"Comrades, can you endure that a foreign oppressor should disperse you with shame and ignominy carry off honest men, usurp our arsenals, and harass the remainder of our unhappy fellow-countrymen at will? No, comrades, come with me; glory and the sweet consolation of being the saviours of your country await you. I give you my word that my zeal will endeavour to equal yours. ...
"To the nation and to the country alone do you owe fidelity. She calls upon us to defend her. In her name I send you my commands. With you, beloved comrades, I take for our watchword: Death or Victory! I trust in you and in the nation which has resolved to die rather than longer groan in shameful slavery,"[1]
[1] March 24, 1794. Given in Letters of Kościuszko, ed. L. Siemienski.
To the citizens he wrote:
"Fellow-citizens! Summoned so often by you to save our beloved country, I stand by your will at your head, but I shall not be able to break the outraging yoke of slavery if I do not receive the speediest and the most courageous support from you. Aid me then with your whole strength, and hasten to the banner of our country. One zeal in one interest ought to take possession of the hearts of all. Sacrifice to the country a part of your possessions which hitherto have not been yours, but the spoils of a despot's soldiers."
He begs them to give men, weapons, horses, linen, provisions, to the national army, and then proceeds:
"The last moment is now here, when despair in the midst of shame and infamy lays a weapon in our hands. Only in the contempt of death is the hope of the bettering of our fate and that of the future generations. ... The first step to the casting off of slavery is the risk taken to become free. The first step to victory is to know your own strength. ... Citizens! I expect all from your zeal, that you will with your whole hearts join the holy league which neither foreign intrigue nor the desire for rule, but only the love of freedom, has created. Whoso is not with us is against us. ... I have sworn to the nation that. I will use the power entrusted to me for the private oppression of none, but I here declare that whoever acts against our league shall be delivered over as a traitor and an enemy of the country to the criminal tribunal established by the Act of the nation. We have already sinned too much by forbearance, and mainly by reason of that policy public crime has scarcely ever been punished."[1]
[1] March 24, 1794. Op. cit.
The man who wrote thus was the strictest of military disciplinarians, and yet he detested bloodshed and openly condemned all revolutionary excess. At a later moment in the war the friend who shared his tent tells how Kościuszko struggled with himself through a sleepless night in the doubt as to whether he had done well to condemn a certain traitor to the capital punishment which he could never willingly bring himself to inflict.
The manifesto to the clergy is on the ordinary lines. In that to the women of Poland the ever-courteous and chivalrous Kościuszko speaks in the following terms: