Many centuries passed before Polish soldiers once again set foot in Bolesławiec and the Bolesławiec region; it was only thanks to the Napoleonic Wars that Polish soldiers, under the banners of the “God of War,” marched across all of Europe—from east to west, from Madrid to Moscow.
These wars brought great fame to Polish arms. “He who desires victory with all his strength pours his power into every soul,” the Emperor of the French used to say. He knew how to pour his power into the souls of Polish soldiers as well. Hurled by the great emperor across Europe, they also found themselves here, in our land along the Bóbr, in 1806–1807 and 1808, but they became linked for the longest and bloodiest time in the spring and summer of 1813, in what was known as the Saxon War. They unwaveringly believed to the end that their beloved emperor would lead them once again toward the Vistula through Silesia, from the Oder, the Lusatian Neisse and the Bóbr. And that the Saxon War, fought in (Lower) Silesia and Saxony, was the “Third Polish War”...
The history of Polish arms and the battles fought by our soldiers in the spring and summer of 1813 deserve to be recalled, because they have not been recorded in the collective memory.
Until now, we knew only of Field Marshal M. Kutuzov, an enemy of Poland and the Poles who had contributed to the fall of the Polish–Lithuanian state. He fought Polish troops at Zieleńce at the end of June 1792, where our forces were commanded by Prince Józef Poniatowski. For a heroic act in battle after this engagement, the first military orders were awarded and the Order of Virtuti Militari was established.
M. Kutuzov took part for many years in the wars of conquest waged by Russia across Eurasia. In Bolesławiec, school trips were ordered to the Kutuzov Museum, and until October 1966 it was necessary to lay flowers at his monuments in Bolesławiec and Bolesławice. Yet no one had ever heard about the places where Emperor Napoleon stayed in our town: when and where did he stop? Nor is there any trace of the graves of Polish soldiers who, fighting at Napoleon’s side, died here in the Bolesławiec region in combat with Prussian soldiers and Russian soldiers allied with them.
Before the bloody Saxon War of 1813 swept through Bolesławiec and its surroundings, Polish soldiers had stood on Bolesławiec soil several years earlier. In 1806, returning from “Italian land to Polish land,” the wandering Polish soldier who “goes through forest and woodland, sometimes wasting away from hunger”—as in the poignant song from the Jankiel concert in Mickiewicz’s work. “They come from Italian land, my uhlans, to Poland, and have arrived in their native Silesia, to Lignica. They march along the road, six hundred horsemen, at night, in May. Only after so many years does the scent of their (native) land reach them”... old veteran Gajkos recounts in Volume III of ?Popioły”. In the spring of 1807, French troops and Polish units supporting the French stormed the Prussian fortresses of Głogów, Wrocław, Koźle (on the Oder), Nysa, Kłodzko and Świdnica.
Later, two full regiments of the Vistula Legion were organized in Wrocław. Here Napoleon reviewed their parade as well: he admired their training and efficiency. Soon after the parade, on the order of the “God of War,” the Vistula Legionnaires set out for war in distant Spain, passing through Środa, Legnica, Chojnów, Bolesławiec, Nowogrodziec, Lubań and Zgorzelec (the road through Bolesławiec to Zgorzelec was laid out later). On 15 April 1812, the bloodied remnants of the Vistula Legion would cross the bridge in Zgorzelec and then stop for several days of rest in Lubań and Bolesławiec. The road back to their homeland led along the same route as the road to Spain. From Bolesławiec they marched to join the massing of the French Grand Army on the Niemen, in order to begin the “Second Polish War” against Russia in June.
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