The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution

by Alex Storozynski

Philip Lichocki had just finished his first year as mayor of Krakow when he was shaken from a lazy slumber on the morning of March 24, 1794, by one of his servants who had just returned from the town square. The mayor of Krakow was an aristocrat chosen to run the medieval city that no longer had all the headaches of the national bureaucracy. The anxious servant told the mayor that the army had pulled up the drawbridges over the moat. People were allowed in, but no one was allowed to leave. Mayor Lichocki got dressed and sent one of his guards to investigate the ruckus. Soon a nervous merchant rushed into the mayor’s quarters and told him that a “storm was brewing in town.”1 The stalled uprising was under way. A Polish army messenger arrived and ordered the mayor to gather the town council and all his deputies at city hall within the hour. There was going to be an announcement that Gen. Thaddeus Kosciuszko has been named commander in chief of the nation. Two nights earlier, before the drawbridges were pulled up, Kosciuszko had walked across one of the spans, leading a single horse pulling a wagon with his baggage, uniform, and weapons.