THE REPUBLIC OF CRACOW 249enthusiastic but untrained volunteers, was dispersed at the battle of Gdow by
the Austrian Colonel Benedek and his peasant allies. On the 27th, there was an
abortive right-wing counter-coup staged by Professor Michal Wiszniewski;
whilst the left-wing leader, the twenty-four-year-old Edward Dembowski
(1822—46), led a religious procession over the bridge into Podgorze to win the
support of the peasants. Dembowski, cross in hand, was slain by the first
Austrian volley. All resistance collapsed. On 4 March, Tyssowski threw down
his arms on the Prussian border, and his remaining forces capitulated. On the
same day, the advancing Russians joined the Austrians in Cracow's ancient
Market Square. If it had not been for the deaths and punishments which ensued,
this Cracovian 'Revolution' would have had all the spirit and banality of an
unruly student Rag. (See pp. 147-8.)
As a direct result of the Rising, the Free City was suppressed. An Austro-
Russian Treaty of November 1846 awarded Cracow to Galicia. The Austrian
Emperor added the 'Grand Duke of Krakau' to his already excessive list of titles.
Twelve hundred men were arrested, some hundred of them were incarcerated in
the Kufstein fortress. Tyssowski, interned by the Prussians, was eventually
allowed to emigrate to the USA. As on similar occasions elsewhere, France and
Great Britain lodged diplomatic protests against the violence done to the Treaty
of Vienna.
On the second anniversary of the Cracovian Rising, on 22 February 1848, Karl
Marx was addressing a meeting in Brussels, in the company of Joachim Lelewel.
'Once again,' he declared, 'the initiative was taken by Poland, not this time by
feudal Poland, but by democratic Poland. Hence Poland's liberation has become
the point of honour of all Europe's democrats.'^3 It was a fine thought destined
to remain unfulfilled. Although in the fateful year of 1848, the barricades were
due to reappear in the streets of Cracow, they caused the Austrian authorities
little embarrassment. When, on 26 April, an order to clear the city of all non-
residents was ignored, General Castiglione simply cleared the Market Square,
and bombarded the city into submission. On this occasion, the National
Committee lasted only three weeks. These events, the afterbirth of the abortive
Rising of 1846, underlined the pathetic weakness of the Polish national move-
ment at that time. Despite Marx's hopes, Poland did not take the initiative in the
Springtime of Nations. For the Poles, 1846 proved to be the false harbinger of a
blighted Spring.
As usual, one of the few lasting monuments to the tragedies of 1846 was
carved in words. Appalled by the fiasco of the Rising in Cracow and of the atten-
dant Jacquerie, Kornel Ujejski (1823-97) composed one of the most intense of
all Polish hymns. In Galicia at least, Z dymem pozarow was adopted as the
national anthem of the Poles, and was sung on all patriotic occasions with a fer-
vour which matched the words: