Poland: A Novel Part 22

Feliks did walk with Eulalia the next day, and before the week was out he and Eulalia met with Orzelski and Princess Lubomirska, who said: 'When a young man like Bukowski has no father, he having died with great heroism in a ridiculous cause, some older person must serve as parent, and I am proud to do so. I want the wedding to be held in my palace, for I have grown to love this young fellow and wish him well.'

It was arranged that the Mniszech-Lubonski wedding would take place on Tuesday and the Orzelski-Bukowski on Thursday, and they were the highlights of the fading winter season, one brighter and more lavish than the other, and fortunately, Princess Lubomirska was never told of the curious behavior of her protege on the night of his wedding, but it was known among her servants: 'The wedding ended in our palace at three, and a procession of sixty horses led Bukowski and his bride to her home on Krakow Suburb, where one must suppose the marriage was consummated, but toward three in the morning he was seen leaving the Orzelski house and walking, without a hat, through the mud and snow to Miodowa, where he stood silent in the street, staring at the new Palais Princesse. He was there at dawn, just staring at the palais, when Pan Orzelski himself came and without saying a word led the young man back home.'

That very afternoon Jan of the Beech Trees came to the Orzelski home with secret information that an officer of the cavalry wished to see Feliks, immediately, so the confused young man allowed himself to be taken to a coffeehouse near the cathedral where a group of fiery young men were speaking in hushed voices, which often rose into daring cries: 'Kosciuszko has appeared on the streets of Krakow, back from France and America, and he says that Poland can defend herself.'

'Is he to be trusted?'

'None better. A true patriot.'

'How old is he?'

'Nearly fifty, I suppose.'

'Too old! Too old! He'll start something, then quit at the first cannon fire.'

'Not Kosciuszko.'

'Has he a chance? I mean a serious possibility?'

'We can win!'

Feliks was impressed by the structure of this group: three sons of magnates, half a dozen lesser gentry like himself, four or five sons of merchants like Orzelski, and a handful of students from no discernible background. Seven were cavalry officers, the most eager of the lot, and all were of the opinion that patriots must move south immediately to support what appeared to be a major uprising.

The only question Feliks voiced was one of the most profound: 'Whom are we fighting against?' and one of the leaders said: 'Against them all.'

He learned, however, that the real battle, if one developed, would be against Russia, whose Empress Catherine was uttering bold threats. 'Can we defeat Russia?' one of the cavalrymen asked, and another answered: 'Prussia will move in to help us, you can be sure.' Feliks, having overheard the conversations at Niedzica, was not at all sure.

But during the next week excitement in Warsaw grew, especially when one of Kosciuszko's personal lieutenants slipped into the city to enlist volunteers in what he described as 'our great crusade.' Feliks was inclined to join those who that day started to move south, but as a new husband with the responsibility of introducing his bride to her country home at Bukowo, he felt an obligation to return south with Count Lubonski rather than with the revolutionaries, and on the long ride home when he asked the count what he thought of men like Kosciuszko, the answer was: 'A man of good family, but a renegade. Picked up rotten ideas in America and especially France. Poland, no matter how it splits, will always be a country of peasants down there and magnates up here, and if you apply your new money wisely, Feliks, you can become a magnate one of these days ... not soon, but quite possibly.'

'What will happen to Kosciuszko?'

'Forget that name! He's a flash. He'll march out of Krakow, and if the Russians don't destroy him, the Prussians will.'

'His people think the Prussians will rush to aid him.'

Lubonski broke into laughter. 'How ridiculous can you get, Feliks? It's Prussia that's determined to annihilate us.' He paused.

'And maybe with good cause. Maybe it will be better for us all when Poland quietly vanishes.'

'Do you believe that?' Feliks asked in obvious astonishment.

'Of course! Feliks, don't you see that with your new funds, Warsaw is your enemy! It's Warsaw that talks about liberties for the peasants ... land for the townspeople ... seats in the Seym for Jews, even ... Once we allow that festering sore to be eradicated, Russia and Austria and Prussia will surely protect interests like yours and mine.'

When Feliks started to ask: 'But is there not a general sense of-' Lubonski halted him: 'I'll tell you what the general sense is-revolution. And it has got to be stamped out. Men like you and me will soon be fighting against Kosciuszko, not for him.'

On the second of April 1794, word reached Bukowo that General Kosciuszko-he held that t.i.tle in the armies of three nations: France, America, Poland-had marched from Krakow at the head of two battalions and twelve heavy guns, and on the very next day Jan of the Beech Trees rushed into the manor house, where Eulalia was beginning to supervise things, with even more disturbing news: 'General Tormasov of Russia is marching with a big army toward Raclawice just across the Vistula.' And on the fifth of April messengers sweating with excitement crossed the river: 'Kosciuszko has won a great victory. Routed the Russians completely.'

Now the contrast between Count Lubonski, defender of the old freedoms, and his liege Bukowski, aspirer toward the new, became irreconcilable, because the former summoned his private army to support the Russians, while the latter, attended by his peasant Buk, opted to join Kosciuszko, and though neither Lubonski nor Bukowski would have fired upon the other personally, each considered the other a traitor to Poland's cause and hoped that the traitor's side would perish.

In a small boat Feliks and Jan poled themselves across the river on 6 May 1794, the master armed with two guns, the serf with a mowing scythe and a length of metal-studded ash tree. When they landed on the far sh.o.r.e, they were greeted with exciting news: 'General Kosciuszko himself is going to meet with us.'

'Where?' Feliks asked.

'Here at Polaniec,' the men said, and they were correct.

One of the crucial events in Polish history was destined to occur only a few miles from Bukowo at the ancient market village of Polaniec, and all that night patriots discussed the first great victory at Raclawice and those still to come as the Russian forces of General Tormasov and his Polish allies-among them, Count Lubonski-were driven out of both old Poland and the territories stolen in the two part.i.tions. It was a night glowing with the sparks of triumph, but it did not compare with what was to happen on the following day.

It was about a mile from the riverbank, near which the men had camped, to the tree-lined field where the general was to meet a large a.s.sembly of local citizens, hoping to enroll them in his crusade; he was especially eager to entice men of substance like Bukowski from the Austrian territories, and all that morning little boats from the occupied zone slipped across the river bringing new conscripts to the cause.

Symbolically, Feliks and Jan, master and serf, walked together up the gentle hill from the river and along the beautiful country road leading to Polaniec, joining a growing crowd, each man armed in his own peculiar way but most with scythes, which they were prepared to use against Russian guns. They came at last to the field, where several thousand irregular troops, themselves variously armed, marshaled the newcomers into orderly units well scattered over the area.

At noon a wild shout of victory arose from the troops, for Kosciuszko himself was coming up the slight rise, and what caused the shouting was the fact that he was wearing, for the first time in this campaign, the heavy white felted peasant's jacket popular in Krakow. 'He's one of us,' shouted the men with scythes, and the orderliness which the troops had tried to enforce broke down as men from everywhere rushed forward to greet their hero.

Forty-eight and in the glory years of his life, he looked a veritable hero. Not tall, not robust, he was spiritually commanding, a handsome, compact man with an almost angelic clean-shaven face framed in copious hair which came to his shoulders. He wore his usual uniform with the air of a patrician, which he was, and his peasant's cloak with an easy informality that made him one of the people. Most of all, he was a leader, for when the rest of Poland lay sunk in chaos, betrayal and despair, he alone had stepped forward with a promise that the nation could be freed, and with his early victories against almost insuperable odds, had proved his claim to the spot prepared for him. Without dismounting, he launched into his oration: 'Men of Poland! With few, we proved that we can triumph and bring real freedom to our imperiled land. With many, we shall drive the invaders from our fields, reunite our severed parts, and establish a new nation founded on justice.

'I speak especially to you men with scythes and clubs who fought as your ancestors did against the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald. When victory comes, you are to know a freedom you have never known before, and as of this moment your liberation begins.

'Peasants of Poland, you are free! Peasants of Poland, you have all the rights other men have, and I shall name them. The land you have worked so faithfully can never be taken away from you by your landlord. The forests you have tended shall be your forests too, and everything that grows therein you, too, shall share, the wood and rabbits and the deer. The days of labor which you have given your magnates and gentry shall be diminished by three-quarters. Where last year you worked eight months for them, you shall now work two.

'We form a new partnership in Poland, and we form it now, the master and the peasant side by side, rejoicing in new freedoms, new liberties for all.'

The proclamation was so sensational that it sent shivers up men's spines and giddiness to their heads; few of Kosciuszko's listeners could a.s.similate it entirely, but one landholder, who stood to lose much under the new rules, cried with remarkable insight: 'Hooray! France and America have come to Poland!' And the air was filled with waving scythes.

From his horse, General Kosciuszko reached out and grabbed one of the scythes and demonstrated how it was to be used in battle: 'From the most ancient times farmers have used the scythe to mow their grain. Look, it forms a letter L, long handle, short cutting edge. If you carry it into battle that way, nothing can be achieved, because the Russians aren't going to stand there waiting for you to come close and cut them down.' Men who had already been in battle laughed. 'No! What you must do is this.' And deftly he untied the little ropes which bound the blade to the haft, then retied them in a way to hold the long, sharp blade as a forward extension of the handle, transforming it into a pike eight or nine feet long. Stabbing and jabbing with his new weapon, Kosciuszko cried: 'The weapon of freedom.' Then, touching his peasant's cloak, he added: 'The uniform of freedom!' and his rude army bellowed its approval.

Bukowski and his serf Jan did not return home; they were caught up in the frenzy and would remain so for the duration of this amazing effort. They marched with Kosciuszko toward a small town west of Sandomierz where a Russian detachment was garrisoned, and with the scythe-men rushing forward, impervious to gunfire and the roar of cannon, they overwhelmed the enemy. In this battle, which lasted only forty minutes, Feliks captured two fine Russian horses, and thinking to reestablish the old tradition, he took one to Jan of the Beech Trees, saying: 'Jan, hold this for me in case I need him in battle,' and to his astonishment, Jan said: 'I fight on my own, and you on your own,' and he would not tend his master's horse as his ancestors had faithfully done for seven centuries. Feliks solved the problem by finding a young lad to serve as his squire, but now he had to pay money for this service.

Some of the gentry were outraged by Kosciuszko's revolutionary idea that peasants could be set free, and after they experienced the kind of rebellion which Feliks had seen with Jan, they muttered protests: 'This can never work in Poland. Peasants are born to serve, and the harder they work for us, the more content they are.'

'They're cattle, really,' one landowner said.

'I did not say that,' a protestor said. 'I asked Bishop Proszynski about that very topic, and he told me firmly: "The peasant has a soul. He is a real human being, but he was born to work and needs no alphabet or books." Kosciuszko is terribly wrong in thinking he can give them freedom.'

Some of the disenchanted asked to speak with the general, who kept himself open to all, and after he had listened to their complaint that Polish peasants were different from French or American, he said firmly: 'I have been forced to travel much. I've seen many lands. And I've learned one thing. All men are alike in the eyes of G.o.d. All are ent.i.tled to the same freedoms.'

'But the Polish peasant 'Is exactly the same as the French peasant, who is exactly the same as the French n.o.bleman.'

'Could the French peasant appreciate a good wine?'

'I have seen them do so ... when they invaded the master's cellars with guns and torches.'

'Aren't you preaching revolution against the gentry?'

'I am trying to avoid revolution against the gentry. Come my way, dear friends, and you will save Poland. You'll create a much better society, believe me.'

The more Feliks saw of Kosciuszko, the more he admired him.

'This man is all of one piece,' he told the dissidents. 'He treats his horse with the same respect he treats me, and I've seen him treat my peasant Jan with the same respect he treats his horse. And he can laugh at himself.'

One night at the campfire before a morning battle with a Russian army, Kosciuszko sat with his cavalrymen, smoke from the embers wreathing his handsome head.'I knew a lot of trouble with General Washington, maybe the best man on earth these days. He made fun of my name, said no one could p.r.o.nounce it or even remember it. Recommended that I change it to Kook. I grew angry and told him: "Look here, General, my name has the same number of letters as yours, and the same number of syllables, too. It's Koshchoosh-ko, and anyone with an education ought to be able to say that," but he continued to p.r.o.nounce it in four syllables Koss-eee-you-sko and sometimes even Ko-shun-ko, so I stopped trying to educate him.'

'Was he a good general?' Feliks asked.

'He was a lucky one, and that's even better.'

'How, lucky?'

'About fifteen times when I served with him the English could have killed us dead had they attacked at the moment. Always they hesitated, allowed us to regroup, or bring up reinforcements, and I call that luck.'

'May the same luck attend us,' an older man said, and Kosciuszko replied: 'It is for that we pray.'

During one waiting period, when it looked as if the rebels were going to drive the Russians clear out of all the Polands, old and new, Feliks and Jan slipped away, crossed the Vistula, and sneaked back into their homes, where Feliks saw with amazement the many good things that Eulalia had done in his absence, and he noticed that when his wife was dressed as a rural housewife rather than as a Warsaw belle, she could be quite handsome, the kind of woman Princess Lubomirska must have been when King Stanislaw August, the young Poniatowski, rejected her. It was rewarding to talk with her, for she loved to explain in detail what exactly she had been doing: 'I decided that the stables should have windows, and in the village I found this man with remarkable skills as a carpenter, so I paid him to-'

'You paid him?'

'Yes. Your general's proclamation at Polaniec reached here and the peasants believe they are free.'

'But ...'

'I see no great problem, Feliks. We pay them a little. They work harder. We earn more. And everybody's better off.'

She was still, as Lubomirska had so harshly described her: 'fat and red and positively oafish,' but she was also pregnant, and this gave her an appealing dignity, and since her father had supervised her education, she had acc.u.mulated ideas from the books in three languages which she had brought with her to the manor house. Eulalia Bukowska was exciting to be with, for she had already adjusted to the new world that was coming and saw a score of ways by which she could use it to her husband's advantage.

'Win the battles and hurry home,' she told Feliks as he prepared to rejoin Kosciuszko for the inevitable confrontation with the Russians at the gates of Warsaw, but before that crucial battle could be joined, a Russian general of supreme talent arrived in Poland to replace all those who had allowed Kosciuszko to outsmart them. He was Aleksandr Vasilievich Suvorov, a scrawny, ill-tempered sixty-five-year-old military genius who had spent half his life battling the enemies of Catherine the Great on distant fields and half-battling the Russian establishment, which despised him for his unorthodox behavior. He was a remorseless adversary, and when he appeared on the scene the Russian backbone stiffened.

The showdown battle occurred at the village of Maciejowice, some distance south of Warsaw, and in the early stages Kosciuszko's extremely brave peasants with their scythes created their customary havoc with the Russian lines, wave after wave of pike-wielding serfs simply smothering the czarina's troops, but in the end the discipline of a professional army tipped the balance. In one cruel charge-three hundred Polish peasants armed only with clubs against eight hundred Russian riflemen-Jan of the Beech Trees was shot four times through the chest and head, his dream of freedom ending on a gra.s.sy mound.

Kosciuszko, wounded, was captured and taken to a Russian prison, but he had encouraged some of the younger officers to escape northward to oppose Suvorov in his attack upon Warsaw. Feliks Bukowski was one of these, and in October, when the first snows were already falling, he slipped into the city, riding one horse and leading another. As he went down Krakow Suburb and turned into Senatorska, thinking to announce himself to Lubomirska, he saw Miodowa, the Street of Sweet Nectar, and turned abruptly into it, riding slowly toward the Palais Princesse, where his beloved lived in her little marble mansion.

He reined in his mount, and for some minutes stood quietly, his two horses gladly resting from their long march, and after a while children gathered, asking him about the battles, and he told them that General Kosciuszko was lost and that the battle for freedom was imperiled. They asked him where he had got his horses, and he explained that they had been captured from the Russians. They wanted to know the horses' names, and he told them 'Czar and Czarina,' and one little boy yelled 'They're both men horses,' and he said 'I must have the names wrong.'

The noise in the street attracted attention from within the marble palais, and a stern footman appeared to caution silence: 'The young mistress is gravely ill and deserves quiet.'

'Who? Who?' Feliks cried.

'Pani Lubonska, the Mniszech mistress,' the footman said. 'She delivered her son and he does well, but she herself is endangered.'

Feliks leaped from his horse, throwing the reins to the boy who had noticed that both horses were male, and shouted: 'I must see her.'

'That you cannot do,' the footman protested, and when Feliks brushed past him, dashing toward the door, the footman began to bellow, making far more noise than the one he came to silence: 'Master! Master!'

At the entrance to the palais, Roman Lubonski intercepted him: 'Feliks! From where?'

'From the battlefield. Kosciuszko's lost.'

'I expected that,' the young n.o.bleman said; he had not joined his father's army opposing the revolution, but spiritually he had supported the Russians, and was pleased to know that the rebels had suffered a major defeat.

'I want to see Elzbieta,' Feliks said, at which Roman began to weep: 'You cannot. Not even I am allowed ...'

'Is she so ill?'

'Gravely.' And Roman retreated into the palais, closing the door behind him and shutting Feliks, his companion of many years, off from any contact.

For two days Feliks stood watch in Miodowa; he slept spasmodically at Lubomirska's palace, talking with her in brief interchanges and learning that she reveled in the approach of Suvorov and the imminent termination of Poniatowski's kingship. Once Feliks said: 'The poor king, Suvorov attacking him from the outside, you trying to bring him down from the inside.' She replied: 'He surrendered his crown the moment it was placed on his n.o.ble brow, for it did not fit. He had no concept of what it signified. And his cowardice before Catherine disqualified him. It has been thirty years of unceasing surrender and it's time we terminated it.'

One morning she told Feliks: 'I'm as bad as Poniatowski. I ought to have you arrested as a traitor-a Kosciuszko man ... freeing the peasants and all that rubbish. But I love you, Feliks ... By the way, how's the little Orzelska, though G.o.d knows she's not so little.'

'She's bigger now, Pani. She's pregnant.'

'Thank G.o.d! That's what matters, Feliks. A family, a farm, a cradle, obedience up and down-that's the soul of Poland and now you're a part of it.'

'Your nineteen castles, Pani? Should you be allowed to keep so many?'

'Poland needs leadership, Feliks. Only the magnates can give it. And besides, I rebuilt my castles and palaces, and no one else would.'

'Your hundred and fifty thousand peasants-the ones you own. Kosciuszko told me-'

'Kosciuszko is a fool, and he will die in a Russian prison. The basic Poland will never change.'

She encouraged him to see the Mniszech girl, and on the third day he went boldly to the door of Palais Princesse and demanded entrance. There was a scuffle, during which he forced his way in. Dashing upstairs, he threw open door after door until he located the sickroom, barging in just before Roman Lubonski could stop him.

'Elzbieta!' he cried, rushing toward her, but when he saw her dreadful pallor he realized that she was near death, and he halted some feet from her bed, standing with his head bowed.

She was even more beautiful than he had remembered-a young girl on a sleigh, a young woman cheering the bear hunters on their trip into the mountains, a young bride kneeling before the priests, and now a young mother approaching death. He did not speak, but his heart called her name, this splendid Mniszech woman who stood in the grand line of czarinas and murderesses and ghostly figures dressed in white on castle turrets. Oh, Elzbieta, it was worth a lifetime to have kissed you once.

Tears like the river at Niedzica rushing through the gorge came from his eyes, and after a while, without ever having spoken to the dying girl or without her having been aware that he had been in her room, he allowed Roman Lubonski to lead him away. All that day he stood in Miodowa, and at dusk, when bells inside the Palais Princesse began to toll her pa.s.sing, he bowed his head and even his body, as if the weight of centuries lay upon him.

The end of Kosciuszko's insurrection came with a force so terrible that all Europe shuddered. It was never known for sure who gave the order for the Pacification of Praga, or in what form General Suvorov received it; it was suspected that Catherine delivered it in person, but some believed that Fyodor Kuprin wrote it out as part of his grand design for the Final Part.i.tion: 'You must teach these Polish pigs a lesson.' No better agent for such a lesson than Suvorov could have been found, for on 1 November 1794 he threw his ma.s.sive Russian army around the suburb of Praga on the right bank of the Vistula opposite Warsaw, where a last remnant of some 14,000 Polish patriots, including Feliks Bukowski, had a.s.sembled to try to protect the capital. Praga also contained about 10,000 civilians who were doing what they could to support the defenders of their little settlement.

Against these Poles, Suvorov had brought up an army of nearly 40,000 professionals, and when the battle for Praga started he told them: 'No mercy. No prisoners. We must teach these pigs a lesson.'

The siege lasted only three days, the first, second and third of November, for on the fourth the Russians broke through, and then the terrible slaughter began. Of the 14,000 Polish troops, only 4,000 escaped to flee across the Vistula; the rest were gunned down, mercilessly. Those who tried to surrender were shot as they raised their hands in the air. Thousands more were bayoneted when they sought to submit. Those who tried to resist were clubbed to death with rifle b.u.t.ts. Groups of twenty and thirty Russians would chase down an alley after one Polish soldier and stomp him to death when they caught him. And the only ones who survived within the city were those few like Feliks who hid themselves in cellars until the fury pa.s.sed.

But it was the ruthless slaughter of the civilian population which stunned Europe, because Suvorov's men rampaged through Praga, shooting everyone who moved and stabbing those who didn't. Knifings, beheadings, shootings, castrations, rape and then piercing became the rule. It is said of such horrible affairs that 'the gutters ran with blood,' but that is ridiculous; however, in Praga blood did drip into the gutters, staining them forever with the hideous vengeance of the Russians.

On the evening of the last day, a roving patrol of Russian soldiers heard a noise in a cellar, and when they inspected they uncovered Feliks Bukowski, two Polish peasants with scythes, and a woman whose infant child had made the noise. With the savage sweep of a rifle b.u.t.t they silenced the child forever, and with two bayonets they slew the mother. The sight of the peasants with scythes infuriated them so that they stabbed each of the two men a score of times, and then, recognizing Feliks as a member of the gentry who may have encouraged insurrection against Catherine's power, they kicked him to death, their heavy boots breaking most of his bones.

The dream of real freedom was ended. The sham of Golden Freedom was restored.

In early 1795, Baron von Eschl and Fyodor Kuprin met for the last time in the Granicki palace in conquered Warsaw, and now they were a.s.sisted by Count von Starhemberg from Vienna. With cold efficiency the three victors restudied the map already agreed upon at Niedzica, and only slight variations had to be made in the boundary lines that separated the territories of the three part.i.tioning countries.

Poland vanished, the new lands of Russia, Prussia and Austria meeting at a point not far from Brzesc Litewski, which the rest of the world would know as Brest-Litovsk. Each of the conquerors acquired lands he had long l.u.s.ted after: Austria gaining Lublin and Pulawy; Russia picking up the Ukrainian estates owned by magnates like Lubonski and Granicki.

There was no justification for this terrible rape of a free land. Such nations as Switzerland had long been encouraged to exist as buffers between larger powers, and there was no reason why Poland should have been denied this privilege, except that she had committed two fatal errors: she had evolved no way to defend herself with a stable government, regular taxation and a dependable army; and in her weakness she had endeavored to initiate freedoms which threatened the autocracies which surrounded her. Had her neighbors been England, France and America instead of Russia, Prussia and Austria, she would surely have been permitted to exist, for the innovations she was proposing were merely extensions of what that first trio had already accepted. To be both weak and daring is for a nation an impossibility.

But it was what Baron von Eschl proposed during the final meeting that would shock the world when it was revealed; for many years his memorandum was unknown in foreign capitals, for it was not allowed to circulate, and there would always be some who would deny that it was ever promulgated, but it had been: It is the wish of my King, who is supported by the Empress of Russia, that from this day henceforth the word Poland never be used in any official doc.u.ment or spoken in any government circle. In our several portions every effort must be made to stamp out the language, the history and the observations.