312 NIEPODLEGLOSC
which necessary reforms were constantly delayed and obstructed by the grow-
ing influence of his right-wing opponents, and by the sordid deals of party polit-
icians. In May 192.6, Wincenty Witos was preparing to form the third
Right-Centre Coalition in three years. A right-wing coup was widely expected,
to break the parliamentary impasse. The Left feared for its future. Piisudski was
persuaded to stage an armed demonstration. His aims were far from clear, and
his mood anything but magisterial. He wanted to warn the Right against any
adventures of their own, and would probably have been satisfied with the resig-
nation of Witos's Coalition. He left his home in Sulejowek to the east of Warsaw
on the morning of 12 May and, in the company of several mutinous Legionary
Regiments, marched to Praga, and occupied the approaches to the Vistula
bridges. But there he met with unexpected resistance. The President of the
Republic, Stanislaw Wojciechowski (1869-1953), an old socialist and associate
of Piisudski, drove down from the Belweder Palace and confronted the Marshal
in the middle of the Kierbedz Bridge. It was a poignant moment. The President
made it clear that any resort to force would be opposed by the government, and
by those units of the army which remained loyal. The Marshal would be obliged
either to accept political defeat and humiliation, or to turn his guns on to his for-
mer friends and subjects. But, having gone so far, there was no turning back.
Fighting began in the afternoon, and continued for three days. A legionary
regiment slipped across the river into the northern suburbs. The airport and rail-
way station were captured early on, but control of the city centre was fiercely
contested. Rival machine-gun posts were firing from all the main intersections.
Some three hundred soldiers were killed, a thousand and more wounded.
Taking the country as a whole, the government undoubtedly enjoyed the greater
support and commanded the larger force. But the issue was settled by the social-
ist railwaymen whose strike paralysed communications and prevented govern-
ment reinforcements from reaching the capital. On the morning of 14 May,
Wojcie-chowski and Witos capitulated in the Belweder, and resigned from
office. For the remaining nine years of his life, Piisudski was to be the effective
ruler of Poland. The Piisudski camp was destined to dominate the Republic for
the rest of its existence.^27
The effects of the May Coup were profound, but not unduly sensational.
Piisudski refused to take formal control of political affairs, preferring to prolong
a pseudo-parliamentary charade than to rule by personal dictatorship.
Kazimierz Bartel (1882-1941), sometime Professor of Mathematics at Lwow
Polytechnic, was appointed as Premier to the first of many short-lived govern-
ments which Pi?sudski inspired. Ignacy Mos'cicki (1867-1946), sometime
Professor of Chemistry at Lwow Polytechnic, was appointed President. The
regime which emerged in 1926 kept power until the collapse of the Republic in
- It took its name from the slogan of Sanacja, which may be translated as a
'Return to (political) health', or, in view of its military overtones, as
'Ablutionism'. At all events, it was guided by a forceful, but very imprecise ideo-
logy, akin to Moral Rearmament, and born in a barrack-room of the contention