ll, not to the
winner of the field of Dubienka, but to the vanquished: to Kosciuszko,
not to the Russian general, Kachowski. Pole and Russian alike speak of
the high military talent that Kosciuszko displayed, no less than of the
valour that fought on, refusing defeat till hope was no more. The
immediate result so far as Kosciuszko was personally concerned was the
acknowledgment of his services by the King in the shape of promotion and
the nomination he greatly desired to the command of one of the chief
regiments in the Polish army, with all the affluence that these rewards
bestowed upon a man who had never hitherto enjoyed wealth. His fame,
too, travelled beyond the confines of his country, and the Legislative
Assembly in Paris conferred upon him the title of Citizen of France.

But the battle of Dubienka was not a week old, and the army was eager
for fresh action, when the King gave in his adherence to the
Confederation of Targowica; in other words, sold himself and his nation
to Russia. The echoes of his speech to the Diet, calling upon the nation
to fight till death, vowing that he was ready to make the sacrifice of
his own life should his country need it, were still in the ears of those
who had heard it. The army had waited in vain for him to place himself
at its head; then Catherine II threatened him, and as usual he dared not
disobey. "Yielding to the desire of the Empress," he told his subjects,
"and to the necessities of the country," he condemned the proceedings of
the long Diet in which he had recognized the salvation of Poland at that
one great moment of his life when he had thrown in his lot with the
noble party of patriotic reform; and now, as the mouthpiece of Catherine
II, he pronounced the nation's only safety to be with the promoters of
Targowica. The most favourable view of Stanislas Augustus's conduct has
little more to urge in his favour than that he was neither a fool nor a
hero, saw no hope of success in the national movement, and preferred to
throw in his lot with the other side. It was on the 23rd of July that
the King signed the Confederation of Targowica. The news fell as the
sentence of death upon the Polish camp that was palpitating with
patriotic ardour. In the presence of all his officers Poniatowski wrote
to the King as plainly as he dared: "News is here going through the
camp which surely must be spread by ill-disposed men who wish evil to
Your Majesty, as though Your Majesty would treat w