nsely and the Poles mustered nearly eighty
thousand men under arms. But they were scattered over too extensive a
line of country in order to make head against their numerous enemies--a
policy tempting by the prospect it holds forth of exciting an extensive
insurrection, but ruinous in the end, by exposing the patriotic forces
to the risk of being beaten in detail. Scarcely had the Poles recovered
from their intoxication at the raising of the siege of Warsaw when
intelligence was received of the defeat of Sizakowsky, who commanded a
corps of ten thousand men beyond the Bug, by the Russian grand army
under Suvaroff. This celebrated General, to whom the principal conduct
of the war was now committed, followed up his successes with the utmost
vigor. The retreating column was again assailed on the 19th by the
victorious Russians, and after a glorious resistance driven into the
woods between Janoff and Biala, with the loss of four thousand men and
twenty-eight pieces of cannon. Scarcely three thousand Poles, with
Sizakowsky at their head, escaped into Siedlice.

Upon receiving the accounts of this disaster, Kosciuszko resolved, by
drawing together all his detachments, to fall upon Fersen before he
joined Suvaroff and the other corps which were advancing against the
capital. With this view he ordered General Poninsky to join him, and
marched with all his disposable forces to attack the Russian General,
who was stationed at Maccowice; but fortune on this occasion cruelly
deceived the Poles. Arrived in the neighborhood of Fersen's position he
found that Poninsky had not yet come up; and the Russian commander,
overjoyed at this circumstance, resolved immediately to attack him. In
vain Kosciuszko despatched courier after courier to Poninsky to advance
to his relief. The first was intercepted by the Cossacks, and the second
did not reach that leader in time to enable him to take a decisive part
in the approaching combat. Nevertheless the Polish commander, aware of
the danger of retreating with inexperienced troops in presence of a
disciplined and superior enemy, determined to give battle on the
following day, and drew up his little army with as much skill as the
circumstances would admit.

The forces on the opposite sides in this action, which decided the fate
of Poland, were nearly equal in point of numbers; but the advantages of
discipline and equipment were decisively on the side of the Russians.
Kosciuszko commanded about ten