THE SPRINGTIME OF OTHER NATIONS 253Russo-Polish War of 1831, arrived from Paris to organize the insurrectionary
forces in Vienna. Later, he took charge of the Hungarian Army of Transylvania.
For several months in 1849, until defeated by the overwhelming forces of the
intervening Russians, his brilliant improvisations kept the Habsburg forces at
bay and enabled Kossuth's infant Republic to survive. His colleague, General
Henryk Dembinski (1791-1864), also served as Hungarian Commander-in-
Chief, and led the Magyar Corps in Slovakia. Ironically enough, the task of
curbing these two Polish heroes fell to their old adversary, Ivan Paskievitch,
Prince of Warsaw.^4
In the war of words, as distinct from the wars of deeds, a prominent role was
played by the short-lived Slav Congress. Convened in Prague in June 1848 under
Czech auspices, it was largely concerned with the problems of the Slavs of
Austria and Hungary. Only two Russian representatives attended - Bakunin,
the anarchist, and Miloradov, ah Old Believer. Neither was really represent-
ative. The Polish delegates, together with the Ruthenians, were assigned to a
'Mazurian-Ruthenian Section'; and one of their number, Karol Libelt, newly
released from prison in Berlin, was elected President of the Congress. Yet it soon
became clear that the Polish cause enjoyed very little support. Although Libelt
succeeded in inserting a clause on Polish independence into the 'Manifesto to the
Nations of Europe', the Czechs were not prepared to contemplate the creation
of a unitary Polish state; and the Ruthenians were openly hostile. The Russians,
too, if consulted, would undoubtedly have taken a negative attitude. The Poles,
whose strongest antipathies were directed against the Tsarist regime, effectively
discredited the great Russian brother to whom most of their fellow-Slavs were
looking for salvation. By so doing, they made themselves highly unpopular,
especially amongst the Czechs. It was not insignificant that the Whitsun riots
which broke out in Prague only ten days after the Congress opened, were
blamed by the local press on unspecified Polish provocateurs. The bombard-
ment of the city by Windsichgratz spelled an end both to the Slav Congress and
to all future thought of Austro-Slav harmony.s
The debates of 1848 revealed fundamental differences of opinion among the
Poles themselves. The Manifesto of the Polish Democratic Society (TDP), which
had been published in France in 1836 and had inspired most of the revolution-
ary activities of the Poles in the intervening period, had described a Poland
which stretched from the Oder to the Dnieper and from the Baltic to the Black
Sea. Joachim Lelewel was still propagating the idea that the Polish nation
included 'all the sons of all the lands of the old Republic'. Karol Libelt, however,
observing the distaste which these traditional Polish concepts aroused at the
Slav Congress, was obliged to take a new tack. In Libelt's opinion, Poland could
not be restored 'as a unitary state with a national government ruling as in the
past over Lithuanians, Ruthenians, and Prussians', but would have to be revived
'as a federation of all these racially distinct lands'. Here was the germ of a
schism in Polish political thinking which was to persist for the next hundred
years.