Dezydery Chłapowski
Baron Dezydery Chłapowski (1788 in Turew – 27 March 1879) of the Dryja coat of arms was a Polish general, businessman and political activist.
Life
His father Józef Chłapowski (born 1756, died 1826) was the baron of Kościan County and his mother Urszula was from the Moszczeńska family. His tutor as a child was the French immigrant priest Steinhoff. He began his education at the Piarists university in Rydzyna and then in Berlin. At the age of 14, his father placed him in the Prussian dragoon regiment of General Bruesewitz that was stationed in Greater Poland. At the same time the young soldier studied at the Berlin Inspection Officers Institute, which he graduated from in 1805 with a promotion to lieutenant. He sought exemption from participating in the wars with Napoleonic France in 1806.
After the occupation of Berlin by the French, he left for Poznań . Here he joined the hundred-man honor guard of Emperor Napoleon formed by the local nobility after the Greater Poland Uprising of 1806 under the command of Umiński. During this period he gained favor with Napoleon, who appointed him a lieutenant. During the campaign in 1807, he fought in a voltaic company in the 9th Infantry Regiment commanded by General Fr. Antoni Paweł Sułkowski formed in Gniezno . Decorated after the battle of Tczew , as a half-company commander, the Virtuti Militari cross and the Legion_of_Honour. During the siege of Gdańsk he was captured by Prussia.
After a peace in Tylża and returning from Riga , where he was interned, he was promoted (1 August) to captain and assigned as adjutant to General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski . In February 1808 he was summoned to Paris , where he became the orderly officer of Napoleon. During this stay, he graduated from military studies at the Paris Polytechnic School. He passed the final exams before General Bertrand . He went through Spanish and Austrian campaigns alongside Napoleon. For participating in the battle of Regensburg he was awarded the title of baron of the empire. In January 1811he was appointed the head of the Polish squadron of the 1st Cavalry Regiment of the Imperial Guard . With him he carried out the Moscow ( 1812 ) and Saxon ( 1813 ) campaigns . During the latter, in Dresden, he asked for dismissal, which he obtained on 19 June . The decision was caused by Chłapowski's bitterness over Napoleon's attitude towards Poland (plans to give the Duchy of Warsaw to the tsar in exchange for peace) and the hardships of the campaigns he had gone through. Among the Napoleonic veterans, however, this action was badly received with accusations of desertion. As a retired colonel , he left for Paris. After the abdication of Napoleon, he went to Great Britain . During the "one hundred days of Napoleon "through Paris returned to Greater Poland ( 1815 ). Dezydery Chłapowski as Napoleon's staff officer
He settled in his hometown Turwia, which he and Rąbin bought back from the debtor father of a professor, and then tidied up the property and began introducing a modern economy. To deepen their knowledge once again went on a trip to England ( 1818 - 1819 ), where among other things practiced physically working on the farm. Upon his return, he introduced solutions observed in England. Thanks to this, he repaid debts within 15 years and the property in Turwia quickly became one of the best farms in the Grand Duchy of Poznań . Chłapowski among others he introduced crop rotation instead of three- crop , used an iron plow and sowed soil enrichmentclover . As a result, Chłapowski was one of the guests invited to a conference in Berlin, where a plan of enfranchisement of peasants in the Grand Duchy was developed. He, for his part, allocated some of his land to parcel among peasants. In 1821 he married Antonina née Grudziński , sister of the Łowicz duchess Joanna , wife of the grand prince Konstanty . He was a deputy from the knighthood from the Kościan poviat to the provincial parliament of the Grand Duchy of Poznań in 1827 [1] and in 1830 [2] . He was a co-founder and activist of Credit Land and Fire Insurance Association. Palace in Turwia
When the November Uprising broke out, he put on his uniform again and crossed the border, reporting to the Polish insurgent army. He has developed a bold and interesting offensive plan, including capture of Brest on the Bug , but it was not approved by Józef Chłopicki , the dictator of the uprising , who preferred defensive tactics. It was only after the removal of Chłopicki that Chłapowski received the command of the brigade. He took part in the battle of Grochów , in which he himself headed the charge of the cavalry holding back Russian infantry after the withdrawal of Polish infantry. Then, under the command of the inept general Antoni Giełgud, he took part in the expedition to Lithuania during which he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General . Despite a number of minor victories, Giełgud's indecision about Chłapowski's offensive plans for a quick attack on Vilnius before the arrival of major Russian forces led to the defeat of the expedition to Lithuania. By decision of the National Council, Chłapowski was finally promoted to the rank of division general and was entrusted with the supreme command in Lithuania, but it did not arrive in time (Chłapowski found out about it only in Prussia). The unit was forced to cross the Prussian-Russian border, where Chłapowski, as a Prussian subject, was sentenced to one year in prison. He avoided confiscating the property and the punishment was instead converted into a high fine. He served his sentence in a fortress in Szczecin , where he wrote a textbook On agriculture.
After being released, he returned to Turwia. He was politically associated with his former subordinate Karol Marcinkowski . In the years 1838 - 1845 worked with the Guide Agricultural and Industrial , which posted articles of agriculture. He intended to set up an Agricultural University , which was to educate numerous apprentices at the Turkish estate. Among them were later activists such as Maksymilian Jackowski . He was also a co-founder and publisher of Przegląd Poznański and Sunday School . Throughout his activities he laid the foundations of organic work, thereby resisting Germanization. He supported enterprises such as the Poznań Bazaar and the Scientific Assistance Society as well as credit societies. He was a member of the national parliament. Correspondent member of the Galician Economic Society (1846-1879) .
During the Greater Poland Uprising of 1848, he organized insurgent troops in his powiat. After the fall of the Spring of Nations , in Greater Poland, he became a member of the upper house of the Prussian Parliament, the House of Lords.
Despite his strictness and Catholic views, which discouraged some liberals from him , his achievements made him a widely respected person with a great impact on the community of Greater Poland . He died on March 27, 1879, and was buried in Rąbin next to the local church . In 1899, his son, Kazimierz , published his father's diaries.
Major General from April 25, 2014 Dezydery Chłapowski is the patron of the Ground Forces Training Center in Wędrzyn .
The general was also a promoter of mid-field tree plantings in Poland, which contributed to the economic success of his property and is still favorable to agriculture in this area [5] [6] . In order to preserve his agricultural and natural heritage, in 1992 and again in 2014, a Landscape Park was created around his estate in Turwia. Its special purpose is to preserve the system of mid-field plantings with "(...) high natural, landscape, scientific, didactic and cultural values".
See also
References
- Witold Jakóbczyk, Przetrwać na Wartą 1815-1914, Dzieje narodu i państwa polskiego, vol. III-55, Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, Warszawa 1989
External links
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