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

when I heard that you were near Zaslav. Praise be to God on high that you are in good health, and that you are preparing for your wedding. Then the end of every evil will come. I told those scoundrels who went against the prince our lord, that they wouldn’t come back. They have caught it. Now maybe the war is over.”

“How over? It is only beginning now with Hmelnitski.”

“And you will fight after the wedding?”

“But did you think that cowardice would seize me at the wedding?”

“I didn’t think that. I know that whomsoever it seizes, it won’t seize you. I just ask; for when I take to my parents what I have collected I should like to go with you. Maybe God will help me to avenge my wrong on Bogun; for since it is not proper to take an unfair advantage, where shall I find him, if not in the field? He will not hide himself.”

“What a determined fellow you are!”

“Let everyone have his own. And as I promised to follow him to Turkey, it cannot be otherwise. And now I will go with you to Tarnopol, and then to the wedding. But why do you go to Bar by Tarnopol? It is not on the road in any way.”

“I must take home my regiment.”

“I understand.”

“Now give me something to eat,” said Pan Yan.

“I’ve been looking out for that. The stomach is the main thing.”

“After we have eaten we will start at once.”

“Praise be to God for that, though my poor nag is worn to death.”

“I will order them to give you a packhorse; you can ride on it.”

“Thank you humbly,” said Jendzian, smiling with delight at the thought that including the purse and the belt a third present had come to him now.

XXXIII

Pan Yan rode at the head of the prince’s squadrons, but to Zbaraj instead of Tarnopol, for a new order had come to march to the latter place; and on the road he told his faithful attendant his own adventures⁠—how he had been taken in captivity at the Saitch, how long he had remained there, and how much he had suffered before Hmelnitski had liberated him. They advanced slowly; for though they had no trains or baggage, their road lay through a country which was so ruined that the greatest exertions were necessary to obtain provisions for men and horses. In places they met crowds of famished people, especially women and children, who implored God for death or Tartar captivity; for then, though in bonds, they would be fed. And still it was harvest time in that rich land flowing with milk and honey; but the parties of Krívonos had destroyed everything that could be destroyed, and the remnant of the inhabitants fed themselves on the bark of the trees. Near Yampol they first entered a country which was not so much injured by war, and having had more rest and provisions in plenty, they went with hurried march to Zbaraj, where they arrived in five days after leaving Sukhojintsi.

There was a great concourse in Zbaraj. Prince Yeremi was there with his whole army, and besides him no small number of soldiers and nobles had come. War hung in the air, nothing else was mentioned; the town and neighborhood were swarming with armed men. The peace party in Warsaw, maintained in its hopes by Pan Kisel, the voevoda of Bratslav, had not given up, it is true, negotiations, and continued to believe that it would be possible to allay the storm with them; still they understood that negotiations could have results only when there was a powerful army to support them. The Diet of convocation was held therefore amidst the threatenings and thunderings of war such as usually precede an outbreak. The general militia was called out, and enlisted soldiers were concentrated; and though the chancellor and commanders still believed in peace, the war feeling was predominant in the minds of the nobles. The victories won by Prince Yeremi fired the imagination. The minds of men were burning with a desire for vengeance on the peasants, and a desire to pay back for Jóltiya Vodi and Korsún, for the blood of so many thousands who had died martyrs’ deaths, for the disgrace and humiliation. The name of the terrible prince was bright with the sunlight of glory⁠—it was on every lip, in every heart; and together with that name was heard, from the shores of the Baltic to the Wilderness, the ominous word “War!”

War! War! Signs in the heavens announced it also, the excited faces of the populace, the glittering of swords, the nightly howling of dogs before the cottages, and the neighing of horses, catching the odor of blood. War! Escutcheoned men through all the lands and districts and houses and villages drew out their old armor and swords from the storehouses. The youths sang songs about Yeremi; the women prayed before altars; and armored men were marching to the field in Prussia and Livonia as well as in Great Poland and populous Mazovia, and away to God’s own Carpathian peaks, and the dark pine forests of Beskid.

War lay in the nature of things. The plundering movement of the Zaporojie and the popular uprising of the Ukraine mob demanded some higher watchwords than slaughter and robbery, than a struggle against serfdom and the land-grabbing of magnates. Hmelnitski knew this well, and taking advantage of the slumbering irritation from mutual abuses and oppressions, of which there was never a lack in those harsh times, he changed a social into a religious struggle, kindled popular fanaticism, and dug in the very beginning between the two camps an abyss which could be filled neither with parchments nor negotiations, but only with blood.

Wishing for negotiations from his soul, he wished them only to secure his own power; but afterward⁠—what was to be afterward the Zaporojian hetman did not think; he did not look into the future and had no care