Poland: A Novel Part 34

He was a ruthless commander with one simple strategy: 'Destroy the troops, burn the villages'-and if in prosecuting these ends he also ravaged the civil population, allowing or even encouraging rape, pillage and arson, his foes had to acknowledge that in the end he usually achieved a complete victory.

But now he realized that he must step up the speed of his offensive, for General Tukhachevsky had issued an incendiary threat at the gates of Warsaw: 'On this day we shall revenge desecrated Kiev and drown the Polish army in its own blood. The pathway to world fire lies across the dead body of Poland. We shall have Warsaw by nightfall.' If that happened, Budenny would have to subdue Zamosc, sweep on to a crossing of the Vistula at Bukowo, and close the Russian pincers about the heartland of Poland before galloping on to Berlin and Paris.

Budenny was a devoted Communist who never fully understood the movement of which he was such a powerful defender, but he did value it as a dynamic force which would enable Russia to gain the seaports on the Atlantic for which she had always yearned. 'We shall be the ones to take Antwerp and Bordeaux and Le Havre,' he a.s.sured his staff. 'This next little target, then nothing to fear in Germany, and our troops on the English Channel before winter.'

The three European journalists who had been allowed to travel with him, barely able to keep up with his dashing tactics, reported that nothing seemed strong enough to halt him: 'He sets impossible timetables for the advance of his troops, then exceeds all his target dates. He is a modern Attila, a new Genghis Khan, and Europe will never be the same after he pa.s.ses through.'

His plan for Zamosc was simple. He knew he had crushed the foremost cavalry of Poland and Ukraine and that only second-echelon hors.e.m.e.n remained. But he also knew from careful scouting reports that in centuries past this hard little nut of Zamosc had withstood sieges by the Swedes, by Turks and by Ukrainians and that its walls did not easily surrender to the invader, so he did not approach it lightly.

Of course, at this period Zamosc no longer had outer walls of any dimension; the famous old battlements had been engulfed by the outward growth of the city, but its robust character and the quality of its citizens combined to make it a formidable bastion. On the other hand, once it was pa.s.sed, an army would enjoy an almost unimpeded avenue into Germany. Zamosc was worth taking and worth taking quickly.

He would make a feint in force at the easternmost point of the city, trusting that this would draw the better Polish cavalry to that area. He would then send a light but noisy detachment to the north, creating the impression that this was to be the major a.s.sault, but at the same time he would himself lead his princ.i.p.al force to the south in a thundering rush which would disorganize any remaining Polish troops and allow him easy entrance to the city from the west. Obviously, this plan would mean that Budenny and his best troops would run into Major Bukowski's irregulars as they moved in unexpectedly from the south. It would be a fearfully uneven skirmish, brief and fatal, but now the two contingents were on their way in the dark of night and nothing could recall them.

At the precise moment when General Budenny's cavalry was riding forth to confront Major Bukowski's, Leon Trotsky a.s.sembled at Brzesc Litewski, ninety miles north of Zamosc, the representatives Lubonski of Poland, Jurgela of Lithuania and Vondrachuk of Ukraine to dictate to them the humiliating terms under which the victorious Red Army would allow the three defeated nations to exist. As Trotsky revealed in a cynical speech: 'Words at Brest, swords at Warsaw.'

Late at night, after formal sessions had ended with Communism's brutal demands on the table, the three envoys met in a shabby hotel to discuss their gloomy future: the Russian chairman had left with them the text of General Tukhachevsky's insulting battle order: 'We shall drown the Polish army in its own blood.'

Lubonski refrained from saying 'I told you so,' but memories of past discussions did make the air heavy, and now when he spoke from his vast knowledge of nations and their aspirations, he was listened to: 'We failed in victory. Maybe we can salvage something from defeat.'

'What?' Vondrachuk asked.

'I think that now more than ever we must unite our aspirations ... form one nation along the American principle-each area protected in its vital interests and customs, but all under one supreme parliament.'

'We would be overwhelmed by you two,' Jurgela protested.

'And if you don't join us, you will be overwhelmed by either Germany or Russia.'

'Then there is no hope for a small nation like us?'

'There is every hope. If you join us.'

'But will Russia allow any of us to exist? After Warsaw falls and her armies get into France?'

'The larger she gets, the more certain it is she will have to organize into smaller units,' Lubonski said with absolute a.s.surance. 'She will have learned her lesson from Austria.'

'You think there will be a Lithuania? Or a Ukraine?'

Now Vondrachuk became the focus, and he said gravely: 'If Warsaw falls, Ukraine falls. Russia will never allow us our freedom. We will never be a nation.' He sat silent for some moments, then added: 'And we wait tonight for news that Warsaw has fallen.'

Count Lubonski could not accept this doleful prediction: 'We must suppose that Warsaw has fallen and that Tukhachevsky's troops are on their way to Paris. All Europe is to be Communist. Well, in that moment it is more imperative than ever that we three hold together so that we can achieve the kind of Communism we prefer. If we do, there's still a chance for a decent national life. But only if we hold together.'

He made his plea so pa.s.sionately, and with such a wealth of experience and strength of character supporting him, that he almost persuaded his two national enemies to listen, but at this moment in the dead of night a messenger hurried in from Warsaw with the astonishing news that Polish forces were holding the city and even beginning to drive Tukhachevsky's armies back: 'There's a real chance for victory!'

'Were you there?' Vondrachuk asked. 'Did you see with your own eyes?'

'Of course not. The telegraph came as far as Biala Podlaska. There the Russians stopped it. They didn't want you to know.'

'How did you get here?'

'On horse, stumbled right into the big meeting place and was almost arrested. But what I tell you is true.'

The meeting continued, but now in a vastly different mood. Vondrachuk said: 'If only Budenny could be defeated at Zamosc! By G.o.d, we'd have them on the run!'

And then everything would be changed, for as Jurgela said: 'We wouldn't have to form any kind of union. Lithuania would have its own nation, its own parliament.'

'Why do you say that?' Lubonski asked, feeling common sense draining out of the shabby room.

'Because if Russia loses at Warsaw, and Zamosc too ... I mean, both arms of her thrust cut off at the same time ...'

'Budenny does not have a habit of losing,' Lubonski reminded the men.

'But if G.o.d grants us a miracle at Warsaw, why not a second one at Zamosc?'

Vondrachuk spoke: 'Jurgela's right. If Russia absorbs two major defeats, she'll be too busy to worry about Lithuania and Ukraine. G.o.d, this night could be a turning point in world history.'

'Men! Men!' Lubonski pleaded. 'If by some miracle we do win a double victory, it will be more imperative than ever that we form a union to defend ourselves in the long years ahead.'

'We would be very uneasy with Poland,' Witold Jurgela said, and in this verdict he summarized the long years when thoughtless and ignorant Polish magnates dominated vast tracts of Lithuanian land, but he conveniently forgot those longer centuries when Lithuanian princes dominated Poland.

'Our Ukrainians,' agreed Vondrachuk, 'could not easily erase memories of our wars with Poland. Especially the wars of the last two years.'

'Do you hear me,' Lubonski asked with infinite patience, 'reciting the horrors that visited Poland when your Cossack Chmielnicki invaded Poland? The hundreds of thousands he slew?'

'They were mostly Jews,' Vondrachuk said, 'and our people had to break out of the bondage your magnates imposed.' He stopped, looked afresh at the count, and said: 'Your Lubonski ancestors were among the worst, and now you come asking us to forgive these centuries of abuse?'

'I do,' Lubonski said, and he hoped that his reasonable plea would encourage these obdurate men to forget recent history and look instead toward a promising future, but he achieved nothing, for at dawn a telegram arrived confirming what the messenger had reported: POLISH FORCES HAVE DRIVEN THE COMMUNISTS BACK FROM ALL WARSAW BRIDGEHEADS. A ROUT IS UNDER WAY.

Taras Vondrachuk fell to his knees, clasped his hands, and began to pray: 'Let Budenny be crushed.' Lubonski, listening to the prayer, suspected that it might be better for eastern Europe if Budenny were not crushed, for he could see in a Polish victory the end of any sensible discussion among the three nations. Arrogance would displace humility, and each would stumble along toward some common disaster which would engulf them all; they would be like simple sheep trying to exist within a circle of wolves.

But even as he phrased these prophetic thoughts, he visualized his rugged old castle at Gorka and the fine new palace at Bukowo and the Lubomirski wonders at Lancut and the peaceful villages between, and he did not want to see them overthrown by the Communists and destroyed, as they had been so often in the past: 'G.o.d, let the miracle happen. Let Budenny's ravagers be crushed.'

Semyon Budenny had no intention of being crushed. He never had been and he never would be. When word reached him, frantically and with the messenger gasping, that his partner Mikhail Tukhachevsky had suffered a major reverse at Warsaw, he gritted his teeth and told his men: 'Not here.'

Dispatching riders to his two subordinate commands, the one heading directly at the eastern approaches to Zamosc, the other circling to attack from the north, he gave stern orders: 'It is essential that Zamosc fall by noon. To give encouragement to our brothers at the north.' He therefore tightened his own formation and rode with even greater determination toward the victory he felt a.s.sured would be his when he struck from the south.

Major Wiktor Bukowski, fifty-two years old, six pounds underweight, still looked rather debonair. Dressed in the uniform of a Polish country gentleman, the kind he had worn when riding at Der Schmelz in Vienna and on the parade grounds inside the fort at Przemysl, he paused occasionally to smooth down his small mustache or brush the dust from his tunic. He knew that within a few hours at the latest he would lead his nondescript men into direct confrontation with the finest mounted army in the world, but he had no way of comprehending the power that the Russian cavalry would have. All he knew was that he must somehow impede it, and what cannon or gunfire he might meet in doing so, he did not care to guess. He was a Polish gentleman out riding on his best horse, and that was enough.

Janko Buk, who had experienced a wide variety of nonsense in his life, from the alleys of Vienna to the formal picnics at Castle Gorka, had a rather better understanding of what lay ahead than his one-time master. 'Those Russians know how to use the saber,' he whispered to those riding close to him. He did not want to frighten the troops behind or discourage in any way his leader, but he was apprehensive about the terrible power of Communist cavalry: 'They didn't ride so fast from Kiev without killing somebody.'

Benedykt Buk, only nineteen, had no concept of what such a battle might be; he rode his good Arab and led the three replacements. He had no idea whatever of how to keep in touch with Pan Bukowski or his father once the battle started, and since he had no weapons of his own, he supposed he was to stay clear of the fight, waiting till critical moments when someone came back for his spares. He hoped the older men would be able to find him, but as distances increased and confusion grew, he did not see how this was going to be possible. Indeed, he began to look upon the three horses he was leading as detriments which would prevent him from joining the battle. Another groom told him: 'I think we're to protect the horses so they can be used in a hurry if we have to retreat.' The rear of Major Bukowski's contingent was obviously not hopeful about the outcome, but even they could not imagine the fury with which Budenny's crack troops would soon fall upon them.

There was, however, one sign of hope: a rather large band of riders had mysteriously come out of the night to occupy Major Bukowski's right flank, and an even larger ma.s.s had evolved on the left flank, so that the Vistula men were in the dead center of a substantial force. It could not be termed an army, or even a regiment, for it lacked any military cohesion or leadership, but it was formidable.

Now a colonel from the regular cavalry rode across the front, west to east, advising the leaders of each contingent: 'We will not charge first. Let Budenny's men come at us. Let them break their ranks. Then we cut at them from the flanks.'

He asked if this was understood, but even as the improvised leaders gave their a.s.sent, he could see that the restlessness of the civilians behind would make discipline most difficult: 'Major Bukowski, do you understand?'

'I do.'

'Can I rely on you?'

'To the death.'

And then, out of gloom to the northeast, came the dreaded hors.e.m.e.n of Semyon Budenny's advance guard, men easy in the saddle, with superb beasts to carry them forward. They had expected an unimpeded canter to the western approaches to the town and this sudden appearance of a real force of mounted adversaries surprised them. But they did not break. In orderly rank they approached to a distance from which they could calculate the strength of the Polish irregulars, then turned and rode back to Budenny himself, who was somewhat distressed to hear that he might have to fight his way to the west.

When dawn was well at hand, the Russians launched a fierce a.s.sault on the Poles, one that carried them deep into the civilian mob, and at first the slaughter was terrifying, but then the Polish farmers realized that if one escaped that first awful crush, one had a good chance of doing some damage to the disorganized Russians, and a counterslaughter began.

At the height of the melee, Major Bukowski was caught up in a great frenzy, and seeing an opportunity to inflict real hurt upon one of Budenny's exposed columns, he ignored his instructions, rallied his men, and galloped with terrible force right at the heart of the Russian position. It was crazy. It was impossible. It was a band of rural riders going up against the best trained hors.e.m.e.n.

With wild enthusiasm, Wiktor Bukowski, this frivolous man who had never accomplished a constructive thing in his life, this dilettante who had thought more of his waxed mustache or his tailored trousers than of Poland, led his tattered troops with a bravura which would have drawn respect from Julius Caesar or Hannibal. Always in the lead, always cheering his men, he created havoc among the astonished Russians. Miraculously, he held his hors.e.m.e.n together, shooting and stabbing as they galloped on, turning as a well-drilled team behind his dashing figure and raging through the enemy lines.

Bukowski's irregulars may have accomplished little in this first charge, killing only a few of the foe, yet they accomplished everything, because they diverted attention long enough for the real surprise of this morning battle to be effective.

From the west, obedient to plans spelled out long before, appeared a large body of real Polish cavalry; it had been held in reserve for just such a moment, and when the confusion of the Russians was greatest, agitated by the wild incursion of Bukowski's men, these professionals saw an opportunity they could not reasonably have antic.i.p.ated, and they drove with great force at the disorganized Communists.

Budenny had been in tight spots before and had acquired his reputation as the foremost cavalry commander because he knew ways to extricate himself from trouble, so he ordered his men to ignore Bukowski's gadflies and charge directly at the oncoming Polish regulars. A mighty clash ensued, and for the first time in this Russian sweep to the west, their hors.e.m.e.n were unable to rout the enemy. The Poles maintained their formations, and what was more ominous, they surged purposefully ahead.

Now Bukowski's men, a totally disrupted rabble, were able to hack and hew, creating enormous confusion, and they were soon augmented by other volunteer units which up to now had obeyed orders and refrained from frontal a.s.sault. The fight became a monstrous riot, with rural units of a hundred men or even a thousand completely out of control as they overran the Russian regulars. Had Budenny been free to turn his Cossacks on this Polish rabble, he could have annihilated them, but whenever he tried to do so, the Polish regulars coming at him from the west demanded his full attention, so the peasants and the farmers and the lesser n.o.bility from the Vistula were free to ravage the Russians as they willed.

Always at their head rode Wiktor Bukowski, his superb horsemanship allowing him to move here and there wherever the informal fighting was thickest. He seemed immortal; Janko Buk, riding on his left flank, was shot through the head and tumbled from his horse, dead before he struck the ground, but Bukowski galloped on, picking up new companions, two of whom were also killed by Russian fire. He was indifferent to death, either his own or that of others, and as the battle raged, it was he who held the volunteers in whatever frail order they managed. He was a fearful force to have been let loose in such a situation, and he harried Budenny's men most savagely.

In any great battle or any war there comes a moment when the forces are evenly matched, when victory is a reasonable possibility for either side; then knowing men watch for the isolated incident which reveals that the tide has turned and is irreversible. Budenny now faced such a moment.

What information did he have to guide him? He knew that Tukhachevsky was in retreat at Warsaw. More important, perhaps, he was painfully aware that his last three requests for additional materiel had been unanswered because of a breakdown in the supply train. On the hopeful side, couriers a.s.sured him that the morning's northern diversion had been successful, but other messengers informed him that the middle contingent, driving directly at Zamosc, had accomplished nothing. Also, the d.a.m.ned Polish regulars, with an insight he could not credit, had antic.i.p.ated his battle plan and had ma.s.sed their major strength on the south, precisely where he did not want it, and they were holding their own or even pushing his men back.

Now, to cap it all, inside his own formation galloped this crazy Polish civilian followed by a gang of inflamed farmers who seemingly could not be stopped.

Upon his black horse, Budenny hesitated, and at this moment Wiktor Bukowski by sheerest accident headed straight for him. 'Gun him down!' an aide shouted, and withering fire swept the irregulars, killing many but missing their wild-eyed leader. 'Capture him! Shoot him!' But with great skill Bukowski evaded his a.s.sailants, dipping and weaving like a headstrong boy on his first bicycle.

At that moment Semyon Budenny realized that his rush toward the channel ports had ended. Disconsolate, he turned his black horse toward Russia, indicating to his subordinates that the battle was over. This crazy collection of tired Polish cavalry, peasants and gentry who seemed not to know what fear was, had saved Zamosc, but they had also saved Berlin and Stuttgart and Paris.

A t.i.tled Englishman who had monitored the two-p.r.o.nged Communist offensive from a hotel inside Warsaw, a learned man who had led a battalion against Ludendorff during the Great War, reported to the French and British governments what he would later state in a book, which would be largely ignored in the west: The defense of Warsaw and the repulse of Budenny's cavalry at Zamosc const.i.tuted one of the decisive battles of the world. It not only saved Poland as a free ent.i.ty perched between disorganized Germany and Communist Russia, but it prevented the latter from sweeping on to Paris and converting the entire continent into a Communist prison camp.

I a.s.sure you that when General Tukhachevsky stood at the gates of Warsaw, with his sh.e.l.ls landing in the city, I a.s.sumed that all was lost. And when he was supported in the south by the brilliance of Budenny's cavalry, I could see no hope for the reborn Germany or war-weary France. The fate of millions was determined by these almost unknown battles, and we shall all be permanently indebted to the heroic Poles who once again held back the pagan invaders.

At Brzesc Litewski, Count Lubonski refrained from making any such observations; his task was still to convince the Lithuanians and Ukrainians that their only hope for permanent survival was to unite with the Poles, but in the euphoria of victory he was again unable to gain an attentive hearing.

Witold Jurgela was ecstatic: 'Now we're a.s.sured of a free Lithuania,' and he would not listen when Lubonski, with his long knowledge of the minorities of the Austrian Empire, warned that Lithuania by itself was not a viable ent.i.ty.

'We have the will,' Jurgela exulted. 'A thousand years of history reborn, a nation of ancient honor.'

Lubonski was terse: 'You have the will, and certainly you have the honor. But you do not have the industrial base. Or the army.'

'Switzerland exists. Norway exists.'

'They are not pinched in between Russia and Germany.'

'Germany is defeated,' Jurgela cried, at which Lubonski grew impatient: 'Do you deny that German troops still occupy most of your land? Even after Versailles? And that before long they will occupy it again, in terrible force?'

'The nations of the world would not allow that.'

'The nations of the world allow whatever happens, dear friend. And I know without question what's going to happen to your Lithuania. You'll have your freedom. Can't be denied. And your own postage stamps. And your paper money bearing the famous faces of your heroes. And you'll have editorials in your newspapers, condemning this or praising that. All that you'll have. And you know in your heart what else you'll have.'

'What?' Jurgela demanded contentiously.

'Within two decades you'll have either Russia or Germany knocking on your door with a message. And it will read: "The foolishness is over. Now you're a part of us." '

'That would never be allowed,' the Lithuanian insisted, and he dropped out of the conversation, for he had to make plans as to where he and his family might fit into the governance of the new republic.

Vondrachuk was brutally brief: 'We've had too many wars between us, Lubonski. Magnates like you oppressing our people, now trying to worm their way back to recover their estates so they can continue the oppression. Your church leaders trying to subvert our churches. No, it's all finished, Lubonski.'

'Tell me, with your collection of villages, with your twenty million people without a central leadership, with no great universities or intellectual traditions, do you really believe you can exist on the borders of a Communist Russia, with men like Trotsky and Lenin at your throat?'

Vondrachuk used almost precisely the words of Jurgela: 'We have the will to exist,' and Lubonski said with real sorrow: 'I hope you can convince Russia of that.'

Unwilling to see the discussions end so mournfully, he made one last desperate plea: 'Vondrachuk, you know that in 1658 one of the wisest men you Cossacks ever produced suggested exactly the kind of union I propose now. It would have saved you then. It will save you now.'

'That was a long time ago, Lubonski.'

'But if we offered every item that you and Lithuania proposed then, wouldn't it be possible?'

'We were different nations then. We had not tasted freedom. And now there can be no going back.'

So the maps were folded, the commission disbanded, and the hopes surrendered. The union which should have crowned the miracle at Warsaw and Zamosc proved unattainable, and the fault was no one's.

Lithuania would have its nationhood, briefly, tragically. Then seven hundred thousand of its people would be deported to various remote corners of Russia and in its death struggles it would vainly seek to ally itself with a losing Germany, and thus lose trebly.

Ukraine would become one of the world's great tragedies, a land in which the oppressors would allow ten million citizens to starve to death, where the native language would be outlawed, and where all kinds of depredations would be visited upon a distrusted and despised subject people. In despair, in 1939 the Ukrainians would try to side with Hitler in hopes that he might rescue them from Russian domination, and when this proved a fatal miscalculation, the revenge of the Communist victors would be harsher than ever.

Poland would be only a little better off. Unable to form an alliance with anyone, it would revert to what it had been a thousand years before, the imperiled land bridge between the Russians and the Germans. Its life would actually be even briefer than Lithuania's, for in 1939 it would be part.i.tioned yet again, this time half to Germany, half to Russia.

Shattered dreams! Each of the negotiators had evidence which demonstrated beyond cavil that union was the only practical solution, but only old Lubonski, seventy and wearied with struggle, accepted the evidence, and he was powerless to persuade others. Even among his own Poles he was dismissed as a visionary; they still wanted to grab half of Lithuania, half of Ukraine, bits and pieces here and there along their borders, as if territory and not universal stability were the safeguard of nations.

Shattered dreams! On his mournful way home from Brzesc Litewski, Andrzej Lubonski experienced a general heaviness in all parts of his body, as if his musculature had decided to quit its business of holding the members together. He left the train at Lublin to consult with a doctor, but before the meeting could be arranged he collapsed, and it was obvious even to him that death was near. He thought of the gracious daughter of the Zamoyskis who had honored him by being his wife and he wished that he could talk with her about the dubious future, for she had been sagacious.

And then he thought of Castle Gorka, which he had defended about as well as any of his ancestors, and of his son Walerian in London: 'I hope he will be capable ...' And with that benediction, which could have been directed equally to the country he had served so honorably, he died.

IX.