Jan Henryk Dąbrowski: the general of Poland's anthem

Dąbrowski spent more than four decades in uniform, in the service of Saxony, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Italian republics, Napoleon and the Kingdom of Poland. With the Legions he fought on the Trebbia in 1799; under Napoleon he fought at Friedland in 1807 and at Leipzig in 1813; and in Napoleon's invasion of Russia he was wounded at the crossing of the Berezina in November 1812.¹

What was Jan Henryk Dąbrowski famous for?

He is famous above all as the founder of the Polish Legions in Italy, the first Polish military formation after the fall of the Commonwealth, and as the general named in the national anthem. He also led the 1806 rising in Greater Poland against Prussia and, after Józef Poniatowski's death in 1813, commanded the Polish army.²

Early life and the Kościuszko Uprising

Dąbrowski was born in August 1755 at Pierzchowiec near Bochnia, the son of Jan Michał Dąbrowski, an officer, and Zofia née Lettow. His career began in Saxony: he joined the Saxon army as a cadet in 1769, 1770 or 1771 (the sources differ), took part in the War of the Bavarian Succession of 1778 to 1779 and from 1780 served in the elector's guard in Dresden.³

He moved to the Polish army in 1792 with the rank of vice-brigadier. During the second partition in 1793 he resisted the advancing Prussians at Gniezno. In the Kościuszko Uprising of 1794 he distinguished himself in the defense of Warsaw and then led a successful diversionary raid against the Prussians in Greater Poland.⁴

After the rising collapsed he looked abroad. In 1796 he went to France, and the Directory, unwilling to raise Polish troops itself, sent him on to the new republics in Italy and to General Bonaparte, who commanded the French army there.⁵

The Polish Legions in Italy

On 9 January 1797, with Napoleon's backing, Dąbrowski signed an agreement in Milan with the Lombard Republic to form Polish Legions in its service. Volunteers came from Polish exiles and from Poles who had been conscripted into the Austrian army and deserted or been captured in Italy. The Legions grew to some 7,000 men, who hoped that fighting beside France would bring them home to a free Poland.⁶

The legionaries fought beside the French across northern Italy, often at heavy cost. They fought on the Trebbia and at Novi in 1799, where, the Fondation Napoléon notes, Dąbrowski distinguished himself, and many were taken prisoner when the fortress of Mantua fell.⁷

Why is Dąbrowski named in the Polish anthem?

Because the anthem began as the marching song of his Legions. Józef Wybicki wrote it in Reggio Emilia in July 1797, between 16 and 19 July according to dzieje.pl and the government portal powroty.gov.pl (15 to 21 July in an Institute of National Remembrance article), and its refrain calls on Dąbrowski to lead his soldiers from Italy back to Poland.⁸

It was first sung in public on 20 July 1797, to the tune of a folk mazurka whose composer is unknown. The soldiers took to it at once: on 29 August 1797 Dąbrowski wrote to Wybicki from Bologna, “Żołnierze do Twojej pieśni nabierają coraz więcej gustu” (the soldiers are taking more and more of a liking to your song). From the start it was called Mazurek Dąbrowskiego (Dąbrowski's Mazurka). By 1798 it was known in all three partitions, and it first appeared in print in 1799, in a Polish paper published in Italy.⁹

In Wybicki's manuscript the song opens “Jeszcze Polska nie umarła, kiedy my żyjemy” (Poland has not yet died while we live) and has two stanzas missing from today's anthem, one of them invoking the scythes of Racławice (“Mamy racławickie kosy”). The official text, announced 130 years after the song was written, on 26 February 1927, in a circular of Interior Minister Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski, opens “Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, kiedy my żyjemy” (Poland is not yet lost while we live), with the refrain “Marsz, marsz, Dąbrowski, z ziemi włoskiej do Polski” (March, march, Dąbrowski, from the Italian land to Poland). Article 28 of the 1997 Constitution names the Mazurek Dąbrowskiego as the national anthem.¹⁰

What happened to the Polish Legions in Saint-Domingue?

After France made peace with Austria at Lunéville in 1801, it had little use for Polish troops in Europe. In 1802 part of the Legions was shipped to Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to restore French colonial rule against the island's rebels. Most of the Poles sent there died of disease or in battle, and only a few returned.¹¹

Dąbrowski himself stayed in Italy and remained in Italian service until 1806. The historian Roman Wapiński, quoted in Polish education ministry materials, wrote that resentment of Napoleon for squandering the Legions, especially strong after Saint-Domingue, faded only once the Duchy of Warsaw was created.¹²

The Duchy of Warsaw, Russia and Leipzig

After Napoleon's victory over Prussia in 1806, the emperor sent Dąbrowski to Greater Poland to raise a rising there. Dąbrowski and Wybicki arrived in Poznań on 6 November 1806, according to the Sejm's 2018 resolution and the historian Adam Danilczyk (dzieje.pl dates their appeal to 3 November), and called on the region to take up arms against Prussia.¹³

In 1807 he fought at Tczew, at the siege of Gdańsk (Danzig) and in the battle of Friedland. When Józef Poniatowski received overall command of the new Duchy of Warsaw's army, Dąbrowski, in Danilczyk's reading, felt undervalued and for a time withdrew into private affairs. In 1809 he was back in the field in the war against Austria.¹⁴

In 1812 he commanded one of the three Polish divisions of the V Corps. He lost Borisov to far stronger Russian forces, as both the Fondation Napoléon and Edward Foord's 1914 history of the campaign describe, and he was wounded at the crossing of the Berezina: on 28 November according to Foord, on 26 November according to dzieje.pl. In 1813 he fought at Leipzig, and after the death there of Józef Poniatowski he took command of the army of the Duchy of Warsaw.¹⁵

What did Dąbrowski do after Napoleon's fall?

He returned to Warsaw and helped to organize the army of the new Kingdom of Poland, ruled by the Russian tsar. In that army he became a general of cavalry, and he was made a senator-voivode, but he soon withdrew from public life and settled on his estate at Winna Góra, which Napoleon had granted him in 1807.¹⁶

How did Jan Henryk Dąbrowski die?

Dąbrowski died at Winna Góra on 6 June 1818, at the age of 62. The Fondation Napoléon gives pneumonia and gangrene as the cause, and Adam Danilczyk writes that in the spring of 1818 he fell ill with pneumonia and gangrene set into an old wound in his leg. He was buried in the village church.¹⁷

In 1863 his remains were moved to a sarcophagus in a side chapel of the church. His heart was kept first in the Winna Góra palace, then in Kraków and in Poznań's town hall, and since 1997 it has rested in an urn in the Crypt of Distinguished Greater Poles beneath St. Adalbert's Church in Poznań.¹⁸

What kind of commander was Dąbrowski?

Above all an organizer. The Sejm's 2018 resolution praises the organizing talent he showed in building the Legions, and the historian Adam Danilczyk counts his wide military learning and his gift for organization as his chief strengths. His soldiers called him the father of the soldiers, while his interwar biographer Adam Skałkowski judged him too cautious in the field.¹⁹

General Klemens Kołaczkowski, in a memoir quoted in a PAP biography on dzieje.pl, described him as tall and strongly built, easy-going and often jovial in company but closed, severe and demanding on duty, a man who knew how to command and be obeyed and was honored and loved by his comrades and subordinates. Danilczyk adds that he was hard on his officers but talked with ordinary soldiers and stood by them in difficult moments.²⁰

Skałkowski, quoted by Danilczyk, charged that in 1812 he kept maneuvering, covered himself on every side and avoided a decisive clash, a believer in the rules of eighteenth-century strategy. Danilczyk finds that verdict too severe, because the forces Dąbrowski had were far too small for his tasks, and stresses that he built the Legions from nothing; the Sejm's 2018 resolution calls him an outstanding military commander.²¹

Remembering Dąbrowski

On 6 June 2018, the bicentenary of his death, the Sejm adopted a resolution calling him an outstanding military commander whose achievements as founder of the Legions returned the Polish question to the international stage. That year the regional government of Greater Poland bought the Winna Góra palace from its private owner and on 10 October opened a museum of the general and the Polish Legions there.²²

The story of his song is told at the National Anthem Museum in Będomin, the village where Józef Wybicki was born.²³