Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (; February 4 or 12, 1746October 15, 1817) was a Polish military engineer, statesman, and military leader who became a national hero in Poland, the United States, Lithuania, and Belarus. He fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's struggles against Russia and Prussia, and on the U.S. side in the American Revolutionary War. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising.
Kościuszko was born in February 1746, in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate in Brest Litovsk Voivodeship, then Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, now the Ivatsevichy District of Belarus.Уладзімер Арлоў «Імёны Свабоды» (Uladzimer Arloǔ "The Names of Freedom")(in Belarusian) pp 26-27 At age 20, he graduated from the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw, Poland. After the start of the War of the Bar Confederation in 1768, Kościuszko moved to France in 1769 to study. He returned to the Commonwealth in 1774, two years after the First Partition, and was a tutor in Józef Sylwester Sosnowski's household. In 1776, Kościuszko moved to North America, where he took part in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army. An accomplished military architect, he designed and oversaw the construction of state-of-the-art fortifications, including those at West Point, New York. In 1783, in recognition of his services, the Continental Congress promoted him to brigadier general.
Upon returning to Poland in 1784, Kościuszko was commissioned as a major general in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army in 1789. After the Polish–Russian War of 1792 resulted in the Commonwealth's Second Partition, he commanded an uprising against the Russian Empire in March 1794 until he was captured at the Battle of Maciejowice in October 1794. The defeat of the Kościuszko Uprising that November led to Poland's Third Partition in 1795, which ended the Commonwealth. In 1796, following the death of Tsaritsa Catherine II, Kościuszko was pardoned by her successor, Tsar Paul I, and he emigrated to the United States. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson, with whom he shared ideals of human rights, Kościuszko wrote a will in 1798, dedicating his U.S. assets to the education and freedom of the U.S. slaves. Kościuszko eventually returned to Europe and lived in Switzerland until his death in 1817. The execution of his testament later proved difficult, and the funds were never used for the purpose he intended.
Early life
Kościuszko was born in February 1746 in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate near Kosów in Nowogródek Voivodeship, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.Institute of World Politics, 2009, article. His exact birthdate is unknown; commonly cited are February 4Herbst, 1969 p. 430. and February 12.
Kościuszko was the youngest son of a member of the szlachta (untitled Polish nobility), , an officer in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army, and his wife .Herbst, 1969 p. 431. The family held the Polish Roch III coat of arms.Szyndler, 1991, p. 476. At the time of Tadeusz Kościuszko's birth, the family possessed modest landholdings in the Grand Duchy worked by 31 peasant families.Storozynski, 2011, p. 2.
Tadeusz was baptized in the Catholic church, thereby receiving the names Andrzej, Tadeusz, and Bonawentura.Szyndler, 1991, p. 27.Krol, 2005, Public address.Gardner, 1920 p. 317.Kajencki, 1998, p. 54. His paternal family was originally RuthenianCizauskas 1986, pp. 1–10. and traced their ancestry to Konstanty Fiodorowicz Kostiuszko, a courtier of Polish King and Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund I the Old.Korzon, 1894, p. 135. Kościuszko's maternal family, the Ratomskis, were also Ruthenian.Новости [Novosti], 2009, p. 317.
His family had become Polonized as early as the 16th century.100 Great Aristocrats, Essay. Like most Polish–Lithuanian nobility of the time, the Kościuszkos spoke Polish and identified with Polish culture.Storozynski, 2011, p. 27. Kościuszko also, as was common for Polish nobility in the region, clearly stressed his attachment to the multiethnic Identity of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in later letters. For example, in 1790 Kościuszko wrote "If this does not soften you and you do not raise my case in the Sejm so that I can return, I myself will probably, God sees, do something bad to myself, as I am angry because being from Lithuania I serve the Kingdom [of Poland] when you do not have three generals", while during the Uprising of 1794 Kościuszko wrote "Lithuania! My countrymen and tribesmen! I was born in your land, sincere love for my homeland evokes in me a special favor for those among whom I began my life".
In 1755, Kościuszko began attending school in Lubieszów but never finished due to his family's financial straits after his father's death in 1758. King Stanisław August Poniatowski established a Corps of Cadets (Korpus Kadetów) in 1765, at what is now Warsaw University, to educate military officers and government officials. Kościuszko enrolled in the Corps on December 18, 1765, likely thanks to the Czartoryski family's patronage. The school emphasized military subjects and the liberal arts,Storozynski, 2011, p. 28. and after graduating on December 20, 1766, Kościuszko was promoted to chorąży, a military rank roughly equivalent to modern lieutenant. He stayed on as a student instructor and, by 1768, had attained the rank of captain.
European travels In 1768, civil war broke out in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, when the Bar Confederation sought to depose King Stanisław August Poniatowski. One of Kościuszko's brothers, Józef, fought on the side of the insurgents. Faced with a difficult choice between the rebels and his sponsors—the King and the Czartoryski family, who favored a gradualist approach to shedding Russian domination—Kościuszko chose to leave Poland. In late 1769, he and a colleague, artist Aleksander Orłowski, were granted royal scholarships; on October 5, they embarked for Paris. They wanted to further their military education. As foreigners, they were barred from enrolling in French military academies, and so they enrolled in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. There Kościuszko pursued his interest in drawing and painting and took private lessons in architecture from architect Jean-Rodolphe Perronet.Gardner, 1942, p. 17.
Kościuszko did not give up on improving his military knowledge. He audited lectures for five years and frequented the libraries of the Paris military academies. His exposure to the French Enlightenment, along with the religious tolerance practised in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, strongly influenced his later career. The French economic theory of physiocracy made a particularly strong impression on his thinking.Storozynski, 2009, pp. 17–18. He also developed his artistic skills, and while his career took him in a different direction, all his life he continued drawing and painting.NPS, 2009, Essay.
In the First Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, Russia, Prussia, and Austria annexed large swaths of Commonwealth territory and gained influence over the internal politics. When Kościuszko returned home in 1774, he found that his brother Józef had squandered most of the family fortune, and there was no place for him in the Army, as he could not afford to buy an officer's commission.Storozynski, 2011, p. 32. He took a position as tutor to the family of the magnate, province governor (voivode) and hetman Józef Sylwester Sosnowski and fell in love with the governor's daughter Ludwika. Their elopement was thwarted by her father's retainers. Kościuszko received a thrashing at their hands, an event that may have led to his antipathy for class distinctions, though historian Halina Filipowicz has suggested that the focus on this heterosexual affair by biographers could have been used as a device to hide homosexual inclinations.
In the autumn of 1775 he emigrated to avoid Sosnowski and his retainers. In late 1775 he attempted to join the Saxon army but was turned down and decided to return to Paris. There he learned of the American Revolutionary War outbreak, in which the British colonies in North America had revolted against the British Crown and begun their struggle for independence. The first American successes were well-publicized in France, and the French people and government openly supported the revolutionaries' cause.Storozynski, 2011, pp. 36–38.
American Revolutionary War On learning of the American Revolution, Kościuszko sailed for America in June 1776 after learning of the Americans' war for independence, along with other foreign officers, likely with the help of Pierre Beaumarchais, a French supporter of American independence. He arrived in Philadelphia after a Caribbean shipwreck, where he sought out Benjamin Franklin at his print shop. He offered to take engineering subject exams in lieu of any letters of recommendation, and he received a high mark on a geometry exam and Franklin's recommendation. On August 30, 1776, Kościuszko submitted an application to the Second Continental Congress at the Pennsylvania State House, and he was assigned to the Continental Army the next day.
Northern region
Kościuszko's first task was building fortifications at Fort Billingsport in Paulsboro, New Jersey, to protect the banks of the Delaware River and prevent a possible British advance up the river to Philadelphia.Colimore, news article. He initially served as a volunteer in the private employ of Benjamin Franklin, but on October 18, 1776, Congress commissioned him a colonel of engineers in the Continental Army.Storozynski, 2011, pp. 41–42.
In spring 1777, Kościuszko was attached to the Northern Army under Major General Horatio Gates, arriving at the Canada–U.S. border in May 1777. Subsequently, posted to Fort Ticonderoga, he reviewed the defenses of what had been one of the most formidable fortresses in North America.Storozynski, 2011, pp. 47–52. His surveys prompted him to strongly recommend the construction of a battery on Sugar Loaf, a high point overlooking the fort. His prudent recommendation, with which his fellow engineers concurred, was turned down by the garrison commander, Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair.
This proved a tactical blunder: when a British army under Major General John Burgoyne arrived in July 1777, Burgoyne did exactly what Kościuszko had warned of, and had his engineers place artillery on the hill. With the British in complete control of the high ground, the Americans realized their situation was hopeless and abandoned the fortress with hardly a shot fired in the siege of Ticonderoga. The British advance force nipped hard at the heels of the outnumbered and exhausted Continentals as they fled south. Major General Philip Schuyler, desperate to put distance between his men and their pursuers, ordered Kościuszko to delay the enemy.Storozynski, 2011, pp. 53–54. Kościuszko designed an engineer's solution: his men felled trees, dammed streams, and destroyed bridges and causeways. Encumbered by their huge supply train, the British began to bog down, giving the Americans the time needed to safely withdraw across the Hudson River.