Tadeusz Kościuszko

Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (English: Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciuszko; 4 or 12 February 1746 – 15 October 1817) was a Polish military engineer, statesman, and military leader who became a national hero in Poland, the United States, Lithuania, France and Belarus. He fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's struggles against Russia and Prussia, and on the US side in the American Revolutionary War. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising.

Kościuszko was born in February 1746, in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate in Brest Litovsk Voivodeship, then Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, now the Ivatsevichy District of Belarus. At age 20, he graduated from the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw, Poland. After the start of the civil war in 1768, Kościuszko moved to France in 1769 to study. He returned to the Commonwealth in 1774, two years after the First Partition, and was a tutor in Józef Sylwester Sosnowski's household. In 1776, Kościuszko moved to North America, where he took part in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army. An accomplished military architect, he designed and oversaw the construction of state-of-the-art fortifications, including those at West Point, New York. In 1783, in recognition of his services, the Continental Congress promoted him to brigadier general.

Upon returning to Poland in 1784, Kościuszko was commissioned as a major general in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army in 1789. After the Polish–Russian War of 1792 resulted in the Commonwealth's Second Partition, he commanded an uprising against the Russian Empire in March 1794 until he was captured at the Battle of Maciejowice in October 1794. The defeat of the Kościuszko Uprising that November led to Poland's Third Partition in 1795, which ended the Commonwealth. In 1796, following the death of Tsaritsa Catherine II, Kościuszko was pardoned by her successor, Tsar Paul I, and he emigrated to the United States. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson, with whom he shared ideals of human rights, Kościuszko wrote a will in 1798, dedicating his U.S. assets to the education and freedom of the U.S. slaves. Kościuszko eventually returned to Europe and lived in Switzerland until his death in 1817. The execution of his testament later proved difficult, and the funds were never used for the purpose Kościuszko intended.

## Early life

Kościuszko was born in February 1746 in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate near Kosów in Nowogródek Voivodeship, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. His exact birthdate is unknown; commonly cited are 4 February and 12 February.

Kościuszko was the youngest son of a member of the Szlachta (untitled Polish nobility), Ludwik Tadeusz Kościuszko, an officer in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army, and his wife Tekla Ratomska. The family held the Polish Roch III coat of arms. At the time of Tadeusz Kościuszko's birth, the family possessed modest landholdings in the Grand Duchy worked by 31 peasant families.

Tadeusz was baptized in the Catholic church, thereby receiving the names Andrzej, Tadeusz, and Bonawentura. His paternal family was ethnically Ruthenian and traced their ancestry to Konstanty Fiodorowicz Kostiuszko, a courtier of Polish King and Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund I the Old. Kościuszko's maternal family, the Ratomskis, were also Ruthenian.

Modern Belarusian writers interpret his Ruthenian or Lithuanian heritage as Belarusian. He once described himself as a Litwin, a term that denoted inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Modern Belarusian Litvinist writers interpret Litvin as designating a Belarusian, before the word "Belarusian" had come into use. His family had become Polonized as early as the 16th century. Like most Polish–Lithuanian nobility of the time, the Kościuszkos spoke Polish and identified with Polish culture.

In 1755, Kościuszko began attending school in Lubieszów but never finished due to his family's financial straits after his father's death in 1758. Poland's King Stanisław August Poniatowski established a Corps of Cadets (Korpus Kadetów) in 1765, at what is now Warsaw University, to educate military officers and government officials. Kościuszko enrolled in the Corps on 18 December 1765, likely thanks to the Czartoryski family's patronage. The school emphasized military subjects and the liberal arts, and after graduating on 20 December 1766, Kościuszko was promoted to chorąży, a military rank roughly equivalent to modern lieutenant. He stayed on as a student instructor and, by 1768, had attained the rank of captain.

### European travels

In 1768, civil war broke out in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, when the Bar Confederation sought to depose King Stanisław August Poniatowski. One of Kościuszko's brothers, Józef, fought on the side of the insurgents. Faced with a difficult choice between the rebels and his sponsors—the King and the Czartoryski family, who favored a gradualist approach to shedding Russian domination—Kościuszko chose to leave Poland. In late 1769, he and a colleague, artist Aleksander Orłowski, were granted royal scholarships; on 5 October, they embarked for Paris. They wanted to further their military education. As foreigners they were barred from enrolling in French military academies, and so they enrolled in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. There Kościuszko pursued his interest in drawing and painting and took private lessons in architecture from architect Jean-Rodolphe Perronet.

Kościuszko did not give up on improving his military knowledge. He audited lectures for five years and frequented the libraries of the Paris military academies. His exposure to the French Enlightenment, along with the religious tolerance practiced in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, strongly influenced his later career. The French economic theory of physiocracy made a particularly strong impression on his thinking. He also developed his artistic skills, and while his career took him in a different direction, all his life he continued drawing and painting.

In the First Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, Russia, Prussia and Austria annexed large swaths of Commonwealth territory and gained influence over the internal politics. When Kościuszko returned home in 1774, he found that his brother Józef had squandered most of the family fortune, and there was no place for him in the Army, as he could not afford to buy an officer's commission. He took a position as tutor to the family of the magnate, province governor (voivode) and hetman Józef Sylwester Sosnowski and fell in love with the governor's daughter Ludwika. Their elopement was thwarted by her father's retainers. Kościuszko received a thrashing at their hands, an event that may have led to his antipathy for class distinctions.

In the autumn of 1775 he emigrated to avoid Sosnowski and his retainers. In late 1775 he attempted to join the Saxon army but was turned down and decided to return to Paris. There he learned of the American Revolutionary War outbreak, in which the British colonies in North America had revolted against the British Crown and begun their struggle for independence. The first American successes were well-publicized in France, and the French people and government openly supported the revolutionaries' cause.

## American Revolutionary War

On learning of the American Revolution, Kościuszko, a man of revolutionary aspirations, sympathetic to the American cause and an advocate of human rights, sailed for America in June 1776 along with other foreign officers, likely with the help of a French supporter of the American revolutionaries, Pierre Beaumarchais. On 30 August 1776, Kościuszko submitted an application to the Second Continental Congress. He was assigned to the Continental Army the next day.

### Northern region

Kościuszko's first task was building fortifications at Fort Billingsport in Paulsboro, New Jersey, to protect the banks of the Delaware River and prevent a possible British advance up the river to Philadelphia. He initially served as a volunteer in the employ of Benjamin Franklin, but on 18 October 1776, Congress commissioned him a colonel of engineers in the Continental Army.

In spring 1777, Kościuszko was attached to the Northern Army under Major General Horatio Gates, arriving at the Canada–US border in May 1777. Subsequently, posted to Fort Ticonderoga, he reviewed the defences of what had been one of the most formidable fortresses in North America. His surveys prompted him to strongly recommend the construction of a battery on Sugar Loaf, a high point overlooking the fort. His prudent recommendation, in which his fellow engineers concurred, was turned down by the garrison commander, Brigadier General Arthur St. Clair.

This proved a tactical blunder: when a British army under General John Burgoyne arrived in July 1777, Burgoyne did exactly what Kościuszko had warned of, and had his engineers place artillery on the hill. With the British in complete control of the high ground, the Americans realized their situation was hopeless and abandoned the fortress with hardly a shot fired in the siege of Ticonderoga. The British advance force nipped hard on the heels of the outnumbered and exhausted Continentals as they fled south. Major General Philip Schuyler, desperate to put distance between his men and their pursuers, ordered Kościuszko to delay the enemy. Kościuszko designed an engineer's solution: his men felled trees, dammed streams, and destroyed bridges and causeways. Encumbered by their huge supply train, the British began to bog down, giving the Americans the time needed to safely withdraw across the Hudson River.

Gates tapped Kościuszko to survey the country between the opposing armies, choose the most defensible position, and fortify it. Finding just such a spot near Saratoga, overlooking the Hudson at Bemis Heights, Kościuszko laid out a robust array of defences, nearly impregnable. His judgment and meticulous attention to detail frustrated the British attacks during the Battle of Saratoga, and Gates accepted the surrender of Burgoyne's force there on 16 October 1777. The dwindling British army had been dealt a sound defeat, turning the tide to American advantage. Kościuszko's work at Saratoga received great praise from Gates, who later told his friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush: "The great tacticians of the campaign were hills and forests, which a young Polish engineer was skillful enough to select for my encampment."

At some point in 1777, Kościuszko composed a polonaise and scored it for the harpsichord. Named for him, and with lyrics by Rajnold Suchodolski, it later became popular with Polish patriots during the November 1830 Uprising. Around that time, Kościuszko was assigned an African American orderly, Agrippa Hull, whom he treated as an equal and a friend.

In March 1778, Kościuszko arrived at West Point, New York, and spent more than two years strengthening the fortifications and improving the stronghold's defences. It was these defences that the American General Benedict Arnold subsequently attempted to surrender to the British when he defected. Soon after Kościuszko finished fortifying West Point, in August 1780, General George Washington granted Kościuszko's request to transfer to combat duty with the Southern Army. Kościuszko's West Point fortifications were widely praised as innovative for the time.

### Southern region

After travelling south through rural Virginia in October 1780, Kościuszko proceeded to North Carolina to report to his former commander General Gates. Following Gates's disastrous defeat at Camden on 16 August 1780, the Continental Congress selected Washington's choice, Major General Nathanael Greene, to replace Gates as commander of the Southern Department. When Greene formally assumed command on 3 December 1780, he retained Kościuszko as his chief engineer. By then, he had been praised by both Gates and Greene.

During this campaign, Kościuszko was placed in command of building bateaux, siting the location for camps, scouting river crossings, fortifying positions, and developing intelligence contacts. Many of his contributions were instrumental in preventing the destruction of the Southern Army. This was especially so during the "Race to the Dan", when British General Charles Cornwallis chased Greene across 200 miles (320 km) of rough backcountry in January and February 1781. Thanks largely to a combination of Greene's tactics, Kościuszko's bateaux, and accurate scouting of the rivers ahead of the main body, the Continentals safely crossed each river, including the Yadkin and the Dan. Cornwallis, having no boats, and finding no way to cross the swollen Dan, abandoned the chase and withdrew into North Carolina. The Continentals regrouped south of Halifax, Virginia, where Kościuszko had earlier, at Greene's request, established a fortified depot.

During the Race to the Dan, Kościuszko had helped select the site where Greene eventually returned to fight Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse. Though tactically defeated, the Americans all but destroyed Cornwallis' army as an effective fighting force and gained a permanent strategic advantage in the South. Thus, when Greene began his reconquest of South Carolina in the spring of 1781, he summoned Kościuszko to rejoin the main body of the Southern Army. The combined forces of the Continentals and Southern militia gradually forced the British from the backcountry into the coastal ports during the latter half of 1781 and, on 25 April, Kościuszko participated in the Second Battle of Camden. At Ninety-Six, Kościuszko besieged the Star Fort from 22 May to 18 June. During the unsuccessful siege, he suffered his only wound in seven years of service, bayonetted in the buttocks during an assault by the fort's defenders on the approach trench that he was constructing.

Kościuszko subsequently helped fortify the American bases in North Carolina, before taking part in several smaller operations in the final year of hostilities, harassing British foraging parties near Charleston, South Carolina. After the death of his friend, Colonel John Laurens, Kościuszko became engaged in these operations, taking over Laurens's intelligence network in the area. He commanded two cavalry squadrons and an infantry unit, and his last known battlefield command of the war occurred at James Island, South Carolina, on 14 November 1782. In what has been described as the Continental Army's final armed action of the war, he was nearly killed as his small force was routed. A month later, he was among the Continental troops that reoccupied Charleston following the city's British evacuation. Kościuszko spent the rest of the war there, conducting a fireworks display on 23 April 1783, to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Paris earlier that month.

### Leaving for home

Having not been paid in his seven years of service, in late May 1783, Kościuszko decided to collect the salary owed to him. That year, he was asked by Congress to supervise the fireworks during the 4 July celebrations at Princeton, New Jersey. On 13 October 1783, Congress promoted him to brigadier general, but he still had not received his back pay. Many other officers and soldiers were in the same situation. While waiting for his pay, unable to finance a voyage back to Europe, Kościuszko, like several others, lived on money borrowed from the Polish–Jewish banker Haym Solomon. Eventually, he received a certificate for 12,280 dollars, at 6%, to be paid on 1 January 1784 (equivalent to \~\$323,000, paid as installments \~\$19,400 a month in 2022), and the right to 500 acres (202.34 ha; 0.78 sq mi) of land, but only if he chose to settle in the United States.

For the winter of 1783–84, his former commanding officer, General Greene, invited Kościuszko to stay at his mansion. He was inducted into the Society of the Cincinnati and into the American Philosophical Society in 1785. During the Revolution, Kościuszko carried an old Spanish sword at his side, which was inscribed with the words Do not draw me without reason; do not sheathe me without honour.

## Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

On 15 July 1784, Kościuszko set off for Poland, where he arrived on 26 August. Due to a conflict between his patrons, the Czartoryski family, and King Stanisław August Poniatowski, Kościuszko once again failed to get a commission in the Commonwealth Army. He settled in a small town called Siechnowicze. His brother Józef had lost most of the family's lands through bad investments, but with the help of his sister Anna, Kościuszko secured part of the lands for himself. He decided to limit his male peasants' corvée (obligatory service to the lord of the manor) to two days a week and completely exempted the female peasants. His estate soon stopped being profitable, and he began going into debt. The situation was not helped by the failure of the money promised by the American government—interest on late payment for his seven years' military service—to materialize. Kościuszko struck up friendships with liberal activists; Hugo Kołłątaj offered him a position as lecturer at Kraków's Jagiellonian University, which Kościuszko declined.

The Great Sejm of 1788–92 introduced some reforms, including a planned build-up of the army to defend the Commonwealth's borders. Kościuszko saw a chance to return to military service and spent some time in Warsaw, among those who engaged in the political debates outside the Great Sejm. He wrote a proposal to create a militia force, on the American model. As political pressure grew to build up the army, and Kościuszko's political allies gained influence with the King, Kościuszko again applied for a commission, and on 12 October 1789, received a royal commission as a major general, but to Kosciuszko's dismay in the Army of the Kingdom of Poland.

He began receiving a high salary of 12,000 zlotys a year, ending his financial difficulties. On 1 February 1790, he reported for duty in Włocławek, and wrote in a letter after a few days, calling the local inhabitants "lazy" and "careless", in contrast to "good and economical Lithuanians". In the same letter, Kosciuszko begged general Franciszek Ksawery Niesiołowski for a transfer to the Army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but his wishes were not granted. Around summer, he commanded some infantry and cavalry units in the region between the Bug and Vistula Rivers. In August 1790 he was posted to Volhynia, stationed near Starokostiantyniv and Międzyborze. Prince Józef Poniatowski, who was the King's nephew, recognized Kościuszko's superior experience and made him his second-in-command, leaving him in command when he was absent.

Meanwhile, Kościuszko became more closely involved with political reformers such as Hugo Kołłątaj, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz and others. Kościuszko argued that the peasants and Jews should receive full citizenship status, as this would motivate them to help defend Poland in the event of war. The political reformers centered in the Patriotic Party scored a significant victory with adopting the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Kościuszko saw the Constitution as a step in the right direction, but was disappointed that it retained the monarchy and did little to improve the situation of the most underprivileged, the peasants and the Jews. The Commonwealth's neighbors saw the Constitution's reforms as a threat to their influence over Polish internal affairs. A year after the Constitution's adoption, on 14 May 1792, reactionary magnates formed the Targowica Confederation, which asked Russia's Tsaritsa Catherine II for help in overthrowing the Constitution. Four days later, on 18 May 1792, a 100,000-man Russian army crossed the Polish border, headed for Warsaw, beginning the Polish–Russian War of 1792.

### Defence of the Constitution

The Russians had a 3:1 advantage in strength, with some 98,000 troops against 37,000 Poles; they also had an advantage in combat experience. Before the Russians invaded, Kościuszko had been appointed deputy commander of Prince Józef Poniatowski's infantry division, stationed in West Ukraine. When the Prince became Commander-in-Chief of the entire Polish (Crown) Army on 3 May 1792, Kościuszko was given command of a division near Kiev.

The Russians attacked a wide front with three armies. Kościuszko proposed that the entire Polish army be concentrated and engage one of the Russian armies, to assure numerical parity and boost the morale of the most inexperienced Polish forces with a quick victory; but Poniatowski rejected this plan. On 22 May 1792, the Russian forces crossed the border in Ukraine, where Kościuszko and Poniatowski were stationed. The Crown Army was judged too weak to oppose the four enemy columns advancing into West Ukraine, and began a fighting withdrawal to the western side of the Southern Bug River, with Kościuszko commanding the rear guard.

On 18 June, Poniatowski won the Battle of Zieleńce; Kościuszko's division, on detached rear-guard duty, did not take part in the battle and rejoined the main army only at nightfall. His diligent protection of the main army's rear and flanks won him the newly created Virtuti Militari, to this day Poland's highest military decoration. Storożyński states that Kościuszko received the Virtuti Militari for his later, 18 July victory at Dubienka. The Polish withdrawal continued, and on 7 July Kościuszko's forces fought a delaying battle against the Russians at Volodymyr-Volynskyi, the Battle of Włodzimierz. On reaching the northern Bug River, the Polish Army was split into three divisions to hold the river defensive line—weakening the Poles' point of numerical superiority, against Kościuszko's counsel of a single strong, concentrated army.

Kościuszko's force was assigned to protect the front's southern flank, touching up to the Austrian border. At the Battle of Dubienka (18 July 1792), Kościuszko repulsed a numerically superior enemy, skilfully using terrain obstacles and field fortifications, and came to be regarded as one of Poland's most brilliant military commanders of the age. With some 5,300 men, he defeated 25,000 Russians led by General Michail Kachovski. Despite the tactical victory, Kościuszko had to retreat from Dubienka, as the Russians crossed the nearby Austrian border and began flanking his positions.

After the battle, King Stanisław August Poniatowski promoted Kościuszko to lieutenant-general and also offered him the Order of the White Eagle, but Kościuszko, a convinced republican would not accept a royal honor. News of Kościuszko's victory spread over Europe, and on 26 August he received the honorary citizenship of France from the Legislative Assembly of revolutionary France. While Kościuszko considered the war's outcome to still be unsettled, the King requested a ceasefire. On 24 July 1792, before Kościuszko had received his promotion to lieutenant-general, the King shocked the army by announcing his accession to the Targowica Confederation and ordering the Polish–Lithuanian troops to cease hostilities against the Russians. Kościuszko considered abducting the King as the Bar Confederates had done two decades earlier, in 1771, but was dissuaded by Prince Józef Poniatowski. On 30 August, Kościuszko resigned from his army position and briefly returned to Warsaw, where he received his promotion and pay, but refused the King's request to remain in the Army. Around that time, he also fell ill with jaundice.

## Émigré

The King's capitulation was a hard blow for Kościuszko, who had not lost a single battle in the campaign. By mid-September 1792, he was resigned to leaving the country, and in early October, he departed from Warsaw. First, he went east, to the Czartoryski family manor at Sieniawa, which gathered various malcontents. In mid-November, he spent two weeks in Lwów, where he was welcomed by the populace. Since the war's end, his presence had drawn crowds eager to see the famed commander. Izabela Czartoryska discussed having him marry her daughter Zofia. The Russians planned to arrest him if he returned to territory under their control; the Austrians, who held Lwów, offered him a commission in the Austrian Army, which he turned down. Subsequently, they planned to deport him, but he left Lwów before they could do so. At the turn of the month, he stopped in Zamość at the Zamoyskis' estate, met Stanisław Staszic, then went on to Puławy.

He did not tarry there for long: on 12–13 December, he was in Kraków; on 17 December, in Wrocław; and shortly after, he settled in Leipzig, where many notable Polish soldiers and politicians formed an émigré community. Soon he and some others began plotting an uprising against Russian rule in Poland. The politicians, grouped around Ignacy Potocki and Hugo Kołłątaj, sought contacts with similar opposition groups in Poland and by spring 1793 had been joined by other politicians and revolutionaries, including Ignacy Działyński. While Kołłątaj and others had begun planning an uprising before Kościuszko joined them, his support was a significant boon to them, as he was among the most famous individuals in Poland.

After two weeks in Leipzig, before the second week of January 1793, Kościuszko set off for Paris, where he tried to gain French support for Poland's planned uprising. He stayed there until summer, but despite the growing revolutionary influence, the French paid only lip service to the Polish cause and refused to commit themselves to anything concrete. Kościuszko concluded that the French authorities were not interested in Poland beyond what use it could have for their cause, and he was increasingly disappointed in the pettiness of the French Revolution—the infighting among different factions, and the growing reign of terror.

On 23 January 1793, Prussia and Russia signed the Second Partition of Poland. The Grodno Sejm, convened under duress in June, ratified the partition and was also forced to rescind the Constitution of 3 May 1791. With the second partition, Poland became a small country of roughly 200,000 square kilometers (77,000 sq mi) and a population of some 4 million. This came as a shock to the Targowica Confederates, who had seen themselves as defenders of centuries-old privileges of the magnates but had hardly expected that their appeal for help to the Tsarina of Russia would further reduce and weaken their country.

In August 1793, Kościuszko, though worried that an uprising would have little chance against the three partitioning powers, returned to Leipzig, where he was met with demands to start planning one as soon as possible. In September he clandestinely crossed the Polish border to conduct personal observations and meet with sympathetic high-ranking officers in the residual Polish Army, including General Józef Wodzicki. The preparations went slowly, and he left for Italy, planning to return in February 1794. However, the situation in Poland was changing rapidly. The Russian and Prussian governments forced Poland to again disband most of her army, and the reduced units were to be incorporated into the Russian Army. In March, Tsarist agents discovered the revolutionaries in Warsaw and began arresting notable Polish politicians and military commanders. Kościuszko was forced to execute his plan earlier than he had intended and, on 15 March 1794, set off for Kraków.

## Kościuszko Uprising

Learning that the Russian garrison had departed Kraków, Kościuszko entered the city on the night of 23 March 1794. The next morning, in the Main Square, he announced an uprising. Kościuszko received the title of Naczelnik (commander-in-chief) of Polish–Lithuanian forces fighting against the Russian occupation.

Kościuszko gathered an army of some 6,000, including 4,000 regular soldiers and 2,000 recruits, and marched on Warsaw. The Russians succeeded in organizing an army to oppose him more quickly than he had expected. Still, he scored a victory at Racławice on 4 April 1794, where he turned the tide by personally leading an infantry charge of peasant volunteers (kosynierzy, scythemen). Nonetheless, this Russian defeat was not strategically significant, and the Russian forces quickly forced Kościuszko to retreat toward Kraków. Near Połaniec he received reinforcements and met with other Uprising leaders (Kołłątaj, Potocki); at Połaniec he issued a major political declaration of the Uprising, the Proclamation of Połaniec. The declaration stated that serfs were entitled to civil rights and reduced their work obligations (corvée). Meanwhile, the Russians set a bounty for Kościuszko's capture, "dead or alive".

By June, the Prussians had begun actively aiding the Russians, and on 6 June 1794, Kościuszko fought a defensive battle against a Prussian–Russian force at Szczekociny. From late June, for several weeks, he defended Warsaw, controlled by the insurgents. On 28 June, a mob of insurgents in Warsaw captured and hanged Bishop Ignacy Massalski and six others. Kościuszko issued a public reproach, writing, "What happened in Warsaw yesterday filled my heart with bitterness and sorrow", urging, successfully, that rule of law be followed.

By the morning of 6 September, the Prussian forces having been withdrawn to suppress an uprising underway in Greater Poland, the siege of Warsaw was lifted. On 10 October, during a sortie against a new Russian attack, Kościuszko was wounded and captured at Maciejowice. He was imprisoned by the Russians at Saint Petersburg in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Soon afterwards, the uprising ended with the Battle of Praga, where, according to a contemporary Russian witness, the Russian troops massacred 20,000 Warsaw residents. The subsequent Third Partition of Poland ended the existence of a sovereign Polish and Lithuanian state for the next 123 years.

## Later life

The death of Tsaritsa Catherine the Great on 17 November 1796 led to a change in Russia's policies toward Poland. On 28 November, Tsar Paul I, who had hated Catherine, pardoned Kościuszko and set him free after he had tendered an oath of loyalty. Paul promised to free all Polish political prisoners held in Russian prisons and forcibly settled in Siberia. The Tsar gave Kościuszko 12,000 rubles, which the Pole later, in 1798, attempted to return, when also renouncing the oath.

Kościuszko left for the United States, via Stockholm, Sweden and London, departing from Bristol on 17 June 1797, and arriving in Philadelphia on 18 August. Though welcomed by the populace, he was viewed with suspicion by the American government, controlled by the Federalists, who distrusted Kościuszko for his previous association with the Democratic-Republican Party.

In March 1798, Kościuszko received a bundle of letters from Europe. The news in one of them came as a shock to him, causing him, still in his wounded condition, to spring from his couch and limp unassisted to the middle of the room and exclaim to General Anthony Walton White, "I must return at once to Europe!" The letter in question contained news that Polish General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski and Polish soldiers were fighting in France under Napoleon and that Kościuszko's sister had sent his two nephews in Kościuszko's name to serve in Napoleon's ranks. Around that time, Kościuszko also received news that Talleyrand was seeking Kościuszko's moral and public endorsement for the French fight against one of Poland's partitioners, Prussia.

The call of family and country drew Kościuszko back to Europe. He immediately consulted then Vice President of the United States Thomas Jefferson, who procured a passport for him under a false name and arranged for his secret departure for France. Kościuszko left no word for either Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, his former comrade-in-arms and fellow St. Petersburg prisoner, or for his servant, leaving only some money for them.

Other factors contributed to his decision to depart. His French connections meant that he was vulnerable to deportation or imprisonment under the terms of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson was concerned that the U.S. and France were on the brink of war after the XYZ Affair and regarded him as an informal envoy. Kościuszko later wrote, "Jefferson considered that I would be the most effective intermediary in bringing an accord with France, so I accepted the mission even if without any official authorization."

### Disposition of American estate

Before Kościuszko left for France, he collected his back pay, wrote a will, and entrusted it to Jefferson as executor. Kościuszko and Jefferson had become close friends by 1797 and thereafter corresponded for twenty years in a spirit of mutual admiration. Jefferson wrote that "He is as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known." In the will, Kościuszko left his American estate to be sold to buy the freedom of black slaves, including Jefferson's own, and to educate them for independent life and work.

Several years after Kościuszko's death, Jefferson, aged 77, pleaded an inability to act as executor due to age and the numerous legal complexities of the bequest. It was tied up in the courts until 1856. Jefferson recommended his friend John Hartwell Cocke, who also opposed slavery, as executor, but Cocke likewise declined to execute the bequest.

The case of Kościuszko's American estate reached the U.S. Supreme Court three times. Kościuszko had made four wills, three of which postdated the American one.

None of the money that Kościuszko had earmarked for the manumission and education of African Americans in the United States was ever used for that purpose. Though the American will was never carried out as defined, its legacy was used to found an educational institute at Newark, New Jersey, in 1826, for African Americans in the United States. It was named for Kościuszko.

### Return to Europe

Kościuszko arrived in Bayonne, France, on 28 June 1798. By that time, Talleyrand's plans had changed and no longer included him. Kościuszko remained politically active in Polish émigré circles in France, and on 7 August 1799, he joined the Society of Polish Republicans (Towarzystwo Republikanów Polskich). Kościuszko refused the offered command of Polish Legions being formed for service with France. On 17 October and 6 November 1799, he met with Napoleon Bonaparte. He failed to reach an agreement with the French general, who regarded Kościuszko as a "fool" who "overestimated his influence" in Poland. Kościuszko disliked Napoleon for his dictatorial aspirations and called him the "undertaker of the [French] Republic". In 1807, Kościuszko settled in château de Berville, near La Genevraye, distancing himself from politics.

Kościuszko did not believe that Napoleon would restore Poland in any durable form. When Napoleon's forces approached the borders of Poland, Kościuszko wrote him a letter, demanding guarantees of parliamentary democracy and substantial national borders, which Napoleon ignored. Kościuszko concluded that Napoleon had created the Duchy of Warsaw in 1807 only as an expedient, not because he supported Polish sovereignty. Consequently, Kościuszko did not move to the Duchy of Warsaw or join the new Army of the Duchy, allied with Napoleon.

After the fall of Napoleon, he met with Russia's Tsar Alexander I, in Paris and then in Braunau, Switzerland. The Tsar hoped that Kościuszko could be convinced to return to Poland, where the Tsar planned to create a new, Russian-allied Polish state (the Congress Kingdom). In return for his prospective services, Kościuszko demanded social reforms and restoration of territory, which he wished would reach the Dvina and Dnieper Rivers in the east. However, soon afterwards, in Vienna, Kościuszko learned that the Kingdom of Poland to be created by the Tsar would be even smaller than the earlier Duchy of Warsaw. Kościuszko called such an entity "a joke".

On 2 April 1817, Kościuszko emancipated the peasants in his remaining lands in Poland, but Tsar Alexander disallowed this. Suffering from poor health and old wounds, Kościuszko died in Solothurn at age 71 after falling from a horse, developing a fever, and suffering a stroke a few days later on 15 October 1817.

## Funerals

Kościuszko's first funeral was held on 19 October 1817, at a formerly Jesuit church in Solothurn. As news of his death spread, masses and memorial services were held in partitioned Poland. His embalmed body was deposited in a crypt of the Solothurn church. In 1818, Kościuszko's body was transferred to Kraków, arriving at St. Florian's Church on 11 April 1818. On 22 June 1818, or 23 June 1819 (accounts vary), to the tolling of the Sigismund Bell and the firing of cannon, it was placed in a crypt at Wawel Cathedral, a pantheon of Polish kings and national heroes.

Kościuszko's internal organs, which had been removed during embalming, were separately interred in a graveyard at Zuchwil, near Solothurn. Kościuszko's organs remain there to this day; a large memorial stone was erected in 1820, next to a Polish memorial chapel. However, his heart was not interred with the other organs but instead kept in an urn at the Polish Museum in Rapperswil, Switzerland. The heart, along with the rest of the Museum's holdings, were repatriated back to Warsaw in 1927, where the heart now reposes in a chapel at the Royal Castle.

## Memorials and tributes

He has been proclaimed and claimed as a National Hero of Poland, the United States of America, Belarus, and Lithuania.

The Polish historian Stanisław Herbst states in the 1967 Polish Biographical Dictionary that Kościuszko may be Poland's and the world's most popular Pole ever. There are monuments to him around the world, beginning with the Kościuszko Mound at Kraków, erected in 1820–23 by men, women, and children bringing earth from the battlefields where he had fought. Bridges named in his honor include the Kosciuszko Bridge built in 1939 in New York City and the Thaddeus Kosciusko Bridge completed in 1959 across the Mohawk River between Albany and Saratoga counties in upstate New York The New York City bridge was partially replaced in April 2017 by a new bridge of the same name, with an additional bridge that opened in August 2019. A commemorative plaque dedicated to Tadeusz Kosciuszko was placed on the newly built bridge in October 2022 by the Polish foundation "Będziem Polakami" (We Will Be Poles) together with the Dobra Polska Szkoła Foundation from New York with financial support from the Polish government.

Kościuszko's 1796 Philadelphia residence is now the Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, America's smallest national park or unit of the National Park System. There is a Kościuszko Museum at his last residence, in Solothurn, Switzerland. A Polish-American cultural agency, the Kosciuszko Foundation, headquartered in New York City, was created in 1925.

A series of Polish Air Force units have borne the name "Kościuszko Squadron". During World War II a Polish Navy ship bore his name, as did the Polish 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division.

One of the first examples of a historical novel, Thaddeus of Warsaw, was written in Kościuszko's honor by the Scottish author Jane Porter; it proved very popular, particularly in the United States, and went through over eighty editions in the 19th century. An opera, Kościuszko nad Sekwaną (Kościuszko at the Seine), written in the early 1820s, featured music by Franciszek Salezy Dutkiewicz and libretto by Konstanty Majeranowski. Later works have included dramas by Apollo Korzeniowski, Justyn Hoszowski and Władysław Ludwik Anczyc; three novels by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, one by Walery Przyborowski, one by Władysław Stanisław Reymont; and works by Maria Konopnicka. Kościuszko also appears in non-Polish literature, including a sonnet by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another by James Henry Leigh Hunt, poems by John Keats and Walter Savage Landor, and a work by Karl Eduard von Holtei.

In 1933, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative stamp depicting an engraving of "Brigadier General Thaddeus Kosciuszko," a statue of Kościuszko that stands in Washington, D.C.'s Lafayette Square, near the White House. The stamp was issued on the 150th anniversary of Kościuszko's naturalization as an American citizen. Poland has also issued several stamps in his honor. In 2010, a copy of the monument was unveiled in Warsaw, Poland.

There are statues of Kościuszko in Poland at Kraków (by Leonard Marconi), which was destroyed by German forces during the World War II occupation and was later replaced with a replica by Germany in 1960 and Łódź (by Mieczysław Lubelski); in the United States at Boston, West Point, Philadelphia (by Marian Konieczny), Detroit (a copy of Leonard Marconi's Kraków statue), Washington, D.C., Chicago, Milwaukee and Cleveland; and in Switzerland at Solothurn. Kościuszko has been the subject of paintings by Richard Cosway, Franciszek Smuglewicz, Michał Stachowicz, Juliusz Kossak and Jan Matejko. A monumental Racławice Panorama was painted by Jan Styka and Wojciech Kossak for the centenary of the 1794 Battle of Racławice. A commemorative monument was built in Minsk, Belarus in 2005.

In 2023, the monument at West Point was dismantled for refurbishment, and a sealed lead box of about 1 cubic foot (28 L) was discovered in the base. The time capsule is believed to date either from 1828 when it was erected by the Corp of Cadets, or 1913 when Polish clergy and laity of the United States donated a statue of Kosciuszko to sit atop the column. In June 2023, X-rays revealed that there was a box within the lead case. The opening of the box that August revealed what only appeared to be dirt but was later found to contain a medal and several coins.

Geographic features that bear his name include Mount Kosciuszko, the tallest mountain in Australia, excluding external territories. This is in a New South Wales national park also named after him, Kosciuszko National Park. Other geographic entities named after Kościuszko include Kosciusko Island in Alaska, Kosciusko County in Indiana, and numerous cities, towns, streets and parks, particularly in the United States.

Kościuszko has been the subject of many written works. The first biography of him was published in 1820 by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, who served beside Kościuszko as his aide-de-camp and was also imprisoned in Russia after the uprising. English-language biographies have included Monica Mary Gardner's Kościuszko: A Biography, which was first published in 1920, and a 2009 work by Alex Storozynski titled The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution.

## See also

- Kazimierz Pułaski (Anglicized as "Casimir Pulaski"), similarly honored Polish commander in the American Revolutionary War
- Michael Kovats de Fabriczy, Hungarian commander in the American Revolutionary War, known as "the father of the American cavalry"
- Brigadier General Thaddeus Kosciuszko – a monument in Washington, D.C.
- List of Poles
- Camp Kosciuszko

## Explanatory notes

## General bibliography

### Books

Polish and American military leader

Belarusian emigrants to the United States

Generals of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

Lithuanian emigrants to the United States

Members of the American Philosophical Society

People of the Polish–Russian War of 1792

Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland)

Ruthenian nobility of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth


Death of Cleopatra

The death of Cleopatra VII, the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, occurred on either 10 or 12 August, 30 BC, in Alexandria, when she was 39 years old. According to popular belief, Cleopatra killed herself by allowing an asp (Egyptian cobra) to bite her, but for the Roman-era writers Strabo, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio, Cleopatra poisoned herself using either a toxic ointment or by introducing the poison with a sharp implement such as a hairpin. Modern scholars debate the validity of ancient reports involving snakebites as the cause of death and if she was murdered or not. Some academics hypothesize that her Roman political rival Octavian forced her to kill herself in a manner of her choosing. The location of Cleopatra's tomb is unknown. It was recorded that Octavian allowed for her and her husband, the Roman politician and general Mark Antony, who stabbed himself with a sword, to be buried together properly.

Cleopatra's death effectively ended the final war of the Roman Republic between the remaining triumvirs Octavian and Antony, in which Cleopatra aligned herself with Antony, father to three of her children. Antony and Cleopatra fled to Egypt following their loss at the 31 BC Battle of Actium in Roman Greece, after which Octavian invaded Egypt and defeated their forces. Committing suicide allowed her to avoid the humiliation of being paraded as a prisoner in a Roman triumph celebrating the military victories of Octavian, who would become Rome's first emperor in 27 BC and be known as Augustus. Octavian had Cleopatra's son Caesarion (also known as Ptolemy XV), rival heir of Julius Caesar, killed in Egypt but spared her children with Antony and brought them to Rome. Cleopatra's death marked the end of the Hellenistic period and Ptolemaic rule of Egypt, as well as the beginning of Roman Egypt, which became a province of the Roman Empire.

The death of Cleopatra has been depicted in various works of art throughout history. These include the visual, literary, and performance arts, ranging from sculptures and paintings to poetry and plays, as well as modern films. Cleopatra featured prominently in the prose and poetry of ancient Latin literature. While surviving ancient Roman depictions of her death in visual arts are rare, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Modern works are numerous. Ancient Greco-Roman sculptures such as the Esquiline Venus and Sleeping Ariadne served as inspirations for later artworks portraying her death, universally involving the snakebite of an asp. Cleopatra's death has evoked themes of eroticism and sexuality, in works that include paintings, plays, and films, especially from the Victorian era. Modern works depicting Cleopatra's death include Neoclassical sculpture, Orientalist painting, and cinema.

## Prelude

Following the First Triumvirate and assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, the Roman statesmen Octavian, Mark Antony, and Aemilius Lepidus were elected as triumvirs to bring Caesar's assassins to justice, forming the Second Triumvirate. With Lepidus marginalized in Africa and eventually placed under house arrest by Octavian, the two remaining triumvirs divided control over the Roman world between the Greek East and Latin West, Antony taking the former and Octavian the latter. Cleopatra VII of Ptolemaic Egypt, a pharaoh of Macedonian Greek descent who ruled from Alexandria, had an extramarital affair with Julius Caesar that produced a son and eventual Ptolemaic co-ruler Caesarion. After Caesar's death she developed a relationship with Antony.

With encouragement from Cleopatra, Antony officially divorced Octavian's sister Octavia Minor in 32 BC. It is likely he had already married Cleopatra during the Donations of Alexandria in 34 BC. Antony's divorce from Octavia, Octavian's public revelation of Antony's will outlining Cleopatra's ambitions for Roman territory in the Donations of Alexandria and her continued illegal military support for a Roman citizen currently without an elected office convinced the Roman Senate, now under Octavian's control, to declare war on Cleopatra.

Following their defeat in the naval Battle of Actium at the Ambracian Gulf of Greece in 31 BC, Cleopatra and Antony retreated to Egypt to recuperate and prepare for an assault by Octavian, whose forces grew larger with the surrender of many of Antony's officers and soldiers in Greece. After a long period of failed negotiations, Octavian's forces invaded Egypt early in 30 BC. While Octavian captured Pelousion near the eastern borders of Ptolemaic Egypt, his officer Cornelius Gallus marched from Cyrene and captured Paraitonion to the west. Although Antony scored a small victory over Octavian's worn out troops as they approached Alexandria's hippodrome on 1 August, 30 BC, his naval fleet and cavalry defected soon afterward.

## Suicide of Antony and Cleopatra

With Octavian's forces in Alexandria, Cleopatra withdrew to her tomb with her closest attendants and had a message sent to Antony that she had died by suicide. Antony ordered his slave Eros to kill him, but instead, Eros killed himself with his sword. In despair, Antony stabbed himself through the stomach with a sword, inflicting a fatal wound. In Plutarch's telling, Antony was still alive as he was carried into Cleopatra's tomb, telling her in his dying words that he would die honorably and that she could trust a certain Gaius Proculeius on Octavian's side to treat her well. The same Proculeius used a ladder to breach a window of Cleopatra's tomb and detain her inside before she could have a chance to burn herself to death along with her vast treasure. Cleopatra was allowed to embalm Antony's body before she was forcefully escorted to the palace, where she eventually met with Octavian, who had also detained three of her children: Alexander Helios, Cleopatra Selene II, and Ptolemy Philadelphus.

As related by Livy, in her meeting with Octavian, Cleopatra told him candidly, "I will not be led in a triumph" (Ancient Greek: οὐ θριαμβεύσομαι, romanized: ou thriambéusomai), but Octavian only gave the cryptic answer that her life would be spared. He did not offer her any specific details about his plans for Egypt or her royal family. After a spy informed Cleopatra that Octavian intended to bring her back to Rome to be paraded as a prisoner in his triumph, she avoided this humiliation by taking her own life. Plutarch elaborates on how Cleopatra approached her suicide in an almost ritual process that involved bathing and then having a fine meal including figs brought to her in a basket.

Plutarch writes that Octavian ordered his freedman Epaphroditus to guard her and prevent a suicide attempt, but Cleopatra and her handmaidens were able to deceive him and kill themselves nonetheless. When Octavian received a note from Cleopatra requesting that she be buried next to Antony, he had his messengers rush to her. The servant broke down her door but was too late. Plutarch states that she was found with her handmaiden, Iras, dying at her feet and Charmion adjusting Cleopatra's diadem before she herself fell. It is unclear from primary sources if their suicides took place within the palace or inside Cleopatra's tomb. Cassius Dio claims that Octavian called on trained snake charmers of the Psylli tribe of Ancient Libya to attempt an oral venom extraction and revival of Cleopatra, but their efforts failed. Although Octavian was outraged by these events and "was robbed of the full splendor of his victory" according to Cassius Dio, he had Cleopatra interred next to Antony in their tomb as requested, and also gave Iras and Charmion proper burials.

## Date of death

There are no surviving records indicating an exact date of Cleopatra's death. Theodore Cressy Skeat deduced that she died on 12 August 30 BC, on the basis of contemporary records of fixed events along with cross examination of historical sources. His supposition is supported by Stanley M. Burstein, James Grout, and Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton, although the latter are more cautious by qualifying it was circa 12 August. An alternative date of 10 August 30 BC is supported by scholars such as Duane W. Roller, Joann Fletcher, and Jaynie Anderson.

## Cause of death

Cleopatra's personal physician Olympos, cited by Plutarch, mentioned neither a cause of death nor an asp bite or Egyptian cobra. Strabo, who provides the earliest known historical account, believed that Cleopatra committed suicide either by asp bite or poisonous ointment. Plutarch mentions the tale of the asp brought to her in a basket of figs, although he offers other alternatives for her cause of death, such as use of a hollow implement (Greek: κνηστίς, romanized: knestis), perhaps a hairpin, which she used to scratch open the skin and introduce the toxin. According to Cassius Dio small puncture wounds were found on Cleopatra's arm, but he echoed the claim by Plutarch that nobody knew the true cause of her death. Dio mentioned the claim of the asp and even suggested use of a needle (Greek: βελόνη, romanized: belone), possibly from a hairpin, which would seem to corroborate Plutarch's account. Other contemporary historians such as Florus and Velleius Paterculus supported the asp bite version. Roman physician Galen mentioned the asp story, but he advances a version where Cleopatra bit her own arm and introduced venom brought in a container. Suetonius relayed the story of the asp but expressed doubt about its validity.

The cause of Cleopatra's death was rarely mentioned and debated in early modern scholarship. The encyclopedic writer Thomas Browne, in his 1646 Pseudodoxia Epidemica, explained that it was uncertain how Cleopatra had died and that artistic depictions of small snakes biting her failed to accurately show the large size of the "land asp". In 1717 the anatomist Giovanni Battista Morgagni maintained a brief, recreational literary correspondence with the papal physician Giovanni Maria Lancisi about the queen's cause of death, as referenced in Morgagni's 1761 De Sedibus and published as a series of epistles in his 1764 Opera omnia. Morgagni argued that Cleopatra was likely killed by a snakebite and contested Lancisi's suggestion that consumption of venom was more plausible, noting that no ancient Greco-Roman authors had mentioned her drinking it. Lancisi rebutted by arguing that accounts offered by Roman poets were unreliable since they often exaggerated events. In his literary memoirs published in 1777, the physician Jean Goulin supported Morgagni's argument of the snakebite being the most probable cause of death.

Modern scholars have also cast doubt on the story of the venomous snakebite as the cause of death. Roller notes the prominence of snakes in Egyptian mythology while also asserting that no surviving historical account discusses the difficulty of smuggling a large Egyptian cobra into Cleopatra's chambers and then having it behave as intended. Roller also claims the venom is only fatal if injected into a vital area of the body. Egyptologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg (1870–1930) argued that Cleopatra's choice of suicide by asp bite was one that befitted her royal status, the asp representing the uraeus, sacred serpent of the ancient Egyptian sun god Ra. Robert A. Gurval, Associate Professor of Classics at UCLA, points out that the Athenian strategos Demetrios of Phaleron (c. 350 – c. 280 BC), confined by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Egypt, committed suicide by asp bite in a "curiously similar" manner, one that also demonstrated that it was not exclusive to Egyptian royalty. Gurval notes that the bite of an Egyptian cobra contains around 175–300 mg of neurotoxin, lethal to humans with only 15–20 mg, although death would not have been immediate as victims usually stay alive for several hours. François Pieter Retief, retired lecturer and dean of medicine at the University of the Free State, and Louise Cilliers, honorary research fellow at their Department of Greek, Latin and Classical Studies, argue that a large snake would not have fit into a basket of figs and it was more likely that poisoning would have so rapidly killed the three adult women, Cleopatra and her handmaidens Charmion and Iras. Noting the example of Cleopatra's hairpin, Cilliers and Retief also highlight how other ancient figures poisoned themselves in similar ways, including Demosthenes, Hannibal, and Mithridates VI of Pontus.

According to Gregory Tsoucalas, lecturer in the history of medicine at the Democritus University of Thrace, and Markos Sgantzos, Associate Professor of Anatomy at the University of Thessaly, evidence suggests that Octavian ordered the poisoning of Cleopatra. In Murder of Cleopatra, the criminal profiler Pat Brown argues that Cleopatra was murdered and the details of it were covered up by Roman authorities. Claims that she was murdered contradict the majority of primary sources that report her cause of death as suicide. Historian Patricia Southern speculates that Octavian could have possibly allowed Cleopatra to choose the manner of her death instead of executing her. Grout writes that Octavian may have wanted to avoid the sort of sympathy espoused for Cleopatra's younger sister Arsinoe IV when she was paraded in chains but spared during Julius Caesar's triumph. Octavian perhaps permitted Cleopatra to die by her own hand after considering the political issues that could have risen from the murder of a queen whose statue had been erected in the Temple of Venus Genetrix by his adoptive father. An alternative theory emerged in 1888 when Ambroise Viaud Grand Marais suggested Cleopatra had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

## Aftermath

During her final days, Cleopatra had Caesarion sent away to Upper Egypt and perhaps planned for him to eventually flee to Nubia, Ethiopia, or India in exile. Caesarion reigned as Ptolemy XV for only eighteen days, when he was captured and executed on Octavian's orders on 29 August, 30 BC. This was done following the advice of the Alexandrian Greek philosopher Arius Didymus, who cautioned that two rival heirs to Julius Caesar could not share the world together.

The deaths of Cleopatra and Caesarion marked the end of both the Ptolemaic dynasty's rule of Egypt and the Hellenistic period, which had lasted since the reign of Alexander the Great (r. 336–323 BC). Egypt became a province of the newly established Roman Empire, with Octavian renamed in 27 BC as Augustus, the first Roman emperor, ruling with the facade of a Roman Republic. Roller affirms that Caesarion's alleged reign was "essentially a fiction" invented by chroniclers of Egypt, such as Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata, to explain the gap between Cleopatra's death and the induction of Egypt as a Roman province directly ruled by Octavian as pharaoh of Egypt. Antony's three children with Cleopatra were spared and sent to Rome; their daughter Cleopatra Selene II eventually married Juba II of Mauretania.

## Tomb of Antony and Cleopatra

The site of the mausoleum of Cleopatra and Mark Antony is uncertain. The Egyptian Antiquities Service believes that it is in or near a temple of Taposiris Magna, southwest of Alexandria. In their excavations of the temple of Osiris at Taposiris Magna, archaeologists Kathleen Martinez and Zahi Hawass have discovered six burial chambers and their artifacts, including forty coins minted by Cleopatra and Antony as well as an alabaster bust depicting Cleopatra. An alabaster mask with a cleft chin discovered at the site bears a resemblance to ancient portraits of Mark Antony. In an early 1st century AD painting from the House of Giuseppe II in Pompeii, a rear wall depicted with a set of double doors positioned very high above the scene of a woman wearing a royal diadem and committing suicide among her attendants suggests the described layout of Cleopatra's tomb in Alexandria.

## Depictions in art and literature

### Hellenistic and Roman eras

In his triumphant procession at Rome in 29 BC, Octavian paraded Cleopatra's children Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene II, but he also presented an effigy to the crowd depicting Cleopatra with an asp clinging to her. This was likely the same painting discovered in emperor Hadrian's Villa in 1818, now lost but described in an archaeological report and depicted in a steel engraving by John Sartain. The poet Propertius, an eyewitness of Octavian's triumph along the Via Sacra, noted that the paraded image of Cleopatra contained multiple snakes biting each of her arms. Citing Plutarch, Giuseppe Pucci indicates that the effigy may have even been a statue. In his "Notes isiaques I" (1989), French Archaeologist Jean-Claude Grenier observed that an ancient Roman statue of a woman wearing a knot of Isis in the Vatican Museums portrays a snake crawling up her right breast, perhaps a depiction of Cleopatra's suicide while dressed as the Egyptian goddess Isis. Cleopatra's association with Isis continued in Egypt after her death, at least until 373 AD, when the Egyptian scribe Petesenufe compiled a book of Isis and explained how he decorated images of Cleopatra with gold.

A mid-1st century BC Roman wall painting from Pompeii most likely depicting Cleopatra with her infant son Caesarion was walled off by its owner around 30 BC, perhaps in reaction to Octavian's proscription against images depicting Caesarion, the rival heir of Julius Caesar. Although statues of Mark Antony were torn down, those of Cleopatra were generally spared this program of destruction, including the one erected by Caesar in the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum of Caesar. An early 1st century AD painting from Pompeii most likely depicts the suicide of Cleopatra, accompanied by attendants and even her son Caesarion wearing a royal diadem like his mother, although an asp is absent from the scene, perhaps reflecting the different causes of death provided in Roman historiography. Some posthumous images of Cleopatra meant for common consumption were perhaps less flattering. A Roman terracotta lamp in the British Museum made c. 40–80 AD contains a relief depicting a nude woman with the queen's distinct hairstyle. In it she holds a palm branch, rides an Egyptian crocodile and sits on a large phallus in a Nilotic scene.

A Roman cameo glass vessel in the British Museum known as the Portland Vase contains a possible depiction of Cleopatra and her imminent death. Dated to the reign of Augustus, it depicts various other figures often identified as Augustus, his sister Octavia Minor, Mark Antony and his alleged ancestor Anton. The seated woman identified as Cleopatra grasps and pulls Antony toward her while a serpent rises from between her legs and the Greek god of love Eros (Cupid) floats above them.

The story of the asp was widely accepted among the Augustan-period Latin poets such as Horace and Virgil, in which two snakes were even suggested as biting Cleopatra. Although retaining the negative views of Cleopatra apparent in other pro-Augustan Roman literature, Horace depicted Cleopatra's suicide as a bold act of defiance and liberation. Virgil established the view of Cleopatra as a figure of epic melodrama and romance.

### Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods

The story of Cleopatra's suicide by snakebite was often depicted in Medieval and Renaissance art. The artist known as the Boucicaut Master, in a 1409 AD miniature for an illuminated manuscript of Des cas de nobles hommes et femmes by the 14th-century AD poet Giovanni Boccaccio, depicted Cleopatra and Antony lying together in a Gothic-style tomb, with a snake near Cleopatra's chest and a bloody sword driven through Antony's chest. Illustrated versions of Boccaccio's written works, including images of Cleopatra and Antony committing suicide, first appeared in France during the Quattrocento (i.e. 15th century AD), authored by Laurent de Premierfait. Woodcut illustrations of Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris published at Ulm in 1479 and Augsburg in 1541 depict Cleopatra's discovery of Antony's body after his suicide by stabbing.

Like much of Medieval literature about Cleopatra, Boccaccio's writings are largely negative and misogynistic. The 14th-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer counters these depictions, offering a positive view of Cleopatra. Chaucer began his hagiography on virtuous pagan women with the life of Cleopatra, depicted in a satirical fashion as a queen engaged in courtly love with her knight Mark Antony. His depiction of her suicide included a pit of serpents rather than the Roman tale of the asps.

Free-standing nude depictions of Cleopatra poisoned by an asp became common during the Italian Renaissance. The 16th-century Venetian artist Giovanni Maria Padovano (i.e. Mosca) created two marble reliefs of the suicide of Antony and Cleopatra, as well as several free-standing nude statues of Cleopatra being bitten by the asp that were partly inspired by ancient Roman sculptures such as the Esquiline Venus. Bartolommeo Bandinelli created a drawing of Cleopatra as a free-standing nude committing suicide that served as the basis for a similar engraving by Agostino Veneziano. Another engraving by Veneziano and a drawing by Raphael depicting Cleopatra's suicide as she slumbered were inspired by the ancient Greco-Roman Sleeping Ariadne, which at the time was thought to depict Cleopatra. Works of the French Renaissance also depict Cleopatra slumbering while pressing a snake to her breast. Michelangelo created a black-chalk drawing of Cleopatra's suicide by asp bite around 1535. The 17th-century Baroque painter Guido Reni depicted Cleopatra's death by asp bite, albeit with a snake that is tiny compared to a real Egyptian cobra.

The Sleeping Ariadne, acquired by Pope Julius II in 1512, inspired three poems of Renaissance literature eventually carved into the pilaster frame of the statue. The first of these was published by Baldassare Castiglione, which became widely circulated by 1530 and inspired the other two poems by Bernardino Baldi and Agostino Favoriti. Castiglione's poem depicted Cleopatra as a tragic but honorable ruler in a doomed love affair with Antony, a queen whose death freed her from the ignominy of Roman imprisonment. The Sleeping Ariadne was also commonly depicted in paintings, including those by Titian, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Edward Burne-Jones. These works tended to eroticize the moment of Cleopatra's death, while Victorian era artists found the unconscious, recumbent female form as an acceptable outlet for their eroticism.

Cleopatra's death features in several works of the performing arts. In the 1607 play Devil's Charter by Barnabe Barnes, a snake handler brings two asps to Cleopatra and allows them to bite both her breasts in a racy manner. In William Shakespeare's 1609 play Antony and Cleopatra the snake represents both death as well as a lover who Cleopatra desires, yielding to his pinch. Shakespeare relied on Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch for crafting his play, which can be viewed as both a comedy and a tragedy. The play involved use of multiple asps, as well as the character of Charmion who killed herself by asp bite after Cleopatra.

### Modern era

In modern literature, Ted Hughes' poem "Cleopatra to the Asp" (1960) creates a monologue of Cleopatra speaking to the asp that is about to kill her. During the Victorian era, plays such as Cléopâtre (1890) by Victorien Sardou became popular, although audiences were generally shocked by the emotional intensity of stage actress Sarah Bernhardt's depiction of Cleopatra reacting to Antony's suicide. In opera, Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, first performed in 1966 and based on Shakespeare's play, Cleopatra recounts a dream that Antony, now dead before her, would become emperor of Rome. When Dollabella informs her that Caesar intends to march her in his triumph in Rome, she commits suicide with Charmion by asp bite, before being carried off to be buried with Antony.

`The 1940 poem Cleopatra by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova portrays the death, with its 12 lines ending as: "heedless hand drops short black asp upon a swarthy breast".`

The character of Cleopatra had appeared in forty-three films by the end of the 20th century. Georges Méliès' Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb (French: Cléopâtre), an 1899 French silent horror film, was the first to depict the character of Cleopatra. Following the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912), the 1913 Italian film Marcantonio e Cleopatra by Enrico Guazzoni depicted Cleopatra as the embodiment of the cruel Orient, a queen who had defied Rome, while the actions of her lover Antony, after his suicide, are forgiven by Octavian. In cultivating a stage persona for her character in the 1917 US film Cleopatra, actress Theda Bara was seen in public petting snakes while the Fox Film Corporation posed her in front of Cleopatra's alleged mummified remains in a museum, where she announced that she was the reincarnation of Cleopatra, having received hieroglyphic tributary offerings from a reincarnated servant. Fox Studios also had Bara dress as a leader of the occult and associated her with perverse death and sexuality. The 1963 Hollywood film Cleopatra by Joseph L. Mankiewicz contains a dramatic scene where the Egyptian queen, portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor, is engaged in a slap-fight with her lover Mark Antony, portrayed by Richard Burton, inside the tomb where they would be interred.

In other modern visual arts, Cleopatra has been depicted in mediums such as paintings and sculptures. In her 1876 sculpture The Death of Cleopatra, African American artist Edmonia Lewis, despite championing the non-white female form in artworks, chose to depict Cleopatra with Caucasian features, perhaps in keeping with Cleopatra's recorded lineage as a Macedonian Greek. Lewis' Neoclassical sculpture offers a post-mortem view of Cleopatra dressed in Egyptian regalia and sitting on her throne, which is decorated with two sphinx heads that represent the twins she bore with Mark Antony: Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene II. An 1880 plaster sculpture of Cleopatra committing suicide, now found in Lille, France, was once thought to be a work by Albert Darcq, but restoration and cleaning of the sculpture revealed the signature of Charles Gauthier, to whom the work is now attributed. The 1874 painting Death of Cleopatra by Jean-André Rixens depicts a dead Cleopatra with very light skin, accompanied by maidservants with rather dark skin, a combination frequently found in modern artworks portraying the scene of Cleopatra's death. Orientalist paintings by Rixens and others influenced the hybrid Ancient-Egyptian and Middle-Eastern decor found in the J. Gordon Edwards' film Cleopatra starring Bara, seen standing on a Persian carpet but with Egyptian wall paintings in the background.

### Paintings

### Prints

### Statues, busts and other sculptures

## See also

- Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination
- Death of Alexander the Great
- Early life of Cleopatra
- List of unsolved deaths
- Reign of Cleopatra

Death of the Egyptian Ptolemaic ruler in 30 BC


Polish minority in the Czech Republic

The Polish minority in the Czech Republic is a Polish national minority living mainly in the Trans-Olza region of western Cieszyn Silesia. The Polish community is the only national (or ethnic) minority in the Czech Republic that is linked to a specific geographical area. Trans-Olza is located in the north-eastern part of the country. It comprises Karviná District and the eastern part of Frýdek-Místek District. Many Poles living in other regions of the Czech Republic have roots in Trans-Olza as well.

Poles formed the largest ethnic group in Cieszyn Silesia in the 19th century, but at the beginning of the 20th century the Czech population grew. The Czechs and Poles collaborated on resisting Germanization movements, but this collaboration ceased after World War I. In 1920 the region of Trans-Olza was incorporated into Czechoslovakia after the Polish–Czechoslovak War. Since then the Polish population demographically decreased. In 1938 it was annexed by Poland in the context of the Munich Agreement and in 1939 by Nazi Germany. The region was then given back to Czechoslovakia after World War II. Polish organizations were re-created, but were banned by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. After the Velvet Revolution Polish organizations were re-created again and Trans-Olza had adopted bilingual signs.

## History

Historically, the largest ethnic group inhabiting the Trans-Olza area was the Poles. During the 19th century the number of Germans grew. At the beginning of the 20th century and later from 1920 to 1938, the Czech population grew significantly (mainly as a result of immigration and the assimilation of locals) and the Poles became a minority, which they are to this day.

From 1848, the national consciousness of the local people grew and from 1848 to the end of the 19th century local Poles and Czechs co-operated, uniting against the Germanizing tendencies of the Austrian Empire, and later of Austria-Hungary. Various Polish clubs were founded. Most schools were Polish, followed by German and Czech. At the end of the century, ethnic tensions appeared as the area's economic significance grew. This growth caused a wave of immigration from Galicia, when about 60,000 people arrived and settled between 1880 and 1910. They settled mainly in the Ostrava region, but also in Trans-Olza. The new immigrants were Polish and poor, about half of them being illiterate, and worked mostly in coal mining and metallurgy. For these people, the most important factor was material well-being; they cared little about the homeland from which they had fled, more readily assimilating into the Czech population which was demographically dominant in the Ostrava region in the heart of Czech Silesia. The social structure of the territory was generally divided along ethnic lines. Germans were economically strongest, mostly owners, Czechs were mostly clerks and other officials, and Poles were mostly manual workers, miners, and metallurgists. This structure had changed over time but in 1921 it was still very similar, with 61.5% of Poles working as labourers.

### Decision time (1918–1920)

There was a very tense climate in 1918–1920, a time of decision. It was decided that a plebiscite would be held in Cieszyn Silesia asking people which country the territory should join. Plebiscite commissioners arrived at the end of January 1920 and after analyzing the situation declared a state of emergency in the territory on 19 May 1920. The situation in the territory remained very tense. Mutual intimidation, acts of terror, beatings, and even killings affected the area. A plebiscite could not be held in this atmosphere. On 10 July both sides renounced the idea of a plebiscite and entrusted the Conference of Ambassadors with the decision. Eventually 58.1% of the area of Cieszyn Silesia and 67.9% of the population was incorporated into Czechoslovakia on 28 July 1920 by a decision of the Spa Conference. This division was in practice what gave birth to the concept of the Trans-Olza — in Polish Zaolzie, which literally means "the land beyond the Olza River" (looking from Poland).

### In Czechoslovakia (1920–1938)

Local Czech militants forced about 5,000 local Poles, mostly from the northern part of the region, to flee to Poland already before July 1920. 4,000 of these expellees were located in a transitional camps in Oświęcim. About 12,000 Poles in total were forced to leave the region and flee to Poland in the aftermath of the division of Cieszyn Silesia. The local Polish population felt that Warsaw had betrayed them and they were not satisfied with the division. It is not quite clear how many Poles were in Trans-Olza in Czechoslovakia. Estimates range from 110,000 to 140,000 people in 1921. The 1921 and 1930 census numbers are not accurate since nationality depended on self-declaration and many Poles declared Czech nationality mainly as a result of fear of the new authorities and as compensation for some benefits. Czechoslovak law guaranteed rights for national minorities, but the reality in Trans-Olza was quite different. The local Czech authorities made it more difficult for local Poles to obtain citizenship, while the process was expedited when the applicant pledged to declare Czech nationality and send his children to a Czech school. Newly built Czech schools were often better supported and equipped, thus inducing some Poles to send their children there. This and other factors contributed to the assimilation of Poles and also to significant emigration to Poland. After a few years, the heightened nationalism typical of the period around 1920 receded and local Poles increasingly co-operated with the Czechs. Still, Czechization was supported by Prague, which did not abide by certain laws related to language, legislative, and organizational issues. Polish deputies in Czechoslovak National Assembly frequently tried to put that issues on agenda. One way or the other, increasingly local Poles thus assimilated into the Czech population.

### In Poland (1938–1939)

On 1 October 1938, Trans-Olza was annexed by Poland following the Munich Conference. The Polish Army, commanded by General Władysław Bortnowski, annexed an area of 801.5 km2 (309.5 mi2) with a population of 227,399. The Polish side argued that Poles in Trans-Olza deserved the same rights as Germans in the Munich Agreement. The vast majority of the local Polish population enthusiastically welcomed the change, seeing it as a liberation and a form of historical justice. But they quickly changed their mood. The new Polish authorities appointed people from Poland to various positions from which Czechs had been dismissed. The Polish language became the sole official language. Rapid Polonization followed. Czech organizations were dismantled and their activity was prohibited. Czech education ceased to exist. About 35,000 Czechs emigrated to Czechoslovakia by choice or forcibly. The behaviour of the new Polish authorities was different but similar in nature to that of the Czech authorities before 1938. Two political factions appeared: socialists (the opposition) and rightists (loyal to the new authorities). Leftist politicians and sympathizers were discriminated against and often dismissed from their jobs. The Polish political system was artificially implemented in Trans-Olza. Local Polish people continued to feel like second-class citizens and a majority of them were dissatisfied with the situation after October 1938. Trans-Olza remained a part of Poland for only eleven months.

### World War II

During the war, strong Germanization was introduced by the Nazi authorities. The Jews were in the worst position, followed by the Poles. Poles received lower food rations, they were supposed to pay extra taxes, and were not allowed to enter theatres, cinemas, and other venues. Polish and Czech education ceased to exist, Polish organizations were dismantled and their activity was prohibited. The Nazis especially targeted the Polish intelligentsia and many functionaries died during the war. The German authorities introduced terror into Trans-Olza. Mass killings, executions, arrests, taking locals to forced labour, and deportations to concentration camps all happened on a daily basis. The most notorious war crime was a murder of 36 villagers in and around Żywocice on 6 August 1944. Most of the victims were Poles. This massacre is known as Tragedia Żywocicka (the Żywocice tragedy). The resistance movement, mostly of Poles, was fairly strong in Trans-Olza.

Volkslists, documents introduced by the Nazi authorities were soon introduced during the war. A non-German citizen declared that he had some German ancestry by signing it and refusal to sign this document could lead to deportation to a concentration camp. Local people who signed the lists were later on enrolled in the Wehrmacht. Many local people with no German ancestry were also forced to sign them. The World War II death toll in Trans-Olza is estimated at about 6,000 people: about 2,500 Jews, 2,000 other citizens (80% of them being Poles), and more than 1,000 locals who died in the Wehrmacht (those who signed the Volksliste). Also a few hundred Poles from Trans-Olza were among those murdered by the Soviets in the Katyń massacre. Percentage-wise, Trans-Olza suffered the worst human loss out of the whole of Czechoslovakia – about 2.6% of the total population.

### Since 1945 and during the Communist Era (1948–89)

Immediately after World War II, Trans-Olza was returned to Czechoslovakia within its 1920 borders, although local Poles hoped it would again be given to Poland. The local Polish population again suffered discrimination, as many Czechs blamed them for the discrimination by the Polish authorities in 1938–1939. Polish organizations were banned, and the Czech authorities made many arrests and dismissed many from their jobs. Polish property stolen by the Germans during the war was never returned. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was the only political party defending the rights of the Polish minority. In the 1946 elections, the majority of Poles voted for the communists. In Trans-Olza, 51% of elected communist officials were ethnic Poles. The situation of Poles improved somewhat when the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia seized power in February 1948. The Polish Cultural and Educational Union (PZKO) was created in 1947. The creation of other Polish organizations was prohibited. This was the only Polish organization representing the Polish minority in the communist era, and was therefore under the strong influence of the Communist Party. It remains today the Polish organization with the largest membership.

During the communist era, rapid urbanization and growth of heavy industry occurred. Whole villages in the coal mining areas were destroyed by the mining activity. These conditions quickened the assimilation of the Poles. Another cause of assimilation was the high rate of intermarriage. Besides Poles belonging to the minority, many more commuted across the border from Polish People's Republic to work in Czechoslovakia or to take advantage of the relative abundance of consumer goods in Czechoslovakia.

During the 1960s, cultural life flourished. Polish books were published and Polish sections in Czech libraries were set up. For example, the state Czech Postal and Newspaper Service was delivering 72 magazines from Poland. During the Prague Spring, the more liberal atmosphere also contributed to the growth of cultural life. After 1968, purges were conducted throughout Czechoslovak society, including the Polish minority. Reformists were fired from their positions. The so-called "normalization" also affected the PZKO. From 1976 the law recommended the introduction of bilingual signs in some municipalities. Being only a recommended measure, it was not implemented. The Czechoslovak communist authorities tried to limit the influence of Poles, resident or not, considering the influence of Poles (given that Polish communist regime was considered more liberal) in the workplace a threat to the regime.

## Present times

After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, under democratic conditions, Polish organizations were quickly created. The Rada Polaków (Council of Poles) was created in 1990. The founders of the Council argued that the PZKO was not fulfilling its function of representing the Poles. The organization was renamed "Kongres Polaków" (Congress of Poles) in 1991. It is the main body representing the Polish minority in negotiations with the Czech government, etc. Local border crossings with Poland were opened in mid-1991, two years after the fall of communism.

## Language and culture

The primary language of the Polish population in Trans-Olza is the Cieszyn Silesian dialect, with the vast majority of Poles using it in everyday communication. The dialect is very prestigious and contributes to the pride of local people. It is also used by some local Czechs. Local Poles also feel a strong regional identity. In the Trans-Olza region, a few church services are conducted in Polish. 90% of worshippers among Polish secondary school students are reported to pray in Polish.

Concerning literature, there is a great variety of authors, genres, and editions produced in Polish. For traditional music, many groups are united in the association Ars Musica; this association also includes many choirs, such as Collegium Iuvenum, Collegium Canticorum, and Canticum Novum. Many other choirs and traditional folk vocal and dance groups exist, including Olza, Bystrzyca, Oldrzychowice, Suszanie, and Błędowianie, among others. Pop and rock bands include Glayzy, Glider, P-metoda, Apatheia, Poprostu and other groups. The Cieszyn Theatre in Český Těšín has a Polish Scene (ensemble). It is the only professional Polish theatre outside Poland.

Many cultural, folk, and music festivals are organized each year. The largest folklore festival of the Polish community and also the largest folklore festival in the Trans-Olza region is the annual Gorolski Święto (lit. "Goral's Festival") organized in Jablunkov. Dożynki (harvest festivals) are organized each year in several villages. Music festivals include Zlot in Bystřice, Zlot in Vendryně and Dni Kultury Studenckiej (Days of Student Culture) in Bystrzyca.

There is a 15-minute daily radio broadcast in Polish by Czech Radio Ostrava. Czech Television has been broadcasting in Polish for ten minutes a week since September 2003; television programmes from Poland can also be received. In 2003, Czech Television's studio in Ostrava launched a regular five-minute news and current affairs weekly in Polish. The broadcast was shortened to four minutes in 2007. The largest Polish newspaper in the country is Głos Ludu; the largest magazine is Zwrot.

## Education

The Polish national minority has a complete education network with Polish teaching language. Polish education is the only ethnic minority education in the Czech Republic to cover the complete cycle from kindergarten through high school. In 2020/21, there were 19 kindergartens, 21 primary schools and one high school with Polish teaching language, in total with 3,134 pupils, and 5 kindergarten with both Polish and Czech language.

Polish primary schools function in the following municipalities: Albrechtice (Olbrachcice), Bukovec (Bukowiec), Bystřice (Bystrzyca), Český Těšín (Czeski Cieszyn), Dolní Lutyně (Lutynia Dolna), Havířov (Hawierzów), Hnojník (Gnojnik), Horní Suchá (Sucha Górna), Hrádek (Gródek), Jablunkov (Jabłonków), Karviná (Karwina), Košařiska (Koszarzyska), Milíkov (Milików), Mosty u Jablunkova (Mosty koło Jabłonkowa), Návsí (Nawsie), Orlová (Orłowa), Ropice (Ropica), Stonava (Stonawa), Těrlicko (Cierlicko), Třinec (Trzyniec), and Vendryně (Wędrynia).

The only Polish high school is the Juliusz Słowacki Polish Gymnasium in Český Těšín. Polish classes are open in the Technical School in Karviná, the Economic School in Český Těšín, and the Medical School in Karviná. In the past there were more Polish schools in the area, but the number is historically declining along with the demographic decline in the Polish population as a whole.

## Sport

First Polish sport organizations have been founded in the 1890s. In the interwar period there was a plethora of organizations of all types in all Central European countries, the Trans-Olza region wasn't exception. Sport clubs there were often multi-sport, associating several sport branches, mostly football, athletics, volleyball, table tennis etc.

The Sokół movement was active in Cieszyn Silesia even before World War I. After 1920 division of the region, Sokół became active in Czechoslovakia. At the beginning of the 1930s it associated 11 local branches and about 1,500 members. After World War II, it hasn't renewed its activity.

Another large sport organization was Siła (i.e. "power"). It was created in 1908 but established again in 1921 as Polskie Stowarzyszenie Robotnicze Siła (Polish Workers' Association 'Power'). The organization was of socialist and workers' character and in 1937 associated 25 local branches. After World War II Siła operated half-legally in 17 local branches, and after the communist takeover of power in 1948 was liquidated by Czechoslovak communist authorities.

Another large organization was Polskie Towarzystwo Turystyczne 'Beskid Śląski' (Polish Tourist Association 'Silesian Beskids') established in 1910. Initially it focused on organizing the Polish tourist movement and building mountain huts in the Beskids but later widened its activities to skiing, football, athletics and volleyball. In the 1930s it associated 27 local branches. After World War II it operated half-legally and as Siła, was liquidated by Czechoslovak communist authorities after the Victorious February 1948. It resumed its activity again in 1991, after the fall of communism.

The last notable multi-sport club was Proletariacka Kultura Fizyczna (PFK, Proletarian Physical Culture). It was created in the mid-1920s and was of communist character. In the 1930s it associated about 40 active local branches. After the Trans-Olza region was annexed in 1938 by Poland it was banned together with the communist party.

The most popular sport was football. Volleyball, athletics, table tennis and other sports were also popular. The club with most members was PKS Polonia Karwina, associating some 1,000 members. Its football branch was the best Polish football club of Trans-Olza.

After World War II many Polish sport clubs resumed slowly their activity. After the communist takeover of power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 communists began to curb number of organizations in the country and tried to achieve the state of only several active nationwide organizations. Therefore, many Polish clubs after 1948 stopped their activity. The ones who still operated were subjected to rising pressure since 1951. Last independent Polish organizations were dissolved in 1952.

After 1952 the Polish sport life was organized through the Polish Cultural and Educational Union. Through the communist era Polish minority declined demographically and this process continue to date, hence after the fall of communism in 1989 only a few sport organizations resumed their activity. Beskid Śląski, the only notable one, focuses on tourism. No exclusively Polish sport club exists today in Trans-Olza.

## Legal issues

The erection of bilingual signs has technically been permitted since 2001, if a minority constitutes 10% of the population of a municipality. The requirement for a petition by the members of a minority has been abolished, thus simplifying the whole process. However, only a couple of villages with large Polish minorities have bilingual signs yet (Vendryně for instance). For a list of all municipalities with a Polish population of at least 10%, see Polish municipalities in the Czech Republic.

## Demography

The Polish population is historically declining. This is primarily caused by low natural birth rate, assimilation, high intermarriage rate (the majority of Poles live in mixed relationships), and migration to other parts of the country as a result of job seeking.

## Notable people

### Politicians

- Jan Buzek, interwar MP
- Jerzy Buzek, President of European Parliament, Former Prime Minister of Poland
- Emanuel Chobot, interwar MP
- Karol Junga, interwar MP
- Tadeusz Michejda, Minister of Health of Poland
- Karol Śliwka, interwar communist politician, MP
- Leon Wolf, interwar Czechoslovak MP and later senator in Polish Senate
- Josef Zieleniec, former Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic

### Writers

- Henryk Jasiczek, poet
- Jan Kubisz, poet, author of Płyniesz Olzo po dolinie, unofficial anthem of Poles of Trans-Olza
- Paweł Kubisz, poet
- Gustaw Morcinek, one of the most important Polish writers from Silesia
- Józef Ondrusz
- Karol Piegza
- Adam Wawrosz

### Other

- Józef Buzek, economist
- Ewa Farna, pop singer
- Tadeusz Kraus, Polish footballer from Trans-Olza
- Adam Makowicz, jazz musician
- Halina Mlynkova, pop singer
- Bronislav Poloczek, theatre and television actor

## See also

- Demographics of the Czech Republic, for other ethnic minorities in the country
- Polish People's Party, Polish party in interwar Czechoslovakia
- Polish Socialist Workers Party, Polish party in interwar Czechoslovakia
- Polish diaspora, for other Polish communities outside Poland
- Czech Republic–Poland relations

Polish national minority in the Czech Republic