January Uprising

Uncommon card · No. 117549

The January Uprising was an insurrection against Russian imperial rule in the Congress Kingdom of Poland and adjacent lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Sparked by nationalist aspirations, political repressions, religious differences and opposition to conscription, it was organized by the clandestine Central National Committee and subsequently by the revolutionary Polish National Government. It began on 22 January 1863 and continued until the last insurgents were captured in 1864. A confluence of factors rendered the uprising inevitable in early 1863. The Polish nobility and urban bourgeois circles longed for the relative sovereignty they had enjoyed in Congress Poland before the previous 1830 November insurgency. The youth, encouraged by the success of the Italian independence movement, urgently desired the same outcome. The Russian Empire had been weakened by the Crimean War and had introduced a more liberal attitude in its internal politics which encouraged Poland's...

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