Bolesław Roman Dłuski

He spent his childhood in the family estate Zamosz, Ukmergė county. He studied at the Vilnius gymnasium. In 1845, at the age of 14, he and his brother Przemysław were sentenced to prison by the Russian authorities for allegedly participating in an anti-state conspiracy. Bolesław was sent to Caucasus, where he was included in the Russian penal unit waging a war with Imam Shamil.[1] He remained in the army until 1856, reaching the rank of a captain. At his own request, he was transferred to the reserve and then studied at St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. After a year, he moved to Moscow University, where he started medical studies. After graduation, he ran a private medical clinic in Pasvalys in Samogitia.[2]

While still a student, he was involved in the Red party, he continued conspirational activity while in Pasvalys. Soon he became a member of Lithuanian Provincial Committee. He took part in talks with the Central National Committee in Warsaw, mainly about demarcation of the spheres of activity between Central and Lithuanian Committees and the level of authonomy of the latter[3] When the uprising broke out, Konstanty Kalinowski appointed Dłuski as the military leader of the Kaunas voivodeship, he went there in February 1863 and took an alias "Jabłonowski".[4] In the first period, he inspected the voivodeship's combat readiness and started first preparations. In March, with his own small unit, he went towards Panevezys, where near the village of Megiany, he merged with the unit of a priest Antoni Mackiewicz.[5] On March 27, both units fought and won a battle against a larger Russian unit. After the fight both divisions separated, Dłuski went towards the forests of Krakės, where he joined the division of the major Tomasz Kuszłejko. The newly formed group, numbering 1000 insurgents, fought a battle on April 1 at Lenčiai, which ended with a tactical victory, but led to the disintegration of the group.[6]

At the beginning of April Jakub Gieysztor, the head of the insurgent government in Lithuania, but unlike Dłuski belonging to the Whites, dismissed Dłuski from the post of the head of the Kaunas voivodeship, appointing in his place Józef Kościałkowski.[6] In the new situation, Dłuski took part in the formation of the unit of Zygmunt Sierakowski. In order to do so he went to the Prussian border, where he picked up a load of smuggled weapons and fought two skirmishes with Russian soldiers on April 27 and 28 in their defense. The weapon was delivered to the forests near Andrioniškis, where Sierakowskiwas stationing.[7] After that he went once again to the Prussian border, near Tauragė, to pick up smuggled guns. On May 11 and 12 his unit of 150 insurgents fought two victorious battles against the overwhelmingly more numerous Russian unit, near village Stemple. The Russians, however, made it impossible to intercept the weapons.

In this circumstances Dłuski went to Telšiai, where at the end of May he established a camp. On the way, he was joined by the unit of Seweryn Gross "Aleksandrajtis".[8] Jasiński's unit joined the Dłuski near Akmenė.At that moment, Dłuski's group consisted of 400 well-experienced insurgents. The unit set up a camp near the village Papilė. On June 22, the camp was attacked by the Russians, who forced the insurgents to withdraw towards the marshes near Draginiai. Thanks to a successful counterattack, the Russian troops were forced to flee inertly, as a result of which many soldiers drowned in the swamps. The victory was total, the insurgents lost only 7 killed and 6 wounded.[9]

After the battle, Gross's unit headed towards Telšiai, while the rest of the insurgents, led by Dłuski, avoided the Russian pursuit, and headed towards the Prussian border. On the very border, Dłuski once again avoided breaking up his unit, attacked by the Russians in the vicinity of the village Pajūris. Then, discouraged to the prospects of the uprising itself, mainly due to the conservative policy of the Vilnius government, he crossed the Prussian border with some of the insurgents, leaving the rest under the command of Jan Staniewicz-Pisarski.[10]

Through Prussia, Dłuski went to Paris, where on behalf of the National Government he started organizing the supply of weapons to Lithuania, where the Reds, led by Kalinowski, retook the government. In February 1864 Romuald Traugutt, the head of the National Government, appointed Dłuski as the head of the fifth corps in Lithuania. Dłuski took up vigorous preparations for the resumption of the uprising in Lithuania and Samogitia. However, these efforts, due to the great numerical superiority of the enemy, were unsuccessful.[11]

After the fall of the uprising, Dłuski lived in Paris and worked at the Hôpital Saint-Louis, where he married a French woman. After the death of his first wife, he moved to London, where he worked as a painter, he also married a Polish woman. In 1873, he and his wife returned to Poland and bought an estate near Kraków. He took up the job of a librarian at Museum of Science and Industry in Kraków, he also worked as a painter and ran an unregistered medical practice for his friends. Jan Matejko portrayed him as the Teutonic commander Werner von Tettingen on his painting Battle of Grunwald.[12] He died in May 1905.

• List of Polish painters

• Universal Lithuanian Encyclopedia

• Stanisław Łaniec, Dowódcy i bohaterowie powstania styczniowego na Żmudzi, Toruń 2002.
• Stanisław Zieliński, Obrazki z powstania 1863 r., Warsaw 1935.