Polish Volunteers in the Napoleonic Wars

Abstract

The Napoleonic Wars had a new character; they were “national wars” in which mass armies fought. This new mode of warfare, as well as influencing civilian societies, led to a great number of military volunteers across Europe.¹ Up until now, the period of the Napoleonic Wars has had different connotations in Poland’s cultural and political history than in most European countries, both temporally and in terms of content. For one thing, the three Partitions of the Polish state (1772, 1793, and 1795) dictated other temporal breaks, which exerted direct and indirect influences on the period of investigation.² On the other hand, the period of the Napoleonic Wars in Poland has been described as międzypowstaniowy [between the rebellions], as it occurred between the Kosciuszko Rebellion of 1794 and the November Rebellion of 1830.³

so that people talk about Poland out loud again in the world today!

Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz