He designed underwater structures, fortified camps, systems of ramparts and fortresses that kept the enemy at bay. His ideas were often ahead of their time. In Poland, Tadeusz Kościuszko went down in history as a soldier who spared no blood. In the eyes of Americans, he is above all a brilliant military engineer.
Always on the move, on horseback, with a notebook in one hand and a measuring device in the other. He rides around the area and sketches, with yet another visionary project already forming in his head. This is how Americans remember him from the Revolutionary War, and also how Poles got to know him – during the battles in defense of the Polish Constitution of May 3, and then during the anti-Russian uprising of 1794. However, the image of Kościuszko the engineer did not make it into the Polish collective consciousness.
“Which is a real shame, as Kościuszko was in many aspects ahead of his time,” says Krzysztof Wielgus, PhD, from the Kraków University of Technology. “He had a remarkable spatial imagination. For him, fortification was more than just a simple set of defenses. It blended perfectly with its surroundings, and together, they formed a compact war machine that forced the opponents to make specific maneuvers, deprived them of their advantages, and, in a sense, incapacitated them,” explains the scientist. Kościuszko did not build structures. He created entire systems.
Time of Great Armies
He was just under 20 years old when he enrolled in the Corps of Cadets, an elite academic institution established by King Stanisław August Poniatowski. He studied philosophy, law, the history of Poland, as well as arithmetic, surveying, and geometry. His interest in the sciences prompted him to enroll in an engineering course. Soon after, he left for Paris on a scholarship. He attended the Military Academy in Versailles, where he was taught by Didier-Grégoire Trincano, a man who revolutionized the art of fortification.
“In the 18th century, bastion fortifications, consisting of massive structures arranged in a geometric pattern, still dominated in Europe. Meanwhile, the art of warfare was undergoing rapid change. Armies were growing in size, and the importance of artillery was increasing. Maneuverability and firepower were becoming the most important factors on the battlefield,” says Krzysztof Wielgus. Fortresses had to be large enough to accommodate dozens of cannons on their walls, and at the same time constructed in a way that would allow the soldiers gathered inside to attack the enemy with quick sorties. Building according to the old formula was slowly losing its relevance. “This was most aptly expressed by Marc Rene de Montalembert, a young fortification specialist. He stated that walls might as well be made of paper, provided they were able to accommodate enough cannons to prevent the enemy from placing a single one opposite them,” explains Wielgus. At that time, the concepts of tenaille and then polygonal fortification were already emerging. Their creators abandoned bastions in favor of broken walls heavily armed with artillery. When drawing up their designs, they also took land features into account. Kościuszko absorbed these ideas and reworked them in his own manner. Soon, he would put the knowledge he had acquired in Warsaw and Paris to the test.
Anti-Ship Cheval de Frise
In 1775, the American Revolutionary War broke out. It was the result of growing tensions between European settlers and Great Britain. American residents opposed the taxes and restrictions on their self-government imposed by the mother country. They set a course for independence, and Kościuszko, inspired by the spirit of republicanism, decided to support them in their struggle. In the summer of 1776, he arrived in Philadelphia and enlisted in the American army. The newly formed armed forces needed experts, so they immediately entrusted the Pole with an important task to secure the mouth of the Delaware River in order to prevent a possible British landing. “Philadelphia was protected by coastal forts, but the cannons installed in them were aimed at long distances. This meant that the crews could not fire on the areas closer to the city. To remedy this, Kościuszko decided to deploy underwater obstacles, which were an anti-ship version of the cheval de frise anti-cavalry blockades, near the fortress. In case of danger, they would keep ships at a distance, precisely in the areas targeted by the artillery,” says Wielgus.
The young engineer’s ingenuity was quickly recognized. The Americans sent him to the Canadian border, where he fortified the military camps of General Horatio Gates. It was there that he also had to swallow his first bitter pill. Kościuszko was ordered to fortify Fort Ticonderoga. He immediately requested for the batteries to be deployed on a height overlooking the complex, referred to as Sugar Loaf. Unfortunately, his superiors ignored this suggestion, concluding that it would be too difficult to drag the cannons up the hill. The British, however, approached the matter quite differently. They occupied the summit, fired on Ticonderoga from there, and forced the Americans to retreat. The American forces managed to avoid complete disaster only thanks to Kościuszko. “His subordinate engineering units created floodplains on the British march route by setting up barriers made of trees. The soldiers got stuck in the mud and were decimated by American minutemen,” explains the scientist.
The tables soon turned. In the fall of 1777, the American Continental Army claimed a major victory at Saratoga. British General John Burgoyne and nearly 4,000 of his soldiers were taken prisoner. The success also had political implications – seeing the determination of the settlers, France officially entered the war on their side. Kościuszko could triumph, especially since his contribution to the American success was difficult to overestimate. It was he who pointed out to his superiors the best place to challenge the British due to the topography of the area. He also created a system of redoubts and ramparts on the surrounding hills, which served as a base for General Horatio Gates’ troops. “These positions would require a regular siege, for which Burgoyne had neither the time nor the methodology [...]. I will not quote the descriptions of the two battles of Saratoga here, as it was not the battles that led to Burgoyne’s surrender. Burgoyne was not defeated, but – almost literally – checkmated. It was precisely Kościuszko’s fortifications, and his choice of positions, that played a decisive role in this finale,” wrote Stefan Bratkowski in his book Z czym do nieśmiertelności [Ways to Immortality]. However, although the British had lost an important battle, the war was still ongoing. Blocking the enemy’s path to New York and controlling the Hudson River, which was an important supply route, could prove crucial to the outcome of the war. This is where Washington saw another task for Kościuszko.
Clinton Says Pass
The matter was to be settled by the West Point fortress, whose construction was already underway. “It was led by Louis de la Radiere, a world-renowned French engineer, who was something of a celebrity at the time. However, he wanted to build a bastion fortress, and the Americans, disregarding all other issues, simply did not have time for that,” says Wielgus. At the beginning of 1778, Kościuszko arrived at West Point and managed to push through his own vision. He built a system of fortifications that was not connected by uniform walls, but made extensive use of the advantages of the hilly landscape. The system consisted of two large forts – West Point and General Putnam, three coastal artillery batteries, three auxiliary forts, and finally, a structure that went down in history as Kościuszko’s Tower. It was a small hexagonal structure on which a significant number of cannons were deployed. The crews of all the posts were able to support each other, flanking the advancing enemy with fire. In addition, Kościuszko ordered the construction of a floating raft dam on the Hudson River, additionally supported by two redoubts located on the other bank. West Point served its purpose. Seeing the effectiveness and power of the solutions used there, General Henry Clinton, commander of the British forces in America, gave up on storming the fortress.
Ultimately, the Americans won the war, and Kościuszko left the continent with the rank of brigadier general. In the following years, he used his engineering skills during wars in his own country. When the Poles defended the gains of the Constitution of May 3 against Russia, field fortifications supported them on the battlefields of Zieleńce and Dubienka, and during the uprising, Kościuszko fortified Warsaw and Kraków.
Unfortunately, in this case, his visionary ideas did not translate into military success, which was mostly determined by external circumstances, such as the geopolitical situation and the attitude of the commanders. Perhaps this was also one of the factors that led us to view Tadeusz Kościuszko today more as a passionate and self-sacrificing fighter than a coolly calculating genius engineer.
