Tadeusz Kościuszko

Tadeusz Kościuszko
Portrait by Wojniakowski
Birth name	Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko
Born	February 4 or 12, 1746 Mereczowszczyzna, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (now Merechevschina, Belarus)
Died	October 15, 1817(1817-10-15) (aged 71) Solothurn, Switzerland
Allegiance	Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; United States of America
Service / branch	Continental Army; Army of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
Years of service	1765–94
Rank	Brevet U.S. Brigadier General, October 1783; Generał Dywizji (Major General)
Unit	engineer, Continental Army; Naczelnik, Polish Army
Battles / wars	American Revolutionary War; Polish–Russian War of 1792 (Battle of Zieleńce, Battle of Dubienka); Kościuszko Uprising (Battle of Racławice, Battle of Maciejowice)
Awards	Order of the White Eagle, Virtuti Militari
Signature

Roch III coat-of-arms

Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kościuszko; [taˈdɛuʂ kɔɕˈt͡ɕuʂkɔ] ; 1746–1817) is a national hero in Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and the United States, who fought in Poland's struggles against Russia and on the American side in the American Revolutionary War. He was a close friend and admirer of Thomas Jefferson, with whom he shared Enlightenment ideals of human rights. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising against Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Prussia.

Kościuszko was born in February 1746 in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in a village that is now in Belarus; his exact birthdate is unknown. He graduated from the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw, Poland. On the outbreak of a civil war involving the Bar Confederation, Kościuszko moved to France to pursue further studies. He returned to Poland in 1774, two years after the First Partition of Poland, and took a position as tutor in the household of Józef Sylwester Sosnowski. After Kościuszko attempted to elope with his employer's daughter and was severely beaten by the governor's retainers, he returned to France. On learning in France about the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, in 1776 Kościuszko moved to the United States, where he took part in the fighting as a colonel in the Continental Army. An accomplished military architect, he also built state-of-the-art fortifications, perhaps most notably at West Point, New York. In 1783, in recognition of his services, the Continental Congress promoted him to brigadier general.

After returning to Poland in 1784, Kościuszko became a major general in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Army. In 1794, two years after the Polish–Russian War of 1792 had resulted in the Second Partition of Poland (1793), Kościuszko organized an uprising against Russia, serving as its Naczelnik (Chief). He was captured by Russian forces at the Battle of Maciejowice. The defeat of the Kościuszko Uprising led to the Third Partition of Poland (1795), which ended the country's independent existence for 123 years until the Second Polish Republic was founded in the wake of World War I, in 1918.

In 1796, following the death of Russia's Tsaritsa Catherine the Great, Kościuszko was pardoned by Tsar Paul I and emigrated to the United States. Two years later, he collected his back pay and entrusted it to Jefferson, stipulating in his last will that the money be spent on emancipating and educating black American slaves, including Jefferson's own; this never came to pass because of legal complications with Virginia law and with the will itself. Kościuszko returned to Europe, living in Switzerland until his death in 1817. In the 1850s, the money in his U.S. trust was turned over by the U.S. Supreme Court to his heirs in Europe.

Early life

Birthplace: Merechevschina manor

Kościuszko was born in February 1746 in the village of Mereczowszczyzna (now Merechevschina [Мерачоўшчына], Belarus), a folwark near the town of Kosów Poleski (now Kosava, Belarus). His exact birthdate is unknown; commonly cited are February 4 and February 12. The area lay within the Polesie region, then in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Kościuszko was the youngest son of a szlachcic (Polish nobleman), Ludwik Tadeusz Kościuszko, an officer in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Army, and his wife Tekla, née Ratomska The Kościuszkos held the Polish Roch III coat-of-arms. Tadeusz was baptized in both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, thereby receiving the names Andrzej and Tadeusz. His paternal family were ethnically Lithuanian-Ruthenian and traced their ancestry to Konstanty Fiodorowicz Kostiuszko, a courtier of Polish King Sigismund I the Old. Kościuszko's maternal family, the Ratomskis, were also Ruthenian.

Warsaw's Kazimierz Palace, where Kościuszko attended the Corps of Cadets

Modern Belarusian writers interpret his Ruthenian or Lithuanian heritage as Belarusian. He once described himself as a Litvin, a term that denoted a Polish-speaking inhabitant, of whatever ethnicity, of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Modern Belarusian writers interpret the word Litvin as designating a Belarusian, before the word "Belarusian" had come into use. Kościuszko, however, did not speak the Belarusian language; his family had become Polonized as early as the 16th century. Like most Polish-Lithuanian nobility of the time, the Kościuszkos spoke Polish and identified with Polish culture. At the time of Tadeusz Kościuszko's birth, the family possessed modest landholdings in the Grand Duchy.

In 1755 Kościuszko began attending school in Lubieszów, but never finished due to his family's financial straits after his father's death in 1758. In 1765 Poland's King Stanisław August Poniatowski established a Corps of Cadets (Korpus Kadetów), at what is now Warsaw University, to educate military officers and government officials. Kościuszko enrolled in the Corps on December 18, 1765, likely thanks to the backing of the Czartoryskis. The school emphasized military subjects and the liberal arts. Graduating on December 20, 1766, Kościuszko was promoted chorąży (lieutenant); he stayed on, as student and instructor, and by 1768 attained the rank of captain.

European travels

In 1768, civil war broke out in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, when the Bar Confederation sought to depose King Stanisław August Poniatowski. One of Kościuszko's brothers, Józef, fought on the side of the insurgents. Faced with a difficult choice between the rebels and his sponsors — the King and the Czartoryskis, who favored a gradualist approach to shedding Russian domination — Kościuszko chose to leave Poland. In late 1769 he and a colleague, the noted artist Aleksander Orłowski, were granted royal scholarships, and on October 5 they set off for Paris. They wanted to further their military education, but as foreigners they were barred from enrolling in a French military academy, and so they enrolled instead in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. There he pursued his desire for drawing and painting and took private lessons in architecture from the noted French architect Perronet.

For five years, however, Kościuszko audited lectures at, and frequented the libraries of, the Paris military academies. His exposure to the French Enlightenment, along with the religious tolerance practiced in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, strongly influenced his later career. The French economic theory of physiocracy made a particularly strong impression on his thinking. He also developed his artistic skills; and while his career would take him in a different direction, all his life he continued drawing and painting.

In the First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772), Russia, Prussia and Austria annexed large swaths of Polish-Lithuanian territory and gained influence over the internal politics of the reduced Poland and Lithuania. When Kościuszko finally returned home in 1774, he found that his brother Józef had squandered most of the family fortune, and there was no place for him in the Army, as he could not afford to buy an officer's commission. He took a position as tutor to the family of the magnate, province governor (voivode) and hetman Józef Sylwester Sosnowski and fell in love with the governor's daughter Ludwika. Their elopement was thwarted by her father's retainers. Kościuszko received a thrashing at their hands—an event that may have led to his later antipathy to class distinctions. In autumn 1775, to avoid Sosnowski and his retainers, he decided to emigrate.

In late 1775 he attempted to join the Saxon army but was turned down and decided to return to Paris. There he learned of the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, in which the British colonies in North America had revolted against the crown and begun their struggle for independence. The first American successes were well-publicized in France, and the French people and government openly supported the revolutionaries' cause.

American Revolutionary War

On learning of the American Revolution, Kościuszko, himself a man of revolutionary aspirations, sympathetic to the American cause and an advocate of human rights, sailed for America in June 1776 along with other foreign officers, likely with the help of a French supporter of the American revolutionaries, Pierre Beaumarchais. On August 30, 1776, Kościuszko submitted an application to the United States Congress, and the next day he was assigned to the United States War Department.

The north

Fort Clinton (West Point), fortified by Kościuszko. In background: his statue.

Kościuszko's first task was building fortifications at Fort Billingsport in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to protect the banks of the Delaware River against a possible British crossing. He initially served as a volunteer in the employ of Benjamin Franklin, but on October 18, 1776, Congress commissioned him a colonel of engineers in the Continental Army.

In spring 1777, Kościuszko was attached to the Northern Army under Major General Horatio Gates, arriving at the Canadian border in May 1777. Subsequently posted to Fort Ticonderoga, he reviewed the defenses of what had been one of the most formidable fortresses in North America. His surveys prompted him to strongly recommend the construction of a battery on Sugar Loaf, overlooking the fort. His prudent recommendation, in which his fellow engineers concurred, was turned down by the garrison commander, Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair. This proved a tactical blunder: when a British army under General John Burgoyne arrived in July 1777, Burgoyne did exactly what Kościuszko had warned of and had his engineers place artillery on the hill.

With the British in complete control of the high ground, the Americans realized their situation was hopeless and abandoned the fortress with hardly a shot fired in the Siege of Ticonderoga. The British advance force nipped hard on the heels of the outnumbered and exhausted Continentals as they fled south. Major General Philip Schuyler, desperate to put distance between his men and their pursuers, ordered Kościuszko to delay the enemy. Kościuszko designed an engineer's solution: his men felled trees, dammed streams, and destroyed bridges and causeways. Encumbered by their huge supply train, the British began to bog down, giving the Americans the time needed to safely withdraw across the Hudson River.

Gates tapped Kościuszko to survey the country between the opposing armies, choose the most defensible position, and fortify it. Finding just such a position near Saratoga, overlooking the Hudson at Bemis Heights, Kościuszko laid out a superb array of defenses, nearly impregnable from any direction. His judgment and meticulous attention to detail frustrated the British attacks during the Battle of Saratoga, and Gates accepted the surrender of Burgoyne's force there on October 16, 1777. The dwindling British army had been dealt a sound defeat, turning the tide to an American advantage. Kościuszko's work at Saratoga received great praise from Gates, who later told his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush: "[T]he great tacticians of the campaign were hills and forests, which a young Polish engineer was skillful enough to select for my encampment."

At some point in 1777, Kościuszko composed a polonaise and scored it for the harpsichord. Named for him, and with lyrics by Rajnold Suchodolski, it later became popular with Polish patriots during the November 1830 Uprising. Around that time, Kościuszko was assigned a black orderly, Agrippa Hull, whom he would treat as an equal and a friend.

In March 1778 Kościuszko arrived at West Point, New York, tasked with improving the stronghold's defenses. It was these that the American General Benedict Arnold subsequently attempted to surrender to the British when he turned traitor. Soon after Kościuszko had finished fortifying West Point, in August 1780, General Washington granted his request to transfer to battle duty with the Southern Army. Kościuszko's West Point fortifications would be widely praised as innovative for the time.

The south

Traveling south through rural Virginia in October 1780, Kościuszko reported in North Carolina to his former commander, General Gates. However, following Gates' disastrous defeat at Camden on August 16, Congress had selected Washington's choice, Major General Nathanael Greene, to replace the disgraced Gates as commander of the Southern Department. When Greene formally assumed command on December 3, 1780, he retained Kościuszko as his chief engineer. By then, he had been praised by both Gates and Greene.

Over the course of this campaign, Kościuszko was placed in command of building bateaux, siting camps, scouting river crossings, fortifying positions, and developing intelligence contacts. Many of his contributions were instrumental in preventing the destruction of the Southern Army. This was especially so during the famous "Race to the Dan", when British General Charles Cornwallis chased Greene across 200 miles (320 km) of rough back country in January and February 1781. Thanks largely to a combination of Greene's tactics, and Kościuszko's bateaux, and accurate scouting of the rivers ahead of the main body, the Continentals safely crossed each river, including the Yadkin and the Dan. Cornwallis, having no boats, and finding no way to cross the swollen Dan, finally gave up the chase and withdrew back into North Carolina. The Continentals regrouped south of Halifax, Virginia, where Kościuszko had earlier, at Greene's request, established a fortified depot.

During the Race to the Dan, Kościuszko had helped select the site where Greene eventually returned to fight Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse. Though tactically defeated, the Americans all but destroyed Cornwallis' army as an effective fighting force and gained a permanent strategic advantage in the South. Thus, when Greene began his reconquest of South Carolina in the spring of 1781, he summoned Kościuszko to rejoin the main body of the Southern Army. The combined forces of the Continentals and Southern militia gradually forced the British from the back country into the coastal ports during the latter half of 1781 and, on August 16, Kościuszko participated in the Second Battle of Camden. At Ninety Six, Kościuszko besieged the Star Fort from May 22 to June 18. During the unsuccessful siege, he suffered his only wound in seven years of service, bayonetted in the buttocks during an assault by the fort's defenders on the approach trench that he was constructing.

Kościuszko subsequently helped fortify the American bases in North Carolina. However, throughout the final year of hostilities he was most active in much smaller operations, harassing British foraging parties near Charleston. He had become engaged in these operations after the death of his friend Colonel Laurence, taking over Laurence's intelligence network in the area. He commanded two cavalry squadrons and an infantry unit, and his last known battlefield command of the war occurred at James Island, South Carolina, on November 14, 1782. In what has been described as the Continental Army's final armed action of the war, he was very nearly killed as his small force was routed. A month later, he was among the Continental troops that reoccupied Charleston following the British evacuation of the city. Kościuszko spent the rest of the war there, conducting a fireworks display on April 23, 1783, to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Paris earlier that month.

Mustering-out

Having not been paid in his seven years of service, in late May 1783, Kościuszko decided to collect the salary owed to him. That year he was asked by Congress to supervise the fireworks during the July 4 celebrations at Princeton, New Jersey. On October 13, 1783, Congress promoted him to brigadier general, but he still had not received his back pay; many other officers and soldiers were in the same situation. While waiting for his pay, unable even to finance a voyage back to Europe, Kościuszko, like a number of others, lived on money borrowed from the Polish-Jewish banker Haym Solomon. Eventually he would receive a certificate for 12,280 dollars, at 6%, to be paid on January 1, 1784, and the right to 500 acres (202.34 ha; 0.78 sq mi) of land, but only if he chose to settle in the United States. For the winter of 1783-84, his former commanding officer, General Greene, invited Kościuszko to stay at his mansion. He was also inducted into the Society of the Cincinnati.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

On July 15, 1784, Kościuszko set off, via Paris, for Poland, where he arrived on August 26. Due to a conflict between his patrons, the Czartoryskis, and King Stanisław August Poniatowski, Kościuszko once again failed to get a commission in the Commonwealth Army. He settled in Siechnowicze (Belarusian: Сяхновічы, now Sehnovichi, Belarus). His brother Józef had lost most of the family's lands through bad investments, but with the help of his sister Anna, Kościuszko secured part of the lands for himself. He decided to limit his male peasants' corvée (obligatory service to the lord of the manor) to two days a week, and completely exempted the female peasants. His estate soon stopped being profitable, and he began going into debt. The situation was not helped by failure of the money promised by the American government—interest on late payment for his seven years' military service—to materialize. Kościuszko struck up friendships with liberal activists; Hugo Kołłątaj offered him a position as lecturer at Krakow's Jagiellonian University, which Kościuszko declined.

Finally the Great Sejm of 1788–92 introduced some reforms, including a planned build-up of the army to defend the Commonwealth's borders. Kościuszko saw a chance to return to military service and spent some time in Warsaw, among those who engaged in the political debates outside the Great Sejm. He wrote a proposal to create a militia force, on the American model. As political pressure grew to build up the army, and Kościuszko's political allies gained influence with the King, Kościuszko again applied for a commission, and on October 12, 1789, received a royal commission as a general. He began receiving the high salary of 12,000 złotych a year, ending his financial difficulties. He asked for a transfer to the Lithuanian army but was instead assigned to a unit in the west, in Greater Poland. On February 1, 1790, he reported for duty in Włocławek, and in mid-March he was given a command. Around summer, he commanded some infantry and cavalry units in the region between the Bug and Vistula Rivers. In August 1790 he was posted to Volhynia, stationed near Starokostiantyniv and Międzyborze. Prince Józef Poniatowski, who happened to be the King's nephew, recognized Kościuszko's superior experience and made him his second-in-command.

Meanwhile Kościuszko became more closely involved with the political reformers, befriending Hugo Kołłątaj, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and others. Kościuszko argued that the peasants and Jews should receive full citizenship status, as this would motivate them to help defend Poland in the event of war. The political reformers centered in the Patriotic Party scored a major victory with the adoption of the Constitution of May 3, 1791. Kościuszko saw the Constitution as a step in the right direction, but was disappointed that it retained monarchy and did little to improve the situation of the most underprivileged, the peasants and the Jews. The Commonwealth's neighbors saw the Constitution's reforms as a threat to their influence over Polish internal affairs. A year after the Constitution's adoption, on May 14, 1792, reactionary magnates formed the Targowica Confederation, which asked Russia's Tsaritsa Catherine II for help in overthrowing the Constitution. Four days later, on May 18, 1792, a 100,000-man Russian army crossed the Polish border, headed for Warsaw, beginning the Polish–Russian War of 1792.

Defense of the Constitution

Kościuszko, by Juliusz Kossak

The Russians had a 3:1 advantage in strength, with some 98,000 men against 37,000 Poles; they also had an advantage in combat experience. Before the Russians invaded, Kościuszko had been appointed deputy commander of Prince Józef Poniatowski's infantry division, stationed in Polish West Ukraine. When the Prince had become Commander-in-Chief of the entire Polish (Crown) Army on May 3, 1792, Kościuszko had been given command of a division near Kiev.

The Russians attacked on a wide front with three armies. Kościuszko proposed that the entire Polish army be concentrated and engage one of the Russian armies, in order to assure numerical parity and boost the morale of the mostly inexperienced Polish forces with a quick victory; but Poniatowski rejected this plan. On May 22, 1792, the Russian forces crossed the border in Ukraine, where Kościuszko and Poniatowski were stationed. The Crown Army was judged too weak to oppose the four enemy columns advancing into West Ukraine, and began a fighting withdrawal to the western side of the Southern Bug River, with Kościuszko commanding the rear guard. On June 18, Poniatowski won the Battle of Zieleńce; Kościuszko's division, on detached rear-guard duty, did not take part in the battle and rejoined the main army only at nightfall; nonetheless, his diligent protection of the main army's rear and flanks won him the newly created Virtuti Militari, to this day Poland's highest military decoration. (Storożyński, however, states that Kościuszko received the Virtuti Militari for his later, July 18 victory at Dubienka.) The Polish withdrawal continued, and on July 7 Kościuszko's forces fought a delaying battle against the Russians at Volodymyr-Volynskyi (the Battle of Włodzimierz). On reaching the northern Bug River, the Polish Army was split into three divisions to hold the river defensive line — weakening the Poles' point numerical superiority, against Kościuszko's counsel of a single strong, concentrated army group.

Kościuszko's force was assigned to protect the front's southern flank, touching up to the Austrian border. At the Battle of Dubienka (July 18, 1792) Kościuszko repulsed a numerically superior enemy, skilfully using terrain obstacles and field fortifications, and came to be regarded as one of Poland's most brilliant military commanders of the age. With some 5,300 men, he defeated 25,000 Russians attacking under General Michail Kachovski. Despite the tactical victory, Kościuszko had to retreat from Dubienka, as the Russians crossed the nearby Austrian border and began flanking his positions.

After the battle, King Stanisław August Poniatowski promoted Kościuszko to lieutenant-general and awarded him the Order of the White Eagle. News of Kościuszko's victory spread over Europe, and on August 26 he received the honorary citizenship of France from the Legislative Assembly of revolutionary France. While Kościuszko considered the war's outcome to still be unsettled, the King requested a ceasefire. On July 24, 1792, before Kościuszko had received his promotion to lieutenant-general, the King shocked the army by announcing his accession to the Targowica Confederation and ordering the Polish-Lithuanian armies to cease hostilities against the Russians. Kościuszko considered abducting the King (as the Bar Confederates had done two decades earlier, in 1771) but was dissuaded by Prince Józef Poniatowski. On August 30 Kościuszko resigned his army position and briefly returned to Warsaw, where he received his promotion and pay, but refused the King's request that he remain in the Army. Around that time, he also fell ill with jaundice.

Émigré

Kościuszko wearing Virtuti Militari and Eagle of the Cincinnati

The King's capitulation was a hard blow for Kościuszko, who had not lost a single battle in the campaign. By mid-September 1792 he was resigned to leaving the country, and in early October he departed Warsaw. First he went east, to the Czartoryski family manor at Sieniawa, which gathered various malcontents. In mid-November he spent two weeks in Lwów (in Ukrainian, Lviv; in German, Lemberg), where he was welcomed by the populace; since the war's end, his presence had drawn crowds eager to see the famed commander. Izabela Czartoryska discussed having him marry her daughter Zofia. The Russians planned to arrest him if he returned to territory under their control; the Austrians, who held Lwów, offered him a commission in the Austrian Army, which he turned down. Subsequently they planned to deport him, but he left Lwów before they could do so. At the turn of the month, he stopped in Zamość at the Zamoyskis' estate, met Stanisław Staszic, then went on to Puławy.

He did not tarry long there either: on December 12–13, he was in Kraków; on December 17, in Wrocław; and shortly after, he left Polish soil and settled in Leipzig, where many notable Polish soldiers and politicians formed an émigré community. Soon he and some others began plotting an uprising against Russian rule in Poland. The politicians, grouped around Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj, sought contacts with similar opposition groups in Poland and by spring 1793 had been joined by other politicians and revolutionaries, including Ignacy Działyński. While Kołłątaj and others had begun planning an uprising before Kościuszko joined them, his support was a major boon to them, as he was among the most popular individuals in Poland.

After two weeks in Leipzig, before the second week of January 1793, Kościuszko set off for Paris, where he tried to gain French support for the planned uprising in Poland. He stayed there until summer, but despite the growing revolutionary influence there, the French paid only lip service to the Polish cause, and refused to commit themselves to anything concrete. Kościuszko concluded that the French authorities were not interested in Poland beyond what use it could have for their own cause, and he was increasingly disappointed in the pettiness of the French Revolution—the infighting among different factions, and the growing reign of terror.

On January 23, 1793, Prussia and Russia signed the Second Partition of Poland. The Grodno Sejm, convened under duress in June, ratified the partition and was also forced to rescind the Constitution of May 3, 1791. With the second partition, Poland became a small country of roughly 200,000 square kilometres (77,000 sq mi) and a population of some 4 million. This came as a shock to the Targowica Confederates, who had seen themselves as defenders of centuries-old privileges of the magnates, but had hardly expected that their appeal for help to the Tsarina of Russia would further reduce and weaken their country.

In August 1793 Kościuszko, though worried that an uprising would have little chance against the three partitioning powers, returned to Leipzig, where he was met with demands to start planning one as soon as possible. In September he clandestinely crossed the Polish border to conduct personal observations and meet with sympathetic high-ranking officers in the residual Polish Army, including General Józef Wodzicki. The preparations went slowly, and he left for Italy, planning to return in February 1794. However, the situation in Poland was changing rapidly. The Russian and Prussian governments forced Poland to again disband most of her army, and the reduced units were to be incorporated into the Russian Army. In March, Tsarist agents discovered the revolutionaries in Warsaw and began arresting notable Polish politicians and military commanders. Kościuszko was forced to execute his plan earlier than he had intended and, on March 15, 1794, set off for Kraków.

Kościuszko Uprising

Kościuszko and peasant scythemen, from Matejko's Battle of Racławice

Main article: Kościuszko Uprising

Learning that the Russian garrison had departed Kraków, Kościuszko entered the city on the night of March 23, 1794. The next morning, at the Main Square, he announced an uprising. Kościuszko received the title of Naczelnik (Commander-in-Chief) of Polish-Lithuanian forces fighting against the Russian occupation. He proceeded to mobilize the populace, intending to raise sufficient numbers of volunteers to counteract the larger and more professional Russian Army. He also hoped that neither Austria nor Prussia would intervene, and so discouraged insurgent activity in the Austrian and Prussian Partitions.

Kościuszko gathered an army of some 6,000, including 4,000 regular soldiers and 2,000 recruits, and marched on Warsaw. The Russians succeeded in organizing an army to oppose him more quickly than he had expected, but he scored a victory at Racławice on April 4, 1793, where he turned the tide by personally leading an infantry charge of peasant volunteers (kosynierzy, scythemen). Nonetheless, this Russian defeat was not strategically significant, and the Russian forces quickly forced Kościuszko to retreat toward Kraków. Near Połaniec he received reinforcements and met with other Uprising leaders (Kołłątaj, Potocki); Połaniec became the site of a major political declaration of the Uprising, the Połaniec Manifesto. Meanwhile the Russians set a bounty for Kościuszko's capture, "dead or alive".

By June, the Prussians had begun actively aiding the Russians, and on June 6, 1793, Kościuszko fought a defensive battle against a Prussian-Russian force at Szczekociny. From late June, for several weeks, he defended Warsaw, controlled by the insurgents. By the morning of September 6, the Prussian forces having been withdrawn to suppress an uprising underway in Greater Poland, the siege of Warsaw was lifted. On October 10, during a sortie against a new Russian attack, Kościuszko was wounded and captured at Maciejowice. He was imprisoned by the Russians at Saint Petersburg in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Soon afterward, the Uprising ended with the Battle of Praga, where (according to a contemporary Russian witness) the Russians troops massacred 20,000 Warsaw residents. The subsequent Third Partition of Poland ended the existence of the sovereign Polish state for the next 123 years.

Later life

House in Philadelphia where Kościuszko stayed, 1796

The death of Tsarina Catherine the Great on November 17, 1796, led to a change in Russia's policies toward Poland. On November 28 Tsar Paul I, who had hated Catherine, pardoned Kościuszko and set him free, after he had tendered an oath of loyalty. Paul promised to free all Polish political prisoners held in Russian prisons and forcibly settled in Siberia. The Tsar gave Kościuszko 12,000 rubles, which the Pole later, in 1798, attempted to return, when also renouncing the oath.

Kościuszko left for the United States, via Stockholm, Sweden, and London, departing from Bristol on June 17, and arriving in Philadelphia on August 18. Though welcomed by the populace, he was viewed with suspicion by the American government, controlled by the Federalists, who disliked Kościuszko for his previous association with the Democratic-Republican Party. Feeling uncomfortable in the United States, Kościuszko decided to return to France. Before leaving, he wrote a last will which allocated substantial of his resources to the manumission of American black slaves.

The following year he returned to Europe, arriving in Bayonne, France, on June 28, 1798. Kościuszko remained politically active in Polish émigré circles in France, on August 7, 1799, joining the Society of Polish Republicans (Towarzystwo Republikanów Polskich). He refused, however, the offered command of Polish Legions being formed for service with France. On October 17 and November 6, 1799, he met with Napoleon Bonaparte; however, he failed to reach an agreement with the French leader, who regarded Kościuszko a "fool" who "overestimated his influence" in Poland. Kościuszko, for his part, disliked Napoleon for his dictatorial aspirations and called him the "undertaker of the [French] Republic". In 1801 Kościuszko settled in Breville, near Paris, distancing himself from politics.

Last residence, Solothurn, Switzerland

Kościuszko did not believe that Napoleon would restore Poland in any durable form. When Napoleon's forces approached the borders of Poland, Kościuszko wrote him a letter, demanding guarantees of parliamentary democracy and substantial national borders, which Napoleon ignored. Kościuszko concluded that Napoleon had created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 only as an expedient, not because he supported Polish sovereignty. Consequently Kościuszko did not move to the Duchy of Warsaw or join the new Army of the Duchy, allied with Napoleon.

Instead, after the fall of Napoleon, he met with Russia's Tsar Alexander I, in Paris and then in Braunau, Switzerland. The Tsar hoped that Kościuszko could be convinced to return to Poland, where the Tsar planned to create a new, Russian-allied Polish state (the Congress Kingdom). In return for his prospective services, Kościuszko demanded social reforms and restoration of territory, which he wished to reach the Dvina and Dnieper Rivers in the east. However, soon afterwards, in Vienna, Kościuszko learned that the Kingdom of Poland created by the Tsar would be even smaller than the earlier Duchy of Warsaw. Kościuszko called such an entity "a joke". When he received no reply to his letters to the Tsar, he left Vienna and moved to Solothurn, Switzerland.

On April 2, 1817, Kościuszko emancipated the peasants in his remaining lands in Poland, but Tsar Alexander disallowed it. Suffering from poor health and old wounds, on October 15, 1817, Kościuszko died there after falling from a horse, getting a fever, and suffering a stroke a few days later, at the age of 71.

Funerals

Urn with Kościuszko's heart, Royal Castle, Warsaw

Kościuszko's first funeral was held on October 19, 1817, at a formerly Jesuit church in Solothurn. As news of his death spread, masses and memorial services were held in partitioned Poland. His embalmed body was deposited in a crypt of the Solothurn church. The viscera, which had been removed during embalming, were separately interred in a graveyard at Zuchwil, near Solothurn, except for the heart, for which an urn was fashioned.

In 1818, Kościuszko's body was transferred to Kraków, arriving at St. Florian's Church on April 11, 1818. On June 22, 1818, or June 23, 1819 (accounts vary), to the tolling of the Sigismund Bell and the firing of cannon, it was placed in a crypt at Wawel Cathedral, a pantheon of Polish kings and national heroes. Kościuszko's heart, which had been kept at the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, Switzerland, was in 1927, along with the rest of the Museum's holdings, repatriated to Warsaw, where the heart now reposes in a chapel at the Royal Castle.

Last will

In March 1798 Kościuszko had received a bundle of letters from Europe. The news in one of them came as a shock to him, causing him, in his crippled condition, to spring from his couch and limp unassisted to the middle of the room and exclaim to General Anthony Walton White, "I must return at once to Europe!" He immediately consulted Thomas Jefferson, who procured him a passport under a false name and arranged for his secret departure for France. Kościuszko left no word for either his former comrade-in-arms and fellow St. Petersburg prisoner Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz or for his servant, only leaving some money for them.

Before departing for France he collected his back pay and wrote out a will which he gave and entrusted to Jefferson as executor, in which, as he did more than half a century before the American Civil War, pleaded for the emancipation of Negro slaves. In the will, Kościuszko left his American estate to buy the freedom of black slaves, including Jefferson's, and to educate them for independent life and work. Several years after Kościuszko's death, Jefferson, aged 77, pleaded inability to act as executor due to age and to the complexity of the case. Jefferson said he wanted to educate blacks before they were freed, but manumission was formally against Virginia law. There were also political considerations by this time, and Jefferson recommended his friend John Hartwell Cocke, who also opposed slavery, as executor, but for similar reasons Cocke refused to execute the bequest. The case of Kościuszko's American estate went three times to the U.S. Supreme Court. None of the money that Kościuszko had earmarked for the manumission and education of African Americans in the United States was ever used for that purpose.

Memorials and tributes

Main articles: Commemoration of Tadeusz Kościuszko and List of things named after Tadeusz Kościuszko

Kościuszko Mound, 112 ft (34 m) high, Kraków, Poland

The Polish historian Stanisław Herbst states in the 1967 Polish Biographical Dictionary that Kościuszko may be Poland's and the world's most popular Pole ever. There are monuments to him around the world, beginning with the Kościuszko Mound at Kraków, erected in 1820–23. The Thaddeus Kosciusko Bridge in Albany, New York; and the Kosciuszko Bridge in New York City are named in Kosciuszko's honor.

Kościuszko's 1796 Philadelphia residence is now the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, America's smallest national park or unit of the National Park System. There is a Kościuszko Museum at his last residence, in Solothurn, Switzerland. A Polish-American cultural agency, the Kosciuszko Foundation, headquartered in New York City, was created in 1925.

A series of Polish Air Force units have borne the name, "Kościuszko Squadron". Named for him, during World War II, was a Polish Navy ship and the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division.

One of the first examples of a historical novel, Thaddeus of Warsaw was written in his honor by the Scottish authoress Jane Porter. Detailing the 1790s revolts in Poland, it proved very popular, particularly in the United States, and went through a dozen editions. An opera, Kościuszko nad Sekwaną (Kościuszko at the Seine), written in the early 1820s, featured music by Franciszek Salezy Dutkiewicz and libretto by Konstanty Majeranowski. Later works have included dramas by Apollo Korzeniowski, Justyn Hoszowski and Władysław Ludwik Anczyc; three novels by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, one by Walery Przyborowski, one by Władysław Stanisław Reymont; and works by Maria Konopnicka. Kościuszko also appears in non-Polish literature, including a sonnet by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another by James Henry Leigh Hunt, poems by John Keats and Walter Savage Landor, a novel by Jane Porter, and a work by Karl Eduard von Holtei.

In 1933 the U.S. Post office issued a commemorative stamp honoring Kosciuszko that depicts an engraving of his statue that stands in Lafayette Park in Washington DC. The stamp was issued on the 150th anniversary of Kosciusko's naturalization as an American citizen. Kosciuszko's native country of Poland has also issued several stamps in his honor.

There are statues of Kosciuszko in Poland at Kraków (by Leonard Marconi) and Łódź (by Mieczysław Lubelski); in the United States at Boston, West Point, Philadelphia (by Marian Konieczny), Detroit (a copy of Marconi's Kraków statue), Washington, D.C., Chicago, Milwaukee and Cleveland; and in Switzerland at Solothurn. Kościuszko has been the subject of paintings by Richard Cosway, Franciszek Smuglewicz, Michał Stachowicz, Juliusz Kossak and Jan Matejko. A monumental Racławice Panorama was painted by Jan Styka and Wojciech Kossak for the centenary of the 1794 Battle of Racławice.

Mount Kosciuszko, Australia

The tallest mountain in Australia, Mount Kosciuszko, is named after him. In the United States, named for him is an island (Kosciusko Island), in Alaska; a county (Kosciusko County) in Indiana; as well as innumerable cities, towns, streets and parks.

Kościuszko has been the subject of many written works. The first biography of him was published in 1820 by Niemcewicz; English-language biographies have included Monica Mary Gardner, Kościuszko: A Biography, 1920, and Alex Storozynski, The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution, St. Martin's Press, 2009.

See also

• Kazimierz Pułaski (Anglicized as "Casimir Pulaski"), another Polish commander in the American Revolutionary War

Bibliography

• Bardach, Juliusz; Leśnodorski, Bogusław; Pietrzak, Michał (1987). History of the Polish State and Law. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

• Cizauskas, Albert C. (1986). "The Unusual Story of Thaddeus Kosciusko". Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences, Lituanus. 32 (1). Chicago, Illinois: Lituanus Foundation, Inc.

• Colimore, Edward (December 10, 2007). "Fighting to save remains of a fort". Philadelphia Inquirer. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

• Davies, Norman (2005). God's Playground: A History of Poland in Two Volumes. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 216–217. ISBN 978-0-19-925340-1.

• Gardner, Monica Mary (1942). Kościuszko: a biography. G. Allen & Unwin., ltd. p. 136., Book (Google), Book (Gutenberg)

• Herbst, Stanisław (1969). Tadeusz Kościuszko (in Polish). Vol. 14. p. 439. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |work= ignored (help)

• Kite, Elizabeth S. (1918). Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence. Boston: Gorham Press. p. 614. E'book

• Kajencki, Francis C. (October 1998). Thaddeus Kościuszko: military engineer of the American Revolution. Southwest Polonia Press. ISBN 978-0-9627190-4-2.

• Korzon, Tadeusz (1894). Kościuszko: biografia z dokumentów wysnuta (in Polish). Nakł. Muzeum Narodowego w Rapperswylu. p. 819.

• Landau, Zbigniew; Tomaszewski, Jerzy (1985). The Polish Economy: In the Twentieth Century. Poland: Croom Helm. ISBN 978-0-7099-1607-9.

• Lukowski, Jerzy; Zawadzki, W. H. (2001). A Concise History of Poland. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-521-55917-1.

• Nash, Gary; Hodges, Graham Russell Gao (2012). Friends of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull. New York, NY: Basic Books. p. 328. ISBN 978-0-465-03148-1.

• Ottenberg, Louis (1958). "A Testamentary Tragedy: Jefferson and the Wills of General Kosciuszko". Washington D.C.: American Bar Association Journal: 22–26. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

• Paulauskienė, Aušra (2007). Lost And Found: The Discovery of Lithuania in American Fiction. Amersterdam, New York: Rodopi B.V.,. p. 173. ISBN 978-90-420-2266-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

• Palmer, Dave R. (1976). "Fortress West Point: 19th Century Concept in an 18th Century War". Military Engineer (68).

• Savas, Theodore P.; Dameron, J. David (2010). New American Revolution Handbook: Facts and Artwork for Readers of All Ages, 1775–1783. New York, NY: Casemate Publishers. p. 160. ISBN 978-1-932714-93-7.

• Saverchenko, Ivan; Sanko, Dmitry (1999). 150 Questions and Answers of the History of Belarus. Менск.

• Stone, Daniel (2001). The Polish-Lithuanian State: 1386–1795. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press. p. 374. ISBN 978-0-295-98093-5.

• Storozynski, Alex (2009). The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution. St. Martin's Press, New York. p. 352. ISBN 978-1-4299-6607-8.

• Storozynski, Alex (2011). Kosciuszko Ksiaze chlopow. W.A.B. p. 476. ISBN 978-83-7414-930-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |authormask= ignored (|author-mask= suggested) (help)

• Sulkin, Sidney; Sulkin, Edith (1944). The Democratic Heritage of Poland, "For Your Freedom and Ours": An Anthology. Poland: Allen & Unwin.

• Sužiedėlis, Saulius (2011-02-07). Historical Dictionary of Lithuania. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 428. ISBN 978-0-8108-4914-3.

• Szyndler, Bartłomiej (1994). Powstanie kościuszkowskie 1794 (in Polish). Poland: Ancher. ISBN 978-83-85576-10-5.

• Szyndler, Bartłomiej (1991). Tadeusz Kościuszko, 1746-1817 (in Polish). Poland: Wydawnictwo Bellona. ISBN 978-83-11-07728-7.

Other sources

• Anderton, Margaret. "The Spirit of the Polonaise: Polish Music Journal 5.2.02 –". Usc.edu. Retrieved November 17, 2012.

• Bumblauskas, Alfredas. "Lithuania's Millennium – Millennium Lithuaniae, Or what Lithuania can tell the world on this occasion" (PDF). Retrieved January 20, 2010.
• Chodakiewicz, Marek Jan. "Tadeusz Kosciuszko: A man of unwavering principle". The Institute of World Politics. Retrieved July 3, 2009.

• "The Kosciuszko Foundation: Mission and History". The Kosciuszko Foundation, New York. Retrieved Sept.29, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

• Nash, Gary; Russell, Graham; Hodges, Gao (2008). "Why We Should All Regret Jefferson's Broken Promise to Kościuszko". History News Network. Retrieved April 21, 2013.
• Новости (2009-03-24). "TUTэйшыя ў свеце. Касцюшка – Общество – TUT.BY | НОВОСТИ – 24.03.2009, 13:46". News.tut.by. Retrieved November 17, 2012.
• Под ред, С. Каўн (2006). Вялікае княства літоўскае: гісторыя вывучэння. Мінск : Медисонт. p. 544. ISBN 985-6530-29-6.
• Gordon T. Trotter, ed. (2007). "Kosciuszko Issue". Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Retrieved Sept.25, 2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

Further reading

• Honeyman, A. Van Doren (1918). Somerset County Historical Quarterly, Volume 7. Somerset, New Jersey: Somerset County Historical Society. p. 334., E'book
• Niestsiarchuk, Leanid (2006). Андрэй Тадэвуш Банавентура Касцюшка: Вяртаннегероя нарадзіму (Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kosciuszko: Return of the Hero to his Motherland) (in Belarusian). Brest, Belarus: ААТ "Брэсцкая друкарня". ISBN 985-6665-93-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Pula, James S. (1998). Thaddeus Kosciuszko: The Purest Son of Liberty. New York: Hippocrene Books. ISBN 0-7818-0576-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• White, Anthony Walton (1883). Memoir of Thaddeus Kosciuszko: Poland's hero and patriot, an officer in the American army of the revolution, and member of the Society of the Cincinnati. G. A. Thitchener. p. 58., E'book

External links

• Kosciuszko by Monica Mary Gardner
• The Kosciuszko Foundation. (Polish-American cultural foundation named for General Tadeusz Kosciuszko.)
• About.com feature on Tadeusz Kosciuszko.
• Polish Embassy in the United States: a tribute page.
• U.S. Kosciuszko National Monument web site.
• Kosciuszko Polish-American Historical Society, Inc., of the Valley Ansonia – Derby – Shelton – Seymour, Connecticut.
• Tadeusz Kościuszko at Find a Grave
• Photographs of Mereszowszczyzna manor in Belarus.
• Will of Thaddeus Kosciuszko.
• "KOSCIUSZKO'€™S GARDEN: Flowers of Verse for the Polish and American Patriot"