Kościuszko

Kościuszko remained in Cracow until the jest of April , overwhelmed from six in the morning till far into the night by the affairs of the Rising, collecting his army, sending broadcast secret letters hidden in pincushions or otherwise concealed by the officers to whom they were entrusted, directing the supremely important task of concentrating the scattered Polish regiments that were with varying success fighting their way towards him. He was working against time with the Russians forming up against his scanty numbers. "For the love of our country make haste," is his ever-recurrent cry in his directions to his subordinates. On the 1st of April he left Cracow at the head of his small army, prepared to take the field against the enemy who was about to attack Madalinski. At his camp outside Cracow his long-cherished desire was fulfilled; bands of peasants, some two thousand strong, marched in, armed "with their pikes and the scythes that won them the name, famous in Polish annals, of the "Reapers of Death." Mountaineers, too, came down in their brilliantly coloured garb from the Polish Carpathians. To all these men from the fields and the hills Kościuszko became not only an adored chief, but an equally beloved brother in arms.

On the day following the advent of the peasants, on the 4th of April, was fought the famous battle of Racławice.

Kościuszko was no invincible hero of legend. His military talent was undoubted, but not superlative and not infallible; yet Racławice was the triumph of a great idea, the victory, under the strength of the ideal, of a few against many. It lives as one of those moments in a nation's history that will only die with the nation that inspired it. The peasants turned the tide of the hotly fought battle. "Peasants, take those cannon for me. God and our country!" was Kościuszko's cry of thunder. Urging each other on by the homely names they were wont to call across their native fields, the peasants swept like a hurricane upon the Russian battery, carrying all before them with their deadly scythes, while Kościuszko rode headlong at their side. They captured eleven cannon, and cut the Russian ranks to pieces. Even in our own days the plough has turned up the bones of those who fell in the fight, and graves yet mark the battle lines. In the camp that night Kościuszko, with bared head, thanked the army in the name of Poland for its valour, ending his address with the cry, "Vivat the nation! Vivat Liberty!" taken up by the soldiers with the acclamation. "Vivat Kościuszko!" Kościuszko then publicly conferred upon the peasant Bartos, who had been the first to reach the Russian battery – he perished at Szczekociny – promotion and nobility with the name of Głowacki. Before all the army he flung off his uniform and donned, as a sign of honour to his peasant soldiers, their dress, the sukman, which he henceforth always wore – the long loose coat held with a broad girdle and reaching below the knee.

"The sacred watchword of nation and of freedom," wrote Kościuszko in his report of the battle to the Polish nation, "moved the soul and valour of the soldier fighting for the fate of his country and for her freedom." He commends the heroism of the young volunteers in their baptism of fire. He singles out his generals, Madalinski and Zajonczek, for praise. Characteristically he breathes no hint of his own achievements.

"Nation!" he concludes. "Feel at last thy strength; put it wholly forth. Set thy will on being free and independent. By unity and courage thou shalt reach this honoured end. Prepare thy soul for victories and defeats. In both of them the spirit of true patriotism should maintain its strength and energy. All that remains to me is to praise thy Rising and to serve thee, so long as Heaven permits me to live."50

The Polish army was badly broken at Racławice, and Kościuszko's immediate affair was its reorganization; but the moral effect of the victory was enormous. Polish nobles opened their private armouries and brought out the family weapons. Labourers armed themselves with spades and shovels. Women fought with pikes. The name of Kościuszko was alone enough by now to gather men to his side. "Kościuszko! Freedom! Our country!" became the morning and the evening greeting between private persons.

After the battle of Racławice, Kościuszko at once issued further calls to arms, especially urging the enrolment of the peasants. This measure was to be effected, so Kościuszko insisted, with the greatest consideration for the feelings of the peasants, all violence being scrupulously avoided, while the land-owners were requested to care for the families of the breadwinners during their absence at the war. The general levy of the nation was proclaimed. In every town and village at the sound of the alarm bell the inhabitants were to rally to the public meeting-place with scythes, pikes or axes, and place themselves at the disposition of the appointed leaders. Thus did Kościuszko endeavour to realize his favourite project of an army of the people.

Unable for lack of soldiers to follow up his victory, Kościuszko remained in camp, training his soldiers, sending summonses to the various provinces to rise, and seeing to the internal affairs of government. The oaks still stand under which the Polish leader sat in sight of the towers of Cracow, as he cast his plans for the salvation of Poland. The spot is marked by a grave where lie the remains of soldiers who died at Racławice; and on one of the trees a Polish officer cut a cross, still visible in recent years.

Kościuszko's character held in marked measure that most engaging quality of his nation, what we may term the Polish sweetness but it never degenerated into softness. His severity to those who held back when their country required them was inexorable.

"I cannot think of the inactivity of the citizens of Sandomierz without emotions of deep pain," he writes to that province, which showed no great readiness to join the Rising. "So the love of your country has to content itself with enthusiasm without deed, with fruitless desires, with the sufferings of a weakness which cannot take a bold step! Believe me, the first one among you who proclaims the watchword of the deliverance of our country, and courageously gives the example of himself, will experience how easy it is to awaken in men courage and determination when an aim deserving of respect and instigations to virtue only are placed before them. Compatriots! This is not now the time to guard formalities and to approach the work of the national Rising with a lagging step. To arms, Poles, to arms! God has already blessed the Polish weapons, and His powerful Providence has manifested in what manner this country must be freed from the enemy, how to be free and independent depends only on our will. Unite, then, all your efforts to a universal arming. Who is not with us is against us. I have believed that no Pole will be in that case. If that hope deceives me, and there are found men who would basely deny their country, the country will disown them and will give them over to the national vengeance, to their own shame and severe responsibility."51

This language ran like a fiery arrow through the province: it rose. On all sides the country rose. Kościuszko's envoy carried to one of the Polish officers in Warsaw the terse message: "You have a heart and virtue. Stand at the head of the work. The country will perish by delay. Begin, and you will not repent it. T. Kościuszko."52 By the time this letter reached its destination Warsaw had already risen."

For weeks the preparation for the Rising in Warsaw had been stealthily carried forward. Igelstrom had conceived the plan of surrounding the churches by Russian soldiers on Holy Saturday, disarming what was left of the Polish army in the town, and taking over the arsenal. The secret was let out too soon by a drunken Russian officer, and the Polish patriots, headed by the shoemaker Kilinski, gave the signal. Two thousand, three hundred and forty Poles flew to arms against nine thousand Russian soldiers. Then ensued the terrible street fighting, in which Kilinski was seen at every spot where the fire was hottest. Each span of earth, in the graphic phrase of a Polish historian, became a battlefield.53 Through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday the city was lit up by conflagrations, while its pavements streamed with blood. When the morning of Holy Saturday broke the Russians were out of the capital of Poland, and all the Easter bells in Warsaw were crashing forth peals of joy. Stanislas Augustus, who a few weeks earlier had at Igelstrom's bidding publicly proclaimed Kościuszko to be a rebel and an outlaw, now went over to the winning side. On Easter Sunday the cathedral rang to the strains of the Te Deum, at which the King assisted, and on the same day the citizens of Warsaw signed the Act of the Rising and the oath of allegiance to Kościuszko. The news was brought into Kościuszko's camp in hot haste by an officer from Warsaw. It was in the evening. Drums beat, the camp re-echoed with song, and on the following morning a solemn Mass of thanksgiving was celebrated. No salvos were fired, in order to spare the powder. "Henceforth," joyfully cried Kościuszko in a manifesto to his country, "the gratitude of the nation will join their names" – those of Mokronowski and Zakrzewski, the President of Warsaw, who had been mainly responsible for the city's deliverance – "with the love of country itself. Nation! These are the glorious deeds of thy Rising; but," adds Kościuszko, whose foresight and sober judgment were never carried away by success, "remember this truth that thou hast done nothing so long as there is left anything still to be done."54

Three days after Warsaw was freed, Wilno, with a handful of soldiers rising in the night, drove out the Russian garrison, and the Russian army retreated through Lithuania, marking their way by atrocities which were but a foretaste of what awaited in no distant future that most unhappy land.

"The powerful God," says the pronunciamento of the Provisional Deputy Council of Wilno – "delivering the Polish nation from the cruel yoke of slavery has, O citizens of Lithuania, sent Tadeusz Kościuszko, our fellow-countryman, to the holy soil to fulfil His will. By reason of the valour of that man whose very dust your posterity will honour and revere, the liberties of the Poles have been born again. At the name alone of that knightly man the Polish land has taken another form, another spirit has begun to govern the heart of the dweller in an oppressed country. … To him we owe our country! To him we owe the uplifting of ourselves, to his virtue, to his zeal and to his courage."55

The burden that rested on the shoulders of Kościuszko was one that would have seemed beyond the mastery of one man. He had to raise an army, find money, ammunition, horses, provisions. He had to initiate and organize the Rising in every province, bearing in mind and appealing to the distinctive individualities of each, dealing in his instructions not merely with the transcendentally difficult material matters of the Rising, but with involved moral questions. He was the military chief, responsible for the whole plan of action of a war for national existence. He was the civil chief, chosen to rule the nation when the most skilful steering of the ship of state was requisite – when the government of the country, owing to dismemberment, foreign intrigues, foreign invasion, internal disunion, was in a condition of chaos. The soundest political acumen, the most unerring tact, was exacted of him. He must needs adopt whatever political measures he deemed necessary, no matter how hard of execution: many of these were innovations that he daringly carried out against every prejudice and tradition, because it was the innermost conviction of his soul that they would save his nation. No doubt Kościuszko's great talent for organization and application, and the robust strength of his character, would, in part at least, have borne him through his herculean task; but it was in the power of the idea that we must find the key to his whole leadership of the struggle for his nation which in the history of that nation bears his name. Where Poland was concerned obstacles were not allowed to exist – or rather, were there merely to be overcome. Personal desires, individual frictions, all must go down before the only object that counted.

"Only the one necessity," he writes to Mokronowski, reassuring the General in brotherly and sympathetic style as to some unpleasantness that the latter was anticipating – for, with all his devotion to the common end, Kościuszko never failed to take to his heart the private griefs, even the trifling interests, of those around him – "the one consideration of the country in danger has caused me to expect that, putting aside all personal vexations, you will sacrifice yourself entirely to the universal good. … Not I, but our country, beseeches and conjures you to do this. Surely at her voice all delays, all considerations, should perish."56

Impressing upon a young prince of the Sapieha family, at the outset of the Rising, that he "must not lose even a minute of time … although," Kościuszko says, "the forces be weak, a beginning must be made, and those forces will increase of themselves in the defence of the country. I began with one battalion, and in a few days I had collected an army. Let the gentry go out on horseback, and the people with scythes and pikes." Let the officers who had been trained to a different service abroad put aside preconceived ideas, and fight in the methods demanded of a popular army.57

Or, far on towards the end of the Rising, Kościuszko, calling upon the citizens of Volhynia to rise for the Poland from which they had been torn away, speaks thus: "You have no army in your own land, but you have men, and those men will soon become an army." He tells them that the Poles who rose in Great Poland were not deterred by the differences of religious belief between them. "These hinder not at all the love of country and of freedom. Let each honour God according to his faith" – Kościuszko himself was a devout Catholic – "and there is no faith that would forbid a man to be free."58

One of the earliest measures that Kościuszko inaugurated as the head of the provisional government of his nation was in relation to the object only less dear to him than the liberation of Poland: that of the serfs. With time the Polish peasant had sunk to the level of those in neighbouring countries, although the condition of the serf in Poland was never as deplorable as, for instance, that which obtained in Russia. France had only just effected the relief of her lower classes – and this by an orgy of revolt and ferocity. Kościuszko now came forward with his reforms. The forced labour of the peasant who could not bear arms was reduced to less than a half of his former obligation, and for those who could take part in the national war, abolished. The peasant was now to enjoy the full personal protection of the law, and "the right of locomotion when he chose. Possession of his own land was assured to him, and heavy penalties were inflicted upon the landlords should they be guilty of any acts of oppression. The local authorities were bidden to see that the farms of those who joined Kościuszko's army should be tended during their military service, and that the soil, "the source of our riches," should not fall into neglect. The people were exhorted, in the spirit, always inculcated by Kościuszko, of mutual good-feeling and a common love for Poland, to show their gratitude for the new benefits bestowed upon them by loyalty to the squires, and by diligence in "work, in husbandry, in the defence of the country." The dictator then ordered the clergy of both the Latin and Greek rites to read these decrees from the pulpit for the course of four Sundays, and directed the local commissions to send emissaries proclaiming them to the peasants in every parish and hamlet. Thus Kościuszko took up the work that the Constitution of the 3rd of May had more vaguely initiated, and that had been terminated by Russian and Prussian interference. He could not at this juncture push his reforms further. Had he brought in a total reversal of hitherto existing conditions while a national insurrection of which the issues were uncertain was proceeding, the confusion engendered would have gone far to defeat the very object it was his desire to bring about.

Kościuszko promulgated these acts from camp on May 7, 1794. About the same time he issued a mandate, requesting the churches and convents to contribute all the church silver that was not positively indispensable in the Divine service to the national treasury. Fresh coinage was stamped, with on the one side the device of the old Polish Republic, on the other that new and sacred formula: "The Liberty, Integrity and Independence of the Republic, 1794." The term "Republic" as applied to Poland was, of course, no subversive title, such being the time-honoured name by which the Polish state had been known through its history.

To Kościuszko the war was a holy one. Its object was, together with the restoration of national independence, that of conferring happiness and freedom on every class, religion, and individual in the country. Take, for example, Kościuszko's manifesto to the citizens of the district of Brześć, directing that the religion of the Ruthenes of the Greek-Oriental rite should be respected: words that in the light of the subsequent history of a people who have been, with fatal results, the victims first of Russian, and then of German, intrigue, read with a startling significance.

"In this wise attach a people, deceived by the fanaticism of Russia, to our country. They will be more devoted to their fellow-countrymen when they see that the latter treat with them like brothers … and that they open to them the entrance, as to common fellow-citizens, to the highest offices. Assure all the Oriental Greeks in my name that they shall have in common with us every liberty which freedom gives men to enjoy, and that their episcopate with all its authority according to the laws of the Constitutional Diet shall be restored to them. Let them use all the influence they may have on the people of their religion to convince them that we, who are fighting for liberty, desire to make all the inhabitants of our land happy."59

He wrote to the clergy of the Ruthenian Greek Orthodox rite, laying emphasis on the persecution that their faith had suffered from Russia and on the liberty that Poland promised them. "Fear not that the difference of opinion and rite will hinder our loving you as brothers and fellow-countrymen. … Let Poland recognize in your devotion her faithful sons. Thus you have the road open before you to your happiness and that of your descendants."60

Following all these enactments of Kościuszko's there ensued a curious interchange of communications between him and the King of Poland. Stanislas Augustus, under the apprehension that he was to follow Louis XVI to the scaffold, wrote to Kościuszko, placing the continuance of such shreds of Royal power as he possessed at the dictator's arbitration. Once again Kościuszko was called to measure swords with his King and sometime patron. This time it was Kościuszko who was in the commanding position. His sovereign was more or less at his mercy. What his opinion of the man was is clear from the scathing indictment which his sense of outrage at the betrayal of his country tore from his lips as he wrote the history of the Ukraine campaign that Stanislas Augustus had brought to ruin. Yet this was how he answered, at the moment when his power was supreme, in a letter dated May 20, 1794:

"My Lord King,

"Just when I was engrossed in the midst of so many other labours with the drawing up of the organization of the Supreme Council, I received a communication from Your Royal Majesty under the date of the 5th instant. Having read therein that Your Royal Majesty only desires authority and importance when and inasmuch as I decide this with the nation, as regards my opinion, I frankly confess that, entertaining a loyal respect for the throne, I hold the person of Your Royal Majesty excepted from the power conferred upon me of nominating personages to the Supreme Council. As to the nation, the conduct of Your Royal Majesty in the course of the present Rising, the restored public confidence in Your Royal Majesty that was weakened by the Confederation of Targowica, the constancy with which Your Royal Majesty declares that, albeit at the cost of great personal misfortune, you will not forsake the country and nation, will contribute, I doubt not, to the securing for Your Royal Majesty of the authority in the Diet that will be most agreeable to the welfare of the country. I have written separately to the Supreme Council upon the duty of imparting to Your Royal Majesty an account of its chief actions, and this in the conviction that Your Royal Majesty will not only be a source of enlightenment to it, but of assistance inasmuch as circumstances permit. Likewise the needs of Your Royal Majesty which you mention at the end of your letter I have recommended to the attention and care of the Supreme Council. Thanking Your Royal Majesty for your good wishes concerning my person, I declare that the prosperity of Your Royal Majesty is not separated in my heart and mind from the prosperity of the country, and I assure Your Royal Majesty of my deep respect."61

Until the month of May Kościuszko had been governing single-handed. He had drawn up the decrees that were of such moment to his country in the primitive conditions of a camp in a soldier's tent, with the collaboration of only his council of three friends, Kołłontaj, Ignacy Potocki, and Wejssenhof. Throughout his sole dictatorship he had combined a scrupulous respect for existing laws with a firm declaration of those reforms which must be carried out without delay, if Poland were to win in her struggle for freedom. No trace of Jacobinism is to be met with in Kościuszko's government. Defending himself with a hint of wounded feeling against some reproach apparently addressed to him by his old friend, Princess Czartoryska:

"How far you are as yet from knowing my heart!" he answers. "How you wrong my feelings and manner of thinking, and how little you credit me with foresight and attachment to our country, if I could avail myself of such impossible and such injurious measures! My decrees and actions up to now might convince you. Men may blacken me and our Rising, but God sees that we are not beginning a French revolution. My desire is to destro the enemy. I am making some temporary dispositions, and I leave the framing of laws to the nation."62

The whole country was now rallying round Kościuszko. Polish magnates, whose ancestors had been heads of armies in the old chivalrous days of the Republic of Poland, who had themselves led soldiers in the field, came to him, begging to serve in the lowest ranks if so be they might serve under him. The King's nephew, Prince Józef Poniatowski, under whose command two years ago Kościuszko had fought as a subordinate officer, now placed himself unreservedly at Kościuszko's disposal. The King, the nation, were in Kościuszko's hands. Yet he remained always the simple Lithuanian soldier, who wore the garb of the peasants, who lived familiarly with the peasants in his army, treating them as his brothers. His letters to his officers are couched in the affectionate and intimate terms of an equal friendship, reading as though from comrade to comrade. "Dear comrade," is, in fact, the title by which he addresses them when giving them his instructions. Instead of orders and decorations, of which he had none at his disposal, he offered them snuff-boxes, watches, rings – "I have sent you a ring of cat's-eyes that at night it may light you on your journey," he writes to Mokronowski – or trifles made by the hands of Polish ladies, accompanied with a few graceful words spoken from the heart that gave the gift its value. He is ever eager to bring to public notice the name of any Pole who had done well by the country; always silent on his own deeds, turning off the praises and thanks of his people to the whole nation or to individuals. The style of his commands bears an invariable hallmark of simplicity. "I conjure and entreat you for the love of our country," is their usual wording. One word, indeed, rings with unwearied reiteration through Kościuszko's public manifestos, in his private correspondence: the love of country: It is not he who cries to the sons of Poland to save her; it is Poland herself, and he voices her call, of which he considered himself but the mouthpiece, with a touch of personal warmth for those to whom he spoke, which they requited with a passionate love.