ADAM MICKIEWICZ, THE NATIONAL POET OF POLAND

(Published 1911)

Daily News.—"Miss Gardner's able study... Lovers of the heroic in history will be grateful to Miss Gardner for her account of this noble enthusiast." (Rest of review, of more than a column, analysing the matter of the book.)

Scotsman.—"So little is known in this country about Polish literati that a book which tells the moving story of the greatest among the poets of Poland is sure of a welcome from student readers. The present interesting volume—while it is instructive in no small measure as to the scope and character of Mickiewicz's poetry and literary work—draws so lively a picture of the persecutions and sufferings and of the unconquered spirit of the poet that its human interest easily overbears mere questions of literature. ... The work, at once discriminating and enthusiastic, will warmly interest all sympathetic students of Slavonic popular literature." (Rest of review analyses matter of the book.)

Westminster Gazette.—"Miss Gardner tells the story with excellent insight and sympathy. ... The author's description of the four parts of this poem gives a vivid idea of its far-reaching scope, its passionate energy, and intensity of patriotism." (Rest of review, three-quarters of a column, analyses matter of book.)

Birmingham Daily Post.—"We are very glad to see that Miss Gardner has at last produced a well-documented and impassioned study of the life and achievements of Mickiewicz. ... Miss Gardner has done a fine and useful piece of work." (Rest of review, a column, analysis of matter of book, and calling attention to the importance of work upon Poland.)

Manchester Guardian.—"Miss Gardner, a devoted and accomplished student of Polish literature, has performed a considerable service in making better known the life and work of the most famous of Polish poets. ... His pathetic story is told in great detail and with deep sympathy by Miss Gardner. ... Some of her prose renderings are of great beauty—often with the wild and wayward beauty which we associate with Chopin." (Rest of review, three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter of book.)

New Age.—"A real work of love, honest and thorough." (Rest of review, of about a column, analysis of matter of the book.)

Cambridge Review.—"Miss Gardner... gives us a remarkably true picture of the relations between the poet and his country. ...Miss Gardner has realized fully what she attempted, and indeed few countrymen of the poet could perform the task better."

Bulletin Polonais.—"Une étude biographique et littéraire très substantielle, très bien documentée, conçue très methodiquement et écrite avec beaucoup de charme et de clarté. ... C'est à notre connaissance le premier livre anglais qui traite avec tant d'ampleur et tant de conscience une question d'histoire littéraire polonaise. Nous espèrons que Mile. Gardner ne se bomera pas à ce brillant coup d'essai."

Academy.—"Miss Gardner has done a real service." (The rest of a very long and sympathetic review is an analysis of the matter of the book.)

Tablet.—"In these days, when the reader is embarrassed by the abundance of books that are not wanted... it is well to meet with a work at once so necessary and so well done. ... When great poetry has waited so long for appreciation, and a story full of interest has been left untold, we might welcome any attempt to supply the deficiency. But in this case the work is so admirably done that it would be welcome, though we had other biographies or critical appreciations of the Polish poet. This remarkable work... Apart from the purely biographical interest, which is of a high order, there is much that throws new light on the tragic pages of modern Polish history. ... It may be hoped that this book will do something to awaken a new interest in the history and literature of Poland." (Rest of review, about a column, analysis of matter.)

Standard.—"This is the first attempt which has been made in our language to capture the imagination by a critical study of the fine character and high achievements of Adam Mickiewicz. Miss Monica Gardner writes exceedingly well—with knowledge, with sympathy, and with vision. ... The book... is a capable bit of work, and it certainly succeeds in giving the reader a realistic and impressive picture of a man who loved Poland with an undivided heart." (Rest of review, about three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

Athenæum.—"One would have been grateful for a moderate biography of Poland's national poet; Miss Gardner's work merits a more distinguished adjective, and therefore is doubly worthy of attention." (Rest of review analysis of matter.)

Glasgow Herald.—"The intensely tragic story is set forth by Miss Gardner with skill equal to her sympathy. ... What an inspiration Mickiewicz was, and is, may be readily gathered from the translations given by Miss Gardner, magnificent even as prose. ... The book is singularly interesting as the story of a man and a nation and as giving a vivid glimpse of a poetry almost unknown in Britain." (Rest of review, about three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

Yorkshire Post.—"This book of Miss Gardner's should appeal powerfully to English readers because its subject has the provocations of novelty; because the work is gracefully and sympathetically written, with discerning and intimate knowledge of fact and of character, and yet discriminating and just; and because it embodies once more the story, especially dear to our hearts, of the struggle of a patriotic race for freedom and national existence." (Rest of review, about three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

POLAND: A STUDY IN NATIONAL IDEALISM

(Published 1915)

Evening Standard.—"Miss Monica Gardner's eloquent book is a little epic of sorrow and courage. The picture that it paints is pitiful and splendid. ... The book must be read for itself. The author has a style that has caught fire from its subject, and a grace and restraint that make the book an appeal to all lovers of literature, as well as to every generous heart." (Rest of review, three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

Spectator.—"Her eloquent and touching book. ... Miss Gardner gives us an excellent account, enriched by many spirited translations, of the principal works of these remarkable poets." (Rest of review, two columns and a half, a laudatory analysis of matter.)

T. P.'s Weekly.—"The admirable historical summary in Monica Gardner's Poland. ... The author has written a book that must be read. ... The position of Poland is one of the important questions to be settled by this war, and we cannot know too much of the soul of a country that, divided among spoilers, still retained national unity." (Rest of review, three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

Pall Mall Gazette.—"Her well-written and brilliant book. This book deals with more than the soul of a nation. It speaks for the spirit of a people. ... Miss Gardner is steeped in Polish literature, and her account of these great poets is intensely interesting. ... Her description of Poland during the last hundred years is full of pathos and power. There is no straining after effect; the facts are ineffaceable; and this brief story brings out into bold relief the sufferings, sorrows, sacrifices, struggle, and strength of the Polish race. ... This book is an eloquent description of a great people." (Rest of review, three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

World.—"At present the only kind of 'War Book' that seems to us really worth reading is that of which the conflict now going on is rather the occasion than the cause. Such, we may say, is Poland: a Study in National Idealism, by Monica M. Gardner. ... Clearly Miss Gardner has not been hurried into producing this admirable volume by the mere war, but only gives out in season the enlightening result of what she long previously assimilated and made her own. This book really reveals Poland." (Rest of review analysis of matter.)

Outlook.—"In this little volume a faithful and fearless picture is given of her [Poland's] struggle for independence." (Rest of review, about a column, analysis of matter.)

Daily News.—"Miss Gardner's sensitive and accomplished little study. ... Miss Gardner's extremely spirited renderings." (Rest of review, column and a half, analysis of matter.)

Manchester Guardian.—"For the first time in England we are able to read books on Poland by an author who has made a special study of that country. To those who know not Poland this book will be a revelation." (Rest of review analysis of matter.)

Birmingham Daily Post.—"We render Miss Gardner the tribute of deep gratitude for introducing us to a noble literature." (Rest of review, three-quarters of a column, analysis of matter.)

The Venturer.—"Miss Gardner has done well to give us this book. It is not large in bulk, but it is no exaggeration to call it a great book."

Expository Times.—"Let us read and follow the course of the war. Let us read and understand what must be when the war is over. Let us read Monica M. Gardner's delightful book on Poland. It is both literary and historical." (Rest of review quotation from the book.)

London Quarterly Review.—"The book is a real contribution to the true understanding of Polish character and Polish aspirations." (Rest of review analysis of matter.)

Tablet.—"This masterly critical appreciation of a great national literature. ... This welcome work on the tragic story of the Polish people and on the glories of their great national literature is singularly happy in the opportuneness of its appearance. For however much other books may be neglected, there is naturally a great demand for books that offer any information on matters connected with the war. In most cases, no doubt, what is called war literature is scarcely literature in the strict sense of the word. But here, happily, we have a book of rare literary merit ... and it comes before us when it meets a present need. ... Miss Gardner, in this fascinating little book on Poland, enables English readers to understand the tragic story of the Polish people, their unbroken spiritual unity, and their undaunted hope in the future of their country." (Rest of review, two columns and a half, analysis of matter.)

Times.—"Miss Gardner is an instructed and cultivated student of Poland."

POLAND ("PEEPS AT MANY LANDS")

(Published 1917)

Daily Telegraph.—"To their popular series of travel books called 'Peeps at Many Lands' Messrs. Black have now added a volume on Poland, by Monica M. Gardner. The more we know of Poland and the Polish people the better our understanding of the causes of the war. ... The book is as good reading as any fiction, and the most austere critic must admit its relevance to the task of 'getting on with the war.'"

Spectator.—"Young people should read Miss Monica Gardner's short and interesting book on Poland. ... English readers know very little about the Poles, and this book deserves attention, for we cannot as a nation afford any longer to neglect Poland."

Common Cause.—"The little volume gives a most vivid and delightful picture of Poland as it was before the war, with its spacious steppes and wonderful forests, and it tells of the nation's struggle for freedom against overwhelming odds. The book deals largely with the manners and customs of the people in modern times, which the writer makes extremely interesting; but it tells also the main events in the history of the unfortunate kingdom from early days."

Globe.—"Miss Gardner tells in a most touching way the picturesque story of that unhappy land."

Aberdeen Journal.—"To the 'Peeps' series of attractive books ... has been added this dainty volume on Poland by Monica M. Gardner, well known as the author of Adam Mickiewicz and Poland: a Study in National Idealism. That the war must have a vital effect on the destiny of Poland is universally acknowledged, and now is the time to study the characteristics of the Poles. ... The chapter devoted to Polish National Customs is quite fascinating, and 'A Day in Cracow' presents vivid glimpses of the chief city of 'Austrian' Poland. The vexatious character of the rule in 'Prussian' Poland is effectively exposed. Miss Gardner possesses a clear and pleasing style well suited to a popular and well-timed book."

Tablet.—"With the fate of Poland once again in the melting-pot of a European war, Miss Monica Gardner's sympathetic account of its people and cities in Poland may be confidently recommended as the work of one who knows and loves her subject. It is a work which, small as it is, deserves the attention of readers young and old."

Polish Review.—"Miss Monica Gardner's little book on Poland in the 'Peeps at Many Lands' ought to be in the hands of all in this country who want to get to the heart of Poland. The authoress both knows and feels her subject, and her lively picturesque style ... makes her pages interesting both to young and old."

THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND

(Published 1919)

Spectator.—"Miss Gardner has followed up her monograph on Mickiewicz with an admirable companion study of Zygmunt Krasinski, the 'Unknown' or 'Anonymous' Poet of Poland, second only to Mickiewicz in genius, and, in virtue of his personality, his strange gift of prescience, and the romantic and tragic conditions of his life, appealing to a wider audience than his great contemporary. He came on his father's side of an ancient, noble, and wealthy Polish family, related to the House of Savoy; his mother was a Radziwill. A precocious only child, he was brought up in his father's palace in Warsaw and on his country estate at Opinogóra. Vincent Krasinski had fought with distinction in the Polish Legion under Napoleon; he was a commanding figure in the autonomous Kingdom of Poland until 1828, when he was the only member of the Senate of the Polish Diet who voted for the death-penalty at the trial of the Poles implicated in the Decembrist rising of 1825. More than that, when the students of the University at Warsaw deserted their lecture-rooms en masse to attend the funeral of the patriotic Bielinski in the folio-wing year, Zygmunt Krasinski was forbidden by his father to join them, and peremptorily ordered to go to his work. This invidious isolation blasted Zygmunt's youth and affected his whole career. He had to be removed from the University, was sent with a tutor to Geneva in 1829, and never saw Poland again save as a conquered province of Russia. His father transferred his allegiance to Nicholas I, migrated to St. Petersburg, was held in high honour by the Tsar and execrated by his fellow-countrymen. Later on he effectually thwarted Zygmunt's desire to join in the rising of 1830, and by his persistence forced him into a reluctant mariage de convenance. Zygmunt Krasinski was undoubtedly in a painful position, for he could not openly declare himself without still further compromising his father's position. He hated his father's policy, but he loved the man who had trained him to love his country, and, above all, he feared him. It was a new and tragic variant on odi et amo, which drove Zygmunt Krasinski into a strange life of compromise, evasion, and sacrifice. To put it brutally, he was not a fighting man; so far as action went, he feared his father more than he loved his country, and there was a sting of truth in the bitter taunt addressed to him by his brother-poet Slowacki: 'Thou wert afraid, son of a noble.' He was often conscious of his weakness as when he wrote to Henry Reeve in 1830: 'I am a fool, I am a coward, I am a wretched being, I have the heart of a girl, I do not dare to brave a father's curse.' But it is right to remember that he was physically a weakling, tormented by ill-health, neurotic, and half-blind from his nineteenth year. Torn in two by the conflict between filial duty and the desire to serve his country, always dreading the worst for himself, never free from the apprehension that he would end his days in Siberia, he took refuge in anonymity as the only means of salving his conscience and sparing his father. The curious and self-protective devices by which he secured secrecy were sometimes more ingenious than dignified. Some of his works were put forth under the names or initials of his friends. The secret was most loyally kept, but others suffered. According to his biographer, his poems were penal contraband, and many of his countrymen were sent to Siberia for possessing them. What Krasinski sacrificed was fame, publicity, above all peace of mind. He envied those of his contemporaries who fought and died for their country. He was not a hero, and he knew it. The heroes of his poems and plays were always soldiers, men of action, and in his most original work, the extraordinary Undivine Comedy, he levelled the most damaging indictment against the self-centred egotism of the poet that has ever been penned by a man of letters. And the bitterness of the portrait is only heightened by the fact that it was largely inspired by self-criticism; his letters and his life afford only too frequent justification for the recurrent comment of the mocking spirit in the play on the melodramatic pose of the hero: 'Thou composest a drama.'

"The Undivine Comedy, a prose drama, though prompted by the events of 1830, makes no mention of Poland. It is a double tragedy in which the central figure, Henryk, after wrecking his home life by his egotism, assumes the leadership of his class, aristocratic and decadent, against a communistic rising led by Pankracy, a Mephistopheles who is not sure of himself. Henryk goes down in the struggle, but his conqueror falls in the hour of triumph with the words 'Vicisti Galilaee' on his lips. The scenes from the domestic tragedy are strangely moving: the sequel, in which the influence of Faust is obvious, is chiefly noteworthy for the flashes of prescience in which the Walpurgisnacht of brutal, revolting humanity fore-shadows with a strange clairvoyance the outstanding features of the democratic upheaval in Russia. But it is a drama of hopelessness: 'the cry of despair,' as Mickiewicz called it, 'of a man of genius who recognizes the greatness and difficulty of social questions' without being able to solve them. The Undivine Comedy is 'the drama of a perishing world': it was only in his later works that Krasinski's belief in the ultimate resurrection of Poland emerged. In Iridion, another prose drama, we have his first direct appeal to his nation, though it is cast in the form of an allegorical romance, in which the men and women are rather symbols than portraits. The hero is a Greek in Rome in the time of Heliogabalus, Rome standing for Russia. Beginning with this drama, and increasingly developed in his later poems, is to be found Krasinski's abiding conviction that Poland's salvation consists in the abjuring of vengeance—that the political redemption of the world would be achieved by her sufferings, as mankind was redeemed by the sufferings of Christ. The agony of Poland was not regarded by him as merited for any crimes in the past. She was an innocent victim, and the greater the wrong inflicted on her, the greater was the chance of her ultimate victory. In what was the darkest hour of his life, in 1846, when the Galician peasantry, incited by Austrian propagandists, rose and massacred the Polish nobles and Austria annexed Cracow, he wrote: 'That last span of earth torn from us by the fourth partition has more than anything else advanced our cause. Every wound inflicted on something holy and good becomes a far deeper wound, by the reflection of the Divine Justice that rules history, on him who inflicted it.' And again: 'There was never a nation in such sublime circumstances, in such favourable conditions, who was so near, from the cross on which she hangs, to heaven whither she must ascend.' It will be readily understood that this panegyric of suffering, coming from a man who had not fought for his country or suffered forfeiture of his wealth, did not appeal to all Polish patriots. The gospel of pardon and the acceptance of pain revolted men like Kamienski and Slowacki, who resented the tone of the Psalms of the Future, in which Krasinski's distrust of democratic propaganda found impassioned utterance. His appeal to his countrymen to adopt the watchword of love and not that of terrorism was ineffective; but the catastrophe of 1846, though it shattered his health, did not shatter his belief that Poland's resurrection depended on each Pole's personal purity of heart and deed. His last national poems are prayers for goodwill. In 'Resurrecturis' his answer to the eternal mystery of undeserved pain is that the 'quiet might of sacrifice' was 'the only power in the world which could crush Poland's crushing fate,' As the late Professor Morfill well said of him, Krasinski 'always stood by the open grave of his country,' and the somewhat cloudy mysticism in which he found his chief consolation is too rarefied for robuster minds. Yet his hope never wholly failed: the saying that he quoted to encourage his friend Soltan—'speravit contra spem: that is a great and holy word of the sacred Scriptures'—might stand for his motto; and a saying from one of his poems, as Miss Gardner not unjustly contends, might well be his epitaph: 'If you would mark him out by any sign, call him a Pole, for he loved Poland. In this love he lived and in it died.'

"Krasinski died in Paris, where he had also been born, in 1859, only outliving his father by three months, in which he was engaged on a memoir, never completed, in vindication of the memory of the man who had dominated his earthly existence. He had many devoted friends who advised and helped him, acted as his amanuenses, and, as we have seen, shielded him by assuming authorship of his works. In turn he was the generous friend of all Polish patriots in distress, whatever were their politics. Deeply susceptible from his boyhood, he was profoundly influenced by three women: Mme. Bobrowa, to whom he dedicated his Undivine Comedy and other works; the beautiful and unhappy Countess Delphina Potocka, immortalized by her friendship with Chopin, who both before and for several years after Krasinski's marriage was his Egeria, and to whom he inscribed a series of love lyrics and the mystical poem 'Dawn,' in which two exiles on the Lake of Como dream of the resurrection of their nation. The idealistic nature of Krasinski's love for Delphina Potocka, as compared with his infatuation for Mme. Bobrowa, is emphasized by his latest biographer. She was his Beatrice, and the figure of the woman he loved constantly merges in that of his eternal mistress, Poland. The third woman was his wife, Elżbieta Branicka, whom he married reluctantly, treated coldly for years, but came in the end to respect and love for her goodness and forbearance, repairing his neglect in the beautiful poems of repentance and gratitude addressed to her in the last years of his troubled life. Miss Gardner's translations, especially those from Krasinski's prose works, are done with spirit and no little skill. The difficulties of the poems are greater, but she has given us at any rate a good idea of their mystical eloquence. She has made excellent use of the already extensive literature on the subject, culminating in the complete edition of his works published in 1912, the year of Krasinski's centenary. And she has drawn freely from the remarkable letters written in French to Henry Reeve, whom he met in Geneva in 1830—when Reeve was a romantic, enthusiastic youth 'with the face of a beautiful girl'—and corresponded with for several years. More than sixty years later these letters were handed over by Henry Reeve to Krasinski's grandson, and published in Paris in 1902 with a Preface by Dr. Kallenbach, of Lwow University, the chief authority on Krasinski."

KOŚCIUSZKO

A BIOGRAPHY

KOŚCIUSZKO

A BIOGRAPHY

BY

MONICA M. GARDNER

AUTHOR OF "ADAM MICKIEWICZ"; "POLAND; A STUDY IN NATIONAL IDEALISM"; "THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND," ETC.

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET W.C. 1 NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

First published in 1920

(All rights reserved)

TO

WIESŁAWA CICHOWICZÓWNA

I AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATE THIS
BOOK UPON THE NATIONAL
HERO OF HER
COUNTRY

PREFACE

The appearance of an English biography of the Polish patriot, Tadeusz Kościuszko, requires no justification. Kościuszko's name is prominent in the long roll-call of Polish men and women who have shed their blood, sacrificed their happiness, and dedicated their lives to gain the liberation of Poland. We are now beholding what it was not given to them to see, the fruit of the seed they sowed—the restoration of their country to her place in the commonwealth of the world. It is therefore only fitting that at this moment we should recall the struggle of one of the noblest of Polish national heroes, whose newly risen country is the ally of England and America, and whose young compatriots fought with great gallantry by the side of British and American soldiers in the war that has effected the deliverance of Kościuszko's nation.

M. M. G.

CONTENTS

NOTE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF POLISH NAMES

C==ts.
Ć, ci,==a soft English ch.
Ch==strongly aspirated h, resembling ch in Scotch loch.
Cz==ch, as in charm.
Dz==j.
J==y.
Ł==a peculiarly Polish letter, roughly speaking to be pronounced
between u and w.
Ó==oo, as in mood.
Rz==the French j, as in Jean.
Ś, si,==a slightly hissed and softened sound of sh.
W==v.
Ż, zi==French j.

The stress in Polish falls almost invariably on the penultimate syllable.

KOŚCIUSZKO

CHAPTER I

THE YOUTH OF KOŚCIUSZKO

The great national uprisings of history have for the most part gone down to time identified with the figure of a people's hero: with some personality which may be said in a certain manner to epitomize and symbolize the character of a race. "I and my nation are one": thus Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, sums up the devotion that will not shrink before the highest tests of sacrifice for a native country. "My name is Million, because I love millions and for millions suffer torment." If to this patriotism oblivious of self may be added an unstained moral integrity, the magnetism of an extraordinary personal charm, the glamour of a romantic setting, we have the pure type of a national champion. Representative, therefore, in every sense is the man with whose name is immortally associated the struggle of the Polish nation for her life—Tadeusz Kościuszko.

Kościuszko was born on February 12, 1746, during Poland's long stagnation under her Saxon kings. The nation was exhausted by wars forced upon her by her alien sovereigns. Her territories were the passage for Prussian, Russian, and Austrian armies, traversing them at their will. With no natural boundaries to defend her, she was surrounded by the three most powerful states in Eastern Europe who were steadily working for her destruction. In part through her own impracticable constitution, but in greater measure from the deliberate machinations of her foreign enemies, whether carried on by secret intrigues or by the armed violence of superior force, Poland's political life was at a standstill, her parliament obstructed, her army reduced. Yet at the same time the undercurrent of a strong movement to regeneration was striving to make itself felt. Far-seeing men were busying themselves with problems of reform; voices were raised in warning against the perils by which the commonwealth was beset. New ideas were pouring in from France. Efforts were being made by devoted individuals, often at the cost of great personal self-sacrifice, to ameliorate the state of the peasantry, to raise the standard of education and of culture in the country. Under these conditions, in the last years of the independence of Poland, passed the childhood and youth of her future liberator.

Kościuszko came of a class for which we have no precise equivalent, that ranked as noble in a country where at that time the middle classes were unknown, and where the ordinary gentry, so long as they had nothing to do with trade, showed patents of nobility, irrespective of means and standing. His father, who held a post of notary in his Lithuanian district and who owned more than one somewhat modest estate, was universally respected for his upright character, which, together with his aptitude for affairs, caused his advice and assistance to be widely sought through the countryside. Kościuszko spent his boyhood in the tranquil, wholesome, out-of-door life of a remote spot in Lithuania. The home was the wooden one-storied dwelling with thatched, sloping roof and rustic veranda, in aspect resembling a sort of glorified cottage, that long after Kościuszko's day remained the type of a Polish country house. Kościuszko's upbringing was of the simplest and most salutary description. There was neither show nor luxury in his home. The family fortune had been left to his father in an embarrassed condition: his father's care and diligence had for the time saved it. The atmosphere that surrounded the young Kościuszko was that of domestic virtue, strict probity. He had before his eyes the example of the devoted married life of his parents. He went freely and intimately among the peasants on his father's property, and thus learnt the strong love for the people that dictated the laws he urged upon his country when he became her ruler.

Unpretending as was his father's household, its practice was the patriarchal hospitality that marked the manners of the Poland of a century and a half ago, as it does to-day. Friends and relations came and went, always welcome, whether expected or unbidden. We have a delicious letter from Kościuszko's mother, Tekla, to her husband on one of the numerous occasions when he was away from home on business, in which, fondly calling him "my heart, the most beloved little dear Ludwik and benefactor of my life," she begs him to send her wine, for her house is filled with "perpetual guests," and will he try and procure her some fish, if there is any to be had, "because I am ashamed to have only barley bread on my table."[1] When accommodation failed in the overcrowded house, the men slept in the barn. In the day they hunted, shot, rode, or went off in parties, mushroom hunting. If to the pure and unspoiled influence of his home Kościuszko owes something at least of the moral rectitude and devotion to duty from which he never swerved, the country life of Lithuania, with its freedom and its strange charm, the life that he loved above all others, has probably a good deal to say to the simplicity of nature and the straightness of outlook that are such strongly marked characteristics in this son of the Lithuanian forests.

His early education was given him by his mother, a woman of remarkable force of character and practical capacity. Left a widow with four children under age, of whom Tadeusz was the youngest, she, with her clear head and untiring energy, managed several farms and skilfully conducted the highly complicated money matters of the family. Tadeusz's home schooling ended with his father's death when the child was twelve years old. He then attended the Jesuit college at the chief town in his district, Brześć. He was a diligent and clever boy who loved his book and who showed a good deal of talent for drawing. He left school with a sound classical training and with an early developed passion for his country. Already Timoleon was his favourite hero of antiquity because, so he told a friend fifty years later, "he was able to restore his nation's freedom, taking nothing for himself."

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko. Cracow, 1894; later edition, 1906 (Polish).

In 1763 the long and dreary reign of Augustus III, the last Saxon king of Poland, came to an end. Russian diplomacy, supported by Russian cannon, placed Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski, the lover of Catherine II, upon the Polish throne in 1764. The year following, Kościuszko, an unknown boy of nineteen years of age whose destiny was strangely to collide with that of the newly elected and last sovereign of independent Poland, was entered in the Corps of Cadets, otherwise called the Royal School, in Warsaw. Prince Adam Czartoryski, a leading member of the great family, so predominant then in Polish politics that it was given the name of "The Family" par excellence, frequently visited Lithuania, where he held high military command and possessed immense estates. Young Tadeusz attracted his interest, and it was through his influence that the boy was placed in an establishment of which he was the commandant and which, founded by the King, who was related to the Czartoryskis, was under immediate Royal patronage. Technically speaking, the school was not a military academy, but the education was largely military and the discipline was on military lines. Above all, it was a school for patriotism.

The admission of the candidate was in the nature of a semi-chivalrous and national function, bearing the stamp of the knightly and romantic traditions of Poland. On the first day Kościuszko was formally presented to the commandant, to the officers and to the brigade to which he was to belong. He embraced his new comrades, was initiated into the regulations and duties of the life before him and examined upon his capabilities. On the following day he gave in his promise to observe the rules, and with a good deal of ceremony was invested with the deep blue uniform of the cadet. But this was merely the probation of the "novice," as the aspirant was termed. A year's test followed, and then if judged worthy the youth received in the chapel his final enrolment. All his colleagues were present in full dress carrying their swords. High Mass was sung, which the "novice" heard kneeling and unarmed. The chaplain then laid before him his high obligation to his country; subsequently the proceedings were adjourned to the hall or square, where the brigadier proffered the neophyte's request for his sword. With the brigadier's hand on his left arm, on his right that of the sub-brigadier—the sub-brigadiers being the senior students—the candidate was put through a string of questions, reminiscent of those administered to a probationer taking the religious vows. One is typical: "Hast thou the sincere resolve always to use this weapon which thou art about to receive in defence of thy country and thy honour?" On the youth's reply, "I have no other resolve," arms were presented, drums rolled, and the senior officer girded the new soldier with his sword, and placed his musket in his hand to the accompaniment of moral formulas. The young man then made a solemn promise not to disgrace his comrades by any crime or want of application to his duties. Led to his place in the ranks, he presented arms, each brigade marched away, led by its brigadier, and the day concluded with a festive evening.

The catechism that the cadet learnt by heart and repeated every Saturday to his sub-brigadier—it was written by Adam Czartoryski—was of the same patriotic description. Next to the love of God it placed the love of country. "Can the cadet fear or be a coward?" was one of its questions, with the response, "I know not how to answer, for both the word and the thing for which it stands are unknown to me." This was no mere ornamental flourish: for a dauntless courage is one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Polish race, whether of its sons or daughters. No opportunity was lost, even in the textbooks of the school, to impress upon the students' minds that above all their lives belonged to Poland. Let them apply themselves to history, said the foreword of an encyclopædia that Adam Czartoryski wrote expressly for them, so that they shall learn how to rule their own nation; to the study of law, that they may correct the errors of those lawgivers gone before them. "You who have found your country in this most lamentable condition must people her with citizens ardent for her glory, the increase of her internal strength, her reputation among foreigners, the reformation of what is most evil in her government. May you, the new seed, change the face of your country."

In this environment Kościuszko spent the most impressionable period of his youth. Early portraits show us the winning, eager, mobile young face before life moulded it into the rugged countenance of the Polish patriot, with its stern purpose and melancholy enthusiasm, that lives as the likeness of Tadeusz Kościuszko. Even as a cadet Kościuszko was distinguished not merely for his ability, but still more for his dogged perseverance and fidelity to duty. Tradition say that, determined to put in all the study that he could, he persuaded the night watchman to wake him on his way to light the staves at three in the morning by pulling a cord that Kościuszko tied to his left hand. His colleagues thought that his character in its firmness and resolution resembled that of Charles XII of Sweden, and nicknamed him "Swede." Truth and sincerity breathed in his every act and word. What he said he meant. What he professed he did. The strength that was in him was tempered by that peculiar sweetness which was native to him all his life, and which in later manhood drew men as by magic to his banners, even as in his school-days it won the respect and love of his young comrades. The esteem in which his fellow-cadets held him is illustrated by the fact that on an occasion when they were mortally offended by some slight put upon them at a ball in the town they chose Kościuszko as their spokesman to present their grievances to the King, who took a personal interest in the school. Something about the youth attracted the brilliant, highly cultured sovereign, the man who wavered according to the emotion or fear of the moment between the standpoint of a patriot or of a traitor. After that interview he often sent for Tadeusz; and when Kościuszko passed out of the school as one of its head scholars or officers, he was recommended to Stanislas Augustus as a recipient of what we should call a State travelling scholarship.

In 1768 Kościuszko's mother died, leaving her two daughters married, the eldest, spendthrift, and most beloved son out on his own, and Tadeusz still a cadet. With his mother's death Kościuszko's financial troubles began. For the greater part of his life he never knew what it was to have a sufficiency of means. His brother held the estate and apparently the control of the family money, that was no considerable sum and had in latter years diminished. Public affairs, moreover, were now assuming an aspect that threatened the very existence of Kościuszko's country. Catherine II's minister, Repnin, with Russian armies at his back, ruled the land. The Poles who stood forward in a last despairing attempt to deliver their country were removed by Russian troops to exile and Siberia. Then in 1768 rose under the Pułaski father and sons that gallant movement to save a nation's honour that is known as the Confederation of Bar. For four years the confederates fought in guerilla warfare all over Poland, in forest, marsh, hamlet, against the forces of Russia which held every town and fortress in the country. These things were the last that Kościuszko saw of the old Republic of Poland. In the company of his friend Orłowski, who had been one of four cadets to receive the King's stipend, he departed from his country in 1769 or 1770 with the intention of pursuing his studies abroad.

Five years passed before Kościuszko saw his native land again. Very little is known to us of that stage of his history. It is certain that he studied in the school of engineering and artillery in Mézières and conceivably in the Ecole Militaire of Paris. He took private lessons in architecture from Perronet, and followed up his strong taste for drawing and painting. Sketches from his hand still remain, guarded as treasures in Polish national museums. French fortifications engaged his close attention, and by the time he left France he had acquired the skill in military engineering that saved a campaign in the New World and that defended Warsaw in the Old.

It is said that Kościuszko prolonged his absence abroad rather than return to see the enslavement of his country without being able to raise a hand in her defence. For in 1772 Russia, Austria, and Prussia signed an agreement to partition Poland between them, which, after a desperate resistance on the part of the Polish Diet, was carried out in 1775. Austria secured Galicia, Prussia a part of Great Poland and, with the exception of Thorn and Danzig, what has since been known as "Prussian" Poland, while to Russia fell the whole of Lithuania.

All this Kościuszko watched from afar in helpless rage and bitterness of soul. His peace of mind was further destroyed by his increasing financial difficulties. Little enough of his share of his father's fortune could have remained to him, and he was in debt. The Royal subsidy had ceased when the treasury was ruined by reason of the partition of Poland. Moreover, Stanislas Augustus was never a sure source on which to rely when it came to the question of keeping a promise or paying his dues. The greater part of Kościuszko's career is that of a man pitted against the weight of adverse circumstance. It was inevitable that he who threw in his lot with an unhappy country could have no easy passage through life. In this he resembles more than one of the national heroes of history; but unlike many another, he never reached the desired goal. His is the tragedy of a splendid and forlorn hope. Even apart from the story of his public service his life was dogged by disappointment and harassing care.

Somewhere in the year 1774 he at last returned home. A youth of twenty-eight, possessed of striking talent and freshly acquired science, he now, with his fiery patriotism and character as resolute as ardent, found himself in the country that he panted to serve condemned to inaction of the most galling description. The King who had been his patron was the tool of Catherine II and through her of Russia. Russian soldiers and officials overran even that part of Poland which still remained nominally independent, but of which they were virtual masters. There was no employment open to Kościuszko. A commission in the minute army that survived the partition was only to be had by purchase, and he had no money forthcoming. All that he could do was to retire into the country, while he devoted his energies to the thankless task of disentangling the finances that the elder brother, Józef Kościuszko, was squandering right and left in debts and dissipation. The relations between this riotous brother and Tadeusz, himself the most frugal and upright of youths, were so painful that the latter refused to remain in the old home that had not yet gone, as it did later, to Józef's creditors. He therefore in true Polish fashion took up his abode in the houses of different kinsfolk, often staying with his married sisters, and especially with that best beloved sister, Anna Estkowa. Between him and her there was always the bond of a most tender and intimate affection, to which their letters, still preserved in Polish archives, bear eloquent testimony.

At this time occurred the first love affair of the hero, who never married. Among the manor-houses that Kościuszko visited was that of Józef Sosnowski. He was Kościuszko's kinsman and had been his father's friend. Tadeusz was a constant guest at his house, giving lessons in drawing, mathematics, and history, his favourite subjects, to the daughters of the house by way of return for their father's hospitality. With one of these girls, Ludwika, Kościuszko fell in love. Various tender passages passed between them, without the knowledge of the parents but aided and abetted by the young people of the family, in an arbour in the garden. But another destiny was preparing for the lady. The young and poor engineer's aspirations to her hand were not tolerated by the father whose ambition had already led him into dealings that throw no very creditable light on his patriotism, and that had Kościuszko known he would certainly never have frequented his house. Over the gaming tables Sosnowski had made a bargain with his opponent, a palatine of the Lubomirski family, in which it was arranged that the latter's son should marry Ludwika Sosnowska. Getting wind of the Kościuszko romance, he privately bade the girl's mother remove her from the scenes; and when one day Kościuszko arrived at the manor he found the ladies gone.

The bitter affront and the disappointment to his affections were accepted by Kościuszko with the silent dignity that belonged to his character; but they played their part in driving him out of Poland. Whether the story that Ludwika really fled to take refuge from the detested marriage imposed upon her in a convent, whence she was dragged by a ruse and forced to the bridal altar, as long afterwards she told Kościuszko, was a romantic invention of her own or an embroidery, after the fashion of her century, on some foundation of fact, it is impossible to say; but it is certain that through her unhappy married life she clung fondly to the memory of her first and young lover. So long after the rupture as fourteen years his name was a forbidden topic between herself and her mother, and at a critical moment in Kościuszko's career we shall find her stepping in to use her rank and position with Stanislas Augustus on his behalf.

With home, fortune, hopes of domestic happiness, all chance of serving his country, gone, Kościuszko determined to seek another sphere. He left Poland in the autumn of 1775.

Poverty constrained him to make the journey in the cheapest manner possible. He therefore went down the Vistula in a barge, one of the picturesque flat-bottomed craft that still ply on Poland's greatest river—the river which flows through two of her capitals and was, it is well said, partitioned with the land it waters from the Carpathians to the Baltic, On his way down the river he would, observes his chief Polish biographer, have seen for the first time, and not the last, the evidence before his eyes that his country lay conquered as his boat passed the Prussian cordon over waters that once were Polish. Thus he came down to the quaint old port of Danzig, with its stately old-world burgher palaces and heavily carved street doors, then still Poland's, but which Prussia was only biding her time to seize in a fresh dismemberment of Polish territory.

Dead silence surrounds the following six months of Kościuszko's life. Every probability points to the fact that he would have gone to Paris, where he had studied so long and where he had many friends and interests. The envoys from America were there on the mission of enlisting the help of France in the conflict of the States with Great Britain. We do not know whether Kościuszko became personally acquainted with any of them. At all events the air was full of the story of a young country striving for her independence; and it is not surprising that when next the figure of Kościuszko stands out clearly in the face of history it is as a volunteer offering his sword to the United States to fight in the cause of freedom.

CHAPTER II

THE FIGHT FOR AMERICAN FREEDOM

In the early summer of 1776 Kościuszko crossed the Atlantic on the journey to America that was then in the likeness of a pilgrimage to a wholly strange land. He found the country palpitating in the birth-throes of a nation rising to her own. Not only was she carrying on the contest with Great Britain by arms, but democratic resolutions, appeals for freedom for all men, were being read in the churches, proclaimed at every popular gathering. What a responsive chord all this struck in Kościuszko's heart we know from his subsequent history.

His best documented historian ruthlessly dismisses the story that the Pole presented himself to Washington with the one request that he might fight for American independence, and that in reply to Washington's query, "What can I do for you?" his terse reply was, "Try me." As a matter of fact he applied to the Board of War, and his first employment was in the old Quaker city of Philadelphia where, in company with another foreign engineer, a Frenchman, he was put to work fortifying the town against the British fleet's expected attack by the Delaware. These fortifications of his devising still remain. They gained for him his nomination by Congress as engineer in the service of the States and the rank of colonel.

After some months passed in Philadelphia, Kościuszko was taken over by Gates for the northern army, and sent to report upon the defences of Ticonderoga and Sugar Loaf Hill. Gates highly approved of his proposed suggestion of building a battery upon the summit of Sugar Loaf Hill; but at this moment Gates was relieved of his command, and Kościuszko's ideas were set aside for those of native Americans to whom his plan was an unheard-of innovation. The authorities soon saw their mistake. "For the love of God let Kościuszko return here," wrote Wilkinson when sent by the commander to inspect the work, "and as quickly as possible." But it was then too late. The English fleet was on Lake Champlain, and Kościuszko's design was vindicated by the British carrying it out themselves. He, meanwhile, was fortifying Van Schaick, with the result that the army of the States, retreating in disorder before Burgoyne, could retire on a safe position, Kościuszko's personal privations and discomforts were considerable. He did not so much as possess a blanket, and had perforce to sleep with Wilkinson under his. He was then sent on by Gates, who was again in command, to throw up fortifications in the defence of Saratoga.

With justifiable pride the Poles point to the part played by their national hero in the victory at Saratoga which won for America not only the campaign, but her recognition as an independent nation from Louis XVI. The Americans on their side freely acknowledged that Kościuszko's work turned the scale in their favour. Gates modestly diverted the flood of congratulations of which he was the recipient by the observation that "the hills and woods were the great strategists which a young Polish engineer knew how to select with skill for my camp"; and his official report to Congress states that "Colonel Kosciuszko chose and entrenched the position," Addressing the President of Congress at the end of the year 1777, Washington, speaking of the crying necessity of engineers for the army, adds: "I would take the liberty to mention that I have been well informed that the engineer in the northern army (Kosciuszko I think his name is) is a gentleman of science and merit."[1] The plan of the fortifications that saved Saratoga is preserved in Kościuszko's own hand among Gates's papers, and traces of them could as late as 1906 be still discerned among beds of vegetables.

That winter of the war—1777-1778—was famous for its length and its intolerable severity. The American soldiers suffered from all the miseries of hunger and cold and insufficient pay, Kościuszko, to whom the piercing rigour of the climate must have seemed as a familiar visitant from his northern Lithuanian home, was on the borders of Canada when he heard of the arrival in Trenton of a Pole, famous, as Kościuszko himself as yet was not, in the national records of Poland—Kazimierz Pułaski. With his father, brothers, and cousin, Pułaski had led the war of the Bar Confederation. He alone survived his family. His father died in prison, suspected by his confederates; his brothers fell in battle, or in their turn breathed their last in prison. Ignorant of fear and gaily risking all for his country, Kazimierz carried on the struggle without them. Pursued on all sides by the Russians, he performed almost incredible feats of doubling and unheard-of marches: leading his troops in the Ukrainian steppes, escaping to the Carpathians, reappearing in Great Poland, fighting on until the last doomed defence of Czenstochowa, after which he was seen no more in Poland. In, Paris he met Benjamin Franklin and other envoys of the States, and, like Kościuszko, he set sail to fight for liberty in the New World.

[1] Jared Sparks, Writings of George Washington. Boston, 1847.

At Christmas time in that bitter winter Kościuszko came out on furlough through the wild snowbound land to Trenton, impelled by desire to see the Pole whom he knew well by repute, and by the craving to hear news of his country from the first compatriot who had come across his path in the New World. They had not known each other in Poland, for Kościuszko had been a youth engaged in his studies at home and abroad while the Bar confederates were fighting; but for the love of Poland they met as brothers. Kościuszko stayed ten days with Pułaski and his Polish companion, entertained, despite their poverty, in true Polish style, and then returned to his quarters. Probably on the way to or from Trenton he turned aside to Valley Forge to make the acquaintance of Lafayette, who had come over to America with Pułaski, and it is possible that on this occasion he may have met Washington. He never saw Pułaski again, for, leading a headlong charge with the fiery impetus of the Polish knight of old, the leader of Bar fell at Savannah in October 1779.

The question of the defence of the Hudson was now being agitated. West Point, the so-called Gibraltar of the Hudson, was chosen for its commanding position on the heights above the river, and the work of fortifying it was finally conferred, over the head of the French engineer, Radière, upon Kościuszko. "Mr. Kosciuszko," wrote McDougall, the general now in command of the northern army, to Washington, Gates being employed at the Board of War, "is esteemed by those who have attended the works at West Point to have more practice than Colonel Radière, and his manner of treating the people is more acceptable than that of the latter; which induced General Parsons and Governor Clinton to desire the former may be continued at West Point."[1] Washington acceded to McDougall's request and confirmed the appointment to the Pole, not only because he was the cleverer engineer, but especially, adds Washington, because "you say Kosciuszko is better adapted to the genius and temper of the people."[2] A few months later Washington ordered Kościuszko to submit his plans to the approval of an inferior officer. Kościuszko, who never sought distinction or pushed his own claims, did not permit himself to resent what was, in fact, a slight; but quietly went forward in his own thorough and painstaking manner with the business entrusted to him.

[1] Jared Sparks, Writings of George Washington.

[2] Ibid.

Kościuszko's work at West Point was the longest and the most important of his undertakings in the United States, and is inseparably connected in the American mind with his name. Little is now left of his fortifications; but the monument raised in his honour by the American youth, with the inscription: "To the hero of two worlds" remains, a grateful tribute to his memory. That the military students of the United States can look back to West Point as their Alma Mater is in great measure Kościuszko's doing. When it was first resolved to found a training school in arms for the young men of the States, Kościuszko urged that it should be placed at West Point, and suggested the spot where it now stands.

Kościuszko was at West Point for two years. Here, if we do not accept the legends and conjectures of former meetings, he met Washington for the first time. He had two thousand five hundred workmen under him, whom he treated with the courtesy and consideration that always distinguished his dealings with his fellow-men, whether his equals or subordinates. The story goes that with his own hands, assisted by his American workmen, he built himself some sort of cottage or shanty in the hope of one day receiving his own countrymen as his guests. One of his modern Polish biographers often heard in his youth a song purporting to be Kościuszko's composition, with the tradition that he had composed it to his guitar—he played both the guitar and the violin—on the arrival of Polish visitors. [1] The doggerel, kindly little verses, express the hope that everything his compatriots see in his modest house will be as agreeable to them as their company is to their host, and inform them that he raised its walls with the purpose of welcoming them therein. It is a fact that, true to the Pole's passion for the soil, he laid out a little garden, still known as "Kościuszko's Garden," where he loved to spend his leisure hours, alone with his thoughts of Poland. Times were hard at West Point and provisions scanty. Washington himself could not sufficiently furnish his table, and Kościuszko naturally fared worse; but out of the pay that he could ill afford and from his own inadequate stores the Pole constantly sent provisions to the English prisoners, whose misery was extreme. It is said, indeed, that had it not been for Kościuszko's succour our prisoners would have died of want. Many years later a Pole, who collected the details of Kościuszko's American service, fell sick of fever in Australia. An English shopkeeper took him into his house and tended him as though he were his own—for the reason that he was a compatriot of the man who had saved the life of the Englishman's grandfather when the latter was a starving prisoner at West Point.

[1] F. Rychlicki, Tadeusz Kościuszko and the Partition of Poland. Cracow, 1875 (Polish).

The West Point episode of Kościuszko's career came to its end in the summer of 1780, when he asked Washington to transfer him to the southern army. The motive of the request was that, without having given Kościuszko notice, Washington had removed a number of his workmen. The correspondence that passed between them was courteous but dry, Kościuszko avoiding acrimonious expressions, and simply stating that under the present conditions he could no longer carry on the work at West Point. The relations between the liberator of America and the champion of Poland's freedom were, indeed, never of the nature exacted by romance. They were confined to strict necessity, and held none of the affection that marked the intercourse of Gates and Nathaniel Greene with their Polish engineer. The precise reason of this is hard to fathom. It has been ascribed to Kościuszko's intimacy with Gates, Washington's adversary, or, again, to Kościuszko's extreme reserve—which latter conjecture, in view of the warm and enduring friendships that the hero of Poland won for himself in the New World, seems untenable.

Gates, now nominated to the command of the southern army, had at once requested that Kościuszko should be sent to him. "The perfect qualities of that Pole," he wrote to Jefferson, "are now properly appreciated at headquarters, and may incline other personages to putting obstacles against his joining us; but if he has once promised we can depend upon him."

Washington gave the required permission, to which Kościuszko replied from West Point on August 4th:

"The choice your Excellency was pleased to give me in your letter of yesterday is very kind; and, as the completion of the works at this place during this campaign, as circumstances are, will be impossible in my opinion, I prefer going to the southward to continuing here. I beg you to favour me with your orders, and a letter of recommendation to the Board of War, as I shall pass through Philadelphia. I shall wait on your Excellency to pay due respects in a few days."[1]

A French engineer took Kościuszko's place, and the latter had not long left when the treachery of the new commandant of West Point, Arnold, was disclosed by the capture of André. Before Kościuszko had time to reach the southern army his old friend Gates was defeated at Camden, and in consequence disgraced. Nathaniel Greene, after Washington the greatest general of the American Revolution, was appointed his successor. While awaiting Greene's arrival to take up his command Kościuszko was for some time in Virginia among the planters. He thus saw the coloured slaves at close quarters, and was brought face to face with the horrors of the slave trade. It was probably then that, with his strong susceptibility to every form of human suffering, he learnt that profound sympathy for the American negro which, seventeen years later, dictated his parting testament to the New World.

[1] Jared Sparks, Writings of George Washington.

Through the whole campaign of the Carolinas, the most brilliant and the most hardly won of the American War, Kościuszko was present. When Greene arrived he found himself at the head of an army that was starving. His troops had literally not enough clothing required for the sake of decency. He was without money, without resources. He resolved to retire upon the unknown Pedee river. Immediately upon his arrival he sent Kościuszko up the river with one guide to explore its reaches and to select a suitable spot for a camp of rest, charging him with as great celerity as he could compass. Kościuszko rapidly acquitted himself of a task that was no easy matter in that waste of forest and marsh. In the words of an American historian: "The surveying of the famous Kościuszko on the Pedee and Catawba had a great influence on the further course of the campaign." The campaign was carried on in a wild country of deep, roaring rivers, broken by falls, and often visited by sudden floods. The frequently impassable swamps breathed out poisonous exhalations. Rattle-snakes and other deadly reptiles lurked by the wayside. Great were the hardships that Kościuszko, together with the rest of the army, endured. There were no regular supplies of food, tents and blankets ran out, the soldiers waded waist-deep through rushing waters. Often invited to Greene's table, where the general entertained his officers with a kindliness and cordiality that atoned for the poor fare which was all that he could offer them, Kościuszko was regarded with strong affection and admiration by a man who was himself worthy of the highest esteem. Kościuszko's office, after the survey of the river, was to build boats for the perilous transport of the army over the treacherous and turbulent streams of the district. Greene writes: "Kościuszko is employed in building flat-bottomed boats to be transported with the army if ever I shall be able to command the means of transporting them."[1] The boats of Kościuszko's devising contributed to the saving of Greene's army in that wonderful retreat from Cornwallis, which is among the finest exploits of the War of Independence. Again his skill came prominently forward when Greene triumphantly passed the Dan with Cornwallis on his heels, and thus definitely threw off the British pursuit. Kościuszko was then despatched to fortify Halifax, but was soon recalled to assist in the siege of Ninety Six, a fort built with heavy stockades originally as a post of defence against the Red Indians. The night before the siege began Greene with Kościuszko surveyed the English works. It was dark and rainy, and they approached the enemy so close that they were challenged and fired at by the sentries. The mining operations that Kościuszko directed were of an almost insuperable difficulty, and his Virginian militiamen struck. By his persuasive and sympathetic language Kościuszko rallied them to the work; but finally Greene abandoned the siege.

[1] William Johnson, Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathaniel Greene. Charleston, 1822.

When the campaign changed to guerilla warfare Kościuszko fought as a soldier, not as an engineer. At the battle of Eutaw Springs, where the licence of the American soldiers pillaging the British camp and murdering the prisoners lost Greene a decisive victory, we hear of Kościuszko as making desperate attempts to restrain a carnage which horrified his humane feelings, and personally saving the lives of fifty Englishmen. Peace and the defeat of Great Britain were in the air, but hostilities still dragged on, and Kościuszko fought through 1782 near Charleston with distinction. After the gallant Laurens had fallen, his post of managing the secret intelligence from Charleston passed to Kościuszko. "Kosciuszko's innumerable communications," says the grandson and biographer of Greene, "exhibit the industry and intelligence with which he discharged that service."[1] Kościuszko possessed all the Polish daring and love of adventure. He would sally forth to carry off the English horses and cattle that were sent to pasture under guard, protected by English guns from the fort. He succeeded in capturing horses, but the cattle were too closely protected. Or, accompanied by an American officer named Wilmot, he would cross the river to watch or harry the English on James' Island. One of these expeditions, when Kościuszko and his companion attacked a party of English woodcutters, has the distinction of being the last occasion on which blood was shed in the American War. They were surprised by an ambuscade, and Wilmot was killed. At length Charleston fell. On December 14, 1782, the American army entered the town in a triumphal procession, in which Kościuszko rode with his fellow-officers, greeted by the populace with flowers and fluttering kerchiefs and cries of "Welcome!" and "God bless you!" Greene's wife, a sprightly lady who kept the camp alive, had joined him outside Charleston. Her heart was set on celebrating the evacuation of Charleston by a ball, and, although her Quaker husband playfully complained that such things were not in his line, she had her way. The ball-room was decorated by Kościuszko, who adorned it with festoons of magnolia leaves and with flowers cunningly fashioned of paper.

[1] George Washington Greene, Life of Nathaniel Greene. New York, 1871.

Peace with England was now attained. Kościuszko had fought for six years in the American army. The testimony of the eminent soldier in whose close companionship he had served, whose hardships he had shared, whose warmest friendship he had won, that of Nathaniel Greene, best sums up what the Pole had done for America and what he had been to his brother-soldiers. "Colonel Kosciuszko belonged"—thus Greene—"to the number of my most useful and dearest comrades in arms. I can liken to nothing his zeal in the public service, and in the solution of important problems nothing could have been more helpful than his judgment, vigilance and diligence. In the execution of my recommendations in every department of the service he was always eager, capable, in one word impervious against every temptation to ease, unwearied by any labour, fearless of every danger. He was greatly distinguished for his unexampled modesty and entire unconsciousness that he had done anything unusual. He never manifested desires or claims for himself, and never let any opportunity pass of calling attention to and recommending the merits of others."[1] All those who had been thrown together with him in the war speak in much the same manner. They notice his sweetness and uprightness of soul, his high-mindedness and delicate instincts, his careful thought for the men under his command. Even Harry Lee ("Light Horse Harry"), while carping at Kościuszko's talents, to the lack of which, with no justification, he ascribes Greene's failure before Ninety Six, renders tribute to his engaging qualities as a comrade and a man. But Kościuszko's services did not in the first instance receive the full recognition that might have been expected from the new Republic. He alone of all the superior officers of the Revolution received no promotion other than that given wholesale by Congress, and was forced to apply personally to Washington to rectify the omission. In language not too cordial, Washington presented his request to Congress, which conferred upon Kościuszko the rank of brigadier-general with the acknowledgment of its "high sense of his long, faithful and meritorious services." The recently founded patriotic Society of the Cincinnati, of which Washington was the first president, elected Kościuszko as an honoured member. Its broad blue and white ribbon carrying a golden eagle and a representation of Cincinnatus before the Roman Senate, with the inscription: "Omnia relinquit servare Rempublicam," is often to be seen in the portraits of Kościuszko, suspended on his breast.

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

Kościuszko was now a landowner of American soil, by virtue of the grant by Congress of so many acres to the officers who had fought in the war. Friendship, affluence, a tranquil life on his own property, that most alluring of prospects to a son of a race which loves Mother Earth with an intense attachment, lay before him in the New World. To him nothing was worth the Poland that he had left as an obscure and disappointed youth.

For all these years his heart had clung to the memory of his native land. On the rocks of West Point he had walked in solitude under the trees of his garden, and sat by the fountain which is still shown, yearning with an exile's home-sickness for his country. At times, probably very rarely in days of long and difficult transit and when communications for a fighting-line were doubly uncertain, letters crossed between Kościuszko and friends in far-off Poland. "Two years ago I had a letter from him," wrote Adam Czartoryski in 1778, as he requested Benjamin Franklin to ascertain what had become of the youth in whom he had been interested; "but from that time I have heard nothing of him."[1] Some sort of correspondence was carried on by Tadeusz with a friend and neighbour of his in his old home, Julian Niemcewicz, the poet and future politician, later to be Kościuszko's companion in the Rising and his fellow-prisoner and exile. Niemcewicz, wrote the Princess Lubomirska who had been Ludwika Sosnowska, to Kościuszko in America, "has told me that you are alive, he gave me your letter to read, and I in my turn hasten to tell you through Julian that in my heart I am unalterably and till death yours."[1]

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

This letter, the same in which the lady gives the remarkable account of her marriage to which we have already alluded, left Kościuszko cold. That chapter was entirely put away from him. The first and hopeless romance of his youth had naturally enough been driven off the field by stirring and strenuous action in a new hemisphere. Even had this not been the case, Kościuszko was of too high a moral mould to cherish a passion for a married woman. His relations with the other sex were always of the most delicate, most courteous and most chivalrous; but, admired and honoured by women as he invariably was, they in reality enter but little in his life.

Now that the war had ended Kościuszko only waited to wind up his affairs in America, and then he could keep away from his country no longer. He started for Europe in July 1784, landed in France, and by way of Paris reached Poland in the same year. From America he brought an enhanced attraction to the democratic ideas that were gaining vogue in Europe, and which had had a hold over him from his youth. Still more, he had seen with his own eyes the miracle of a national struggle.

[1] op. cit.

He had fought and marched side by side with ragged, starving, undisciplined, unpaid men who had carried off the victory against a powerful nation and a regular army. With that memory burnt into his soul, ten years later he led a more desperate throw for a freedom to him incomparably dearer—his country's.

CHAPTER III

THE YEARS OF PEACE

When Kościuszko returned to his native land, that great wave of a nation's magnificent effort to save herself by internal reform, which culminated in the Constitution of the 3rd of May, was sweeping over Poland. Equality of civic rights, freedom of the peasant, a liberal form of government, political and social reforms of all descriptions, were the questions of the hour. The first Commission of Education to be established in Europe, the precursor of our modern Ministry of Education, that had been opened two years before Kościuszko left Poland, and on which sat Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłontaj, both afterwards to be closely associated with Kościuszko in his war for national independence, was, founding schools, refounding universities, and raising the level of education all through the country. Roads were built, factories started, agriculture and trade given fresh impetus. A literary and artistic revival set in, warmly encouraged by Stanislas Augustus, who gathered painters, musicians, and poets around him in his brilliant court. All this was done by a dismembered nation upon whose further and complete destruction the three powers that had already partitioned her were resolved.

Coincident with these last days of Poland's political existence that hold the tragic glory of a setting sun is the one tranquil span of Kościuszko's life. His sister's husband had managed his affairs so generously and so well that his old home had been saved for him. Here Kościuszko for four years led the retired life which was most to his taste, that of a country farmer and landowner in a small way, his peace only disturbed by the financial worries handed on to him by his brother.

Soldierly simplicity was the note of Kościuszko's rustic country home. The living-room was set out with a plain old table, a few wooden seats and an ancient store cupboard. The furniture of the small sleeping apartment consisted of a bed and by its side a table on which lay Kościuszko's papers and books, conspicuous among the latter being the political writings of the great contemporary Polish reformers—Staszyc and Kołłontaj—which to the Pole of Kościuszko's temperament were bound to be fraught with burning interest. His coffee was served in a cup made by his own hand; the simple dishes and plates that composed his household stock were also his work, for the arts and crafts were always his favourite hobbies. An old cousin looked after the housekeeping. A coachman and manservant were the only other members of the family. There was a garden well stocked with fruit-trees that was the delight of Kościuszko's heart. On a hillock covered with hazels he laid out walks, put up arbours and arranged a maze that wound so craftily among the thicket that the visitor who entered it found no easy exit. The maze may still be seen, together with the avenue of trees that was planted by Kościuszko himself. His interest in his domain was unfailing. When far away from home, in the midst of his military preoccupations, while commanding in the Polish army, he wrote minute directions to his sister on the importation of fresh trees, the sowing of different grains on the farm.

Although Kościuszko was an ardent farmer, his farm brought him no great returns; and this by reason of the sacrifices that he made to his principles. As a Polish landowner he had many peasants working on his property. By the legislation of that day, common to several countries besides Poland, these peasants were to a great extent under his power, and were compelled to the corvée. Such a condition of things was intolerable to Kościuszko. The sufferings of his fellow-men, equal rights for all, were matters that ever touched him most nearly. Many others of his countrymen were earnestly setting their faces against this abuse of serfdom and, even before the measure was passed by law, as far as possible liberating the serfs on their estates. That at this time Kościuszko entirely freed some of his peasants appears certain. It was not then practicable to give full freedom to the remainder; but he reduced the forced labour of all the men on his property by one-half, and that of the women he abolished altogether. His personal loss was considerable. He was not a rich man. His stipend from America, for one cause or another, never reached him, and thanks to his brother his private means were in so involved a condition that he had to summon his sister to his help and contract various loans and debts.

This favourite sister, Anna Estkowa, lived not far, as distances go in Poland, from Kościuszko's home. She and her husband and son were often guests in Kościuszko's house, and he in hers. She frequently had to come to his rescue in housekeeping emergencies, and the correspondence between them at times takes a very playful note. "Little sister," or "My own dear little sister," alternates with the title used by the brother in jest: "Your right honourable ladyship." Or again he calls her by epithets remarkable to the English ear, but which in Lithuania are terms of close intimacy, and correspond to the rough and endearing language of a fondly attached brother and sister in our own country. He sends her a packet of China tea or a wagon filled with barley that was forced to turn back on account of the bad state of the roads; while she is requested to buy him "about four bottles of English beer: I will pay you back when I see you." Sometimes she is treated to a friendly scolding when she fails to fulfil Kościuszko's commissions to his liking.

"I particularly beg you to try and get [some furniture he required] from that joiner and send it to me on the first of May, or even sooner. ... Come and stay with me in May. I will give you something to busy yourself with, and to keep you in health. You must send some money to Stanislas [her son, who was staying with Kościuszko], and enjoin upon him to manage with it, but it would be better if he always had some in store. You are a cow: and why did you not buy more almonds in their shells, or at least four spoons?"[1]

[1] Letters of Kościuszko, edited by L. Siemienski, Lwow, 1877 (Polish).

"My Saint Anna"—thus he addresses her on another occasion: "I have sent my carts for the chairs and sofas. ... I present my humble respects to the Stolnik [his brother-in-law], and I beg him to let himself be persuaded to come and stay for a time with me, if only to smoke one pipe over my hearth. I beg you both to buy me two fine cows. Good-bye, lapwings."[1]

"Little sister of mine," he writes most tenderly after her husband's death: "come to me, I beg you. Take a carriage to Brześć. I shall be there on Sunday for my cure, as Müller ordered me to go there. Otherwise I would go to you. You must let yourself be ruled by reason. You are in bad health, I am in bad health: do you wish to drive me into the grave by your extravagant conduct? You must watch over your health for the sake of your children, for my sake."[2]

Kościuszko loved his retirement, and was happiest in his own cherished garden; but he by no means led the life of a hermit, and was fond of visiting the country houses of his friends in the sociable open-hearted manner of his race. His frank kindliness and courtesy made him a welcome guest; and the favourite amusement of the soldier who had gained fame in the New World was to play "blind man's buff" and other youthful games with the young people of the house.

One of the manors that he frequented was that of Michał Zaleski, a legal and political functionary of some importance in Lithuania. With him and his wife Kościuszko contracted a lasting friendship.

[1] op. cit.

[2] Ibid.

"I will begin"—so runs a letter of his to Mme. Zaleska—"first of all by reproaching your ladyship for not having added even one word to the letter"—presumably her husband's. "A fine way of remembering your neighbour! So I have only got to hurry home to be forgotten by my friends! I will forbid any more of my water to be given to you, and will entirely prohibit my well; so you will have to drink from your own, made badly by your husband. I lay my curse on your ladyship and will show you no mercy; and if I should be in the church on Good Friday you would most certainly be denied absolution for your great and heinous sins. However, I kiss your hands, and be both of you convinced of the enduring respect and esteem with which I desire to be your humblest servant."[1]

"Oh, would that I could obtain such a wife!" he writes to the husband. "She is an example for thousands—how to find happiness at home with husband and children. What month were you born in? If my birthday were in the same month, then I too might venture to marry."[2]

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

[2] Letters of Kościuszko.

Although Kościuszko lived far from the turmoil of publicity and out of the reach of events, his thoughts, as we know from his letters and from rough notes that exist in his handwriting, were much taken up with the crisis through which his country was passing. He pondered much upon the means of her preservation. His correspondence with Michał Zaleski insists upon the necessity for Poland of national self-consciousness and confidence in her own destiny. Education for the masses, a citizen army of burghers and peasants, were two of the reforms for which Kościuszko most earnestly longed, and in which, in advance of his epoch, he saw a remedy for crying evils. It was a moment when the attention of thoughtful men was riveted on great national problems, for the famous Diet was now sitting that from 1788 to 1791 was engaged in the task of framing for Poland the enlightened Constitution that, were it not for the armies of Prussia and Russia, would have saved her. One of its early enactments was the remodelling of the Polish army. Kościuszko's standing was now for the first time to be publicly recognized by the Government of his country, and his talent impressed into her service. His old love, the Princess Lubomirska, here reappears in his history, writing a letter to the King, with the request that Kościuszko should be given a military command. If to the modern reader it comes with something of a shock, as Korzon remarks, that a woman considered her intervention needed to push the claims of a soldier who had so greatly distinguished himself, we must remember that Kościuszko was then scarcely known in Poland. His service had been foreign; he belonged to a quiet country family that had nothing to do with affairs of state. Apart from the Princess's propaganda, of which we hear nothing further, Kościuszko's name was sent up for recommendation to the Grand Diet, and the Lithuanian magnate who proposed it spoke before the Diet of Kościuszko as a man "who possesses high personal qualities, and, as he learnt to shed his blood for a foreign country, will assuredly not grudge it to his own." Kościuszko was present; and as he heard these words he politely rose and bowed. Kościuszko was no frequenter of courts or lover of palaces; but his interests obliged him to present himself to the King, who remembered him as the promising youth to whom his favour had been given when a cadet. The upshot of all this was that he received the commission of major-general in the Polish army on the 1st of October, 1789.

His first command was in the country districts of Great Poland, close to the frontiers of that part of Poland which since the first partition had been under Prussian dominion. It was a keen disappointment to Kościuszko that his appointment was in the army of Poland proper, the so-called Crown army, instead of in that of his native Lithuania. That wild and romantic land of marsh and forest which the poetry of her great singer, Adam Mickiewicz, has made live for ever in Polish literature, casts a spell as it were of enchantment over her born sons; and Kościuszko felt himself a stranger among the less simple and more sophisticated men with whom he was now thrown.

While busy training soldiers his thoughts turned often to his little estate which he had placed in the charge of his sister.

"See that the Dutch cheeses are made," he writes to her. "Please put in the grafts given me by Laskowski, and in those places where the former ones have not taken. To-morrow sow barley, oats. Plant small birches in the walk immediately behind the building."[1]

[1] Letters of Kościuszko.

"Why on earth don't you write to me?" he says, reading her a fraternal lecture. "Are you ill? Your health is bad. Take care of yourself; do not do anything that might trouble you. Say the same as I do, that there are people worse off than I, who would like to be in my place. Providence will cheer us, and can give us opportunities and happiness beyond our expectations. I always commend myself to the Most High and submit myself to His will. Do you do this, in this way calm yourself, and so be happy. Here is a moral for you, which take to the letter. For Heaven's sake get me some trees somehow. Let the buds have sap, not like they are at the Princess's. Goodbye. Love me as I do you with all our souls."[1]

In the course of his duties Kościuszko had constantly to make journeys to Warsaw on business. When there he entered into close relations with those noblest of Poland's patriots and reformers, Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłontaj, both holding office under the Crown and employed in drawing up the reforms that the Great Diet was passing. Here too Kościuszko often saw his already friend, Niemcewicz, who was bringing out patriotic plays and taking an active part among the enlightened political party. The high esteem in which Kościuszko was held, not merely by those who loved him personally but by men who only knew of him by repute, may be illustrated by a letter addressed to him, not then, but later, by Kołłontaj, in which the latter tells Kościuszko that words are not needed to express how much he prizes the friendship of one "whom I loved, honoured and admired before fate granted me to know you in person."[2]

[1] op. cit.

[2] Letters of Hugo Kołłontaj. Poznań, 1872 (Polish).

In 1790 Prussia concluded a defensive and offensive alliance with Poland, which, as the sequel shows, she was prepared to break at the psychological moment, in order to secure Polish help in the probable Prussian war against an Austrian-Russian coalition. Poland began to make ready for the field. Kościuszko was sent southwards, to Lublin, where he remained for the summer months. His employment was to train the recruits for approaching active service. Against the difficulties always to beset him throughout his career of lack of ammunition and want of funds, he devoted himself to his task with the energy and foresight that were customary with him. He was ordered in September to move to Podolia, on the frontiers of which the Russians were massing. He stayed in that district for many months until the July of 1791.

There the commandant of Kamieniec was no other than his old comrade and friend, Orłowski.

"Truly beloved friend," wrote Orłowski to Kościuszko during the winter of 1790, chaffing him on the untiring activity that he displayed at his post: "I hear from everybody that you don't sit still in any place for a couple of hours, and that you only roam about like a Tartar, not settling anywhere. However, I approve of that. It is evident that you mean to maintain your regiment in the discipline and regularity of military service. I foresee yet another cause for your roaming about the world, which you divulged in my presence. You write to me for a little wife, if I can find one here for you."[1]

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

For, as is clear from various expressions in Kościuszko's letters, the soldier, who was no longer young, was yearning for domestic happiness. And now, in the turmoil of warlike preparations, he fell in love with a girl of eighteen, Tekla Żurowska, the daughter of a noble, and heiress to his estates. The courtship between the general bordering on middle age—he was then forty-five—and this child in her teens has given us Kościuszko's love-letters that are among the most charming productions of his pen, for their tenderness and their half-playful chivalry, characteristic not only of Poland's national hero, but in themselves typically Polish. The couple met for the first time at a ball in a country manor-house. We can visualize the picturesque spectacle of the ballroom, brilliant with the gorgeous national costumes of the guests, both men and ladies; the rugged and simple soldier in his Polish uniform, courteously handing to the many figured Mazur or the stately Polonaise the slim girlish form sporting her tight sleeveless little coat with military facings and rich fur edgings and sleeve-like streamers drooping from the shoulders, with her hair dressed in two long plaits sweeping to her skirts. The girl's family was staying in the town that was Kościuszko's head-quarters, and so near Kościuszko's rooms that the lovers could watch each other from their windows. Seeing one of Kościuszko's officers leave his general's house in haste, Tekla, with the assurance, to use no harsher term, of her years, wrote a rebuke to her lover for getting rid of his subordinates with greater speed than was seemly. Kościuszko replied by informing her what the business had been between himself and the soldier in question: "but I greeted him beautifully and politely, and if he went away quickly it was certainly because he saw a great many unfinished papers before me."[1]

[1] Letters of Kościuszko.

There was another Tekla on the scenes, Tekla Orlewska, a cousin of the first Tekla, whose friendship and sympathy were freely given, both to Kościuszko and the girl he loved. "To the two Teklas" Kościuszko pens this letter.

"For the notebook sent me "—this to Tekla Żurowska—"I thank thee very much, although it is somewhat undurable, not suitable for use. 'Twas a pity for little hands to labour at such a passing thing: a pity to wear eyes out over so small a form of writing which it must overstrain the eyes to read: it would have been better instead to have written more. I know not to whom I must write, whether to the first little Tekla or to the second; but what I do know is that I love the first and am the greatest friend to the second. Both reproach me for somewhat of which I do not find myself guilty. To the first I had no opportunity of writing, and now I am sending my answer by Kniaziewicz"—the future famous soldier of the Napoleonic legions: "but should he not come I have no one by whom to write, for I do not know which of my friends visits you. The second ought to reproach herself because she forgot so good a friend, and because with so many opportunities she told me nothing about either the first friend or about herself. They tell me that Orlewska has looked with favour upon a certain person, and that he has wounded her heart with love. Little Tekla, when thou writest send me at the same time one of the coral beads from thy neck. May Providence enfold thee in the cloak of perfect happiness, and be thou always convinced of my steadfastness, friendship, esteem, respect."[1]

[1] Letters of Kościuszko.

But although Tekla's mother warmly encouraged Kościuszko's cause, her father looked askance at his daughter's suitor: either on account of the disparity of age between them, or, which seems more probable, for the reason that Kościuszko possessed neither large estates nor a great family name. On one occasion Kościuszko, not finding himself pressed to make a longer stay under the Żurowski roof, took an early departure, telling Tekla that:

"It is always a bad thing for the uninvited to stay on. Through my natural delicacy I understood that I was one too many. I had to go, albeit with sorrow. I will now ask you where you are going to-morrow. If I could find a good excuse I would go there too. ... May Heaven bless the mother and daughter, and may it also send down upon the father, even though he is unfriendly to me, bountiful riches of health. ... I kiss your little feet, and when you are dining with an Englishman and Frenchman forget not the Pole who wishes you well."[1]

[1] op. cit.

"Captains P. and P. told me," he says later, "that I was the cause of your shedding tears. That such precious drops from lovely springs should be shed through suspicion of me causes the greatest anguish to my heart. Therefore I kneel and kiss your little hands until I win your pardon. But think not that I ever had any idea of casting an aspersion on you. It was only the result of my native frankness. I never have failed to relate to a friendly person what I see, think, and hear. Now I will correct myself. Never henceforth will I practise my frankness on you: even my thoughts shall be restrained."[1]

But at times he attempted to keep the young lady in some sort of discipline.

"Going to dine two miles off"—the Polish mile, be it observed, is more than three times the length of ours—"is a very bad thing," not for herself, he hastens to add: "four miles for your delicate mother are too much, and I am afraid lest she should feel it. As for you, if it were eight, all the better. The more you exert yourself the better your health will be. Jump, laugh, run, but don't sleep after dinner; and if you cannot go out, at least walk in the hall, play or read."[2]

Again: "Please write more clearly, for I lose half of the pleasure; or if you will write in pencil, wet it in water, then the letters will not be rubbed out."[3]

On her side the lady imposed orders upon her lover with which he, not very willingly, complied.

"I have acted according to thy command," he writes, "and will not go to the christening, although it was disagreeable to me to refuse. I have no choice, because thou only art the mistress of my heart. Do whatever seems to thee best. To behold thee happy is my prayer to God." He tells her that he sees her father prowling about the windows of his own house and looking suspiciously in the direction of Kościuszko's, but: "I will do as thou desirest, and will behave most politely, and if he says anything against my opinions I will gnaw out my tongue, but will answer nothing back."[4]

[1] Letters of Kościuszko.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

The ill-founded rumour that in Kościuszko's youth he had intended to run off with Ludwika Sosnowska had got to the ears of Tekla's father. Certain enemies of Kościuszko's did their best to slander him yet further. The result was a scene of the sort more familiar a hundred and odd years ago than now: a girl throwing herself weeping at the feet of an enraged parent, the wrath of the father dissolving into tears, but his determination remaining implacable. The history of it was duly handed on to the absent Kościuszko, whose comment was as follows:

"I return thee, but bathed with tears, thy goodnight." He charges Tekla not to let her mother, who regarded Kościuszko with sincere affection, fret herself sick over what had happened. "Embrace her as fondly as she loves thee. ... Amuse and distract her so that her thoughts may incline her to sleep." He complains that Tekla does not tell him how she herself has weathered the storm: that he knows nothing of what is happening in her home. "I should be glad to be even in thy heart and enfold thee all within my heart. Each moment makes me uneasy for thee. ... As for me ... all my mind is confused. There is bitterness in my heart, and I feel fever tearing my inmost being. Go to bed, and sleep with pleasant thoughts, seeing thy mother better. ... I commend thee to that Providence who is beneficent to us all. Once more I embrace thee. I am going away, but in thought I am always present by thy side."[1]

To Tekla's mother he wrote:

[1] Ibid.

"I cannot, God knows, I cannot keep silence or send letters, for what I have heard and read has struck me like a thunderbolt. You do not bid me write again, my little mother"—here he uses one of the caressing untranslatable Polish diminutives. "I see that you have been prevailed upon by his [her husband's] persuasions. I see that I shall be parted from her for ever. ... I will always act according to the bidding of the mother who is mine and the mother of her who will always be in my heart. I will write no more and will not visit at her house, that the sight of her shall not be as poison to me. ... However, may the all High Providence bless you; and now I can write no more."[1]

He then went off to manoeuvres. But the lovers had by no means given up hope. They continued their correspondence, and Kościuszko, at Tekla's suggestion and subject to her approval, sent her a letter which he had drawn up for her father with a formal request for her hand.

The father returned an unmitigated refusal, repeating the absurd charge that Kościuszko had intended to abduct his daughter. To this Kościuszko replied with dignity and respect, ending with the words:

"If I cannot gain for myself your favour, if I do not win for myself the hope of gaining her I love, if I do not receive the title so honourable for me of your son and am not to be made happy, at least I look for the approbation of an honest man."[2]

[1] Letters of Kościuszko.

[2] Ibid.

Żurowski's answer was to remove his family to his Galician estate. Kościuszko wrote joint letters to the mother, whom he still fondly terms his "little mother," and to the daughter, assuring the former that his reply to her husband had been:

"... most mild because he is your husband and the father of my little Tekla; but I now see no chance after such a letter [the father's], at the very memory of which my blood boils. But I thank you for your kindness to me, which will be held in my undying remembrance. Your character, your rare attachment to your daughter, will be an example to all. ... May you live long and happily, and you will find your reward when you wish to take it. My God! what a horrible idea that I should have done violence to a law of nature, and in spite of the father have carried off from his house my beloved! And thou, the life of my heart, who wert to have been the sweetness of all my life, little Tekla, forgive me for not finding fitting words at this moment, but, weeping, I bow my head to kiss thy little feet with affection that shall endure for ever. Do not exalt me in thy thoughts, but tread down all the proofs of my friendship and drown in thy memory my love for thee."[1]

"I will always be with you both"—this to Tekla's mother, bidding her good-bye in language of unshaken affection: "although not present, yet in heart and thought."[2]

[1] Ibid.

[2] Ibid.

Korzon notices that at the moment of Kościuszko's rebuff at the hands of his Tekla's father, who was after all nobody more than an ordinary landowner, the rejected suitor had several thousand soldiers under his command, and in days when wild and lawless acts were not unknown, and not difficult of execution in a country where conditions were unsettled and communications long, it would have been easy enough for him to have carried his way by sheer force. But outrage and violence against another's rights, defiance of law and honour, were foreign to Kościuszko's whole trend of character. Here, then, love passes out of Kościuszko's life, whose only passion henceforth will be that of devotion to his country. Five years later Tekla married Kniaziewicz, the friend of Kościuszko who, with him, was to be sung in the most famous of Poland's poems, the Pan Tadeusz of Adam Mickiewicz.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST FIGHT FOR POLAND

In 1791, amidst an outburst of national rejoicing, was passed the Polish Constitution of the 3rd of May. Polish music and song have commemorated the day—to this hour the Polish nation dedicates each recurrent anniversary to its memory—when Poland triumphantly burst the shackles that were sapping her life and stood forth in the van of European states with a legislation that evoked the admiration of Burke, Walpole, and the foremost thinkers of the age. The old abuses were swept away. A constitutional and hereditary monarchy was established. Burghers were granted equal civic rights with the nobility, the condition of the peasants was ameliorated. Freedom was proclaimed to all who set foot upon the soil of Poland.

New life now lay before the transfigured Polish state. But an internally strong and politically reformed Poland would have dealt the death-blow to Russia's designs of conquest. Catherine II's policy was therefore to force back internal anarchy upon the nation that had abjured it, and to prevent the new Constitution from being carried into effect. She had in her hand a minority of Polish nobles who had no mind to part with their inordinate privileges that the new laws had abolished, and who regarded a liberal constitution with distrust and disfavour. At the Empress's instigation the chief of the malcontents, Felix Potocki, Xavery Branicki, and Severin Rzewuski, went to Petersburg to lay their grievances before her. Out of this handful of Polish traitors Catherine formed a confederation, supported by Russia; and in the spring of 1792 she formally declared war upon Poland. Such is the tragic story of the Confederation of Targowica, the name that has gone down to odium in the history of Poland, its members held as traitors by Polish posterity and by the majority of their contemporaries.

While events were thus hurrying on in his country Kościuszko, himself ready to strain every nerve in her cause, wrote in the April of 1792 to Michał Zaleski:

"Having heard that you are staying in the Brześć palatinate and are my near neighbour, and always my partisan and friend, I cannot refrain from sending you the expression of esteem which is due to you, as well as one of astonishment that you have sacrificed this time to domestic tranquillity and to your own happiness, living with the lady admired by all and most especially beloved by me for her character and most beautiful soul, and that you have abandoned your country, to which you could have been of great assistance. This is the time when even where there is diversity of opinions there ought to be one unity of aim for her happiness, for leading her to importance in Europe, to internally good government. I well know and am convinced of your character, heart and patriotism; but, as your talents, judgment, wit, and general knowledge of law are well known, so I should wish that you would be of assistance to your country. It is a sure fact that every citizen, even the most unimportant and least instructed, can contribute to the universal good, but he to whom the Almighty has given understanding of affairs greater than that of others sins when he ceases to be active. We must all unite in one aim: to release our land from the domination of foreigners, from the abasement and destruction of the very name of Pole. On ourselves depends the amendment of the government, on our morals; and if we are base, covetous, interested, careless of our country, it is just that we shall have chains on our necks, and we shall be worthy of them."[1]

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

Through the spring of 1792 Kościuszko was preparing the division of the army under his command for the war with Russia. His were still the heart-burnings that he was to experience whenever he was at the head of men, those of a commander who had neither sufficient soldiers, ammunition, nor provisions. On the 21st of May the King delivered a stirring speech to the Diet. "You behold deeds," he said, alluding to the Confederation of Targowica, "that aim at the destruction of the authority and existence of the present Diet and of the restoration of our entire independence. You behold the open support of those compatriots who are committing violence against the welfare and will of our country. You behold, therefore, the indispensable necessity that we should adopt as best we can every measure to defend and save our country. Whatever, honourable Estates, you resolve I will not only accede to, but I hereby declare that I will take my place in person wheresoever my presence shall be called for." Probably those of his audience who knew the King best took his words at their true value.

On May 22nd the Russian army crossed the frontier. Poland appealed to the terms of her treaty with Prussia, and requested the Prussian state to come to her assistance. Prussia threw off the mask and disavowed her treaty obligations; and the Poles were left to their own resources. Their numbers equalled, according to Kościuszko's computation, one single column of the Russian army. An empty treasury, an empty arsenal, were behind them; they were pitted against seasoned soldiers, trained in successful war; but the fire of patriotism ran high through their ranks. Many of the nobles, following the old traditions of Polish history, raised regiments in their own provinces, armed them at their own cost, and in person led them to the field. The commander-in-chief was young Józef Poniatowski, the nephew of the King. He was to become one of the most popular of Poland's heroes, as the brilliant leader of a Polish army during the Napoleonic wars; but at this moment he was a youth of twenty-eight, whose military knowledge was wholly negligible, and who owed his high position to his family connections. The only Polish general who had practical experience of war was Kościuszko; and with him, for all Poniatowski's devoted service of his country, rests the chief fame of the Ukraine campaign.

The story of that three months' campaign is one of a gallant struggle of a little army, now winning, now losing, inflicting heavy loss upon a superior enemy, but gradually driven back by overwhelming numbers through Volhynia and Podoha. During all these weeks of desperate fighting Kościuszko figures as the man whose bravery and skill again and again saved the critical moment. In his dispatches to the King, whose arrival in the Polish camp was daily looked for, and who never came, Poniatowski praises Kościuszko as "doing great service, not only by his courage, but also by his singular prudence." At Włodzimierz, when the Polish army was in the utmost danger of annihilation, Kościuszko thrust back the attack of "the whole Russian army"—the quotation is his—with heavy; loss to the Russians and little to the Poles. It was, thus Poniatowski declares in his report to the King, thanks "to the good and circumspect dispositions of General Kościuszko that our retreat was continued in unbroken order." The subsequent safe passage of the army over the river is again ascribed to Kościuszko. And so we arrive at the famous day of Dubienka, fought on the banks of the Bug between the marshes of Polesie and Galicia, which covered Kościuszko's name with glory, and which by tragic paradox saw the end of that stage of his nation's hope for freedom.

Kościuszko has left a manuscript account, written in the nature of a rough sketch, of the Ukraine campaign.[1] It passed into the keeping of Stanislas Potocki, one of the great pioneers of educational reform in Poland, not to be confounded with his ill-famed namesake, Felix Potocki. In it Kościuszko gives with brevity and characteristic modesty the account of the battle: how, with Poniatowski too far off to render assistance, and the safety of the whole Polish army depending upon Kościuszko, "left to himself," to cite his own words—he invariably employs the third person—he threw up defences and prepared for the Russian attack. Through the day of July 18th he stood with five thousand Poles and eight cannon against a Russian army of twenty thousand soldiers and forty cannon, repelling the enemy with sanguinary loss to the latter. One of his officers who fought by his side told afterwards how he had seen Kościuszko in the hottest fire calm and collected as though taking a stroll. The battle that has been called the Polish Thermopylæ only closed when towards evening the Russian commander, Kachowski, violated neutral territory and fell upon the Poles from the side of Galicia, so that, hopelessly outnumbered, they were compelled to retreat. The retreat through the forest on a pitch-dark night was led by Kościuszko, says an eyewitness, "with the utmost coolness and in the greatest order," directing an incessant fire on the pursuing Russians that told heavily upon them. Kniaziewicz, whom we last saw in a less stern moment of Kościuszko's life, here played a gallant part.

[1] Printed in Edward Raczynski's Pictures of Poles and of Poland in the Eighteenth Century. Poznań, 1841 (Polish).

It has been pointed out that the honours of the day fell, not to the winner of the field of Dubienka, but to the vanquished: to Kościuszko, not to the Russian general, Kachowski. Pole and Russian alike speak of the high military talent that Kościuszko displayed, no less than of the valour that fought on, refusing defeat till hope was no more. The immediate result so far as Kościuszko was personally concerned was the acknowledgment of his services by the King in the shape of promotion and the nomination he greatly desired to the command of one of the chief regiments in the Polish army, with all the affluence that these rewards bestowed upon a man who had never hitherto enjoyed wealth. His fame, too, travelled beyond the confines of his country, and the Legislative Assembly in Paris conferred upon him the title of Citizen of France.

But the battle of Dubienka was not a week old, and the army was eager for fresh action, when the King gave in his adherence to the Confederation of Targowica; in other words, sold himself and his nation to Russia. The echoes of his speech to the Diet, calling upon the nation to fight till death, vowing that he was ready to make the sacrifice of his own life should his country need it, were still in the ears of those who had heard it. The army had waited in vain for him to place himself at its head; then Catherine II threatened him, and as usual he dared not disobey. "Yielding to the desire of the Empress," he told his subjects, "and to the necessities of the country," he condemned the proceedings of the long Diet in which he had recognized the salvation of Poland at that one great moment of his life when he had thrown in his lot with the noble party of patriotic reform; and now, as the mouthpiece of Catherine II, he pronounced the nation's only safety to be with the promoters of Targowica. The most favourable view of Stanislas Augustus's conduct has little more to urge in his favour than that he was neither a fool nor a hero, saw no hope of success in the national movement, and preferred to throw in his lot with the other side. It was on the 23rd of July that the King signed the Confederation of Targowica. The news fell as the sentence of death upon the Polish camp that was palpitating with patriotic ardour. In the presence of all his officers Poniatowski wrote to the King as plainly as he dared: "News is here going through the camp which surely must be spread by ill-disposed men who wish evil to Your Majesty, as though Your Majesty would treat with the betrayers of our country. The degradation of cringing to the betrayers of our country would be our grave."[1]

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

The army, was, however, bidden by the King to lay down arms, and was recalled to Warsaw. "It is impossible to express the grief, despair, and anger of the army against the King," wrote Kościuszko several months later as he collected his memories of the campaign in the manuscript notes referred to above. "The Prince-General himself gave proof of the greatest attachment to the country. All recognized the King's bad will, since there was still the possibility of defeating the Russian army." Kościuszko was present at one of the conferences held after the arrival of the Royal mandate between the Polish commander and Kachowski; and he could not restrain tears of wrath as he took stock of the Russian officers whom he was convinced that, were it not for treachery at headquarters, Poland could have overcome. Honour forbade the Polish officers to retain their commissions any longer in a service that was no more national, but that was in the domination of Russia and of those who were playing into her hands. On the march back to Warsaw, Poniatowski sent in his resignation to the King, and on another page of The same document Kościuszko—followed by hundreds of others—in a few laconic words laid down his tardily and hardly won command.

"Since," his note runs, "the change in the national conditions are contrary to my original oath and internal convictions, I have the honour to request Your Royal Majesty for the favour of signing my resignation.

"Tadeusz Kościuszko."

"We have sent our notes to the King," writes Kościuszko to his warm friend, Adam Czartoryski's wife, to whom he poured out the wounds of his heart, bleeding at the sight of the terrible danger under which his country was being submerged, "requesting for our resignations, and for this reason, that in time we may not be drawn into an oath against our convictions, that we may not be colleagues of those three [Branicki, Felix Potocki, and Rzewuski], and for fear that the King, if we requested later on for our resignations, will by that time not have the power to grant them to us. Therefore, we wish to secure ourselves, declaring to the King that if there is nothing against the country in these negotiations [with Russia], and if those personages will not be in the army, then we will serve, and withdraw our resignations. I expect to be in Warsaw this week, where I shall assuredly find out something more certain about this change. Oh, my God! why wilt Thou not give us the means of rooting out the brood of the adversaries of the nation's happiness? I feel unceasing wrath against them. Day and night that one thought is forced upon me, and I shudder at the recollection of what end may befall our country."[1]

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

He reached Warsaw, and was summoned by the King to an audience. Then a dramatic scene took place. The plain, reserved soldier, the Puritan patriot as a Polish historian calls him, was confronted with the monarch who was a trained orator, to whom elegance of dress and manner were a study of moment, whose handsome face and captivating address had won him the favour—a fatal gift for Poland—of the Semiramis of the North. Against every cajolement of one who was an adept in the arts of blandishment, promise and flattery, Kościuszko had but one argument: that of the straight-forward devotion that saw his country outraged, and that would accept no compromise where duty to that country and to his own honour were concerned. In his boyhood Kościuszko had been in marked manner dependent on the King's favour. Now—as at a later crisis in their mutual relations—it is clear that, however outspoken his language to his sovereign, Kościuszko never forgot a subject's respect. Let him tell what passed in his own words:

"The King strongly urged me, sought to persuade, to convince me, finally sent me ladies known as being in relations with him, if only we would not abandon him and would not insist on our resignations. I always gave him the same answer, shattering all his arguments, so that he was often embarrassed what to answer me. At last with tears I told him that we had deserved some consideration, fighting for our country, for the state, for Your Royal Majesty, and that we will never act against our convictions and honour. No one has yet chosen publicly to proclaim those scoundrels as infamous traitors. I alone have said this openly in the presence of the King, to which he answered: 'Leave them to their shame.'"[1]

[1] Op. cit.

Kościuszko thus remained master of the situation. Stanislas Augustus was silenced before an integrity that would not bend before him. On August 17th the Russian army entered Warsaw as conquerors. The King was virtually a prisoner, for whom neither side felt compassion or respect, in the hands of Russia. By a rescript of Catherine II the Polish army was drafted into small divisions and scattered through the country, thus rendered powerless. The reforms of the Constitution were set aside. Russia ruled the country behind her puppets, the leaders of Targowica. The second partition was only a question of time.

Radom was designated to Kościuszko as his head-quarters; but his determination to serve no more under the betrayers of his country held firm. He remained two months longer in Warsaw in the seclusion of an abandonment of grief, choosing to stay within walls rather than see the streets of the capital of Poland under the Russian heel. The last piece of business with which he concerned himself in the official capacity he was surrendering for honour's sake was to recommend to the King's notice several officers, including Kniaziewicz, for their gallantry in the late war. Amidst his heavy anxieties he made time to write to a friend, whose name we do not know, but who, to judge from the letter's closing words—"I bid you farewell, embracing you a thousand times with the most tender affection for ever"—was one very dear to Kościuszko, begging him to relieve the necessities of some individual whose position in Warsaw without means had aroused the writer's pity.[1]

"Watering my native soil with my tears,"—thus he writes to Felix Potocki, in an outburst of the patriotic indignation that even his enemies respected—"I am going to the New World, to my second country to which I have acquired a right by fighting for her independence. Once there, I shall beseech Providence for a stable, free, and good government in Poland, for the independence of our nation, for virtuous, enlightened, and free inhabitants therein."[2]

[1] Letters of Kościuszko.

[2] Op. Cit.

He fell sick for sorrow at the thought of his nation's future. From his bed of convalescence in the famous Blue Palace of the Czartoryskis in Warsaw he wrote to Michał Zaleski, acquainting him with his intention to repair as soon as the fever left him to Galicia, thence:

"... possibly to Switzerland or England, whence I shall watch the course of events in our country. If they make for the happiness of the country, I shall return; if not, I shall move on further. I I shall enter no foreign service, and if I am forced to it by my poverty then I shall enter a service where there is a free state—but with an unchanging attachment to my country which I might serve no longer, as I saw nothing to convince me of the amelioration of the government or that gave any hope for the future happiness of our country in the measures at present taken"—meaning, of course, under the rule of the Confederation of Targowica. "I would not enter into undertakings of which the end is unknown: I feared lest, if only indirectly, they should contribute to the unhappiness of the nation. I do not doubt that there are men even among the Targowicians who are trying to serve their country, but I know not if they can, and if they are in the way of doing it. With my whole heart and soul I long that some one experienced in affairs could enlighten me, for I am in the darkness of night."[1]

[1] Ibid.

Told in the light of subsequent events, from standing ground removed from the passion and confusion of a present strife, with, moreover, the diplomatic intrigues of Russia and Prussia laid open before our eyes by modern research, the issues of this period of Poland's history are intelligible enough; but to the combatants in the arena the line was not so defined. Some among the Poles of the period, even including men of no mean capacity, wavered as to whether Catherine II were not genuinely prepared to guarantee a free Poland under Russian protection. The leaders of Targowica have been branded with the name of traitors, and justly; but it seems as though they proceeded rather as hotheaded and unpatriotic malcontents than with the deliberate intention of betraying their country. Kościuszko was ill-versed, either by nature, training, or inclination in the art of politics; but through this tangled web of perplexity and uncertainty, when present and future were equally enveloped in obscurity, his singleness of aim supplied him with the unerring instinct with which through the whole of his life he met and unmasked the pitfalls that were spread before the unhappiest and the most cruelly betrayed of nations. Under the dictates of this pure patriotism he directed himself unfalteringly through the most difficult and involved hours of his nation's history, allowing neither friendship, tradition, nor personal advantage to obscure for one moment the great object he had at stake—his country's good. He now laid down high rank, parted with fortune upon which his hand had barely had time to close, and prepared to face an uncertain future in a foreign land. On the eve of his departure from Poland he wrote to Princess Czartoryska:

"I was faithful to my country; I fought for her and would have offered myself a hundred times to death for her. Now it seems as if the end of my services for her is at hand; perhaps this uniform which I am wearing will be the badge of shame. I will cast it off betimes, and lay my sword in the grave till future better times. ... I will once more bid farewell to you. Princess, whom all adore for your virtues and devotion. I kiss the hands which have often dried tears shed for our country."[1]

[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

Before leaving his native land, as far as he knew for ever, he sent, together with his farewell to the sister whom he never saw again, his last disposition of the home to which his heart clung with deep affection, and which was to be his no more.

"Permit me, my sister, to embrace you, and because this may be the last time I shall be given that happiness I desire that you should know my will, that I bequeath to you my estate of Siechnowicze, and that you have the right to bequeath it either to one of your sons or to any one, but under one condition: that Susanna and Faustin shall be kept in every comfort until their death; that the peasants from every house in the whole estate shall not do more than two days of forced labour for the men, and for the women none at all. If it were another country where the government could ensure my will, I would free them entirely; but in this country we must do what we are certain of being able to do to relieve humanity in any way, and always remember that by nature we are all equals, that riches and education constitute the only difference; that we aught to have consideration for the poor and instruct ignorance, thus bringing about good morals. I am sending you my signature so that you can act legally according to my wish, so that later no disputes shall arise against you or your sons. Farewell! I embrace you with the tenderest heart.

"Embrace Susanna for me," he adds in a postscript. "Thank her for the friendship she has shown me. Remember me to Faustin and to your son Stanislas. Let him give his children a good republican education with the virtues of justice, honesty, and honour."[1]

[1] Op. Cit.

The letter has come down to us with its small clear handwriting, a few words in the postscript erased with the scrupulous neatness of the whole document. We can best realize how near the condition of the peasants lay to Kościuszko's heart when we reflect that it filled his parting communication to his sister, written at the moment when, full of sorrow and anxiety, he was going into the unknown road of exile. He left Poland in the early days of October, having won, says Korzon, the esteem of friend and foe alike. Before crossing the frontier into what was Polish soil, but since Austria had taken possession of it at the first partition was politically recognized as Poland no longer, he unbuckled his sword and, lifting his hands to heaven, prayed that he might be given once again to draw it in the defence of his dearly loved land.

CHAPTER V

THE EVE OF THE RISING

In Galicia, Kościuszko was welcomed by a crowd of sympathizers. The Czartoryskis, then residing on their Galician estates, showed him such marked proofs of their admiration that it was even said, without foundation, that Princess Czartoryska destined Kościuszko for the husband of one of the princesses. A married daughter drew his portrait, inscribing it, after the taste of the epoch, with the words: "Tadeusz Kościuszko, good, valiant, but unhappy." On his feast-day, October 28th, the ladies of the family presented him with a wreath woven of leaves from an oak planted by the Polish hero with whose name Kościuszko's is often coupled: Jan Sobieski, the deliverer of Christendom. At the banquet held on this occasion was present, not only Kościuszko's friend, Orłowski, like him banished and for the same reason, but a young son of the house who had fought in the recent Russo-Polish war, Adam Czartoryski, soon to be removed by Catherine II's orders as a hostage to the Russian court, and who in later life was one of the principal and noblest figures in Polish politics of the nineteenth century. We shall see his path again touching Kościuszko's at a critical juncture in the history of their nation.

The bitterness of an exile's wanderings, so familiar to the generations of Poles that followed through the unhappy years of the succeeding century, was now to be tasted by Poland's national hero. The Austrian Government took alarm at the evidences of popularity that were showered upon him. The Russian Government would not have his presence near the Polish frontiers, and the Russian sentries received orders to be on the look-out not to permit him to enter any Polish town. Legends ran through the ranks of the superstitious Muscovite soldiery that Kościuszko had, notwithstanding, come up to the sentries, and when fired upon had changed himself into the form of a cat. Such tales apart, on December 5th he was given notice by the Austrian authorities to quit the country within twelve hours.

"I am grieved to leave beloved Poland, my friends and so many hearts that were good to me," sadly writes Kościuszko. Spies and secret agents were watching the posts; so he and his fellow-Poles protected themselves and their correspondence by various precautions, fictitious names, confidential messengers. "Bieda"—misfortune—was the pseudonym by which Kościuszko, his heart heavy with foreboding for his country and grief at her loss, signed himself, and wished to be known, as he set out for a foreign land. Cracow lay in the route that as a fugitive from the Austrian Government he was obliged to choose. He tarried a few days in the beautiful old city that is the sepulchre of Poland's kings, and where he was after death to lie in the last resting-place of those whom his nation most honours. Thence he journeyed to Leipzig.

In Leipzig were the men of the nation whose minds and aims were in the closest sympathy with his. Kołłontaj, Ignacy and Stanislas Potocki, and the band of Poles who had been responsible for the drawing up of the Constitution of the 3rd of May, had gathered together in the Saxon city out of reach of Russian vengeance, where they could best concert measures for saving Poland. In January 1793 the news reached them that Prussia, whose attitude in regard to scraps of paper is no recent development, had helped herself to that portion of Great Poland which had escaped her at the first partition, and to Thorn and Danzig, which she had so long coveted, while Russia took the southern provinces of Poland and part of Lithuania.

But the camp of Polish patriots in Leipzig would not give Poland up for lost. "She will not remain without assistance and means to save her," wrote Kołłontaj. "Let them do what they will; they will not bring about her destruction." "Kościuszko is now in Paris"—this was early in 1793. "He is going to England and Sweden." As a matter of fact he went to neither at that time. "That upright man is very useful to his country."[1]

[1] Letters of Hugo Kołłontaj.

It was to France, which had won Kościuszko's heart in his youth, and whose help he had seen given to America in the latter's struggle for her freedom, that he now made his way to beg a young Republic's assistance for his country. He was not a diplomat himself; but Kołłontaj and Ignacy Potocki were behind him with their instructions. Fortune never favoured Kościuszko. He arrived in Paris shortly before the execution of Louis XVI. He may even have been in the crowd around the scaffold, the witness of a scene that, however strong his popular sympathies, would have inspired a man of his stamp with nothing but horror and condemnation. The European coalition was formed against France: and Poland was forgotten. The second partition by which Russia and Prussia secured the booty that they had, as we have seen, a few months previously arrogated to themselves, was effected in a Europe convulsed with war, that little noticed and scarcely protested against the dismemberment of a European state and the aggrandizement of two others, with its fatal consequence of Prussia's rise to power. The tale of the scene in the Diet of Grodno, convoked under the compulsion of the Russian armies to ratify the partition, is well known: how the few deputies who consented to attend sat with Russian cannon turned upon them, while Russian troops barred all the exits of the hall and carried off by night to Siberia those members who protested against the overthrow of their nation: how the group of Poles, deprived of all other means of defending their country, opposed an absolute silence to every proposal of their enemies, till the deed was signed that left only a shred of territory, in its turn doomed to fresh destruction, to the Republic of Poland.

From Lebrun, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kościuszko succeeded in winning the promise of financial assistance in the war for Polish independence that the national party was projecting; but shortly after his interview with Kościuszko Lebrun lost liberty and office. With Danton Kościuszko would have nothing to do, and in the sanguinary scenes of the Terror all public traces of the Pole are lost. It is certain that he had no dealings with Robespierre or with any of the men who then sat in the French revolutionary tribunals. How strongly he abhorred their manner of revolution is proved not only from expressions he let drop during his own dictatorship, but still more by his mode of proceeding when he himself was responsible for a new government of state. He was a democrat always; but in the best sense of the word.

Seeing that there was no prospect of gaining anything for Poland from France, Kościuszko remained in seclusion during his further stay in Paris, writing in the blood-stained city the record to which we have already alluded of the national war in which he had lately fought. In this work he freely criticizes all the errors on the part of its leaders which he had seen, and in vain pointed out to Poniatowski, during its course; but nothing could shake his conviction that the Polish cause could have triumphed. "If," he writes, "the whole army had been assembled beyond the Vistula with volunteers and burghers from the cities of Warsaw and Cracow, it would have risen to sixty thousand, and with a king at its head, fighting for its country and independence, what power, I ask, could have conquered it? "He refers to the sights he had beheld in the American War as a proof of what soldiers could do without pay, if animated by enthusiasm for a sacred cause. That patriotic fire, says he, burned as brightly in his own country: the Polish soldier, the Polish citizen, were equally ready to sacrifice all. "The spirit was everywhere, but no use was made of their enthusiasm and patriotism. ... The weakness of the King without military genius, without character or love of his country, has now plunged our country, perhaps for ever, into anarchy and subjection to Muscovy."[1]

[1] MS. of Kościuszko in Pictures of Poles and of Poland in the Eighteenth Century, by Edward Raczynski.

Thus wrote Kościuszko in the day when a peasant soldiery was unknown in Poland; and a few months later he was leading his regiments of reapers and boatmen to the national Rising.

There was nothing more for him to do in Paris. His intended attempt in England was given up, for Kołłontaj received a broad hint from the British representative in Saxony that Kościuszko's presence would be both unwelcome to George III and profitless to the Polish cause. Kościuszko may then have gone on from France to Brussels, but in the summer of 1793 he was back in Leipzig in close consultation with Ignacy Potocki.

The condition of Poland was by now lamentable. Her position was that of a nation at the mercy of a foreign army, ravaged by war, although she was not at war. Russians garrisoned every town. Russian soldiers were systematically pillaging and devastating the country districts, terrorizing village and town alike. Poles were arrested in their own houses at the will of their Russian conquerors, and despatched to Siberia. Hidden confederations, especially among the Polish youth, were being carried on all over Poland, preparing to rise in defence of the national freedom. In the teeth of the Russian garrison and of Catherine II's plenipotentiary, Igelstrom, Warsaw sent secret emissaries to the scattered remnants of the Polish army; and in the conferences that were held at dead of night the choice of the nation fell upon Kościuszko as the leader above all others who should avenge the national dishonour and wrest back at the point of the sword the independence of Poland. In the beginning of September 1793 two Polish delegates carried the proposal to him where he still remained in Leipzig.

The great moment in the life of Tadeusz Kościuszko had now arrived. His fiery and enthusiastic soul leapt to its call; but with none of the headlong precipitance that would have been its ruin. Kościuszko was too great a patriot to disdain wariness and cool calculation. He never stirred without seeing each step clearly mapped out before him. He took his counsels with Potocki and his other Polish intimates in Saxony; then formulated his plan of the Rising. Each district of Poland and Lithuania was to be under the command of some citizen who would undertake secretly to beat up the inhabitants to arms. The people could choose their own officers according to the general wish. Special insistence was laid on the duties of calling the peasants to fight side by side with the landowners. The Polish peasant had hitherto been counted incapable of bearing arms: Kościuszko overrode this ancient prejudice with results that have given one of the finest pages to the history of Poland.

He then went alone with his confidant, Zajonczek, to the Polish frontiers to collect information. He sent round messengers to the different provinces of Poland and Lithuania carrying his letters and full instructions, while Zajonczek, under a false name, was despatched to Warsaw. The report the latter gave to Kościuszko on his return was not satisfactory. Matters were not as yet ripe for the undertaking. Financial means in the widespread ruin that had come upon Poland through the overrunning of her territories by a hostile soldiery were lacking, in spite of the private generosity of such a donor as the Warsaw banker, Kapostas. The difficulties of getting together a fighting force when Russian soldiers, closely supervising every movement of the Poles, occupied the country and the Polish divisions had been purposely drafted to great distances from each other by the Empress, were almost insuperable. The peasant rising upon which Kościuszko had built his best hopes was unprepared. But two elements remained that should, as pointed out by Zajonczek, consolidate and ensure a great national Rising: universal detestation of the Russian and limitless confidence in the chosen national leader. Kościuszko deemed it advisable to wait. "It is impossible," he said after receiving Zajonczek's report, "to build on such frail foundations; for it would be a sad thing to begin lightly and without consideration, only to fall." He himself, recognizable as he was through all Poland, was too well known to act as a secret propagandist in his own country; so in order to throw dust in the eyes of Russia and Prussia he retired to Italy for some months. In Florence he found Niemcewicz. Niemcewicz tells how one night as he sat reading by his lamp the door burst open, the Polish greeting, "Praised be Jesus Christ," rang on the exile's ear, and a former colleague of the poet's hurried in with the simple words: "I have come for Kościuszko."[1] But the last act was played out in Dresden, that for long after Kościuszko's day remained a stronghold of Polish emigration. While Kościuszko was taking final deliberation there with Kołłontaj and Ignacy Potocki, two Poles came straight from Poland, and on their knees besought Kościuszko to give the word. The moment was now or never. Placards were being fastened mysteriously on the walls of Warsaw, calling to the Poles to rise. Patriotic writings were scattered broadcast, patriotic articles printed, in spite of the rigorous Russian censorship, in the Polish papers. Plays were acted in the theatre whose double meaning, uncomprehended by the Russians who sat in crowds in the audience, were fiery appeals to Polish patriotism. The streets of Warsaw, all Poland and Lithuania, were seething with agitation and secret hope. The suspicions of Igelstrom were aroused. He resolved to take over the arsenal in Warsaw and to disarm and demobilize the Polish army. In this dilemma Kościuszko was compelled to throw his all on one card or to fail. He therefore decided on the war; and in March 1794 he re-entered Poland as the champion of her freedom.

[1] J. Niemcewicz, Recollections of My Times, Paris, 1848 (Polish).

CHAPTER VI

THE RISING OF KOŚCIUSZKO

A barn in the vicinity of the city has long been shown as the place where Kościuszko slept the night before he entered Cracow. The Polish general, Madalinski, who by a ruse had evaded the Russian order to disarm, was the first to rise. At the head of his small force, followed by a hot Russian pursuit, he triumphantly led his soldiers down towards Cracow. At the news of his approach the Russian garrison evacuated the town, and Kościuszko entered its walls a few hours after the last Russian soldier had left it, at midday on March 23 1794. It had been intended to convene the meeting of the citizens at the town hall on that same day; but the Act of the proclamation of the Rising proved to be so erroneously printed that it could not be published, mainly because Kościuszko was not an adept at putting his ideas into writing, and the numerous corrections were too much for the printers. The night was spent by Kościuszko in rewriting the manifesto which was to travel all over Poland, which was to be proclaimed from the walls and pulpits of Polish town and village, and despatched to the governments of Europe. The room yet remains where he passed those hours in the house of General Wodzicki who, when commanded by Russia to disband his regiments, had at Kościuszko's instigation secretly kept them together, paying them out of his own pocket, in readiness for the Rising.

The morning of March 24th dawned With Wodzicki and several other soldiers, Kościuszko assisted at a low Mass in the Capuchin church, where the officiating priest blessed the leader's sword. "God grant me to conquer or die," were Kościuszko's words, as he received the weapon from the monk's hand. At ten o'clock he quietly walked to the town hall. From all quarters of the city dense throngs had poured into the marketplace, and pressed outside the town hall, overflowing on to its steps, surging into its rooms. In front of his soldiers Kościuszko stood before the crowds on the stone now marked by a memorial tablet, upon which on each anniversary of March 24th the Poles lay wreaths. That day, that scene, remain engraved for ever among the greatest of Poland's memories. As far as Kościuszko's gaze rested he saw his countrymen and countrywomen with eyes turned to him as to the deliverer of themselves and of their country, palpitating for the moment that he was about to announce, many of them wearing his portrait and carrying banners with the inscriptions: "Freedom or Death," "For our rights and liberty," "For Cracow and our country," or "Vivat Kościuszko." The drums were rolled, and in the midst of a dead silence the army took the oath of the Rising.

"I, N. N., swear that I will be faithful to the Polish nation, and obedient to Tadeusz Kościuszko, the Commander-in-Chief, who has been summoned by this nation to the defence of the freedom, liberties, and independence of our country. So help me God and the innocent Passion of His Son."

Then Kościuszko himself stepped forward. With bared head, his eyes lifted to heaven and his hands resting on his sword, standing in plain civilian garb before his people, surrounded by no pomp or retinue, in the simplicity that was natural to him, the new dictator of Poland in his turn took his oath:

"I, Tadeusz Kościuszko, swear in the sight of God to the whole Polish nation that I will use the power entrusted to me for the personal oppression of none, but will only use it for the defence of the integrity of the boundaries, the regaining of the independence of the nation, and the solid establishment of universal freedom. So help me God and the innocent Passion of His Son."

He then went inside the town hall. There he was greeted by cries of "Long live Kościuszko ! Long live the defender of our country! "When silence was restored he delivered a speech, the exact terms of which are not accurately recorded; but it is known that he demanded of every class in the country to rally to the national banner—nobles, burghers, priests, peasants, Jews—and that he placed himself at the disposal of his people without requiring of them any oath, for, said he, both he and they were united in one common interest. Then he ordered the formal Act of the Rising to be read. It was received with an outburst of applause, and the clamour of rejoicing rang to the skies.

This Act was in part grafted on Kościuszko's personal observation of the American Declaration of Independence, but only in part. Kościuszko's own intensely Polish soul speaks through the document—the anguish of a Pole at the sight of his country's wrongs, the cry of a desperate but undespairing patriotism, the breathing of the spirit that should bring new life.

"The present condition of unhappy Poland is known to the world"—so the Act opens. "The iniquity of two neighbouring Powers and the crimes of traitors to the country have plunged her into this abyss. Resolved upon the destruction of the Polish name, Catherine II, in agreement with the perjured Frederick William, has filled up the measure of her crimes."

The treatment of Poland at the hands of Russia and Prussia is then recapitulated in accents of the burning indignation that such a recital would necessarily evoke. Of Austria Kościuszko makes no mention, for the reason that he believed, erroneously, as he was to learn by bitter experience, that her sympathies could be enlisted for the national movement.

"Overwhelmed with this weight of misfortune, injured more by treachery than by the power of the weapons of the enemies ... having lost our country and with her the enjoyment of the most sacred rights of freedom, of safety, of ownership, alike of our persons and of our property, deceived and played upon by some states, abandoned by others, we, Poles, citizens, inhabitants of the palatinate of Cracow, consecrating to our country our lives as the only possession which tyranny has not yet torn from us, are about to take those last and violent measures which patriotic despair dictates to us. Having, therefore, the unbroken determination to die and find a grave in the ruins of our own country or to deliver our native land from the depredations of tyranny and a shameful yoke, we declare in the sight of God, in the sight of the whole human race, and especially before you, O nations, by whom liberty is more highly prized than all other possessions in the world, that, employing the undenied right of resistance to tyranny and armed oppression, we all, in one national, civic and brotherly spirit, unite our strength in one; and, persuaded that the happy result of our great undertaking depends chiefly on the strictest union between us all, we renounce all prejudices and opinions which hitherto have divided or might divide the citizens, the inhabitants of one land and the sons of one country, and we all promise each other to be sparing of no sacrifice and means which only the holy love of liberty can provide to men rising in despair in her defence.

"The deliverance of Poland from the foreign soldier, the restoration and safeguarding of the integrity of her boundaries, the extirpation of all oppression and usurpation, whether foreign or domestic, the firm foundation of national freedom and of the independence of the Republic:—such is the holy aim of our Rising."

To ensure its success and the safety of the country Kościuszko was elected as Poland's military leader and her civil head, with the direction that he should nominate a National Council to be under his supreme authority. The proclamation then enters into the details of his functions and those of the Council. He alone was responsible for the military conduct of the war. Its financial management, the levy of taxes for its support, internal order and the administration of justice, were under the jurisdiction of the Council, to which was entrusted the task of endeavouring to gain foreign help and of "directing public opinion and diffusing the national spirit so that Country and Liberty may be the signal to all the inhabitants of Polish soil for the greatest sacrifices." All those who should act in any way against the Rising were to be punished by death. Emphasis was laid on the fact that the government was provisional, to rule only until the enemy should be finally driven out of Poland, and that it held no power of making a fresh constitution. "Any such act will be considered by us as a usurpation of the national sovereignty, similar to that against which at the sacrifice of our lives we are now rising." The head of the government and the National Council were bound by the terms of the Act "to instruct the nation by frequent proclamations on the true state of its affairs, neither concealing nor softening the most unfortunate events. Our despair is full, and the love of our country unbounded. The heaviest misfortunes, the mightiest difficulties, will not succeed in weakening and breaking the virtue of the nation and the courage of her citizens.

"We all mutually promise one another and the whole Polish nation steadfastness in the enterprise, fidelity to its principles, submission to the national rulers specified and described in this Act of our Rising. We conjure the commander of the armed forces and the Supreme Council for the love of their country to use every means for the liberation of the nation and the preservation of her soil. Laying in their hands the disposal of our persons and property for such time as the war of freedom against despotism, of justice against oppression and tyranny, shall last, we desire that they always have present this great truth: that the preservation of a people is the highest law."[1]

[1] Act of the Rising. T. Korzon, Kościuszko.

For the first time in Poland—and it would have been an equal novelty in most other countries of the period—nobles and peasants side by side signed their adhesion to the Act among thousands of signatures. The levy of the military forces, the arrangements for the taxation and the necessary business of the Rising, were at once set on foot, and Kościuszko spent the rest of March 24th in these affairs and in his heavy correspondence. On the same day he sent out four more special addresses, one to the Polish and Lithuanian armies, a second to the citizens of the nation, a third to the Polish clergy, and a fourth to the women of Poland.

In the manifestos that Kościuszko issued all through the course of the Rising there is not only the note of the trumpet-call, bidding the people grapple with a task that their leader promises them will be no easy one; there is something more—a hint of the things that are beyond, an undercurrent of the Polish spirituality that confer upon these national proclamations their peculiarly Polish quality, emanating as they do from the pen of a patriot, whose character is typically and entirely Polish.

Kościuszko appeals always to the ideal, to the secret and sacred faiths of men's hearts; but with that strong practical sense with which his enthusiasm was tempered and ennobled.

"Each of us has often sworn to be faithful to our mother country"—thus runs his manifesto to the Polish and Lithuanian armies. "Let us keep this faith with her once more, now when the oppressors, not satisfied with the dismemberment of our soil, would tear our weapons from us, and expose us unarmed to the last misery and scorn. Let us turn those weapons against the breasts of our enemies, let us raise our country out of slavery, let us restore the sanctity of the name of Pole, independence to the nation, and let us merit the gratitude of our native land and the glory dear to a soldier.

"Summoned by you I stand, comrades, at your head. I have given my life to you; your valour and patriotism are the surety for the happiness of our beloved country. ... Let us unite more strongly, let us unite the hearts, hands, and endeavours of the inhabitants of the whole land. Treachery thrust our weapon from our hands; let virtue raise again that weapon, and then shall perish that disgraceful yoke under which we groan.