Tuesday, March 19, 2013

150 years ago...

the January Uprising took place in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Tsarist Russia.

Some historians think that this was the last time Lithuanians and Poles fought side by side against a common enemy...

Some quotes from Wikipedia:

"It is of interest to note that it persisted in Samogitia and Podlaskie, where the Greek-Catholic population, outraged and persecuted for their religious convictions, clung longest to the revolutionary banner."

"The government confiscated 1,660 estates in Poland and 1,794 in Lithuania. A 10% income tax was imposed on all estates as a war indemnity."

"Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian insurgents were more numerous (up to 30,000 men at the peak of uprising) and a little better armed, but there were 135,000 Russian troops and 6,000 Cossacks in Lithuania and another 45,000 Russian troops in Volhynia. In every major military engagement of the uprising insurgents were outnumbered at least 10 to 1."

"In addition to the thousands who fell in battle, 128 men were hanged personally by Mikhail Muravyov ('Muravyov the Hangman'), and 9,423 men and women were exiled to Siberia (2,500 men according to low Russian data estimates, Norman Davies gives the number of 80,000 noting it was the single largest deportation in Russian history)."

P.S. this Walt Richmond's article tells the story of what happened to Circassians during roughly the same time period.

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