Thaddeus Kosciusko (440)

Thaddeus Kosciusko (12 February 1746–15 October 1817) was a military officer, revolutionary, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1785. Born to a family of minor nobility near Kosów, Poland, his status as youngest of four sons granted Kosciosko little inheritance. After studying under an uncle and a brief stint at a Jesuit school, Kosciusko moved to Lubieszów and studied at the Piarist college there (1755-1760), and afterwards entered the Royal Military School in Warsaw with sponsorship from Prince Casimir Czartoryski (1765). While there, he became an ensign, instructed students of his own (1766), earned promotion to captain (1768), and graduated (1769). Winning favor with the Polish king, Kosciusko attained enough support to attend the École Militaire in Paris, where he studied artillery, engineering, and also painting. He returned to Poland in 1774, but had to leave almost as soon as he arrived. He took a position teaching math and drawing to the daughter of a general, fell in love with her, attempted to propose, incurred the wrath of the father, and ultimately left himself no option but to flee back to Paris. From there, he sailed to America, where he lent his engineering talents to the Pennsylvania Committee of Defense (1774). Constructing fortifications along the Delaware River, Kosciusko attained the rank of Colonel less than a year after setting foot in the United States, serving as engineer to the Northern army under General Horatio Gates. He contributed to the victory at Saratoga (1777), and then moved on to build fortifications at West Point (1778-1780), joined Gates with the Southern army as chief of engineers for the Southern Department, served at Charleston, and ultimately gained the rank of brigadier general for his efforts during the war (1783). Later that year, he contributed to the founding of the Society of the Cincinnati before returning to Poland in 1784.

With a faction opposed to his past benefactors now in power, Kosciusko was unable to obtain a military position and lived off his land in relative poverty after freeing his serfs in accordance with his democratic values. Several years later, liberal reforms allowed Kosciusko to join the Polish military: he attained the rank of general major (1789) and became a war hero while resisting Russian forces at Dubienka, rose to general lieutenant, and gained honorary citizenship from the Revolutionary government of Paris. However, the Russians were able to force the Polish king into submission and Kosciusko found himself once again out of a job and fleeing his home country. In 1793, he began advocating for the Polish cause in Paris to any Revolutionary party that would hear him and returned a year later as leader of the Polish resistance to Russian and Prussian occupation. Likely inspired by his time in America, he wrote the Act of Insurrection, which became a Polish Declaration of Independence. Despite his resistance forces facing Russian and Prussian bayonets and cannons with little more than medieval weaponry, Kosciusko achieved victory at the battle of Raclawice, and freed and armed leagues of Polish serfs to join the fight against their occupiers. Even with the expanded forces, however, repeated defeats led the army to retreat to Warsaw, now laid under siege by the enemy. After a valiant two-month long effort, the Prussians were diverted from the city and Kosciusko continued fighting until his defeat and capture at Maciejowice (1794). Imprisoned by the Russians for the remainder of Catherine II’s reign, he finally gained his freedom upon the ascension of her son (1796), who favored him.

His home country now divided up between his enemies, Kosciusko once again had no home, and so he left once again for America, making a stop in England to tend to his wounds. Congress welcomed the international revolutionary with open arms and awarded him funds and five hundred acres in Ohio for his role in the American Revolution. The following year he returned to Paris, wrote Manoeuvres of Horse Artillery (1800), a handbook which earned Kosciusko’s reputation as father of American artillery tactics. Retiring to Solothurn, Switzerland, for the rest of his life, he attempted to rally other nations to fight for Polish liberation, but to no avail. Before his death, however, he emancipated the remainder of his serfs. A close friend of and regular correspondent with Thomas Jefferson, Kosciusko made Jefferson the executor of his estate, and charged him to use funds from the sale of his Ohio lands to free some of the enslaved members of the Jefferson estate and build a school for freed Black Americans in New Jersey. A probate battle, but especially Jefferson’s reluctance, never brought this plan to completion. (EB, ANB, et al.)