Page:Kościuszko A Biography by Monika M Gardner.djvu/198

 the complications of the hour Kościuszko was advised to have his passport made out under some name not his own. He chose that of "Pole."

With considerable difficulty, constantly turned back by police authorities, forbidden entrance by the Bavarian frontier, sent about from pillar to post, the white-haired, frail old soldier at last reached the Tsar's headquarters at Braunau. The Tsar and he conferred for a quarter of an hour. Kościuszko derived small satisfaction from the interview, and immediately proceeded to visit Czartoryski in Vienna. Czartoryski had nothing good to tell. The wrangling over the Polish question at the Congress, the mutual suspicions and jealousies of every power represented, nearly brought about another war. In May, 1815, Russia, Austria, and Prussia signed an agreement for a renewed division of Poland between them. An autonomous Kingdom of Poland was, it is true, to be formed, with the Tsar as king, but only out of a small part of Poland. As regards the remaining Polish provinces that remained under Russia's rule, they were severed from the Kingdom and incorporated with Russia.

Kościuszko heard these things. Under the shock of his apprehensions he wrote to the Tsar, pleading in the strongest language at his command, that penetrates through the diplomatic wording he was compelled to use, against the separation of lands that were Polish from the mother country, the mutilated Kingdom of Poland.

After expressing his gratitude for what the Tsar was prepared to do in the foundation of the new Kingdom of Poland, he proceeds:

"One only anxiety troubles my soul and my joy.