or whom neither side felt compassion or respect,
in the hands of Russia. By a rescript of Catherine II the Polish army
was drafted into small divisions and scattered through the country, thus
rendered powerless. The reforms of the Constitution were set aside.
Russia ruled the country behind her puppets, the leaders of Targowica.
The second partition was only a question of time.

Radom was designated to Kosciuszko as his head-quarters; but his
determination to serve no more under the betrayers of his country held
firm. He remained two months longer in Warsaw in the seclusion of an
abandonment of grief, choosing to stay within walls rather than see the
streets of the capital of Poland under the Russian heel. The last piece
of business with which he concerned himself in the official capacity he
was surrendering for honour's sake was to recommend to the King's notice
several officers, including Kniaziewicz, for their gallantry in the late
war. Amidst his heavy anxieties he made time to write to a friend, whose
name we do not know, but who, to judge from the letter's closing
words--"I bid you farewell, embracing you a thousand times with the most
tender affection for ever"--was one very dear to Kosciuszko, begging him
to relieve the necessities of some individual whose position in Warsaw
without means had aroused the writer's pity.[1]

"Watering my native soil with my tears,"--thus he writes to Felix
Potocki, in an outburst of the patriotic indignation that even his
enemies respected--"I am going to the New World, to my second country to
which I have acquired a right by fighting for her independence. Once
there, I shall beseech Providence for a stable, free, and good
government in Poland, for the independence of our nation, for virtuous,
enlightened, and free inhabitants therein."[2]

[Footnote 1: _Letters of Kosciuszko_.]

[Footnote 2: _Op. Cit_.]

He fell sick for sorrow at the thought of his nation's future. From his
bed of convalescence in the famous Blue Palace of the Czartoryskis in
Warsaw he wrote to Michal Zaleski, acquainting him with his intention to
repair as soon as the fever left him to Galicia, thence:

"... possibly to Switzerland or England, whence I shall watch the course
of events in our country. If they make for the happiness of the country,
I shall return; if not, I shall move on further. I I shall enter no
foreign service, and if I am forced to it by my poverty then I shall
enter a service where th