Incorporation of Polish children into the Imperial Russian Army (1831-1832)
Incorporation of Polish children into the Imperial Russian Army occurred during and after the defeat of the November Uprising, when penalised Polish adolescents were incorporated into the Imperial Army of the Russian Empire.
In March 1831, in accordance with Tsar Nicholas I, the children of those who took part in the November Uprising were treated as cantonists and incorporated into special battalions of the Imperial Russian Army. The directive ordered the assimilation adolescent boys, 7 to 16 years of age, children of political exiles, orphans, those of the poor and homeless. Russian police commissars called the occupied population forth to report those children requiring support, abducting all those declared.
The agony of those children incorporated into the Imperial Russian Army was presented in Juliusz Słowacki's narrative poem Anhelli. Several thousand children were taken towards Mińsk, Bobrujsk, into the depths of Russia, i.e. Siberia. Two-thirds of abducted children died on the journey between Warsaw and Bobrujsk. The rest were brought up as Russian soldiers.
