Józef Klemens Piłsudski was born on the 5th of December 1867 at the manor of Zulov, now known as Zalavas in Lithuania. His family had been part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania before the region fell under Russian rule in 1795. Young Józef attended a Russian Gymnasium in Vilnius where he developed a deep hatred for the Tsar and his empire. He refused to attend Russian Orthodox Church services and left school with an aversion for all things Russian.
In 1885 he began medical studies at Kharkov University but became involved with Narodnaya Volya, a revolutionary movement. Authorities suspended him in 1886 for participating in student demonstrations. On the 22nd of March 1887 Tsarist police arrested him for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. A court sentenced him to five years of exile in Siberia.
During transport to Siberia he spent weeks in a prison in Irkutsk. Guards beat political prisoners who defied them. Piłsudski lost two teeth during this ordeal. He joined a hunger strike that forced authorities to reinstate suspended privileges. In 1888 he received another sentence of six months imprisonment.
The first night of his incarceration occurred in forty-degree-below-zero cold. This exposure caused an illness that nearly killed him and created health problems that plagued him throughout his life. While exiled he tutored local children in mathematics and foreign languages. Local officials denied him the ten-ruble pension given to other prisoners because they viewed him as a nobleman.
Legions And The Oath Crisis
Piłsudski anticipated a coming European war and organized leadership for a future Polish army. In 1906 Austrian authorities allowed him to found a military school in Kraków for training paramilitary units. That same year eight hundred strong paramilitaries operating in five-man teams killed three hundred thirty-six Russian officials.
On the night of the 26th or the 27th of September 1908 these groups robbed a Russian mail train carrying tax revenues from Warsaw to Saint Petersburg near Vilnius. The funds totaled two hundred thousand eighty-one rubles which equaled their entire income for the preceding two years. Piłsudski used this money to finance his secret military organization.
In 1914 at a meeting in Paris he declared that Poland could only regain independence if Russia was defeated by the Central Powers. On the 3rd of August in Kraków he formed a small cadre unit called the First Cadre Company. Two days later a cavalry unit under Władysław Belina-Prażmowski crossed the border into Russian Poland before official war declarations.
On the 27th of August 1914 Piłsudski established the Polish Legions within the Austro-Hungarian Army. He took personal command of their first brigade leading them into several victorious battles against Russia. The Legions fought alongside Austria-Hungary until 1917 when relations with Germany deteriorated.
After the July 1917 Oath crisis Piłsudski forbade soldiers from swearing loyalty to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. German authorities arrested him and imprisoned him in Magdeburg. His arrest enhanced his reputation among Poles who saw him as a leader willing to challenge all partitioning powers.