#can't help agreeing with the observation that kościuszko just wanted to be forgotten

[my-deer-history]

I saw Kosciusco, who served with reputation against Burgoyne, and in South Carolina, and who has since acted so distinguished a part in Poland; he lives in the outskirts of Paris in the family of a friend whose children play about him, and here he reads the newspapers, and cultivates his garden, and smokes his cigar, forgetting the world as much as possible, and striving, I really believe, to be forgotten. The sight of Kosciusco reminded me of his friend and countryman Pulawski, whom I had known during our revolutionary war; and to whose merit, as I look back upon what I remember to have been the opinion of those times, I do not think we did justice. What appeared rashness to us, was a well placed confidence in his knowledge of the partisan war, and in his own personal prowess. In mixed companies, and in a drawing room, there was something of awkwardness, I had almost said of timidity, in his manners and appearance, but on horseback, and at the head of his corps, he bad the air of the God Mars. Rulhiere has given an account of this distinguished family of Pulawski in his late work on Poland. You would be struck with the resemblance in some circumstances between the old Pulawski, as he was called in the papers of the day, and the elder Brutus in Roman history. There was the same forbearance for years under injuries and insults, the same fearless exertion afterward, and the same devotedness in death to the cause of the republick.

Francis Kinloch, Letters from Geneva and France (1819)

#tadeusz kościuszko #kazimierz pułaski #francis kinloch #18th century history #amrev #polish history #can't help agreeing with the observation that kościuszko just wanted to be forgotten