Vanished kingdoms of Europe 2: Galicia

By Mariusz Paździora - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3817601

There are at least two Galicias of significance in Europe; one in Spain and one in Eastern Europe – the latter being the subject of this blog. Both are situated in plains to the north of mountain ranges, and so it’s tempting to think they share the name’s etymology. It is possible. The Spanish Galicia – notable in British history for the heroics of Sir John Moore at Corunna during the Peninsular War against Napoleon’s occupation – derives from a celtic tribe of ‘hill people’ the Callacei who resided north of the River Douro. Eastern European Galicia’s etymology is less certain, but probably derives from Old East Slavic language as a derivation of the town name Galiç (today Halych in Ukraine).

Anyhow, regardless of etymology, Galicia has a complex history riddled with violence and tragedy. Its story subsumes a number of other smaller vanished kingdoms. Its final incarnation from 1772, as the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, was as part of the Habsburg Empire, and its demise accompanied that of Austria-Hungary at the end of WW1. Overall it has a 1000 year history - usually closely tied to the fortunes of Poland, but also under the sphere of influence of Hungary, Austria, Russia and Prussia.

I’ll aim to chunk this into three periods before the denouement of the world wars: the early iterations from 1000-1200 approximately; from thirteenth to eighteenth centuries, and from 1772 until 1914.

1. Geography. Allowing for frequent shifting of boundaries the Kingdom of

Galicia was broadly as shown in the above map of Galicia and Lodomeria - attractive mountainous Carpathian southern borders descending northwards with diminishing hills and valleys to arable plains. Numerous rivers and lakes cross the country winding down from the watershed of the Carpathians, the greatest to the western end being the rivers Oder and Vistula. The river San, a large tributary of the Vistula effectively divided Galicia into east and western regions. At its northern border were the plains of Poland. As Galicia and Lodomeria it reached a population of 8 million in1914 and covered an area of over 30,00 square miles¹. It was Austria-Hungary’s most ethnically diverse region, although the great majority of the population were peasants.

2. 950-1400AD. In early times the ‘kingdom’ was ruled by the Ruthenian Kings. The origin and fate of Ruthenia is a topic in its own right², but until the twelfth century they held sway in the city and principality of Halych, which gave Galicia its name. This somehow became Galicia Volhynia,  which fell apart in the mid 14^th century in the wars of the same name, after which the old kingdom of Ruthenia was annexed by Poland. Then there was period from 1188 to around 1400 when 'ownership’ and title passed to the Kings of Hungary.

3. 1400-1772. The growing power of Poland and Lithuania dominated the region for the next four hundred years. Poland annexed all of the previous Galicia and Volhynia as part of this. Poland and Lithuania’s alliance was consolidated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, with Poland as the dominant partner. Despite this, the commonwealth ultimately folded, and Poland’s subjugation began in 1772 with its first partition by the surrounding powers of Russia, Prussia and Austria. By the First Partition of Poland³, Habsburg Austria swallowed Galicia and Volhynia, creating a new title for its Emperor (at that time still also the head of the Holy Roman Empire). Volhynia was renamed Lodomeria, and the territory titled the “Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria’. From the outset, Lodomeria was not a real entity and the kingdom was more generally known as Galicia (or Austrian Galicia, presumably to distinguish it from Spanish Galicia…. or Polish Galicia?). This brings us to the Galicia that came to my notice as a critical site for the Eastern Front of WW1 in 1914.

4. Austrian Galicia. In its 142 years existence, Galicia’s fortune was bound up with that of the Habsburg Empire. Its status was mostly poor and backward, the large plains being primitive serfdoms with predominantly Polish nobility owners. Those of Polish ethnicity spoke Polish, and the peasantry - predominantly Ruthenian - spoke Rus’ (Ruthenian). A large Jewish minority inhabited the towns and southern areas, and spoke Yiddish. Gradually, Austrians moved in, making the city of L’viv their regional capital and renaming it as Lemberg. In 1846 the formerly ‘Free City’ of Cracow, came into the sphere of Galician control along with two neighbouring duchies of Oświeçim and Bielske. Almost immediately an uprising against poverty and hunger broke out across Galicia. It was a harbinger of the wider revolutions that burst upon Europe in 1848, and became known as the Galician Slaughter. Marauding peasants hunted down and massacred all landowners and their families. The world was shocked, but the Austrian leaders did little to help the predominantly Polish victims until Lemberg itself was threatened. Once the revolt had been suppressed, Galicia returned to its rural, poor and primitive status. The growing cities of Lemberg and Cracow were exceptions, and in the 1850s oil was discovered, triggering a Galician oil rush (By 1908 Galicia was reckoned to have the world’s third largest oil fields after Texas and Persia). This also became the era of mass migration, as people took the opportunity of modern transport to escape from poverty. The main point of departure became the station at Oświeçim. North America was a magnet – ethnic Poles emigrated to the USA mid-west; the Ruthenians to the plains of USA and Canada, and the Jews to the cities.

Following its defeat in the 1866 Austro-Prussian war, the Habsburgs’ empire entered its final configuration in the ausgleich – the creation of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Galicia remained under Austrian rule, although geographically it was closer to Hungary. Galicia’s delegates sat alongside Slavs, Bohemians, Czechs, Hungarians and many others in the new Austrian parliament the ‘Reichsrat’, which was established in 1908 to placate the disenchanted states within Austria-Hungary.

5. World War One. In June 1914 that disenchantment surfaced in Sarajevo with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the subsequent outbreak of WW1. Galicia’s topography made it inevitable that early military engagement with Russia would happen there. Austria had to split its armies between the invasion of Serbia to the south, and protection of its borders in the north (see WW1 Blog posts as below). Overwhelming numbers of Russian forces were able to advance (relatively) rapidly across the Galician plains, and they captured Lemberg in one of the early great battles in August 1914. They occupied most of Galicia and laid siege to the great fortress of Przemysl (see WW1 Posts 14/1/2015 and 31/1/2015). The Austrians recovered in early 1915, pushing back eastwards from the outskirts of Cracow, and then in May came the great German breakthrough of Gorlice-Tarnow (see Post 7/6/2015), and the Russians were driven completely out of Galicia. They returned in 1916 during Brusilov’s offensive (See Post 15/5/2016) pushing through eastern Galician and heading for the Hungarian plains and Roumania. Then came the 1917 Russian collapses after revolution in St. Petersburg followed by the crushing fate of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (See Post 22/1/2018).

The great Russian retreat from Galicia 1917

In a miserable combination of death, disease and starvation WW1 came to an end in German occupied Galicia, with competing aspirations of Ukrainian and Polish nationalism struggling to emerge from the wreckage. The Polish question was too complex for the Versailles Treaty of 1919 (See Post 22/6/2019), but after the wars between Poland and the Red Russians, Galicia in its entirety was incorporated into the reunited Poland. However worse was to follow.

6. World War Two and its aftermath.  Along with much of Poland, Galicia was subjected to atrocities by Russian and German occupiers. In the 1939 carve up Germany took over west Galicia and Russia the eastern half. Then came the brutal eastwards German invasions of 1941-2, and the equally brutal retreats from the Red Army in 1944-45. The advancing Red Army reached western Galicia to discover the famous 19^th century rail junction Oświeçim had become the world’s most infamous railway terminus – Auschwitz.  Whatever remained of the 1914 Galicia was utterly broken and destroyed by 1945. In the post war jockeying, east Galicia was absorbed into the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine and west Galicia became southern Poland. Both were behind the iron curtain and under Stalin’s control. Callous ethnic cleansing sent all of polish origins back to Poland from Ukraine, and most of Ruthenian origin in west Galicia moved into Ukraine. Galicia was finished.

Yet still those ethnic tensions and east v west barriers continue. The area containing ancient Halych is the Lviv Oblast of Ukraine, bordering Poland based on its main city (ex Lvov, Lemberg, L’viv). The wider political issues for Ukraine pitch those of Russian ethnicity against those of Ruthenian origins (today known as ethnic Ukrainians). Plus ça change.

1 About the size of today’s Slovakia and Estonia

² Ruthenia is an exonym for the language and influence of the Rus’ peoples  (aka Old East Slavic, or Kievan Rus'). An exonym is a name for language, culture or ethnicity used by those external to it. For example English language 'German' and French language 'Allemagne' are exonyms for that country's endonym 'Deutsch'. (Thanks to Wikipedia for that one)

³ There were two further Partitions in 1793 and 1795, resulting in the loss of Polish independence, and the creation of the Polish Salient of the Russian Empire

Vanished Kingdoms of Europe 1: Savoy

Humbert the Whitehead
 Founder of Savoy

Ignorance may be bliss, but once uncovered it can be somewhat embarrassing. If, a few years ago, you had asked what I knew of Savoy, I would have come up with a posh hotel in the Strand, and a George Harrison song on the White Album. I had a feeling there was a town of Savoy in the south west of France – home of Harrison’s ‘truffle’. Chastening, therefore, to discover that a county of Savoy spawned a dynasty and history that lasted nearly one thousand years, more than double the life of our present UK. If you’re in the same space as me, let’s explore this history.

It’s difficult to summarise a thousand years in a single post, for sure.  There seem to me to be three phases worth trying to capture: the first four hundred years; the years of involvement in the major European wars involving the Bourbons then Napoleon, the Habsburgs, Russians, Ottomans and Spaniards; and finally the 19^th century emergence of a unified Italy that suffered through two world wars. These are huge topics of history, but there is a strong Savoy thread running throughout.

1. Origins

After the final demise of the Roman Empire much of Europe regressed into dark ages of instability. Hordes of wandering tribes roamed Europe, crossing the Rhine and exploring into the France and Spain of today – franks, germanics, vandals, goths and visigoths. Charlemagne (748-81) created an Empire remotely comparable to that of Rome, indeed it became the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), which persisted for a thousand years, but by around 1000AD it was unstable, and diminished by feudalism. From the south of the Alps came a leader, Humbert the Whitehanded, who would establish the Savoy dynasty. He came to the aid of a post-Charlemagne Emperor Conrad II, driving back Burgundian expansion towards the Alps, and for his efforts was awarded the lands around Aosta, the area becoming the feudal county of Savoy. Humbert’s family held sway until 1416 when, meeting favour with the HRE, it was elevated to a Dukedom. The rulers of Savoy were pragmatic, often duplicitous and cunning – characteristics that would permeate the dynasty through to the end. Savoyards adopted a black eagle as their symbol before the Habsburgs. They were stolid rather than charismatic, although they had some great names. They gained and lost territory over the years (see map) as a result of different political alliances.

In 1536 a rapacious France, emerging from the 100 Years War with England, occupied Savoy and Piedmont and the Alpine passes between. The next Savoyard hero was … Emmanuel Philibert the Iron Head. After his army scored a remarkable victory against France at St. Quentin in 1553, the ensuing peace treaty saw the establishment of an independent state of Savoy-Piedmont, a buffer state between France and the Spanish ruled Italian peninsula. Emmanuel of the Iron Head was certainly a hard nut. He established absolutist rule; shifted the capital of Savoy to Turin, and instituted merciless persecution of the Jews and the Waldenses (the Savoy equivalent of the protestant Huguenots in France).  

In 1713 Savoy-Piedmont became a kingdom, and soon thereafter acquired Sardinia creating the Union of Savoy-Piedmont-Sardinia, which survived until the 1860s – ironically better known as the Kingdom of Sardinia.

 

The shifting borders of Savoy.
From: The Fall of the House of Savoy. Katz, Robert.
(New York). MacMilllan 1971

2. European Wars

In the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era of 1789-1814 the House of Savoy fared badly. Bonaparte, in his excursions into Italy swept through Savoy and Piedmont, and the King, Victor Emmanuel I, was forced into exile in Sardinia. After the end of Napoleon in 1814, the ‘kingdom of Sardinia’ did well at first, falling in with Austrian leader Metternich’s plans to re-establish the old order in the Italian peninsula, and regaining its lands and more to boot.  But Piedmont railed against Austrian rule, and a subversive nationalist culture developed rapidly.  The important Savoy king at this time was Charles Albert the Magnanimous -probably should have had the soubriquet ‘the Indecisive’. He lurched between promoting his kingdom with Austrian support and then joining with the growing ranks of Italian republicanism. When Milan and Venice rose against Austrian rule he pitched in his lot with them, and led his armies against Austria. He was roundly defeated by the Austrian veteran Radetzky and was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Victor Emmanuel the Second (VE II). However, the die was cast, and the new king’s Piedmont became the driver for Italian unification.

A new war against the Austrian occupation began in 1859, this time with the support of French armies, led by Napoleon III. The Austrians, while holding on to Venice, were driven back across the whole of the north. Napoleon and VE II incorporated Lombardy into Sardinia and shortly after annexed lesser states – Parma, Tuscany and Romagna – creating a large north Italian entity, controlled by Piedmont, backed by France and ruled over by the House of Savoy.

At this point, enter Giuseppe Garibaldi, probably the best known figure in the struggle for Italian unification. Under the banner of “Italy and Victor Emmanuel” he invaded Sicily with a small force to support peasant uprisings against Bourbon rule. To some general surprise, after succeeding there, he moved on to capture Naples, and to threaten Rome itself, declaring himself the ‘Duce of Naples and Sicily’. VE II, anxious that Garibaldi might tilt towards republicanism rather than monarchy, moved his armies south to meet him. In a famous encounter in October 1860 on the outskirts of Naples Garibaldi conceded his conquests to the king. At this point all of Italy, barring Rome and Venice, became one kingdom under the man of Savoy, VE II.

3. The Emergence of Italy.

Victor Emmanuel wanted Venice and Rome and took his chance to join sides with Bismarck in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866.  However, like his grandfather, he was defeated by a smaller Austrian army outside Venice – but then gained it anyway from Bismarck’s demands of Austria at Germany’s victorious peace conference. Rome proved more difficult, protected as it was by the occupying French army. In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 however, French troops were forced to abandon Rome and return to support Napoleon’s failing army. VE II was then able to enter and occupy the Holy City. He had his unified Italy, but the House of Savoy’s way of running things was not popular in the rest of Italy. Civil war, North v South, would follow within a few years (the South was crushed).

When VE II died unexpectedly in 1878 his young son Humbert I succeeded him. His reign saw a halting development of the newly unified country. Republicanism, socialism and liberalism rubbed alongside his constitutional monarchy, and Humbert’s popularity grew gradually. He sought an external alliance to strengthen his authority, and looked towards Germany and Austria. For Germany, Bismarck was dismissive but, surprisingly, Austria was interested. In October 1881 Emperor Franz Josef rolled out the red carpet at Vienna Central station for a melodramatic welcome for Humbert. Kaiser Wilhelm I expressed royal solidarity and the Triple alliance was signed in 1882. This was the high watermark of Humbert’s reign. The Treaty added to the illusion of Italy as a new great power, with pretensions to extend an empire into Africa and the Mediterranean countries. In reality, the next fifteen years ran a complex, violent and bloody course. Humbert, managed these years with characteristic Savoyard pragmatism and compromise, before becoming a victim of the violence himself.  In 1900 he was assassinated at Monza. Ironically, he was en route to vacation in the 900 years old Savoy hunting lands in the Aosta Valley.

Black Eagle of Savoy on the Royal Standard
of Victor Emmanuel III 1905

And so the final player in the House of Savoy drama – Humbert’s son, the Prince of Naples - accede to the throne as Victor Emmanuel III (VE III). He was known as ‘the little king’  (a sickly child who had only attained an adult height of five feet) but showed remarkable stickability. He was a true Savoyard and, almost unbelievably, would rule until 1946 surviving two world wars, revolution and fascism.

In WW1, the Triple Alliance with Austria and Germany failed at the first fence when Italy declined to declare war on France and Britain, later joining on the side the Entente in hopes of gaining lands in the Balkans and North Africa. Through the disaster of Caporetto in 1917 (See WW1 Blog 13/11/2017) and the frustrations of Versailles in 1919 (See WW1 Blog 18/6/2019) VE III proved a source of constancy for the distressed Italian people. He appointed Mussolini as Duce in 1924 and until the outbreak of WW2 in 1939 enjoyed the most stable period of his reign (and probably of most of his predecessors). But it all ended in tears. The end of Mussolini’s fascism came in 1943 as Italy gradually was occupied by the Allies. VE III soon came to be viewed as the remaining symbol of fascism and the knives, never too securely stowed, came out again. Victor fled Rome, and perched himself apprehensively on the coast at Brindisi, on the heel of the occupied Italian boot. Under humiliating pressure to abdicate, his only real supporter was Winston Churchill, who felt a continuing monarchy of Italy would be preferable to a revolutionary republic. VE III won a concession – to abdicate only when Rome was finally occupied. In fact, he remained king in name (delegating all duties to his son Humbert in 1944) until 1946 when the final blow fell on the house of Savoy. A plebiscite voted (narrowly) for republic over monarchy and VEII and his son Humbert sailed into exile.

Thus ended the House of Savoy, a near 1000 years dynasty fashioned from Germanic tribes moving west into France from the foothills of the Alps. Like pseudopodia of some giant amoeba the borders of Savoy moved to and fro across modern France and Italy until the decisive shift of its centre to Piedmont after the Napoleonic Wars. ‘Old Savoy’ became a pawn in negotiations with Napoleon III and was annexed by France in 1860, where most of it remains today, described as a ‘cultural-historic region of France in the Western Alps’. Its capital is Chambéry and its largest town is Annecy. I wrongly thought there was still a town of Savoy. If there was, it has vanished.

Why a new Blog on Europe's lost kingdoms?

Have you ever wondered how Savoy was a county, ruled for 400 years as a fiefdom by the House of Savoy; and then a Duchy of Savoy for another 400 years before disappearing into the borderlands of Italy France and Switzerland? Or who controlled Pomerania before it was incorporated into the new German Empire in 1871? If, like me, these questions are of interest to you then I hope this new blog may be of passing interest. My first blog ran from 2014 to 2019, marking the centenaries of the events and campaigns of World War One (WW1 – I was there in Spirit. https://seansww1blog.blogspot.com/). 

One of the aspects that most interests me about WW1 is the way the maps of Europe and the Middle East were re-drawn after the Treaty of Versailles. But of course Versailles is only one example, albeit a significant, of how politics and wars rotate the kaleidoscope of the European land mass (and its associated islands). Europe today consists of around fifty countries, more than half of which are members of the EU. For most of them it is easy to see how the events of two world wars and the cold war have got us to the point of the current version of its map (See above). However the map is multi-layered, and stripping away the consequences of major historical events or eras reveals very different patterns. My previous blog focused on WW1, but within that it was plain that many of the factors influencing events arose from earlier wars – Franco-Prussian War; Napoleonic Wars; French Revolutionary Wars; the Great Northern War; the Ottomans v the Habsburgs etc. etc. So how far back do you go?  Certainly to Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire, and maybe to the greatest of all – the Roman Empire of the Caesars.

During the WW1 blog I encountered numerous unknown (to me) countries, regions and kingdoms that do not appear on the above map. To name a few: Carinthia, Ruthenia, Trentino, Galicia, Bessarabia, Wallachia. My interest was caught, and moving backwards in time to try and understand the Napoleonic Wars I encountered many more. The balance of power that to some extent prevented major wars in Europe lasted only 100 years and arose from the Congress of Vienna as Napoleon was exiled to Elba. It had a bad start when he returned to France for his 'hundred days' campaign, but after Waterloo it got back to business. The 'great powers' of Russia, Britain, France, Austria and Prussia held the reins of influence and peace uneasily. In the fault lines between them (and often within their borders) many fascinating kingdoms and principalities. They were unstable and vulnerable. Most became assimilated into larger countries, others have to all intents and purposes vanished.

My intention is to look at these places through the lenses of onset and outcomes of WW1. Some of the links are bound to be tenuous and speculative, but any jigsaw pieces that help to build up a picture to understand better the catastrophes of the 20th century might be worth pursuing. the first episode will follow soon.