o's
first visit in their house, his sojourn with them in the country at
Berville, near Fontainebleau, that reminded him of the Poland he had
lost for ever, were the beginning of a common household that only death
severed.

Napoleon became emperor. He crushed Prussia at Jena, from Berlin
summoned the Poles in "Prussian" Poland to rise, and sent his minister,
Fouche, to Kosciuszko, as the leader whose name every Pole would follow,
to engage him to place himself at their head. Kosciuszko received these
proposals with the caution of a long and bitter experience. Would
Napoleon, he asked, openly state what he intended to do for Poland?
Fouche put him off with vague promises of the nature that the Poles had
already heard, and of which the Treaty of Luneville had taught them the
worth, coupled with threats of Napoleon's personal vengeance on
Kosciuszko if he opposed the Emperor's desire. "The Emperor," answered
Kosciuszko, "can dispose of me according to his will, but I doubt if in
that case my nation would render him any service. But in the event of
mutual, reciprocal services my nation, as well as I, will be ready to
serve him. May Providence forbid," he added solemnly, "that your
powerful and august monarch shall have cause to regret that he despised
our goodwill."[1]

[Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kosciuszko_.]

But the tide of Napoleonic worship ran too high not to carry all before
it. Kosciuszko's was the one dissentient voice. Before the interview
with Fouche had taken place, Wybicki and Dombrowski, unable to conceive
that Kosciuszko would take a different line, had given their swords to
the Emperor. Jozef Poniatowski did likewise. In November, 1808, Napoleon
entered Poznan (Posen). In the same month the French armies were in
Warsaw, and the Poles, in raptures of rejoicing, were hailing Napoleon
as the liberator of their nation. Fouche, already cognizant of
Kosciuszko's attitude, issued a bogus manifesto, purporting to be from
Kosciuszko, summoning his countrymen to Napoleon's flag. But Kosciuszko
himself only consented to repair to Warsaw, and throw his weight into
the balance for Napoleon, if the Emperor would sign in writing and
publicly proclaim his promise to restore Poland under the following
three conditions:--

(1) That the form of Poland's government should be that of the English
constitution;

(2) That the peasants should be liberated and possess their own land;
and

(3) That the old boundaries of Poland s