With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz (big ebook reader .txt) 📕

in battle, impaled on stakes. You cannot depend on Tartar friendship. Today they are with us; tomorrow they may turn against us and rush off to the Crimea, or sell our heads to the Poles. Well, what more will you say? March on Vishnyevetski? He would detain our forces and those of the Tartar till armies could be enrolled in the heart of the Commonwealth and brought to his aid. Choose!”

The alarmed colonels were silent, and Hmelnitski continued:⁠—

“Why are you silent? Why do you urge me no longer to go to Warsaw? If you know not what to do, then rely on me, and with God’s help I will save my own head and yours, and win satisfaction for the Zaporojian army and all the Cossacks.”

In fact, there remained one method⁠—negotiation. Hmelnitski knew well how much he could extort from the Commonwealth in that way. He calculated that the Diets would rather agree to liberal concessions than to taxes, levies of troops, and war, which would have to be long and difficult. Finally, he knew that in Warsaw there was a strong party, and at the head of it the king himself (news of whose death had not yet come), with the chancellor and many nobles, who would be glad to hinder the growth of the colossal fortunes of the magnates of the Ukraine, and to create a power for the hands of the king out of the Cossacks, conclude a permanent peace with them, and use those thousands of warriors for foreign wars. In these conditions Hmelnitski might acquire a distinguished position for himself, receive the baton of hetman from the king, and gain countless concessions for the Cossacks.

This was why he remained long in Bélaya Tserkoff. He armed his men, sent general orders in every direction, collected the people, created whole armies, took possession of castles, for he knew they would negotiate only with power, but he did not move into the heart of the Commonwealth. If he could conclude peace by negotiation, then either the weapon would drop from the hand of Vishnyevetski, or, if the prince would not lay it aside, then not Hmelnitski, but Vishnyevetski, would be the rebel carrying on war against the will of the king and the Diets. He would move then on Vishnyevetski, but by command of the king and the Commonwealth; and the last hour would have struck not for Vishnyevetski alone, but for all the kinglets of the Ukraine, with their fortunes and their lands.

Thus meditated the self-created Zaporojian hetman; such was the pile that he built for the future. But on the scaffolding of this edifice the dark birds, Care, Doubt, Fear, sat many a time, and ominous was their croaking. Will the peace party be strong enough in Warsaw? Will it begin negotiations with him? What will the Diet and the Senate say? Will they close their ears in the capital to the groans and cries of the Ukraine? Will they shut their eyes to the flames of conflagration? Will not negotiations be prevented by the influence of the magnates possessing those immeasurable estates, the preservation of which will be for their interest? And has the Commonwealth become so terror-stricken that it will forgive him?

On the other hand, Hmelnitski’s soul was rent by the doubt. Has not the rebellion become too inflamed and too developed? Would those wild masses allow themselves to be confined within any limits? Suppose he, Hmelnitski, should conclude peace, the cutthroats may continue to murder and burn in his name, or take vengeance on his head for their deluded hopes. Then that swollen river, that sea, that storm! An awful position! If the outbreak had been weaker, they would not negotiate with him, by reason of his weakness; but because the rebellion is mighty, negotiations, by the force of things, may be defeated. Then what will happen?

When such thoughts besieged the weighty head of the hetman he shut himself up in his quarters, and drank whole days and nights. Then among the colonels and the mob the report went around: “The hetman is drinking!” and following his example, all drank. Discipline was relaxed, prisoners killed, fights sprang up, booty was stolen. The day of judgment was beginning, the reign of horror and ghastliness. Bélaya Tserkoff was turned into a real Inferno.

One day Vygovski, a noble captured at Korsún and made secretary to the hetman, came in. He began to shake the drinker without ceremony, till seizing him by the shoulders he seated him on the low bench and brought him to his senses.

“What is it? What the plague⁠—” demanded Hmelnitski.

“Rise up, Hetman, and come to yourself!” answered Vygovski. “An embassy has come.”

Hmelnitski sprang to his feet, and in a moment was sober.

“Hi, there!” he cried to the Cossack sitting at the threshold, “give me my cap and baton. Who has come? From whom?”

“The priest Patroni Lasko, from Gushchi, from the voevoda of Bratslav.”

“From Pan Kisel?”

“Yes.”

“Glory to the Father and Son, glory to the Holy Ghost and to the Holy Most Pure!” said Hmelnitski, making the sign of the cross. His face became clear, he regained his good humor⁠—negotiations had begun.

But that day there came news of a character directly opposed to the peaceful embassy of Pan Kisel. It was stated that Prince Yeremi, after he had given rest to his army, wearied with its march through the woods and swamps, had entered into the rebellious country; that he was killing, burning, beheading; that a division sent under Skshetuski had dispersed a band of two thousand Cossacks with a mob and cut them to pieces; that the prince himself had taken Pogrébische, the property of the princes Zbaraski, and had left only earth and water behind him. Awful things were related of the storm and taking of Pogrébische⁠—for it was a nest of the most stubborn murderers. The prince, it was said, told the soldiers: “Kill them so they will feel they are dying.” The soldiers therefore allowed themselves the wildest excesses