Set against the background of the last, and the most tragic, nineteenth-century Polish insurrection and the patriotic fever that accompanied it, the story of how the cross became a political symbol in Poland opens with the figure of the Jewish defender of the cross, Michał Landy, shot dead while carrying a crucifix during an anti-tsarist demonstration in 1861. After Landy’s death, the cross was first used to voice protest, mobilize action, and convey a strictly political vision – in this case, that of an interethnic alliance of the East-Central European nations subjugated by the tsarist regime rising in a joint struggle for freedom, equality, and emancipation.