With Fire and Sword, Henryk Sienkiewicz [year 7 reading list txt] 📗

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.

Bogun, foremost of the Cossack colonels, stood with the Tartars at Berestechko at the head of fifty thousand men. He took part in the three days’ cavalry fight, and defeated with the Khan and the hordes by Yeremi, he succeeded in bringing out of the defeat the greater part of his forces and finding shelter in the camp. Then after Daidyalo the party opposed to conciliation gave him chief command, hoping that he was the one man able to save the tabor and the army.

In truth the young leader would not hear of negotiations. He wanted battle and blood, even if he had to drown in that blood himself. But soon he saw that with his troops it was vain to think of passing with armed hand over the bodies of the king’s army. Therefore he grasped after other means.

History has preserved the memory of those matchless efforts which to contemporaries seemed worthy of a giant, and which might have saved the army and the mob.

Bogun determined to pass through the bottomless swamp of the Pleshova, and build over those quagmires a bridge of such make that all the besieged might cross. Whole forests began then to fall under the axes of the Cossacks and sink in the swamp. Wagons, tents, coats, sheepskins were thrown in, and the bridge extended day by day. It appeared that there was nothing impossible to that leader.

The king deferred the assault, from aversion to bloodshed. But seeing these gigantic works, he recognized that there was no other way, and ordered the trumpets to sound in the evening for the final struggle.

No one knew of that intention in the Cossack camp, and the bridge lengthened all night as before. In the morning Bogun went forth at the head of the officers to examine the work.

It was Monday, July 7, 1651. The morning of that day rose pale, as if from fright; the dawn was bloody in the east; the sun appeared, red, sickly; a sort of bloody reflection lighted the woods and forests. From the Polish camp they were driving the horses to pasture; the Cossack tabor sounded with the voices of awakened men. Fires were lighted, the morning meal prepared. All saw the departure of Bogun, his retinue and the cavalry going with him, by the aid of which he intended to drive away the voevoda of Bratslav, who had occupied the rear of the tabor and was injuring the Cossack works with his cannon.

The crowd looked on the departure quietly, and even with hope in their hearts. Thousands of eyes followed the young commander, and thousands of mouths said: “God bless thee, my falcon!”

The leader, the retinue, and the cavalry receded gradually from the tabor, came to the edge of the forest, glittered once more in the early sunlight, and began to disappear in the thicket. Then some awful, terrified voice shouted, or rather howled, at the gate of the tabor: “Save yourselves, men!”

“The officers are fleeing!” roared hundreds and thousands of voices. The roar passed through the crowd, as when a whirlwind strikes a pine-wood; and then a terrible, unearthly cry burst forth from two hundred thousand throats: “Save yourselves! Save yourselves! The Poles! The officers are fleeing!” Masses of men rose at once, like a mad torrent. Fires were trodden out, wagons and tents overturned, palings broken to pieces, men trampled and suffocated. Piles of bodies barred the road. They rushed over corpses, amidst howls, shouts, uproar, groans. Crowds poured from the square, burst on to the bridge, stuck in the swamp; the drowning seized one another with convulsive embraces, and crying to heaven for mercy, sank in the cold moving swamp. On the bridge began a battle and slaughter for place. The waters of the Pleshova were filled with bodies. The Nemesis of history took terrible payment for Pilavtsi with Berestechko.

The awful shouts came to the ears of the young leader, and he knew at once what had happened. But in vain did he return at that moment to the tabor; in vain did he turn to meet the crowd with hands raised to heaven. His voice was lost in the roar of thousands. The terrible river of fugitives bore him away, with his horse, his retinue, and all the cavalry, and carried him on to destruction.

The armies of the king were amazed at the sight of this movement, which some mistook at first for a desperate attack. But it was difficult not to believe the eyes of all. A few