For we have reached that period of Polish history which belongs to the Polish legions: the moment of brilliance and of glory when; led by the Polish flags, Polish soldiers in the armies of Napoleon shed their blood on every battlefield of Europe. In the hope of regaining from Napoleon the freedom of their country, the former soldiers of the Republic, no less than the rising young Polish manhood, panting with passionate patriotism and with the warlike instinct of their race, enrolled themselves in the French army. "Poland has not perished while we live," was the song, the March of Dombrowski, with which they went to battle, and which to this day forbidden though it has been by their oppressors, we may hear Poles sing at national gatherings. The leader of the legions was the gallant Dombrowski. "Fellow-citizens! Poles!" cried he in his manifesto to his nation in language strangely prophetic of the hour that is scarcely past, when we have seen a Polish army in Polish uniform fighting for liberty by the side of the Allies in the European War: "Hope is rising! France is conquering. The battalions are forming. Comrades, join us! Fling away the weapons which you have been compelled to bear. Let us fight for the common cause of all the nations, for freedom."[1] [Footnote 1: T. Korzon, _Kościuszko_.] In these early days Napoleon's betrayal of Poland was a tale still untold; but to the end the Poles fought by his side with a hope in him that only died with his fall, with a love and loyalty to his person that survived it. Such was the news that travelled across the Atlantic to Kościuszko with dispatches that informed him that his two nephews, sons of his sister Anna, who had borne arms in the Rising, had been sent in the name of Kościuszko by their mother to Bonaparte with the prayer that they might serve in his ranks. By the end of June, 1798, Kościuszko was in France, in Bayonne. The accustomed acclamations greeted him there. Some _fête-champêtre_ was arranged at which Kościuszko, the guest of honour, watched peasants laying their ploughs at the feet of soldiers, in exchange for the weapons of war. "It would have been thus in Poland," he was heard to murmur to himself, "if fate had not betrayed us." In Paris he heard sympathy with himself and the Polish cause expressed on all sides. Public toasts to the defender of the nation who was pouring her blood like water in the cause of France were the order of the hour. Kościuszko was moved to tears as he listened to the utterance of these good wishes for his country's liberation. His first task was to confer with the various foreign ambassadors and with Dombrowski's adjutant, Dombrowski being in Italy. He then definitely broke the bond between himself and Paul I. He returned the money received from the Tsar with the following letter:--