they lay to the unbroken discipline in which they had died. Of
that battlefield, such is the phrase, "the enemy only remained master by
treading over the ranks of the corpses of our soldiers, still occupying
after death the same place they had occupied in the battle."[1] Without
hope of victory the Polish riflemen fired till their last cartridge was
spent. With the Russians on all sides of them the gunners, standing at
the cannons, had worked till the end. A final desperate effort was made
by Kosciuszko to form up a front with a small band of his soldiers. His
third horse was killed beneath him. He mounted another, when a wave of
Russian cavalry swept in upon the broken remains of the Polish army, and
all was over. Fighting in a hand-to-hand struggle in a marsh, Kosciuszko
fell, covered with wounds, unconscious, and was taken prisoner by three
young Russian ensigns. Only two thousand of the Poles who had fought at
Maciejowice returned to Warsaw from that tragic and heroic field.
Conducted to the manor where a few hours before he had slept by the side
of Kosciuszko, Niemcewicz found there Kosciuszko's devoted officers,
Sierakowski, Kniaziewicz, who had commanded the left wing at the battle.
Kopec and Fiszer--all prisoners of war. The last drop was added to their
cup of bitterness when they heard that nothing was known of the fate of
their beloved leader, save the report that he was slain.

[Footnote 1: J. Niemcewicz, _Notes sur ma Captivite a Saint-Petersbourg_.]

CHAPTER VIII

THE RUSSIAN PRISON

Late in the afternoon of that ill-fated day a stretcher, roughly and
hastily put together, was carried by Russian soldiers into the courtyard
of the manor. The prisoners saw that on it lay the scarcely breathing
form of Kosciuszko. His body and head were covered with blood. He was
insensible and apparently at the point of death. The dead silence as he
was carried in was only broken by the sobs of his Polish officers. The
surgeon dressed his wounds, and he was then taken to a large hall and
left to the companionship of Niemcewicz, with Russian grenadiers posted
inside each door. In the evening the hall was required by Fersen for
dinner and his council of war, and Kosciuszko, still unconscious, was
transferred, Niemcewicz following him, to a room over the cellar.

Towards the end of the battle the fiercest contest had raged around the
Zamojski manor. At the last a hundred Polish soldiers had in the
desperation of extrem