page_title: Tadeusz Kościuszko
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Tadeusz Kościuszko / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‎: Марачоўшчына (Maračoŭščyna), сядзіба Касьцюшкаў (Kaściuška)
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 was born in February 1746 in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna (now Kosava, Belarus) estate near Kosów in Nowogródek Voivodeship, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. His exact birthdate is unknown; commonly cited are 4 February and 12 February.
  Kościuszko was the youngest son of a member of the szlachta (nobility), Ludwik Tadeusz Kościuszko, an officer in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army, and his wife Tekla Ratomska. The family held the Polish Roch III coat of arms. At the time of Tadeusz Kościuszko's birth, the family possessed modest landholdings in the Grand Duchy worked by 31 peasant families.
  Tadeusz was baptized in the Catholic church, thereby receiving the names Andrzej, Tadeusz, and Bonawentura. His paternal family was ethnically Lithuanian–Ruthenian and traced their ancestry to Konstanty Fiodorowicz Kostiuszko, a courtier of Polish King and Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund I the Old. Kościuszko's maternal family, the Ratomskis, were also Ruthenian.
  Modern Belarusian writers interpret his Ruthenian or Lithuanian heritage as Belarusian. He once described himself as a Litvin, a term that denoted inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Modern Belarusian writers interpret Litvin as designating a Belarusian, before the word "Belarusian" had come into use.  Kościuszko, however, did not speak the Belarusian language; his family had become Polonized as early as the 16th century. Like most Polish–Lithuanian nobility of the time, the Kościuszkos spoke Polish and identified with Polish culture.
  In 1755, Kościuszko began attending school in Lubieszów but never finished due to his family's financial straits after his father's death in 1758. Poland's King Stanisław August Poniatowski established a Corps of Cadets (Korpus Kadetów) in 1765, at what is now Warsaw University, to educate military officers and government officials. Kościuszko enrolled in the Corps on 18 December 1765, likely thanks to the Czartoryski family's patronage. The school emphasized military subjects and the liberal arts, and after graduating on 20 December 1766, Kościuszko was promoted to chorąży (a military rank roughly equivalent to modern lieutenant). He stayed on as a student instructor and, by 1768, had attained the rank of captain.
caption: Mereczowszczyzna manor (1848)
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