that ended in 1795. Russia defeated Napoleon and made the 'independence' no more meaningful than that of Congress Poland, which emerged from the Vienna settlement. However, the Duchy represented the hope of true independence, whereas Congress Poland was always in Russia's shadow. The other lasting significance of Napoleon's Grand Duchy is that it cast off old feudal Poland to some degree under the rule of the partitioning powers. Serfdom was abolished and a modern legal code based on the French model was introduced. Critical was the contribution the Napoleonic period made towards the creation of a national legend or myth, which was to sustain and comfort Poles down the decades that followed. Amongst other things, it contributed to a belief that the rest of Europe had an abiding interest in the fate of Poland, arising from Bonaparte's support in 1797 for the formation of Polish Legions, recruited from amongst émigrés and other exiles living in Italy. The Polish national anthem, "Dąbrowski's Mazurka", is a celebration of the legion's commander, Jan Henryk Dąbrowski, and Napoleon is only mentioned in passing. Napoleon's treatment of these soldiers was cynical in the extreme. After the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801, they were sent to the West Indies to suppress the slave revolt in the French colony Saint-Domingue, or modern Haiti. Napoleon continued to use Poles where it suited him best. Of the fresh forces raised after the creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, some 10,000 were sent to fight against the Spanish and the British in the Peninsular War. However, the Poles were most enthusiastic about the 1812 war against Russia-which Napoleon called the Second Polish War-as they formed by far the largest foreign contingent of the Grand Army. There is no precise information on what form the peace would have taken if Napoleon had won his war against Alexander, but many Poles held to the belief that it would, at the very least, have led to a fully restored Poland, including Lithuania; a return, in other words, to the situation prior to the first partition in 1772. The whole experience of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw is one of Polish confidence in Napoleon's promise of a better future, though there is really nothing that proves he would have fulfilled these expectations. Polish national determination did impact Czar Alexander I, as he accepted that there could be no return to the position prevailing