With Fire And Sword Part 34

Again resounded the tramp; and this time several hundred Tartar hors.e.m.e.n appeared on the square. They rushed on at random. The crowd stopped the way before them. They rushed at the crowd, struck, beat, and dispersed it; they lashed their horses, urging them on to the road leading to Cherkasi.

"They run like a whirlwind," said Zakhar.

Scarcely had Skshetuski moved when a second division flew by, and after that a third. The flight seemed to be general. The guards before the houses began to grow uneasy, and also to show a wish to escape. Zakhar hurried through the porch.

"Halt!" cried he to the Mirgorod men.

Smoke, heat, disorder, the tramping of horses, sounds of alarm, the howling of the crowd in the light of the conflagration, were blended in one fearful picture on which the lieutenant gazed through the window.

"What a defeat there must be! what a defeat!" cried he to Zakhar, not considering that the latter could not share his delight.

Now a new division of fugitives rushed by like lightning. The thunder of cannon shook the houses of Korsun to their foundations. Suddenly a shrieking voice began to cry right there at the house,--

"Save yourselves! Hmelnitski is killed! Hmelnitski is killed! Tugai Bey is killed!"

On the square there was a real end of the world. People in terror rushed into the flames. The lieutenant fell upon his knees, raised his hands to heaven,--

"Oh, almighty, great, and just G.o.d, praise to thee in the highest!"

Zakhar interrupted his prayer, running into the room from the antechamber.

"Come now," said he, panting, "come and promise pardon to the Mirgorod men, for they wish to go away; and if they go, the crowd will fall upon us."

Skshetuski went out to the porch. The Mirgorod men were moving around unquietly before the house, exhibiting a firm determination to leave the place and flee by the road leading to Cherkasi. Fear had taken possession of every one in the town. Each moment new crowds came, fleeing, as if on wings, from the direction of Krutaya Balka,--peasants, Tartars, town Cossacks, Zaporojians, in the greatest disorder. And still Hmelnitski's princ.i.p.al forces must be fighting yet.

The battle could not be entirely decided, for the cannon were thundering with redoubled force. Skshetuski turned to the Mirgorod men.

"Because you have guarded my person well," said he, loftily, "you need no flight to save yourselves, for I promise you intercession and favor with the hetman."

The Mirgorod men uncovered their heads. Pan Yan put his hands on his hips, and looked proudly on the square, which grew emptier each moment.

What a change of fate! Here is the lieutenant, a short time since a captive, dragged after the Cossack camp; now he has become among insolent Cossacks as a lord among subjects, as a n.o.ble among peasants, as an armored hussar among camp-followers. He, a captive, has now promised favor, and heads are uncovered in his presence, while submissive voices cry with that prolonged tone indicating fear and obedience,--

"Show favor to us, lord!"

"It will be as I have said," returned the lieutenant.

He was indeed sure of the efficacy of his intercession with the hetman, with whom he was acquainted, for he had often borne letters to him from Prince Yeremi, and knew how to secure his favor. He stood, therefore, with his hands on his hips; and joy was on his face, lighted up with the blaze of the conflagration.

"Behold! the war is at an end, the wave is broken at the threshold!"

thought he. "Pan Charnetski was right: the forces of the Commonwealth are unexhausted, its power unbroken."

When he thought of this, pride swelled his breast,--not ign.o.ble pride, coming from a hoped-for satisfaction of vengeance, from the conquest of an enemy; not the gaining of freedom, which now he expected every moment; nor because caps were removed before him; but he felt proud because he was a son of that victorious and mighty Commonwealth, against whose gates every malice, every attack, every blow, is broken and crushed like the powers of h.e.l.l against the gates of heaven. He felt proud, as a patriotic n.o.bleman, that he had received strength in his despondency, and was not deceived in his faith. He desired no revenge.

"She has conquered like a queen, she will forgive like a mother,"

thought he.

Meanwhile the roar of cannon was changed to prolonged thunder. Horses'

hoofs clattered again over the empty streets. A Cossack, bareheaded and in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, dashed into the square on a barebacked horse, with the speed of a thunderbolt; his face, cut open with a sword, was streaming with blood. He reined in the horse, stretched forth his hands, and when he had taken breath, with open mouth began to cry,--

"Hmelnitski is beating the Poles! The serene great mighty lords, the hetmans and colonels, are conquered,--the knights and the cavalry!"

When he had said this, he reeled and fell to the ground. The men of Mirgorod sprang to a.s.sist him.

Flame and pallor pa.s.sed over the face of Skshetuski.

"What does he say?" asked he feverishly of Zakhar. "What has happened?

It cannot be. By the living G.o.d, it cannot be!"

Silence! Only the hissing of flames on the opposite side of the square, shaking out cl.u.s.ters of sparks, and from time to time a burnt house falls with a crash.

Now more couriers rush in. "Beaten are the Poles,--beaten!"

After them follow a detachment of Tartars. They march slowly, for they surround men on foot, evidently prisoners.

Skshetuski believes not his own eyes. He recognizes perfectly on the prisoners the uniform of the hetmans' hussars; then he drops his hands, and with a wild, strange voice repeats persistently, "It cannot be! it cannot be!"

The roar of cannon was still to be heard. The battle was not finished, but through all the unburnt streets Zaporojians and Tartars were crowding in, their faces black, their b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaving, but they were coming as if intoxicated, singing songs. Thus return soldiers from victory.

The lieutenant grew pale as a corpse. "It cannot be!" repeated he in a hoa.r.s.er voice,--"it cannot be! The Commonwealth--"

A new object arrested his attention. Krechovski's Cossacks enter the town, bringing bundles of flags. They come to the centre of the square, and throw them down. Polish flags!

The roar of the artillery weakens, and in the distance is heard the rumble of approaching wagons. One of them is in advance,--a lofty Cossack telega, and after it a line of others, all surrounded by Cossacks of the Pashkoff kuren, in yellow caps; they pa.s.s near the house where the Mirgorod men are standing.

Skshetuski put his hand over his eyes, for the glare of the burning blinded him, and looked at the prisoners sitting in the first wagon.

Suddenly he sprang back, began to beat the air with his hands, like a man struck with an arrow in the breast, and from his lips came a terrible unearthly cry: "Jesus, Mary! the hetmans!"

He dropped into the arms of Zakhar; his eyes became leaden, his face grew stiff and rigid as that of a corpse.

A few minutes later three hors.e.m.e.n rode into the square of Korsun, at the head of countless regiments. The middle rider, in red uniform, sat on a white horse, holding a gilded baton at his side. He looked as proud as a king. This was Hmelnitski. On one side of him rode Tugai Bey, on the other Krechovski.

The Commonwealth lay prostrate in dust and blood at the feet of a Cossack.

CHAPTER XVI.

Some days pa.s.sed by. It appeared to men as if the vault of heaven had suddenly dropped on the Commonwealth. Joltiya Vodi; Korsun; the destruction of the armies of the crown, ever victorious. .h.i.therto in struggles with the Cossacks; the capture of the hetmans; the awful conflagration in the whole Ukraine; slaughters, murders, unheard of since the beginning of the world,--all these came so suddenly that men almost refused to believe that so many misfortunes could come upon one land at a time. Many, in fact, did not believe it; some became helpless from terror, some lost their senses, some prophesied the coming of antichrist and the approach of the day of judgment. All social ties were severed; all intercourse between people and families was interrupted. Every authority ceased; distinction of persons vanished.

h.e.l.l had freed from its chains all crimes, and let them out on the world to revel; therefore murder, pillage, perfidy, brutality, violence, robbery, frenzy, took the place of labor, uprightness, and conscience. It seemed as though henceforth people would live not through good, but through evil; that the hearts and intentions of men had become inverted, and that they held as sacred that which hitherto had been infamous, and that as infamous which hitherto had been sacred.

The sun shone no longer upon the earth, for it was hidden by the smoke of conflagrations; in the night, instead of stars and moon, shone the light of fires. Towns, villages, churches, palaces, forests, went up in flames. People ceased to converse; they only groaned or howled like dogs. Life lost its value. Thousands perished without an echo, without remembrance. And from out all these calamities, deaths, groans, smoke, and burnings, there rose only one man. Every moment loftier and higher, every moment more terribly gigantic, he wellnigh obscured the light of day, and cast his shadow from sea to sea. That man was Bogdan Hmelnitski.

A hundred and twenty thousand men, armed and drunk with victory, stood ready at his nod. The mob had risen on all sides; the Cossacks of the towns joined him in every place. The country from the Pripet to the borders of the Wilderness was on fire. The insurrection extended in the provinces of Rus, Podolia, Volynia, Bratslav, Kieff, and Chernigoff.

The power of the hetman increased each day. Never had the Commonwealth opposed to its most terrible enemy half the forces which he then commanded. The German emperor had not equal numbers in readiness. The storm surpa.s.sed every expectation. The hetman himself did not recognize at first his own power, and did not understand how he had risen so high. He s.h.i.+elded himself yet with justice, legality, and loyalty to the Commonwealth, for he did not know then that he might trample upon these expressions as empty phrases; but as his forces grew there rose in him that immeasurable, unconscious egotism the equal of which is not presented by history. The understanding of good and evil, of virtue and vice, of violence and justice, were confounded in the soul of Hmelnitski with the understanding of injuries done him, or with his personal profit. That man was honorable who was with him; that man was a criminal who was against him. He was ready to complain of the sun, and to count it as a personal injustice if suns.h.i.+ne were not given at his demand. Men, events, nay, the whole world, he measured with his own _ego_. But in spite of all the cunning, all the hypocrisy of the hetman, there was a kind of deformed good faith in this theory of his.

All Hmelnitski's crimes flowed from this theory, but his good deeds as well; for if he knew no bounds in his cruelty and tyranny to an enemy, he knew how to be thankful for every even involuntary service which was rendered him.

Only when he was drunk did he forget even good deeds, and bellowing with fury, with foam on his lips, issue b.l.o.o.d.y orders, for which he grieved afterward. And in proportion as his success grew, was he oftener drunk, for unquiet took increasing possession of him. It would seem that triumph carried him to heights which he did not wish to occupy. His power amazed other men, but it amazed himself too. The gigantic hand of rebellion seized and bore him on with the swiftness of lightning and inexorably. But whither? How was all this to end?

Commencing sedition in the name of his own wrongs, that Cossack diplomat might calculate that after his first successes, or even after defeats, he could begin negotiations; that forgiveness would be offered him, satisfaction and recompense for injustice and injuries. He knew the Commonwealth intimately,--its patience, inexhaustible as the sea; its compa.s.sion, knowing neither bounds nor measure, which flowed not merely from weakness, for pardon was offered Nalivaika when he was surrounded and lost. But after the victory at Joltiya Vodi, after the destruction of the hetmans, after the kindling of civil war in all the southern provinces, affairs had gone too far. Events had surpa.s.sed all expectations, and now the struggle must be for life and death. To whose side would victory incline?