User:Jimregan/Notes on my Captivity in Saint Petersburg
EDITOR'S FOREWORD
Julian Niemcewicz's notes on his captivity in Saint Petersburg, which we publish today, were written half a century ago in the United States of America.
It was there, in the middle of a nation free, happy, and triumphant after a long struggle, that came to live two defeated soldiers, two citizens in despair, Kościuszko and his good friend Niemcewicz. America had first appeared their best refuge because it was far from the abyss of despair they left behind. But soon they felt the full weight of their isolation in the overseas world. Thus Kościuszko eagerly returned to the protector region, on whose doors is written "hope, ye who enter"; he returned to France. Niemcewicz, forced by circumstances, remained in America. Companion of Kościuszko, compatriot of Pułaski, recommended by his own merit, by his wit and knowledge, he was generally esteemed in this country, and found friends who were eager to be of use. Jefferson lent him some money; others made efforts to help him get citizenship; King Louis-Philippe, then Duke of Orleans, also exiled, honoured him with invitations; Washington himself took an interest in the fate of the Polish emigre. But all these kindnesses fell short of softening his sufferings, which nobody could share, or perhaps even understand; he actually felt the opposite. It is in these circumstances that Niemcewicz, perhaps to respond to the benevolent questions of his new friends, to talk to them about Poland, and, at the very least, to entertain their curiosity, wrote in a foreign language, and for foreign readers, an account of his captivity in Russia. This is but one chapter of an active, generous, poetic life, tormented by the noblest passions and most unbearable of ailments: love of country and the destruction of its independence. However this episode of the suffering of an individual is intimately connected with the great misfortunes of Poland. It is a scene detached from this terrible tragedy where an entire nation struggles under the weight of seemingly endless misfortunes, where every noble effort opens an abyss, every virtue has no effect, where an implacable fate pulls the sword from the hands of the victor and blasphemies from the mouth of a Christian. In old age, Niemcewicz told us that one day, June 4, 1796, he heard from his prison in Saint Petersburg several artillery discharges, and having asked for the reason: "It is because the grand duchess", they replied to him, "deigned to give birth to a son." This son was the Emperor Nicholas. "So", he said, "I was not even out of captivity then, and already was born the man who would, when I was in old age, force me to seek my grave in a foreign land;" And he ended with these words of Tacitus: non esse curae deis securitatem nostram, esse ultionem.[1]
Niemcewicz's story begins with a flash of happiness. Warsaw breathes! Two powerful besieging armies withdraw. The leaders, reunited at a banquet of friends, open their hearts to hope. But it's the eve of a decisive battle. The battle takes place. Kosciuszko succumbs... Towards the end of the story, the Polish patriots are together again, but in Saint Petersburg, captives, misfortunates, subjects under oath to the tsars; and in this scene of the tragedy, Poland had ceased to exist.
There are few names as popular in Poland as that of Niemcewicz, and one can predict in advance the reception this book will have among our compatriots. For us it is a remembrance of the virtuous citizen who served his country with all his means, his whole soul; this is the story of an eyewitness to various interesting facts in these days of misery and shame, where history is reduced to silence. Here, for the first time, a soldier of Maciejowice tells the harrowing details of that fatal day, one of the captives unfolds the sad chronicle of their journey and their lives in prison. It is in this book we see Niemcewicz, injured, imprisoned in the fortress of Petersburg, trace with his left hand, and from prison, instead of the vile condemnation that was demanded of him, a noble and energetic defence of the insurgency. In this story, he speaks also, he, Niemcewicz, pitiless enemy of all that is Russian, he speaks willingly of Paul's justice, of the young Alexander's tenderness, and of the sympathy of Makar, the poor soldier, his guard. Who among us could read with indifference everything we are told of Kościuszko, Kapostas, Kiliński, Potocki? There are books that one receives as one receives, after a long wait, the letter of a friend, a brother, a father, that one reads in one sitting, the heart touched, thought absorbed by everything but literary merit. This is how this fragment from the autobiography of Niemcewicz, written across the ocean, and dated from beyond the grave, will be welcomed in Poland.
But the book is written in French, and it is in France that we publish it. Will it be regarded favourably? Will it go there unnoticed, or will it awaken some thoughts on the vicissitudes of Poland, a few more wishes for its future?
The cause of Poland is judged in the great tribunal of the conscience of humanity, and it is won. Princes and subjects, philosophers and people, friends and enemies, Napoleon, Washington, Metternich, and even on the throne of the tsars, Paul, Alexander, have declared just the cause of Poland. The crime of its partition is so shameful, so cowardly, that history searches in vain for the first author of this satanic idea. Russia attributes it to Prussia, Prussia throws it back on Russia, and Austria continues to defend itself. All of our plunderers assure that they took part only through necessity, some of them have admitted that they would voluntarily restore their part of this robbery... So the question of law, of justice, of the legitimacy of the restoration of Poland, has never been doubted. As for the problem of execution, it is already solved; the extent of the insurrection of 1831 has not been assessed at its true value.
The force that Poland then deployed will be available at the first canon shot of a European war. The force that Poland then deployed, forty years after its complete and utter annihilation, the force that without good internal leadership, without foreign aid, by itself kept in check the power of Russia: this force is only that intimate feeling, that sacred fire, that principle of life, that Divine Providence maintains the depths of consciences, to counterbalance the violence and repel the temporary triumphs of injustice.
The extermination policy pursued so persistently by Emperor Nicholas, changes nothing at the bottom of things. All these measures of severity and persecution, which may well make the Russian name odious in the eyes of Europe, cannot destroy what Poland always has: they covered with mourning and filled with bitterness a noble and generous nation; but, after all, they can only augment the intensity of the sentiments of a martyred people and reanimate their patriotism. The Emperor of Russia can already see, or will one day see, that his blows are falsely dealt, and that he has subjugated, enchained, destroyed everything in Poland, except the soul. Cuncta terrarum subacta, praeter atrocem animum.[2] No, there is neither wisdom, nor foresight, nor strength, that can prevent a nation, such as Poland, from standing in front of their oppressors, at the first opportunity that the course of events will necessarily bring.
Besides, Poland, though it may seem to have been dismissed from the stage of world politics, has not ceased to have as an ally a great and powerful nation. Between France and Poland there is an ancient, unbreakable pact. Nations of different races of men, of different social elements, of different degrees of civilization: one big, happy and free, the other subjugated and partitioned, yet they are forever linked by sympathy, by interests, by positions, by this providential disposition that balances the evils and remedies on earth. This alliance of two nations exists in the tradition of the past, in the provisions of diplomacy, in the suspicious fear of our plunderers, in the reasoning of statesmen and the vague presentiments of our people, who every spring, at return of the swallow, scarcely ever tires of waiting for the liberating armies of France. A literary society of Leipzig has published a competition for a historical memoir: On the Relations between France and Poland. It would be a good subject for a French publicist. It would have to go look into old chronicles, to tap into the history of our church, of our literature, of our civilization, of the elections of our kings. The three hundred volumes of Polish documents, conserved in the diplomatic archives of France, would provide ample material. It would have to expose the grand projects of Richelieu and the wrongs of the Poles; the bold plans, the prophetic counsels of Marie Louise Gonzaga, and the wrongs of Louis XIV. The author would show us the time of Leszczyński, where for the first time, France and Russia enter into the struggle on subject of the affairs of Poland; it would expose without reserve the false and indolent measures of the cabinet of Louis XV, and the fruitless concerns of Stanisław Poniatowski, who cried in vain for a secret mission, the assistance of France in time to escape from the harsh protection of his imperial lover. It would have to retrace, at the same time, the French Revolution, and the Great Sejm in Poland; it would try to appreciate the interplay of these two simultaneous movements, unfortunate for us and favourable for our friends. In verifying the facts, at the time of the empire, it would show that the expedition of 1812 was not intended for the restoration of Poland, and that it is uniquely through that reason that it was attended by so many disasters. French Revolution of 1830 was immediately followed by the Polish Insurrection. Would it be forbidden for the historian to make heard some of the regrets and bitter complaints, reminding of the abandonment when France then left behind a friendly and unhappy nation while taking advantage of its heroic struggle to establish peace in its new destiny? The author might also remember the days when the outcasts of France found asylum in Poland, and would there join at the table in this noble hospitality of the French people, which provides for the maintenance of so many exiles, while its legislators are prolonging the old alliance with Poland with words of hope. The historian, finally, would ask the magnanimous French people if they could not voluntarily add one more page, one of the best, the annals of their glory. The sword of Sobieski is said to be resting on the monument that France erected to its emperor. It would be a noble and ingenious idea to remember also, both the old alliance between the two nations and the trophy that is missing from the tomb of Napoleon.
Moreover, the restoration of Poland is a wish, a need of the civilized world. England, this ancient ally of Russia, whose interests were so linked with those of Poland, England expressed in recent times, and the most unequivocal manner, by the bodies of all parties, an opinion decided in favour of our country, and embraced, on this issue, a similar system to France. "As the cause of Poland," - and here we copy what a peer of France, M. de Montalembert, told a meeting chaired by the English Duke of Sussex, in 1839 in London - "the cause of Poland in particular seems to me a token of sympathy between England and France. Both nations have similarly wronged Poland; both have to make amends. This duty, the common debt is, in my opinion, the best and surest of the links that unite England and France."
The history, the rights, the misfortunes of Poland, the sympathies that they excite, these are our social ties, our national strength; it is the hope for our future. By publishing a fragment of the life of a Polish patriot, we thought it our duty to precede with these few words about the past and the rights of our country, about that which is the most essential, the most sacred in the existence of a Pole.
It remains for us to say a few words on the manuscript from which these notes were printed. The author had bequeathed to the Polish Historical Committee of Paris, of which he had been a founder, several very valuable manuscripts, among which was found, written in French, under the modest title: Notes on my Captivity in Saint Petersburg written by the hand of Julian Niemcewicz. This manuscript, written in very closely spaced writing in three folio notebooks, is dated 10 May, 1800, Elizabethtown, New Jersey, United States of America. The Historical Committee, currently chaired by Adam Mickiewicz, professor of Slavic literature at the Collège de France, having ordered the publication of this manuscript, has charged us, as secretary of the Committee, with this honourable care, in which we have been assisted by Mr. Calixte Morozewicz, poseł[3] of the last Sejm, and one of the most active members of the Committee. This task is confined to reviewing the copy of the manuscript, splitting it into chapters, making summaries, and adding some explanatory notes where it seemed to us the most necessary for the understanding of facts and Polish names. Also thanks to M. Morozewicz is the biographical notice of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, which is located at the end of this book, and which seemed indispensable for the majority of foreign readers.
Paris, 17 June, 1843
The Secretary of the Historical Committee,
Charles Sienkiewicz
NOTES
ON
MY CAPTIVITY
IN RUSSIA
IN 1794, 1795, AND 1796.
I
THE BATTLE OF MACIEJOWICE.
The twenty-six months of my imprisonment in Russia, the evils of every kind I have suffered there, have left deep impressions on my soul. I will recount here the memories.
A history of the Polish revolution of 1794, a revolution so just, so sacred in its causes and principles, so fatal in its consequences for the country and the people who took part in it, would provide interesting stories and useful lessons; but deprived as I am at present of necessary materials of every kind, I find this task beyond my strength; I also cannot rely on my memory, much less on my talents; I will therefore confine myself to relating the principal circumstances of my captivity here from the moments immediately preceding the fateful day of 10 October, 1794,[4] until the time when the death of a shameless impostor broke my chains.
The fearlessness with which our troops, during two months of siege, defended the fortifications of Warsaw, the rainy season and the Warsaw Uprising, had forced the combined armies of the Russians and Prussians to withdraw to the outside of the capital. The King of Prussia marched to the provinces where the insurgency had just commenced, and the Russians marched along the Vistula, giving us a respite as much desired as necessary, and of which we took advantage immediately to detach five or six thousand troops under the command of General Dąbrowski, to create a diversion in Royal Prussia, torn from Poland at the time of its first partition. This small corps, thanks to its valour, its enthusiasm and the talents of its leader, battled the enemy wherever it met it; it defeated the Prussian troops under the command of Sekuli and stormed the city of Bromberg.
While these successes spread the liveliest joy in the camp and in the city, General Kościuszko, on the night between the 4th and 5th of October, received a letter from General Poniński bearing the unfortunate news that General Fersen, at the head of the Russian army, which had withdrawn from Warsaw, had passed the Vistula near a village called Maciejowice twenty leagues[5] from the capital. Poniński, with three thousand men, had been detached to observe and defend the passage; he, not having done so, and afterwards gave the excuse that the enemy, taking advantage of a very thick fog, crossed the river unseen. Whether negligence on his part or our unlucky star, that crossing threatened us with the most fatal results. Fersen was going to join the great army of Suvarov, and then both, with forces three times greater than ours, we would have been attacked and obliterated without help.
The army of Lithuania, receiving vague and contradictory orders, more than a hundred leagues removed from Warsaw, wandered to the adventure. General Sierakowski's small division, after having fought with courage and glory at Krupczyce against all of Suvarov's forces, was several days after battle in a disadvantageous position, and lost nearly all his artillery. This little troop, weakened and discouraged, was best in range to provide opposition to Fersen. It was approaching at a distance of six leagues from Poniński's detachment, and it is with these two corps that General Kościuszko resolved to combat Fersen's army, numbering about twenty thousand men and one hundred and fifty canons.
The headquarters of the army, of Warsaw, that even in the heaviest rains of Autumn, and after the enemy's retreat, had been in the middle of the camp, was being transferred to Mokotow, the charming villa of the marshal's wife, Princess Lubomirska, On Sunday evening, 5th October, General Kościuszko gave the order for two regiments of infantry and some canons to cross the Vistula by the bridge of Praga, and march towards General Sierakowski's division; he then told me, under the seal of the greatest secret, that the next day at daybreak that both of us would go on horseback to join said army. We spent the evening in Warsaw, at President Zakrzewski's house. Marshal Potocki; Mostowski, Kochanowski, and several of my other best friends were there; only Vice Chancellor Kołłątaj was in on the secret. The supper was gay and lively. I was seated next to Marshal Potocki,[6] I had on my finger an Etruscan scarab of the greatest beauty; it turned in the collet, and on one side was engraved a wounded soldier leaning on his shield. Potocki admired it -- "Keep it, I told him, until we meet again." He did not understand the true meaning of my words; my intention was, that in the event that some misfortune should happen to me, this estimable friend should at least retain a souvenir of me. We parted an hour after midnight, none of us foreseeing the long separation and misfortunes that awaited us; I myself scarcely though that this would be the last time I would visit the capital of Poland.
The next day, Monday, 6th of October, at five in the morning, General Kościuszko having spread the rumour that he was in the town, and having entrusted General Zajączek with command of the army, mounted his horse. He would have no other companion than me. We left via the Praga bridge, after three leagues, we left our horses and took those of the peasants; as we went always at a gallop, we were obliged to change mount very often; the marches and countermarches of the army, and moreso the pillage of the Cossacks, had absolutely ruined the land; the horses could not have been more miserable, the saddles had no straps, and often just a simple rope placed in the mouth of the poor pony, to serve as bit and bridle. We did not, however, break our necks, destiny had something better reserved for us. At four o'clock in the afternoon, we met General Sierakowski's first vedette, and at five we descended to his headquarters.
General Poniński, having left his corps six leagues behind, arrived; there was a small council, and I was surprised that Poniński had not received the order to rejoin General Sierakowski's division. I spend the night in a covered wagon of Brigadier Kopeć.
The next day, Tuesday, 7th of October, the small army, without waiting for reinforcements from Warsaw or Poniński's corps, began to march; the weather was beautiful, the soldiers laughed and sang. We halted near Żelechów, a small town ruined entirely by the Russians. Towards evening we reached Korytnica, a village ruined even more. The proprietor's house was intended to be headquarters. The Cossacks had passed a few days before; everything there was upside down; the chairs chopped with swords, the bureaux, the commodes, the secretaires buried, drawers, books, papers chopped into pieces and strewn about the floor. Behind the village rose two ranges of hills, separated by a deep ravine and bristling with thorns. Our small army occupied one of these ranges, with the ravine in front and woods on both sides. The next day it rained very heavily; at around noon, one of our patrols brought ten Russian Hussars and a major or the engineers; sent to reconnoitre and map the area. This misfortunate, named Podczaski, was a Pole of the Bracław Voivodeship; more dead than alive, he told us, driven by poverty, he had entered the Russian service long before, and had never been able to get discharged; we could have had him hanged for bearing arms against his country, but we contented ourselves with demanding from him information on the state and situation of the enemy camp; this he did with the greatest sincerity and the best faith in the world. He drew us a map of the Russian camp, and specified the number of men and canons. We saw clearly that the enemy was in men and artillery four times stronger than we were; we saw it, but we did not want to believe it. That evening, Captain Molski arrived as the courier of General Dąbrowski's army with the news of the defeat of the Prussians at Bromberg. We immediately published this victory in our little army, to invite it to match with its exploits the glory of its comrades in arms. In the evening, the rain stopped a little, the army reloaded its weapons. General Komiński, my friend and schoolmate, arrived at general quarters; we strolled in the courtyard, in discussing the day to come, in mingling with all the memories of the wonderful days of our youth, when, in the middle of the conversation, we saw in the air a flock of crows flying to our right. "Do you remember your Livy?" he told me: "the crows that are on our right, that's an ill omen." "It would be for the Romans," I told him, "but not for us. You will see that though it seems difficult, we will beat the Muscovites". "I think so too", he replied.
The day of the 9th of October was as beautiful as the previous had been rainy. At dawn, General Krzycki lead the two regiments detached from the Warsaw camp. His soldiers, exhausted by hunger and fatigue, were in poor humour; but the exhortations of the officers and a few glasses of eau-de-vie[7] soon returned them to gaiety. We, having no news of Poniński, and approaching nine in the morning, all our little army amounting to approximately five thousand eight hundred men, with twenty-one pieces of canon, began to march. At four in the afternoon we left the great woods and approached the village of Maciejowice. General Kościuszko and I, with some light cavalry, taking the lead. We were not long before discovering the enemy army. It was encamped along the Vistula as far as the eye could see. Although the great distance did not permit distinct discernment, the general view could not have been more imposing; the rays of the setting sun reflected on the weapons of thick columns of infantry; the neighing of the horses and the humming of all that armed multitude filled the air with a muffled, confused noise that could not but be something terrible. We sent our chasseurs[8] into the woods that extended on our flanks, and our outposts commenced a skirmish with the Cossacks in the plain that extends from the dyke in front of the house of Maciejowice up to the Vistula. Our cavalry killed some of them, when a large group, attacking them all of a sudden in semicircle (as was their custom), forced us to withdraw. I don't know how we weren't taken, as twice the general and I were surrounded; Kamiński's light cavalry repulsed them; finally, around five o'clock, everything became quiet, and all of our little army arrived on the scene.
The village of Maciejowice is located in the lowlands coming out of the woods; at some distance there is a raised platform, covered with fields and some bushes; a large two-storey house, built of bricks, was built beside the Vistula; in front there is a slope that leads to a dyke lined with willows; on the right, a small river; the rest of the platform is surrounded my marshy meadows. This position seemed excellent to us: the whole army was arranged on the platform; a battery was placed in front of the house, which threaded the whole avenue of the dyke; here also was placed the regiment of fusiliers and that of Działyński, under General Sierakowski. Behind the house, the two large segments of the circle from the river to a clump of trees to the left of the house, were bordered by the rest of our infantry, the line towards the village under the command of Colonel Krzycki, composed of Kopeć's brigade, Kamiński's light cavalry, two squadrons from the Crown Horse Guard regiment and two squadrons from the militia of the Brześć Voivodeship, for lack of space, along the small river and at the centre. General Kościuszko gave an order to erect some escarpments, but nightfall prevented their erection, they had barely been started. The whole army camped outside. The outposts were doubled, mixing the chasseurs with the cavalry; finally at nightfall, we retired within the headquarters, located in the brick house mentioned earlier.
Tell me what you will about premonitions! It was the eve of the most misfortunate day of my life, the day when I lost my liberty, and, what is a thousand times more distressing, when I see the events that precipitated the complete ruin of my country: I was, however, calm, and, what's more, happy. The house where we had been was plundered and ravaged like all the Russians had passed. It had belonged of old to the Maciejowski family, and then to the Zamoyski family. On display in the first floor salon were family portraits depicting primates, grand chancellors, great generals, bishops, etc. All of these personages had their eyes pierced, their figures sabred and mutilated by the Cossacks. Such was the army of the great Catherine, that protector of science and the arts. We did not find any more books; that was always the share of the general officers; Russians, who carried them off everywhere they could find them; a case, containing only brochures and Polish newspapers from the start of the century, was broken, and the contents covered the parquet of a chapel ruined like the rest.
I picked up a packet of these newspapers, they contained the account of the death of August II and the journal of the Convocation Sejm; the speeches, bombastic and stuffed with bad Latin, amused me extremely, in the few pieces I read at supper. We spoke of the strength of our position, of the difficulty, the almost impossibility for the enemy to attack us there. At two hours after midnight, we received an express from General Poniński. General Kościuszko had written to him to hasten his march to join us as soon as possible; but, alas! it was already too late. On October 10th, Friday, at daybreak, we were informed the the whole enemy army had advanced in battle order.
Our small army stood ready to received them. As the enemy had cannons of a greater calibre than ours, it began the cannonade from afar; its enormous balls emerging through the undergrowth, breaking with a terrible noise the branches and tree tops, coming to land in the middle of us. We had only three or four twelve-pound cannons[9]; and as soon as the enemy came into their range, we also struck them with such success, that we could see the columns drift and terror gain in the ranks. We were on dry, high ground; the Russians marched on marshes where guns and even men sank with every step. For nearly three hours we kept a decided advantage, to the point that General Sierakowski, placed with his troops facing the enemy and in front of the brick house, told us that it seemed to him that the Russians were going to abandon the attack and withdraw. But soon it was quite the opposite: the enemy four times as strong as us, having an immense gun park, besides counting the life of its soldiers for nothing, was not discouraged by the difficulties of the terrain and continued its advance. Its fire became increasingly fast and terrible; a hail of bullets of every calibre, of grapeshot and shells, which, bursting, carried death from all sides, raining down on us. One of these shells burst right between General Kościuszko, his aide-de-camp Fischer[10] and me; and its fragments, passing over our heads, went to strike at fifty paces a gunner who fell dead.
At the beginning of the affair, General Kościuszko, fearing that the enemy would lodge in a village which rested against our left, gave the order to set fire to it. Immediately the heated shells burst, the flames, the billows of smoke rose; and the poor peasants fleeing with their wives and children weeping, in the forest, remind me of one of the cruelest scenes I have ever seen.
Around noon the fire became even more terrible: death flew and struck from all sides, almost all of our artillery horses were killed or maimed; none of ours left its place though. The enemy was already in rifle range; a terrible fire of muskets then started on both sides, the ground was covered with the dead and wounded and the air resounded with their groans. The hail of bullets, their sharp whistle, were so continual, that I could not conceive how any of us could escape. But our ammunition ran out, and our canons became silent. The soldier, tired of remaining exposed without moving under five hours of continuous fire, finally lost patience. The line placed from the village to the top of the platform, under the command of Colonel Krzycki, advanced to attack the enemy; a canon discharge of grapeshot pushed them back and then routed a battalion of armed peasants, I warn General Kościuszko of it, and get in front of it at the same time as through the undergrowth the enemy cavalry advances at a gallop to take our flank. A squadron of militia from my province (from Brześć), placed at the bottom of the platform, started to falter and to want to leave the battlefield, I run to animate it, and being placed at its head, I was going to oppose the enemy cavalry. We were going to join it, when I was hit by a ball in the right arm above the elbow; my blood flooded out. I remember that pain was not the first feel feeling I felt in that moment, it was, on the contrary, pride to have shed my blood for my country. But this romantic pleasure of patriotism, which flattered my self-esteem, was soon dispelled by the appearance of the general rout of our army. The riders I lead dispersed; confusion reigned everywhere; the whole enemy army advanced and surrounded us. Our weakened infantry, presenting voids and gaps everywhere, did not move; it received the attack of the phalanx of Russian bayonets; the slaughter began, and after an obstinate combat, where the defenders of my country covered themselves in immortal glory, the enemy did not remain master of the battlefield, marching through the ranks of corpses of our soldiers, occupying again afterwards: the dead in the same place they had occupied in combat.
I looked everywhere for General Kościuszko; I saw him in the little plain beside the river; the blood loss weakened me, my sword fell from my hand. An officer, seeing me in this state, undid his tie and tied it around my arm. I finally joined the general, occupied in reuniting a small cavalry corps; a ball killed his horse, he had been presented with another. Suddenly a new corps of enemy cavalry appears in front of us; we attack it, we push it back, but soon all the Russian light horse forms on us; the Cossacks take us on both flanks; our small troop turns its back, and everyone runs to save themselves as they can, the forest promising to cover our retreat.
An officer, having twenty horsemen with him, shouts to me: "Join our troop, hurry, we will not fall into the hands of the enemy". "All is lost", I reply, "it doesn't matter what becomes of me". He moved away at speed; me, I had neither the force nor even the will to push my horse on; a band of Cossacks surrounded me at once. I no longer had a sword, my guns were discharged, and I could not raise my arm; they seized my horse by the bridle and I was taken prisoner.[11]
After conducting me through the forest, they dispersed in pursuit of new prizes, leaving me alone with their officer. This gentleman immediately demanded of me the inventory of all I had on me: he started by taking my watch, then my purse; then seeing the ring on the finger of my wounded and considerably swollen hand, he tried to remove it, and not being able to remove it, he put my finger in his mouth and would certainly have cut me with his teeth, if, seized by indignation, I had not pushed him off, then, not without difficulty and pain, removed this ring, and thrown it at his face. From thief, my officer then became valet, and set himself to undressing me, he took off my tie, my green coat, my jacket, etc., and covered me in a uniform he had torn from the body of one of our dead soldiers; he then took my horse and put me on his; I was dying of pain and fatigue, while he amused himself by walking me, through the many Russian batallions, swollen with pride their vitory had lent them, and filling the air with insolent clamour. Many of their officers shouted to my conductor: "Why not kill him? Kill him! Kill!" and he would perhaps have rendered me this service, for which I would not have been sorry at that moment nor for the next, but for the arrival of a regiment commander named Miller, who spoke to me with civility and humanity, scolded the officer who had stripped me, and charged himself with taking me to headquarters.
We crossed once more the whole battlefield; the ground was littered with corpses already completely stripped and left naked. This heart-rending spectacle had something great, even in its horror. All those soldiers, mostly six feet tall, broad, chest pierced by bayonets, the nervous limbs covered in already congealed blood, the menace or despair which was painted still in their livid features and frozen by death, but especially the idea that these brave men had died for their country by covering it with their breast, filled my heart with an impression as painful as profound, and which will never be erased.
We found the commander in chief, Fersen, walking in the court of the brick house with his followers; instead of a uniform, he was wearing a red plush coat, lined with a small gold braid; no sword, as far as I remember; in one word, he could not have been more bourgeouis on the day of combat. I was introduced and then taken to the same house which, seven hours earlier, had served us as general headquarters. I found the room filled with Russian generals and several of ours: the generals Kamiński, Sierakowski, Kniazewicz and the brigadier Kopec. We could not hold back our tears, seeing ourselves reunited by our common misfortune. The report of the death of General Kościuszko further increased our pain, especially mine. The Russian generals Khrushchev, Tormasov, Denisov, Engelhard, all knew my family; they came to console me, making protestations of interest and offerings of service: "We are not barbarians", they repeated constantly vying with each other. The eagerness to justify themselves as not being barbarians showed how much their conscience made them this reproach: they were not, however, with respect to their conduct towards us. One is not malicious when one feels happy, and they all were! They left victorious from a cruel and obstinate combat; they had come to the end of an adversary with whose end they believed the war was over forever; in a word, the fatigues of the campaign, the dangers of combat, dissapeared in their eyes, and a bright future, rewards of all kinds, decorations and rubles, diamonds, donations of villages, in all everything that flatters vanity and cupidity, presented themselves to their imagination. As we were the instruments of all this happiness, how could they hate us? So I repeat, in these first moments of their joy, they were lost in attentions of any kind towards us.
I was covered with blood, and my arm had not yet been bandaged; colonels Moronzov[12] and Khlebov, sent for their army surgeons, who, as one might think, were fully occupied. My wound was checked; the ball had passed through completely, torn all the veins bordering on the artery where there was bleeding, but without damaging or touching the bone. I suffered little while I was checked and when the first splint was put on me; I did not expect the torment I would soon endure.
However the general headquarter filled more and more. Among the newcomers, we saw the wife of General Khrushchev with his daughters and her niece; she had come from the side where the combat had been deadliest; and nothing proved better how hardened these ladies were, than to see them jumping slightly over the naked bodies of the grenadiers which, at every step, blocked their passage.
Between four and five in the evening, we saw a troop of soldiers approaching the general headquarters, bearing on a stretcher, made in haste, a man half dead: it was General Kościuszko. The blood, which covered his body and his head contrasted in a horrible manner with the livid pallor of his face. He had a broad sabre wound to the head and three pike blows in the back, above the kidneys. He hardly breathed. This spectacle tore my heart; silence, a dull stupor, was ended: interrupted by sobs and cries of pain as sharp as sincere. I kissed the general, who had not yet regained consciousness; and, from that moment until we were thrown into solitary dungeons, I was not separated from him again.
A surgeon dressed his wounds, but did not dare to make any pronouncements about his condition. He still gave no sign of consciousness. He was taken to a large room on the first floor, and none remained with him but me, crying by his bedside, and a grenadier beside every door inside the room.
- ↑ "the gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment." The Histories (Tacitus)/Book 1#3
- ↑ "And conquered all but the indomitable mind [of Cato.]", Horace, Od., ii. 1, 23., translation from The Essays of Montaigne by Charles Cotton
- ↑ "Envoy"; member of parliament
- ↑ The day of the Battle of Maciejowice, which Kościuszko lost against Fersen.
- ↑ The author, in using the word "leagues", intends always to speak of the Polish league, or mile, of fifteen geographical degrees; the distances thus designated ought to be considered almost double the leagues in France. (approx. 7 kilometres)
- ↑ Ignacy Potocki, marshal of the court, and then Grand Marshal of Lithuania, was one of the principal authors of the Constitution of 3 May 1791, which was intended for the political regeneration of Poland. A patriot remarkable for his spirit as much as his character, Ignacy Potocki was always respected, even by his enemies. He died in 1809, at the moment he was to plead the cause of his country with Napoleon at Schönbrunn; at the time of the brilliant success of the armies of the Duchy of Warsaw against the Austrians. M. Serra, Ambassadors of France to Warsaw, made him the following epitaph:
"Hic iacet ob patriam ærumnas et vincula passus,
Eripiturque eodem, quo inchoat illa, die"
- ↑ śliwowica, a plum brandy
- ↑ light infantry
- ↑ ?? I assume this is what "piece of twelve" means.
- ↑ This officer later served with distinction in the Polish legion in France, becoming divisional general and chief of staff of the army of the Duchy of Warsaw, and was killed in the Russian campaign of Tarutino.
- ↑ We believe we ought here to cite the description of the Battle of Maciejowice, taken from the book entitled "History of the Revolution of Poland, by an Eyewitness." (General Zajączek). "Kościuszko left Warsaw on September 29th, and mounted the Battle of Maciejowice on October 10th, or rather he received it: because not having found Poniński with Sierakowski's army; and Zieliński having sent only a few squadrons of bad cavalry, the General-in-chief would then have liked to avoid combat; but Fersen preferred to come to action than to leave behind an army that would have obstructed him in the march on Brześć. This affair was very lethal; the Polish had there an instant of success; some Russian battalions were very badly treated there by the insurgents, had folded and abandoned their cannons; but the Russian division with Denisov's orders, had pierced the left flank of the Poles, broke them up, and set them in confusion. The place where the enemy executed this passage was to be occupied by Poniński's division, which did not arrive in time. Kościuszko did everything in his power to reestablish combat, but it was in vain. The battle was lost. Much of the Polish army perished there; the rest taken prisoner. Kościuszko sought to emerge at the head of some cavalry; but surrounded, wounded three times, he fell unconscious from the last shot he received. Recognised by the enemy, he was carried from the battlefield to the headquarters of the Russians. Sierakowski, Kniaziewicz and Kamiński, general officers, were also taken prisoner. Niemcewicz, a friend of Kościuszko, received a dangerous wound in the combat. This young man was brave, spiritual and as poetic as Aeschylus; but the Greek had the good fortune to sing the triumph of his country, which he had helped on the day of Marathon; whereas the Pole, taken prisoner on that of Maciejowice, cries the misfortunes of his country in a dungeon. Poniński, instructed by fugitives of what had just happened to Kosciuszko, retreated to Warsaw."
- ↑ This Moronzov was grievously wounded and taken prisoner on the day of Racławice; he was kept in Krakow, where, on my journey through that city, I paid him a visit. (Author's note).