In 1797, two years after the nation of Poland was partitioned among Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and had disappeared from the map,

the Polish legions in Napoleon's army began singing a patriotic song. Poland is not yet lost. For a century, the very

singing of this song was a prosecutable offense in most of the lands that had been Poland,

and occasionally it became a revolutionary anthem during the numerous revolts.

Finally, in 1918,

prophecy became reality when Poland was reborn.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music 20th century. Episode 179, Poland, Part 1.

This is the fourth episode in our 1919 world tour, and today we're looking at the rebirth of Poland.

One of the most dramatic changes wrought by the Great War was the re-emergence of the nation of Poland

124 years after that same nation had been erased from the map of Europe.

Poland, or more precisely the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was at one time the largest nation

in Eastern Europe, admired for its prosperity and learning. But the Commonwealth went into a long decline in the 17th and 18th centuries,

caused by a series of debilitating wars and the collapse of its unique political system,

under which the king was elected by the nobility. In the final decades of the 18th century,

Poland was partitioned by its neighbors, Germany, Austria, and Russia, in three stages, until after the final partition in 1795, no Polish state remained.

In 1807, Napoleon recreated a Polish state, the Duchy of Warsaw, which encouraged many Poles to fight with Napoleon's armies.

But following Napoleon's retreat from Russia, the Duchy of Warsaw was occupied by the Russians in 1813,

and the Congress of Vienna essentially reaffirmed the earlier partitions.

Despite this, the reappearance of a Polish state 12 years after it was declared dead made

an impression on the Polish people, who kept alive the dream of a free and independent Poland,

despite the century of oppression that followed.

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