Czajkowski, Michal (Sadyk-Pasza)
(1804-1886)
writer and political activist in exileThe Czayka Czaykowski family of the Jastrzebiec (chicken hawk) crest cam from the Rawicz area. Stanislaw Czajkowski, father of Michal, was the Kiev castellan, and deputy to the Grodno sejm in 1793 and sub-collector of rents for Zytomierz. He died early. Petronela, the mother, took charge of raising her only son was, assisted by her father Michal Glebocki the marshal of Owruck, an eccentric and adventurer known across Ukraine. The lifestyle in the wealthy noble household in Halczyniec, near Berdyczow, was wide but shallow. Frequent guests, card games, banquets, many servants - dressed in cossack livery, hunting, stables of well bred horses and dogs, were Michal's first experiences and made a great impression on a child's imagination. This was all tied to the cossack tradition, because this family maintained the memory of being related to the cossack hetman [field commander] Brzuchowiecki, while three of Michal's uncles served under the cossack banner.
Czajkowski started his education in Berdyczow at a school operated by the Englishman Wolsey, who formerly was tutor to the great princes of Russia. It was a live-in school for wealthy nobles, where the primary subjects were: French, dance and horsemanship. When dining, the students were served by a female staff. They wore uhlans' uniforms and had their own horses at the school. The atmosphere was one of wealthy nobility which was trying to attain the cachet of the aristocratic families and maintain a cult of Tsar Alexander I. Czajkowski writes in his "memoirs" about pan-slavic ideas which were forming in Berdyczow and ideas for regenerating the cossacks through the agency of some noble-cossack order. It was no surprise that after three years, when Wolsey's school closed and Czajkowski was transferred to the Piarist school in Miedzyrzecz, he had no liking for the democratic atmosphere in that school nor the Polish-patriotic attitudes of the students and teachers. At sixteen he left Miedzyrzec with a diploma of a "Bachelor of Mathematics and Literature." But life in the freedom of the countryside played out in many ways -- he lost a lot of money at cards in the company of officers from a nearby Russian infantry regiment. Though he was considered to be a man "who had gone as far in being educated as he could go," his mother sent him to Warsaw to study in the law department of the university there. In Warsaw a female relative of the Czajkowskis, the wife of Gen. Wasowicz, introduced him to the salon society. He could not, however, join with the youth that were in the national-patriotic movement. Shortly after, he returned to Halczyniec on learning of his mother's illness. After her death he inherited a large property. He became famous for his hospitality and the fabulous hunts he organized. He went to business meetings in Kiev and to balls in Kodnia and Zytomierz where he was introduced to Tsar Nicholas I and named a "kamerjunker" [noble landowner]. In the 1831 uprising he and thirty of his cossacks fought as part of K. Rozycki's regiment. Czajkowski rose to the rank of lieutenant and received a gold cross for bravery. With Rozycki's regiment he escaped into Austria and then to an emigree community in Bourges.
He was sensitive and influenced by his surroundings and was affected by the atmosphere that prevailed among the emigrants, with the hope of getting help from other nations and democratic slogans. He was a member of the Polish Democratic Society which he left in 1836. Under the influence of deputy J. Ledochowski he joined the Polish National Confederation, an organization that had the support of the lesser part of the democratic emigrants. Taking his wife and daughter he moved to Paris and from 1835 started writing. He wrote reports for the "Constitutionel" about the Polish literary movement, and about the cavalry for "Spectateur militaire." He published a pamphlet about the civilizing role played by the Cossacks and after 1837 he published: Powiesci kozackie [Cossack tales], Wernyhora, Kridzali, Gawedy [Tales], Stanislaw Czarniecki, Koszowate, Anna, and Owruczanina. These stories were translated into other languages: French, German, Czech, and Serbian, gaining him great fame. They appeared during a period of renewed interest in the Near East and were told in a lively fashion, intensely colorful language, with interesting action and humorous episodes. Romantic poetic prose was their style, where crudeness and triviality went side by side with high ideals. He quickly became one of the most popular romance writers in France. With a tremendous inborn talent Czajkowski gave the contemporary generation adventure novels that were among the most widely read. Flaws in composition present in these novels, errors due to his incomplete knowledge of history, and inadequacies in presenting his characters and psychological situations, a pretentious style and language full of Russian provincialism did not offend the reader during the age of romanticism the way that it would today [in 1920]. These novels came about because of his longing for the family lands, from his recent experiences and recollections, and were a glorification of all that was Cossack. But these were not the Cossacks who were faithful to Poland as written by J.B. Zaleski, nor the ones that rebelled against the Polish nobles in the stories of S. Goszczynski, but were the court cossacks, serving "under colors" and who were best known to the reading public in the then existing social structure of Poland. Thus they enjoyed great popularity.
Czajkowski wrote these stories "for himself and for Jan Omiecinski" a neighbor in Ukraine. Omiecinski was the editor of a publication for the monarchist faction among the emigrants, the "Kronika Emigracji Polskiej," and it is probable that under his influence Czajkowski's political convictions underwent further evolution. As a member of the Polish Democratic Society, then from 1836 of the Polish National Confederation, Czajkowski adopted the phraseology and slogans of the democrats, but his upbringing and memories made him more of a conservative. In Warsaw he met J. U. Niemcewicz and W. Zamoyski who played major roles in the court of Prince Adam Czartoryski. He entered this group thanks to J. Omiecinski. Prince Czartoryski was just beginning his diplomatic and propaganda activities in the East, and decided to utilize Czajkowski for his own purposes. The Prince considered his influence among the wealthy Ukrainian nobility important and wanted to have his energy and abilities to further the work done at the Hotel Lambert [as the faction Czartoryski led was known].
Czajkowski's first mission for Prince Czartoryski to Rome was to introduce him to diplomatic assignments. There he assisted W. Zamoyski, but at the Vatican could not develop relationships of the kind that Cezary Platter and L. Opiszewski maintained. The city and the Roman world were closed to him.
However, in Constantinople he carried out his assignments rather well when Czartoryski sent him there in 1841 under an understanding with Reszyd Pasha and Guizot's knowledge, using the pretext of conducting an ethnographic and historical study among the Slavs in Turkey. Czajkowski was energetic and bright, with no scruples. He mastered the methods of dealing with the Ottoman Porta. He became a valuable source of information on the East for those in Paris and had an excellent relationship with the French Embassy, as well as significant influence among the pashas who ruled Turkey. Leaving his wife and four children in France in the keeping of Prince Czartoryski he became head of the main Polish agency in the East. Through the help of subordinate agents in the Balkans and emissaries in the Caucasus and Ukraine he developed a lively network. The support of Franciscans in Bosnia against Austrian influence, the selection of Alexander Karageorgiewicz as prince of Serbia, the Leonir-Zwierkowski and Gordon's expeditions to the Caucasus and relations with the Lazarites [?] on the matter of the Polish village, Adampol [named for and owned by Czartoryski], were all largely Czajkowski's accomplishments. His main activities centered on agitating the border Cossacks and the Russian emigres in Dobrudza, preparing them for a time when they could be used to incite the lower class subjects of Russia.
He largely achieved the purpose of his mission, that is to convince the Balkan nations that in seeking political and religious autonomy they should not seek the protection of Russia, but rater that of England and France. During his work in Constantinople he found a guide and a wise advisor in the person of Ludwika Sniadecka, who after meeting Czajkowski in Constantinople, attached herself to him and devoted herself to serving Poland. Czajkowski's influence and significance were strong because in 1845 he was not expelled from Turkey despite the urging of both the Russian and Austrian envoys. He was saved by the intervention of the French envoy and the support of Riza Hassan-Pasha.
At the time of the Spring of Nations, Czajkowski acted on the directions of Prince Czartoryski, and prepared the ground for a Turkish war against Russia. He made arrangements with the Rumanians and mobilized powers unfriendly to Russia in the Bulgarian and Serbian territories. In 1849 and 1850 when the matter of giving up the participants of the Hungarian Revolution to Austria and Russia -- who were seeking a safe haven in Widyn - was being decided, Czajkowski played a major part. He represented not only the Poles but also the Hungarians and remained in continuing correspondence with Kossuth. He reached the Sultan and influenced the Turkish Ministers' council, and even the imams and Sheik ul Islam who proclaimed that giving up the escapees wound be counter to the laws of hospitality and the Koran. Eventually through French and British assistance the emigrants were not surrendered. However, they had to agree to interment of the leaders including Kossuth and Dembinski chiefly; and the expulsion of Lenoir Zwierkowski and Czajkowski from Turkey. Useless were the French General Aupick's appeals that through Czajkowski Turkey "connects to the Slavic population" and that "his departure would be an irreparable loss." In this way, with approval of the [French] Republic's President, Czajkowski lost the protection of the French. It was not possible for him to start a different life, he was too ingrained into the East. Elsewhere he would not be able to play a role as important as in Carograd [Tsarograd?] and would have to separate from Ludwika Sniadecka. Thus he accepted conversion to Islam and the name of Mehmed Sadyk-effendi. In his life this was a pivotal moment, and his connection to Poland began to fade. The Turkish cause (though he was called Sadyk=faithful) was not the closest thing to him, and now he worked mainly for his own self-interest. And conditions were developing that could lead to the complete breakdown of this ambitious man of weak character. Adam Czartoryski tried to dissuade Czajkowski from becoming a Muslim and did not break contact but even continued to maintain a certain sympathy for him. To Czajkowski's career the maintenance of ties to France were a decisive factor. A total severing of ties to the Hotel Lambert group would have damaged his standing with the Porta and at the French Embassy. Thus he tried to at least keep-up an appearance that he was still dependent on Adam Czartoryski, maintaining correspondence with Bystrzanowski and Zwierkowski. The relationship with Paris was maintained mainly by Ludwika Sniadecka rather than the Sadyk himself; she saw service in the Polish cause as the only ideological reason for Czajkowski's remaining in Turkey.
J. Koscielski became the chief agent, then it was Dr. St[anislaw] Drozdowski who were to represent Prince Czartoryski in Turkey and take care of the matter of Adampol and relations with the emigres. Czajkowski was to maintain contact with the provincial agents and a relationship with the Porta, while his friend, the sultan's banker A. Alleon, was to manage the finances of the agency. Unfortunately, Czajkowski badly managed the allowance he received from the Porta and his influence with Hotel Lambert lessened, so that after Koscielski's departure from Constantinople in 1852 the agency virtually ceased to exist.
Czajkowski's influence was at its highest ebb during the Crimean War. On the territory of Constantinople he went against the democratic emigrants who wanted to form a military organization under Gen. Jozef Wysocki. He stated that the sultan himself would choose their commander. To arguments given by Fr. Mikolowski, he counter-argued "I am not Michal, my name is not Czajkowski, I am Mehmed-Sadyk, from the grace of the merciful Sultan effendi." He sought the support of the Hotel Lambert group, he dreamed of a noble-cossack Poland under the scepter of Prince Czartoryski, with himself as commander of the cossacks. He went further than any of the Paris monarchists. On May 30, 1854 he wrote "I promise and vouch that the Polish crown, even despite the will of the Poles, will fall to the Czartoryskis." From the Turkish government he obtained certificates for Generals Zamoyski, Chrzanowski, Bystrzonowski and Breanski; stating that the cossack military units in Turkey would be commanded by Karol Rozycki, commander of the uprising in Ruthenia in 1831. However, before the named generals had arrived in Turkey, Czajkowski had them assigned to a military mission in the Asian theater of operations. In this way he put Hotel Lambert on notice that he could accomplish matters on a high military level and removed from Constantinople his eventual competitors giving himself a free field of action. Before K. Rozycki had a chance to answer the proposal, Czajkowski had himself appointed as Mirmiran-pasha, the chief commander of the Sultan's cossacks.
With great dedication and not sparing his own funds, Czajkowski organized six centuries [units] of cossacks, with whom he was sent to the war. Acting as the forward guard of Omer-pasha's army he took the forest of Deli Orman near Silistria, and managed to maintain communications with the besieged fortress and the Turkish army. When the Russian army began to retreat he distinguished himself at Ramadan and Frateszti and was first to march into Bucharest. He was commander of the city until the Austrian army moved in and then he withdrew with the Turkish army to the line at Seret. In the first weeks he could have crossed the Prut [River] and entered Ukraine, which was encouraged by Reszyd-pasha and indirectly by Napoleon III. But he had doubts as to the strength of Poland and Ruthenia and as a commander did not want to take the responsibility for a move of such great consequence. He later excused himself by citing the unwillingness of Omer-pasha and that the Turkish pashas under his command were forbidden to cross the Prut. The Turkish corps which he commanded was not in good shape. A surprise attack by Gen. Uszakov at Maximeni on Christmas Day in 1854 caused them to flee as far as the Warna. Capt. Garczynski was killed and one century [unit of one-hundred] was totally scattered. The cossacks who gathered at Burgas did not give a good account of themselves. In addition to emigres from Russia there were the drunken and degenerate dregs of the borderlands. The soldiers consisted of: Gypsies, Jews, Rumanians and freed criminals. A few of the officers and part of the soldiers in the first century were Polish. The Polish emigres did not want to join with cossacks. Czajkowski did not assign a professional officer to them and did not demonstrate administrative abilities or any ideological stance that was essential to a Polish legion in the uncertain situation in the East. The cossacks were short of supplies and equipment which could not be supplied to them by the Turkish government. These reasons caused Wladyslaw Zamoyski to form a Polish division in the East, the so-called "cossacks of the Sultan in the service of Great Britain." Thus began a disagreement between Zamoyski and Czajkowski in which, in addition to personal matters, the most important thing was the Western and Eastern attitudes toward the Polish cause. Czajkowski was against taking the II Regiment from under the combined command. He even tried to turn Napoleon [III] against Czartoryski and put the 1st regiment into French service. After the Crimean War, he put all his energy, cleverness and knowledge of the Turkish situation into holding onto his Cossack units. He did not shrink from ruining Lapinski's expedition into the Caucasus. He operated by intrigue to limit Zamoyski's influence in Constantinople, as well as that of W. Jordan, the new agent for Hotel Lambert. This led to the loss of Polish influence in the Balkans and in Constantinople, but Czajkowski's cossacks thrived.
In 1856 some of the Cossacks dispersed, in their place remnants of the Polish division and Bulgarian volunteers were recruited. The total number of men vacillated between 1000 and 1400. In 1857 Czajkowski received permission to form a dragoon regiment; with the cossacks under Kirkor and the dragoons under E. Lange's command, they served on the Greek and Serbian frontiers. At Trekalia in Tresaliia there was, for a time, an officers' school. One century [unit] of cossacks and a squadron of dragoons under command of S. Rawski were in Constantinople as the house guard for the sultan. The cossacks were commanded in Russian, the dragoons in Polish, but there were fewer and fewer Polish volunteers. Czajkowski wrote of this, "the Polish youth to this school (of war) I could not attract, in lack of such I had to take the dregs." The main emphasis was on the uniforms. His subordinates wore wide blue trousers, a uniform with tucked-up sleeves whose color depended on the century or squad - red, white, blue, yellow - and helmets with horse tails. They looked like court cossacks but their ethical level was low. The society they formed practiced drinking and depravity and order could only be maintained by punishments which were not always just. Wojnicki was whipped to death, Lt. Zakrzewski died in chains in 1861.
Not only his morality, but Czajkowski's political ideology were repugnant to the Polish emigrants who avoided the cossacks. Not only was he in conflict with the Polish emigree community, he was hated by the Catholics, and those who were aligned with the British embassy in Carograd. Thus he began to lean toward the Turkish reactionaries and approach the Russians. During this time, Duchinski's ideas about the non-Slavic origins of the Muscovites gained popularity. But Czajkowski called them laughable and non-factual because "even if these were not of the Slavic people, then through their achievements they have a right to be Slavs, and by their reason, dedication, and patriotism they stand at the head of all the Slavic nations. And in this they are practical that in the Tsar they personalize all their love of Homeland and thus they are worth what they do.." (March 16, 1859 to L. Sniadecka and Lenoir; Rappersvil Library Manuscript 996).
He did not acquire the patriotic fervor during the January [1863] Insurrection and only cared for maintaining his cossack units and safeguarding his career. Officers who wanted to go to the field of battle he deceived that soon they would move against Russia as the avant-garde of the Turkish army. He warned them against "conspiracies" and group "manifestations" among the cossacks and made it difficult for his soldiers to leave for Poland despite a tolerant attitude from the Turks. Ludwika Sniadecka managed to prevent him from totally severing his ties to Poland. After her death in 1866 he fell into financial difficulties because of an extravagant lifestyle and came under the influence of his adjutant, or rather confidant, Horenstein and the Greek lady Irena Teoskolo, whom he married. In 1865 he published Dziwne zycie polek i polakow [The strange life of Polish men and women] which was based on his reminiscences and was very colorful. These were the last flashes of his talent. Later he published Bulgaria, Legendy, Nemolak, but these are long running pamphlets in the form of awkward novels. In them Czajkowski tried to find a justification for the step that he intended to take. Heroes of these stories, old Bech and Skoropadzki, cossacks and nobility, return to Ukraine after attending receptions in Dobrudza under the care of a "White Tsar" where "God's law is Tsar's law."
Over was the period when there were carriages and sedans with command insignia waiting for Turkish and Polish guests under the windows of L. Sniadecka's residence. Because his relations with the Russian ambassador were too close, Czajkowski was removed from command of the cossacks, who were then distributed among Turkish regiments.
Czajkowski was waiting for an "opportunity to embrace Russia in a moment when such move would be have the appearance of an honorable act" (to W. Koscielski Nov. 29, 1872). He took this moment to be the disaster of France in 1871. Without aid from Napoleonic France, Poland would be threatened by Germanization and in such a situation one "should break with the West and return to the East, where is our traditional place" he wrote in a letter on Jan. 1, 1873. "Give all of one's loyalty and service to the Tsar of Russia, the one and only ruler of the Slavs, Alexander the Virtuous." He wanted to make his turn-about an example but in this letter his financial situation and news about kindness of the Tsar toward him and his son Adam, are mixed in with ideological motives. Thanks to the influence of deputy Ignatiev he received an annual pension of 6,000 rubles from the Turks and he bought the Borki manor estate in East Ukraine, settling there with Irena Teoskolo and his adjutant Morozowicz. In 1877 Turkey stopped paying out the pension, while the Russian government would only give him a fifth of what the Porta delivered. He and Morozowicz moved into a peasant cottage in Parchimow, while his wife took up housekeeping with a younger man at Borki. In 1885 Morozowicz died, there were days of want, Czajkowski was subject to pangs of conscience. On Jan. 4 1886 [old Russian calendar] he committed suicide by shooting himself with a pistol.
He had a tremendous writing talent that was not subject to the literary culture, as well as the ability and capacity to adjust himself to the environment in which he moved, yet he was a product of the Eastern civilization. He was not a citizen but a subject, first of Prince Czartoryski then of the Turkish Sultan and finally the Russian Tsar. His hate for the West and the Catholic Church was, it seems, a manifestation of the fear a renegade has of his own conscience. In his character and ideas there was much contradiction. He was both a noble and a cossack, a servant of every government yet a plotter, a writer and an actor, who played out in life the roles of the main characters in his novels.
[Sources] Bibliography is given in "Wiek XIX. Sto lat mysli polskiej" [The 19th century. One hundred years of Polish thought] Warsaw 1911, VI 219 and Korbut, Literatura Polska, Warsaw 1930, III 185; Grobicki J., Formacje kawalerii polskiej na obczyznie, "Przeglad Kawaleryjski" [Polish cavalry formations in exile, "Cavalry Review"] 1917; Handelsman, M., La Guerre de Crimee "Revue historique" 1932; also: Mickiewicz in the years 1854/5, Warsaw 1933; also Czartoryski, Nicholas I, Paris 1934; Knapowska W., W. Ks. Poznanskie przed wojna krymnska [The Greater-Poland Kingdom before the Crimean War] Poznan, 1923; Lewak A., Dzieje emigracji polskiej w Turcji [History of Polish emigres in Turkey] Warsaw 1935; Lukasik S., Relatiunile lui M. Czajkowski en Romanii, "Rivista Istorica Romana" 1932, I ; the Archives of the Polish Agency in the East burned in Constantinople in 1847. -- Reports by M. Czajkowski to Paris and letters to Bystrzonowski are in the Czartoryski Library; at B.P.A.U. Are the memoirs and correspondence of Adam Czajkowski. Letters to Sefer-pasha Koscielski are in the Koscielski collection; at the Rapersvil Library there are letters written to Leonoir Zwierkowski and others; letters to L. Kossuth are in the archives of the National Museum in Budapest; correspondence in the archives of the French Embassy in Constantinople.
[Author] Adam Lewak
From: Polski Slownik Biograficzny, Vol. IV , Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci, Krakow, 1938, p. 155-159.
Translation: Peter J Obst, February 26, 2010
NOTES: on Czajkowski, Michal (Sadyk Pasha) from:
Moje wspomnienia o wojnie 1854 roku; Czajkowski, Michal, 1804-1886.
(My reminiscences of the 1854 [Crimean] war), edited by: Jozef Fijalek, Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, Warsaw, 1962This book (in the Polish language) is forworded with a rather extensive biography of Czajkowski, and is equipped with an index. Much of the biography is present in the above translation from SLOWNIK BIOGRAFICZNY. Here are a few additional items:
"In the November Uprising he was a lieutenant in Karol Rozycki's cavalry, and after his unit was pushed out of Galicja he emigrated to France (Aug. 27, 1832). There he married a French woman, Leonida Gabaret, the daughter of an architect, who bore him two sons: Wladyslaw (who became a Turkish General under the name of Muzaffer Pasha) and Adam (who later became a Russian General); as well as two daughters: Karolina (who married Piotr Suchodolski, captain of the 1st Cossack regiment) and Michalina (who married Dr. Rudolf Gutowski, a medical doctor of the Cossack Corps, a colonel)." page IX
On page XII, there is mention of him trying to obtain a divorce from his 1st wife in order to marry Ludwika Sniadecka. Some believe that he married her under Muslim Law. He dedicated the book "Dziwne zycie polek i polakow" to her, calling her the "Generalowa Sadykowa" which indicates high regard and her importance in his life. In the dedication he makes reference to "Two souls born to understand each other -- two hearts to beat side-by-side -- for Poland ... death will separate us in this strange life but after death we will again connect ..."
In 1866 Sniadecka died and he married his "third" wife, Teresa {Note: the SLOWNIK calls her "Irena"} Teoskolo. "After her [Sniadecka's] death the Sadyk visited the house of a certain Greek where he met the young Greek woman, Teresa Teoskolo, toward whom he burned with a fierce love. In that house he also met the Russian ambassador Mikolaj Ignatiew who tried to talk him into returning to Russia, and lured him with the promise that the Tsar would return his confiscated properties. ... Teresa bore him a daughter. Attempting to assure a secure future for the child he had her baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church with Tsar Alexander II acting as godfather by proxy. He received assistance in the form of several thousand rubles and 1,200 rubles per month. The Russians made a show of supporting this morally bankrupt man, to get the maximum effect of his coming over to their side, something he long resisted."