The troops of these three sovereigns were in possession of all Poland, when, in April, 1773, the Polish King, Stanislaus, was compelled by his Russian rulers to convene a mock assembly at Warsaw, for the purpose of ratifying the treaty by which the partitioning powers had, in the preceding August, divided amongst themselves the coveted provinces of the Polish territory. Under the menaces of Russian bayonets the Diet was convened, and the treaty sanctioned; and then the allies withdrew from Warsaw, and the portion of Poland which they were pleased, for a time, to leave in nominal independence and peace. fession first in the military school at Warsaw. I than the Czarina; and the Austrian Empress, An early disappointment in love caused him Maria Theresa, was persuaded, though with to leave Poland for a time; and he pro- difficulty, to become an accomplice in the ceeded to Paris, where he resumed his mili- greatest national crime that had been comtary studies. He was still young when he mitted since Christian Europe emerged from returned to Poland, and he applied to Stanis- the chaos and strife of the Dark Ages. laus, the then King, for an appointment in the army, but was refused. At this time the war of Independence was going on between England and her American colonies; and Kosciusko, who had formed the acquaintance of Lafayette at Paris, now joined him and the other French volunteers, who crossed the Atlantic to offer their swords in what they deemed the cause of justice and freedom. Kosciusko served for several campaigns under Gates and Washington, and acquired a high reputation both for personal bravery and for skill. He rose to the rank of general in the American army. At the end of the war he returned to his own country, where he lived in retirement, until the opportunity came of serving her with his counsel and his word. The first spoliation of the Polish territory by the crowned conspirators who ruled the three great empires of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, had taken place in 1772. A century had not then elapsed since the rescue of Austria from the Turks, by the Poles under King Sobieski. Little more than a century and a half had passed from the time when the Polish armies of King Sigismund conquered Russia, dethroned her Czar, and gave away the Russian crown in captured Moscow. The Prussian dukes had been long the vassals of the Jagellon Polish kings; and of the three powers that have blotted Poland out from the list of the living nationalities of Europe, there is not one that has not formerly been her humble and submissive inferior: and it was in her that Christendom found for ages its bravest and best barrier against the tide of Mahometan invasion. But while other states had been consolidating their strength, Poland had been gradually sinking into weakness, and becoming the prey of dissension and anarchy. The mass of her population were serfs. The inhabitants of her cities and towns had no social rank or political power. And her nobility, though numerous and brave, were turbulent and lawless, regarding with equal jealousy the masses below them, and the king whom they elected to be over them. The Russian Empress, Catherine, found ready pretext for interfering in the royal elections, and in the civil wars that were continually breaking out among the Poles. Frederick of Prussia was even more ambitious and unscrupulous This terrible blow at last awoke the Poles to the necessity of reforming the wretched state of their national institutions. The wisest of their sovereigns, Sobieski and John Casimir, had vainly predicted the coming calamty, and vainly urged their countrymen to lay aside their dissensions, and to abandon their arbitrary and wild usages for a more just and rational form of government. Taught by experience, but taught when the lesson came too late, Poland now earnestly employed herself in the task of self-reform: and, in 1791, a new constitution was enthusiastically adopted, which commanded the respect of the sagest minds; and which, if foreign interference had been averted or repelled, might even yet have rescued the Polish nation from ruin. By this constitution a system of public education was provided; the partial emancipation of the serfs, with a view to their gradual elevation to all the rights of freemen, was decreed; the throne was declared hereditary in the Saxon royal branch, after the death of King Stanislaus; the "Liberum Veto," by which a single dissident in the Diets had been able to nullify every resolution, was abolished, and the consent of a majority was declared sufficient. Moreover, the cities and towns acquired representatives; and thus, at last, this important element of European civilization, the municipal, was called into activity in Poland. The wisdom of this reform may be best judged of from the remarks made upon it by Burke, at the very time when that statesman was signalizing himself by his denunciations of revolutionary innovation : In contemplating that change, humanity duct, now received the command of one of the three divisions of the Polish army of defence. In the short campaign that ensued, he distinguished himself greatly, both for spirit and for judgment; and he won the ad that he made at Dubienka on the 18th of July, where, at the head of five thousand Poles, he held his ground for many hours against seventeen thousand Russians, and, when at last compelled to retire, effected an orderly and steady retreat. The valor and the coolness which he exhibited in this engagement, marked him out to the Poles as their future military chief. The vacillations and the cowardice of the Polish King, Stanislaus, paralyzed all the efforts of the national troops during this cam has everything to rejoice and glory in, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to suffer. Anarchy and servitude were at once removed; a throne was strengthened for the protection of the people, without trenching on their liberties; foreign cabal abolished, by chang-miration of all Europe by the gallant stand ing the crown from elective to hereditary; a reigning king, from an heroic love to his country, exerted himself in favor of a family of strangers, as if it had been his own. Ten millions of men were placed in a way to be freed gradually, and therefore to themselves safely, not from civil or political chains, which, bad as they seem, only fetter the mind, but from substantial personal bondage. Inhabitants of cities, before without privileges, were placed in the consideration which belongs to that improved and connecting situation of social life. One of the most nu-paign; and, while the contest was still unmerous, proud, and fierce bodies of nobility in the world, was arranged only in the foremost rank of free citizens. All, from the king to the laborer, were improved in their condition. Everything was kept in its place and order, but in that place and order everything was bettered. Not one drop of blood was spilled; there was no treachery, no outrage; no slander, more cruel than the sword; no studied-insult on religions, morals, or manners; no spoil or confiscation; no citizen was beggared; none imprisoned, none exiled; but the whole was effected with a policy and discretion, a unanimity and secrecy, such as have never been before known on any occasion." It was the establishment of this constitution that was made the pretext for a fresh spoliation of Poland. The King of Prussia, in the most detestable spirit of treachery, had encouraged the Poles to proceed with their reforms, and had proffered the alliance of Prussia as a safeguard, in the event of any attack from Russia. A treaty was concluded in 1791, by which King Frederick William bound himself to protect Poland from foreign interference in any time or any manner. The Russian minister, with more insolence, but more candor, informed the Polish Diet that the least change in the constitution of their country would be looked on as an infraction of the peace between Poland and Russia. Poland completed her reforms, in defiance of this threat; and in the May of 1792, the Russian troops, a hundred thousand strong, entered her territory. Kosciusko, who had zealously co-operated with the chiefs of the great constitutional regeneration of his country, and whose career in America had inspired just confidence in his valor and con decided, the King signed a treaty which placed Poland in the hands of the Russians. After this submission, the Polish army was partly disbanded, and partly scattered into small detachments throughout the country. The officers who had signalized themselves in the resistance to the Russian arms were dismissed; and Russian garrisons were posted in Warsaw and the other principal towns. Early in 1793, the Prussian King, whose energies ought to have been devoted to meeting the real emergencies of the war in which. he was engaged against republican France, revealed the base motives through which he had encouraged Poland to proceed with those reforms that drew on her the hostility of Russia. Neglecting his French foes and German friends on the Rhine, King Frederick William marched his troops into Great Poland, and seized the important cities of Thorn and Dantzic. He tried to justify these acts of violence by a manifesto, in which he declared that the Poles had behaved very ungratefully to his ally, the Empress of Russia, and that they had had the contumacy to make an obstinate resistance against the Russian troops. He complained that the Poles had imbibed the detestable principles of French democracy; and that this was especially the case in the province of Great Poland which adjoined his own dominions; so that he was compelled to have recourse to strong measures. The Russian Empress and the Austrian Emperor also put forth manifestoes about their love of peace and good government, and the consequent necessity for certain parts of Poland being incorporated in the dominions of her neighbors. The Poles in vain appealed to the treaties made after the former partition in 1773, brought the enthusiastic youth of Poland in to him was taken both by the soldiery and the civilians. His authority was absolute. He had the regulation of all affairs, civil as well as military. The national council, which he was commissioned to form, was chosen by himself, and its members were subject to dismissal at his will. He had power given him to nominate his successor, but that successor was to be subject to the control of the national council. So ample was the authority which Poland conferred upon Kosciusko; and on assuming it he bound himself thus to its faithful and just exercise:-"I, Thaddeus Kosciusko, in the presence of the Most High God, swear to the Polish nation that I will never employ against any of my fellow-countrymen the power that has been intrusted to me, but that I will exert it only to maintain the integrity of my fatherland, to recover the national independence, and to strengthen the general liberties of the people." Such was the oath taken by Kosciusko upon entering on his high and perilous office; and no one has ever been found to assert or insinuate that Poland's great Dictator did not keep that oath both in letter and in spirit. when Russia, Austria, and Prussia solemnly I tion, and the magic of his personal influence, guaranteed the independence and integrity of Poland as those treaties left her. The wretched Polish King was compelled to convene a mock assembly, in which the new constitution was abolished, and the old system, with all its abuses, restored. At the same time a fresh partition of territory was ratified, which made over to Russia a terri-gency of the state. An oath of allegiance tory containing a population of more than three millions and a half, and to Prussia a territory with a population of nearly a million and a half, together with the command of the navigation of the Vistula, and the important city of Dantzic on the Baltic. The miserable remnant of Poland was left for King Stanislaus to govern, but with all the disorders and oppressions of the old constitution revived, with a Russian minister in his council to direct him, and with a Russian army in his capital to coerce him if required. A chivalrous and ancient nation like the Polish, justly proud of its military renown, and enthusiastically devoted to liberty, could not be expected to endure such a yoke without one struggle more for independence. It was felt by the Polish generals and soldiery that the King had tied their hands in the late war, and that the chances of battle had not yet been fairly tried. Kosciusko, and the other principal generals, were now refugees from their country; but to whatever region they wandered, their hearts were with Poland still. Kosciusko, though resolute to effect a national rising against the oppressors of his country, was wisely averse to any rash and immature attempts. He waited in the hope of some crisis occurring in the great European war, that then was raging, which might weaken and disunite the force of the oppressors of Poland, and give a favorable opportunity for a struggle. But the patriots who remained at home, and who smarted under the daily insolence and misrule of the satellites of Russia, precipitated the insurrection in 1794; not wholly without reason, for an order had been issued to disband half of the little army which Poland had been allowed by the late treaty to keep on foot, and it seemed essential not to allow the national force to be thus weakened. The Polish officer Madalinski, who received the command to disband his brigade, replied by marching upon Cracow, and calling on the Poles to arm for the rescue of their independence. Few at first obeyed the summons: The news of this victory spread far and but when Kosciusko, who had been watching wide through Poland; and the Polish troops the progress of events from the Saxon fron- and a considerable number of the population tier, arrived at Cracow, his military reputa-rose in support of the patriotic cause. | The first acts of Kosciusko were to summon a Diet of representatives of the nobles and representatives of the cities; to provide funds for the immediate purposes of the war by a property-tax; and to call out and organize as far as possible the military force of the land. On the first of April he marched out of Cracow at the head of four thousand imperfectly armed troops. On the fourth he encountered a superior force of Russians at Raclavicé, and after an obstinate fight of five hours, gained a complete victory, in which, besides the heavy loss which the enemy sustained in killed and wounded, they left eleven cannons in Kosciusko's hands, and a large quantity of arms and military stores, which were of the greatest service to him in equipping the volunteers who thronged around him. The Kosciusko was, indeed, neither a sanguinary party chief, nor a fanatical democrat. He had the good sense to understand that the republican institutions which he had seen introduced into America were wholly unsuited for the Polish nation. He seems to have thought a limited hereditary monarchy, with a representative house of commons, and with fair privileges secured to the higher nobility, the best adapted for his country. He showed the equity and humanity of his disposition by the efforts that he made to ameliorate the condition of the serfs; though these efforts lost him the good-will and the co-operation of some of the great land-owners, who looked on their peasants as their chattels, and were more influenced by avarice than by humanity or patriotism. Simple in his habits, unaffected in his manners, amiable and mild to his comrades and associates, chivalrously bold in danger, and sternly resolute when duty required, he was the idol of his soldiers' hearts, and won the admiration and esteem even of his foes. Russian general, Denisoff, whom Kosciusko | their September massacres, the anarchists of had defeated at Raclavicé, was largely rein- Warsaw attacked the prisons, threatening forced soon after the battle, so as to check instant death to all traitors. The magistrates, Kosciusko from advancing on the capital. at imminent danger to themselves, checked But the Polish commander, by compelling the riot, but not before eight of the prisoners the enemy to concentrate their troops round had been seized and slaughtered. Kosciusko Cracow, secured the insurgents in the rest of showed the deepest grief and indignation Poland free opportunity for action and or- when informed of these excesses. Count ganization. In the palatinate of Lublin, the Oginsky, who served under Kosciusko during district of Chelm, and the duchy of Lithua- this war, heard from Kosciusko's own lips nia, corps of Poles were collected, and im- how he lamented this blot on the Polish revoportant advantages over the Russians were lution. He did more than lament it. He obtained. A considerable garrison of Rus- caused a strict investigation to be made resian troops was posted in Warsaw; but the specting the originators of these crimes, and citizens rose against them, and, after two seven of the ring-leaders were executed by days' hard fighting, nearly the whole of the his orders. foreign garrison was destroyed, and the capital of Poland was in the possession of the Polish troops and armed citizens. All readily acknowledged the authority of Kosciusko; and while professing allegiance to King Stanislaus, and declaring their intention of preserving their monarchy, the Poles placed themselves under the guidance of their Great Dictator, so long as the struggle against the enemy should continue. The Prussian troops now took an active part in the campaign against the Poles, whom the Russians, singlehanded, were plainly unable to subdue. An army of forty thousand Prussians marched upon Cracow, and united themselves with Denisoff's troops. Kosciusko attacked them at Scekocin, on the 8th June, but the disparity of numbers was too great, and, after some gallant fighting, he was obliged to retreat upon Kielce, leaving the road to Cracow open to the enemies. This city was soon obliged to surrender to a Prussian division, and, about the same time, a Polish corps under General Zaginczech was completely defeated by a Russian force under Defelden. These reverses were met by Kosciusko with unflinching fortitude. His army, though beaten at Scekocin, had not been routed; and while he rested and reinforced it at his camp at Kielce, he issued proclamations and orders to all the Polish generals on the frontiers, bidding them carry the war into the Prussian and Russian territories, and offer liberty to the enslaved and oppressed populations. But, in the meanwhile, scenes occurred at Warsaw which did serious injury to the Polish cause, and threatened to disgrace it as deeply as the cause of freedom had been disgraced in France. The mob of the capital broke out into the most furious violence, when the reverses of the national armies were known. On the same pretexts as those assigned by the Jacobins of Paris in At the end of June an Austrian army entered Little Poland, and though it did not proceed to further hostilities, it necessarily weakened the forces of the defenders, by requiring a Polish corps of observation to be drafted from the other armies and employed in watching its movements. The combined Prussians and Russians now advanced from Cracow upon Warsaw. Kosciusko was too weak to fight a pitched battle with them, and he retreated before them to a stronglyfortified camp, which he had directed to be prepared a few miles from the city. He had also caused the fortifications of Warsaw to be strengthened, and the invaders were repulsed in several assaults upon the city; while, from the judicious position which Kosciusko had taken, he made it impossible for them to carry on a regular siege. After several partial engagements, in which I to Sierakovsky preventing the eastern Russian the Polish general showed great skill, and his army, under Suwarrow, from passing the troops great bravery, the allies, who, be- latter stream. But Sierakovsky was no match sides their losses in action, suffered severely for the conqueror of Ismail. Suwarrow for want of provisions, retreated from Warsaw came on him by surprise, and almost destroyon the 5th of September. The Polish prov- ed his army in a series of engagements, inces, which the late treaties of partition had which were all desperately fought, but all given to Prussia, now rose in arms. Kosci- completely lost by the Poles. Suwarrow adusko sent one of his best generals, with a vanced rapidly as far as Bresck, and Kosconsiderable number of troops, to aid them, ciusko was obliged to quit his own position and in a short time nearly the whole of Great near the Vistula, in order to protect the capPoland was in the hands of the patriots; an ital. Leaving Prince Poninski, with a third advantage which seemed to compensate for of his army, to guard the Vistula against the loss of Lithuania, which the Russians Fersen, he himself took a central station at had reconquered while the first siege of War- Lukow, and concentrated the scattered Polish saw was proceeding. forces for the purpose of making a bold effort to crush Suwarrow, who had moved forward to Bresck with such haste, that only a portion of his troops had been able to keep up with him. But Fersen completely outmanoeuvred Poninski, and, on the 8th of October, succeeded in placing his whole army on the right bank of the Vistula, so that only a few score miles of open country now separated the two Russian armies from each other. But the Czarina was resolved to crush the Polish insurrection at any cost and at all hazards. She therefore ordered her celebrated general, Suwarrow, to march with his army of victorious veterans from the frontiers of Turkey, through the south-eastern provinces of Poland upon Warsaw. Kosciusko, after the deliverance of the capital from the Russian and Prussian troops that had attacked it from the south-west, had followed the retreating enemies for some distance southward of that city, and had established his headquarters on the left bank of the Vistula. The Russian general, Fersen, who, after the departure of the King of Prussia, assumed the chief command of the allies, and who was speedily reinforced by several divisions of his countrymen, was posted on the opposite bank. The news of Suwarrow's approach on the east, obliged Kosciusko to prepare an army to oppose this fresh antagonist. General Sierakovsky, one of the best of the Polish officers, was accordingly sent with fifteen thousand men to check the advance of Suwarrow. At this time ten thousand of the Polish troops were employed in watching the Austrians. Several thousands, under Madalinski, were actively engaged in southern Prussia. Lithuania had exhausted an army; Warsaw required a garrison; and the main Polish army, under Kosciusko, was reduced to seventeen thousand men; and a large proportion of these were recruits, imperfectly armed and disciplined. The want of natural barriers, which characterizes Poland, and her want also of frontier fortresses, made the task of defending her with the slender means at Kosciusko's disposal peculiarly difficult. The rivers Vistula and Bug offered the only lines of defence; and while Kosciusko himself kept the western Russian army, under Fersen, from crossing the former, he trusted Kosciusko felt the instant necessity of fighting his enemies before their junction could be completed, and, for that purpose, leaving one of his generals, Mokranovski, with some troops to retard Suwarrow, he himself hastened, with about eleven thousand men, to Maciovice, where he ordered Poninski to join him, with the intention of then attacking Fersen, whose troops were near that town. But Fersen attacked Kosciusko himself before Poninski came up. The decisive battle was fought on the 8th October. The numerical superiority of the Russians was not very great, but Fersen's men were veterans, and he had a large force of cavalry and of guns, while Kosciusko was almost entirely destitute of artillery and horse, and his soldiers were chiefly half-disciplined and half-equipped volunteers. Still the battle was long and well contested, and the Polish infantry held their ground stubbornly for hours, in hopes of Poninski's division coming up to aid them. At length the superior fire of the Russian artillery, and the charges of their horse regiments on the flank of the Poles, broke the left wing of Kosciusko's army, and spread confusion throughout his line. Collecting his principal officers round him, Kosciusko made a desperate effort to redeem the day by a charge, which he headed in person, against the Russian centre. But his little band was overwhelmed with numbers, and cut down almost to a man: he himself received several severe wounds, and fell to |