1/174/0/1/6

Two entries from a register of the Governing Commission (Komisja Rządząca), kept in the Central Archives of Historical Records (Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych) in Warsaw. The archive calls the volume “Collection of the judgments, resolutions, orders and all decisions of the Governing Commission”. The two entries published here are of 12 and 21 July 1807. The second is the resolution that returned the confiscated estates of the Starost Antoni Prusimski, Trąbczyn among them, to his daughter Michalina Dąbska; the first is the order for Józef Wybicki on which that resolution rests. Both are in Polish and fill three pages of the volume.

Historical background

Prussia confiscated the estates of the Starost Antoni Prusimski in 1796 and gave Trąbczyn and Kamionna with Kolno to Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen (1746-1818), a Prussian general. In the war of 1806 and 1807 Napoleon drove Prussia out of the Polish provinces it had taken in the partitions. On 14 January 1807 he set up the Governing Commission, a provisional government of Poles under Stanisław Małachowski, which administered those provinces until 5 October 1807. Its orders and resolutions were copied into this register in the order in which they were issued.

Contents

The order for Wybicki, 12 July 1807. The commission sends the Director of Internal Affairs a certified copy of a decree of the Emperor of the French and King of Italy, given at Finckenstein on 5 June. The decree returns to Wybicki, a member of the commission, the possession of the estates of Manieczki, Przylepki, Boreczek and Esterpol, which had been sequestrated in the department of Poznań and disposed of by the Prussian government, and it charges the provisional Polish government with carrying this out. The director is to proceed without delay: to order the administrative chamber of the department of Poznań to hand the estates over for Wybicki, and to have him put in possession. The entry is dated at Warsaw, at the session of 12 July 1807 [1].

The resolution for Dąbska, Niemojewski and Wichrowski, 21 July 1807. The entry opens the part of the register headed as the record of the resolutions the commission issued during its stay at Dresden. Its own heading says that the hereditary estates of Michalina Dąbska, General Niemojewski and Wichrowski, confiscated by the Prussian government, are brought under the judgment the Emperor gave in favour of Wybicki. The text states that Dąbska’s case had been referred to the commission by the Emperor. Following the decree of 5 June given at Finckenstein, the commission extends that judgment to her case and to the two others, so that the estates return to their true owners. It is dated at Dresden, at the session of 21 July 1807 [2]. The resolution names no estate and says nothing of debts secured on the estates [2].

Under each entry stand the names of the president, Stanisław Małachowski, and the secretary general, Jan Łuszczewski [1, 2].

Form and language

The register is a fair copy in a clerk’s hand. The names under the entries are written by the clerk after the word “podpisano” (signed), with the letters “LS” for the place of the seal; neither is transcribed. Pages 47 and 48 also hold three other entries, which are not part of this edition. The commission’s draft of the resolution of 21 July, with the corrections made to it, is in its files: 1/174/0/2/73.

Related holdings

The petitions of Michalina Dąbska of July 1807 and the commission’s draft resolution: 1/174/0/2/73. The grant of the estates to Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen in 1796: Oe 1 Bü 14525 and I. HA GR, Rep. 7 C, Nr. 3570. The letters of his agent Triebenfeld, which report the loss of the estates in 1807: Oe 1 Bü 9454. The later argument over whether the return of 1807 cancelled the debts he had raised on Trąbczyn, in which the cases of Wybicki, Niemojewski and Wichrowski are cited again: III. HA MdA, III. Nr. 12366 and III. HA MdA, III. Nr. 12367.

Scans

The editor supplied three images from the volume. Each shows two facing pages, of which one is wanted; that page was cut out of the image and the other left aside. The edition has three pages: those numbered 47, 48 and 331 in pencil at the top corner.

Transcription

The editor transcribed the two entries that concern the estates, paragraph by paragraph and not line by line. The other entries on pages 47 and 48 are not transcribed, so those two page images show more text than the edition gives. The order of 12 July begins in the lower half of page 47 and ends in the upper half of page 48.

Division into documents

Each of the two entries is one document. The heading of the section that the resolution of 21 July opens is kept with it. Dates are taken from each entry’s closing formula.

Corrections

An AI model (Claude) compared the transcription with the scans and corrected it where the page is plain: nine passages. The transcription of page 331 had spelled out the abbreviations and modernised the spelling; the entry is given as the page has it. One word of the section heading was misread: the resolutions were issued “both to the general directorate and to the directors singly”, not “or”. Each change is logged with its reason.

Summaries

The summaries were written in German from a reading of each document against its scan, and translated into English. Each statement in them was then checked against its document, under the same rules as the separate check that the summaries of other holdings received: a summary may say only what the document says. All of them held.

Translation

The documents were translated into English in a working session under the same rules as the other holdings: every figure, name and mark of doubt carried across, names in the edition’s settled forms where it has settled them and otherwise as the page spells them, and passages that do not read left visibly doubtful rather than smoothed. Both entries were translated from the Polish, with the forms of address given in English (the Most Illustrious, the Honourable, Mrs). The same automatic check as elsewhere then confirmed that every figure and every mark of doubt survives into the English.