y when; led by the
Polish flags, Polish soldiers in the armies of Napoleon shed their blood
on every battlefield of Europe. In the hope of regaining from Napoleon
the freedom of their country, the former soldiers of the Republic, no
less than the rising young Polish manhood, panting with passionate
patriotism and with the warlike instinct of their race, enrolled
themselves in the French army. "Poland has not perished while we live,"
was the song, the March of Dombrowski, with which they went to battle,
and which to this day forbidden though it has been by their oppressors,
we may hear Poles sing at national gatherings. The leader of the legions
was the gallant Dombrowski. "Fellow-citizens! Poles!" cried he in his
manifesto to his nation in language strangely prophetic of the hour that
is scarcely past, when we have seen a Polish army in Polish uniform
fighting for liberty by the side of the Allies in the European War:
"Hope is rising! France is conquering. The battalions are forming.
Comrades, join us! Fling away the weapons which you have been compelled
to bear. Let us fight for the common cause of all the nations, for
freedom."[1]

[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]

In these early days Napoleon's betrayal of Poland was a tale still
untold; but to the end the Poles fought by his side with a hope in him
that only died with his fall, with a love and loyalty to his person that
survived it.

Such was the news that travelled across the Atlantic to Kosciuszko with
dispatches that informed him that his two nephews, sons of his sister
Anna, who had borne arms in the Rising, had been sent in the name of
Kosciuszko by their mother to Bonaparte with the prayer that they might
serve in his ranks. By the end of June, 1798, Kosciuszko was in France,
in Bayonne.

The accustomed acclamations greeted him there. Some _fete-champetre_ was
arranged at which Kosciuszko, the guest of honour, watched peasants
laying their ploughs at the feet of soldiers, in exchange for the
weapons of war. "It would have been thus in Poland," he was heard to
murmur to himself, "if fate had not betrayed us."

In Paris he heard sympathy with himself and the Polish cause expressed
on all sides. Public toasts to the defender of the nation who was
pouring her blood like water in the cause of France were the order of
the hour. Kosciuszko was moved to tears as he listened to the utterance
of these good wishes for his country's liberation. His first task