After more than a year of being prodded by various intellectuals, aristocrats, soldiers, and fawning women, Kosciuszko finally agreed to lead an uprising to oust the foreign armies from his country. He had never been a fluid writer, so when the time came to issue his tour de force, The Act of Insurrection, the writing was left up to Kollontay, whose essays inspired the Seym to pass a democratic constitution. Kosciuszko objected that the principles in the act were too similar to those of the May 3 Constitution. He wanted the “country to be formed on the same model as the American republic.”
