"To that first violation of the sacred principles of general liberty which was effected in the partition of 1772, and those that followed in 1793 and 1795, we must refer all the dangers to which the whole of Europe has been subsequently exposed. … No real safeguard can exist against the return of these dangers, if Poland remains excluded from the benefits of a general deliverance, which, to be perfect, must be guaranteed by the solemn recognition of her rights and independence. If the powers who sought to profit by injustice and who, in the sequence, have suffered so much because of it, could learn the true lesson of experience, they would see that their mutual safety and tranquility would be best preserved by reestablishing among them, as a genuinely independent state, the country that a false policy has so cruelly oppressed." (Portman Square, London, July 1, 1814.)[1]
This was written a hundred years ago, and the Nemesis of history is still with us. The Congress of Vienna was a fresh partition of Poland.
If, so Kościuszko wrote to Alexander, he could have returned "as a Pole to his country," he would have done so. As it was, he refused to return to what he knew was treachery and deception. With the aspect of a man who had suffered shipwreck, he left Vienna, and retired for good and all from public life.
He was now sixty-nine, with his health, that he had never regained since he was wounded at Maciejowice, broken. All that he asked was to spend his declining years in free Switzerland with a little house and garden of his own. When it came to the
- ↑ d'Angeberg, Recueil des Traités.
