[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.
In these early days Napoleon's betrayal of Poland was a tale still untold; but to the end the Poles fought by his side with a hope in him that only died with his fall, with a love and loyalty to his person that survived it.
Such was the news that travelled across the Atlantic to Kościuszko with dispatches that informed him that his two nephews, sons of his sister Anna, who had borne arms in the Rising, had been sent in the name of Kościuszko by their mother to Bonaparte with the prayer that they might serve in his ranks. By the end of June, 1798, Kościuszko was in France, in Bayonne.
The accustomed acclamations greeted him there. Some fête-champêtre was arranged at which Kościuszko, the guest of honour, watched peasants laying their ploughs at the feet of soldiers, in exchange for the weapons of war. "It would have been thus in Poland," he was heard to murmur to himself, "if fate had not betrayed us."
In Paris he heard sympathy with himself and the Polish cause expressed on all sides. Public toasts to the defender of the nation who was pouring her blood like water in the cause of France were the order of the hour. Kościuszko was moved to tears as he listened to the utterance of these good wishes for his country's liberation. His first task was to confer with the various foreign ambassadors and with Dombrowski's adjutant, Dombrowski being in Italy. He then definitely broke the bond between himself and Paul I. He returned the money received from the Tsar with the following letter:—
"I am profiting by the first moment of liberty which I am enjoying under the fostering laws of the greatest and noblest of nations to send you back a gift, to the acceptance of which I was forced by the manifestations of your benevolence and the merciless proceedings of your ministers. If I agreed to accept it, let Your Majesty ascribe this only to the unconquerable strength of the attachment which I bear to my compatriots, the companions of my misfortunes, as well as to my hopes of still serving my country. It seemed to me that my unhappy condition moved your heart, but your ministers and their satellites did not proceed with me according to your wishes. Therefore, since they have dared to ascribe to my free resolution an act to which they forced me, I will disclose their violence and perfidy before you and before all men who know the worth of honour, and may they only be answerable before you, Sire, for the proclamation of their unworthy conduct."[1]
[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.
At the same time that Kościuszko forwarded this letter to the Tsar he published it in two French papers. The Tsar's reply was to return the sum through the Russian ambassador in Vienna, with the remark that he would "accept nothing from traitors." It lay untouched in an English bank till Kościuszko's death.
Even before the repudiation of Kościuszko's oath reached Petersburg the fact of his arrival in France had roused the wrath of Paul's envoy in Berlin, who deliberated with the Prussian ministers how to impede "the criminal intentions of the chief perpetrator and instigator of the revolution in Poland." Kościuszko's instant arrest was decreed, should he ever be seen within the boundaries of Russia's domination, and any one who entered into relations with him there was branded as a traitor. Austria and Prussia followed suit. Thus was Kościuszko's return to his own country barred before him.
Closely watched by Russian and Prussian spies, who communicated, often erroneously, to their respective governments the movements of "that adventurer," as one of them styles him, Kościuszko had his headquarters in Paris. He was there when Kniaziewicz, fresh from the triumphs of the legions in Italy, brought him, in the name of Poland, Sobieski's sword. It had been preserved at Loreto, whither the deliverer of Vienna had sent it more than a century ago, after his triumph over the Turks. The newly founded Republic of Rome presented it to the officers of the Polish legions in 1798, who destined it for Kościuszko. "God grant," said Kościuszko, in his letter of acknowledgment to his fellow-Poles, "that we may lay down our swords together with the sword of Sobieski in the temple of peace, having won freedom and universal happiness for our compatriots."[1]