The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution

by Alex Storozynski

But the nation’s commander had overestimated the commitment to his cause from the aristocracy and the church. Poland’s economy was based on slave labor, and getting rid of the corvée would be a disaster for the nobility. The aristocrats had contributed vast sums of money to the cause, and the church had given up much of its gold and silver, but the Proclamation of Polaniec meant that they would have to give up future income as well. The priests of the Catholic Church, who also had their own serfs, did not want to free the peasants who provided them with cheap labor and a steady income.48 It was an act of abolition, akin to the issue of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the yet-unwritten Emancipation Proclamation all at once. Publicly Poland’s priests and aristocrats backed the insurrection, but privately they were stewing that the commander of the nation had gone too far by granting freedom to the serfs with a stroke of the pen. It was a promise that could not be kept.