Józef Chłopicki

Józef Chłopicki (born March 14, 1771, Kapustynie, Volhynia, Pol. [now in Ukraine]—died Sept. 30, 1854, Kraków, Pol., Austrian Empire [now in Poland]) was a general who served with distinction with the armies of Napoleon and was briefly the dictator of Poland after the November Insurrection of 1830.

Chłopicki enlisted in the Polish army in 1785 and fought in the campaigns of 1792–94 before and after the Second Partition of Poland. He then took service under the French in the new Polish legions and distinguished himself in the Italian campaigns of 1797 and 1805. He commanded Napoleon’s First Vistula Regiment in Poland in 1807 and from 1808 served in the Peninsular War in Spain, receiving the Legion of Honour for heroism at Epila and in the storming of Saragossa. He accompanied Napoleon’s Grande Armée into Russia in 1812. On the reconstruction of the Polish army under Russia in 1814, he was made general of a division but resigned his commission after a quarrel in 1818 with Grand Duke Constantine of Russia.

Chłopicki at first kept aloof from the November Insurrection of 1830 but accepted the dictatorship at his countrymen’s request on Dec. 5, 1830. Lacking faith in the war’s success, he clung to the hope of negotiation with Russia and acted purely on the defensive until he was forced to resign on Jan. 17, 1831, and became nominally a private soldier. Actually, he retained his military command until he was seriously wounded during the Battle of Grochów (near Warsaw) on Feb. 25, 1831, and was forced to retire from public life.