Prince Roman was a Polish nobleman, a captain in the army of Czar Nicholas of Russia. When his young wife died, the prince left the army and returned in sorrow to his native Poland. In time, love for his country and its people took the place of his lost love. He joined a Polish rising against the Russians. The rising was crushed, and Prince Roman was taken prisoner. His relatives and friends begged the military court to have mercy on him. The president of the court received these appeals kindly. He was a good Russian, but he was also a good-natured man. Russian hatred of Poles was not as fierce at that time as it became later; and the Russian felt sympathetic as soon as he saw the prince's thin, tired, sun-burnt face. The court of three officers sat in a bare room, behind a long black table. Some clerks sat at the two ends, but no one else was there when the guards brought in the prince. Those four walls shut out from Prince Roman all sights and sounds of freedom, all hopes of the future, all comforting thoughts. How much love for Poland remained in him then? How much love of life? He stood before his judges alone, having refused their permission to sit. He answered their first formal questions -- his name and so on -- clearly and politely although he felt too weary to talk. Then the president of the court seemed to suggest how the young man could best help himself. He asked questions in a way that almost put the right answers in the prisoner's mouth. "Didn't your wife's death drive you to despair? Wasn't your mind unbalanced by that sad event ?" Prince Roman was silent. "You were not fully responsible for you conduct, were you?" Prince Roman was silent. "You made a sudden blind decision to join the rising. You didn't realize that your actions were dangerous and dishonourable. Isn't that the truth of this unfortunate matter?" The judges looked at the prisoner hopefully. In silence the prince reached for a pen and some paper. He wrote, "I joined the rising because I believe it was just." He pushed the paper towards the president, who took it and read it in silence. Prince Roman was sentenced to hard work for life in the Siberian salt mines. It was a sentence of delayed death. When Czar Nicholas read the report and sentence, he added in his own handwriting, "Make sure that this prisoner walks in chains every step of the way to Siberia." What does the passage tell us of Poland at the time?
Polish officers in the Russian army had to return to Poland. Russia was at war with Poland, so the Poles were enemies. The Russians were very cruel rulers of Poland. It was ruled by Russia, and Poles served in the Russian army.