The problem of prisoners-of-war in the 19th century insurrectionist concepts

Abstract

One of the topics raised in the insurrection projects envisaged after the fall of the November Uprising was the question of prisoners of war. This issue, however, has not yet been the subject of historical research. Some Polish theoreticians, in particular the supporters of the guerrilla war, were against showing mercy to surrendering opponents. Some of them even suggested terminating captured enemy soldiers. The supporters of ruthless handling of the opponent argued, among other things, that it was impossible to keep prisoners under the conditions of guerrilla insurgency and justified their viewpoint on the grounds of bad treatment of captured insurgents by the victorious invaders. At the other extreme, there was the lonely Henryk Kamieński who hoped that the prisoners of war could be turned into Russian troops fighting against Tsarist Russia alongside Poles.