L==a peculiarly Polish letter, roughly speaking to be pronounced
between u and w.

O==oo, as in mood.

Rz==the French j, as in Jean.

S, si,==a slightly hissed and softened sound of sh.

W==v.

Z, zi==French j.

The stress in Polish falls almost invariably on the penultimate
syllable.

KOSCIUSZKO

CHAPTER I

THE YOUTH OF KOSCIUSZKO

The great national uprisings of history have for the most part gone down
to time identified with the figure of a people's hero: with some
personality which may be said in a certain manner to epitomize and
symbolize the character of a race. "I and my nation are one": thus
Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, sums up the devotion that will
not shrink before the highest tests of sacrifice for a native country.
"My name is Million, because I love millions and for millions suffer
torment." If to this patriotism oblivious of self may be added an
unstained moral integrity, the magnetism of an extraordinary personal
charm, the glamour of a romantic setting, we have the pure type of a
national champion. Representative, therefore, in every sense is the man
with whose name is immortally associated the struggle of the Polish
nation for her life--Tadeusz Kosciuszko.

Kosciuszko was born on February 12, 1746, during Poland's long
stagnation under her Saxon kings. The nation was exhausted by wars
forced upon her by her alien sovereigns. Her territories were the
passage for Prussian, Russian, and Austrian armies, traversing them at
their will. With no natural boundaries to defend her, she was surrounded
by the three most powerful states in Eastern Europe who were steadily
working for her destruction. In part through her own impracticable
constitution, but in greater measure from the deliberate machinations of
her foreign enemies, whether carried on by secret intrigues or by the
armed violence of superior force, Poland's political life was at a
standstill, her parliament obstructed, her army reduced. Yet at the same
time the undercurrent of a strong movement to regeneration was striving
to make itself felt. Far-seeing men were busying themselves with
problems of reform; voices were raised in warning against the perils by
which the commonwealth was beset. New ideas were pouring in from France.
Efforts were being made by devoted individuals, often at the cost of
great personal self-sacrifice, to ameliorate the state of the peasantry,
to raise the standa