Kosciuszko was appointed dictator, and a supreme council was established to assist him.
On the outbreak of Kosciuszko's insurrection he returned to Poland, and as member of the national government and minister of finance took a leading part in affairs.
But his radicalism had now become of a disruptive quality, and he quarrelled with and even thwarted Kosciuszko because the dictator would not admit that the Polish republic could only be saved by the methods of Jacobinism.
In the interval between these visits he fought for his country during the war of the second partition, and would subsequently have served under Kosciuszko also had he not been arrested on his way to Poland at Brussels by the Austrian government.
The little Polish army of 46,000 overthrows men, under Prince Joseph Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko, did all that was possible under the circumstances.