Act VI · Index

Index of Persons, Places, and Concepts

An alphabetical guide to the Tadeusz Kościuszko monograph. Every entry leads directly to the relevant passage in the story.

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73 entries

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Emancipation at Siechnowiczeconcept · The Kościuszko Uprising

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Ludwika Sosnowskaperson · Saratoga

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Oath in Cracow’s Main Squareevent · The Kościuszko Uprising

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Chronology 1746–1817

Thirty-three dates that made up the life of the Naczelnik. From Polesia, through Saratoga, Racławice and the Peter and Paul Fortress — to Solothurn.

4 (according to other sources, 12) February 1746
Birth in Polesia

Born into an impoverished noble family in Mereczowszczyzna (in present-day Belarus).
1755–1760
Piarist College

He attends the Piarist school in Lubieszów, where he encounters Enlightenment ideas, ancient models of civic virtue, and the works of antiquity’s great commanders.
1765
Knights' School

He enters the newly founded royal Cadet Corps in Warsaw. He distinguishes himself by ambition — asking superiors to wake him at 3 a.m. so he can study more.
1768
Promotion and instructor’s work

Outstanding results bring him the rank of captain and a position at the Knights' School as instructor, thereby sparing him participation in the fratricidal Bar Confederation.
1769–1774
Parisian studies, with a workaround

He travels to Paris on a royal stipend. As a foreigner he cannot officially enroll at military academies, so he registers at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture and, in private tutorials, secretly absorbs engineering knowledge.
1774–1775
Unhappy love and flight

He returns to Poland but, lacking the funds to purchase a commission, fails to enter the army. He takes employment as a tutor with the voivode (from 1775 hetman) Sosnowski. He falls in love with his daughter, Ludwika. Their attempted elopement ends in failure, with Kościuszko beaten by Sosnowski’s men. He has to flee the country.
August 1776
American beginnings in Philadelphia

After a brief stay in France, he arrives in America and presents himself to Congress. His first task is the fortification of the Delaware River and of Philadelphia itself against the British fleet.
Spring 1777
Disregarded warnings at Ticonderoga

Sent north, he advises the fortification of the strategic Sugar Loaf hill above Fort Ticonderoga. The command ignores his counsel. The British take the hill, and the Americans must surrender the fortress in haste.
October 1777
Triumph at Saratoga

He selects and fortifies Bemis Heights. His brilliant system of earthworks blocks the British army’s advance, leading to its capitulation. This is the turning point of the American War of Independence.
1778–1780
Building West Point

He oversees the construction of the modern and impregnable fortress of West Point on the Hudson River, which effectively bars all British attempts to split the colonies in two. The fortress also remains untaken because in September 1780 the plot of Benedict Arnold, who intended to sell it to the British, is uncovered.
1780–1783
Southern campaign

At Gen. Nathanael Greene’s request he is dispatched to the American South. He conducts engineering operations in the partisan war, organizes crossings of rivers in flood (the Yadkin, the Dan) and, as chief engineer, directs the siege works at Fort Ninety-Six.
1783
Brigadier general and Cincinnatus

On 13 October 1783 Congress promotes him to brigadier general, grants him his back pay and the right to 500 acres of land. He is admitted to the elite Society of the Cincinnati as its only Pole.
1784–1789
A quiet life at Siechnowicze

He returns to Poland. With no prospects, he settles on the family’s debt-ridden estate. Ahead of his time, he voluntarily and drastically reduces the corvée owed by his peasants, to the indignation of the neighboring gentry.
October 1789
A return to the uniform

A year after the Great Sejm’s resolution to raise the army to 100,000 (20 October 1788), Kościuszko at last receives the long-desired posting: on 12 October 1789 he is granted his commission as major general of the Crown Army.
18 June 1792
Zieleńce and the Virtuti Militari

The first victory of the war of 1792 in defense of the Constitution of May 3, won by the division of Prince Józef Poniatowski (Kościuszko commands the rearguard at the time). To commemorate it, the Order of Virtuti Militari is established — Kościuszko is among the first to receive it.
18 July 1792
The Battle of Dubienka

In the war in defense of the Constitution of May 3, commanding five thousand soldiers and brilliantly anchoring his line on the river and marshes, he repels the attacks of a twenty-five-thousand-strong Russian corps. He earns European fame.
August 1792
Resignation and honorary French citizenship

When the king joins the Targowica Confederation, Kościuszko resigns in protest (30 August). Revolutionary France confers upon him the title of French Citizen for his services to liberty. In the autumn he leaves Warsaw and settles in Leipzig, a center of the émigré community.
Early 1793
A secret mission in Paris

As an envoy of the Polish émigré community he travels to Paris to ask the Girondins for support for the planned uprising in Poland. The mission ends in failure.
24 March 1794
The Oath on Cracow Main Market Square

He swears the oath to the nation. The Kościuszko Uprising formally begins.
4 April 1794
The Racławice Victory

A brilliant victory in which the decisive moment is the audacious assault of scythe-armed peasants on Russian artillery. The myth of the scytheman becomes the symbol of the uprising.
7 May 1794
The Połaniec Manifesto

A legal act abolishing personal serfdom and guaranteeing peasants security of tenure on the land. As Naczelnik, Kościuszko seeks to join the war of independence with social revolution.
6 June 1794
Defeat at Szczekociny

The Polish army is defeated by the combined and superior Russian and Prussian forces. Gen. Józef Wodzicki is killed, and the hero of Racławice, Bartosz Głowacki, dies of his wounds a few days later in Kielce.
July–September 1794
The defense of Warsaw

Kościuszko’s engineering masterwork. Brilliantly designed fortifications and an active defense, together with the outbreak of an uprising in Greater Poland in the Prussians' rear, compel King Frederick William II of Prussia to abandon his weeks-long siege of the capital (6 September).
10 October 1794
The tragedy of Maciejowice

The Polish corps is shattered by Gen. Fersen’s army. Kościuszko, attempting to break through with a handful of cavalry, is gravely wounded (a saber cut to the head, pike-thrusts to the back and hip) and taken prisoner.
4–16 November 1794
The massacre of Praga and the capitulation

On 4 November the massacre of Praga takes place, and on 16 November the Uprising capitulates. Thus ends the uprising whose Naczelnik is already in captivity.
December 1794
Prisoner in St. Petersburg

He is brought to the Peter and Paul Fortress and, from the summer of 1795, to the Stegelmann house on the Moika (the so-called Orlov palace), where he is held under guard. His physical and mental state deteriorates drastically; in 1795 the Polish state collapses.
November 1796
An oath to save others

Catherine II dies. Her son, Tsar Paul I, agrees to free Kościuszko and 20,000 Polish exiles on one dramatic condition: the Naczelnik must take a humiliating oath of allegiance to Russia. He consents, paying with his own honor for the lives of his fellow countrymen.
1797–1798
Return to the US and an anti-slavery testament

He visits Philadelphia, where he is greeted as a national hero. He befriends Thomas Jefferson. In May 1798, before secretly returning to Europe, he leaves with him a testament: his American estate (land and back pay) is to be used to purchase the freedom and provide for the education of enslaved Black people.
1798–1801
A republican in Paris

He settles in Paris. In 1798 the Society of Polish Republicans is founded, and in 1800, at Kościuszko’s inspiration, the pamphlet “Can the Poles Win Their Independence?” appears — a program for an uprising that would not look to foreign powers for help. The Polish Legions (formed in Italy in 1797) regard him as their head, but he declines to take their command and criticizes their dependence on France. He distrusts Napoleon — after the coup of 18 Brumaire he calls him “the gravedigger of the Republic.”
Autumn 1806
Rejecting Napoleon’s offer

Napoleon asks Kościuszko to come to Poland and summon the nation to arms. Kościuszko sets hard conditions: he demands the pre-partition borders and a constitutional system. When Napoleon refuses guarantees, Kościuszko remains in France.
1814–1815
Disappointment with Tsar Alexander

After meetings with Tsar Alexander I in Paris and Braunau (1814) he travels to Vienna. When he learns from Prince Czartoryski that the so-called Kingdom of Poland is to encompass only a sliver of the former Commonwealth, he refuses to return to the country and settles in Solothurn.
2 April 1817
A testament for the peasants of Siechnowicze

In his will he frees his serfs at Siechnowicze and grants them land. To the American testament for the enslaved is added a Polish one — for the peasants.
15 October 1817
Death in Switzerland

After moving to Solothurn, he lives out his days as a moral authority universally respected throughout Europe. He dies at the age of 71; his final illness began with a fall from his horse.