Confiscations, imprisonments, and banishments to Siberia were the least terrible of the punishments.
Every germ of a Polish nationality was destroyed--the army and the Diet effaced, Russian systems of taxes, justice, and coinage, and the metric system of weights and measures used in Russia were introduced,--the Julian Calendar superseded the one adopted all over the world--the University of Warsaw was carried to Moscow, and the Polish language was prohibited to be taught in the schools.

Indemnity and pardon were offered to those who abjured the Roman Catholic faith, and many were received into the bosom of the National Orthodox Church; those refusing this offer of clemency being subjected to great cruelties.

Poland was no more.

Polish exiles were scattered all over Europe.

In France, Hungary, Italy, wherever there were lovers of freedom, there were thousands of these emigrants without a country, living illustrations of what an unrestrained despotism might do, and everywhere intensifying the desires of patriots to achieve political freedom in their own lands.
Nicholas, as the chief representative of conservatism in Europe, looked upon France with especial aversion.