They got as far as Kielce, rather over sixty miles from the Austrian frontier, unmolested. In Kielce they set up a provisional government, removed all the Russian lettering from the shop signs and street corners, and beat up a Jew or two as occasion offered. Then there was a pause, till the Austrian armies of Dankl and Auffenberg developed their offensive (10-31 August), received their check (1-3 September), and were forced to retreat. Pilsudski's two thousand legionaries were of course involved in the retreat. They were commended for their reconnaissance work by the Austrian corps commander, to whom they were attached. The aeroplane had not come into its own in those early days of 1914.
From this time on they were merged in the Austro-Hungarian army. The Austrian Government formed the Headquarters of the legions in Cracow, through the Viceroy of Galicia, on 10 August 1914, that the Minister of War recognized the formation of a corps of Polish Strzelcy, would provide it with arms and equipment, and facilitate the transfer to its ranks of the Polish conscripts from the rest of the army. On 5 September 1914 after a solemn open-air Mass, celebrated by a Capuchin chaplain of the legions, the legionaries swore that they would ' keep faith and obedience to His Apostolic Majesty, our Most Illustrious Monarch and Lord, Francis Joseph I, by God's Grace Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, etc., Apostolic King of Hungary, Polish King'. They then went into camps in Galicia for serious military training. Pilsudski was made an Austrian brigadier-general.
By the beginning of 1915 three brigades had been formed : and the number of the legions remained for some time at about 14,000 men. That was approximately half the number of Napoleon's Polish Legion. The legions took part in most of the Austrian fighting in Galicia and in Russian Poland in 1915 and 1916. After the occupation of Warsaw by the Austro-German armies, they became restive. The German Governor-General von Beseler was prepared to recognized them as ' the nucleus of a future Polish army ' ; but required them to take an oath of allegiance. At Pilsudski's instigation the majority refused to take it, and were accordingly interned in a camp on the borders of the kingdom. Pilsudski himself was arrested and confined in a fortress at Magdeburg, where he remained until the Armistice.
That was the end of the legions : and to all outside observers their record was a record of failure. Save for a few weeks at the outset of the war, they never represented more than a section of the Polish people. their strength, first and last, was in Galicia (Austrian Poland). In the Kingdom (Russian Poland) they were received, even in the early days when the enthusiasm was at its height, at best with indifference and often with dislike. In Kielce, when they occupied it in August 1914, they were attacked in the local (Polish) newspapers, and their meetings were interrupted. And in the country it was worse. The peasants viewed them with profound suspicion ; and only the presence of priests as chaplains with the legionaries was able to convince them that the legions were not bands of robbers. To political propaganda the peasant remained, as in 1830 and in 1863, deaf in both ears. There is a proverb in Poland, of the truth of which the peasant has had ample occasion to convince himself in the last few hundred years ; and it is likely to take as many hundred years before he will unlearn it. The proverb is, ' Czego panowie nawarza tem sie poddani poparza ' ; which means ' The gentry drink [cook] the soup, but the peasant's lips are scalded '.
Nothing is impossible in Poland ; but it is highly improbable that, if the first Austrian offensive in August 1914 had succeeded, the legions would ever have formed the nucleus of a general rising in Russian Poland. Later they were swamped in the vast masses of the Austro-German armies. And in the end, when the Moscovite evacuated Warsaw, it was to the German invader that Poland owed her freedom.
And yet, when all this has been said, nothing has been said.