La visión de la participación polaca en los Sitios de Zaragoza (1808-1809) en Cenizas de Stefan Żeromski y Andrzej Wajda
The Vision of the Polish Participation in the Sieges of Saragossa (1808-1809) in Ashes by Stefan Żeromski and Andrzej Wajda

Summary/Abstract: In Poland, the knowledge of the participation of the Vistula Legion’s infantry and the lancers from the Vistula Legion in the Sieges of Saragossa comes mainly from literature and cinema. The first works derives from the novelistic genre. The lack of a rigorous historical study caused that these creations rose like authentic bearers of the facts narrated there, when in fact, they were interpretations created by the pen of the writer of turn. In this way, the myths were forged that have lasted to the present. One of these legends came from the imagination of Stefan Żeromski, who from an anonymous text, invented a scene that has been the object of remorse for generations of Poles: the suicide of a nun before being raped by the soldiers in a convent of Saragossa. Andrzej Wajda picked up this passage by capturing it in a scene from his film. We have shown that the inspiring text of Żeromski, and therefore of Wajda, is an apocryphal, a text probably invented by tsarist propaganda in order to dirty Polish actions in the Napoleonic wars, when the Poles were once again free in the Duchy of Warsaw thanks to Napoleon I Bonaparte. With this article we demonstrate the need to reinterpret the original sources to banish myths that create errors with clear political aims.

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