Selim III's New Army

A month later.

Stanisław II returned to Warsaw from Saint Petersburg in accordance with the Ceasefire Agreement.

Only Prince Poniatowski and a dozen or so officials were there to welcome him; both sides of the road seemed cold and deserted.

The King did not return to the Royal Castle, but instead went to his little villa in the Southern Suburbs of Warsaw.

The next day, Stanisław II formally announced that he would officially marry his mistress, Elżbieta Szydłowska.

In truth, they had already lived together for many years and had two children.

But before this, in order not to enrage the King's public mistress—Catherine II—they had never dared make their relationship public.

Now, he no longer needed to worry that the Russian Tsar would be unhappy.

Or rather, she was already extremely unhappy; a little more hardly mattered.

At the end of that month, at the King's request and with Parliament's unanimous approval, Prince Poniatowski took office as Regent of Poland and assumed overall charge of government affairs.

After the King's engagement banquet ended, a saying began to circulate among the Polish nobility and senior officials: that the King had only feigned compliance with the Tsar, buying Poland precious time to prepare for war. Many people went to the King's little villa to sincerely thank him or apologize to him.

The common people, however, did not quite accept this. What they loved most were the absurd jokes about the King and the Tsar.

Another two months or so passed. Of the soldiers who had followed Kościuszko in risking death to penetrate deep into Russia's heartland, the 3,900 who still survived finally returned home through prisoner exchanges, as well as an 800,000-Ruble ransom paid by the Polish Government.

Among them were 2,800 men captured in the final battle in Crimea, as