The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution

by Alex Storozynski

The U.S. superintendent of finance, Robert Morris, wrote to Congress that while “the merit of Col. Kosciuszko is great and acknowledged,” a law passed in 1781 stipulated that foreign officers were to receive one-fifth of the amount due, and four-fifths in bank notes with interest.15 Morris wrote a glowing letter about Kosciuszko to Congress, but left the matter up to the legislature, which stalled on paying all soldiers. Morris even wiggled out of paying Kosciuszko the one-fifth that was due him, yet when Duportail and the French engineers came knocking several weeks later and demanded their pay, he dutifully found a way to come up with their money.

As the new government was still setting up its treasury and unable to pay him, General Kosciuszko was given a certificate for $12,280 bearing interest at 6 percent starting on January 1, 1784. The interest payments were to be sent to him through Paris.19 And in case he wanted to settle in the United States, Kosciuszko was entitled to five hundred acres of land.

Washington raised a glass of wine, took a drink, and added, “I cannot come to each of you, to take my leave, but shall be obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.” Starting with General Henry Knox, each officer in succession stepped toward their leader, grasped his hand, and embraced him. No one spoke a word.21 When it was Kosciuszko’s turn Washington pulled off the cameo ring, given to him as a member of the Society of Cincinnati, and slid it onto Kosciuszko’s finger.22

The news from Poland was not good. The libertine writer Tomasz Kajetan Wegierski arrived in the United States with stories of Russia’s increasingly belligerent treatment of Poland. Wegierski had been banished from Warsaw because of his burlesque satires of Czarina Catherine and King Stanislaw. Like Kosciuszko, Wegierski had been educated by Jesuits, but he could no longer tolerate the political situation in Poland and spoke his mind.24 Wegierski’s plight made it clear to the engineer that after helping America to win its liberty, it would take some time to readjust to living in a country with an absolute monarchy. Kosciuszko was concerned about how he would be greeted by King Stanislaw after taking part in a revolution to overthrow the British king in America.

While Philadelphia had been shaken up by Thomas Paine’s anonymous pamphlet Common Sense, Warsaw was stirred by a series of “Anonymous Letters” addressed to the speaker of the Seym, Stanislaw Malachowski. The letters denounced the treatment of serfs as livestock, and called for a democratic constitution to end class distinction and create a strong central government to revive Poland.

The idealistic veteran of the American Revolution wanted Poland to take the lead in freeing Europe’s serfs. By 1788 the winds of change that blasted through the United States and swirled around France were hovering over Poland. Just as America’s Founding Fathers left their farms to convene the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to cut ties with the British monarch, Polish and Lithuanian landlords left their farms to convene the Seym in Warsaw’s royal castle to cut ties with the Russian monarch.

The Scottish born Jones had earned world renown for turning the tide in a 1779 naval battle against British captain Richard Pearson of the HMS Serapis. With the battle-scarred American ship, the Bonhomme Richard, on fire and taking on water, Captain Pearson asked Jones to surrender. In his Scottish brogue Jones was famously quoted as saying, “I have not yet begun to fight.”37 After a daylong battle in which Jones captured the enemy’s ship, the Bonhomme Richard sank off the coast of England, and Jones and his crew sailed away on the Serapis. After the Revolution, Jones was out of work and went to France in search of a commission. When war broke out with the Turks, Russia’s minister in Paris asked Jefferson about securing the services of the legendary naval officer. Jones accepted the czarina’s offer and left for Russia.38 Despite being given a fleet of clunky and leaky Russian ships, over a three-week campaign in the Black Sea, Jones fought four naval battles, destroying or capturing thirteen Turkish ships and helping to capture the Ottoman fortress of Otchakoff. He served brilliantly and was awarded the Medal of Saint Anne.39

Kollontay was the main instigator of the democratic reforms, and on November 24, 1789, a group of 269 representatives from 141 cities across the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth arrived in the capital to sign “the United Cities Act.” Kollontay helped the townsfolk draft a proclamation demanding that they be allowed to own land and elect representatives to the Seym. They were inspired by the rise of the “third estate” in France, where burgher townspeople and rural peasants were demanding new rights. On December 2 the burghers, led by Warsaw mayor, Jan Dekert, dressed in black and marched down Senator Street to the royal castle to present their demands to the king and the Seym. The “Black March of the Burghers” was harshly received and called “impertinent” by the nobles in the Seym.1 It also shook the other monarchs of Europe, who sat up and took notice.2 Between two bookends, France in the west and Poland in the east, the entire continent of Europe seemed to be on the verge of revolution.

Austria sided with Russia in its war against Turkey, causing the Prussians to grow more concerned about the Russian-Austrian alliance. The Prussians wanted to pull Poland into Berlin’s sphere of influence, but they didn’t hide their opinion of Poles and had a slogan that said: “Poland is the hell of peasants, the paradise of Jews, the purgatory of burghers, the heaven of nobles, and the gold mine of foreigners.”36 Prussia forced Poland to sign a treaty, and Lucchesini squeezed King Stanislaw, saying, “If you do not sign the alliance, not only will we keep on wronging you, but we will increase our wrongdoing, and you, without an ally, not only will be forced to endure it, but Poland will become a battleground and finally the peace prize.”37 Stanislaw signed the treaty on March 29, 1790. It was a shaky alliance at best.

After an agreement that the new government would be a constitutional monarchy similar to that of England, Stanislaw wrote the first draft of the constitution, which had contributions and edits from Kollontay, Malachowski, Potocki, Niemcewicz, and others. The impact of Kosciuszko’s stories about America’s Founding Fathers influenced his friends, and the notion of “no taxation without representation” began to reverberate among the reformers who represented the burghers, peasants, and Jews.

The “Black March of the Burghers” had forced the Seym to cave in to the demands of the townspeople, and on April 18, 1791, a law was passed giving the bourgeois class the right to elect twenty-four representatives to the Seym who could debate and vote on matters concerning cities, industry, and commerce. By passing this act the Seym was able to secure the burghers’ support for the constitution.

On May 2, Bulgakov once again invited the greediest land magnates to his home, but this time it was to devise a plan to disrupt the proceedings in the Seym. They spread gossip, and that night burghers in Warsaw’s pubs and coffeehouses were chattering about rumored death threats sent to the king and members of the Patriot Party. Across town King Stanislaw and the conspirators gathered in the baroque-style Radziwill Palace, where the constitution was read aloud to fewer than one hundred chosen members of the Seym. All those present promised their support. To throw the Russians off balance, Stanislaw moved the vote up to the next day.

The speakers banged their staffs on the floor and called the session to order. Several delegates explained the importance of the new constitution. The document hailed: “We publish and proclaim a perfect and entire liberty to all people.”60 It was not a strict democracy because it preserved the dominance of the aristocracy. The compromise mostly benefited the burghers, opening the door for them to buy land and become members of the gentry.61 It also provided them with neminem captivabimus, a form of habeas corpus to protect against arbitrary arrest.62 While the new laws offered less for the peasants and the Jews, it promised them protection by the courts.

May 3 1791

The status of serfs changed only marginally. “This agricultural class of people, the most numerous in the nation consequently forming the most considerable part of its force, from whose hands flows the source of our riches, we receive under the protection of national law and government.”63 Serfs won their rights “after having fulfilled the obligations [they] may have voluntarily entered into.” While it was a tall order for indentured servants to pay off their debts and become free, it was possible. Kosciuszko’s hopes for ending serfdom were dashed. However, peasants who fled other countries were offered sanctuary. “Any person coming into Poland, from whatever part of the world,” the constitution read, “as soon as he sets his foot on the territory of the Republic, becomes free and at liberty to exercise his industry, wherever and in whatever manner he pleases.” Poland’s neighbors worried that this would create an escape route for runaway serfs.

Constitution's treatment of Serfdom

The Seym did not reorganize the Jewish state within a state or further integrate Jews into society because of burgher opposition, the greed of the aristocracy, and disagreement among Jews over how best to resolve the issue.64 The constitution did, however, reiterate their rights to political autonomy and religious freedom. It established Roman Catholicism as the “dominant national religion,” but “as the same holy religion commands us to love our neighbors, we therefore owe to all people of whatever persuasion, peace in matters of faith, and the protection of government; consequently we assure, to all persuasions and religions, freedom and liberty, according to the laws of the country, and in all dominions of the republic.”65

Religious freedom

Executive power was vested in the king, but his power was checked by a Council of Inspection, cabinet ministers who could be impeached by the Seym if they went against the will of the people. The new system outlined a separation of powers with a bicameral legislature and a judicial branch. It abolished the liberum veto and reestablished majority rule. Recognizing that it was not a perfect document, the new constitution required a special legislative session every twenty-five years to examine amendments required to “perfect it.” Some nobles were opposed to a hereditary monarchy, but others saw it as a compromise to end foreign meddling in Polish affairs. Even with the establishment of an ancestral kingdom, the checks and balances of the new constitution were a giant leap forward when compared to the autocratic monarchies that ruled throughout Europe.

Checks and balances

The legislative leader, Stanislaw Malachowski, took the floor and pronounced, “There are two republican governments in this century: the English and the American which has corrected the faults of the first. But the one which we intend to establish today will be finer than both, since it will combine in itself all that is most relevant in each to our own circumstances.”66

King Stanislaw stood up on his throne, turned to the archbishop and said, “I swear before God that I won’t regret it. I ask that whoever loves the fatherland should come with me to the church to take the same oath! ”67 The Patriots roared in approval, and the constitution was passed by acclamation.

Notable that the constitutional convention seems to have been called somewhat by surprise to its opponents. Also no word on any requirements that it receive some high threshold to pass. Could it just be repealed or another convention called by a majority?

The Polish revolution had begun. It was the first constitution in Europe, second in the world only to that of the United States.

To Kosciuszko’s way of thinking, the Polish constitution did not go far enough. He was a republican who wanted a direct democracy descending from the people—all the people. While the great debate raged in Warsaw, he was charged with guarding the Russian border. The Polish rebel was in Miedzyboza when he received an order from the military commission in Warsaw to swear an oath to protect the constitution. It was not the full democracy he had hoped for, but the May 3 Constitution represented progress and hope for a democratic Poland. Kosciuszko signed it and asked ten of his fellow officers also to pledge their allegiance to the new system of government.

The world was stunned that such a bold document could emerge from feudal Europe. It was considered a major step forward by political thinkers of the day. The king had, after all, willingly given up much of his own power. On July 20, 1791, George Washington, serving his first term as president, wrote to his representative in Europe: “Poland, by the public papers, appears to have made large and unexpected strides towards liberty, which, if true, reflects great honor on the present King, who seems to have been the principal promoter of the business.”69 A member of the British House of Commons, the Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke called the Polish constitution a “masterpiece of political wisdom” and “a glory to humanity.”70 Burke said that the Poles’ quest for “liberty” went from “anarchy to order,” while the French had gone from “order to anarchy.”71

Reactions of Washington, Burke to Poland's new constitution.

While it was looked upon positively in France, Britain, and the United States, the enthusiasm for the peaceful Polish revolution proved to be premature. The Russian, Prussian, and Austrian monarchs all viewed these reforms as a threat. It would be only a matter of time before they stepped in to quash the reforms.

By the end of the year several rich families that were not willing to give up power began conspiring with Russia. They printed propaganda denouncing the reforms and smuggled it into eastern Poland. Kosciuszko found copies of a brochure called Observations on the Constitution and Revolution of May 3, which claimed that the movement was a “conspiracy” pushed by enemies of the aristocracy.

While the Patriots were celebrating the new constitution, in April 1792, Felix Potocki, Seweryn Rzewuski, Francis Branicki, and several other collaborators traveled to St. Petersburg to meet with Catherine the Great in her palace to plot the overthrow of Poland’s democratic government. Turning reality on its head, the traitors allowed the czarina’s minions to draft the Act of the Targowica Confederation, claiming that an international conspiracy had been hatched with revolutionary France, and that Russia needed to send its army to protect the security and freedom of Poland. The defectors coordinated the timing of the invasion with the Russian army and then rushed to the small town of Targowica in southeastern Poland to issue their proclamation. On May 14, 1792, the traitors made their goals known: They had officially declared war on the constitution.

Most Poles could not believe that the constitution passed by the Seym and ratified in local elections could be wiped out by a handful of traitors.

After months of negotiations with the rebels in Paris, Kosciuszko grew weary of the French Revolution, which had started out as a democratic movement but was degenerating into a quest for revenge. The Jacobins and Girondists were at one anothers’ throats. The Polish rebel came to the conclusion that the French revolutionaries were only interested in how a Polish diversion would benefit their own cause. Citizen Kosciuszko left Paris empty handed.

Kosciuszko had been secretly lobbying the Vatican to help Poland. He made friends in Vatican hierarchy and nearly became head of the Pope’s army, but conservative cardinals viewed his participation in the American Revolution as too radical.77

The plotters had yet to make enough progress raising troops, and Kosciuszko demanded that unless they guaranteed one hundred thousand soldiers, the battle would be pointless. He asked them to send him a list showing the number of people and guns, and the amounts of ammunition and provisions, that they had at their disposal, as well as the number of enemy soldiers and garrisons stationed in Poland. He promised that he would return to Saxony to meet with the exiled political leaders only after he received the information that he needed to reassess the situation.

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.

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.”

As soon as Kosciuszko began to speak, his words made it clear that his uprising would not tolerate vengeance, but rather celebrate unity: “Honorable sirs, in defense of the fatherland, equality will prosper in my eyes, and that is why Jews, peasants, aristocrats, priests and burghers have equal respect from me, the many citizens and land magnates who have been invited to participate in today’s events.”11 With all the different sectors of society in one place, it was an incredible show of harmony. The Act of Insurrection was read aloud by Krakow’s Seym representative as the crowd listened attentively. There was a great rumble of applause when he finished, and the mass of people assembled in the square cheered in approval.

The gathered soldiers took an oath of allegiance to Kosciuszko. The officers and government officials all filed into city hall. One of the angry burghers suggested that they take down the portrait of King Stanislaw hanging on the wall and throw it away. The consensus was that it would be a petty act, so Stanislaw’s face was left on the wall, staring down on them as they plotted his overthrow.14 One after another they all took the quill pen, dipped it into the inkwell, and signed their names under the Act of Insurrection. Copies were sent out to foreign newspapers and the governments of France, England, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, and the United States.15

Over the next several days Kosciuszko took inventory of how many soldiers he had at his disposal and welcomed peasant volunteers shuffling into town with the scythes and sickles they used to harvest wheat. They bent the curved blades straight up to create long, sharp weapons. The peasant infantry were dubbed the “scythemen.”

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 hundred peasant scythemen with pikes and axes.26 Over the next few days Manget, Madalinski, and other straggling military units and peasant volunteers joined the commander, bringing the size of his army to about five thousand men.27

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).

Under the military tradition of the time, Polish commanders donned the uniform of their most effective unit in combat. To the delight of the serfs Kosciuszko ripped off his general’s uniform and put on a sukmana, a peasant robe made from woven sheep’s wool. The serfs shook their weapons in the air and roared in approval as their new peasant prince officially declared the scythemen infantry a separate branch of Poland’s military. “They feed and defend,” became their motto. The commander in chief promoted Madalinski and Zajaczek to lieutenant general. Kosciuszko also received permission from Wojciech Bartosz’s noble landlord to grant him his freedom, and the heroic peasant was promoted to standard-bearer. He was also awarded a tract of land and dubbed a nobleman. Bartosz assumed his mother’s maiden name, becoming Duke Glowacki.

Kosciuszko left about two thousand soldiers and peasants to guard Krakow and marched his army along the left bank of the Wisla River toward Warsaw. On the right bank of the river was former Polish territory annexed by Austria. He had to be careful not to incur the wrath of three great powers at once, so Kosciuszko sent a message to Francis II, emperor of Austria, explaining that his fight was not with Austria. And as Austria was at war with France, Kosciuszko also had to assure the emperor that the Polish revolution did not have a Jacobin nature.

Austria was holding its fire against the Polish rebels, but Prussian king Frederick William sent his army into Poland to assist the Russians. The Poles had to contend with a war on two fronts, and with a shortage of weapons, ammunition, and regular soldiers, the commander in chief was getting desperate.

At Saratoga, Israel Ashley tried to reclaim his slave, Gilliam, who enlisted without his master’s approval. Kosciuszko’s mentor, General Gates, thwarted Ashley’s attempt to repossess Gilliam, and allowed him and other slaves to remain in the army. With Polish noblemen complaining that their serfs had joined the army without permission, it was Kosciuszko’s turn to take a stand. Together with his advisers Kollontay and Ignacy Potocki, the commander drafted the most radical proclamation of the war. On May 7, 1794, in a field outside the village of Polaniec, Kosciuszko issued the Proclamation of Polaniec, granting civil rights to Poland’s peasants and cutting their corvée. Kosciuszko’s preamble criticized those noblemen who had a “criminal spirit of self love and selfish prospects, added with mixed up stubbornness, delay and the tendency to unite with outsiders, ending in ignoble submission to them.” The commander issued fourteen points, the first of which gave serfs the same rights as everyone else “under the laws and protection of the national government.” The second declared that “every peasant is personally free, and free to move where he wishes, provided he notifies the Commission for Order of his County as to his whereabouts, and provided he has paid his debts and national taxes.”45 As he had done with his own serfs, Kosciuszko cut the work requirement of the corvée in half, and by two-thirds for some. The remaining points reduced the bureaucratic restrictions that made ...

Proclamation of Polaniec, May 7, 1794, freeing serfs and ending feudalism, enabling them to own and build wealth

The Proclamation of Polaniec would be the death knell for feudalism that Russia, Prussia, and Austria wanted to avoid.

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.

Jan Kilinski had uncovered records in the basement of the Russian Embassy which revealed that the Russians had been paying Bishop Kossakowski for his collaboration. Less than a month after he had urged the Russians to surround Polish churches and arrest the Patriots, the bishop was put on trial and hanged from a gallows set up across the street from a Bernardine church near the royal castle. Three delegates of the Grodno Seym, Peter Ozarowski, Joseph Ankwicz, and Joseph Zabiello, were convicted as traitors for approving the second partition of Poland, which ceded territory to Russia. They, too, were hanged before a cheering crowd of onlookers.50

To the outside world the hangings in Warsaw looked as if the Polish revolution had taken a turn toward Jacobin mob rule, while the commander in chief was busy issuing proclamations and appeals. When even his dear friend Princess Isabella Czartoryska wrote to criticize him, Kosciuszko felt he had to respond. “How wrongly you judge me princess, if you don’t yet know what is in my heart, you hurt my feelings and way of thinking,” Kosciuszko replied. “Men may blacken me and our uprising, but God sees that we are not starting a French revolution. I want to destroy the enemy. I am giving some temporary orders, but I leave the framing of the laws to the nation.”55

But the commander in chief was caught off guard when Gen. Francis Favrat joined Denisov with a Prussian army of 17,500 to finish off the Polish army before it could reach Warsaw.57 The enemy had fooled the Poles by hiding their tents and sleeping under the open sky so that spies would not see them. Kosciuszko, who had received assurances that Prussia would stay neutral for the time being, was in complete denial that the Prussians would attack him.

But while the Poles were happy with their leader, the French revolutionaries were angry that Kosciuszko had prosecuted the Jacobins who built gallows and hanged traitors. The French viewed the Warsaw hangings as a positive development. The Polish emissary in Paris, Barss, was given a statement that read: “The French government will not grant a single piece of gold, will not send a single soldier, to support a revolution which would aim at retaining aristocratic or royal governments in which using the term ‘revolution’ would lead only to a change in government that would not be based on the principles that are rudimental for truly Republican constitutions.”68

Rev. Kollontay, who had been the voice of reason, speaking of “a gentle revolution” during the four-year Seym, had grown vengeful as the leader of the court council and emerged as “the Polish Robespierre.” But the commander in chief had become uncomfortable with the death penalty, and on the advice of Niemcewicz and others, he commuted the bishop’s sentence to life in prison.

The Polish rebel was not sure how he would be received in England. After all, he had helped to eject Great Britain from its American colonies, and King George III was allied with Russia. Yet even though he was bitterly attacked by Tory newspapers such as the Courier and the Post, Kosciuszko was the toast of London.1 On May 30, 1797, the Gentleman’s Magazine reported: “The gallant General Kosciuszko arrived in the river Thames on-board a Swedish vessel, attended by many Polish officers, who are going with him to America.

It is not known how much Kosciuszko shared with Dr. Rush about his ability to walk, but Kosciuszko later admitted to Polish friends that he had been exaggerating the severity of his long healing process to fool his enemies into thinking he would no longer be able to lead an army into battle.

The Federalists began passing a series of bills known as the Alien and Sedition Acts to protect the country from citizens of enemy powers. The witch hunt cast a shadow over all foreigners in Philadelphia, especially those with ties to France. Kosciuszko, who had been mistaken for a Frenchman during the American Revolution, and wrongly accused of being a Jacobin during the Polish revolution, was considered a suspicious character by some of Federalists. It didn’t help that he openly supported Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans.

Kosciuszko had to figure out a way to slip out of the country unnoticed. The bombastic and conspicuous Niemcewicz would have to be left behind. The vice president arranged for a fake passport so that Kosciuszko could travel under an assumed name. Kosciuszko wrote the name “Mr. Kann” on the application, and Jefferson scribbled the letters berg, changing his friend’s alias to “Thomas Kannberg.”

The new version of the will not only gave Jefferson the authority to carry out the rebel’s wishes, it made his slaves the beneficiaries of Kosciuszko’s will. While it was the astute Virginia attorney who made the changes that potentially benefited his own plantation, by signing it Kosciuszko was telling Jefferson: Not only do I want to free slaves, I want to free your slaves.