One Wave Follows Another

Galicia was not as peaceful as it seemed. Even with an army of a hundred thousand stationed there, someone was still plotting a conspiracy.

The Polish Restoration Army and other Polish restoration organizations had agreed to launch an uprising on February 22, 1846. Their goal was to drive out the Russian, Prussian, and Austrian invaders and establish a new Poland centered on the Free City of Kraków.

The Polish conspirators were terrible at keeping secrets. You could ask a few Poles in any tavern in Paris or Vienna and learn all the details: the time, the place, and the people involved.

In fact, the Polish restorationists were also facing an awkward problem. To make more money, the merchants of the Free City of Kraków had built a railway to Lviv.

That meant that if they launched an uprising in the Free City of Kraków, the garrisons in Lviv, Bilaya, Paowa, and Bochnia could thunder along the railway and arrive just a few hours later.

Lviv, Bilaya, Paowa, and Bochnia were Galicia's main cities at the time. The Free City of Kraków was nominally outside the Austrian Empire, but it lay right on Galicia's northern edge.

Franz thought an uprising in the Free City of Kraków was impossible now that it was connected to the Austrian Empire. But the slap in the face came swiftly: rumors swept across the land, and all three countries began to act.

The Kingdom of Prussia moved first.

Berlin, Charlottenburg Palace.

Friedrich List fully agreed with Bismarck's view: if Prussia wanted to occupy Polish territory permanently, it had to turn its inhabitants into Germans, body and soul.

Historically, after partitioning Poland, the Prussian government had eagerly renamed the three provinces it had just acquired after Prussia: West Prussia, South Prussia, and New Prussia.

Frederick the Great