rung with the first vows of the
national uprising, must have been bitter beyond expression to Kosciuszko
and to all Poland; but again he would permit neither himself nor his
nation to meet this blow with anything but unshaken fortitude.

"We have sustained a loss "--thus his manifesto: "but I ask of
courageous and stable souls, ought this to make us fear? Can the loss of
one town bid us despair of the fate of the whole commonwealth? The first
virtue of a free man is not to despair of the fate of his country." He
speaks of Athens and the Persians, Rome after Cannae, France driving the
English out of their country, and the heroes of his own nation who had
repulsed Sweden, Turkey, Russia, and the Tartars. "Other men of courage
and of virtue have not doubted. Instead of breaking into profitless
lamentations they flew to arms, and delivered the country from the
invasions of their enemies. ... I have told you, citizens, what my duty
bade me tell you in the conditions of to-day: beware of indirect and
alarmist impressions, beware of those who spread them. Trust in the
valour of our armies and the fidelity of their leaders. ... Let not
Europe say: 'The Pole is swift to enthusiasm, swifter to
discouragement.' Rather let the nations say: 'The Poles are valiant in
resolution, unterrified in disaster, constant in fulfilment.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: _op. cit_.]

As if to prove the truth of his words, good news poured in from
Lithuania, Samogitia, Courland. Bands of peasants were fighting in
Lithuania. The Rising was general in Samogitia. Courland remembered that
in the past she had been a member of the Polish Commonwealth, and her
citizens gave in their act of adhesion to the Polish Rising.

Taking advantage of Frederick William's incapacity of profiting by his
victory at Szczekociny, Kosciuszko pushed rapidly on to Warsaw. By a
series of skilful manoeuvres, in the last days of June he arrived outside
the city, and prepared to defend her at all costs.

Events then occurred in Warsaw of a nature to arouse his strong
condemnation. Hearing of the loss of Cracow at the hand of a traitor,
the Warsaw populace, with the memory of Targowica, many of whose
confederates were still in their midst, staring them in the face,
dragged out from the prisons certain Poles who had either been guilty or
who were suspected of treason, and executed them then and there.
Kosciuszko was in camp in the neighbourhood of Warsaw. Any form of
terrorism was abhor