A Batalha de Racławice

When Matejko finished this in 1888, Poland had not existed as a country for nearly a century, its lands split between Russia, Prussia and Austria. He painted a moment from 1794, the Battle of Racławice, when Tadeusz Kościuszko led a rising against Russian rule and won the day largely thanks to peasants charging with their scythes turned upright into weapons. Kościuszko, on horseback, wears an American army coat. He had fought in the American Revolution, and Matejko dressed him this way on purpose, as a sign of a country where all men stood equal before the law. Poles living under all three foreign powers gave money to buy the picture, and it was handed to the Kraków museum where it still hangs.