Casting a steely gaze over the square named in his honour is a gloomy looking Field Marshal Piłsudski, a man many Poles hold responsible for winning the country its independence in 1918. Regarded as a political and military hero this man did more than most to free Poland from the shackles of Russian control; his early years saw him imprisoned in Siberia after being wrongfully convicted of plotting to assassinate the Tsar, though his finest hour undoubtedly came in 1920 when he beat off the Bolshevik hordes at the gates of Warsaw, inadvertently saving a battered post-war Europe from being flooded by the rampant Soviets. Unveiled in 1995 this particular monument found on Piłsudski Square is the work of Tadeusz Łodziana, and Piłsudski fans can view another such monument to the man on ul. Belwederska.