THE CONGRESS KINGDOM 235leave Warsaw unmolested, taking his troops and his political prisoners with
him. Chtopicki refused to put the army on a war footing. At the same time,
Lubecki hoped that negotiations with the Tsar would lead to progress on the
constitutional issue and on his scheme for closer ties between Poland and
Lithuania. It was an odd situation. The loyalist leaders of a mutinous rebellion
were hoping to exact constitutional concessions from the Autocrat in return for
bringing the Rebellion to a close.
The Tsar, however, had other ideas. Nicholas had no desire to negotiate with
rebels, however loyal they professed to be. From the very beginning he deter-
mined to crush the Poles by force. In his first communication with Constantine,
he had declared that 'Russia or Poland must now perish'. The 'November
Night' had played straight into his hands. There is some doubt whether he had
already decided to overturn the Constitution of the Kingdom before the out-
break occurred. But now all hesitation was cast aside. Nicholas had a perfect
opportunity for teaching the Poles a lesson, and for installing the sort of gov-
ernment in which he believed. Polish negotiators who travelled to St. Petersburg
were unable to get a hearing. As soon as Constantine had been safely extracted
from Warsaw, preparations were laid for assembling a punitive force. General
Diebitsch was given command of 12.0,000 men who throughout January were
concentrated in the region of Belostok. When news arrived at the end of the
month that the Polish Sejm had voted for the legal dethronement of the Tsar,
Nicholas was able to order an immediate invasion of the Kingdom. Diebitsch
crossed the frontier on 5 February 1831. By this act, a local rebellion was trans-
formed into a national war.
In Warsaw, the moderate designs of the Government grew steadily more
extreme, as all attempts to reach a settlement failed. Step by step, cautious men
were replaced by 'activists'; the activists by radicals; the radicals by despera-
does, and the desperadoes by a military clique. Over the nine months of the
Government's existence, control passed successively from Chtopicki and his
'Whites' to the liberal, centrist, leaders of the Sejm; from the Sejm to the largely
extraparliamentary 'Reds'; from the 'Reds' to the Warsaw mob; and from the
mob to General Krukowiecki. It was a political process of classic simplicity, dri-
ven on by the logic of a conflict where all remedies could be tried, but where
none, given the nature of the protagonist, could possibly succeed. The first stage
came to an end in January. Patient negotiation had yielded nothing. A restless
Sejm appointed a fifteen-man commission to supervise General Chtopicki's
decisions, and on 19 January eventually forced him to resign. At this point,
Polish patience, already strained by the intransigence of the Tsar, suddenly
snapped. After a memorial meeting on Z4 January in honour of the Russian
Decembrists, executed by the Tsar six years before, the restraint of the Sejm
evaporated. On the next day, a Sejm decree announced that the throne of Poland
was vacant. Nicholas was dethroned. It was the moment of no return. A new
constitution declared that the government should be accountable to the
'Sovereign Sejm'. Pending the appointment of a new ministry, Chtopicki was