No More Learning

A year after he had written this poem, Ujejski
saw Warsaw for the first time. This visit to the
capital of his country, then groaning beneath the
heel of Nicholas I. , had a far reaching influence
on the young poet's subsequent life as a writer.
Not only did it lay the foundations of the poem
Marathon by which he made his name, but it was
in Warsaw, with the spectacle of the nation's
suffering before him, that he was inspired with
the clear comprehension of his particular vocation.
He tells us in the poem The Lyre of Jeremias,
which he wrote in Warsaw, that now he casts his
old lyre underfoot:
"For I can sing no longer for myself. I stretch
my hand to Jeremias' lyre to string it to the wail-
ing of my brothers. I renounce myself. I cast all
my own sorrows to the bottom of my heart; let
them perish without echo. My whole nation is my
family. Mine are the tears from her eyes, mine
the blood from her wounds. Suffering her pain,
I will sing. Ah, I suffer! "
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He sits sorrowing and alone, with a city in
mourning about him. His friends are gone, slain,
or in the living graves of Siberia; and, as he
watches at night,
"I hear the subterranean hollow drag of chains.
I hear far off the beating of the hammer. It is my
brothers toiling in the mines. "
He sees his people in the snowy deserts, perish-
ing of hunger and cold, dying with no memory
left of them. And, likening the tears of Poland
to those of Jerusalem, the poet, falling on his face
for grief, cries upon the spirit of Jeremias, his
favourite type of a national inspirer and prophet,
to give him of his strength, for he sinks beneath
his sorrow.
We shall see later with what deep psychological
significance this figure of Jeremias is invested in
Ujejski's eyes.
Up to the year of Ujejski's visit to Warsaw, his
name was scarcely known. Then, after his return
to Austrian Poland, as he was taking part one
evening in a literary gathering in a friend's house,
the boy of twenty-two read aloud a poem that he
had just finished writing, entitled Marathon. Such
was the patriotic power, the finished artistic
beauty, of these lines that the audience sat spell-
bound in silent wonder and admiration. From
that hour, UjejsH took his place among the great
poets of his nation.
His purpose in writing Marathon may be gath-
ered from the words of stinging reproach to his
countrymen which form the preface, and from
the quotation out of Byron which he chooses as his
motto:
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? 'THE IDEALS OF KORNEL UJEJSKI 213
"The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream'd that Greece might still be free,
For standing on the Persian's grave,
I could not deem myself a slave. "
"You ask a song," so Ujejski flings his poem
forth into the world, "of charm and sweetness
for your ears; but, my compatriots, my only
song for you is one that shall remind you of the
clanking of your chains. You ask a song as a flower
in a garland to give you honour at the banquet;
but I would fain steel your enervated souls in
a blush of fire like armour in the flame. "
Then he laments that to him, a youth, has
fallen the task of spreading this language of
sarcasm and upbraiding instead of that of love.
He has long sought for some means by which he
can infuse manhood into the hearts of men who
are growing weak in bondage; and now he will
raise the heroes of ancient history to point the
way.
And so he sings the story of Marathon; in
other words, of the victory of a few routing, by
the strength of one common bond of devotion to
their fatherland, the hosts of Persia. The poem
opens with the burning of Sardis.
"A slave ran out from the burning town, and
behind him ran in pursuit the wails of the dying
that rang in his ears. And he fled, veiled by the
darkness of night. Oft he cast backward his terrified
eyes, and behind him the wind breathed fire on
the heights, and carried clamour upon it. He stood
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and he listened. Perchance even now the enemies
butcher his brothers, give the aged mother to
drink of the blood of her son, and level the hut
with fire and with sword. But tarry he may not.
With the satrap's command, oh, runner, speed
on, for the way is still long. When thou returnest
thou shalt count the corpses in ashes. He fled
through the desert with the news he was bearing,
and swiftly he ran till the sun had arisen; and
when at the outposts he met with a runner,
* Sardis is in flames. To Susa! To Susa! ' he
cried, and he turned; and the other, like an
ostrich wide spreading its wings, flew, and van-
ished before the sun like a spectre of night. "
In a series of virile word-paintings, Ujejslri
tersely but vigorously depicts the march to war
of the Persian armies, the terror in Athens, the
victory.
"From the four ends of the world the legions
march. From the four ends of the world the
vultures flock; until a mighty wind springs up
from the fluttering of the flags, and a mighty
humming from the rattling of the bows. The
earth is blackened with the horses' hoofs. "
Meanwhile, in Athens we have the moral point
of the poem, that is, the speech of Miltiades,
bidding him who would prefer to be a slave begone
', to Darius and to fawn upon him, like a hungry
cur, for empty honours.
"But we others, let us remain, we who are
linked in misfortune. Either we will wipe out the
foe with this sword, or, by the holy gods, will we,
free, find refuge from slavery in death. "
Impressing upon the Athenian crowds that,
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? THE IDEALS OF KORNEL UJEJSK1 215
united, they are all-powerful against the most
overwhelming odds, he reminds them that their
ancestors are summoning them to the like glorious
deeds as theirs.
Ujejski hardly describes the battle itself except
to insist again upon that dominant, and to the
Pole most significant, note of a handful confound-
ing a multitude. The action transfers itself to
Athens, to the women and old men awaiting
tidings till the night is broken by the sound of
hurrying feet, and the messenger, crying victory
through the streets, falls dead without a wound.
"On the battle-field after the murderous day-
long game is played, after the bloody toil, the
raging war, thousands of men sleep now in peace.
The Greek and Persian on one self-same bed lie
without anger in eternal brotherhood. Over them
ravens stalk and feast, and with hoarse voices bid
their brethren to the banquet come. "
Marathon was written in 1845. The following
year Poland was stricken by one of the most terrible
tragedies that she has ever known, the uprising
of the Galician peasantry against the Polish nobles.
Their ignorance exploited by secret agents,
driven on by the instigations of the Austrian
government, the peasants fell upon their land-
lords' houses and put the inhabitants to tortures,
butchering men, women, and children. Whole
families perished together at their hands. Terror
reigned over the land.
Belonging as he did to a noble house, Ujejski,
although he himself and his immediate family
escaped destruction, lived in the midst of these
scenes. The grief and horror of his soul are stamped
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POLAND
upon the poems that streamed forth from his pen
at this time. Passionately patriotic, devoted to
the purest of national ideals, he saw the nation that
he loved thrust down into a pit of abasement,
dragged from the path of glory. and salvation
which he and every poet of his race had looked
to see her tread, her fair fields become a shambles.
For once his heart seems to fail him, and he com-
plains that he can see God no longer. Nature,
that had inspired him with the hope of the wheat,
is now only cruel, parading her beauty, indifferent
to human anguish.
""" QkJEaxth* there is no heart nor love in thee.
As a coquette decking herself at evening, thou
dreamest only of ornaments, of splendour. Thou
art an egotist. Drowned in thy flowers, thou dost
forget thy suffering children. Gladly thou
catchest every different voice, except one only--
except the voice of pain.
"Many a time thy treacherous hand has woven
from the thorns thou bearest a crown of torment
for thy child. That guilty thorn, drunken with
innocent blood, blooms again as a white flower
in the spring, and the birds sing of it to the world:
'Oh, what a white and stainless flower! '
"And over our flaming homes, when the con-
flagrations fling wide their crimson flags, and the
mother, with her hair sparkling in the glare, casts
herself on the cradle of her child; then the cloud
floating in the dark night skies thus whispers to
itself : 'See the gay fires that flame upon the
earth. Oh, but they paint my bosom with their
beauty! '
"Oh, Earth, thou ever, ever art the same. A
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? THE IDEALS OF KORNEL UJEJSKI 217
demon of irony flies always over thee that makes
our pain thine ornament, thy splendour. They
say that amber is a bird's tear, turned to stone.
Oh, Earth, our blood is but a ruby to thee, our
cry of grief thy music, our whitened bones thy
easy couch.
"To-day I saw a string of cranes fly from across
the sea, lured by the spring. And they flew fast,
and with a joyful song they hailed the pond where
lilies float, and hailed the hills with pine-trees
crowned, and the silver rivers on the carpeted
meads. And, flying their free trail above this
earth, nought, nought they saw or heard--except
the spring. I wept, and in my heart I said: 'Oh,
Lord, why am I not a bird? ' Old wish! Age
after age repeats, better to be a bird than be a
man " (The Earth, 1846).
Under the burden of his own distress of mind \
and of his country's agony, Ujejski, like the other
Polish poets who had gone before him, poured
out his soul in poetical inspiration. The figure of
Jeremias, lamenting among the ruins of a fallen
city, had already, as we have seen, captivated his
imagination. In the midst of the fresh national
disaster, he now turned again in thought to another
oppressed race who had wept by the waters of
strange lands--to the Hebrews of old. The pecu-
liar part that their prophet-poets had played in
raising and inspiring them spoke straight to
Ujejski's heart. His nation was now the outcast
of peoples. He would sericTher a message of counsel
and of consolation under the impersonation of a
second Jeremias. Thus arose that famous cycle
of lyrics that are among the most mournful poems
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even- of Poland's tragic literature--Ujejski's Com-
plaints of Jeremias.
Jeremias, the type of a national guide, flies, an
angel of vengeance, over Poland. The land is one
lake of blood. The skies are red with the fires of
burning homes. The wails of the dying are
mingled with the hoarse cries of the murderers.
And Jeremias calls upon the nation to retaliate,
and avenge her wrongs by bloodshed on her side.
She has been patient long enough. Heaven will
not take pity on the weak, but gives the victory
to brute strength.
"' Oh, Lord, Thou, Who weighest in Thy hand
our fate, open Thy heavens to this song. And
when that day of ours shall come, that yearned-
f or day, bid Thy angels thunder on brazen trumpets
to the four quarters of the world this watchword
in that day: Revenge! Revenge! Revenge! '
"And the nation trembled and moved: but,
dragged down by her chain, she fell once more, for
she breathed not the spirit of God, and it was
not in God but revenge, that she woke from
6leep. "
Then Jeremias repents him of his evil bidding
till at last, after long penance, his tongue is loos-
ened to sing a higher strain of prayer and praise.
"Oh, my people! " cries the poet, in conclu-
sion to this, his preliminary poem, The Word of
Jeremias: "These songs of mine are my life's
blood. Let this one word ring in your inspirations,
let it flow in your veins. Let it die not on your
lips before the jeering foe, and you shall need no
other pillory for the foe--sorest punishment for
Satan--than this word, Praised Jn. . God,"
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? THE IDEALS OF KORNEL UJEJSK1 tig
The moral teaching of this poem is the more
striking, when we realise not only that it came
from the heart of a youth at an age when the blood
runs hottest at the sight of wrong, but that he
was not, as it were, merely writing on paper, far
removed from the passion of the conflict. What
he described was a matter that touched his own
life to the quick. The deep religious feeling and
high ideal with which these lines are impregnated
are the key-note of Ujej ski's life-work.
The succeeding poems of the series continue
on the like tone of faith, of pain, of prayer under
intolerable affliction. As the poet keeps vigil on a
Bummer's night, his soul revolts against the beauty
and tranquility of that night, where no trace
remains of the tears that have watered it, of the
blood with which it has streamed. The leaves
are motionless on the trees, and swans dream
where the lakes reflect the stars.
"The earth smells sweet, and the dawn flames.
My God! My God! " is his horror-stricken
refrain.
At another moment, he will paraphrase the
Our Father, turning each of its invocations into
a heart-broken entreaty for his nation.
"Oh, let the nations troubled by eternal war
breathe again in brotherhood and peace. Let this
earth be engirdled by liberty and love. Let there
be one God, one aim, one race. Thy Kingdom
come.
"Oh, then, then it were worth while to live,
in liberty beneath Thy care. To-day we knock
in vain against the coffin's lid. Thy Will be done. "
In the Chorale, which Ujejski wrote before the
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POLAND
other poems of the cycle and to which he subse-
quently added the latter, he reaches the height
of power as a national and a moral poet, calling
to the deepest things of the heart. One of the
finest poems that he ever composed, it is still sung
in Poland and at Polish gatherings, and remains
among the best loved poems of his country.
"With the smoke of the burning fires, with the
dust soaked with our brothers' blood, this voice
oh, Lord, beats up to Thee. Terrible is this our
complaint. This is the last sigh of ours. Our hair
grows white from such prayers as these. We know
no songs now without complaint. The crown of
thorns has grown into our brows. Eternally, as a
monument to Thine anger, our imploring hands
are stretched out to Thee.
"How many times hast Thou not scourged
us! And we, not yet cleansed from our fresh
bleeding wounds, we cry out again: 'He has
heard us and pardoned, for He is our Father, for
He is our Lord. ' And we rise again more firmly
hoping, and again by Thy will our enemy crushes
us; and he flings us his gibe like a rock on our
bosoms: 'Now where is that Father and where is
that God? '
"And we look to the sky to see if a hundred
suns will not fall from its height, as a sign to our
foes. All is still, all is still. In the blue the free
bird still soars as of old. Then, rent asunder by
fearful doubt, ere we can waken again our faith,
our lips blaspheme Thee, though our hearts are
weeping. Oh, judge us by our hearts, not by our
words.
"Oh, Lord, Lord, to the horror of the world
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? THE IDEALS OF KORNEL UJEJSKI 221
time has brought on us a terrible story. The son
has slain his mother, the brother has slain his
brother: a multitude of Cains is among us now.
Lord, it is not they who are guilty, though they
have thrust back our future; but other demons
have done this deed. Oh, punish the hand, not
the blind sword.
"See, in our misery ever the same, to Thy
breast, to Thy stars we float on prayer, like birds
fain to sleep flying to rest in the nests that are
theirs. Shelter us, shelter us with the hand of a
father. Give us the vision of Thy mercies to come.
Let the flower of martyrdom lull us by its frag-
rance, let the light of martyrdom surround us
with glory.
"And with Thy archangel to lead us we will
then go on to the mighty battle, and Satan's
cowering body transfix with Thy conquering
banner. We will open our hearts to our erring
brothers ;* the oil of freedom shall cleanse their
guilt. And then shall the abject blasphemer hear-
ken to our answer: 'God was and God is. '"
(Chorale, 1846).
All through Ujej ski's poetry, and most notice-
ably in the Complaints of Jeremias, written though
they were under such tragic circumstances, the
poet's attitude is never pessimistic! Even in the
* Were it only from his expressions in the Chorale we should
learn how completely Ujejski had pardoned the Galician peasantry;
but his whole life, spent in working in their behalf, speaks for itself.
+ It may be said that The Earth and a fragment which he wrote
at the same time, during the massacres, and in which he says,
"Terror blanched my face, I saw not God," convey an impression
of utter hopelessness. But such lang-uage is so unusual with Ujejski
that it must be considered as exceptional, and only representing a
moment of agony, not the habit of his mind.
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POLAND
hours of his deepest desolation, his confidence in
a Divine ordering, however terrible the test by
which it is tried, does not falter. The ideals that
he places before the eyes of the youth of Poland
are invariably those of faith, moral purity, con-
stancy, and hope. His grief, indeed, seems to
approach despair in that poem from the Complaints
of Jeremias where, at the end of each of the eight
stanzas in which the poet commemorates the
sufferings of his country, tolls the cry of pain:
"Oh, God, we are sorrowful. " The nation, he
says, has drunk to the dregs of her chalice. Upon
the burning pyres of our brethren, on our sons
thirsting at the stakes, heaven casts not dew, but
thunderbolts. "We are filled with tears and
mourning " that our homes know us no more but
are given over to the stranger, while our bones
are scattered over the wide world. The swallows
chirp in their own tongue, but the Polish child
no longer hears his language. Birds of passage
may return, with the spring, to their country;
the Pole, driven to the snows of Siberia,
may never return again, and only the dead
bodies of those fallen by the wayside mark his
road.
"Then, Lord, wilt Thou never console Thy
repentant people? We wither as leaves before
Thine eyes; and wilt Thou not hasten the hour
of redemption? "
But even here the poet can still reiterate that
his nation kneels before her God. UjejsH, in fact,
is always and definitely on the side of the angels.
The Act of Faith that closes the Complaints shows
us an undismayed soul that rose victorious above
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? THE IDEALS OF KORNEL VJEJSKI 223
the temptations that encompass the children of
a suffering and persecuted nation.
"Long I wept in the garden of Gethsemane.
Long I tore the music of my lyre out from my
tears. Now I rise me with a wearied body, but with
a strong, a mighty and anointed soul. "
Poland, having lain in the dust of humiliation,
soars upward, crowned with stars. Ujejski dictates
I to her her act of faith. Here he follows more closely
; in the steps of Krasinski than in any other of his
poems. The echoes of the great Messianistic
prophecies that reached their noblest confession
in Krasinski's Psalm of Good Will cling about the
lips of the younger poet likewise. Ujej ski's poetry
is never so decided an expression of the theories
of Messianism as we find in Mickiewicz's Ancestors
and Krasinski's Dawn and Psalms of the Future.
He is, indeed, far more what we might call
Western in his line of thought, more concrete.
But this Act of Faith is a clear testimony to Messi-
anistic hopes.
"We believe, Lord, oh, firmly we believe that
Thou hast sent us as a torch by night to lead the
human race to Thee. We believe that the light of
our dawn is already dawning in the skies. We
believe that Thou sowest stars upon our road. We
believe that though Thou dost permit at times
the weak to stagger, yet Thou dost shield us all from
fall, and that Thou hast set Thy angels round the
{)it. We believe, oh, Lord, we are the sons of
ight. We believe that, in some time not far away,
our country's bounds shall be from sea to sea, and
all the nations will through the ages and the ages
gaze on us, as man gazes to the sun. We believe,
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? 224 POLAND
oh, Lord, that Thou shalt rule us as our
King. "
The Complaints of Jeremias touch the highest
point of Ujej ski's national aspirations, and
created a profound impression in his country.
Under the literary aspect, he showed himself here
as a master of lyrical form, whose love of music
gave his poetry a peculiar rhythmic charm. The
patriotic fire that trembles through these poems
never died. Using again the image of the chosen
race, in which so many of the Polish poets saw
the mystic counterpart of their own people,
Ujejski wrote his Biblical Melodies. Albeit the
subjects are scriptural, reading between the lines
and especially in Super Flumina Babylonis, we
know that the Polish singer is in reality writing
of no nation of the past, but of his Poland under
a veil, letting these lessons of fidelity to a national
cause, steadfastness under oppression, hope in the
future, speak for themselves.
But it would be a mistake to imagine that the
nature of Ujejski's patriotism is purely one of
resignation and passive endurance. There is a
strong martial side to it. The Angelus, peaceful
evening picture though it is, has yet a sterner and
a rugged colouring. The mists of the coming
night droop about the hamlet. Homing birds fly,
crying, to their nests. The peasant boy in the
hills is piping on his flute. Then the Angelus rings
out from the village church. The scent of the
flowers, the mist, the murmuring of the stream,
the clamour of the birds, the flute of the boy, all
join their voices in song and prayer. The sound
of the bell reaches the dead in their graves who
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? 7HE IDEALS OF KORNEL UJEJSKI 225
died for Poland, and they, too, pray. Then the
poet asks of fate that when he, in his turn, goes
down into his grave, after having sung to its
depths the sorrow of his nation, with his last
tears given to the mother earth he loved so well,
these same evening sounds may breathe over him,
as his dying lips repeat the Angelus.
"Let them lay me in my coffin on a bloody
shield. Let my songs of war murmur there around
me. Let me dream that, dying, I beheld an armed
people, radiant in their victory. "
Many years later, he prays that when he has
finished his work of song for his nation:
"May that beloved earth, that natal earth, fall
on my bosom as though she mourned for me. She
will not lie heavily on me who loved her. Softly
as a mother's hand, will she rest upon mine eyes. "
And he bids that his bones shall be laid in a
meadow that he knows, where, so popular tra-
dition has it, the sons of Poland fell in the past
fighting for their country, and where a legend
foretells that the final victory of Poland will be
fought. There, says the poet, spring blooms earlier,
the winds blow more freshly and more sweetly
than in any other spot. There, the ghosts of those
who gave up their lives for Poland hold nightly
procession.
"Bear me there. Lay my head there beneath
the turf. Let that great hope be my glory. I reck
not whether they bury me with lamenting and
with weeping; but let that mighty hope be my
death monument. "
"Oh, earth of my songs," cries the poet with
^'all the passion of the Pole for the soil. " Oh, thou
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POLAND
who art my mother! Thou, who dost lavish
comfort on thy faithful sons, thou wilt not drive
my yearning soul away from thee. "
There he will lie till above his head resounds
the clash of arms, and the peasants rise for Poland,
the nation battles for her freedom. In that day of
triumph, of a conflict such as the world has never
yet seen, in that day " I will arise again. "
The pastoral scenes that he has painted in the
Angelus were the setting of most of UjejsH's life.
He married in 1849, and, as he sings in a poem to
his wife, found in his happy marriage a refuge
from adversity. From that time he spent nearly
all of his tranquil days in the country, surrounded
by domestic joys, devoting himself to unwearied
labour for the welfare of the Galician peasants.
From his youth upwards their condition had
always been a subject dear to his heart. Their
poverty and misfortunes are the theme of more
than one of his poems, written to awake sympathy
for their lot. For the last seventeen years of his
life he wrote little. But his nation was never for-
gotten. Not long before his death, on the celebra-
tion of his poetical jubilee, he said that life had
deceived him, for it had given him what he had
neither sought nor wished, fame and honours,
but it had withheld from him the one desire of
his heart, the resurrection of Poland. His^place
in Polish literature is that of a greatr lyric poet,
and of a teacher who never ceased to urge the
youth of his nation towards the highest ideals,
personal and national, and to inspire them with
an evergreen hope for the restoration of their
beloved and oppressed nation. These two tenets
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:09 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015005782621 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? THE IDEALS OF KORNEL UJEJSK1 227
of hope and resurrection were his own cherished
and life-long beacon-lights. We may, indeed,
look upon them as being his last testament, the
last words by which he chose to be remembered.
For it was he who raised the inscription over the
gate of the country graveyard near his home,
where his dust was to lie: "They shall rest and
they shall rise. "
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-06-10 17:09 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 39015005782621 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? TABLE OF VARIOUS DATES IN POLISH
HISTORY
600. Birth of Cracow.
842. Foundation of the Piast dynasty, the
earliest line of Polish sovereigns.
963. Conversion to Christianity of Miecfcys-
law I. , which brings about the conversion
of Poland.
992-1025. Reign of Boleslaw I. He unites
Poland, is victorious over Bohemia, Ger-
many, and Russia, and establishes the
archbishopric of Gnesen.
1079. Murder by Boleslaw II. of St. Stanislas,
'Bishop of Cracow.
1139. Poland is divided into duchies.
iT77-U94- Reign of Casimir II. , the Just, who
reunites Poland, and founds the nucleus
of the Polish senate.
1194. Poland again divided into duchies.
1226. Rise of the Teutonic Knights in Polish
history. Summoned by Conrad, Duke of
Masovia, to assist him against Prussia,
they become the deadliest enemies of
Poland and the founders of modern
Prussia.
1241. First of the Tartar invasions that ravage
Poland for centuries and against which
she stands as the bulwark of Christendom.
1295. Poland is again a kingdom.
1331. First general Diet.