As a sixth grader some 60 years ago, I learned that two Polish heroes played prominent roles in the struggle to secure American independence from Great Britain—Casimir Pulaski and Thaddeus Kosciuszko. What they did for America left a deep impression on me and began a lifelong appreciation for Poland and things Polish.
Pulaski became “the Father of the American Cavalry” and is buried near Savannah, not far from an 18th-century fort that bears his name. All over America you can find highways, townships, towns and villages, schools, bridges, and monuments monikered in his memory.
Thaddeus Kosciuszko, however, is my focus in this essay. Born in 1746, a few months after Pulaski, Kosciuszko came to America for the same reason, to fight for liberty. He distinguished himself as a master engineer of fortifications and, like Pulaski, also earned the rank of brigadier general. His work proved indispensable to the American victory at Saratoga and in the successful defense of West Point.
Later dispatched to the South, he is credited with valuable service in the Carolinas, including the reoccupation of Charleston after the British retreat. He endured seven years of fighting for America without pay, until Congress finally found the money to compensate him and other Continental Army soldiers, meager though it was.
But it is for another venture that I write about Kosciuszko here. Over eight months from March to November 1794—exactly 230 years ago—he led a courageous insurrection in his native Poland against the Russians.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the early 1790s was a nation under siege by three powerful neighbors: Austria-Hungary, Prussia, and most importantly, Russia. Those three adjoining nations had long vexed the Poles—grabbing land, bribing Polish politicians, and isolating the country diplomatically. After his valiant efforts on behalf of the freedom of America, he returned to Europe to fight for the freedom of his beloved Poland.
When the Russians invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1792, Kosciuszko sprang into action. Rising to the rank of lieutenant general, he fought the Russians and never lost a battle. But in an act judged misguided at best and cowardly at worst, King Stanisław Poniatowski stunned the nation by ordering a cessation of hostilities against the Russians. The King’s surrender opened the door to Russian occupation, and in disgust, Kosciuszko left the country to begin planning a revolution against the Russian usurpers.
The King thought he had struck a deal with the Russians that would leave Polish borders intact. That was naïve. If you wonder why Poles today distrust, even despise, the regime then in St. Petersburg and now in Moscow, this is one of many good reasons. In January 1793, Russia and Prussia signed an agreement that produced a second partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (the first being in 1772) that shrunk the country further.
The patriot in Kosciuszko wouldn’t allow for acceptance of these circumstances. Working with other Polish emigres in Europe, he plotted to liberate occupied Poland. Under threat of arrest and execution, he made his way back to the country, and in the main square of Krakow on March 24, 1794, he daringly announced what would quickly become known as the Kosciuszko Insurrection. He was now commander-in-chief of Polish-Lithuanian forces opposing the forces of Catherine the Great’s autocratic Russia.
Kosciuszko’s forces fought valiantly in every corner of the country. Two months in, he issued the Polaniec Manifesto. It granted the people substantial civil liberties and a partial end to serfdom, private ownership of land, and certain legal rights previously unknown to ordinary people. Though the Manifesto rallied the peasantry to support the cause of the insurrection, it was ultimately to little avail. The old nobility resisted it, and by November, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth succumbed to the overwhelming numbers of the Russian enemy.
As for Kosciuszko himself: After the Russian victory in 1795, he emigrated to America again. He enjoyed a long friendship with many American patriots, including Thomas Jefferson. He wrote his will in 1798 and bequeathed much of his estate to the freedom and education of black slaves in the United States. He died in Switzerland in 1817, at age 71.
