Read Fire in the Steppe Online
Authors: Henryk Sienkiewicz,Jeremiah Curtin
Fire in the Steppe (77 page)
Pan Adam, for it was he, had already spread dreadful destruction, for no one could withstand the strength and sullen rage of the man; but now he had given the greatest service by hewing down the old hero, who alone had supported the stubborn battle. The janissaries shouted in a terrible voice on seeing the death of their leader, and more than ten of them aimed muskets at the breast of the cavalier. He turned toward them like dark night; and before other hussars could strike them, the shots roared, Pan Adam reined in his horse and bent in the saddle. Two comrades seized him by the shoulders; but a smile, a guest long unknown, lighted his gloomy face, his eyeballs turned in his head, and his white lips whispered words which in the din of battle no man could distinguish. Meanwhile the last ranks of the janissaries wavered.
The valiant Yanish Pasha tried to renew the battle, but the terror of panic had seized on his men; efforts were useless. The ranks were broken and shivered, pushed back, beaten, trampled, slashed; they could not come to order. At last they burst, as an overstrained chain bursts, and like single links men flew from one another in every direction, howling, shouting, throwing down their weapons, and covering their heads with their hands. The cavalry pursue them; and they, not finding space sufficient for flight singly, gather at times into a dense mass, on whose shoulders ride the cavalry, swimming in blood. Pan Mushalski, the bowman, struck the valiant Yanish Pasha such a sabre-blow on the neck that his spinal marrow gushed forth and stained his silk shirt and the silver scales on his armor.
The irregular janissaries, beaten by the Polish infantry, and a part of the cavalry which was scattered in the very beginning of the battle, in fact, a whole Turkish throng, fled now to the opposite side of the camp, where there was a rugged ravine some tens of feet deep. Terror drove the mad men to that place. Many rushed over the precipice, "not to escape death, but death at the hands of the Poles." Pan Bidzinski blocked the road to this despairing throng; but the avalanche of fugitives tore him away with it, and threw him to the bottom of the precipice, which after a time was filled almost to the top with piles of slain, wounded, and suffocated men.
From this place rose terrible groans; bodies were quivering, kicking one another, or clawing with their fingers in the spasms of death. Those groans were heard until evening; until evening those bodies were moving, but more and more slowly, less and less noticeably, till at dark there was silence.
Awful were the results of the blow of the hussars. Eight thousand janissaries, slain with swords, lay near the ditch surrounding the tents of Hussein Pasha, not counting those who perished in the flight, or at the foot of the precipice. The Polish cavalry were in the tents; Pan Sobieski had triumphed. The trumpets were raising the hoarse sounds of victory, when the battle raged up again on a sudden.
After the breaking of the janissaries the vizir, Hussein Pasha, at the head of his mounted guards and of all that were left of the cavalry, fled through the gate leading to Yassy; but when the squadrons of Dmitri Vishnyevetski, the field hetman, caught him outside and began to hew without mercy, he turned back to the camp to seek escape elsewhere, just as a wild beast surrounded in a forest looks for some outlet. He turned with such speed that he scattered in a moment the light squadron of Cossacks, put to disorder the infantry, occupied partly in plundering the camp, and came within "half a pistol-shot" of the hetman himself.
"In the very camp," wrote Pan Sobieski, afterward, "we were near defeat, the avoidance of which should be ascribed to the extraordinary resolution of the hussars."
In fact, the pressure of the Turks was tremendous, produced as it was under the influence of utter despair, and the more terrible that it was entirely unexpected; but the hussars, not cooled yet after the heat of battle, rushed at them on the spot, with the greatest vigor. Prusinovski's squadron moved first, and that brought the attackers to a stand; after it rushed Pan Yan with his men, then the whole army,—cavalry, infantry, camp-followers,—every one as he was, every one where he was,—all rushed with the greatest rage on the enemy, and there was a battle, somewhat disordered, but not yielding in fury to the attack of the hussars on the janissaries.
When the struggle was over the knights remembered with wonder the bravery of the Turks, who, attacked by Vishnyevetski and the hetmans of Lithuania, surrounded on all sides, defended themselves so madly that though Sobieski permitted the Poles to take prisoners then, they were able to seize barely a handful of captives. When the heavy squadrons scattered them at last, after half an hour's battle, single groups and later single horsemen fought to the last breath, shouting, "Allah!" Many glorious deeds were done, the memory of which has not perished among men. The field hetman of Lithuania cut down a powerful pasha who had slain Pan Rudomina, Pan Kimbar, and Pan Rdultovski; but the hetman, coming to him unobserved, cut off his head at a blow. Pan Sobieski slew in presence of the army a spahi who had fired a pistol at him. Pan Bidzinski, escaping from the ravine by some miracle, though bruised and wounded, threw himself at once into the whirl of battle, and fought till he fainted from exhaustion. He was sick long, but after some months recovered his health, and went again to the field, with great glory to himself.
Of men less known Pan Rushchyts raged most, taking off horsemen as a wolf seizes sheep from a flock. Pan Yan on his part worked wonders; around him his sons fought like young lions. With sadness and gloom did these knights think afterward of what that swordsman above swordsmen, Pan Michael, would have done on such a day, were it not that for a year he had been in the earth resting in God and in glory. But others, taught in his school, gained sufficient renown for him and themselves on that bloody field.
Two of the old knights of Hreptyoff fell in that renewed battle, Pan Motovidlo and the terrible bowman, Mushalski. A number of balls pierced the breast of Motovidlo simultaneously, and he fell as an oak falls, which has come to its time. Eye-witnesses said that he fell by the hand of those Cossack brothers who under the lead of Hohol had struggled to the last against their mother (Poland) and Christendom. Pan Mushalski, wonderful to relate, perished by an arrow, which some fleeing Turk had sent after him. It passed through his throat just in the moment when, at the perfect defeat of the Pagans, he was reaching his hand to the quiver, to send fresh, unerring messengers of death in pursuit of the fugitives. But his soul had to join the soul of Didyuk, so that the friendship begun on the Turkish galley might endure with the bonds of eternity. The old comrades of Hreptyoff found the three bodies after the battle and took farewell tearfully, though they envied them the glorious death. Pan Adam had a smile on his lips, and calm serenity on his face; Pan Motovidlo seemed to be sleeping quietly; and Pan Mushalski had his eyes raised, as if in prayer. They were buried together on that glorious field of Hotin under the cliff on which, to the eternal memory of the day, their three names were cut out beneath a cross.
The leader of the whole Turkish army, Hussein Pasha, escaped on a swift Anatolian steed, but only to receive in Stambul a silk string from the hands of the Sultan. Of the splendid Turkish army merely small bands were able to bear away sound heads from defeat. The last legions of Hussein Pasha's cavalry gave themselves into the hands of the armies of the Commonwealth. In this way the field hetman drove them to the grand hetman, and he drove them to the Lithuanian hetmans, they again to the field hetman; so the turn went till nearly all of them had perished. Of the janissaries almost no man escaped. The whole immense camp was streaming with blood, mixed with snow and rain. So many bodies were lying there that only frost, ravens, and wolves prevented a pestilence, which comes usually from bodies decaying. The Polish troops fell into such ardor of battle that without drawing breath well after the victory, they captured Hotin. In the camp itself immense booty was taken. One hundred and twenty guns and with them three hundred flags and banners did Pan Sobieski take from that field, on which for the second time in the course of a century the Polish sabre celebrated a grand triumph.
Pan Sobieski himself stood in the tent of Hussein Pasha, which was sparkling with rubies and gold, and from it he sent news of the fortunate victory to every side by swift couriers. Then cavalry and infantry assembled; all the squadrons,—Polish, Lithuanian, and Cossack,—the whole army, stood in order of battle. A Thanksgiving Mass was celebrated, and on that same square where the day previous muezzins had cried: "La Allah illa Allah!" was sounded "Te Deum laudamus!"
The hetman, lying in the form of a cross, heard Mass and the hymn; and when he rose, tears of joy were flowing down his worthy face. At sight of that the legions of knights, the blood not yet wiped from them, and while still trembling from their efforts in battle, gave out three times the loud thundering shout:—
"Vivat Joannes victor!"
Ten years later, when the Majesty of King Yan III. (Sobieski) hurled to the dust the Turkish power at Vienna, that shout was repeated from sea to sea, from mountain to mountain, throughout the world, wherever bells called the faithful to prayer.
Here ends this series of books, written in the course of a number of years and with no little toil, for the strengthening of hearts.
Footnote 1
: "With Fire and Sword," page 4.
Footnote 2
: The bishop who visited Zagloba at Ketling's house, see pages 121-126.
Footnote 3
: A celebrated bishop of Cracow, famous for ambition and success.
Footnote 4
: A diminutive of endearment for Anna. Anusia is another form.
Footnote 5
: One of the chiefs of a confederacy formed against the king, Yan Kazimir, by soldiers who had not received their pay.
Footnote 6
: The story in Poland is that storks bring all the infants to the country.
Footnote 7
: This refers to the axelike form of the numeral 7.
Footnote 8
: Diminutive of Barbara.
Footnote 9
: Diminutive of Krystina, or Christiana.
Footnote 10
: Drohoyovski is Parma Krysia's family name.
Footnote 11
: A diminutive of Anna, expressing endearment.
Footnote 12
: To place a water-melon in the carriage of a suitor was one way of refusing him.
Footnote 13
: "Kot" means "cat," hence Basia's exclamations are, "Scot, Scot! cat, cat!"
Footnote 14
: In Polish, "I love" is one word, "Kocham."
Footnote 15
: In the original this forms a rhymed couplet.
Footnote 16
: That is let me kiss you.
Footnote 17
: Injured his head.
Footnote 18
: The Tsar's city,—Constantinople.
Footnote 19
: Zagloba refers here to Pavel Sapyeha, voevoda of Vilna, and grand hetman of Lithuania.
Footnote 20
: Poland.
Footnote 21
: God is merciful! God is merciful.
Footnote 22
: The territory governed by a pasha, in this case the lands of the Cossacks.
Footnote 23
: The Commonwealth.
Footnote 24
: That means as tall as a stove. The tile or porcelain stores of eastern Europe are very high.
Footnote 25
: A barber in that age and in those regions took the place of a surgeon usually.
Footnote 26
: Each nearly equal to five English miles.
Footnote 27
: A hot drink made of gorailka, honey, and spices.
Footnote 28
: Motovidlo's words are Russian in the original.
Footnote 29
: See note after introduction.
Footnote 30
: Hero.
THE END.Footnote 31
: More likely Yan Zisca, the great leader of the Hussites.
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