Thread by @akoz33

This gives me an excuse to return to one of my favourite topics - Poland in the Napoleonic period. 😉
This prayer for the “conversion” or “return to the Faith” of Polish economists and scientists and for exorcising the evil spirit of cosmopolitanism from Polish universities

https://twitter.com/BDStanley/status/1330244380142264320

appeared on the site of Radio Maryja (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Mar… ) founded and run by a Redemptorist monk, Tadeusz Rydzyk (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_R… ). Father Rydzyk has been for years in an uneasy alliance with Poland’s currently governing Law and Justice Party. In fact, it was not

even always an alliance - nobody has quite forgotten that many years ago, Jarosław Kaczyński described Father Rydzyk’s project as a Russian intelligence operation. Kaczyński referred to generally anti-Western outlook of the station and the fact that it was easily able to obtain

a powerful transmitter in the Ural Mountains. It was in 1998, a year before Yeltsin chose Putin as Prime Minister. Kaczyński said then “although there is a mess in Russia right now, certain things they pay careful attention to.” Kaczyński later apologised for these words.

There were of course words on the other side too. In 2007 the magazine Wprost published a secret recording of a talk by Rydzyk at the private university in Toruń, which he runs, in which he described the late President Lech Kaczyński (Jarosław’s brother) as a

"a swindler who had bowed to pressure from the Jewish lobby” and his wife Maria as “a witch who should perform euthanasia on herself”.
Rydzyk claimed that the tapes had been doctored.

Anyway, the Redemptorists are an order formed in Italy specifically to work with the poor and

they have always been probably the mist militantly conservative grouping in the Polish Church. And in 1808 they were for that reason expelled from the Duchy of Warsaw by Napoleon’s Marshal Davout.
Napoleon created the Duchy in 1897, after his victories over Prussia and Russia,

out of territories taken by Prussia from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Partitions. This was done as part of the treaty of Tilsit, and in order not to upset the Tsar and Austria, which was neutral at that time, the name Poland was not used, and the new state,

was called a Duchy and not a Kingdom. Napoleon, unusually for himself, for he hardly cared for “legitimism”, on thus occasion decided to follow Poland’s short lived Constitution of the 3rd of May 1791, which declared the Saxon Wettin dynasty hereditary rulers of Poland. Since

Elector of Saxony (later King) Friedrich August was his ally, it was an easy decision for Napoleon to make him the Duke of the new Duchy. But Napoleon’s mist immediate concern was the raise as many troops from the Duchy as possible and for this purpose its administration had to

be put on a sound basis. Napoleon gave this task to his best commander and administrator, Marshal Louis Nicholas Davout, who was also awarded the Duchy of Lowicz as a personal fief.
While Davout was in overall charge, Prince Poniatowski was made the commander of the new Polish

army. Davout at first distrusted Poniatowski, whom he viewd as a decadent aristocrat (he himself was of noble origin but joined the Revolution while many of his relatives remained monarchists) but later changed his mind and the two became close allies and even friends, which was

very special because the strict and severe Davout had very few of those. Anyway, Davout’s task was to implement the code of Napoleon, which, among other things, legitimized diverse. Davout himself, was actually a believing Catholic, but of a very moderate kind and the

Redemptorists soon proved to be an obstacle, which the Marshal dealt with in his typical way

Davout, by the way, was considered very pro-Polish and in Napoleon’s circle, the strongest supporter of creating a genuinely independent Polish state. Since he had many enemies, they made sure that this was presented as due to personal ambition. Connected with this was also the

fact that Davout was the staunchest supporter of war against Russia of 1812, its principal organizer and was therefore blamed when it turned out disastrously, although it has to be remembered that Napoleon disregarded the Marshal’s advice when making several key decisions.

As a result the relationship between Napoleon and his best marshal (not only was Davout never defeated himself, but Napoleon never lost a battle in which Davout was involved - he was absent at both Leipzig and Waterloo) broke down, although Davout remained loyal to the very end.