3.1 Napoleon creates the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807

After the end of the Fourth Coalition War, which Prussia and Russia lost to Napoleon; Peace of Tilsit (1807), Napoleon established the so-called Duchy of Warsaw This French satellite state included mainly the area of the former Prussian provinces of South and New East Prussia and the Net District, which had already come to Prussia in 1772; in 1809, Western Galicia, annexed by Austria, and the Region of Zamość were added.

Fig. 18: Duchy of Warsaw
Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Herzogtum-Warschau.png

The Duchy of Warsaw, a creation of Napoleon, with an area of 155,000 km² (after 1809) and more than 4 million inhabitants, existed between 1807 and 1814. It was a very imperfect, but still the most extensive form of Polish autonomy between 1795 and 1918.

Krasna ancestors were settled in:

1. South Prussia:
   Posen region (Orzechowo and other places), \ Warsaw region.
2. New East Prussia:
   region Ostrow (Mecklenburg, Wilhelmsdorf, Luisenau, Königshuld)
3. Galicia:
   Zamość region (Sitaniec and other places).

The establishment of the Duchy of Warsaw was a great disappointment, even a disaster, for the German settlers called to the country by the Prussians and Austria.

• They had to send their sons to war.
• The government insisted that they fulfill the commitments made to the Prussian and Austrian authorities. The “free years” had expired for the settlers; despite crop failures, they now had to pay taxes. In view of their disastrous economic situation, the colonists were often hardly able to do so.
• Poor harvests in 1808 and 1811-12 further worsened their situation.
• The hardship was increased first in 1809 by the Fifth Coalition War (also known as the Austro-French War) and then by Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812 first on the advance with troop crossings and requisitions, then with the returning disbanded French troops. Russian troops were already back in Warsaw in the spring of 1813.