Thaddeus of Warsaw Part 66

Nor in the country, when returned to their separate dwelling-places, did the same happy and honorable routine cease its genial round.

Pembroke's most stationary residence was Somerset Castle, his father's beneficent representative, whose favorite home was Deerhurst. And thus mutually endeared, and worthy of their Heaven- bestowed stewardship, we leave the family of Sir Robert Somerset.

We leave Thaddeus Sobieski, now one of its most beloved members, blessed in the fruition of every earthly good. The virtues, the muses, and the charities were the chosen guests at his abundant table. Poverty could not veil genius from his penetration, nor misfortune obscure the inborn light of its integrity. Though exiled from his native land, where his birth gave him dominion over rich territories, now in the hands of strangers, and a numerous happy people, now no more, he had not yet relinquished the love of empire.

But it was not over princ.i.p.alities and embattled hosts that he desired to prolong the sceptre of command. He wished to reign in the soul. His throne was sought in the hearts of the good, the kind, the men of honest industry, and the unfortunate, on whom prosperity had frowned. In fact, the unhappy of every degree and nation found consolation, refuge, and repose within the sheltering domains of Beaufort. No eye looked wistfully on him to turn away disappointed; his smiles cheered the disconsolate, and his protecting arms warded off, when possible, the approach of new sorrows. "Peace was within his walls, and plenteousness within his palaces."

And when a few eventful months of the succeeding year had distinguished its course with the death of the imperious destroyer of Poland, and General Kosciusko (having been set at liberty by her generous successor, and honorably empowered to go whither he willed) had arrived in England on his way to the United States, he sought and found Thaddeus, his young comrade in the fields of Poland, and was hailed with the warmest welcome by that now indeed truly "comforted"

brave and last representative of the n.o.ble race and name of the glory of his country, the more than once Gideon-shield of Christendom--John Sobieski.

"Ah, my chief!" cried he, while he clasped the veteran to his breast, "I am indeed favored above mortals. I see thee again, on whom I believed the gates of a ruthless prison had closed forever! I have all that remains of my country now within my arms. Kosciusko, my friend, my father, bless your son!"

Kosciusko did bless him, and embalmed the benediction with a shower of tears more precious than the richest unction that ever flowed on a royal head. They were drawn from a Christian soldier's heart--a true patriot and a hero.

Sobieski presented his lovely wife to this ill.u.s.trious friend, and while he gratefully acknowledged the rare felicity of his ultimate fate, he owned that the retrospection of the past calamity, like a shade in a picture, gives to our present bliss greater force and brightness. But that such felicity was his, he could only ascribe to the gracious providence of G.o.d, who "trieth the spirit of man," and can bring him to a joy on earth even like unto a resurrection from the dead. And the conclusion is not even then; "there remaineth yet a better life, and a better country for those who trust in the Lord of earth and heaven!"

APPENDIX.

NOTES

CHIEFLY RELATING TO GENERAL KOSCIUSKO.

NOTES

The writer prefaces these notes with the following dedicatory tribute she inscribed to the memory of this ill.u.s.trious chief in a former but subsequent edition, some years after the first publication of the work. It runs thus:--

THADDEUS OF WARSAW.

THIS TENTH EDITION IS HUMBLY AND AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE JUSTLY REVERED AND RENOWNED

General Thaddeus Kosciusko.

"The spirit of war between nation and nation, and between man and man in those nations, for public supremacy on the one side and private aggrandizement on the other, being still as much the character of the times as in the days when the preceding biographical tale of Poland was written, the author continues to feel the probable consequences of such a crisis in forming the future principles of manly British youth--a feeling which was the origin of the work itself.

"Its direct aim being to draw a distinguishing line between the spirit of true patriotism and that of ambitious public discontent,-- between real glory, which arises from benefits bestowed, and the false fame of acquired conquests, which a leader of banditti has as much right to arrogate as would the successful invader of kingdoms,-- the character of General Kosciusko, under these views, presented itself to the writer as the completest exemplar for such a picture.

"Enthusiasm attempted to supply the pencil of genius, and though the portraiture be imperfectly sketched, yet its author has been gratified by the sympathy of readers, not only of her own people, but of those of distant nations; and that the principles of heroic virtue which she sought to inculcate in her narrative were p.r.o.nounced by its great patriot subject, in a letter he addressed to herself, 'as worthy of his approbation and esteem,' seems, now that he is removed from all earthly influence, to sanction her paying that honest homage to his memory which delicacy forbade her doing while he lived.

"The first publication of this work was inscribed to a British hero, 'a land commander and a tar,' whose n.o.ble nature well deserved the t.i.tle bestowed upon it by his venerable sovereign, George III., ('Coeur-de-Lion.') He, a brother in spirit, fully appreciated the character of Thaddeus Kosciusko, and the writer of this devoted tribute feels that she deepens the tints of honor on each name by thus a.s.sociating them together. But may the tomb of the British hero be long in finding its place! That of the Polish patriot has already received its sacred deposit, and with the sincere oblation of a not quite stranger's heart, this poor offering is laid on the grave of him who fought for 'his country's freedom, laws, and native king;'

who, when riches and a crown were proffered to himself by the then dictator of almost all Europe, declined both, because no price could buy the independence of an honest man.

"Such was General Kosciusko; such was the model of disinterestedness, of tempered valor, and of public virtue which his annalist sought to set forth in the foregoing pages; such was the man who honored their narrator with his approval and esteem! and in that last word she feels a privilege, but with due humility, to thus link some little memorial of herself to after times, by so uniting to the name of Thaddeus Kosciusko that of his humble but sincere aspirer to such themes,

"JANE PORTER.

"LONG-DITTON ON-THAMES, September, 1819."

Since the above inscription was first written and inscribed in the former edition, the brave and benign "Christian knight," the Coeur- de-Lion of our own times, has also been gathered to the tears of his country, and his monumental statue, as if standing on the victorious mount of St. Jean d'Acre, is now preparing to be set up, with its appropriate sacred trophies, in the great Naval Hall at Greenwich. It is understood that his mortal remains will be removed from the Pere la Chaise in Paris, where they now lie, to finally rest in St. Paul's Cathedral, where Nelson sleeps. Kosciusko's tomb is at Cracow, the ancient capital of Poland; and in the manner of its most ancient style of sepulchre, it appears an immense earthen tumulus, piled over the simple-mounded grave, which acc.u.mulating portions were severally borne to their hallowed place in the arms alone of each silent mourner, in a certain number of successive days, till the whole was raised into a grand pyramidal ma.s.s.

In looking back through the avenue of life to those periods the tale tells of, what events have occurred, public and private, to the countries and the individuals referred to in these memoranda! to persons of lofty names and excellence, both in our own and in other lands, mutually affected with admiration and regret for the virtues and the calamities described. It is an awful contemplation, and in sitting down in my now solitary chamber to its retrospection, I find that nearly half a century has pa.s.sed since its transactions swept over Europe like a desolating blast. Then I wrote my little chronicle when the birthright independence of Poland was no more; when she lay in her ashes, and her mighty men were trodden into the dust; when the pall of death overspread the country, and her widows and her orphans wandered afar into the trackless wilderness of a barren world.

During this wide expatriation, some distinguished captives, who had fallen in the field, and were counted among the slain, having been found by the victors alive in their stiffened blood, were conveyed to various prisons; and along with these was discovered the justly feared, and not less justly deplored, General Kosciusko, who, though long unheard of by the lone wanderers of his scattered host, had been thus preserved by the supreme Lord of all, to behold again a remnant of his own brightened in hope, and comforted by the honoring sympathy of the good and brave in many nations.

Kosciusko was of n.o.ble birth, and early distinguished himself by his spirit and talents for the martial field. Indeed, owing to the belligerent position of Poland, situated in the midst of jealous and encroaching nations, arms was the natural profession of every gentleman in the kingdom, commerce and agriculture being the usual pursuits of the middle cla.s.ses. But it happened, in the early manhood of Thaddeus Kosciusko, that the dangerous political Stromboli which surrounded his country, and often aroused an answering blaze in that since devoted land, slept in their fires; and Poland being at peace, her young military students, becoming desirous of practising their science in some actual campaign, resolved to try their strength across the Atlantic. Hearing of the war then just commenced between the British Colonies in America and the mother country, Kosciusko, as a deciding spirit amongst his ardent a.s.sociates, brought them to this resolution. Losing no time, they embarked, pa.s.sed over the wide ocean of the Western world, and landing safe and full of their object, offered their services to the army of independence. Having been readily accepted, and immediately applied to use, the extraordinary warrior talents of Kosciusko soon shone conspicuous, and were speedily honored by his being appointed special aide-de-camp to General Washington. His subsequent conduct in the camp and field was consonant to its beginning, and he became a distinguished general in rank and command long before his volunteered military services had terminated. When the war ended, in the peace of mutual concessions between the national parent and its children on a distant land, (a point that is the duty of all Christian states to consider, and to measure their ultimate conduct by,) the Poles returned to their own country, where they soon met circ.u.mstances which caused them to call forth their recently pa.s.sed experience for her. But they had not departed from the newly-established American State without demonstrations of its warm grat.i.tude; and Koscuisko, in particular, with his not less popular compatriot and friend, Niemcivitz, the soldier and the poet, bore away with them the pure esteem of the brave population, the sighs of private friendship, and the tears of an abiding regret from many fair eyes.

To recapitulate the memorable events of the threatened royal freedom of Poland, by the three formidable foreign powers confederated for its annihilation, and in repelling which General Kosciusko took so gallant a lead, is not here necessary to connect our memoranda concerning his unreceding struggles to maintain her political existence. They have already been sketched in the preceding little record of the actual scenes in which he and his equally devoted compeers held their indomitable resistance till the fatal issue.

"Sarmatia lay in blood!" and the portion of that once great bulwark of civilized Europe was adjudged by the paricidal victors to themselves: a sentence like unto that pa.s.sed on the worst of criminals was thus denounced against Christendom's often best benefactor, while the rest of Europe stood silently by, paralyzed or appalled, during the immediate execution of the n.o.ble victim.

But though dismembered and thrown out from the "map of nations" by the combination of usurping ambition and broken faith, and no longer to be regarded as one in its "proud cordon," Poland retained within herself (as has been well observed by a contemporary writer) "a mode of existence unknown till then in the history of the world--a domestic national vitality." Unknown, we may venture to say, except in one extraordinary yet easily and reverentially understood instance. We mean the sense of an integral national being, ever- living in the bosoms of the people of Israel, throughout all their different dispersions and captivities. And, perhaps, with respect to this principle of a moral, political, and filial life, still drawing its aliment from the inhumed heart of their mother-country, who, to them, "is not dead but sleepeth!" may be explained, in some degree, in reference to the above remark on the existing and individual feeling amongst the wanderers of Poland, by considering some of the best effects, latent in their "working together for good," in the deep experience of her ancient variously-const.i.tuted modes of civil government.

Under that of her early monarchs, the Piasts and their senate, she sat beneath an almost patriarchal sceptre, they being native and truly parental princes. John Sobieski was one of this description by descent and just rule. Under the Jagellon dynasty, also sprung from the soil, she held a yet more generalizing const.i.tutional code, after which she gradually adopted certain republican forms, with an elective king--a strange contradiction in the a.s.serted object, a sound system for political freedom, but which, in fact, contained the whole alchemy of a nation's "anarchical life," and ultimately produced the entire destruction of the state. From the established date of the elective monarchy, the kingdom became an arena for every species of ambitious rivalry, and its sure consequences, the interference of foreign influences; and hence rapidly advanced the decline of the true independent spirit of the land, to stand in her laws, and in her own political strength; her own impartial laws, the palladium of the people and a native king the parental guardian of their just administration. But, in sad process of time, "strangers of Rome, of Gaul, and of other nations," in whose veins not a drop of Sclavonian blood flowed, found means to successively seat themselves on the throne of the Piasts, the Jagellons, and the Sobieskis, of ancient Sarmatia; and the revered fabric fell, as by an earthquake, to be registered no more amongst the kingdoms of the world.

THE EARLY EDUCATION OF KOSCIUSKO AND HIS COMPATRIOTS, WITH ITS SUBSEQUENT EFFECTS ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THEIR LIVES.

Though their country appeared thus lost to them, they felt its kingdom still in their minds--in the bosom of memory, in the consciousness of an ancestry of bravery and of virtue; and though the soil had pa.s.sed away from the feet of those whose ancestors of "sword or share" had trod it as sons and owners, and it now holds no place for them but their fathers' graves, yet the root is deep in such planting, and the tree, though invisible to the world, is seen and nourished in the depths of their hearts by the dews of heaven.

The pages of universal history, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, when opened with the conviction that He who made the world governs it also, will best explain the _why_ of these changes in the destiny of nations; and within half of the latter part of the last century, and the nearly half of the present, awful have been the pages to be read. Hence we may understand the vital influence of the objects of education with regard to the principles inculcated, whether with relation to individual interest or to the generalized consideration of a people as a commonwealth or a kingdom. A kingdom and a commonwealth may be considered the same thing, when the power of both people and king are limited by just laws, established by the long exercised wisdom of the nation, holding the whole powers of the state in equilibrium; and in this sense, meaning "a royal commonwealth," comprising, as in England, "kings, lords, and commons," it is generally believed is intended to be understood the term, "The republic of Poland, with its king."

The Polish nation, however, under all their dominions of government, usually partook something of the policies and manners of the then existing times. Yet they were always distinguished by a particular chivalry of character, a brave freedom from all foreign and domestic va.s.salage, and a generous disposition to respect and to a.s.sist the neighboring nations to maintain the same independence they themselves enjoyed. Though actual schools, or colleges, or written lore, might not originally have had much to do with it, the continued practice of old, well-formed customs held them in "the ways their fathers walked in" and they found them those of "pleasantness" and true honor. But the time came when literary dictation was to take the place of oral tradition, and of habitual imitative reverence of the past. Schools and colleges were inst.i.tuted, teaching for doctrines the prevailing sentiments of the endowers, or of the instructors employed. During the reigns of the later sovereigns of the Jagellon dynasty, Sigismund I. and II., and that of their predecessor, John Sobieski, the principles of these seminaries might be considered sound. But soon after the death of the last-named monarch, when the latent mischief contained in the Utopian idea of the perfection of an always elective monarchy began to shake the stability of even the monarchy itself, certain of the public teachers evinced correspondent signs of this destructive species of freemasonry; and about the same period the Voltaire venom of infidelity against all the laws of G.o.d and man being poured throughout the whole civilized world, the general effect had so banefully reached the seats of national instruction in Poland, that several of the most venerated personages, whose names have already been, commemorated in the preceding biographical story, congregated together to stem, by a counteracting current, the torrent where they saw it likely to overflow; to sap up its introduced sources, by obtaining the abolition of some of the most subtle and dangerous of the scholastic inst.i.tutions, and the establishment of others in their room, on the sound foundation of moral and religious polity between men and nations.

The sole remaining princely descendants of the three just referred to, true patriot-monarchs, were the earliest awakened to resist the spirit of evil spreading amongst all cla.s.ses in the nation. The Czartoryski and the Zamoyski race, both of the Jagellon line, and near kinsmen to the then newly raised monarch to the Polish throne, Stanislaus Poniatowski, appeared like twin stars over the darkened field, and the whole aspect of the country seemed speedily changed. A contemporary writer bears record that one hundred and twenty-seven provincial colleges were founded, perfected, and supported by them and their patriotic colleagues; while the University of Vilna was judiciously and munificently organized by its prince palatine, Adam Czartoryski himself, and a statute drawn up which declared it "an open high-school from the supreme board of public education for all the Polish provinces." Herein was every science exalting to the faculties of man, and conducive to his sacred aspirations, seriously and diligently inculcated; and every principle of morality and religion, purifying to his mixed nature, and therefore calculated to establish him in the answering conduct, truth, justice, and loyal obedience to the hereditary revered laws of the nation, equally instilled, qualifying him to uphold them, and to defend their freedom from all offensive operations at home or abroad, intended to subvert the purity of their code or the integrity of their administration.

Such was the import of the implied vow on entering the university.

Amongst the gallant youths brought up in such a school of public virtue was Thaddeus Kosciusko and the young Timotheus Niemcivitz, his friend from youth to age. Kosciusko, as has already been said, was of n.o.ble parentage; and to be the son of a Polish n.o.bleman was to be born a soldier, and its practical education, with sabre and lance, his daily pastime. But military studies were included in these various colleges, and the friends soon became as mutually expert in arms as they ever after continued severally distinguished in the fields of their country with sword or lyre. Besides, neither of the young cavaliers pa.s.sed quite away from their _alma mater_ without having each received the completing accolade of "true knighthood" by the stroke of "fealty to honor!" from the inaugurating sunbeam of some lovely woman's eye. Such befell the youthful Kosciusko, one bright evening, in a large and splendid circle of "the beautiful and brave" at Vilna; and it never lessened its full rays in his chivalric heart, from that hour devoted to the angel-like unknown who had shed them on him, and who had seemed to doubly consecrate the ardors of his soul to his country--her country--the country of all he loved and honored upon earth. How he wrought out this silent vow is a story of deep interest--equally faithful to his patriotic loyalty and to his ever-cherished love; and in some subsequent reminiscences of the hero, should the writer live to touch a Polish theme again, they may be related with additional honor to his memory.

Brief was the time after the preceding sealing scene of the young Kosciusko for his military vocation took place, before himself and his friend Niemcivitz--who had also received his "anointing spell,"

which he gayly declared came by more bright eyes than he would dare whisper to their possessors--made a joint arrangement to quit the study of arms, though thus cheered on by the Muses and the Graces, and at once enter the exercise in some actual field of rugged war.

The newly-opened dispute between Great Britain and her colonies in North America seemed calculated for their honorable practice.

Consulting some of their most respected friends, they speedily found means to cross the seas, and shared the first great campaign under Washington. The issue of that campaign, and those which followed it, need not be repeated here; suffice it to say, the hard-fought contest ended in a treaty of peace between the parent country and its contumacious offspring, in the year 1783, with England's acknowledgment of their independence, under the name of the United States of America.

The two gallant Poles returned to Europe, and onward to their own country, by a route tracked by former brave deeds; through France, Germany, and other lands, marked by the Gustavuses, the Montecuculi, the Turennes, the Condes, the Marlboroughs, the Eugenes, champions alike of national peace and national glory on those widely-extended plains and bulwarked frontiers, till the belligerent clouds of a still more threatening hostility than any of those repelled invasions were seen hovering luridly over their own beloved country. Warned thus, during their pleasant travel, of the coming events whose shadows seemed to rise on every side of Poland, in forms appalling to the luxurious, the avaricious, the indolently selfish, of every description in the land, but which only roused and nerved the hearts and arms of her two sons, courageous in the simplicity of their purpose--Poland's preservation! they hastened in that moment to her bosom.

The events of this her mortal struggle, in fast union with these faithful sons, and other filial hearts, commemorated in the foregoing narrative of Thaddeus Sobieski, need not be recapitulated here. It amply tells the fate of the great kingdom which had stood as with gates of bra.s.s, until the intestine rivalries of an elective monarchy--the worshipped idol alike of presumptuous private ambition and pretended patriotic liberality--the true masked priest of public anarchy--rent them asunder, and the watchful nations, ready for plunder and extended dominion, poured into them a flood like the rivers of Babylon, over all her walls and towers.

We have read that part of her bravest sons were swept away into distant lands; some to die in homeless exile, others to meet the honorable compa.s.sion and the cheering hopes of sympathy from a people like themselves, who had formerly fought the good fight for England's laws, liberties, and royal name in Europe. And some were shut up from the light of day in the fettered captivity of foreign prisons, until "the iron entered their souls." Amongst these n.o.ble captives were General Kosciusko and his faithful Achates, Niemcivitz, to whom might be justly applied the words of our bard of "The Seasons," affixed to the young brow of Sir Philip Sidney--

"The plume of war, with early chaplets crown'd The hero's laurel with the poet's bays."

But the Emperor Paul, on his accession to the throne of the Czars, as has before been noted, was too generous a captor to hold in cage so sweet a singing bird and so n.o.ble a lion; and he gave them liberty, appending to the act, dearest to a free-born heart, an imperial donation to Kosciusko that might have furnished him with a golden argosy all over the world. But the wounded son of Poland declined it in a manner worthy her name, and with an ingenuous grat.i.tude towards the munificent sovereign who had offered it, not as a bribe for "golden opinions," but as a sincere tribute to high heroic virtue.

The writer of this note was informed of this fact many years ago, by a celebrated English banker, at that time at St. Petersburg, and corresponding between that city and London, with whom the imperial present had been lodged, and through whom General Kosciusko respectfully but decidedly declined its acceptance.

Then it was that, after halting a short time in England, he with his school and camp companion in so many changes, prepared a second crossing over the Atlantic, to revisit its victor President in his olive-grounds at Mount Vernon. But Niemcivitz had another errand. His roving Cupid had long settled its wing, and he eagerly sought to plight, before Heaven's altar in the church, the already sacred vow he had pledged to a fair daughter of that country while sharing the dangers of its battlefields.

It was with great difficulty the portcullis of a friendship strong as death had been raised in old chivalric Kent, to allow departure to so dear and honored a guest as he, who their master had seen fall in his memorable wounds on the plain of Brzesc. But he promised to return again, should the same sweet cherub that sat up aloft on his first voyage to America steer back his little bark in safety; and then he trusted to be once more clasped to the bosom of Poland, in that of his most beloved friend, a dweller in England. [Footnote: The portcullis, the gate, and the armorial crest of Beaufort has descended from the royal founder of the family, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.]

Besides this cherished heir of his earliest remembrances, there were other friends of olden days who had welcomed him with gladdening recollections. Amongst these was the family of Vanderhorst, originally of the Spanish Netherlands, who, from religious rather than political motives, had transferred themselves from certain persecutions in that land during times of papal tyranny to the shelter of the British colonies on the Transatlantic sh.o.r.e, and who, on the separation of those colonies into independent states from the mother country, had removed, in relative grateful duties, to the governing land of their early refuge, and were now dwelling here in prosperity and happy repose, when General Kosciusko set his honored foot on its sea-girt and virtue-bulwarked coast He was their former guest while at New York, and he readily accepted their eager invitation that he would revisit them in their new paternal country.