Page:Kościuszko A Biography by Monika M Gardner.djvu/153

 captives he treated with a courtesy and kindness that were ill repaid during his own march into Russia as a prisoner in Russian hands. He directed that services in their own language and faith should be held for the Prussian prisoners. A letter of his remains that he wrote to the Lutheran minister of the evangelical church in Warsaw, expressing his gratitude that this clergyman's pulpit had been a centre of patriotism, at a time "when nations who love freedom must win the right to their existence by streams of blood," and telling the pastor that he has issued orders for the Prussian prisoners to be taken to church in the "conviction that you will not refuse them your fatherly teaching."

This letter and the snuff-box that accompanied it were preserved as relics in the pastor's family.

The Bohemian and Hungarian prisoners were by Kościuszko's command released, "in memory of the bond that united the Hungarians and Czechs, when free countries, with the Polish nation." We have lived to see the descendants of that Hungarian generation spreading untold atrocities through Polish towns and villages as the tool of Prussia in the recent war.

The triumph over the Prussians was but a temporary respite. The Prussian army returned to the investment of Warsaw, at some distance from the town itself. The ambassador of the King of Prussia was treating in Petersburg with Catherine II for the third partition of Poland. She on her side sent Suvorov with a new and powerful army against the Poles. The Austrians were already in the country. Kościuszko, fighting for life against Russia and