Following his defeat in the Napoleanic Wars, Napolean's creation of the Duchy of Warsaw was brought to an end at the Congress of Vienna. A new Polish state, Congress Kingdom, was created in its place with the Czar as its king and semi-autonomy from Russian rule. The relative freedom and autonomy was short-lived as the freedoms were quickly eroded and the Polish Constitution ignored by Russian authorities. As an elderly Polish gentleman once confided in me, "Those damned Russians. They pee on your shoes and tell you that it must be raining".

Cadets at the military academy seized their armory and then the Russian arsenal at Warsaw in late November, 1830, which sparked an uprising which eventually grew to about 70,000 Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusan, and Ukainian combatants facing about 200,000 Czarist troops. After nearly a year of fighting, the uprising ended on 5 October 1831 when the last 20,000 Polish soldiers crossed the Prussian border at Brodnica and laid down their arms rather than submit to the Czar.

Dennis Benarz, Chicagoland USA 2010