Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  There was one new device which Vuldai did appreciate; it came, some said, from China; others claimed, from Turkey; but regardless of derivation, it was most effective when fifteen hundred Tatars had to defeat seven thousand enemy. It consisted of small kegs of black powder—not gunpowder—which emitted a sickening, poisonous gas that could be ignited only when the wind was so directed that it carried the fumes into the faces of the enemy. It did not kill, but it did ruin battle plans, for while the confused infantry were gasping and vomiting, Vuldai’s cavalry chopped the flanks to pieces, turning the battle into a rout.

  When Genghis died in 1227 his restructured Tatars were the most formidable fighting force in the world, subsisting on almost nothing, capable of sweeping forward forty or fifty miles a day, conquering all that intervened, yet rigorously trained in subordinating their wild forays to the general plan of battle. They were never, under the Khan’s specific orders, used at the center of any attack, only on the flanks, and by habit they customarily found themselves on the right flank, which meant that since most of the Mongol advances were from east to west, the Tatars instinctively drove toward the northwest.

  When Genghis was buried, with sheepskins draped over the drums to muffle their mournful beat, his vast empire, continental in size, passed to his lecherous, wine-bibbing, incompetent son Ogodei, forty-two years old, who had the good luck to find in his nephew Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis, a military leader of some ability. Ogodei had wild, drunken visions, Batu the ability to realize them, and in the year 1239 these two learned from travelers who came east from Europe and from spies sent west by the Mongols that the entire continent of Europe, even down to Italy, was ripe for another of those vast explosions which from time to time had come out of Asia.

  Ogodei outlined the strategy: ‘We will attack on two massive flanks. You and I, Batu, will smash into Hungary, which is undefended if we can believe what they tell us. We’ll send the Tatars north to smash Poland. Our two arms will meet in Bohemia, then on to the other ocean.’ Plans no more subtle than this had succeeded eight centuries earlier when Goths and Vandals surged all the way to Rome, and the Mongols were convinced that with their superior horsemanship and tactics, they would succeed again.

  The Tatar contingent, on its customary dash to the northwest, would be required to cover enormous distances: campsite to the Caspian Sea a thousand miles, then another thousand crossing the Volga and the Don rivers to that formidable spot where much trouble was to be expected, the fortified city of Kiev on the Dnieper. If Kiev could be subdued—say, seven months of heavy assault—the Tatars would be free to gallop another four hundred miles to Lwow, Lublin and Sandomierz in Poland itself.

  Then they would have before them a prize which would justify the manifold dangers of their wild invasion: Golden Krakow would stand awaiting them, with the most beautiful women in Europe to be ravaged, the richest churches to be looted and the finest shops to be emptied and then burned. Krakow was a magnet powerful enough to draw invaders more than two thousand miles, and Vuldai’s dark eyes glowed when he visualized it.

  At the final planning sessions the leaders of the Mongol horde which would invade Hungary informed two Tatar generals, the brothers Pajdar and Kajdu, that they were to command the thrust into Poland, and the young men bowed. ‘God of the Great Distances,’ the Tatars shouted as they mounted their horses, ‘lead us to victory!’ And in a clatter of lances and a swirl of dust they were off to the far adventure.

  The Tatars organized their troops on a basis of tens: a unit of horsemen under a lieutenant, a company of a hundred under a captain, a battalion of a thousand under a colonel, and a tumen of ten thousand under a brigadier. As generals, each of the two young brothers commanded three tumen, that is, thirty thousand horsemen each, or sixty thousand in all, but not all were battle-ready troops, for an immense train followed the Tatar fighters. There were foragers, and horse-tenders, and women to make camp when the warriors regrouped, and children who begged to come along, and spare horses. Not one Tatar in the vast assemblage was on foot. This was, unquestionably, the most mobile force in the world, and one of the most terrifying.

  The warriors carried no armor or protection for their horses; defense depended upon evasion and speed. The Tatars appeared to be only an attacking force, but they knew every trick so far devised for protecting themselves and their horses. They liked to divide their force into three segments: the first would attack single file and run into obvious difficulty; in retreat, it would encourage the victorious enemy to thin itself out in swift pursuit, whereupon a hidden second unit would crash in upon the flanks; and when the confusion was at a peak, the third force would dash in to annihilate. The Tatars took few male prisoners.

  The two major wings of this assault, the southern Mongols toward Hungary and the northern Tatars toward Poland, achieved larger successes than they had anticipated, so that by the end of 1240 the southern prong was in position to attack the Carpathian Mountains guarding Hungary while the northern closed in upon Kiev, the well-defended fortress city that blocked the approaches to Poland. It seemed to the messengers who moved back and forth between the far-separated arms that the invasion had reached its halting spot and that a year or two might be required for regrouping and a careful assault upon formidable barriers.

  ‘But there is real hope,’ reported the leaders of the Tatar divisions, ‘that if we can subdue Kiev within the year, we can gallop into Poland next year and into the heartlands of Europe the year after.’ Batu Khan, reporting from the borders of Hungary, assured the Tatars that his troops would match that schedule or even improve upon it.

  So the attack on Great Kiev, as it was called, began. On a November day the Tatar horde assembled on the left bank of the Dnieper, some ten miles distant from the city, and spies sent out from Kiev reported back: ‘They resemble no army we have ever seen before. No armor, no machines, no panoply. Just rather small men on rather small horses.’

  It was cold when the Tatars started to move forward, sixty thousand wiry, eager horsemen coming like a firestorm out of the steppes. They wore thick jackets and had drooping mustaches. They carried lances and daggers. Each man had a small pouch tied to his saddle containing enough thin strips of dried meat to keep him alive for twenty days, but in some ways the most powerful weapon the Tatars carried with them as they rode was a hunger for the spoils they were about to garner and a lust for the women they would soon embrace.

  The attack on Kiev turned out to be one of the miracles of contemporary warfare: the Tatars approached at an easy canter, then spurred their horses and simply rode over the defenders. On and on came the terrible horsemen, not shouting or screaming to cause terror, but in irresistible force, shaggy aliens from the heartland of Asia exploding into the mainland of Europe.

  The two young generals, Pajdar on the left, Kajdu on the right, led the wild gallop into the city, encouraging the thundering ranks that followed, and before dusk the looting and the screaming began. A city that had considered itself impregnable had collapsed in one day.

  The destruction of Kiev was pitiful to see. Noble churches were burned. Streets were corrupted with hundreds of corpses. Any house that looked as if it might contain a single item of unusual value was gutted. And for three days the raping was incessant, and public, and frequently terminated by a score of stabbings with the dagger. Kiev was desolated, leaving the Tatars free to attack Poland a full year ahead of schedule. From the Carpathians, Batu Khan reported a similar unexpected success, and now the messengers between the two groups carried the exultant word that Europe lay defenseless.

  In the last cold days of 1240 the Tatars, emboldened by their easy conquest of Kiev, embarked upon an enterprise of great daring. Said Pajdar: ‘Let us assemble those warriors with the swiftest horses and the fiercest manner and send them forward to invade as quickly as possible. Speed, speed.’

  When his wiry little assistant Vuldai asked: ‘How will the slower horsemen with our supplies catch up?’ the daring general replied: �
�They’ll not leave Kiev. They stay here to rebuild the city the way we want it. We gallop on ahead without supplies. Then our men will have to fight, or starve. Every farm we sweep past will give us its pigs and chickens.’

  ‘And the loot?’

  ‘Whatever our men can carry.’

  ‘And slaves?’

  ‘At four stopping points we’ll collect all our captives and send them back to Kiev. But we forge ahead.’

  The light in Vuldai’s eyes as he visualized the endless assault, the unlimited booty, so pleased Pajdar that he said: ‘You shall lead the southern horsemen. Not many, but very swift. To draw attention while Kajdu and I take the greater mass through the north. We meet at Krakow, then on through what they call the German states.’

  ‘My men must start to dry their beef,’ Vuldai said in proud acknowledgment of his new command, and for six weeks the Tatars took all the beef they could command from the conquered peasants and cut it into strips, which they dried in what sun there was and in the harsh blowing wind. They made little balls of hard cheese from whatever milk they found—cow’s, mare’s, goat’s, ewe’s—and by mixing a handful of parched wheat or barley they made a durable, nourishing kind of food which only men with good teeth could manage.

  They were particularly careful to salt whatever foodstuffs they dried, knowing that this delectable addition not only helped preserve the food for long periods but also added to its utility when a piece the size of a thumb might have to suffice for three days in the saddle. ‘A little salt,’ Vuldai told his men, ‘is better than a banquet.’

  By the middle of December the two arms of the assault on Poland were ready, with rude maps showing each the recommended route. Pajdar’s men would sweep north through Zhitomir, Chelm and Lublin, crossing the Vistula near Sandomierz; Vuldai’s would ravage the lands to the south: Berdichev, Lwow, and Przemysl, negotiating the Vistula well below Sandomierz. They would meet before the gates of Golden Krakow, and when it fell, the men would be awarded seven days for looting and raping.

  It was a bold plan, and they knew that if at any point either the Ruthenians (later to be known as Ukrainians) or the Poles managed to mount an effective resistance, their Tatar cavalry, lacking any organized supply, would have to retreat; but if they could gallop from one farm village to the next, bypassing any troublesome cities, they had a fighting chance for success. Speed, savagery, foraging, plunder, the capture of slaves to be marched eastward, that was the daring strategy, and of all the fighting forces then operating throughout the world, the Tatar horsemen formed the one most likely to execute it properly.

  It was agreed that Vuldai would start his diversionary sweep to the south seven days ahead of the major force in order to attract the attention of spies. Now, as he rested sideways in his saddle, left leg hanging free, Vuldai was five feet one inch tall and weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds. His hair was close-cropped sides and back; his mustaches were big and drooping. He dressed himself in thick felted trousers, linen shirt and kaftan made from animal skins, and wore a conical fur cap. Tied to his saddle was a kind of thin cape that would be used to fend off rain or snow during storms and the cold when he slept on the bare earth. He carried four weapons, four pounds of dried food, no change of clothing, no medicines, no replenishments of any kind, yet he proposed to ride his horse, and others he would steal along the way, eight hundred miles through nations which should have been prepared to repulse him easily, except for two things: he moved with speed that bedazzled the enemy, and he was prepared to slay anything that threatened to impede him even momentarily. He and his men represented one of the most terrible forces ever let loose upon a civilized world, and he was prepared to devastate that world.

  ‘We go!’ he shouted one frosty morning, and his little horsemen headed west.

  It was eighty miles from Kiev to Berdichev, and the galloping force covered this distance in two days, but they did not attack the well-fortified city; they swept around it, destroying every outlying settlement and accumulating stores which would carry them safely the two hundred-odd miles to Lwow, where they employed the same tactics.

  Their strategy was seen at its best when they approached a small settlement called Polz, a farm village containing some sixty cottages, with an equivalent number of barns and lesser buildings. Two hundred and eighty people lived in or near Polz, clustered about the small, rude castle occupied by the younger son of the magnate who owned sixty other villages of similar size.

  When the Tatars’ six thousand hungry, excitable horsemen spotted Polz lying ahead, Vuldai ordered his men to ride forward at a slow trot so that their dust could be plainly seen in the village, warning the occupants of what faced them. He then dispatched three horsemen to ride ahead, asking that the villagers surrender all their goods immediately, but when the latter employed delaying tactics, hoping to salvage at least some of their possessions, the three Tatars grew angry and flashed a signal, whereupon the six thousand spurred their horses and came thundering down full force upon the village.

  Everything was destroyed. All barns were burned, all houses leveled. Not a living animal escaped, not a pig, not one fowl. During the first mad rush all visible men were slain, some chopped down with swords, most run through with lances. A good many women died too, cut to pieces in the mad onslaught, but when the fury subsided the younger women and the girls were saved for two nights of sporting, then shipped eastward into slavery at what was now the Tatar capital of Kiev. About twenty younger men were saved to service the Tatar horses, but when this job was completed, they were killed one by one, until none was left. A few strong boys were preserved for playful and repulsive games, then marched eastward to join the slaves. And at the conclusion of the two days, there was only death and devastation where Polz and its two hundred eighty citizens had once existed.

  But Vuldai and his men had acquired enough food and new horses to sustain them for their gallop to the next village, which would be treated in similar fashion. Cities, because of their walls, escaped these horsemen; no village did.

  By 10 January 1241, less than three weeks after having departed from Kiev, Vuldai’s men completed their dash across the steppes and realized that their first target, the Vistula River, lay less than a day’s ride ahead, with their second target, Golden Krakow, only a short distance beyond. But crossing the river might prove difficult, so Vuldai reined in his rampaging horsemen and sent out two groups of scouts, one to the north to ascertain how Pajdar’s army was doing, the other straight ahead to reconnoiter approaches to the river.

  The latter moved cautiously, capturing a family of peasants, who informed them that directly ahead lay the huge Forest of Szczek whose far end opened directly on the river, and when the scouts had ridden some miles into the forest and seen the giant beech trees and the oaks, they realized that this would be a splendid hiding area in which to assemble the horsemen. From here the avalanche would be launched to destroy any settlements guarding the river, throwing it open to an easy passage.

  Two scouts penetrated the entire depth of the forest, standing finally in a grove of large beech trees from which they could scout the specific obstacles they would face when the time came to cross the Vistula, and they reported back to Vuldai: ‘A village like the others. Roofs easy to burn. A small castle, wood and stone of no consequence. Easy to burn. To the south, along the bank of the river, a larger castle of stone which can be invested. Wipe these out, and we have a safe passage to the other side of the river, with enough time to build any boats we might need.’

  So on the morning of 11 January 1241, a date recorded with awe in the chronicles, the six thousand mounted troops of the Tatar leader Vuldai eased themselves quietly into the eastern limits of the Forest of Szczek and started cautiously infiltrating toward the western edge, where the little settlement waited.

  * * *

  One unauthorized person witnessed this passage of the Tatars through the forest. From the village a boy of twelve named Jan was working in the woods gathering fallen b
ranches for his father, also named Jan, but with the additional designation The Woodsman, and he had wandered far to a place which had always enchanted him: a grassy glade hidden among the tall trees which his father tended for the knight who owned them. The area was surprisingly large, a pleasing gap in the forest where birds came and deer and sometimes one of the bears who lived nearby.

  Young Jan liked to visit here and rest from his labors, lying on the grass and staring at the open sky, and on this day he was in this position when he heard a clinking sound to the east, and it occurred to him that once again the devil was rattling his chains in the forest to which he had given a name. But when the sound grew closer, appearing to be not devilish but human, he prudently slipped away from the glade and hid himself among the trees.

  What he saw astounded him, for out of the trees to the east came two men on horseback, and they were certainly not Poles, for they were dressed in costumes he had not seen before, and their skins were dark, their mustaches long and their eyes cocked curiously. That they were some kind of military men seemed evident from the swords and daggers in their belts, but they rode easily, letting the reins hang slack, and they spoke in low voices as they passed, using words he could not understand.

  One thing was clear: they were men ready to strike at anything that surprised them, and when they were gone Jan moved farther back into the shadows lest others follow.

  Now solitary horsemen entered the area, always from the east, and they were fascinating to see: small, heavily clothed, darting eyes, each man looking as if he were an inseparable part of his mount. The lone rider would pause, encourage his horse to browse on the good grass, then pass quietly on, leaving the area silent.

  But then four or five of the strangers would arrive in unison, and they, too, would graze their horses and talk quietly, then vanish mysteriously into the farther trees.