eing the
saviours of your country await you. I give you my word that my zeal will
endeavour to equal yours. ...

"To the nation and to the country alone do you owe fidelity. She calls
upon us to defend her. In her name I send you my commands. With you,
beloved comrades, I take for our watchword: Death or Victory! I trust in
you and in the nation which has resolved to die rather than longer groan
in shameful slavery,"[1]

[Footnote 1: March 24, 1794. Given in _Letters of Kosciuszko_, ed. L.
Siemienski.]

To the citizens he wrote:

"Fellow-citizens! Summoned so often by you to save our beloved country,
I stand by your will at your head, but I shall not be able to break the
outraging yoke of slavery if I do not receive the speediest and the most
courageous support from you. Aid me then with your whole strength, and
hasten to the banner of our country. One zeal in one interest ought to
take possession of the hearts of all. Sacrifice to the country a part of
your possessions which hitherto have not been yours, but the spoils of a
despot's soldiers."

He begs them to give men, weapons, horses, linen, provisions, to the
national army, and then proceeds:

"The last moment is now here, when despair in the midst of shame and
infamy lays a weapon in our hands. Only in the contempt of death is the
hope of the bettering of our fate and that of the future generations.
... The first step to the casting off of slavery is the risk taken to
become free. The first step to victory is to know your own strength. ...
Citizens! I expect all from your zeal, that you will with your whole
hearts join the holy league which neither foreign intrigue nor the
desire for rule, but only the love of freedom, has created. Whoso is not
with us is against us. ... I have sworn to the nation that. I will use
the power entrusted to me for the private oppression of none, but I here
declare that whoever acts against our league shall be delivered over as
a traitor and an enemy of the country to the criminal tribunal
established by the Act of the nation. We have aleady sinned too much by
forbearance, and mainly by reason of that policy public crime has
scarcely ever been punished."[1]

[Footnote 1: March 24, 1794. _Op. cit_.]

The man who wrote thus was the strictest of military disciplinarians,
and yet he detested bloodshed and openly condemned all revolutionary
excess. At a later moment in the war the friend who shared his tent
tells how Kosciuszko st