ners to provide recruits
for the organizing Polish forces, Gniezno initially provided 60 recruits who
participated in the battles of 1806-07. Consequently the town was included
within the Duchy of Warsaw, but upon defeat of Napoleon in Russian in 1812 was
occupied by the Russian army and was returned to Prussia in the 1815 Congress
of Vienna. Gniezno was subsequently governed within Kreis Gnesen of the Grand
Duchy of Posen and the later Province of Posen. Following the Greater Poland
Uprising (1918–1919) and the Treaty of Versailles Gniezno became part of the Second
Polish Republic. Its citizen-soldiers joined the Polish army fighting the
Bolsheviks during the Polish–Soviet War.
World War II
Gniezno was occupied by German troops in 11
September 1939 and by annexed into Nazi Germany on 26 October 1939 after the invasion
of Poland and made part of Reichsgau Wartheland. The town was liberated by the Red
Army in 21 January 1945 and restored to Poland
