The January Uprising was the longest Polish and Lithuanian uprising against the Russian Empire: it began January 22, 1863, and the last insurgents were not captured until 1865. It started as a spontaneous protest by young Poles against conscription into the Russian Army.

The uprising was soon joined by various politicians and high ranking Polish officers from the tsarist army. The insurrectionists, severely outnumbered and lacking any serious outside support, were forced to resort to guerrilla warfare tactics. The insurrectionists failed to win any major military victory, and throughout the campaign, not one major city or fortress in Russian-occupied Poland was recaptured. The uprising did, however, succeed in blunting the effect of the Tsar's abolition of serfdom in the Russian partition, which had been designed to win Polish peasants away from supporting the rest of the Polish nation. In the aftermath of the uprising, severe reprisals against the Poles, such as public executions or deportations to Siberia, led many Poles to abandon armed struggle and turn instead to the idea of "organic work" - the economic and cultural self-improvement.

After series of patriotic riots, the Russian namestnik of Tsar Alexander II General Nikolai Sukhozanet introduced martial law in Poland on 14 October 1861. The uprising broke out at a moment when general quiet prevailed in Europe and in Russia, and when the Revolutionary Party had not sufficient means to arm and equip the bands of young men who were hiding in forests to escape Alexander Wielopolski's order of conscription into the Russian army. Altogether about 10,000 men rallied around the revolutionary banner; they were recruited chiefly from the ranks of the city working classes and minor clerks, although there was also a considerable admixture of the younger sons of the poorer szlachta and a number of priests of lower rank. To deal with these ill-armed bands the government had at its disposal a well trained army of 90,000 men under General Ramsay in Poland, 60,000 troops in Lithuania and 45,000 in Volhynia. It looked as if the rebellion would be crushed in a short while. The die was cast, however, and the provisional government applied itself to the great task with fervor.

It issued a manifesto in which it pronounced "all sons of Poland free and equal citizens without distinction of creed, condition and rank." It declared that land cultivated by the peasants, whether on the basis of rent-pay or service, henceforth should become their unconditional property, and compensation for it would be given to the landlords out of the general funds of the State. The revolutionary government did its very best to supply and provision the unarmed and scattered guerrillas who, during the month of February, met the Russians in eighty bloody encounters. Meanwhile, it issued an appeal to the nations of western Europe, which was received everywhere with a genuine and heartfelt response, from Norway to Portugal. Pope Pius IX ordered a special prayer for the success of the Polish arms, and was very active in arousing sympathy for the suffering nation.

After the collapse of the uprising, harsh reprisals followed. According to Russian official information, 396 persons were executed and 18,672 were exiled to Siberia. Large numbers of men and women were sent to the interior of Russia and to Caucasus, Urals and other sections. Altogether about 70,000 persons were imprisoned and subsequently taken out of Poland and stationed in the remote regions of Russia. The government confiscated 1,660 in Poland and 1,794 in Lithuania. A 10% income tax was imposed on all estates as a war indemnity. Only in 1869 was this tax reduced to 5% on all incomes. Besides the land granted to the peasants, the Russian Government gave them additional forest, pasture and other privileges (known under the name of servitutes) which have proven to be a source of incessant irritation between the landowners and peasants, and of serious difficulty to rational economic development. The government took over all the church estates and funds, and abolished monasteries and convents. With the exception of religious instruction, all other studies in the schools were ordered to be in Russian.

Russian also became the official language of the country, used exclusively in all offices of the general and local government. All traces of the former Polish autonomy were removed and the kingdom was divided into ten provinces, each with an appointed Russian military governor and all under complete control of the Governor-General at Warsaw. All the former government functionaries were deprived of their positions
Source: wikipedia.org