Rabaccja galicyjska a powstanie krakowskie

The Galician Slaughter, also known as the Galician Rabacja,

Peasant Uprising A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...

of 1846 or the Szela uprising (german: Galizischer Bauernaufstand; pl, Rzeź galicyjska or ''Rabacja galicyjska''), was a two-month uprising of

impoverished Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little

income

Galician Eastern European

peasants A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...

that led to the suppression of the szlachta uprising (

Kraków Uprising The Kraków uprising ( Polish: ''powstanie krakowskie'', ''rewolucja krakowska''; German: ''Krakauer Aufstand''; Russian: ''краковское восстание'') of 1846 was an attempt, led by Polish insurgents such as Jan Tyssowski and ...

) and the massacre of szlachta in Galicia, in the

Austrian Partition The Austrian Partition ( pl, zabór austriacki) comprise the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth acquired by the Habsburg monarchy during the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. The three partitions were conduct ...

zone, in early 1846. The uprising, which lasted from February to March, primarily affected the lands around the town of

Tarnów Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999. From 1975 to 1998, it was the capital of the Tarn� ...

.rabacja galicyjska
in

Internetowa encyklopedia PWN ''Internetowa encyklopedia PWN'' ( Polish for ''Internet PWN Encyclopedia'') is a free online Polish-language encyclopedia published by Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN (''Polish Scientific Publishers PWN''; until 1991 ''Państwo ...

A revolt against

serfdom Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which deve ...

, it was directed against manorial property and oppression (such as the manorial prisons). Galician peasants killed about 1,000 nobles and destroyed about 500 manors. The Austrian government used the uprising to decimate nationalist Polish nobles, who were organising an uprising against Austria.

Background

In the autonomous

Free City of Kraków Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procure ...

, patriotic Polish intellectuals and nobles (''szlachta'') had made plans for a general uprising in partitioned Poland and intended to re-establish a unified and independent country. A similar uprising of nobility was planned in

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...

, but police quickly caught the ringleaders. The

began on the night of 20 February and initially met with limited successes. In the meantime, the recent poor harvests had resulted in significant unrest among the local peasantry. The crownland (province) of Galicia was the largest, most populous and poorest province in the Austrian Empire and was disparagingly known in Vienna as ''Halbasien'' ("Half-Asia"). The Austrian officials regarded it dismissively as "a barbaric place inhabited by strange people of questionable personal hygiene". In 2014, ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...

'' reported: "Poverty in Galicia in the 19th century was so extreme that it had become proverbial—the region was called Golicja and Głodomeria, a play on the official name (''Galicja i Lodomeria'' in Polish, i.e. Galicia and Lodomeria) and '' goły'' (naked) and '' głodny'' (hungry)". Though Galicia was officially a province of the Austrian Empire, Austrian officials always regarded it as a colonial project in need of being "civilized", and it was never seen as a part of Austria proper.

Uprising

The Kraków uprising was a spark that ignited the peasants' rebellion. The insurgent nobles made appeals to the peasants by reminding them of the popular Polish-Lithuanian hero

Tadeusz Kościuszko Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko ( be, Andréj Tadévuš Banavientúra Kasciúška, en, Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciuszko; 4 or 12 February 174615 October 1817) was a Polish military engineer, statesman, and military leader who ...

and promising an end to serfdom. Some peasants indeed sided with the nobles. Narkiewicz and Hahn, among others, note that the peasants around Kraków, many of whom remembered the promises made by Kościuszko and the peasant soldiers who fought beside him, were sympathetic to the noble insurgents. Another account is of the peasants in Chochołów, who gathered under a Polish flag and fought against the Austrians. Most sources agree that the Austrians encouraged the peasants to revolt. A number of sources point to the actions of the Austrian

administration, in particular an official identified as the District Officer of Tarnów,

Johann Breindl von Wallerstein Johann, typically a male given name, is the German form of ''Iohannes'', which is the Latin form of the Greek name ''Iōánnēs'' (), itself derived from Hebrew name ''Yochanan'' () in turn from its extended form (), meaning "Yahweh is Gracious" ...

. Wallerstein offered help to peasant leader

Jakub Szela Jakub Szela (was born 14 July 1787, Smarżowa, in Galicia - died 21 April 1860, Dealul Ederii, in Bukovina, now Romania) was a Polish leader of a peasant uprising against the Polish gentry in Galicia in 1846; directed against manorial property a ...

. Serfs were promised an end of their feudal duties if they helped to put down the insurgent Polish noblemen, and thet were also paid in money and salt for the heads of captured and killed nobles. Hahn notes, "it is generally accepted as proven that the Austrian authorities deliberately exploited peasant dissatisfaction in order to suppress the noble (proto-national) uprising". Magosci ''et al.'' write that "most contemporaries condemned the Austrian authorities for their perfidious use of the peasantry for counter-revolutionary aims". It was ironic, as the historian Eric Hobsbawm noted, that the peasants turned their anger on the revolutionaries, whose ideals also included improvement of the peasants' situation. The progressive ideals of the Polish insurgents in the Kraków uprising were praised, among others, by

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

, who called it a "deeply democratic movement that aimed at land reform and other pressing social questions". As noted by several historians, the peasants were not so much acting out of loyalty to the Austrians as revolting against the oppressive feudal system (

), of which the Polish nobles were the prime representatives and beneficiaries in the crownland of Galicia. Wolff takes a different stance here by noting that it is likely that the Austrian authorities held greater sway with the peasants, who saw improvement in their living conditions in the recent decades, which they associated with the new Austrian rule. The Polish historian Tomasz Kamusella proposes that the serfs and the nobles could be interpreted as different ethnic groups, which would explain the events as an act of ethnic cleansing. Galicyjscy chłopi składają głowy swoich ofiar

Galicyjscy chłopi składają głowy swoich ofiar

Bideleux and Jeffries (2007) are among the dissenters to that view and cite Alan Sked's 1989 research that contends that "the Habsburg authorities – despite later charges of connivance – knew nothing about what was going on and were appalled at the results of the blood-lust". Hahn notes that during the events of 1846, "the Austrian bureaucracy played a dubious role that has not been completely explained, down to the present day". The peasants also aided the Austrian army in defeating the insurgents at the

Battle of Gdów The Battle of Gdow (Polish language: Bitwa pod Gdowem) took place on February 26, 1846 near Gdow, Free City of Krakow. It was the only battle of the Krakow Uprising: a 380-strong rebel unit commanded by Jakub Suchorzewski was defeated by a 480-st ...

. Peasants attacked the manor houses of the rebel noble leaders and of suspected rebel nobles and killed many hundreds of the estate owners and their families. About 90% of the

manor houses A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals wi ...

in the Tarnów region are estimated to have been destroyed. At least 470 manor houses were destroyed. A popular rumor in Galicia had it that the Emperor had abolished the

Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments (Biblical Hebrew עשרת הדברים \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים, ''aséret ha-dvarím'', lit. The Decalogue, The Ten Words, cf. Mishnaic Hebrew עשרת הדיברות \ עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְ ...

, which the peasants took as permission to act against the ''szlachta''. Estimates of the number of lives lost by Polish estate owners and officials range from 1,000 to 2,000. Jezierski notes that most of the victims were not nobles (who he estimates constituted maybe about 200 of the fatalities) but their direct employees. Most of the victims had no direct involvement with the Polish insurgents other than being part of the same social class. (Davies also notes that near

Bochnia Bochnia (german: Salzberg) is a town on the river Raba in southern Poland. The town lies approximately halfway between Tarnów (east) and the regional capital Kraków (west). Bochnia is most noted for its salt mine, the oldest functioning i ...

, Austrian officials were attacked by overzealous peasants.) Bideleux and Jeffries discuss the total number of victims noting that "more than two thousand lives were lost on both sides", which suggests that most of the victims were from among the Polish nobility. The uprising was eventually put down by Austrian troops. Accounts of the pacification vary. Bideleux and Jeffries note it was "brutally put down by the Austrian troops". Jezierski notes the use of

flagellation Flagellation (Latin , 'whip'), flogging or whipping is the act of beating the human body with special implements such as whips, rods, switches, the cat o' nine tails, the sjambok, the knout, etc. Typically, flogging has been imposed on ...

by the authorities. Nance describes the arrest and exile of the anti-Austrian peasants in Chochołów. Magocsi ''et al.'' note that the peasants were punished by being forced to resume their feudal obligations while their leader, Szela, received a medal and a land grant.

Legacy

Serfdom Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which deve ...

, with

corvée Corvée () is a form of unpaid, forced labour, that is intermittent in nature lasting for limited periods of time: typically for only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of ...

labor, existed in Galicia until 1848, and the 1846 massacre of the Polish szlachta is credited with helping to bring on its demise. The destruction of crops during the hostilities was one of the reasons for the ensuing

famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including war, natural disasters, crop failure, population imbalance, widespread poverty, an economic catastrophe or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompani ...

. For the Polish nobles and reformers, this event was a lesson that class lines are a powerful force, and that peasants cannot be expected to support a cause of independent Poland without education and reform. Soon after the uprising had been put down, the Republic of Krakow was abolished and incorporated into Galicia. Estimates of the number of lives lost by Polish estate owners and officials range from 1,000 to 2,000. In Vienna, the result of the Galician slaughter was a sense of complacency as what happened there was taken as evidence that the majority of the Austrian Empire's peoples were loyal to the House of Habsburg. The Austrian authorities were thus taken very much by surprise by the Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire. The massacre of the gentry in 1846 was the historical memory that haunted

Stanisław Wyspiański Stanisław Mateusz Ignacy Wyspiański (; 15 January 1869 – 28 November 1907) was a Polish playwright, painter and poet, as well as interior and furniture designer. A patriotic writer, he created a series of symbolic, national dramas withi ...

's play '' The Wedding''. The uprising was also described in the stories "Der Kreisphysikus" and "Jacob Szela" by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach.

Notes

a The nationality of the peasants is a complex issue. A number of sources describe them as Polish. Hahn notes that the peasants in the region affected by the uprising were not Ruthenian, but rather "Polish speaking Catholics". Others, however, note that the peasants had little national identity and considered themselves

Masurians The Masurians or Mazurs ( pl, Mazurzy; german: Masuren; Masurian: ''Mazurÿ''), historically also known as Prussian Masurians ( Polish: ''Mazurzy pruscy''), is an ethnographic group of Polish people, that originate from the region of Masuri ...

; to quote one of the peasants as late as end of World War I: "The older peasants called themselves Masurians, and their speech Masurian ... I myself did not know that I was a Pole till I began to read books and papers, and I fancy that other villagers came to be aware of the national attachment in much the same way." In turn Wolff prefers to talk of "Galician peasants". A famous Ukrainian poet

Ivan Franko Ivan Yakovych Franko (Ukrainian: Іван Якович Франко, pronounced ˈwɑn ˈjɑkowɪtʃ frɐnˈkɔ 27 August 1856 – 28 May 1916) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, ...

, whose family were witnesses of the events, depicted the Galician slaughter in a number of works, particularly "''Slayers''" (1903), in which he describes the peasants as Masurians, as well as "''Gryts and the nobleman's son''" (1903), where Franko depicts a broader picture, showing both the aforementioned "Masurian slayers", and the Ruthenians, who opposed the Polish anti-Kaiser movement.

Background

Uprising

Legacy

See also

Notes

References

Further reading