The age of conscription was fixed at twenty to twenty-five, while boys between the age of twelve and eighteen were to be drafted only when the parents themselves wished to offer them as substitutes for their elder sons who were of military age.

Nevertheless, to the Polish Jews, who had never known of conscription, military service lasting a quarter of a century, to be discharged in a strange Russian environment, seemed a terrible sacrifice.

The "Congregational Board" of Warsaw, having learned of the ukase, sent a deputation to St.Petersburg with a petition to grant the Jews of the Kingdom equal rights with the Christians, referring to the law of 1817 which distinctly stated that the Jews were to be released from personal military service so long as they were denied equal civil rights.

The petition of course proved of no avail; the very term "equal rights" was still missing in the Russian vocabulary.
Only in point of disabilities were the Jews of Poland gradually placed on an equal footing with their Russian brethren.

In 1845 the Russian law imposing a tax on the traditional Jewish attire [1] was extended in its operation to the Polish Jews, descending with the force of a real calamity upon the hasidic masses of Poland.