THE DUCHY OF WARSAW 223hope! I see you still, fair phantom of my dream. Born in slavery, and chained by my
swaddling bands, I had but one such Spring in my whole life.^6
These lines form the setting for one of the most celebrated scenes of Polish fic-
tion — 'the last old-Polish banquet' at Soplicowo, where all the feuds and quar-
rels of the manor were reconciled, and everyone rose to the noble toast
Kochajmy Sie. — 'Let us love one another!' The centrepiece of the banquet was
the virtuoso recital on the dulcimer performed in honour of General D^browski
by the old Jew, Jankiel:
At last, when the old man turned his eyes on Dabrowski he covered them with his hands,
and he wept a flood of tears.
- 'General', he said, 'our Lithuania has waited for you a long time, as long as we Jews
have awaited the Messiah.. .'
He wept as he spoke. The honest Jew loved his country like a Pole. Dabrowski
extended his hand, and thanked him; and Jankiel, doffing his cap, kissed the leader's
hands.^7
The Poles in the Grande Armee numbered almost 100,000 men. Thirty-five
thousand of them were concentrated in the Fifth Polish Corps under General
Poniatowski, the only national formation in the entire motley host. They
marched in the vanguard, and entered Wilno on 28 June, where a Ruling
Commission was installed Under the Dutchman, General Dirk Van Hogendorp.
They reached Smolensk in August. They fought at Borodino. In September they
entered Moscow. Exactly two hundred years after Gosiewski had put the
Russian capital to the torch, they watched as it burned again. In Warsaw, at a
meeting of the Society of Friends of Science, the poet Kozmian read an Ode to
the destruction of Moscow:
Where is it now, that Monster of Nature,
That Giant, that terror of the peoples?After the meeting, Kozmian was taken on one side by Stanislaw Staszic, who
advised him to delay publication of the Ode until the war was over. Olbrzym
walczy, he said - 'the Giant is still fighting.'^8
And so it proved. The Tsar did not sue for peace. In October, the terrible
retreat began. Blizzards, marauding peasants, Cossacks, frostbite, and starva-
tion pared the ranks inexorably. The 'Chevaux Legers' under the heroic Pawel
Jerzmanowski were detailed to hold the rearguard. At Smolensk, and on the
Berezina, thousands perished. In December, Napoleon drove through Warsaw
en route for Paris, in total silence. He failed to call on Walewska, who was left
to pursue him to Paris, and eventually to Elba. Two weeks later, the first sur-
vivors of the Fifth Corps arrived — one general, 12 officers, and 124 men. In all,
20,000 Poles survived from the 100,000 who had crossed the Niemen six months
before. Warsaw could not be defended. In February 1813, the Russian Army
appeared. A provisional Supreme Council was established under General Vasily
Lanskoi, and his deputy, Nikolai Novosiltsov. For the next two years, the