With a relation of the most remarkable occurrences in the life of the celebrated Count Pulaski, well known as the champion of American Liberty, and who bravely fell in its defence before Savannah, 1779.
Interspersed with Anecdotes of the late unfortunate King of Poland, so recently dethroned.
(Continued from [page 99].)
Encouraged in this manner, what dangers had I to fear? I departed accordingly, but in the course of that campaign, there happened nothing worthy of narration; the enemy, equally careful with ourselves to avoid any action which might produce an open war between the two nations, contented themselves with fatiguing us by means of frequent marches: we, on the other hand, bounded our views to following and observing them; and they only seemed to oppose themselves to us, in those parts where the open country afforded them an opportunity of making good their retreat.
At the end of the campaign, they prepared to retire on purpose to take up their winter-quarters in their own country; and our little army, composed almost wholly of gentlemen, separated soon after.
I returned to Warsaw full of joy and impatience; I thought that Love and Hymen were about to bestow Lodoiska on me.——Alas! I no longer had a father. I learned, on entering the capital, that Lovzinski died of an apoplexy on the night before my arrival. Thus I was deprived of even the sad consolation of receiving the last sighs of the most tender of parents; I could only offer up my sorrows at his tomb, which I bathed with my tears!
——“It is not,” says Pulaski to me, who was but little moved with my profound sorrow; “it is not by means of barren tears that you can do honour to a father such as thine. Poland in him regrets a Citizen—— ——a hero, who would have been of immense service during the critical moment which now approaches. Worn out with a tedious malady, our monarch has not a fortnight to live, and on the choice of his successor depends the happiness or misery of our fellow-citizens.
“Of all the rights which the death of your father transmits to you, the most noble is undoubtedly that of assisting at the Diet, in which you are to represent him; it is there where he will revive in you; it is there, where you ought to exhibit a courage infinitely more difficult to be sustained than that which consists only in braving death in the field of battle!
“The valour of a soldier is nothing more than a common virtue; but they are not ordinary men who on awful emergencies, preserving a tranquil courage, and displaying an active penetration, discover the projects of the powerful who cabal, disconcert the enterprises of the intriguing, and confront the designs of the factious; who, always firm, incorruptible, and just, give not their suffrages but to those whom they think most worthy of them; whom neither gold nor promises can seduce, whom prayers cannot bend, whom menaces cannot terrify.
“These were the virtues which distinguished your father; this is the precious inheritance which you ought to be desirous of sustaining. The day on which the states assemble for the election of a king, will be the epoch on which the pretensions of many of our fellow-citizens, more occupied with their private interests than jealous of the prosperity of their country, will be manifested, as well as the pernicious designs of the neighbouring powers, whose cruel policy it is to destroy our strength by dividing it.