fight Russia on Prussia's behalf. At this time the majority of Poles were not yet engaged in political activity. At most only the landowners, the intelligentsia and the upper urban classes possessed a developed national consciousness. The peasantry and the working class had yet to experience their own "Polish national awakening". Through military service and school education, and in the case of "regulated" peasants also in the wake of the benefits wrought by the final emancipation decree introduced in 1823, some segments of these social groups had begun to identify with the Prussian state. However, as German colonization grew in strength and policies against Polish religion and traditions were introduced the local population begun to feel hostility towards Prussia and German presence. Economic factors also began to influence Polish-German relations. Colonization policies in particular created a fear of German competition among Poles. The greatest difference remained the religious segregation. The local Germans displayed rather politically apathy and refrained from creating an organized form of social life. Prior to 1848, the provincial diet remained the only forum of German political activity. In general relations of the local Germans with the Polish population were good. In the end of the 1840s about 60 percent of the population of the Duchy were Polish, 34 percent German and 6 percent Jewish. Out of the administrative districts Poles had majority in 18 while Germans in 6, out which 4 were in the western part and 2 in the northern part. A first attempt to change the situation in the Duchy was made in the Greater Poland Uprising of 1846 after which 254 Polish activists were imprisoned upon charges of conspiracy. The trial ended on 2 December 1847, when 134 of the defendants were acquitted and returned to the Duchy. 8 defendants, including Ludwik Mierosławski, were sentenced to death, the rest to prison in the Berlin-Moabit prison. The death sentences were not carried out as Revolution in Prussia started . and the Prussian king amnestied political prisoners as part of concessions to revolutionaries Timeline of the uprising Prelude On 19 March 1848, after the Revolution in Berlin succeeded throughout the Spring of Nations, King Frederick William IV of Prussia amnestied the Polish prisoners, who joined the Berlin Home Guard in the evening of 20 March 1848 by founding a “Polish Legion” in the courtyard of the Berliner Schloss, and were armed with weapons from the Royal