With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz (big ebook reader .txt) 📕
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Goodwill in the seventeenth century Polish Commonwealth has been stretched thin due to the nobility’s perceived and real oppression of the less well-off members. When the situation reaches its inevitable breaking point, it sparks the taking up of arms by the Cossacks against the Polish nobility and a spiral of violence that engulfs the entire state. This background provides the canvas for vividly painted narratives of heroism and heartbreak of both the knights and the hetmans swept up in the struggle.
Henryk Sienkiewicz had spent most of his adult life as a journalist and editor, but turned his attention back to historical fiction in an attempt to lift the spirits and imbue a sense of nationalism to the partitioned Poland of the nineteenth century. With Fire and Sword is the first of a trilogy of novels dealing with the events of the Khmelnytsky Uprising, and weaves fictional characters and events in among historical fact. While there is some contention about the fairness of the portrayal of Polish and Ukrainian belligerents, the novel certainly isn’t one-sided: all factions indulge in brutal violence in an attempt to sway the tide of war, and their grievances are clearly depicted.
The initial serialization and later publication of the novel proved hugely popular, and in Poland the Trilogy has remained so ever since. In 1999, the novel was the subject of Poland’s then most expensive film, following the previously filmed later books. This edition is based on the 1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin, who also translated Sienkiewicz’s later (and perhaps more internationally recognized) Quo Vadis.
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- Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
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“Oh, lie awhile, lie awhile! You will go on a journey. You are an old man, and you need rest before the road.”
“Where do you wish to take me?”
“You are my friend, so I will take you to my other friend, Krívonos. Then we shall both think how to make it pleasant for you.”
“It will be hot for me,” muttered Zagloba; and again the ants were walking over his back. At last he began to speak:—
“I know that you are enraged at me; but unjustly, God knows. We lived together, and in Chigirin we drank more than one bottle. I had for you the love of a father for your knightly daring; a better love you did not find in the whole Ukraine. Isn’t that true? In what way have I crossed your path? If I had not gone with you to Rozlogi, we should have lived to this day in kind friendship; and why did I go if not out of friendship for you? And if you had not become enraged, if you had not killed those unhappy people—God is looking at me—I should not have crossed your path. Why should I mix in other men’s affairs? I would have preferred to see the girl yours; but through your Tartar courtship my conscience was moved, and besides it was a noble’s house. You yourself would not have acted otherwise. I might, moreover, have swept you out of the world with the greatest gain to myself. And why did I not do it? Because I am a noble. Be ashamed of yourself too, for I know you wish to take vengeance on me. As it is, you have the girl in your hands. What do you want of me? Have not I guarded as the eye in my head this your property? Since you have respected her it is to be seen that you have knightly honor and conscience; but how will you extend to her the hand which you steep in my innocent blood? How will you say to her, ‘The man who led you through the mob and the Tartars I delivered to torment’? Have shame, and let me go from these bonds and from this captivity into which you have seized me by treachery. You are young, and know not what may meet you, and for my death God will punish you in that which is dearest to you.”
Bogun rose from the bench, pale with rage, and approaching Zagloba, began to speak in a voice stifled with fury—
“Unclean swine! I will have straps torn from you, I’ll burn you on a slow fire, I’ll drive spikes into you, I’ll tear you into rags.”
In an access of fury he grasped at the knife hanging from his belt, and for a moment pressed it convulsively in his hand. The edge was already gleaming in Zagloba’s eyes, when the chief restrained himself, thrust the knife back into the scabbard, and cried: “Boys!”
Six Zaporojians came into the room.
“Take that Polish carrion, throw it into the stable, and guard it as the eye in your head!”
The Cossacks took Zagloba—two by his hands and feet, one behind by the hair—and carrying him out of the house bore him through the yard, and threw him on a dung-heap in the stable standing at one side. Then they closed the door. Complete darkness surrounded the prisoner, but in the cracks between the wall-planks and through holes in the thatch the dim light of night penetrated here and there. After a while Zagloba’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. He looked around, and saw there were no pigs in the stable, nor Cossacks. The conversation of the latter, however, reached him clearly through all the four walls. Evidently the whole building was surrounded closely; but in spite of these guards Zagloba drew a long breath.
First of all, he was alive. When Bogun flashed his knife above him he was convinced that his last moment had come, and he recommended his soul to God—it is true with the greatest fear. But evidently Bogun decided to save him for a death incomparably more complicated. He desired not only to take revenge, but to glut himself with vengeance on the man who had stolen from him the beauty, belittled his Cossack glory, and covered him with ridicule, swaddling him like a baby. It was therefore a gloomy prospect for Pan Zagloba; but he was comforted by the thought that he was still living, that likely they would take him to Krívonos and begin to torture him there, and consequently he had a few, perhaps a number of days before him. In the mean while he lay in the stable alone, and could in the midst of the quiet night think of stratagems.
That was the one good side of the affair; but when he thought of the bad ones the ants began to travel over his spine in thousands.
“Stratagems! If a pig lay here in this stable, he would have more stratagems than I, for they would not tie him crosswise to a sabre. If Solomon had been bound in this way, he would have been no wiser than his trousers or my boot-heel. Oh, my God, my God, for what dost thou punish me? Of all people in the world I wanted most to avoid this scoundrel, and such is my luck that he is just the man I have not avoided. I shall have my skin dressed like sviboda cloth. If another had taken me, I might promise to join the rebellion and then run away. But another would not have believed me, and this one least of all. I feel my heart dying within me. The devils have brought me to this place. Oh, my God! my God!”
But after a while Zagloba thought that if he had his hands and feet free, he might more easily use some stratagem. Well, let him try! If he could only push the sword from under his knees, the
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