the Congress of Vienna and the final 'pogrom' (crushing defeat) of the Napoleon's Grand Armee in 1815 brought changes to our Polish-Lithuanian lands, where Russian armies had already occupied the provinces of the French satellite state known as Duchy of Warsaw (created and augmented between 1807-09 by Napoleon's sword from some of the partitioned Polish provinces - nota bene why Napoleon allowed Silesia to remain with Prussia after 1807 may be the greatest puzzle of his chess playing in our part of Europe ).
so in 1815 the victorious Russian sovereign Alexander I Romanov become the king of the realm known as 'Krolestwo Kongresowe' (Congress Poland or Congress Kingdom of Poland).
Hence, some of the former Polish Kingdom provinces achieved a status of a state and were united with Russia by the person of her ruler.
Alexander had flirted with uniting the former Lithuanian and Belarusian provinces (already in Russian possession de jure and in fact since AD1772-1795) with this new Polish state, but it is said that United Kingdom and Austria vehemently opposed this idea, while rewarding Prussia with the fictitious created out of Greater Poland known as the Grand Duchy of Poznan (Posen) - you know, perhaps the British allies or the Hohenzollern arch-thieves wanted to cover the shame of the melting of Polish Crown regalia in 1810-11?). Our ancient capital Krakow was excluded from Congress Poland and a tiny Krakow Republic was created(annexed by Austria in 1846), and although Alexander I was allegedly the mind behind the idea of creating this free statelet (Torun was also on his mind, but again the allies gave the city to thieving state of Prussia) it was imagined and carried through in face of the opposition from the allied powers to create more complete Polish state and perhaps to deny tsar Alexander even more legitimacy, and perhaps even to prevent Russia's future claims to more Polish provinces, since some of the core of Polish lands were held by force by these two lovely countries - Austria and Prussia.
Anyway, the good tsar become our king and ruled through his brother, Grand Duke Konstantine
(who was married to a Polish aristocrat Joanna Grudzinska, Grzymala coat of arms). More about this grand duke in some future,
Below a painting by a Polish painter Wiktor Mazurowski (murdered by the SS Nazi RONA forces during the Warsaw Uprising 1944) - combat of the Russian Imperial Guard Cavalry against the French battle of Friedland 1807
So here are some of the equestrian portraits of our king and Russia tsar
I have been thinking, given the popularity of the English thoroughbreds in Russia and even Polish breeders, that Alexander might have ridden the English blood horses? But in this painting the mount looks very Spanish
imperial carraige
and a typical East and Central European mode of travel -
Valete
ps
images are all from wiki commons
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