Congress Poland (1815-1915) was a personal union of the Russian Empire and Russian-controlled Poland that lasted from the end of the Napoleonic Wars and Grand Duchy of Warsaw to World War I, when the German Empire made Poland an independent kingdom (with a vacant throne; the first Prime Minister was Jan Kucharzewski).
History[]
Map of divided Poland
Congress Poland was founded in 1815 after the Russian Empire conquered the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, a satellite nation of the French Empire of Napoleon. Tsar Aleksandr I of Russia reunited the two countries as a personal union and made Jozef Zajaczek its first Namiestnik (Viceroy), but Poland's people refused to let Russia rule over its people without representation. In 1831, 1848, and 1863 there were three failed national uprisings against Russian rule, and the country became governed by more namiestniks after the first revolt. Congress Poland was divided into guberniya (governorates), and Polish autonomy became little more than fiction. In 1867, the Russian Empire officially incorporated Congress Poland into their kingdom as a province.
From 1867 to 1915, there were no more national rebellions against Russian rule. However, the start of World War I in 1914 led to an invasion of Russia by the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, leading to the conquest of Poland by the Central Powers. Warsaw fell to the Germans in late 1914, and the rest of Poland became a German and Austro-Hungarian possession by 1915. A regency was established over a new and independent kingdom of Poland, but there was no king from 1915 to 1918. The Treaty of Versailles in February 1919, a few months after the 11 November 1918 armistice that ended the Great War, guaranteed Polish independence as a republic.