Page:Kościuszko A Biography by Monika M Gardner.djvu/165

 conveyance, while the rest of the prisoners went on foot. Detachments of Russian cavalry rode in front and behind. An immense train of wagons, filled with the loot carried off from Polish homes, Polish cannon captured on the field, a car bearing the Polish flags with their national device of eagles, embroidered heavily with silver, added the final drop of bitterness to the lot of the defeated sons of a proud and gallant race. On the halt held the following day messengers came up from Warsaw, bringing Kościuszko his personal effects and a letter from the National Council, conveying expressions of the highest eulogy and deep sympathy, with a present of four thousand ducats, of which Kościuszko gave half to his fellow-prisoners.

The scene in Warsaw when the news of Kościuszko's captivity reached it was, writes a Pole who was then in the town, the saddest sight he ever saw. In every public place, in every class of society, in every home, the one refrain, broken by sobs, was: "Kościuszko is no more." The leader was gone; but the men and women who were met wandering, weeping, in the streets, wringing their hands and mourning for the man they and the country had lost together, had no thought of giving up the struggle for their nation. "Neither the duty of a citizen nor thy example permits us to despair for our country," wrote the National Council to Kościuszko. The war was carried on, and the citizens of Warsaw went in their thousands to the ramparts, as in Kościuszko's time, to hold the town against Suvorov's siege.

Together with their dispatches to Kościuszko, the National Council sent a letter to Fersen, offering to

11