Tadeusz Kościuszko (Hero of Two Worlds)

Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (1746–1817) was a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer, statesman, and international champion of liberty who fought for both American independence and Polish national sovereignty. Educated in military engineering at the Royal Military Academy in Warsaw and in Paris, Kościuszko sailed to America in 1776, appointed colonel of engineers in the Continental Army.

Kościuszko was the strategic genius behind the American victory at Saratoga in 1777: his fortified earthworks on Bemis Heights gave General Horatio Gates an unassailable defensive position, trapping General Burgoyne's British army. He then spent two years designing and constructing the fortress of West Point on the Hudson River, which Benedict Arnold later attempted to betray. Returning to Poland, he led the heroic Kościuszko Uprising of 1794 against the Russian Empire and Prussia, emancipating serfs and winning the Battle of Racławice with peasant scythemen.