Kitabı oku: «Kościuszko», sayfa 8

"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."⁶⁶

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. Kościuszko 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."⁶⁷

Public morality did not satisfy Kościuszko 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 Kościuszko'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 Kościuszko sent Kołłontaj and Ignacy Potocki to Warsaw, and the National Council assumed there its legal functions. Among its members sat not only Kołłontaj, 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 Kościuszko 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, Kościuszko, 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.

CHAPTER VII
THE RISING OF KOŚCIUSZKO

II

We have reached the month of May, 1794. Kościuszko and the Russian army under Denisov were now at close grips, Denisov repeatedly attacking, Kościuszko beating him off. Communications with Warsaw and all the country were impeded. Provisions were almost impossible to procure. Kościuszko's men went half starved. Burning villages, set on fire by Denisov's soldiers, a countryside laid waste, were the sight the Poles beheld each day, while the homeless peasants crowded into Kościuszko's camp to tell him their piteous stories. Then Denisov retreated so swiftly towards the Prussian frontier that Kościuszko, either through the enemy's rapidity, or because he was detained by the civil affairs of the government with which his hands were just then full, and by the no less arduous task of organizing the war in the provinces, was not able to overtake him. At this moment the Rising promised well. The Polish regiments, escaping from Russian garrisons, augmented the number of the army that, against unheard-of difficulties – short of money, short of all military requisites – Kościuszko had by the end of May gathered together. From Kiev, under the very eyes of the Russian troops in the town. Kopeć – who for his share in the national war later underwent exile in the penal settlements of Kamchatka – led a band of Polish soldiers to Kościuszko's Rising. They had already been in communication with the Poles who were preparing the Rising in Warsaw, when the news of the outbreak of the insurrection reached them. Catherine II at once resolved to disarm them and send them to the Crimea. Kopeć was despatched by the Russian authorities to convey to the Polish soldiers flattering promises from the Empress of pay and rewards. He seized the opportunity for a different purpose, took the oath of the Rising from his compatriots and succeeded in leading them out of Kiev. Halting on the way at Uszomierz, he repaired in the middle of the night to the Carmelite convent, to beg the blessing of the old monk, Marek, who had preached with the fire of a Bernard the Bar war, and around whose white-robed figure among the patriots fighting for freedom tales of miracle had gathered. Rising from his bed of sickness, the old man went out with Kopeć, crucifix in hand, to the Polish soldiers, and gave them his blessing, adding the words: "Go in the name of God and you shall pass through." Eluding the strong Russian forces that were on all sides, they effected their escape, and, singing the ancient battle hymn of Poland, marched to the banners of Kościuszko.

We have seen that Kościuszko held the war as a sacred crusade. He enforced rigid discipline. Licence was unknown in his camp, where the atmosphere, so eyewitnesses have recorded, was that of gaiety and ardour tempered by a grave enthusiasm.

"There is here," writes the envoy whom Kościuszko was sending to Vienna and whom he had summoned to the camp to receive his instructions, "neither braggadocio nor excess. A deep silence reigns, great order, great subordination and discipline. The enthusiasm for Kościuszko's person in the camp and in the nation is beyond credence. He is a simple man, and is one most modest in conversation, manners, dress. He unites with the greatest resolution and enthusiasm for the undertaken cause much sang-froid and judgment. It seems as though in all that he is doing there is nothing temerarious except the enterprise itself. In practical details he leaves nothing to chance: everything is thought out and combined. His may not be a transcendental mind, or one sufficiently elastic for politics. His native good sense is enough for him to estimate affairs correctly and to make the best choice at the first glance. Only love of his country animates him. No other passion has dominion over him."⁶⁸

The name of Kościuszko is linked, not with victory but with a defeat more noble than material triumph. The watchword he had chosen for the Rising, "Death or Victory," was no empty rhetoric; it was stern reality. The spring of 1794 saw the insurrection opening in its brilliant promise. From May the success of an enterprise that could have won through with foreign help, and not without it, declined Kościuszko had now to reckon not only with Russia Prussia was about to send in her regiments of iron against the little Polish army, of which more than half were raw peasants bearing scythes and pikes, and which was thus hemmed in by the armed legions of two of the most powerful states in Europe.

On the 6th of June Kościuszko reached Szczekociny. It was among the marshes there that the Polish army met the fiercest shock of arms it had yet experienced in the course of the Rising. "The enemy," wrote Kościuszko in his report, "stood all night under arms. We awaited the dawn with the sweetest hope of victory." These hopes were founded on the precedent of Racławice and on the battles in which Kościuszko had fought in the United States, where he had seen British regulars routed by the American farmers. But as hostilities were about to begin with the morning, Wodzicki, examining the proceedings through his field-glasses, expressed his amazement at the masses moving against the Polish army. "Surely my eyes deceive me, for I recognize the Prussians," he said to a Polish officer at his side. It was too true. In the night the Prussian army had come up under Frederick William II. "We saw," says Kościuszko "that it was not only with the Russians we had to deal, for the right wing of the enemy was composed of the Prussian army." The Poles fought with desperate valour. Kościuszko himself records the name of a Polish sergeant who, "when both of his legs were carried off by a cannon-ball, still cried out to his men, "Brothers, defend your country! Defend her boldly. You will conquer!"⁶⁹ The charges of the Polish reapers went far to turn the tide of victory; but the overwhelming numbers of Prussian soldiers, and of scientific machines of war in a ratio of three to Kościuszko's one, carried the day against the Poles. Kościuszko's horse was shot under him, and himself slightly wounded. Only two of his generals emerged from the battle unscathed. The rest were either killed, including the gallant Wodzicki and another who, like him, had been one of the earliest promoters of the Rising, and the others wounded, Poninski redeeming by his blood a father's infamy.

There was no choice left open to Kościuszko, if he would save an army composed for the most part of inexperienced volunteers, but to order a retreat. This retreat was carried out in perfect order. The field was strewn with Polish dead, whom, after the withdrawal of the Prussians, the villagers piously buried in their parish church. There, too, on the battlefield, lay so many corpses of Prussian soldiers that Frederick William expressed the hope that he would gain few more such costly victories. It was at the close of this disastrous defeat that Kościuszko for a moment gave way to despair. An officer of his – Sanguszko – met him wandering stupefied over the battlefield when the day was lost. "I wish to be killed," was all Sanguszko heard him say. Sanguszko only saved his general's life by gripping him by the arm and forcing him within the turnpike of a village hard by, where the shattered Polish ranks had taken refuge. This was, however, but a momentary faltering of Kościuszko's soul. On the morrow of the battle he was once more sending his country summonses to a renewed courage and calling up a fresh general levy.

The proivisional government of Poland was the while negotiating with France and Austria. It was hoped that France would support the Rising financially, and persuade Turkey with French encouragement to declare war on Russia. France, preoccupied with internal revolution, had no thought to spare for Polish affairs, and her assistance was never gained. Nor had the Poles' overtures to Austria any happy result. The Austrian Government gave secret orders to arrest Kościuszko and Madalinski if they crossed the frontier, and the Austrian regiments received instructions to attack any Polish insurgents who should pass over into Galicia, providing that the Austrians were superior in number. The favourable answer obtained through a French intermediary from the Porte arrived after Kościuszko was in a Russian prison. By the irony of fate he never heard it, and it was only divulged thirty years after his death. Thus every diplomatic means failed the patriot, who was no match for the machinations of the European statecraft which has borne its lamentable fruits in the recent cataclysm we have all witnessed. He was thrown on the resources with which he was more familiar: those of an ennobling idea and of the exactions of self-devotion in its cause. Immediately after his eyes had been opened at Szczekociny to the new peril that had burst upon his country he sent out another order, bidding his commanders to "go over the Prussian and Russian boundaries" into the provinces that were lawfully Poland's but which had been filched from her at the partitions, "and proclaiming there the freedom and the rising of the Poles, summon the peasants oppressed and ground down with slavery to join us and universally arm against the usurpers and their oppression: " to do the same in Russia proper and Prussia, to all "who are desirous of returning to the sweet liberties of their own country or desirous to obtain a free country."⁷⁰

A peasant war could at the moment be only a chimera, impossible of realization. Does this manifesto prove that Kościuszko, in a most perilous situation, abandoned by Europe, was pushed to a measure that he himself knew was a desperate hope? Or was it the generous prompting of a great dream that beats down, that refuses to be disconcerted by the obstacles that stand before it – that in its failure we call visionary, but in its success the reform for which the world has waited? Be that as it may, the proclamation was not without its response. The Supreme Council modified its wording, and sent it into Great Poland – the so-called "Prussian" Poland – with the result that the Poles there took up arms.

A lion striving in the toils: – such is the simile by which a Polish historian describes the position of Kościuszko. Not one word or sign of sympathy for his nation in her gallant struggle for life reached him from any quarter outside his country. Nor was he beset only by external obstacles. Difficulties inside the state added to his cares. In answer to the complaint of a deputation from Warsaw, dissatisfied with the composition of the Supreme Council, he wrote from his tent, begging the people of the city, his "brothers and fellow-citizens," to remember that he, whom their delegates "saw," as he expresses it, "serving you and the country in the sweat of my brow," had only the happiness of the sons of Poland at heart. May, says he, his "vow made before God and the world calm all the anxieties of each citizen and defend them from irregular steps against the established Council. … My answer is short: let us first drive out the enemy, and then we will lay down the unchangeable foundations of our happiness."⁷¹

Sincerity was the groundwork of Kościuszko's dealings with his people. The greater the reverses which the cause of Poland encountered, the greater must be the courage with which to conquer them. Defeat must be regarded merely as the incentive to victory. Thus, a few days after the battle of Szczekociny, giving the nation a full report of the battle, in which he mitigated none of his losses, he ended with these words:

"Nation! This is the first test of the stability of thy spirit, the first day of thy Rising in which it is free to thee to be sad, but not to be dismayed. Those guilty of thy defeat will amend it at the first opportunity, and they who have never deceived thee as to their courage thirst to avenge thy misfortune of a moment. Wouldest thou be worthy of liberty and self-government if thou knowest not how to endure the vicissitudes of fate? Nation! Thy soil shall be free. Only let thy spirit be high above all."⁷²

He then marched in haste towards Warsaw, whose safety was threatened. On the way tidings of a great disaster were brought to him – that of the capitulation of Cracow to the Prussians by its Polish commander, the national honour only redeemed by the gallant attempt of the Cracow burghers led by a book-keeper to defend the castle, to whom the Prussian general gave the honours of war as they marched out. The knowledge that the Prussians were in possession of the ancient capital of Poland, the most beloved of Polish cities, which had rung with the first vows of the national uprising, must have been bitter beyond expression to Kościuszko and to all Poland; but again he would permit neither himself nor his nation to meet this blow with anything but unshaken fortitude.

"We have sustained a loss " – thus his manifesto: "but I ask of courageous and stable souls, ought this to make us fear? Can the loss of one town bid us despair of the fate of the whole commonwealth? The first virtue of a free man is not to despair of the fate of his country." He speaks of Athens and the Persians, Rome after Cannae, France driving the English out of their country, and the heroes of his own nation who had repulsed Sweden, Turkey, Russia, and the Tartars. "Other men of courage and of virtue have not doubted. Instead of breaking into profitless lamentations they flew to arms, and delivered the country from the invasions of their enemies. … I have told you, citizens, what my duty bade me tell you in the conditions of to-day: beware of indirect and alarmist impressions, beware of those who spread them. Trust in the valour of our armies and the fidelity of their leaders. … Let not Europe say: 'The Pole is swift to enthusiasm, swifter to discouragement.' Rather let the nations say: 'The Poles are valiant in resolution, unterrified in disaster, constant in fulfilment.'"⁷³

As if to prove the truth of his words, good news poured in from Lithuania, Samogitia, Courland. Bands of peasants were fighting in Lithuania. The Rising was general in Samogitia. Courland remembered that in the past she had been a member of the Polish Commonwealth, and her citizens gave in their act of adhesion to the Polish Rising.

Taking advantage of Frederick William's incapacity of profiting by his victory at Szczekociny, Kościuszko pushed rapidly on to Warsaw. By a series of skilful manœuvres, in the last days of June he arrived outside the city, and prepared to defend her at all costs.

Events then occurred in Warsaw of a nature to arouse his strong condemnation. Hearing of the loss of Cracow at the hand of a traitor, the Warsaw populace, with the memory of Targowica, many of whose confederates were still in their midst, staring them in the face, dragged out from the prisons certain Poles who had either been guilty or who were suspected of treason, and executed them then and there. Kościuszko was in camp in the neighbourhood of Warsaw. Any form of terrorism was abhorrent both to his private and national conscience. So deeply did he take to heart this outbreak of popular fury that one of his Lithuanian commanders, Prince Michał Oginski, who visited him at that time, heard him declare that he would have preferred the loss of two battles as being less prejudicial to the Polish cause. As the head of the national government, he at once addressed the following letter to the city of Warsaw: —

"While all my labours and efforts are strained to the expulsion of the enemy, the news has reached me that an enemy more terrible than a foreign army is threatening us and tearing our vitals asunder. What happened in Warsaw yesterday has filled my heart with bitterness and sadness. The wish to punish delinquents was well, but why were they punished without the sentence of a tribunal? Why have you outraged the authority and sanctity of the laws? Is that the act of a people which has raised its sword and conquered foreign invaders in order to restore a well-ordered liberty and the rule of law, and the tranquil happiness that flow therefrom?"

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.