Tadeusz Kościuszko

Tadeusz Kościuszko

Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (4 or 12 February 1746 – 15 October 1817) was a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer, statesman, and military leader. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 KoŚciuszco Uprising. He fought on the US side in the American Revolutionary War. He died in Switzerland, where he was buried in the Swiss National Cemetery in Basle, Switzerland.

About Tadeusz Kościuszko in brief

Summary Tadeusz KościuszkoAndrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (4 or 12 February 1746 – 15 October 1817) was a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer, statesman, and military leader who became a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and the United States. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 KoŚciuszco Uprising. He fought on the US side in the American Revolutionary War. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson’s, he wrote a will in 1798 dedicating his U.S. assets to the education and freedom of the U. S. slaves. He eventually returned to Europe and lived in Switzerland until his death in 1817. He was the youngest son of a member of the szlachta, and his wife Tekla Ratomska. His paternal family was ethnically Lithuanian–Ruthenian and traced their ancestry to Konstantor Fiodorzko, a courtier of Polish King and Grand Duke of Sigismund. He once described himself as a Litvin, a term that denoted the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, within the Polish–Lithuian Commonwealth. His family had become early as early as the 16th century as the most Polish and most Lithuanian nobility of the time. He had come into contact with the Belarusian nobility, and spoke Belarusian, before the word Belarusian was used in the word Polonian.

He died in Switzerland, where he was buried in the Swiss National Cemetery in Basle, Switzerland. His exact birthdate is unknown; commonly cited are 4 February and 12 February, but it is believed he was born in 1746, in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate near Kosów in Nowogródek Voivodeship, a part of the Polish–Litovsk Commonwealth. His maternal family, the Ratomskis, were also Lithuanian or Modern Ruthenian heritage as well as the Old Ruthenians. His father was an officer in the Lithuanian Army and his mother was a wife of a Polish courtier. He is buried in Brest Litovsk, in what is now the city of Brest, in the province of Lietovsk-on-Luxembourg, in Poland. He also had a son, Ludwik, who served in the Polish Army, and a daughter, Tekla, who was married to a Polish army officer. His son was also a military engineer. He served in France, and was promoted to brigadier general. In 1783, in recognition of his services, the Continental Congress promoted him to major general. Upon returning to Poland in 1784, he was commissioned as a major general in the Lithuaian Commonwealth Army in 1789. He commanded an uprising against the Russian Empire in March 1794 until he was captured at the Battle of Maciejowice in October 1794.