Tadeusz Kościuszko: Saratoga, Scythemen and a Will Jefferson Ignored

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Tadeusz Kościuszko was born in 1746 in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to a modest noble family. After civil war interrupted his studies at the Warsaw military academy, he went to Paris, enrolled at the Royal Academy of painting and sculpture because foreigners were barred from military schools, and audited engineering lectures. Back in Poland, a failed elopement with Ludwika, the governor's daughter he tutored, ended with a beating by her father's guards. In 1776 he passed a geometry test given by Benjamin Franklin and became a colonel of engineers. He warned that Sugar Loaf Hill left Fort Ticonderoga exposed, was ignored, and then fortified Bemis Heights for the American victory at Saratoga.

He spent more than two years fortifying West Point, organized river crossings during the Race to the Dan and dug zigzag approach trenches at Ninety Six. Home again, he cut the forced labor owed by peasants on his estate, fought an undefeated retreat against Russia in 1792, and led the 1794 uprising whose peasant scythemen took Russian guns at Racławice. Wounded and captured at Maciejowice, he was freed in 1796. His 1798 will directed his American fortune to freeing and educating enslaved people and named Thomas Jefferson executor, but Jefferson never carried it out. He died in Switzerland in 1817.

• He was paid for seven years of service with a certificate and borrowed money for his passage back to Europe.
• At Dubienka his 5,300 men held a 25,000-strong Russian army by anchoring their flanks on the Bug River and bogs.
• The Proclamation of Połaniec gave serfs legal protection, freedom of movement and lighter labor duties.
• He called Napoleon "the undertaker of the French Republic" and refused to serve him or endorse Tsar Alexander I's puppet Polish state.
• He formed a lasting bond with Agrippa Hull, an African American orderly in the Southern campaign, and Mount Kosciuszko in Australia is named for him.