The Peasant Prince http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Peasant-Prince-Alex-Storozynski/9780312388027

Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution

By Alex Storozynski

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Reviews

**2010 FRAUNCES TAVERN MUSEUM BOOK AWARD WINNER** "Despite his heroic efforts, Kosciuszko's fatherland had to wait a century after his death before regaining independence from Russia. The world would have to wait even longer for an accessible, soundly researched, English-language biography. With "The Peasant Prince," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex Storozynski has filled the void. And what a tale he has to tell. A melodramatic, foiled elopement deprived the young Kosciuszko of the love of his life and led him to cross the Atlantic and sign up with George Washington's ragtag rebel army. The Polish emigre engineered the network of fortifications around West Point that -Benedict Arnold unsuccessfully tried to betray to the British and that he lped keep the main British army bottled up in New York City. Kosciuszko also played a key role in the wilderness campaigns that ended in the crucial American victory at Saratoga. And he made a triumphal return to his native Poland in time to lead a doomed but heroic national struggle against Russia and overwhelming odds. All this and a supporting cast that amounts to a Who's Who of 18th-century American and European history. In America, those who knew Kosciuszko included Benjamin Franklin (who helped recruit him); George Washington (who had trouble getting Kosciuszko's name right but hailed him as a military "engineer of -eminence"); Thomas Jefferson (who called him "as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known"); and Thomas Paine (who, like Kosciuszko, was granted honorary French -citizenship by the revolutionary regime but spoke out against its brutal excesses). In Europe, Kosciuszko's acquaintances included Napoleon Bonaparte (who tried--and failed--to use him as a pawn in European power politics) and Catherine the Great (who, after ruthlessly suppressing the Polish insurrection, kept Kosciuszko a political prisoner in Russia until her death in 1796)."--"Wall Street Journal"

"Alex Storozynski has just published "The P