Kingdom of Poland

The Kingdom of Poland was created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 from most of the Duchy of Warsaw. At first it was a state with its own constitution, parliament and army, joined to Russia through the Tsar as its king. After the November and January Risings Russia stripped away its autonomy, and after 1874 semi-officially called it the Vistula Land. In 1914 it was the most populous part of the Polish lands and, in the early years of the war, one of the main battlegrounds of the Eastern Front.

In the summer of 1915 Germany and Austria-Hungary occupied the Kingdom and divided it into the Governments-General of Warsaw and Lublin. In the Act of 5 November 1916 they announced a Kingdom of Poland on these lands, a hereditary monarchy tied to the Central Powers. This state, without a king or fixed borders, had a Provisional Council of State, then a Regency Council and its own governments. In 1918 it became the nucleus of independent Poland.