260 REVERIES
their predecessors of 1830-1. But in conspiratorial and political terms, they were
far more professional. Indeed, the 'Reds' of the National Central Committee
(KCN), the successor to the old City Committee in Warsaw, were well able to
provoke the provocateur. At the beginning of January thousands of young men
crept out of Warsaw into the Kampinos Forest. When the Branka was sprung,
only 1,400 conscripts were actually caught in the trap. Two days later the Russian
garrisons were attacked simultaneously in scores of places all over the Kingdom.
Wielopolski was not faced with an amateur plot of the sort hatched in the
November fog by Wysocki and Zaliwski. He was faced from the start by a guer-
rilla war, which was master-minded by unseen hands from within his own capital,
and which kept Europe's largest army at bay for sixteen months.^4
Political divisions among the leaders of the Rising were unavoidable in the
circumstances. The failure to capture the town of Plock, which had been chosen
for the Rising's headquarters, meant that the leadership was forced either to
ramble round the countryside or to operate under the noses of the Russians in
Warsaw itself. Contact between the centre and the provinces was intermittent.
The commanders of individual guerrilla bands enjoyed considerable autonomy.
Strict political conformity could not be expected. Most of the societies and fac-
tions maintained their separate identities, and pursued their own particular
policies. The Reds were constantly at odds with the Whites; and both the
two main camps were divided by rightist, centrist, and leftist splinter groups. A
welter of ideological positions were publicized. The leadership was in constant
contention. In the initial phase, the initiative lay exclusively with the Reds. The
Rising depended largely on the KCN, and its energetic, youthful chairman
Stefan Bobrowski (1841-63), a populist student from Kiev. In March, the
Whites reacted to the threat that Mieroslawski might gain general recognition
by choosing a supreme commander of their own. For nine days, Marian
Langiewicz (18x7—87), a a lecturer at the emigre academy at Cuneo, enjoyed the
doubtful title of 'Dictator', before being forced to withdraw into Galicia.
Bobrowski, who was not informed of the move in advance, took umbrage and
was killed in a duel. Thereafter, on the proclamation of a secret National
Government on 21 March, the two camps lived in uneasy alliance. The Whites
generally controlled policy and, in the person of Karol Majewski (1833—97),the
over-all command. There were two attempts to seize control by the terrorist
wing of the Reds. One attempt in May failed, but another in September suc-
ceeded. The latter Coup preceded an abortive assassination attempt on the life
of General Berg which released a wave of police reprisals. Finally in October
1863, when the ranks were already decimated by death and defeat, a new
Dictatorship was formed, to heal the rift between Whites and Reds, and to pro-
vide co-ordinated military leadership. Romuald Traugutt (1825-64) served as
the political leader and military commander of the Rising until his arrest in the
night of 10/11 April 1864.
In spite of political differences, the underground state showed remarkable
resilience. It organized one of the world's earliest campaigns of urban guerrilla