The rebels had only about a week of preparations when they learned that Russian general Fiodor Denisov was marching on Krakow with an army of five thousand. If the enemy surrounded Krakow and besieged the city, the uprising would be finished before it had a chance to spread through Poland. The commander realized that he would be better off if he could link up with the units of Generals Madalinski and Manget that had been harassing the enemy in the field. On April 1 Kosciuszko marched out of Krakow with a ragtag army of 850 regular soldiers, two hundred young volunteers with horses, and four
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Wild portrayal of the early odds: learned a Russian army of 5,000 were marching on them and marched out of Krakow with less than a thousand, hoping to link up with others (and did).
