Patent on the Regency Council

On 12 September 1917 Emperor Charles I signed at Reichenau an der Rax in Lower Austria a handwritten letter to the Austro-Hungarian Governor-General in Lublin, Count Stanisław Szeptycki. In it he authorised him, “in complete agreement” with Emperor Wilhelm II, to issue jointly with the German Governor-General of Warsaw, Hans Hartwig von Beseler, the attached patent “on state authority in the Kingdom of Poland”. The act bears the same date and the signatures of both governors-general. Its first article laid down that supreme state authority in the Kingdom of Poland, until it was assumed by a king or regent, passed to a Regency Council, “without prejudice to the international position of the occupying powers”. The British chronology of the war records under this date that the Central Powers granted Poland a provisional constitution. In the Austro-Hungarian zone of occupation the patent was published on 15 September in the official gazette of the military authorities issued in Lublin.

After the fall of the Provisional Council of State

The patent was the occupiers’ second step, after the Act of 5th November, in building the promised Kingdom. The first practical fruit of that proclamation had been the Provisional Council of State, which from January 1917 had only an advisory voice. On 3 July the Council adopted a draft provisional organisation of the supreme Polish authorities, which envisaged the appointment of a regent or a regency council. A few days later the oath crisis broke out; on the night of 21–22 July the Germans arrested Józef Piłsudski; and on 25 August the members of the Council resigned their seats. Current business was taken over by a Transitional Commission (PL) chosen by them and headed by the deputy marshal Józef Mikułowski-Pomorski. On 1 September the administration of the courts was handed over to it.

It was to this Commission that the two governors-general addressed the letter attached to the patent. In it they explained that the governments in Berlin and Vienna had laid the July proposals of the Provisional Council of State before the emperors, and that on their basis the monarchs had ordered “the principles of the provisional constitutional arrangements of the Polish State” to be drawn up. The Regency Council was to give the state “a generally recognised representation” and at the same time “prepare the future monarchy”. Emperor Charles wrote in his letter that the hard times of war did not yet allow a king to sit in Warsaw “in the ancient, glory-crowned crown of the Piasts and Jagiellons”, but that a “National Government” was to take over power in the main areas even now. He also expressed his hope for the future of “a free Poland voluntarily leaning on the Central Powers”.

What the patent laid down

The patent had six short articles. The Regency Council was to consist of three members, to be installed in office by the monarchs of the two occupying powers. Its acts of government were to be countersigned by a responsible President of Ministers. The Council was to exercise legislative power jointly with a Council of State (PL), established by a separate law. According to the governors’ letter, the new Council of State, with an enlarged membership, was to be “the forerunner of the Polish Sejm” and to receive a decisive voice in legislation, not merely an advisory one like its predecessor. The regents’ first task was to be the appointment of a President of Ministers, whose confirmation both governments reserved for themselves, and the organisation of ministries in those branches of administration that had been handed over to the Poles.

The rest of the text set the limits of this authority. In fields whose administration had not yet been handed over, legislative proposals could go to the Council of State only with the occupiers’ consent, and there the governor-general could issue decrees with the force of law after hearing the Council of State. “To safeguard important war interests” he could also issue the necessary orders without doing so. Every Polish law or decree that imposed rights and duties on the population had to be submitted to the governor-general of the zone concerned. They came into force only if he did not object to them within 14 days. In matters affecting the occupier’s interests the governor could demand a review of the judgments and decisions of Polish courts and offices. The Polish authorities were to gain the right to represent the Kingdom abroad and to conclude international agreements only after the occupation ended. The patent came into force on the establishment of the Regency Council.

One matter that had broken the Provisional Council of State remained outside the patent: the army. Supreme command over the Polish Armed Force, being formed since the autumn of 1916, stayed with Beseler, and the appointment of the Regency Council changed nothing in this. Behind the façade of a joint act, Berlin and Vienna still differed over the future of Poland, and the patent did not settle who would become its king, or when.

Reactions

According to Polish historians, most political groups, with the exception of the SDKPiL and the PPS-Left, received the announcement of the Regency Council favourably or with a wait-and-see attitude. A lengthy report has also survived by Marian Seyda, a member of the Paris-based Polish National Committee, which reached the United States ambassador in Paris in October. Seyda, an opponent of the pro-Central Powers orientation, wrote that the impression made by the acts of 12 September was “very weak”, and that the handing over of the courts and schools to the Poles meant more than all the announcements. Society, disappointed by the promises of 5 November, was said to reply briefly: “after words, let deeds come”.

The report quoted the positions of the main camps. The passivists (PL) grouped in the Inter-Party Political Circle (PL), from conservative realists to National Democrats, declared that they had taken part neither in preparing the plan nor in choosing the candidates. In their view the Regency Council could fulfil its task if it did not forget that the nation was the sole source of supreme authority. Without the nation’s will it should not decide the borders and system of the state, offer the crown to anyone, or conclude treaties determining Poland’s fate. The left admitted that the patent might be a step towards a Polish state, but stipulated that its value would become clear only when it was known what powers the Polish government would receive. As conditions for effective work it listed the restoration of civil liberties, the release of the interned legionaries, Piłsudski’s return to the country and the convening of a Sejm elected by universal, equal, secret and direct suffrage. Piłsudski was then held in the Magdeburg fortress (PL). Only some of the activists (PL) linked to former members of the Provisional Council of State backed the patent without reservation. They called for the rapid creation of a conscript army and for cooperation with the Central Powers against Russia.

The choice of regents

The patent named no names. On 18 September the Transitional Commission presented its candidates to the occupiers. From the start there was talk of the Archbishop of Warsaw, Aleksander Kakowski, and the President of Warsaw, Prince Zdzisław Lubomirski. The third was to have been the marshal of the Provisional Council of State, Wacław Niemojowski (PL), but according to Seyda his candidacy fell through in the face of opposition from the moderate groups and the left, and the former Austro-Hungarian ambassador Count Adam Tarnowski also declined the office. In the end the choice fell on the 67-year-old landowner Józef Ostrowski, chairman of the conservative Party of Real Politics (PL) and a former member of the Russian State Council. Kakowski agreed only after obtaining the Pope’s consent. According to Seyda, the occupiers insisted for several weeks that the future regents should announce in a manifesto a close alliance with the Central Powers and war with Russia, but in the end they dropped this demand.

The emperors appointed the regents on 15 October 1917, the hundredth anniversary of the death of Tadeusz Kościuszko. The ceremonial assumption of office, combined with an oath in Warsaw cathedral, took place on 27 October. Only then did the patent come into force.

Significance

The patent gave the Poles in the Kingdom more than the Act of 5th November had a year earlier: instead of a mere promise of a state, Polish bodies with the attributes of sovereign authority were being created, a government and the germ of a parliament. At the same time every important decision depended on the occupiers’ consent, and foreign policy and the army remained beyond the reach of the new authorities. The first regency government, the cabinet of Jan Kucharzewski (PL), was formed in December 1917. The Regency Council, regarded by many as a tool of the occupiers, lasted until the end of the war. In October 1918 it proclaimed Poland’s independence (PL), and on 14 November it handed all power to Piłsudski and dissolved itself.