The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution

by Alex Storozynski

All around, vast fields of wheat, rye, and hops stretched as far as the eye could see across the flat pole, or prairie lands, from which Poland gets its name. The greedy land barons of the eighteenth century got rich off the brawn and sweat of the peasants who toiled in these fertile plains. These lords established a plutocracy to elect a king, and dictated the terms of government to him and to the rest of society.

European serfdom was not as vicious as American slavery, but peasants were bought and sold with the land they tilled. Troublesome serfs were whipped and hanged if they tried to revolt. British colonies exploited slaves for tobacco, rice, indigo, sugar, and cotton, while Poland capitalized on serf labor to drive the grain trade. These vassals slogged away in the fields and lived in abject poverty, while the land magnates who abused them grew fat off the land. The peasants were subject to the whims of landowners such as Lord Sosnowski, who could beat them for infractions.7

Thaddeus Kosciuszko was born on February 12, 1746.8 He grew up on a midsize estate where 31 peasant families worked the land that belonged to his family. His father, Ludwig Kosciuszko, was well off but not wealthy.

The elder Kosciuszko was easier on his farmhands than most landlords and taught his sons, Joseph and Thaddeus, and his daughters, Anna and Catherine, that treating the peasants fairly and providing them with a greater share of the fruits of their labor would make them more productive.10 Ludwig was a loving husband, father, and landlord who believed that all people were entitled to hope and happiness. Thaddeus, the youngest child, was idealistic and took his father’s philosophy to heart.

When he turned nine he was sent to the Catholic Piarist Fathers College at Lubieszow, near Pinsk. There he followed a new syllabus set up by Father Stanislaw Konarski, the Piarist leader of a cadre of reformist priests who were revolutionizing Poland’s school system. They instituted a curriculum that included lessons about British philosopher John Locke’s theory of a social contract, in which the people of a nation consent to be governed in exchange for social order.12 The Poles had already experimented with their own form of democracy, but Father Konarski’s educational reforms were laying the groundwork for a political enlightenment in Poland. Consumed by the Piarist teachings, Kosciuszko was fascinated by the ancient Greeks and the Roman Empire. The works of Tacitus, Plutarch, and Aristides engrossed him and he was riveted by a biography of Timoleon, the Greek statesman and general who freed his fellow Corinthians and the Sicilians from the tyranny of Carthage.

The quixotic student drew parallels between Timoleon’s Greece and Poland’s subjugation by czarist Russia, whose army was growing more assertive in controlling Polish affairs. He saw in Timoleon a lesson in freeing his own people from Russian domination. Kosciuszko realized early on that Europe’s unjust class structure and agrarian economy allowed the rich to get richer by exploiting the peasants. To him the notion of happiness meant self-determination.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a confederation of two nations that united in the fifteenth century to defend themselves from foreign invaders, such as the German Roman Catholic order of the Teutonic Knights. In recent years it had been a kingdom in decline because of foreign meddling in legislative affairs.

the top one percent, the upper echelon of land magnates made up of wealthy families that employed small armies to protect their dynasties. There were clans such as the Czartoryskis, known as Familia, “the Family,” who had close ties with the Russians; the Potockis, who were allied with Saxony; and the Radziwills, who had long-standing connections to Lithuania.

The decentralized government and divisive alliances of the aristocrats destabilized Poland, creating a tumult in the Commonwealth. When the last king of the Jagiellonian dynasty died without an heir in the late sixteenth century, the magnates experimented with elections, creating a new system in which the nobility voted on the monarch. The Polish lords chose a French prince, Henri de Valois, to be king, but they required him and future monarchs to sign the “Henrician Articles.” These included a stipulation that the monarchy was not hereditary but elected, and that the king must call a session of the legislature, the Seym, every two years. The king could not declare war or collect taxes without approval of the Seym, and was bound by the Articles of Agreement, in which he promised to abide by his campaign promises.14 This libertarian system hailed its “Golden Freedoms,” such as freedom of religion, which could not be taken away by the king.

Poland was experimenting with a republican elected monarchy, albeit a caste based one, and liberal tenets like freedom of religion, in the 1500's

Poland’s kings provided sanctuary to Jews who were persecuted elsewhere and stopped priests who wanted to convert them to Christianity. As a result Jews flocked to Poland and formed the core of the merchant class. While Jews were not allowed to own land, they could lease it and own businesses. They ran the royal treasury and the mint and helped establish the banking system.

The country had a small Muslim population of Asian Tatars, who initially arrived as invaders, starting in the fourteenth century. These nomadic horsemen, descended from the Mongol army of Genghis Khan, drank horse milk mixed with blood and ate raw meat that they kept under their saddles to cushion their ride and tenderize their steaks. The Hussars defeated the Tatar warriors, and some of the vanquished were allowed to settle in Poland, where they freely practiced their Sunni religion.

The Winged Hussars once again faced the Muslims in the late seventeenth century, when the Ottoman Empire swallowed Greece, the Balkans, Hungary, and much of Austria. The Turkish Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha and his army surrounded Vienna and were on the verge of capturing the Danube River, the commercial gateway to Europe. With the Muslims on their doorstep, the German-speaking kingdoms, Austria and Prussia, pleaded with King John Sobieski to send the hussars to repel the marauding army. Sobieski’s hussars led an army that routed the Turks in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. He was hailed as the savior of Europe who rescued the Christians from Muslim invaders.

Poland’s destiny was also determined between the sheets warmed by these political bedfellows. Eventually the dissolute duchess grew tired of Poniatowski, and he returned to Poland. She continued hiding her liaisons until Duke Peter became czar. The new monarch grew tired of his wife, but was assassinated in a coup staged by her supporters, who installed her as czarina. She became known as Catherine the Great and no longer lurked in the shadows with her love affairs. Catherine continued the expansion of Russia begun years earlier by Ivan the Terrible. One month after ascending to the throne, she wrote to Poniatowski, “I am sending at once Count Keyserling as Ambassador to Poland to declare you king after the death of the present monarch.”30

When word spread that Poland had opened a new military academy, another colorful character to show up in Warsaw was British colonel Charles Lee. Lee was a restless British officer who lived in the American colonies where he fought in the French and Indian War, the American theater of the Seven Years’ War. He was adopted by the Mohawk tribe and married the daughter of a Seneca chief and was dubbed Ounewaterika, meaning “boiling water,” or “the spirit that never sleeps.”35 Upon returning to London, Lee was denied his petition to become a general in the British army, so he sought greater experience by obtaining a post in the Polish army. The Poles were in no position to expand their military, so Lee agreed to serve as Stanislaw’s aide-de-camp. Starting in 1764, he served for several years in the royal court in Warsaw. Lee was given a seat at the king’s table and an apartment in Prince Czartoryski’s palace. The English officer was so taken by Stanislaw that he wrote home asking that his prized possession, a sword once owned by Oliver Cromwell, be delivered to Warsaw so he could present it to the king as a gift.36 When Lee returned to London, King George III still deemed his foreign experience and social status insufficient to merit promotion in the British army. So before the outbreak of the American Revolution, the disappointed Lee again sailed for the colonies, where he enlisted in the Continental Army and was finally commissioned as a general.

Charles Lee, a British officer, trained at the Polish war college. When George III denied him promotion due to his low caste, Lee sailed to America and enlisted in the Continetal Army.

Kosciuszko did not find what he was looking for in Saxony, and by December he returned to Paris to look up friends from his university days. The French capital was abuzz over the rebellion against Britain in the thirteen colonies, and Kosciuszko spent time in the cafés and salons of Paris searching for the right opportunity to which to devote his skills. The story of the Boston Tea Party in 1774 was already known in Europe, and the latest news was of the “shot heard round the world” fired by the Massachusetts minutemen on the British at the battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The French were openly giddy over the misfortunes of their greatest enemy, England. Banging the drum for the French to support the Americans was the multitalented Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a writer, musician, inventor, watchmaker, publisher, revolutionary, and would-be spy. His plays The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, would be turned into operas, and his revolutionary polemics were shaking up Paris. Beaumarchais wrote daring letters to the French foreign minister, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes goading King Louis XVI into taking a moral stand in world affairs. Beaumarchais boldly criticized Louis XVI for not opposing slavery in the new world, or the land grab by Poland’s neighbors: “How can you allow your vessels [sic] to take by force and bind suffering black men whom nature made free and who are only miserable because you are powerful? How can you suffer ...

Kosciuszko was inspired to join the American rebellion after marinating in the salons of Paris as news of Lexington and Concord rolled in.

Through the friends he made while studying in Paris, Kosciuszko found the opportunity he was looking for. The American colonists were reaching out to England’s adversaries, and a Virginia diplomat, Arthur Lee, wrote to Beaumarchais pleading, “We need arms, powder and above all engineers.”66

On June 10, 1776, the French government loaned Beaumarchais one million livres to create a shell corporation under the alias Roderigue Hortalez & Co.68 Its mission was to smuggle weapons and ammunition to the Americans. Spain secretly matched that amount, and by the end of June, Kosciuszko was on a ship sailing across the Atlantic with the Frenchman Charles Noel Romand, Sieur de Lisle, and Nicolas Dietrich, Baron von Ottendorf, a nobleman from Saxony. These were but the first foreign officers that Beaumarchais’ shell corporation sent to the new world. The same month the American diplomat and secret agent Silas Deane arrived in France to buy cannons, muskets, and tents to supply the Continental Army. Deane and Beaumarchais would establish a covert operation to send more Frenchmen to aid America’s Continental Army.

The ship was being tossed about on the waves when America’s Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. The long voyage across the choppy waters of the Atlantic took a heavy toll on the sailing vessel, and after two months on the high seas it was blown off course by a tropical storm and smashed on the coral reefs near the coast of the island of Martinique. The following year, on April 16, 1777, the Polish newspaper Nowiny published an account of the wreck as relayed by Kosciuszko in a letter to Prince Czartoryski. Kosciuszko and five other Poles—former Bar confederates—planning to enlist in the American army rescued themselves from the powerful Gulf Stream currents by clutching the ship’s mast and kicking to shore.1

Many years later Kosciuszko recounted his first steps in the new world to his personal secretary. He explained that after getting off the boat he went to visit the shop of the most famous American—Benjamin Franklin. When Kosciuszko walked through the door, the old sage of Philadelphia peered through the top half of his bifocals at the unannounced visitor.3 In broken English before switching to French, Kosciuszko introduced himself, explaining that he wanted to offer his services to the new nation. Thinking that America’s armed forces were as structured as those in Europe, Kosciuszko asked to take the officer’s placement exam so that he could enlist in the Continental Army. Franklin was well attuned to the political situation in Poland and understood that the Poles were more radical about democratic principles than their neighbors. He asked, “Do you have any letters of recommendation?” Kosciuszko replied, “I don’t have any. A talented person should be able to show his worth, and not letters of recommendation. I want to show my competence by taking your placement exam.” About to embark for Paris to lobby France for military assistance, Franklin interrogated the French-educated engineer about news from Europe. The Founding Father pressed Kosciuszko about his own background and political views to get a better sense of the convictions of the foreign volunteer. Satisfied with the answers, the seventy-year-old Franklin rose to his feet and said, “I am convinced of your clear and ...

On the shores of the Delaware River at Billingsport, New Jersey, Kosciuszko drafted plans for a 180-foot-square redoubt with parapets for soldiers and stations for eighteen cannons.

After Washington's retreat across the Delaware, Kosciuszko led fortification down river to prevent the British advancing to Philadelphia

Kosciuszko was already making a name for himself in Philadelphia when Gen. Charles Lee returned to the capital from the south. On October 7 Lee went to Congress to take care of his personal affairs and resume his duties with the Pennsylvania Line. There is no record that he spoke up for the Pole, but shortly after Lee’s arrival, Congress commissioned Kosciuszko as an American officer.

Congress set his salary at sixty dollars a month, which he declined to collect during the entire course of the war.

On December 9 Washington wrote to Hancock: “If the Measure of fortifying the City should be adopted, some skillful person should immediately view the Grounds and begin to trace out the Lines and Works. I am informed there is a French Engineer of eminence in Philadelphia at this time. If so, he will be the most proper.”11 The engineer in Philadelphia was Kosciuszko. While Washington did not know his name, Gen. John Armstrong (father of Maj. John Armstrong, a friend of Kosciuszko), figured out who he was and wanted to hire the talented engineer everyone was talking about.

The British “gentlemen” ridiculed New Englanders with a song called “Yankee Doodle.” A “doodle” was a simpleton, and as the rebellion spread to New York, a colony of many Hollanders, the name Janke, Dutch for “little Jan,” was used derisively. The rebels wore the name Yankee as a badge of honor, and turned the song around, rewriting the lyrics to praise their bravery. It became a battle hymn to tease the snooty Brits.

Kosciuszko was one of Gates’s confidants who dined with him, advised him, and was at the commander’s side during most of the campaign.

About six hundred Redcoats were killed or wounded, yet Gates was not able to finish off the British army. He had good reason to hold back. The rebel army’s ammunition had been exhausted, and each of Morgan and Arnold’s soldiers had only about a single shot left. If Burgoyne had known this, he would have sent his men charging into the mix with their deadly bayonets, and the battle might have finished differently. It was not until the next day that General Schuyler arrived with a fresh supply of gunpowder and lead taken from windowpanes from houses in Albany that could be melted down for bullets.26

First phase of Saratoga

Kosciuszko’s diversionary tactics during the retreat from Ticonderoga and his battle plan for Saratoga earned him a reputation as an adroit field strategist

He understood that the job of a clever military engineer was to come up with a strategy and a battle plan. Engineers had to decide where to position the troops by using math and physics to figure out how far cannonballs could fly and the firing range for muskets. They had to organize troop movements quickly, coordinate safe campsites, and select defensible positions. The military engineer was a crucial part of the war effort.

Washington also had a problem with Gates. The decisive victory over the British at Saratoga inflated Gates’s ego and put him in a position to challenge Washington’s authority as commander in chief. While Gates’s celebrity was on the rise after he turned the tables on the British, Washington was on the run after losing the Battles of Brandywine and Germantown. When the Redcoats attacked Philadelphia, Congress fled west and set up shop in York, Pennsylvania. Washington was the scapegoat. Driven from their capital, several New England delegates believed that the commander in chief should be replaced.

In a shot across Washington’s bow, on October 17, 1777, Congress reestablished the Board of War to oversee his handling of the military. For their sneaky maneuvering, the anti-Washington faction became known as “the Conway cabal.”5 It was named after Gen. Thomas Conway, an Irishman who had served in the French army. He did not like Washington, and after the Battle of Saratoga, Conway wrote a congratulatory letter to Gates in which he took a dig at the commander in chief, saying, “Heaven had determined to save our country, or a weak general and bad counselors would have ruined it.”6

While York was engulfed in political chaos, Kosciuszko was posted 250 miles away in Albany trying to hold together the ragged Northern Army and build redoubts to protect New York from another attack. Kosciuszko stayed loyal to Gates on a personal level, but because of his rudimentary English and lack of contact with Congress in York, he was out of the loop of the machinations of military politics.

Late 1777

When Congress promoted Duportail to general, and each of the French engineers by an additional rank, Kosciuszko’s friends argued that he should be promoted as well. One of these was Col. Robert Troup, who was with Gates in York. Kosciuszko responded to Troup, saying: “I am far from possessing such Qualities as you mention. . . . My dear Colonel if you see that my promotion will make a great many Jealous, tell the General that I will not accept of one because I prefer peace more than the greatest Rank in the World.”15

Kosciuszko greeted Lafayette in Albany on February 17, 1778. The French general gave Kosciuszko a firsthand account of Pulaski’s efforts to raise a cavalry unit in Pennsylvania, and the Polish engineer gave Lafayette an update on the sorry state of the Northern Army.

On December 2, 1777, he wrote to Gen. Israel Putnam: “The importance of the North River in the present contest and the necessity of defending it, are subjects which have been so frequently and so fully discussed and are so well understood, that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon them.” Washington wrote that if the Continental Army was “to preserve the communication between the Eastern, Middle and Southern States” and keep the “chief supplies of flour” flowing to feed the troops, Putnam had to use all his forces to erect “works and obstructions as may be necessary to defend and secure the River against any future attempts of the Enemy.” Since autumn 1777 the British had burned Kingston, New York, and its wheat fields to the ground, Washington worried that the Redcoats would try to destroy all the houses, mills, and towns in the Hudson Valley. “Unless proper measures are taken to prevent them,” he wrote Putnam, “they will renew their Ravages in the Spring, or as soon as the season will admit, and perhaps Albany the only Town in the State of any importance remaining in our hands, may undergo a like fate and a general havoc and devastation take place.”30 The French engineer Colonel Radiere was ordered to report to General Putnam in the Hudson Highlands and design the defenses for West Point as the Americans saw fit. But as soon as he arrived, the Frenchman clashed with Putnam and the other officers. Kosciuszko, who worked with Putnam on the defenses for Philadelphia, would soon...

How Kosciuszko came under Putnam's command and would gain the more direct attention of Washington.

When Salomon died in 1785 at age forty-five, he had no will, but left receipts at the Register’s Officer in Philadelphia for various loans and state and treasury certificates totaling $353,744 to the U.S. government. Unfortunately many of the records concerning Salomon were destroyed when the British burned Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812.45 In 1850, however, the U.S. Senate issued a report that said: “Haym Salomon gave great assistance to the government by loans of money, and advancing liberally of his means to sustain the men engaged in the struggle for independence at a time when the sinews of war were essential to success.”46

Foregoing 5 or so pages synopsis of Haym Salomon - fascinating financier of the American Revolution.

To the scientific skill and sedulous application of Kosciuszko, the public was mainly indebted for the construction of the military defences at West Point.”17

Kosciuszko showed compassion for the English prisoners of war, and even though the rebel soldiers had little food, he shared his own meager rations with the captives. (Many years later a Polish traveler to Queensland, Australia, fell ill with yellow fever and was nursed back to health by a local shopkeeper. The Australian brought the sick Pole to his home and cared for him, explaining that his grandfather would have starved to death as a prisoner during the American Revolution, if not for a Polish soldier named Kosciuszko who shared his bread.)

Sir Henry Clinton was biding his time in New York City during the winter months, hoping to send his navy up the Hudson to carry out the mission in which Burgoyne had failed—cutting the colonies in two and containing the Yankee Revolution in New England.

Good succinct summary of Britain’s plan to divide the colonies at the Hudson and contain the rebellion in New England; and therefore importance of West Point

In early May 1779 the British raided several towns in Virginia to disrupt the supply lines and force the Southern states to keep their militias in place defending the home front so that they would be hesitant about sending their troops to Washington’s main Continental Army.

The commander in chief issued general orders from his headquarters at New Windsor, New York: “All those soldiers who are Masons by trade in the line are immediately to be drawn out and sent to the Fort for a special and temporary service. They are to take their orders from Colonel Kosciuszko.”38 Though it was the first time that the commander in chief had actually spelled his Polish engineer’s name correctly, it was more than a matter of penmanship. The initial ambivalence that he had felt toward Gates’s friend and ally had evolved into trust and respect for the architect of West Point, which Washington called “the most important Post in America.”39

Ironically General St. Clair, who ignored Kosciuszko’s advice at Fort Ticonderoga and was acquitted at his court-martial thanks to the Pole’s testimony, was put in charge of building Redoubt No. 4 on the high ground of Rocky Hill. After a tour of the camp Washington made sure that this time St. Clair would follow the orders: “The possession of this Hill appears to me essential to the preservation of the whole post and our main effort ought to be directed to keeping the enemy off of it. . . Make yourself completely master of its defence . . . you will have an eye to the works to be erected to hasten their completion as fast as possible.”43 Duportail was also present at West Point when Washington reversed the Frenchman’s previous orders to leave Rocky Hill unmanned. Palmer wrote: “General Duportail might have seen a smirk flash across Colonel Kosciuszko’s face when Washington made that decision.”44 The commander in chief vindicated Kosciuszko over the naysayers who had doubted his ideas for the past three years.

Washington found a way to honor Pulaski and at the same time make a gesture to boost the morale of Kosciuszko and the Poles serving in his army. Washington was staying at Moore House, his headquarters in West Point, when he gave the sentries a new password to distinguish between friend and foe. On November 17, 1779, he set the parole (query) and countersign (password) for crossing military checkpoints as “Pulaski” and “Poland.”52 General Pulaski’s heroic death enshrined his name in American history. It also made Colonel Kosciuszko the highest-ranking Pole in the Continental Army, and made him even more eager to prove himself in battle as a master tactician.

An alumnus of the military academy in Warsaw, and a former student who audited classes at the military academy in Paris, Kosciuszko suggested that Americans establish a military school to train their officers.72 After his death American cadets at the officer school raised money for a column on which a statue of Kosciuszko now stares out over the Hudson River where the chain once blocked British navigation.

Maj. Chevalier de Villefranche was the latest French engineer sent to West Point. Before he arrived Kosciuszko had pondered what to do with a chest full of detailed plans that he had drafted during his two and a half years working on the citadel. The Polish engineer did not know who his successor would be, so he left the valuable renderings at the boardinghouse of Mrs. Warren for safekeeping. For the British the chest might as well have been filled with gold, because it would have provided them with a secret roadmap of how to sneak in and capture West Point.

By the time Arnold was ready to make his move and hand over the key to West Point to the British, Kosciuszko was 350 miles away in Richmond, Virginia, where he stopped off to deliver correspondence to Gov. Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was helping the Southern Army by funding the construction of boats to transport troops. Kosciuszko had been traveling with Hull, a free black man, and was surprised to learn that the man who wrote that “all men are created equal” owned slaves.

On September 25, with several guests eating breakfast at his quarters in the Robinson house, Arnold was reading the dispatches of the day when he came across a report that had been accidentally sent to him instead of Washington. It revealed that a spy going by the name of John Anderson [André], dressed in civilian clothes, had been searched at a checkpoint. He was arrested with clandestine documents in his boot, along with a pass from Arnold.86 Stunned by the realization that the plan had fallen apart, and that he was about to be caught, Arnold quietly limped upstairs to his bedroom to speak with his wife. Within minutes Col. Franks knocked on the door to announce that Washington’s servant had ridden up. Arnold knew that the commander in chief would not be far behind. The traitor hobbled down the stairs, jumped on his horse, and raced down to the river, where he found a whaleboat with eight British soldiers who rowed him to the Vulture to make his escape.

in Virginia, Kosciuszko could not help noticing that 40 percent of the population was black, and in Richmond the percentage was even higher. Southern plantation owners cowered at the notion of arming slaves, and Jefferson, a slave owner who claimed to be opposed to slavery, straddled the fence as a politician, saying, “Slaves are by the laws excluded from the Militia,” especially when it came to carrying a gun.7 However, he encouraged the military to use blacks as laborers. Kosciuszko could not understand how the author of the Declaration of Independence was able to sacrifice his views on human rights for the sake of politics and economics. After the Revolution the two men became close friends, and the Pole held Jefferson’s feet to the fire over slavery.

The bitter loss at the doomed siege of Ninety Six turned out to be Kosciuszko’s greatest failure during the American Revolution. Colonel Lee blamed the Pole for the defeat, writing in his memoirs, “Kosciuszko was extremely amiable, and, I believe, a truly good man, nor was he deficient in his professional knowledge; but he was very moderate in talent,—not a spark of the ethereal in his composition. His blunders lost us Ninety Six; and general Greene, much as he was beloved and respected, did not escape criticism, for permitting his engineer to direct the manner of approach.”

The war was over. On December 14, 1782, Greene’s army marched triumphantly into Charleston. Nathanael Greene had not won a single battle in the South, but he had won the war by persevering and outlasting the British.

Yet even with George Washington and the other generals lobbying Congress on his behalf, Kosciuszko did not get the merit promotion that he deserved. Instead, on October 13, 1783, Kosciuszko was advanced to brigadier general by brevet, in a mass promotion given to all officers who had served in the Revolution, meaning that it did not come with a pay raise and the privileges of advancement for merit.12