402 AGONIA
conclude that Tadeusz Kosciuszko influenced the course of Polish history as
effectively as Catherine the Great or the Confederates of Targowica.
Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746-1817) combined the ideal-
ism of intellectual circles with the practical skills of a soldier. He was one of
those providential figures who in ordinary times might well have lived in
obscurity but who was thrown into prominence in spite of himself. He was
born into a military family, the son of the 'Sword-bearer' of Brzesc, and edu-
cated in a Piarist school near Pinsk, and later in the Cadet School. For five
years between 1769 and 1775, he was trained on a royal bursary in France, at
Versailles, Paris, and Brest, in the Corps du Genie. On his return to Poland, he
was unable to afford the 18,000 zl. required for a commission, and left almost
immediately for North America with a group of French volunteers. As an
officer-engineer in the United States' service, he distinguished himself in the
War of Independence at Saratoga and West Point, building fortifications,
directing river-crossings, and rising to the rank of Brigadier-General. At the
end, he was invested with the Order of Cincinnati, whom he promptly imitated
by returning home to the plough and to his native village of Siechnowice. In
1789, at the age of 43, he was finally recruited to the Polish service on the
orders of the Four Years Sejm, which realized that a strong army was the only
safe guarantee for its political deliberations. This 'hero of two continents', 'the
Polish Lafayette', together with the King's nephew, General Jozef
Poniatowski, who had been retrieved from the Austrian Service, was set to
work on the painstaking task of Army Reform.^21
To anyone with a sense of reality, it was clear that the work of the Four Years
Sejm initiated in October 1788, ran a serious risk of Russian intervention.
Unlike all its predecessors, it refused to recess after the usual six weeks, but con-
stituted itself into a legal Confederation, determined to stay the course until
meaningful legislation had been passed. Under its energetic Marshal, Stanislaw
Malachowski (1736-1809), it launched a large number of projects and commis-
sions aimed at the recovery of national sovereignty and the growth of the econ-
omy. Benefiting from Russian preoccupation with the French crisis and with the
Turkish War, it was able to push its demands much further than normal times
would have permitted. In December 1789, it received a demonstration by repre-
sentatives of 141 towns, who paraded in black in protest against their exclusion
from the constitutional life of the country. In 1790, it divided itself into two
chambers, to speed up business. Finally, on 3 May 1791, it was the scene of a
carefully planned coup d'etat. Kollataj's 'Patriotic Party', acting in collusion
with Malachowski and with the knowledge of the King, picked a day when two-
thirds of the deputies were absent on holiday. A bill, secretly prepared, was read
to a half-empty House:
Freed from the shameful coercion of foreign orders, and cognizant of the ancient faults
of our system of government, and valuing national independence and freedom over life
itself... We pass the following statute in recognition that the fate of us all depends exclu-
sively on the foundation and perfection of a national constitution...^22