page_title: Tadeusz Kościuszko
section_title: Return to Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Tadeusz Kościuszko / Later life / Return to Europe
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the house in Solothurn at Gurzelngasse 12, where Polish national hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko lived in exile in his last years, and died in 1817. The bedroom where he died is located next to the salon. The interior was reconstructed based on original drawings that are kept in Krakow.
context_page_description: Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko was a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer, statesman, and military leader who became a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and the United States. He fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's struggles against Russia and Prussia, and on the US side in the American Revolutionary War. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising.
  Kościuszko was born in February 1746, in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate in Brest Litovsk Voivodeship, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. At age 20, he graduated from the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw, Poland. After the start of the civil war in 1768, Kościuszko moved to France in 1769 to study. He returned to the Commonwealth in 1774, two years after the First Partition, and was a tutor in Józef Sylwester Sosnowski's household. In 1776, Kościuszko moved to North America, where he took part in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army. An accomplished military architect, he designed and oversaw the construction of state-of-the-art fortifications, including those at West Point, New York.
context_section_description: Kościuszko arrived in Bayonne, France, on 28 June 1798. By that time, Talleyrand's plans had changed and no longer included him. Kościuszko remained politically active in Polish émigré circles in France, and on 7 August 1799, he joined the Society of Polish Republicans (Towarzystwo Republikanów Polskich). Kościuszko refused the offered command of Polish Legions being formed for service with France. On 17 October and 6 November 1799, he met with Napoleon Bonaparte. He failed to reach an agreement with the French general, who regarded Kościuszko as a "fool" who "overestimated his influence" in Poland. Kościuszko disliked Napoleon for his dictatorial aspirations and called him the "undertaker of the [French] Republic". In 1807, Kościuszko settled in château de Berville, near La Genevraye, distancing himself from politics.
  Kościuszko did not believe that Napoleon would restore Poland in any durable form.  When Napoleon's forces approached the borders of Poland, Kościuszko wrote him a letter, demanding guarantees of parliamentary democracy and substantial national borders, which Napoleon ignored. Kościuszko concluded that Napoleon had created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 only as an expedient, not because he supported Polish sovereignty. Consequently, Kościuszko did not move to the Duchy of Warsaw or join the new Army of the Duchy, allied with Napoleon.
  After the fall of Napoleon, he met with Russia's Tsar Alexander I, in Paris and then in Braunau, Switzerland. The Tsar hoped that Kościuszko could be convinced to return to Poland, where the Tsar planned to create a new, Russian-allied Polish state (the Congress Kingdom). In return for his prospective services, Kościuszko demanded social reforms and restoration of territory, which he wished would reach the Dvina and Dnieper Rivers in the east. However, soon afterwards, in Vienna, Kościuszko learned that the Kingdom of Poland to be created by the Tsar would be even smaller than the earlier Duchy of Warsaw. Kościuszko called such an entity "a joke".
  
  On 2 April 1817, Kościuszko emancipated the peasants in his remaining lands in Poland, but Tsar Alexander disallowed this. Suffering from poor health and old wounds, on 15 October 1817, Kościuszko died in Solothurn at age 71 after falling from a horse, developing a fever, and suffering a stroke a few days later.
caption: Kościuszko's last residence, in Solothurn, Switzerland, where he died
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