Page:Kościuszko A Biography by Monika M Gardner.djvu/163

 CHAPTER VIII

THE RUSSIAN PRISON

in the afternoon of that ill-fated day a stretcher, roughly and hastily put together, was carried by Russian soldiers into the courtyard of the manor. The prisoners saw that on it lay the scarcely breathing form of Kościuszko. His body and head were covered with blood. He was insensible and apparently at the point of death. The dead silence as he was carried in was only broken by the sobs of his Polish officers. The surgeon dressed his wounds, and he was then taken to a large hall and left to the companionship of Niemcewicz, with Russian grenadiers posted inside each door. In the evening the hall was required by Fersen for dinner and his council of war, and Kościuszko, still unconscious, was transferred, Niemcewicz following him, to a room over the cellar.

Towards the end of the battle the fiercest contest had raged around the Zamojski manor. At the last a hundred Polish soldiers had in the desperation of extremity defended the house, and fought it out till no round of ammunition remained to them. The Russians then burst in, and despatched at the point of the bayonet every Pole in every room of the building, including the cellar, where the only 159