KOŚCIUSZKO, TADEUSZ. – Polish patriot, born at Mereczowszczyzna on 4 February 1746, died at Soletta (Switzerland) on 20 October 1817. Protected by the Czartoryski family, he was able to attend the cadet school in Warsaw, graduating as an officer. He then pursued further studies in Paris, where, in the Enlightenment climate of the French capital, those democratic-humanitarian ideas, that faith in progress and in the improvement of humanity that would never again leave him, began to take shape in him.
Sentimental complications led him to the United States (1776), where he enlisted as a colonel of engineers,
distinguishing himself through his moral qualities and technical ability, to such an extent that he attained the rank of commander-in-chief of the engineering corps of the Southern Army. His stay in the United States and his contact with American society strengthened in him an already clear democratic consciousness.
Thus, after his return to his homeland (1784), in the aftermath of the unsuccessful campaign of 1792 against the Russians and the second partition of Poland, K. appeared to all those yearning for a revival as the person best suited to channel all social classes toward a single goal: the struggle against the Russians. On 23 March 1794 K. assumed command of the insurrection at Cracow; it spread throughout Poland and achieved successes at Racławiec, Żmuda, Warsaw and Vilna. At the same time, through suitable measures in favor of the peasants (partial abolition of serfdom, reduction of the corvées imposed on peasant combatants, etc.), he succeeded in bringing fresh forces into the ranks of the insurgents. Suvorov’s Russians, after the reverses they had suffered, went on the offensive and, together with Fersen’s Prussians, defeated the Poles in the successive battles of Szczekociny (6 June) and Maciejowiec (10 October), where K., seriously wounded, fell into Russian hands, while Warsaw capitulated on 4 November. K., taken prisoner to Petersburg, was released by Paul I at the end of 1796 and from then on remained virtually inactive and politically isolated, except for a final meeting with Alexander I in 1815, retiring to Soletta.