The Year That Changed Everything—1846

“With the beginning of 1846, the life of Polish emigration changed in its main features; the first period of this life came to an end,” one can read in Zamoyski’s memoirs. The unsuccessful attempt at a revolution in Krakow and Poznań, where the Prussian authorities intervened vigorously and the leaders of the unsuccessful uprising were quickly caught and condemned, especially the bloody peasant uprising in Galicia, which was directed not against the Austrian government but against the Polish nobility, caused an enormous shock.