Monica M. Gardner

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

“ 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 ”

“ If till now the [151] results of your toil and struggles have not entirely corresponded to the courage and intrepidity of a free nation, I ascribe this, not to the superior valour of our enemies (for what could there be more valiant than a Polish army?) ; but I ascribe it to a want of confidence in our own strength and courage, to that false and unfortunate idea of the enemy's power which some fatality has sown among your troops. Soldiers valiant and free! Beware of those erroneous conceptions that wrong you; thrust them from your hearts; they are unworthy of Poles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ That day, that scene, remain engraved for ever among the greatest of Poland's memories. As far as Kościuszko'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 Kościuszko." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ This was no mere ornamental flourish: for a dauntless courage is one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Polish race, whether of its sons or daughters. No opportunity was lost, even in the textbooks of the school, to impress upon the students' minds that above all their lives belonged to Poland. Let them apply themselves to history, said the foreword of an encyclopædia that Adam Czartoryski wrote expressly for them, so that they shall learn how to rule their own nation ”

“ The leader of the legions was the gallant Dombrowski. "Fellow-citizens! Poles!" cried he in his manifesto to his nation in language strangely prophetic of the hour that is scarcely past, when we have seen a Polish army in Polish uniform fighting for liberty by the side of the Allies in the European War: "Hope is rising! France is conquering. The battalions are forming. Comrades, join us! Fling away the weapons which you have been compelled to bear. Let us fight for the common cause of all the nations, for freedom." [1]
[1] T. Korzon, Kościuszko. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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]
[1] K. Bartoszewicz, Op. cit. Kościuszko. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the hope of regaining from Napoleon the freedom of their country, the former soldiers of the Republic, no less than the rising young Polish manhood, panting with [183] passionate patriotism and with the warlike instinct of their race, enrolled themselves in the French army. "Poland has not perished while we live," was the song, the March of Dombrowski, with which they went to battle, and which to this day forbidden though it has been by their oppressors, we may hear Poles sing at national gatherings. ”

“ Or, far on towards the end of the Rising, Kościuszko, 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"—Kościuszko himself was a devout Catholic—"and there is no faith that would forbid a man to be free." ”

“ Thirteen thousand of the civilian inhabitants of Warsaw, men, women, and children, were put to the sword, immolated in the flames, or drowned in the Vistula as they fled over a broken bridge before the fury of the Russian soldiers. Thus ended the Rising of Kościuszko. If under one aspect it closed in failure, on the other side it had proved to the admiration and belated sympathy of all Europe how Poles could fight for freedom. ”

“ If at least the greater part of the Poles thought as you do, Poland might still exist."
"Sire," said Kościuszko, with deep emotion, "that greater part was certainly there. If only Your Imperial Majesty could have been the eyewitness of that virtue, that patriotism, of which they gave no common proofs in the last Rising! I know how men tried to give Your Imperial Majesty the falsest and worst ideas about our nation, because they represented [170] them in the eyes of the whole world as a horde of noisy ruffians, intolerant of rule and law, and therefore unworthy of existence. ”

“ The third partition of Poland was carried out by Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1795, while the man who had offered his life and liberty to avert it lay in a Russian prison. Not even the span of Poland's soil which Kościuszko and his soldiers had watered with their blood was left to her. To that extinction of an independent state, lying between Russia and the Central Powers, barring the progress of Prussia to the Baltic and the East, the most far-seeing politicians ascribe the world-war that has been so recently devastating the world. ”

“ One is typical: "Hast thou the sincere resolve always to use this weapon which thou art about to receive in defence of thy country and thy honour?" On the youth's reply, "I have no other resolve," arms were presented, drums rolled, and the senior officer girded the new soldier with his sword, and placed his musket in his hand to the accompaniment of moral formulas. The young man then made a solemn promise not to disgrace his comrades by any crime or want of application to his duties. ”

“ 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? ”