I'm the Dauphin in France

Chapter 1196 A chaotic world

However, to the Austrian government's surprise, their increased 15-year buyout fee failed to satisfy the Polish nobles.

These landowners wanted to preserve serfdom. Even if they wanted to redeem the serfs, they would have to follow the policy of neighboring Prussia—the redemption period was 30 years, and one-third of the serfs' land was directly allocated to the landowners.

As a result, in the newly acquired Polish territories, large numbers of nobles held continuous demonstrations and protests, and even threatened to refuse to pay taxes.

At the same time, Polish serfs were also enraged.

Poland's Grand Sham had already promised them the land for free, but these damned Austrian invaders are making them pay a ransom for 15 years!
The serfs didn't understand things like demonstrations, but when Polish resistance organizations came to recruit, they were very eager to join—if they drove out the invaders, they could continue to enforce the laws of Great Sham.

Yes, this is the "big pit" that Joseph had the Poles leave for the invaders—such a radical serf reform policy would cause chaos anywhere.

Of course, the occupying forces could decisively declare the Polish parliament's previous emancipation laws null and void. That's what the Russians did.

This enraged the serfs.

That's how humans are. If they could only live in the mire their whole lives, they would just drift along numbly. But once they see hope, that hope immediately becomes everything to them.

Anyone who dares to extinguish this last glimmer of hope will absolutely fight to the death.

Therefore, although the Russian-occupied areas in eastern Poland were predominantly Orthodox Christian, the riots were far more severe than those in the Prussian-Austrian-occupied areas.

In Minsk alone, four serf uprisings broke out in just over a month since the Russians arrived.

Prussia fared no better. They applied their domestic serf buy-out policy directly to western Poland, and even areas like Poznań, which they had occupied a few years earlier, experienced frequent riots.

In the church square of Melec, Governor Prosno was still earnestly persuading the Polish landowners: "Look, the ransom for just 15 years of taxes has already caused a riot among the serfs. It really can't be increased any further..."

An elderly man in the crowd shouted in French, "Your Majesty the Emperor, please send troops to suppress the rioters!"
“Our taxes are used to support the army. If Your Majesty does not do this, we have no choice but to leave the money behind.”

Immediately, someone shouted in agreement: "Yes! No taxation without suppression!"

"If this continues, we won't have the money to pay taxes even if we want to."

"Or the government could compensate everyone..."

They were all in French, which means they were all proper nobles.

The Austrian governor wiped his brow—the serf revolt was already giving him enough headaches, and he didn't want to offend the nobles as well.

He raised his hand to signal everyone to be quiet: "Very well, I will convey your requests to His Majesty. Please wait another month..."

"That's too long, at most half a month," someone shouted.

"Okay, okay, I'll do it as soon as possible."

……

Near Mount Juozapines, south of Vilnius.

More than 120 Lithuanian serfs were intently listening to their "commander" explain the battle plan in the woods at the foot of the mountain: "We'll first go to Scharchinenkai to steal bread. Baron Vaicunas there is very wealthy. There will definitely be many serfs joining us there, and then we'll all storm Vilnius!"

The serfs immediately raised their pitchforks and hunting rifles and shouted, "Attack Vilnius!"

"Drive the Russians out!"

"No, kill them!"

The "commander" was the first to mount a packhorse and waved, saying, "Follow me..." He had only uttered two words when he suddenly froze.

His father appeared before him, with a neatly dressed man standing beside him.

"What brings you here? Who is this person?"

"This is Mr. Hofmannatsky, from Warsaw," the old man said respectfully, gesturing to his side.

Before the insurgents could react, Hofmanatsky immediately pulled out his identification from his pocket: "I was sent by the Military Commission."

"Please don't act impulsively, that will only get you killed."

"You Russian lackey! Get out of here!"

Hofmanatsky quickly replied, "You misunderstand. What I mean is, we should wait until the right time for everyone to deal with the Russian aggressors together."

"I will come to the village regularly to keep in touch with everyone. What we need is to defeat the enemy once and for all!"

It took Hofmanatsky most of the day, until he vowed to provide flintlock muskets to the rebels, to finally persuade the serfs to return to the village.

He then immediately went to the town of Sharchininka, and the next day gave a public speech outside the town, explaining that rioting now would not drive away the Russians, and that they should wait for the right time when the government would lead everyone to launch a counterattack.

The speech was well received, and many serfs who had originally decided to participate in the uprising returned home as instructed.

However, Hofmanatsky was arrested by Russian troops at noon.

A few hours later, the Polish "handover officer" in Vilnius arrived at the Russian military camp and handed a document issued by the Warsaw government to the major in front of him with a smile: "Look, this is a strategy implemented by His Highness the Regent at the request of Count Vorontsov to reduce riots."

The Russian pointed at Hofmanatsky, whose face was bruised and swollen: "Do you know what he did?"

“Yes, sir. He told the serfs not to cause trouble. Of course, to be efficient, he had to tell some lies,” the officer said. “There’s no such thing as a ‘unified counterattack.’ You know the lords of Warsaw are terrified.”

"As long as no trouble is caused within six months, those serfs will accept the governor's rule."

The officer then sent someone to communicate with the governor's office, and after confirming that everything was correct, he released Hofmannatsky.

Of course, he was unaware at the time that Prince Poniatovsky had used his help in quelling the riots to secure for the Russians the condition that Warsaw officials could move freely in the occupied territories.

This allowed the Poles to openly unite the resistance fighters and coordinate their actions.

As for the talk of retaliation, not only the Russians, but even many Polish serfs believed that the Warsaw government was trying to fool them.

But one day, they will find out that all of this actually happened.

……

It's April now.

Regent Poniatowski's entourage slowly entered Warsaw. He had just signed a cargo forwarding agreement with Prussia—from now on, all of Poland's import and export goods would be handled by Prussia. Currently, the port of Gdansk was controlled by the Prussians, who could easily force this arrangement.

However, the Polish regent used this agreement in exchange for the continued use of the port by Polish ships and the retention of jobs for all Polish dockworkers.

When the carriage was less than 200 meters away from the Siddham Palace, an old woman suddenly rushed out from the roadside and fell in front of the carriage.

Poniatowski noticed the carriage had stopped and was about to peek out to check the situation when two young men nimbly squeezed past the guards on either side, raised their pistols, and fired at the carriage.

(End of this chapter)