The Warsaw Citadel

The terrain that later was to be occupied by the Citadel, initially constituted a quiet countryside, termed "a beautiful embankment", ("joli bord" in French; this phrase has been adopted as the name of the Warsaw district Żoliborz). The St. Spirit Manor, providing for the hospital of the same vocation, has been situated here. Later on its name became "Fawory". At the beginning of the XVIIIth century barracks of the Guard regiment, serving under Stanisław Poniatowski, father of the king Stanisław August, have been founded nearby. By the middle of the century the buildings of the school run by the Piarist monks were also erected. The school has been founded by Rev. Augustyn Orłowski, then rector of the famous Collegium Nobilium. Rich and elegant district of Fawory became a part of Warsaw in 1781.

Erecting the Citadel has been a direct consequence of the November Uprising, which started on the 29th of November 1830 in the Warsaw Cadet School. From the very beginning, the uprising has been supported by the civilians. About 15,000 of Warsaw inhabitants helped the insurgents to gain control of the Arsenal building. Therefore Russian government had every reason to be afraid of a future unrest in Warsaw.

Citadel contained infamous prison – the Xth Pavilion. Predating the Citadel and originally serving as a storage of uniforms, since 1833 it hosted political prisoners. Between 1834 and 1915 about 40,000 of them have been kept in the Citadel. The list of convicts reads like a history textbook: Gustaw Ehrenberg, author of patriotic songs; Karol Levittoux, participant of a high school conspiracy in Łuków, who committed suicide on the 7th of July 1841, setting his prison bed aflame; Rev. Piotr Ściegienny, whose uprising in 1844 failed before it even started; poet Adam Asnyk (1860); Filipina Płaskowicka, a socialist and a teacher, running an illlegal newspaper "The Prisoner’s Voice" in the Xth Pavilion; Roman Dmowski, later the president of the Polish National Committee in Paris, representing newly created Polish state abroad.

In his article "Psychology of a convict" Józef Piłsudski wrote: "When I stand before you in the uniform of the highest-ranked officer, in the uniform of the highest-ranked exponent of the Polish army and speak frankly about "the big house", it happens only because 150 years of the Polish history made prison into nothing short of ordinary human life". He spoke from experience. Piłsudski has been arrested on the night of the 21st of February 1900, in a flat containing an illegal printing press, issuing the newspaper "The Worker" ("Robotnik"). The investigation has been carried out in Łódź, but on the 17th of April the arrestee has been moved to the Xth Pavilion on account of the new charges. In addition to distributing illegal press, he was (wrongly) accused of murdering two turncoat informers.

Freeing a prisoner from a well guarded military object was impossible. Piłsudski had to be moved to a more convenient facility, so he started to simulate persecutory delusions. The symptoms were the aversion to the people in uniforms and refusal to accept prison meals for fear of poisoning. The only thing missing now was a diagnosis, promptly supplied by doctor Ivan Shabashnikov, a man of Buriat origin and of liberal convictions (first from the right on the photo depicting students of Ivan Pavlov). Paszkowska recalls: "Doctor I.S. knew from first sight that he met a men who was perfectly sane, so he stopped his examinations, and J.P. stopped pretending, and they started a nice talk about Syberia". Piłsudski has been moved to St. Nicolas Hospital in Petersburg, from which he managed to escape.

1862 – Jan Rzońca and Ludwik Ryll, organizers of two failed attempts at assassination of Aleksander Wielopolski, a reformer and legalist at the same time, head of Poland's Civil Administration within the Russian Empire, opponent of the January Uprising;

1865 - Emanuel Szafarczyk, 30 years old leader of "the Digger Bearers" – the secret organization carrying out death sentences during the January Uprising;

1905 – Stefan Okrzeja, socialist, a bomber from the Combat Organization of Polish Socialist Party;

1908 – Józef Montwiłł-Mirecki, one of the leaders od the Combat Organization of PPS, highly regarded by Józef Piłsudski.

In the 1870’s, after the Franco-Prussian war it became apparent that, due to the progress in the realm of artillery, no single fortress can be deemed effective. Russians decided to encircle Warsaw with a system of strongholds, consisting of two rings of fortifications. In 1909, the tsar ordered to abolish the fortress Warsaw, because Russian army needed modernization, and maintaining the fortress seemed a waste of resources. In 1913, however, because of growing international tensions, the Russians commenced rebuilding Fortress Warsaw, which… surrendered without the fight in August of 1915. The only long-term effect of its existence has been the stifling of the city growth for a couple of decades.

In the interwar period the Warsaw Citadel has become a location of state ceremonies. They usually commemorated the very people that used to suffer there: prisoners of the Xth Pavilion (some of whom were running the state at the time) or the veterans of the January Uprising. For example, in the Citadel the War Orders of Virtuti Militari were given to the veterans of January Uprising by The Chief of The State Józef Piłsudski. This ceremony took place on the 5th of August 1921, on the anniversary of Romuald Traugutt’s execution.

On the 13th of October 1923 a huge blast of the powder magazine shook the city. According to "The Warsaw Gazette": "the glass fell out of the windows on the railway stations Warszawa Wileńska and Eastern Station and throughout the Praga district. The commuters, terrified, threw themselves on the floor". The Citadel itself took far less damage than could be expected. The powder magazine was partially underground, which directed the impact upwards. The artillery shells stored nearby were luckily unaffected. Instead the Xth Pavilion, at that time containing flats for the soldiers’ families, incurred heavy damage. Explosion affected the towns near Warsaw – Rembertów, Otwock and Piaseczno. A terrorist attack has been suspected.

Bagiński and Wieczorkiewicz were to be exchanged for the Polish captives in the Soviet Union. However, they were shot in the train near the railway station Stołpce by a policeman escorting them, one Józef Muraszko. In the court he explained his actions by the state of agitation, and desire to avenge wrongs suffered by the Polish people. He was sentenced only to two years in prison. According to later rumors, during the second world war Muraszko was killed for cooperating with Gestapo. If this was the case, eight out of the people involved in the process were killed or executed: both of the accused, their killer, main witness of the accusation, three perpetrators of a failed assasination of that witness, and his actual killer, Izaak Naftali Botwin.

The last moment when the Citadel of Warsaw was used as a military facility, occured during the Warsaw Uprising. Manned by the German soldiers, it separated The Old Town from the district of Żoliborz. The insurgents’ attack on the 1st of August 1944 failed. Germans, in turn, used the Citadel as a base for their onslaught on Żoliborz on the 29th of September.

Museum of the Xth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel is a branch of the Independence Museum in Warsaw. Its exposition concerns the prisoners held in that facility, and contains a separate part devoted to Józef Piłsudski. The exhibition contains both the objects left behind by the prisoners and the documents of the Tsarist authorities concerning the convicts.

Polish Army Museum has been created on the 22th of April 1920 by the decree of Józef Piłsudski. Its exhibition deals with military history, presenting both the mediaeval arms and the heavy military vehicles from World War II. The collection is supplemented by the documents and works of art exploring military themes. The Museum is to be relocated to the Warsaw Citadel.

On the 18th of April 1919 Józef Piłsudski issued the following order: "On the order of the Chief of State the building of the Xth Pavilion of the Warsaw Citadel, which is a national monument from the times we suffered under the Russian yoke, for it became one by the virtue of constituting a prison for the leaders of the freedom fighters and of the most noble citizens of Poland, has been allocated to organizing there a historical and military archive, a museum, conference and lecture rooms." This museum, however, has not been created in the Second Polish Republic. Creation of the Citadel of Museums fulfills that very order on a much greater scale that it has been anticipated.