THE RISING OF KOSCIUSZKO
A barn in the vicinity of the city has long been shown as the place
where Kosciuszko slept the night before he entered Cracow. The Polish
general, Madalinski, who by a ruse had evaded the Russian order to
disarm, was the first to rise. At the head of his small force, followed
by a hot Russian pursuit, he triumphantly led his soldiers down towards
Cracow. At the news of his approach the Russian garrison evacuated the
town, and Kosciuszko entered its walls a few hours after the last
Russian soldier had left it, at midday on March 23 1794. It had been
intended to convene the meeting of the citizens at the town hall on that
same day; but the Act of the proclamation of the Rising proved to be so
erroneously printed that it could not be published, mainly because
Kosciuszko was not an adept at putting his ideas into writing, and the
numerous corrections were too much for the printers. The night was spent
by Kosciuszko in rewriting the manifesto which was to travel all over
Poland, which was to be proclaimed from the walls and pulpits of Polish
town and village, and despatched to the governments of Europe. The room
yet remains where he passed those hours in the house of General Wodzicki
who, when commanded by Russia to disband his regiments, had at
Kosciuszko's instigation secretly kept them together, paying them out of
his own pocket, in readiness for the Rising.
The morning of March 24th dawned With Wodzicki and several other
soldiers, Kosciuszko assisted at a low Mass in the Capuchin church,
where the officiating priest blessed the leader's sword. "God grant me
to conquer or die," were Kosciuszko's words, as he received the weapon
from the monk's hand. At ten o'clock he quietly walked to the town hall.
From all quarters of the city dense throngs had poured into the
marketplace, and pressed outside the town hall, overflowing on to its
steps, surging into its rooms. In front of his soldiers Kosciuszko stood
before the crowds on the stone now marked by a memorial tablet, upon
which on each anniversary of March 24th the Poles lay wreaths. That day,
that scene, remain engraved for ever among the greatest of Poland's
memories. As far as Kosciuszko's gaze rested he saw his countrymen and
countrywomen with eyes turned to him as to the deliverer of themselves
and of their country, palpitating for the moment that he was about to
announce, many of them wearing his portrait and carrying banners with
the inscriptions: "Freedom or Death," "For our rights and liberty," "For
Cracow and our country," or "Vivat Kosciuszko." The drums were rolled,
and in the midst of a dead silence the army took the oath of the Rising.
"I, N. N., swear that I will be faithful to the Polish nation, and
obedient to Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Commander-in-Chief, who has been
summoned by this nation to the defence of the freedom, liberties, and
independence of our country. So help me God and the innocent Passion of
His Son."
Then Kosciuszko himself stepped forward. With bared head, his eyes
lifted to heaven and his hands resting on his sword, standing in plain
civilian garb before his people, surrounded by no pomp or retinue, in
the simplicity that was natural to him, the new dictator of Poland in
his turn took his oath:
"I, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, swear in the sight of God to the whole Polish
nation that I will use the power entrusted to me for the personal
oppression of none, but will only use it for the defence of the
integrity of the boundaries, the regaining of the independence of the
nation, and the solid establishment of universal freedom. So help me God
and the innocent Passion of His Son."
He then went inside the town hall. There he was greeted by cries of
"Long live Kosciuszko ! Long live the defender of our country! "When
silence was restored he delivered a speech, the exact terms of which are
not accurately recorded; but it is known that he demanded of every class
in the country to rally to the national banner--nobles, burghers,
priests, peasants, Jews--and that he placed himself at the disposal of
his people without requiring of them any oath, for, said he, both he and
they were united in one common interest. Then he ordered the formal Act
of the Rising to be read. It was received with an outburst of applause,
and the clamour of rejoicing rang to the skies.
This Act was in part grafted on Kosciuszko's personal observation of the
American Declaration of Independence, but only in part. Kosciuszko's own
intensely Polish soul speaks through the document--the anguish of a Pole
at the sight of his country's wrongs, the cry of a desperate but
undespairing patriotism, the breathing of the spirit that should bring
new life.
"The present condition of unhappy Poland is known to the world"--so the
Act opens. "The iniquity of two neighbouring Powers and the crimes of
traitors to the country have plunged her into this abyss. Resolved upon
the destruction of the Polish name, Catherine II, in agreement with the
perjured Frederick William, has filled up the measure of her crimes."
The treatment of Poland at the hands of Russia and Prussia is then
recapitulated in accents of the burning indignation that such a recital
would necessarily evoke. Of Austria Kosciuszko makes no mention, for the
reason that he believed, erroneously, as he was to learn by bitter
experience, that her sympathies could be enlisted for the national
movement.
"Overwhelmed with this weight of misfortune, injured more by treachery
than by the power of the weapons of the enemies ... having lost our
country and with her the enjoyment of the most sacred rights of freedom,
of safety, of ownership, alike of our persons and of our property,
deceived and played upon by some states, abandoned by others, we, Poles,
citizens, inhabitants of the palatinate of Cracow, consecrating to our
country our lives as the only possession which tyranny has not yet torn
from us, are about to take those last and violent measures which
patriotic despair dictates to us. Having, therefore, the unbroken
determination to die and find a grave in the ruins of our own country or
to deliver our native land from the depredations of tyranny and a
shameful yoke, we declare in the sight of God, in the sight of the whole
human race, and especially before you, O nations, by whom liberty is
more highly prized than all other possessions in the world, that,
employing the undenied right of resistance to tyranny and armed
oppression, we all, in one national, civic and brotherly spirit, unite
our strength in one; and, persuaded that the happy result of our great
undertaking depends chiefly on the strictest union between us all, we
renounce all prejudices and opinions which hitherto have divided or
might divide the citizens, the inhabitants of one land and the sons of
one country, and we all promise each other to be sparing of no sacrifice
and means which only the holy love of liberty can provide to men rising
in despair in her defence.
"The deliverance of Poland from the foreign soldier, the restoration and
safeguarding of the integrity of her boundaries, the extirpation of all
oppression and usurpation, whether foreign or domestic, the firm
foundation of national freedom and of the independence of the
Republic:--such is the holy aim of our Rising."
To ensure its success and the safety of the country Kosciuszko was
elected as Poland's military leader and her civil head, with the
direction that he should nominate a National Council to be under his
supreme authority. The proclamation then enters into the details of his
functions and those of the Council. He alone was responsible for the
military conduct of the war. Its financial management, the levy of taxes
for its support, internal order and the administration of justice, were
under the jurisdiction of the Council, to which was entrusted the task
of endeavouring to gain foreign help and of "directing public opinion
and diffusing the national spirit so that Country and Liberty may be the
signal to all the inhabitants of Polish soil for the greatest
sacrifices." All those who should act in any way against the Rising were
to be punished by death. Emphasis was laid on the fact that the
government was provisional, to rule only until the enemy should be
finally driven out of Poland, and that it held no power of making a
fresh constitution. "Any such act will be considered by us as a
usurpation of the national sovereignty, similar to that against which at
the sacrifice of our lives we are now rising." The head of the
government and the National Council were bound by the terms of the Act
"to instruct the nation by frequent proclamations on the true state of
its affairs, neither concealing nor softening the most unfortunate
events. Our despair is full, and the love of our country unbounded. The
heaviest misfortunes, the mightiest difficulties, will not succeed in
weakening and breaking the virtue of the nation and the courage of her
citizens.
"We all mutually promise one another and the whole Polish nation
steadfastness in the enterprise, fidelity to its principles, submission
to the national rulers specified and described in this Act of our
Rising. We conjure the commander of the armed forces and the Supreme
Council for the love of their country to use every means for the
liberation of the nation and the preservation of her soil. Laying in
their hands the disposal of our persons and property for such time as
the war of freedom against despotism, of justice against oppression and
tyranny, shall last, we desire that they always have present this
great truth: that the preservation of a people is the highest law."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Act of the Rising_. T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]
For the first time in Poland--and it would have been an equal novelty in
most other countries of the period--nobles and peasants side by side
signed their adhesion to the Act among thousands of signatures. The levy
of the military forces, the arrangements for the taxation and the
necessary business of the Rising, were at once set on foot, and
Kosciuszko spent the rest of March 24th in these affairs and in his
heavy correspondence. On the same day he sent out four more special
addresses, one to the Polish and Lithuanian armies, a second to the
citizens of the nation, a third to the Polish clergy, and a fourth to
the women of Poland.
In the manifestos that Kosciuszko issued all through the course of the
Rising there is not only the note of the trumpet-call, bidding the
people grapple with a task that their leader promises them will be no
easy one; there is something more--a hint of the things that are beyond,
an undercurrent of the Polish spirituality that confer upon these
national proclamations their peculiarly Polish quality, emanating as
they do from the pen of a patriot, whose character is typically and
entirely Polish.
Kosciuszko appeals always to the ideal, to the secret and sacred faiths
of men's hearts; but with that strong practical sense with which his
enthusiasm was tempered and ennobled.
"Each of us has often sworn to be faithful to our mother country"--thus
runs his manifesto to the Polish and Lithuanian armies. "Let us keep
this faith with her once more, now when the oppressors, not satisfied
with the dismemberment of our soil, would tear our weapons from us, and
expose us unarmed to the last misery and scorn. Let us turn those
weapons against the breasts of our enemies, let us raise our country out
of slavery, let us restore the sanctity of the name of Pole,
independence to the nation, and let us merit the gratitude of our native
land and the glory dear to a soldier.
"Summoned by you I stand, comrades, at your head. I have given my life
to you; your valour and patriotism are the surety for the happiness of
our beloved country. ... Let us unite more strongly, let us unite the
hearts, hands, and endeavours of the inhabitants of the whole land.
Treachery thrust our weapon from our hands; let virtue raise again that
weapon, and then shall perish that disgraceful yoke under which we
groan.
"Comrades, can you endure that a foreign oppressor should disperse you
with shame and ignominy carry off honest men, usurp our arsenals, and
harass the remainder of our unhappy fellow-countrymen at will? No,
comrades, come with me; glory and the sweet consolation of being the
saviours of your country await you. I give you my word that my zeal will
endeavour to equal yours. ...
"To the nation and to the country alone do you owe fidelity. She calls
upon us to defend her. In her name I send you my commands. With you,
beloved comrades, I take for our watchword: Death or Victory! I trust in
you and in the nation which has resolved to die rather than longer groan
in shameful slavery,"[1]
[Footnote 1: March 24, 1794. Given in _Letters of Kosciuszko_, ed. L.
Siemienski.]
To the citizens he wrote:
"Fellow-citizens! Summoned so often by you to save our beloved country,
I stand by your will at your head, but I shall not be able to break the
outraging yoke of slavery if I do not receive the speediest and the most
courageous support from you. Aid me then with your whole strength, and
hasten to the banner of our country. One zeal in one interest ought to
take possession of the hearts of all. Sacrifice to the country a part of
your possessions which hitherto have not been yours, but the spoils of a
despot's soldiers."
He begs them to give men, weapons, horses, linen, provisions, to the
national army, and then proceeds:
"The last moment is now here, when despair in the midst of shame and
infamy lays a weapon in our hands. Only in the contempt of death is the
hope of the bettering of our fate and that of the future generations.
... The first step to the casting off of slavery is the risk taken to
become free. The first step to victory is to know your own strength. ...
Citizens! I expect all from your zeal, that you will with your whole
hearts join the holy league which neither foreign intrigue nor the
desire for rule, but only the love of freedom, has created. Whoso is not
with us is against us. ... I have sworn to the nation that. I will use
the power entrusted to me for the private oppression of none, but I here
declare that whoever acts against our league shall be delivered over as
a traitor and an enemy of the country to the criminal tribunal
established by the Act of the nation. We have aleady sinned too much by
forbearance, and mainly by reason of that policy public crime has
scarcely ever been punished."[1]
[Footnote 1: March 24, 1794. _Op. cit_.]
The man who wrote thus was the strictest of military disciplinarians,
and yet he detested bloodshed and openly condemned all revolutionary
excess. At a later moment in the war the friend who shared his tent
tells how Kosciuszko struggled with himself through a sleepless night in
the doubt as to whether he had done well to condemn a certain traitor to
the capital punishment which he could never willingly bring himself to
inflict.
The manifesto to the clergy is on the ordinary lines. In that to the
women of Poland the ever-courteous and chivalrous Kosciuszko speaks in
the following terms:
"Ornament of the human race, fair sex! I truly suffer at the sight of
your anxiety for the fate of the daring resolution which the Poles are
taking for the liberation of our country. Your tears which that anxiety
draws forth from tender hearts penetrate the heart of your compatriot
who is consecrating himself to the common happiness. Permit me,
fellow-citizenesses, to give you my idea, in which may be found the
gratification of your tenderness and the gratification of the public
necessity. Such is the lot of oppressed humanity that it cannot keep its
rights or regain them otherwise than by offerings painful and costly to
sensitive hearts, sacrificing themselves entirely for the cause of
freedom.
"Your brothers, your sons, your husbands, are arming for war. Our blood
is to make your happiness secure. Women! let your efforts stanch its
shedding. I beg you for the love of humanity to make lint and bandages
for the wounded. That offering from fair hands will relieve the
sufferings of the wounded and spur on courage itself."[1]
[Footnote 1: Cf. K. Bartoszewicz, _History of Kosciuszko's
Insurrection_. Vienna, 1909 (Polish).]
Kosciuszko's appeals to the nation soon found their response. Recruits
flocked to the army, and money, weapons, clothing, gifts of all
descriptions came pouring in. Polish ladies brought their jewels to the
commander or sold them for the public fund; men and women cheerfully
parted with their dearest treasures. The inventories range from such
contributions as four horses with a month's fodder from a priest, "five
thousand scythes" given by a single individual, couples of oxen, guns
and pistols, to bundles of lint, old handkerchiefs, and what was
probably the most valued possession of its owner, set down in the list
of donations as "the gold watch of a certain citizen for having
distinguished himself at Kozubow," where on March 25th one of the Polish
detachments had engaged the Russians.
In the course of these patriotic presentations there occurred an episode
that stands out among the many picturesque incidents in the romantic
story of Kosciuszko's Rising. Three Polish boatmen came to the town hall
to offer Kosciuszko twenty of their primitive flat-bottomed barges.
Hearing of their arrival, Kosciuszko pushed his way through the crowds
thronging the building, till he reached the ante-room where stood the
peasants in their rough sheepskin coats and mud-stained top-boots, "Come
near me, Wojciech Sroki, Tomasz Brandys, and Jan Grzywa," he cried,
"that I may thank you for your offering. I regret that I cannot now
satisfy the wish of your hearts [by using the barges]; but, God helping
and as the war goes on, then will our country make use of your gift."
The peasants were not to be baulked of their desire to give their all to
Poland. The spokesman of the trio, followed by his comrades, shook into
his sheepskin cap the little sum of money that they had managed to
scrape together and, smiling, handed it to Kosciuszko, apologizing in
his homely dialect for the poorly stuffed cap. Kosciuszko flung the cap
to an officer who stood by his side, crying, "I must have my hands free
to press you, my beloved friends, to my heart." Drawn by that personal
fascination which, united to the patriot's fire, invariably captivated
all those who came into contact with Kosciuszko, the simple boatmen fell
on their knees before him, kissing his hands and feet.
Kosciuszko 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 Kosciuszko 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 Raclawice.
Kosciuszko was no invincible hero of legend. His military talent was
undoubted, but not superlative and not infallible; yet Raclawice 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 Kosciuszko'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 Kosciuszko 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 Kosciuszko,
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 Kosciuszko!"
Kosciuszko 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 Glowacki. 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 Kosciuszko 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."[1]
[Footnote 1: K. Bartoszewicz, _History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection_.]
The Polish army was badly broken at Raclawice, and Kosciuszko'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 Kosciuszko was alone
enough by now to gather men to his side. "Kosciuszko! Freedom! Our
country!" became the morning and the evening greeting between private
persons.
After the battle of Raclawice, Kosciuszko at once issued further calls
to arms, especially urging the enrolment of the peasants. This measure
was to be effected, so Kosciuszko 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 Kosciuszko endeavour to
realize his favourite project of an army of the people.
Unable for lack of soldiers to follow up his victory, Kosciuszko
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 Raclawice; and on one of the trees a Polish officer cut a
cross, still visible in recent years.
Kosciuszko'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."[1]
This language ran like a fiery arrow through the province: it rose. On
all sides the country rose. Kosciuszko'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. Kosciuszko."[2] By the time this
letter reached its destination Warsaw had already risen."
[Footnote 1: K. Bartoszewicz, _History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection_.]
[Footnote 2: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]
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.[3] 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 Kosciuszko 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 Kosciuszko. The news was brought into Kosciuszko'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 Kosciuszko 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 Kosciuszko, 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."[1]
[Footnote 3: A. Choloniewski, _Tadeusz Kosciuszko_. Lwów, 1902
(Polish).]
[Footnote 1: _Kosciuszko_. Periodical Publication, 1893-6. Cracow
(Polish).]
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 Kosciuszko, 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."[1]
[Footnote 1: K. Bartoszewicz, _History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection_.]
The burden that rested on the shoulders of Kosciuszko 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 Kosciuszko'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, Kosciuszko 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."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Letters of Kosciuszko_.]
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,"
Kosciuszko 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.[1]
Or, far on towards the end of the Rising, Kosciuszko, 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"--Kosciuszko himself was a devout Catholic--"and there is no faith
that would forbid a man to be free."[2]
[Footnote 1: _Letters of Kosciuszko_. April 14, May 12.]
[Footnote 2: K. Bartoszewicz, _History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection_.]
One of the earliest measures that Kosciuszko 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. Kosciuszko 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 Kosciuszko'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 Kosciuszko, 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 Kosciuszko 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.
Kosciuszko 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 Kosciuszko 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, Kosciuszko's manifesto to the citizens of the district of
Brzesc, 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."[1]
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."[2]
[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]
[Footnote 2: _Op. cit_.]
Following all these enactments of Kosciuszko'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 Kosciuszko, placing the continuance of
such shreds of Royal power as he possessed at the dictator's
arbitration. Once again Kosciuszko was called to measure swords with his
King and sometime patron. This time it was Kosciuszko 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."[1]
Until the month of May Kosciuszko 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, Kollontaj, 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 Kosciuszko'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."[2]
[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]
[Footnote 2: _Op. cit_.]
The whole country was now rallying round Kosciuszko. 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 Kosciuszko had fought as a subordinate
officer, now placed himself unreservedly at Kosciuszko's disposal. The
King, the nation, were in Kosciuszko'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 Kosciuszko'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.
"Dear comrade," he writes in the first weeks of war to one of his
deputies, "those who have begun the Rising are in this determination:
either to die for our country or to deliver her from oppression and
slavery. I am certain that to your soul, your courage, I need say no
more. Poland will certainly touch your sensitive heart, dear
comrade."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Letters of Kosciuszko_.]
The same tone is conspicuous in Kosciuszko's many proclamations to the
nation. In these, too, he addresses the people of whose destinies he was
the ruler, who were under his obedience, as his "dear comrades," his
"fellow-citizens," his "brothers." He regarded himself in no other light
than that of: the servant of his country, equally ready to command or to
resign his authority, according as her interests demanded. Lust of power
and personal ambition were unknown to him. He was, if we may use the
expression, out for one object: to save his country; and any interest of
his own was in his scheme nonexistent. "Let no man who prizes virtue,"
he wrote, "desire power. They have laid it in my hands at this critical
moment. I know not if I have merited this confidence, but I do know that
for me this power is only a weapon for the effectual defence of my
country, and I confess that I long for its termination as sincerely as
for the salvation of the nation."[1] He yearned not for the sword, but
for peace and the "little garden" of his dreams, as he tells a friend.
Given that temper of his mind and the inherent nobility of his nature,
and we have the explanation how it is that not one unworthy deed, not a
single moral stain, disfigures the seven months that Kosciuszko stood at
the head of the Polish state, beset though he was by internal and
external problems under which a man of less purity of aim and
single-heartedness than his might well have swerved.
But for all his native modesty Kosciuszko was too conscious of his
obligation to his country to brook any infringement of the power he
held. Writing a sharp rebuke to "the whole principality of Lithuania and
especially to the Provisional Council of Wilno," which he had reason to
believe was arrogating to itself his functions, he declares that he
would be "unworthy of the trust" that his nation had confided to him if
he did not "know how to use and maintain" his authority.[2] A little
later, desirous to mitigate this sternness with the suavity more
congenial to him, he spoke to his native district in a different key.
[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]
[Footnote 2: K. Bartoszewicz, _History of Kosciuszko's Insurrection_.]
"The last moment of Poland, her supreme cause, salvation or eternal ruin
and shame, personal freedom and national independence, or a terrible
slavery and the groaning of millions of men ... the destruction of the
Polish name, or her glorious place in the ranks of nations: these are
the considerations that must take hold of the Polish nation, of you,
citizens of Lithuania. ... Poles, now is the moment for the amendment of
eternal errors. Now is the time to be worthy of your ancestors, to
forget yourselves in order to save the country, to stifle in yourselves
the base voice of personal interest in order to serve the public. Now
must you draw forth your last strength, your last means, to give freedom
to your land. ... Let us know how to die! And what is earthly life? A
transitory and passing shadow, subject to a thousand accidents. What
Pole can live, if he must live in the state in which till now, with his
compatriots, he has been compelled to live? ... Oh, fellow-countrymen!
If you spare your lives, it is that you should be wretched slaves; if
you spare your possessions, it is that they should be the spoils of the
invaders. Who can be so deprived of reason or so fearful, as to doubt
that we shall surely conquer, if we all manfully desire to conquer?
"Lithuania! My fellow-countrymen and compatriots! I was born on your
soil, and in the midst of righteous zeal for my country more especial
affection is called forth in me for those among whom I began life. ...
Look at the rest of the nation of which you are a part. Look at those
volunteers, already assembling in each province of all the Crown,
seeking out the enemy, leaving homes and families for a beloved country,
inflamed with the watchword of those fighting for the nation: Death or
Victory! Once again, I say, we shall conquer! Earlier or later the
powerful God humbles the pride of the invaders, and aids persecuted
nations, faithful to Him and faithful to the virtue of patriotism."[1]
[Footnote 1: K. Bartoszewicz, _Op. cit. Kosciuszko_. Periodical
Publication.]
The moment had now arrived--in the May of 1794--to regularize the Rising
and to establish the temporary government on a stable and more
conventional basis. Kosciuszko explained himself fully in his
proclamation of May 21st to the "citizens of Poland and Lithuania":
"It has pleased you, citizens, to give me the highest proof of
confidence, for you have not only laid your whole armed strength and the
use thereof in my hands, but in addition, in the period of the Rising,
not deeming yourselves to be in the condition to make a well-ordered
choice of members for the Supreme National Council, you confided that
choice to me. The greater the universal confidence in me that I behold,
the more solicitous I am to respond to it agreeably to your wishes and
to the necessities of the nation.
"I kept to that consideration in the nomination of members of the
Council. I desired to make the same choice that you yourselves would
have made. So I looked for citizens who were worthy of the public trust:
I considered who in private and public life had maintained the
obligations of unstained virtue, who were steadfastly attached to the
Rights of the Nation and the Rights of the People, who at the time of
the nation's misfortunes, when foreign oppression and domestic crime
drove at their will the fate of the country, had most suffered for their
patriotism and their merits. It was such men whom for the most part I
summoned to the National Council, joining to them persons honoured for
their knowledge and virtue, and adding to them deputies capable of
assisting them in their onerous obligations."
He then says that the reason he did not nominate the Council earlier was
because he was awaiting the whole nation's confirmation of the Act of
the Rising that had been proclaimed in Cracow, and thus "during the
first and violent necessities" of the Rising he was driven to issue
manifestos and ordinances on his own responsibility.
"With joy I see the time approaching when nothing shall be able to
justify me for the smallest infringement of the limits you placed to my
power. I respect them because they are just, because they emanate from
your will, which is the most sacred law for me. I hope that not only
now, but when--God grant it!--having delivered our country from her
enemies, I cast my sword under the feet of the nation, no one shall
accuse me of their transgression."[1]
[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]
Public morality did not satisfy Kosciuszko in his choice of the men who
were to rule the country. He would have none to shape her laws and
destinies whose personal morals were lax. "What do you want, Prince?"
were the dry words with which he greeted Józef Poniatowski, when the gay
officer came into his camp to offer his sword to the Rising; and it is
said that this ungracious reception, widely different from Kosciuszko's
usual address, was due to the fact that he, whose own private life was
blameless, was of too Puritan a temper to be able to overlook certain
notorious aspects of Poniatowski's character.
Still in May Kosciuszko sent Kollontaj and Ignacy Potocki to Warsaw, and
the National Council assumed there its legal functions. Among its
members sat not only Kollontaj, Potocki, and those who had taken part in
the old Polish Diet, former ministers of state and high officers, two
representatives of the clergy of the Latin and Greek rites, but the
banker Kapostas, who had been the originator of the secret confederation
that had prepared the Rising in Warsaw and who had only narrowly escaped
Russian imprisonment, and the shoemaker Kilinski. Thus for the first
time in Polish history artisans and burghers were included in the
national governing body. The assembly was animated by that new spirit of
democracy in its noblest form in which Kosciuszko himself was steeped.
It carried forward the task that the Constitution of the 3rd of May had
begun and had been forced by Poland's conquerors to abandon. Its
presidency passed by rotation to each member, who called each other
"citizen," and who were all, without distinction of rank and class,
treated as equals. They organized the Ministry into the ordinary
departments, and entered into relations with foreign powers, among which
England, Sweden, and Austria--the latter soon to change her
face--acknowledged them as the lawful government of state.
Having thus lightened the burden of civil rule by securing effective
colleagues, Kosciuszko, although he did not cease to be the chief
dictator of the nation, could now more freely devote himself to the
immediate object of the Rising.