Kościuszko

Warning them in impassioned accents that such conduct was the surest means of playing into the hands of the enemy whose desire was to promote public confusion and thus impede the national work:

"As soon as the turn of war permits me to absent myself for a moment from the duties entrusted to me, I shall be among you. Perhaps the sight of a soldier who daily risks his life for you will be agreeable to you; but I would that no sadness imprinted on my countenance shall mar that moment. I would that our joy shall then be full, both yours and mine. I would that the sight of me shall remind you that the defence of freedom and of our country should only knit and unite us together, that only in unity can we be strong, that by justice, not by violence, shall we be safe at home and respected in the world. Citizens! I conjure you for the sake of the nation and of yourselves wipe out a moment of madness by unison, by courage against the common enemies and by a henceforth constant respect of the laws and of those who are appointed in the name of the law. Know this, that he who refuses to be submissive to the law is not worthy of freedom."

He blames the Council of State for not having brought the prisoners to trial before, and bids this be done immediately.

"And thus fulfilling what public justice exacts, I from henceforth most severely forbid the people, for their welfare and salvation, all lawless riots, violence against the prisoners, laying hands on individuals, and punishing them by death. Whoso does not betake himself to the government by the proper way is a rebel, a disturber of the public peace, and as such must be punished. You whose ardent courage is fain to take action for the country, employ it against the enemies, come to my camp; we will receive you here as brothers."74

Many responded to this call, Kilinski, the shoemaker, with the cap of liberty planted rakishly on his head, as we may see him in his portraits, went to Kościuszko with the proposal that he should "catch" the lower classes of the town. Kościuszko gave his hearty consent, and a regiment of these was formed with Kilinski as their colonel. Kościuszko was always singularly happy in his dealings with men and with the extraordinarily involved and delicate situations in which the domestic affairs of his country at this difficult period of her history placed him. His tact and common sense saved the situation. The guilty were punished. Order was restored.

The Russian and Prussian armies were advancing to invest Warsaw. At Kościuszko's bidding the President of the town, Zakrzewski, whom Kościuszko addresses as his "beloved" Zakrzewski, had already in stirring language summoned the citizens to take their share in Warsaw's defence.

"Old men and young men, mothers and children, masters and servants, convents and confraternities, and all, in whatsoever you have of strength and health, present yourselves on the ramparts of the city with spades, shovels, barrows, baskets. You who are rich forget your comforts. You who are highborn forget your rank. Stand with the poor and hard-working citizens so that you who have drawn life from one soil shall on one soil taste the fruits of your safety, liberties, and possessions."75

Crowds toiled on the ramparts, singing over their spades the song then sung throughout Poland, calling the Pole to the labour without which he would be torn from his brothers, "a prisoner on his own soil." The sons of noble families enrolled themselves in Kilinski's burgher regiment, eager to serve under his command. On the 13th of July the Russian and Prussian armies, the King of Prussia being present with the latter, were seen from the walls of Warsaw. The alarm was given and the cannon fired from the castle. The citizens took up their places in the entrenchments with an order and a precision that won high praise from Kościuszko as he went his round of inspection. With undisturbed equanimity Kościuszko prepared with his body of 26,000 men, of whom 16,000 were regulars, the rest peasants armed with scythes, to defend Warsaw against 41,000 Russians and Prussians and 235 cannon. Despite the labour of the townsfolk, the defences of the city were weak and incomplete when the enemy first appeared; but during the fortnight while the hostile armies lay encamped before Warsaw, waiting for their heavy cannon, Kościuszko, by dint of his great gift of organization, put the fortifications into strong working order.

"His creative power," said of him one of his adversaries, a Prussian officer, who took part in the siege, "is worthy of admiration, since he alone, in the midst of creating an army, fought with it against the two best armies of Europe, having neither their stores nor their discipline. What would he not have shown himself at the head of a good army, since he did so much with peasants who knew nothing? Equally great in character, in devotion, in love of his country, he lived exclusively for her freedom and independence."76

The story would be long to tell, of how the Poles, peasants, burghers and soldiers alike, with the inheritance of the fighting blood that runs in the veins of every son of Poland, with the fire of patriotism and of measureless devotion to the chief who led them, fought day after day the besieging army till it was beaten. The diary of the siege is the daily record of deeds of gallantry, of steadfastness, of a few carrying off the honours against many. Nor is there wanting a touch of that wild and romantic spirit of knightly adventure which runs all through the history of a country that for centuries defended Christendom against Turk and Tartar. Thus we find a Polish officer, Kamienski, who had already crowned himself with glory at Szczekociny, choosing to celebrate his name-day by inviting his friends to come with him and stir up the Russians, hitherto entirely passive in the operations of the siege. This, so to speak, birthday party was swelled by a band of eager Polish youths and by General Madalinski, who hastened to offer himself as a volunteer. They attacked a Russian battery, spiked the cannon and cut the gunners to pieces. Again and again Dombrowski, who was later to lead the Polish Napoleonic legions, and whose name stands at the head of the famous patriotic song so beloved of Poland, would at Kościuszko's laconic order, "Harass the enemy," sally forth on some daring expedition. Or we hear of a sixteen hours' battle, the Poles, under a terrific fire, successfully driving the Prussians from height to height, Kościuszko himself commanding Kilinski's burgher regiment. No shirkers were to be found in Warsaw. Under the fearful Prussian bombardment the citizens coolly put out the fires, and the children ran into the streets to pick up the spent balls and take them to the arsenal, receiving a few pence for each one that they brought in. Once as Kościuszko and Niemcewicz stood on the ramparts with cannon-balls pattering about them, Niemcewicz heard a voice shouting into his ear through the din: "You are coming to supper with me, aren't you?"77 The host who had the presence of mind to arrange a party under these circumstances was the President of Warsaw.

Even those who will not allow that Kościuszko was a military commander of the first capacity acknowledge that the defence of Warsaw was a magnificent feat. He was its life and soul. Organizing, encouraging, seeing into the closest details, the somewhat small but strongly built figure of the commander, clad in the peasant sukman worn, after his example, by all his staff, including the "citizen General Poniatowski," was to be met with at every turn, his face lit up by that fire of enthusiasm and consecration to a great cause that confers upon its rough lineaments their strange nobility. From the 13th of July till the 6th of September, when the enemy abandoned the siege, Kościuszko never once took off his clothes, merely flinging himself on a little heap of straw in his tent on his return from his rounds to catch what sleep he could. His very presence inspired soldiers and civilians alike to redoubled ardour. The sweetness of his smile, the gentle and kindly word of the leader who yet knew how to be obeyed and who was famed for his courage in the field, left a memory for life with all who saw him. Passionate admiration, the undying love of men's hearts, were his. "Death or Victory is Kościuszko's watchword, therefore it is ours," said a Polish officer who served under him. "Father Tadeusz" was the name by which his soldiers called him. Invariably he spent some part of his day among his beloved peasants, and daily he recited with them public prayers. Often at night he and they together went up to the teeth of the Russian batteries on expeditions to spike the cannon. His inseparable companion, Niemcewicz, who slept with him in his tent till the-end came, describes how the silence of these nights was broken hideously by the wild, shrill cry of the reapers, by the sudden roar of the cannon and crack of gunfire, by the groans of the wounded.

The defence of Warsaw was but half of the task that fell to Kościuszko. The minutest particulars were dealt with by him personally. He wrote letter after letter, commandeering everything in the country for the national cause: requisitioning linen from the churches to clothe his soldiers, who in the beginning of the siege were half naked, sending out his directions to the leaders of the Rising in the provinces, issuing proclamations, maintaining an enormous correspondence on affairs – it is said that the number of letters from his pen or signed by him at this time is almost incredible – giving audiences, and conducting the civil government of Poland.

Early in August the Prussian general, in a letter to Orłowski, Kościuszko's old friend, whom he had made commandant of Warsaw, summoned the city to surrender, while the King of Prussia addressed himself in similar language to Stanislas Augustus, whose part in the historical drama of the siege was that of an inert spectator. Kościuszko drily replied, "Warsaw is not in the necessity to be compelled to surrender." The Polish King replied, not drily, to the same effect. The fortunes of the Rising in the rest of the country were fluctuating, and in Lithuania, where Wilno fell, hopeless. In the beginning of September exultation ran through Warsaw at the news that every province of Great Poland had risen against their Prussian conquerors. Kościuszko characteristically took up the general joy as the text of a manifesto to the citizens of Warsaw, warning them that Prussia would, in the strength of desperation, redouble her efforts against them, and urging them to a dogged resistance. On the 4th of September, shortly after the Poles had by a most gallant attack carried off a signal triumph, when Warsaw was preparing for a fresh and violent bombardment, Kościuszko wrote in haste to the President: "Beloved Zakrzewski, to-day, before daybreak, we shall certainly be attacked, and therefore I beg and conjure you for the love of our country that half of the citizens shall go to-day into the line, and that if they attack all shall go out."78

The attack did not take place; and on the 6th of September the Prussians retired from Warsaw. During the whole course of the siege, with the exception of one post they had taken in its earliest stage, they had gained not one inch against the Poles defending their city with smaller numbers and inferior ammunition. The Russians retreated with the Prussians. They had remained almost immovable during the siege. Neither of these two collaborators in the destruction of Poland were on the best terms with each other, and Catherine II had no mind to share with Prussia the distinction, and still less the profits, of bringing Warsaw to its knees. Austria, although she was by way of being at war with Kościuszko, had held aloof from the siege, unwilling to commit herself, but determined on coming in for the spoils when the Rising should be crushed out.

Kościuszko then tasted one of the greatest triumphs of his life: the armies of the enemy were no more seen round the city he had saved.

"By your assiduity, your valour," the National Council wrote to him, "you have curbed the pride and power of that foe who, after pressing upon us so threateningly, has been forced to retreat with shame upon his covetous intentions. The Council knows only too well the magnitude of the labours which you brought to the defence of this city, and therefore cannot but make known to you that most lively gratitude and esteem with which all this city is penetrated. "79

Further, it expressed the wish that Kościuszko should show himself to a grateful people in some solemn function.

To this Kościuszko politely replied, declining to take any share in a public honour which it was against every dictate of his nature to accept.

"I have read with the greatest gratitude and emotion the flattering expressions of the Supreme National Council. I rejoice equally with every good citizen at the liberation of the city from the enemy armies. I ascribe this to nothing else but to Providence, to the valour of the Polish soldiers, to the zeal and courage of the citizens of Warsaw, to the diligence of the government. I place myself entirely at the disposition of the Supreme National Council: in what manner and when do you wish the celebration to take place? My occupations will not permit me the pleasure of being with you. I venture to trust that the God who has delivered the capital will deliver our country likewise. Then, as a citizen, not as a bearer of office, will I offer my thanks to God and share with every one the universal joy."80

He stayed in his camp and, in order to avoid an ovation, did not enter Warsaw. No public triumph was celebrated, but Masses of thanksgiving were sung in every church of the city.

Although he was the ruler of the state, Kościuszko lived in the utmost simplicity. He had refused the palace that was offered to him, and took up his quarters in a tent. When receiving guests his modest meal was spread under a tree. Asked by Oginski why he drank no Burgundy, his reply was that Oginski, being a great magnate, might permit himself such luxuries, "but not the commander who is now living at the expense of an oppressed commonwealth." When taken unawares by a royal chamberlain he was discovered blowing up his own fire, preparing some frugal dish.

In the first flush of joy at the liberation of Warsaw, he wrote to Mokronowski:

"Warsaw is delivered. There are no longer either Muscovites or Prussians here: we will go and seek them out. Go, my friend, and seek them out, and deliver Lithuania from the invaders."81

But Kościuszko's steadiness of outlook was not for an instant relaxed by the signal success he had won. Untiring vigilance and redoubled activity were his order of the day, both for himself and his fellow-Poles. The short breathing-space that followed the retirement of the enemy was devoted by him to the pressing internal concerns of the nation, taxation and so forth. He was determined on perfect freedom for all classes and all religions in Poland. He ordered the erection of new Orthodox places of worship for the members of the Eastern Church. He enrolled a Jewish legion to fight in Poland's army, and commanded that this regiment should be equipped and treated on equal terms with the Polish soldiers of the Republic. In a transport of gratitude the Jewish leaders called upon their fellow-believers to rise for Poland in confidence of victory under "our protector, Tadeusz Kościuszko," who "is without doubt the emissary of the eternal and Most High God."82

Kościuszko was a generous enemy. His Russian captives he treated with a courtesy and kindness that were ill repaid during his own march into Russia as a prisoner in Russian hands. He directed that services in their own language and faith should be held for the Prussian prisoners. A letter of his remains that he wrote to the Lutheran minister of the evangelical church in Warsaw, expressing his gratitude that this clergyman's pulpit had been a centre of patriotism, at a time "when nations who love freedom must win the right to their existence by streams of blood," and telling the pastor that he has issued orders for the Prussian prisoners to be taken to church in the "conviction that you will not refuse them your fatherly teaching."83

This letter and the snuff-box that accompanied it were preserved as relics in the pastor's family.

The Bohemian and Hungarian prisoners were by Kościuszko's command released, "in memory of the bond that united the Hungarians and Czechs, when free countries, with the Polish nation." We have lived to see the descendants of that Hungarian generation spreading untold atrocities through Polish towns and villages as the tool of Prussia in the recent war.

The triumph over the Prussians was but a temporary respite. The Prussian army returned to the investment of Warsaw, at some distance from the town itself. The ambassador of the King of Prussia was treating in Petersburg with Catherine II for the third partition of Poland. She on her side sent Suvorov with a new and powerful army against the Poles. The Austrians were already in the country. Kościuszko, fighting for life against Russia and Prussia, had no army to send against the third of his foes. His generals were engaging the enemy in different parts of Poland, at times with success, as notably Dombrowski in Great Poland, where events continued to be the one gleam of hope in these last days of the Rising, but again with terrible defeats, such as Sierakowski experienced by the army of Suvorov, near Kościuszko's old home. Kościuszko deceived himself with no illusions: but neither fear nor despair found an entry into his soul. "He did not lose heart," writes one who never left him. "He turned and defended himself on all sides."84 Wherever his presence was most urgently needed, thither he repaired. Accompanied only by Niemcewicz he rode at full speed into Lithuania to rally the spirits of Mokronowski's corps, depressed by defeat. He returned at the same breakneck pace, miraculously, says his companion, escaping capture by the Cossacks who were swarming over the country. On this occasion, Princess Oginska, at whose house the travellers took a hasty dinner, pushing on immediately afterwards, gave Kościuszko a beautiful turquoise, set with diamonds. It was to be among the Russian spoils at Maciejowice.

The proclamation that Kościuszko addressed to the Lithuanian soldiers, found later in his handwriting among his letters, bears its own testimony to the soul of the leader who, in the face of strong armies marching upon his doomed nation, would give no entrance to despair or discouragement. Expressing the joy he experienced at being among the soldiers of Lithuania, on whose soil he was born:

"My brothers and comrades! If till now the results of your toil and struggles have not entirely corresponded to the courage and intrepidity of a free nation, I ascribe this, not to the superior valour of our enemies (for what could there be more valiant than a Polish army?); but I ascribe it to a want of confidence in our own strength and courage, to that false and unfortunate idea of the enemy's power which some fatality has sown among your troops. Soldiers valiant and free! Beware of those erroneous conceptions that wrong you; thrust them from your hearts; they are unworthy of Poles. … A few thousand of your ancestors were able to subdue the whole Muscovite state, to carry into bondage her Tsars and dictate to her rulers, and you, the descendants of those same Poles, can, wrestling for freedom and country, fighting for your homes, families and friends, doubt … if you will conquer. … Remember, I repeat, that on our united courage and steadfastness the country must depend for her safety, you for your freedom and happiness."

He threatens with the utmost rigour of martial law any who shall attempt to undermine the spirit of the army by representing the difficulty of opposing the enemy, or similar offences.

"It were a disgrace to any man to run away, but for the free man it were a disgrace even to think of flight."

"I have spoken to the cowards who, God grant, will never be found among you. Now do I speak to you, valiant soldiers, who have fulfilled the duties of courageous soldiers and virtuous citizens, who have driven the enemies even to the shores of the sea. … I speak to those who have in so many different battles spread wide the glory of the Polish name. Accept through me the most ardent gratitude of the nation."85

In the same month, towards the end of September, he sent his country what proved to be his last message, still from his tent outside Warsaw.

"Freedom, that gift beyond estimate for man on earth, is given by God only to those nations which by their perseverance, courage, and constancy in all untoward events, are worthy of its possession. This truth is taught us by free nations which after long struggle full of labours, after protracted sufferings manfully borne, now enjoy the happy fruits of their courage and perseverance.

"Poles! You who love your country and liberty equally with the valorous nations of the south, you who have been compelled to suffer far more than others oppression and disdain; Poles, who, penetrated with the love of honour and of virtue, can endure no longer the contempt and destruction of the Polish name, who have so courageously risen against despotism and oppression, I conjure you grow not cold; do not cease in your ardour and in your constancy."

He tells them he knows only too well that in a war with the invaders their possessions are exposed to the danger of loss; "but in this perilous moment for the nation we must sacrifice all for her and, desirous to taste of lasting happiness, we must not shrink from measures, however bitter, to ensure it to ourselves. Never forget that these sufferings (if we may call such sacrifices for our country by that name!) are only passing, and that contrariwise the freedom and independence of our land prepare for you uninterrupted days of happiness."86

These were the numbered days of Kościuszko's Rising. A Russian army of highly trained troops under the able command of Suvorov was marching on Warsaw. To prevent Suvorov's juncture with the forces of the Russian general, Fersen, Kościuszko prepared to leave Warsaw and give Fersen battle. Beset from every quarter, he had been compelled to divide his army in order to grapple with the powerful armies against him. Sierakowski had, as we have seen, been defeated. There was not a moment to be lost. On the 5th of October Kościuszko confided to Niemcewicz that by daybreak on the following morning he intended to set out to take command of Sierakowski's detachment. He spent the evening in the house of Zakrzewski, for the last time among his dearest and most faithful collaborators, Ignacy Potocki, Kołłontaj, and others. The next morning by dawn he was off with Niemcewicz. They galloped over the bridge at Praga. A month later that bridge was to run red with the blood of Polish women and children; its broken pillars were to ring with the agonizing cries of helpless fugitives as they fled from Suvorov's soldiers only to find death in the river below. The life of Poland depending on his speed, for Fersen at the head of twenty thousand men was nearing both Warsaw and Suvorov, Kościuszko, with his companion, rode at hot haste. They only paused to change horses, remounting the miserable steeds of the peasants, sorry beasts with string for bridle and bit, and saddles without girths; but none others were to be found in a land laid waste by the Cossacks and by the marches of armed men. At four in the afternoon Kościuszko rode into Sierakowski's camp, where he at once held a council of war. The army under his command moved on October 7th, The day was fair, glowing with the lights of the Polish autumn. The soldiers were gay of heart, and sang as they marched through villages ruined by the Cossacks – to defeat. They halted at one of these villages where the Russians had been before them. The staff spent the night in the house of the squire. The furniture had been hacked to pieces by the Cossacks, books, utensils, all destroyed. That evening a courier rode in to convey to Kościuszko the intelligence that Dombrowski had won a victory over the Prussians at Bydgoszcz – rechristened by Prussia, Bromberg – and had taken the town. It was Kościuszko's last hour of joy. He published the news through the camp, amidst the soldiers' acclamations, bidding them equal Dombrowski's prowess with their own. With an old friend of his Niemcewicz walked in the courtyard of the house where the staff was quartered. A flock of ravens wheeled above them. "Do you remember your Titus Livy?" asked Niemcewicz's companion. "Those ravens are on our right. It is a bad sign." "It might be so for the Romans," replied the poet, "but not for us. You will see that though it seems difficult we shall smash the Muscovites." "I think so too," answered the other.87 In this spirit the Polish soldiers advanced to the fatal field of Maciejowice. Tents they had none. Fires were lit, around which they stood or sat, arms in hand.