the prevailing political loyalism of their regiments, and learned to
follow their commands in Russian or German. In Prussia, the army's demand
for literate recruits provided a major stimulus to state education, and hence to
Germanization. By 1901, 99 per cent of recruits from the province of Posen, for
example, could write and speak German. In Russia and Austria, where educa-
tional standards were lower, Polish identity was not submerged so easily. At the
same time, large numbers of educated Poles were drawn into the various officer
corps. Although Polish Catholics fared less well in the service of Protestant
Prussia and Orthodox Russia, Polish names can be found on the staff lists, and
on the rolls of honour of all three imperial armies. Marshal Konstanty
Rokossowski (Konstantin Rokossovskiy, 1896-1967) born in Warsaw the son
of a Polish engine-driver, who joined the Russian army during the First World
War, was but the last of many Polish predecessors in the Tsarist service, includ-
ing Wladystaw Anders (1892-1970), J. Dowbor-Musnicki (1867-1937),
Zygmunt Pitsudski, R. L^gwa (1891-1938), and Lucjan Zeligowski
(1865-1947). In Prussia, Poles were less common among the officers than among
the NCOs, the backbone of the German service; but in Austria men such as
Tadeusz Rozwadowski (1866-1928), Stanislaw Szeptycki (1867-1946), and
Stanislaw Haller (1872—1940) who were awarded commands at the highest level,
were by no means isolated examples. All these soldiers were strongly affected by
the traditions of the armies in which they served, not least by the intensity of
their experiences in the trenches of the First World War. When they were called
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