With Fire And Sword Part 152

"The prince was about to give orders to shave a stake for him at once, but he changed his mind and said: 'I'll give him to Skshetuski; let him do what he likes with him.' Now the Cossack is in Tarnopol under ground; the barber is taking care of his head. My G.o.d, how many times the soul tried to go out of that man! Never have dogs torn the skin of any wolf as we have his. Pan Michael alone bit him three times. But he is a solid piece; though, to tell the truth, an unhappy man. But let the hangman light him! I have no longer any ill-feeling against him, except that he threatened me terribly and without cause; for I drank with him, a.s.sociated with him as with an equal, till he raised his hand against you, my daughter. I might have finished him at Rozlogi. But I know of old that there is no thankfulness in the world, and there are few who give good for good. Let him--" Here Zagloba began to nod his head. "And what will you do with him, Yan?" asked he. "The soldiers say you will make an outrider of him, for he is a showy fellow; but I cannot believe you would do that."

"Surely I shall not. He is a soldier of eminent daring, and because he is unhappy is another reason that I should not disgrace him with any servile function."

"May G.o.d forgive him everything!" said the princess.

"Amen!" answered Zagloba. "He prays to Death, as to a mother, to take him, and he surely would have found it if he had not been late at Zbaraj."

All grew silent, meditating on the marvellous changes of fortune, till in the distance appeared Grabovo, where they stopped for their first refreshments. They found there a crowd of soldiers returning from Zborovo; Vitovski, the castellan of Sandomir, who was going with his regiment to meet his wife, and Marek Sobieski, with Pshiyemski and many n.o.bles of the general militia who were returning home by that road. The castle at Grabovo had been burned, as well as all the other buildings; but as the day was wonderful,--warm and calm,--without seeking shelter for their heads, all disposed themselves in the oak-grove under the open sky. Large supplies of food and drink were brought, and the servants immediately set about preparing the evening meal. Pan Vitovski had tents pitched in the oak grove for the ladies and the dignitaries,--a real camp, as it were. The knights collected before the tents, wishing to see the princess and Pan Yan. Others spoke of the past war; those who had not been at Zbaraj asked the soldiers of the prince for the details of the siege; and it was noisy and joyous, especially since G.o.d had given so beautiful a day.

Zagloba, telling for the thousandth time how he had killed Burlai, took the lead among the n.o.bles; Jendzian, among the servants who were preparing the meal. But the adroit young fellow seized the fitting moment, and drawing Skshetuski a little aside, bent obediently to his feet. "My master," said he, "I should like to beg a favor."

"It would be difficult for me to refuse you anything," answered Skshetuski, "since through you everything that is best has come to pa.s.s."

"I thought at once," said the youth, "that you were preparing some reward for me."

"Tell me what you want."

Jendzian's ruddy face grew dark, and from his eyes shot hatred and stubbornness. "One favor I ask,--nothing more do I want. Give me Bogun, my master."

"Bogun!" said Skshetuski, with astonishment. "What do you want to do with him?"

"Oh, my master, I'll think of that. I'll see that my own is not lost, and that he shall pay me with interest for having put me to shame in Chigirin. I know surely that you will have him put out of the way. Let me pay him first."

Skshetuski's brows contracted. "Impossible!" said he, with decision.

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake! I'd rather die," cried Jendzian, piteously. "To think that I have lived for disgrace to fasten to me."

"Ask what you like, I'll refuse you nothing; but this cannot be. Ask your grandfather if it is not more sinful to keep such a promise than to abandon it. Do not touch G.o.d's punishing hand with your own, lest you suffer. Be ashamed, Jendzian! This man as it is prays to G.o.d for death; and besides he is wounded and in bonds. What do you want to be to him,--an executioner? Do you want to put shame on a man in bonds, to kill a wounded man? Are you a Tartar or a Cossack man-slayer? While I live I will not permit this, and do not mention it to me!"

In the voice of Pan Yan there was so much power and will that the youth lost every hope at once; therefore he added with a tearful voice: "When he is well he could manage two like me, and when he is sick it is not becoming to take vengeance. When shall I pay him for what I have suffered?"

"Leave vengeance to G.o.d," said Pan Yan.

The youth opened his mouth. He wished to say something more, inquire about something; but Pan Yan turned away and went to the tents, before which a large a.s.sembly had collected. In the centre sat Pani Vitovska, at her side the princess, around them the knights. In front of them stood Zagloba, cap in hand. He was telling those who had been only at Zborovo of the siege of Zbaraj. All listened to him with breathless attention; their faces moved with emotion, and those who had not taken part in the siege regretted that they had not been there. Pan Yan sat near the princess, and taking her hand, pressed it to his lips: then they leaned one against the other and sat quietly. The sun was already leaving the sky, and evening was gradually coming. Skshetuski was lost in attention, as if hearing something new for himself. Zagloba wiped his brows, and his voice sounded louder and louder. Fresh memory or imagination brought before the eyes of the knights those b.l.o.o.d.y deeds.

They saw therefore the ramparts as if surrounded by a sea, and the raging a.s.saults; they heard the tumult and the howling, the roar of cannon and musketry; they saw the prince, in silver armor, standing on the ramparts, amidst the hail of bullets; then suffering, famine; those red nights in which death circled like a great ill-omened bird over the intrenchments; the departure of Podbipienta, of Skshetuski. All listened, sometimes raising their eyes to heaven or grasping their swords, and Zagloba finished thus:--

"It is now one tomb, one mighty mound; and if beneath it are not now lying the glory of the Commonwealth, the flower of its knighthood, the prince voevoda, I, and all of us, whom the Cossacks themselves call the lions of Zbaraj, it is owing to him!" And he pointed to Skshetuski.

"True as life!" cried Marek Sobieski and Pan Pshiyemski.

"Glory to him,--honor, thanks!" strong voices began to cry. "Vivat Skshetuski! vivat the young couple! Long life to the hero!" was cried louder and louder.

Enthusiasm seized all present. Some ran for the goblets; others threw their caps in the air. The soldiers began to rattle their sabres, and soon was heard one general shout: "Glory! glory! Long life!"

Skshetuski, like a true Christian knight, dropped his head obediently; but the princess rose, shook her tresses, a glow came in her face, her eyes were gleaming with pride,--for this knight was to be her husband, and the glory of the husband falls on the wife like the light of the sun on the earth.

Late at night the a.s.sembly parted, going in two directions. Vitovski, Pshiyemski, and Sobieski marched with their regiments toward Toporoff; but Skshetuski, with the princess and the squadron of Volodyovski, to Tarnopol. The night was clear as day. Myriads of stars shone in the sky; the moon rose and illuminated the fields covered with spider-webs.

The soldiers began to sing. Then white mists rose from the meadows and turned the land as it were into one gigantic lake, shining in the light of the moon.

On such a night Skshetuski once went forth from Zbaraj, and on such a night now he felt the heart of Kurtsevichovna beating near his own.

EPILOGUE.

But this tragedy of history was finished neither at Zborovo nor Zbaraj, and not even the first act of it. Two years later all Cossackdom rushed forth to do battle with the Commonwealth. Hmelnitski rose mightier than ever before; and with him marched the Khan of all the hordes, attended by the same leaders who had fought at Zbaraj,--the wild Tugai Bey, Urum Murza, Artimgirei, Nureddin, Galga, Amurat, and Subahazi. Pillars of flame and groans of men went on before them; thousands of warriors covered the fields, filled the forests; half a million of mouths sent forth shouts of war, and it seemed to men that the end of the Commonwealth had come.

But the Commonwealth had risen from its lethargy, had broken with the past policy of the chancellor, with treaties and negotiations. It was seen at last that the sword alone could win enduring peace. When the king therefore marched against the hostile inundation, there went with him an army of one hundred thousand soldiers and n.o.bles, besides legions of irregulars and attendants.

No one living of the personages in the foregoing narrative was absent.

Prince Yeremi Vishnyevetski was there with his whole division, in which were serving, as of old, Skshetuski and Volodyovski, with the volunteer Zagloba; both hetmans, Pototski and Kalinovski, were there, ransomed at that time from Tartar captivity. There were present also Stephen Charnetski, later on the crusher of Karl Gustav, the Swedish king; Pan Pshiyemski, commander of all the artillery; General Ubald: Pan Artsishevski; Marek Sobieski, starosta of Krasnostav, with his brother, Yan Sobieski, starosta of Yavorov, afterward King Yan III.; Ludvik Weyher, voevoda of Pomorie; Yakob, voevoda of Marienburg; Konyetspolski, the standard-bearer; Prince Dominik Zaslavski; the bishops, the dignitaries of the Crown, the senators,--the whole Commonwealth, with its supreme leader the king.

On the fields of Berestechko those many legions met at last, and there was fought one of the greatest battles of history,--a battle the echoes of which thundered through all contemporary Europe. It lasted for three days. During the first two the fates wavered; on the third a general engagement decided the victory.

Prince Yeremi began that engagement; and he was seen in front of the entire left wing as, armorless and bareheaded, he swept like a hurricane over the field against those gigantic legions, formed of all the mounted heroes of the Zaporojie, and all the Tartars,--Crimean, Nogai, and Belgorod,--of Silistrian and Rumelian Turks, Urumbalis, Janissaries, Serbs, Wallachians, Periotes, and other wild warriors a.s.sembled from the Ural, the Caspian, and the swamps of Maeotis to the Danube. As a river vanishes from the eye in the foaming waves of the sea, so vanished from the eye the regiments of the prince in that sea of the enemy. A cloud of dust moved on the plain like a mad whirlwind and covered the combatants.

The whole army and the king stood gazing on this superhuman struggle.

Leshchinski, the vice-chancellor, raised aloft the wood of the Holy Cross, and with it blessed the perishing.

Meanwhile, on the other flank, the army of the king was approached by the whole Cossack tabor, two hundred thousand strong, bristling with cannon, which vomited fire. It was like a dragon pushing slowly out of the woods his gigantic claws.

But before the bulk of the enemy had issued from the dust in which Vishnyevetski's regiments had disappeared, hors.e.m.e.n began to drop away from their ranks, then tens, hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of them, and rush to the height on which stood the Khan surrounded by his chosen guard. The wild legions fled in mad panic and disorder, pursued by the Poles. Thousands of Cossacks and Tartars strewed the battle-field; and among them lay, cut in two by a double-handed sword, the sworn enemy of the Poles but the trusty ally of the Cossacks, the wild and manful Tugai Bey.

The terrible prince had triumphed.

But the king looked with the eye of a leader on the triumph of the prince, and determined to break the hordes before the Cossacks could come up. All the forces moved, all the cannon thundered, scattering death and disorder. Soon the brother of the Khan, the lordly Amurat, fell struck in the breast with a bullet. The hordes roared with pain.

Wounded in the very beginning of the battle, the Khan looked on the field with dismay. From the distance came Pshiyemski in the midst of cannon and fire, and the king with the horse; from both flanks the earth thundered beneath the weight of the cavalry rushing to the fight.

Then Islam Girei quivered, left the field, and fled; and after him fled in disorder all the hordes,--the Wallachians, the Urumbali, the mounted warriors of the Zaporojie, the Silistrian Turks, and the renegades,--as a cloud before a whirlwind.

The despairing Hmelnitski caught up with the fugitives, wishing to prevail on the Khan to return to the battle; but the Khan, bellowing with rage at the sight of the hetman, ordered the Tartars to seize, bind him to a horse, and bear him away.

Now there remained but the Cossack tabor. The leader of that tabor, colonel of Krapivna, Daidyalo, knew not what had happened to Hmelnitski; but seeing the defeat and shameful flight of all the hordes, he stopped the advance, and pushing back with the tabor, halted in the marshy forks of the Pleshova.

Now a storm burst in the heavens, and measureless torrents of rain rushed down. "G.o.d was washing the land after a just battle." The rain lasted some days, and some days the armies of the king rested, wearied from struggles; during this time the tabor surrounded itself with ramparts, and was changed into a gigantic movable fortress.

With the return of fair weather began a siege, the most wonderful ever seen in life. The hundred thousand warriors of the king besieged the twice one hundred thousand Zaporojians. The king needed cannon, provisions, ammunition. The Zaporojians had immeasurable supplies of powder and all necessaries, and besides seventy cannon of heavier and lighter calibre. But at the head of the king's armies was the king, and the Cossacks had not Hmelnitski. The armies of the king were strengthened by a recent victory; the Cossacks were in doubt of themselves.

Several days pa.s.sed; hope of the return of Hmelnitski and the Khan disappeared. Then negotiations began. The Cossack colonels came to the king, and beat the forehead to him, asking for pardon; they visited the senators' tents, seizing them by their garments, promising to get Hmelnitski even from under the earth and deliver him to the king.

The heart of Yan Kazimir was not opposed to forgiveness. He wished to let the rabble return to their homes if all the officers were surrendered; these he determined to keep till Hmelnitski should be rendered up. But such an agreement was not to the mind of the officers, who, from the enormity of their offences, had no hope of forgiveness.

Therefore in time of negotiations battles continued, desperate sallies, and every day Polish and Cossack blood flowed in abundance. The Cossacks fought in the daytime with bravery and the rage of despair; but at night whole clouds of them hung round the camp of the king, howling dismally for pardon.

Daidyalo was inclined to compromise, and was willing to give his head as a sacrifice to the king, if he could only ransom the army and the people. But dissension rose in the Cossack camp. Some wished to surrender, others to defend themselves to the death; but all were thinking how to escape from the tabor. To the boldest, however, this seemed impossible. The tabor was surrounded by the forks of the river and by immense swamps. Defence was possible for whole years, but to retreat only one road was open,--through the armies of the king. Of that road no one in the camp thought.

Negotiations, interrupted by battles, dragged on lazily. Dissensions among the Cossacks became greater and more frequent. In one of these Daidyalo was deposed from leadership, and a new man chosen. His name gave fresh strength to the fallen spirits of the Cossacks, and striking a loud echo in the camp of the king, roused in some hearts forgotten memories of past sorrows and misfortunes. The name of the new leader was Bogun. He had already occupied a lofty position among the Cossacks in council, and in action the general voice indicated him as the successor of Hmelnitski.