The Deluge- Volume 2

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Arrayed in iron these skeletons of horsemen sat on skeletons of horses. The infantry hardly drew their legs along; barely could they hold spears and muskets with trembling hands. Day followed day; they went onward continually. Wagons were broken, cannons were fastened in sloughs; they went on so slowly that sometimes they were able to advance hardly five miles in one day. Diseases fell on the soldiers, like ravens on corpses; the teeth of some were chattering from fever; others lay down on the ground simply from weakness, choosing rather to die than advance.

  But the Swedish Alexander hastened toward the Polish Darius unceasingly. At the same time he was pursued himself. As in the night-time jackals follow a sick buffalo waiting to see if he will soon fall, and he knows that he will fall and he hears the howl of the hungry pack, so after the Swedes went “parties,” nobles and peasants, approaching ever nearer, attacking ever more insolently, and snatching away.

  At last came Charnyetski, the most terrible of all the pursuers, and followed closely. The rearguards of the Swedes as often as they looked behind saw horsemen, at one time far off on the edge of the horizon, at another a furlong away, at another twice the distance of a musket-shot, at another time, when attacking, on their very shoulders.

  The enemy wanted battle; with despair did the Swedes pray to the Lord of Hosts for battle. But Charnyetski did not receive battle, he bided his time; meanwhile he preferred to punish the Swedes, or let go from his hand against them single parties as one would falcons against water birds.

  And so they marched one after the other. There were times, however, when Charnyetski passed the Swedes, pushed on, and blocked the road before them, pretending to prepare for a general battle. Then the trumpet sounded joyously from one end of the Swedish camp to the other, and, oh miracle! new strength, a new spirit seemed to vivify on a sudden the wearied ranks of the Scandinavians. Sick, wet, weak, like Lazaruses, they stood in rank promptly for battle, with flaming faces, with fire in their eyes. Spears and muskets moved with as much accuracy as if iron hands held them; the shouts of battle were heard as loudly as if they came from the healthiest bosoms, and they marched forward to strike breast against breast.

  Then Charnyetski struck once, twice; but when the artillery began to thunder he withdrew his troops, leaving to the Swedes as profit, vain labor and the greater disappointment and disgust.

  When, however, the artillery could not come up, and spears and sabres had to decide in the open field, he struck like a thunderbolt, knowing that in a hand-to-hand conflict the Swedish cavalry could not stand, even against volunteers.

  And again Wittemberg implored the king to retreat and thus avoid ruin to himself and the army; but Karl Gustav in answer compressed his lips, fire flashed from his eyes, and he pointed to the south, where in the Russian regions he hoped to find Yan Kazimir, and also fields open to conquest, rest, provisions, pastures for horses, and rich plunder.

  Meanwhile, to complete the misfortune, those Polish regiments which had served him hitherto, and which in one way or another were now alone able to meet Charnyetski, began to leave the Swedes. Pan Zbrojek resigned first; he had held to Karl hitherto not from desire of gain, but from blind attachment to the squadron, and soldierly faithfulness to Karl. He resigned in this fashion, that he engaged in conflict with a regiment of Miller’s dragoons, cut down half the men, and departed. After him resigned Pan Kalinski, who rode over the Swedish infantry. Yan Sapyeha grew gloomier each day; he was meditating something in his soul, plotting something. He had not gone hitherto himself, but his men were deserting him daily.

  Karl Gustav was marching then through Narol, Tsyeshanov, and Oleshytse, to reach the San. He was upheld by the hope that Yan Kazimir would bar his road and give him battle. A victory might yet repair the fate of Sweden and bring a change of fortune. In fact, rumors were current that Yan Kazimir had set out from Lvoff with the quarter soldiers and the Tartars. But Karl’s reckonings deceived him. Yan Kazimir preferred to await the junction of the armies and the arrival of the Lithuanians under Sapyeha. Delay was his best ally; for he was growing daily in strength, while Karl was becoming weaker.

  “That is not the march of troops nor of an army, but a funeral procession!” said old warriors in Yan Kazimir’s suite.

  Many Swedish officers shared this opinion. Karl Gustav however repeated still that he was going to Lvoff; but he was deceiving himself and his army. It was not for him to go to Lvoff, but to think of his own safety. Besides, it was not certain that he would find Yan Kazimir in Lvoff; in every event the “Polish Darius” might withdraw far into Podolia, and draw after him the enemy into distant steppes where the Swedes must perish without rescue.

  Douglas went to Premysl to try if that fortress would yield, and returned, not merely with nothing, but plucked. The catastrophe was coming slowly, but inevitably. All tidings brought to the Swedish camp were simply the announcement of it. Each day fresh tidings and ever more terrible.

  “Sapyeha is marching; he is already in Tomashov!” was repeated one day. “Lyubomirski is marching with troops and mountaineers!” was announced the day following. And again: “The king is leading the quarter soldiers and the horde one hundred thousand strong! He has joined Sapyeha!”

  Among these tidings were “tidings of disaster and death,” untrue and exaggerated, but they always spread fear. The courage of the army fell. Formerly whenever Karl appeared in person before his regiments, they greeted him with shouts in which rang the hope of victory; now the regiments stood before him dull and dumb. And at the fires the soldiers, famished and wearied to death, whispered more of Charnyetski than of their own king. They saw him everywhere. And, a strange thing! when for a couple of days no party had perished, when a few nights passed without alarms or cries of “Allah!” and “Strike, kill!” their disquiet became still greater. “Charnyetski has fled; God knows what he is preparing!” repeated the soldiers.

  Karl halted a few days in Yaroslav, pondering what to do. During that time the Swedes placed on flat-bottomed boats sick soldiers, of whom there were many in camp, and sent them by the river to Sandomir, the nearest fortified town still in Swedish hands. After this work had been finished, and just when the news of Yan Kazimir’s march from Lvoff had come in, the King of Sweden determined to discover where Yan Kazimir was, and with that object Colonel Kanneberg with one thousand cavalry passed the San and moved to the east.

  “It may be that you have in your hands the fate of the war and us all,” said the king to him at parting.

  And in truth much depended on that party, for in the worst case Kanneberg was to furnish the camp with provisions; and if he could learn certainly where Yan Kazimir was, the Swedish King was to move at once with all his forces against the “Polish Darius,” whose army he was to scatter and whose person he was to seize if he could.

  The first soldiers and the best horses were assigned, therefore, to Kanneberg. Choice was made the more carefully as the colonel could not take artillery or infantry; hence he must have with him men who with sabres could stand against Polish cavalry in the field.

  March 20, the party set out. A number of officers and soldiers took farewell of them, saying: “God conduct you! God give victory! God give a fortunate return!” They marched in a long line, being one thousand in number, and went two abreast over the newly built bridge which had one square still unfinished, but was in some fashion covered with planks so that they might pass.

  Good hope shone in their faces, for they were exceptionally well fed. Food had been taken from others and given to them; gorailka was poured into their flasks. When they were riding away they shouted joyfully and said to their comrades,—

  “We will bring you Charnyetski himself on a rope.”

  Fools! They knew not that they were going as go bullocks to slaughter at the shambles!

  Everything combined for their ruin. Barely had they crossed the river when the Swedish sappers removed the temporary covering of the bri
dge, so as to lay stronger planks over which cannon might pass. The thousand turned toward Vyelki Ochi, singing in low voices to themselves; their helmets glittered in the sun on the turn once and a second time; then they began to sink in the dense pine-wood.

  They rode forward two miles and a half,—emptiness, silence around them; the forest depths seemed vacant altogether. They halted to give breath to the horses; after that they moved slowly forward. At last they reached Vyelki Oehi, in which they found not a living soul. That emptiness astonished Kanneberg.

  “Evidently they have been waiting for us here,” said he to Major Sweno; “but Charnyetski must be in some other place, since he has not prepared ambushes.”

  “Does your worthiness order a return?” asked Sweno.

  “We will go on even to Lvoff itself, which is not very far. I must find an informant, and give the king sure information touching Yan Kazimir.”

  “But if we meet superior forces?”

  “Even if we meet several thousand of those brawlers whom the Poles call general militia, we will not let ourselves be torn apart by such soldiers.”

  “But we may meet regular troops. We have no artillery, and against them cannons are the main thing.”

  “Then we will draw back in season and inform the king of the enemy, and those who try to cut off our retreat we will disperse.”

  “I am afraid of the night!” replied Sweno.

  “We will take every precaution. We have food for men and horses for two days; we need not hurry.”

  When they entered the pine-wood beyond Vyelki Ochi, they acted with vastly more caution. Fifty horsemen rode in advance musket in hand, each man with his gunstock on his thigh. They looked carefully on every side; examined the thickets, the undergrowth; frequently they halted, listened; sometimes they went from the road to one side to examine the depths of the forest, but neither on the roads nor at the sides was there a man.

  But one hour later, after they had passed a rather sudden turn, two troopers riding in advance saw a man on horseback about four hundred yards ahead.

  The day was clear and the sun shone brightly; hence the man could be seen as something on the hand. He was a soldier, not large, dressed very decently in foreign fashion. He seemed especially small because he sat on a large cream-colored steed, evidently of high breed.

  The horseman was riding at leisure, as if not seeing that troops were rolling on after him. The spring floods had dug deep ditches in the road, in which muddy water was sweeping along. The horseman spurred his steed in front of the ditches, and the beast sprang across with the nimbleness of a deer, and again went on at a trot, throwing his head and snorting vivaciously from time to time.

  The two troopers reined in their horses and began to look around for the sergeant. He clattered up in a moment, looked, and said: “That is some hound from the Polish kennel.”

  “Shall I shout at him?”

  “Shout not; there may be more of them. Go to the colonel.”

  Meanwhile the rest of the advance guard rode up, and all halted; the small horseman halted too, and turned the face of his steed to the Swedes as if wishing to block the road to them. For a certain time they looked at him and he at them.

  “There is another! a second! a third! a fourth! a whole party!” were the sudden cries in the Swedish ranks.

  In fact, horsemen began to pour out from both sides of the road; at first singly, then by twos, by threes. All took their places in line with him who had appeared first.

  But the second Swedish guard with Sweno, and then the whole detachment with Kanneberg, came up. Kanneberg and Sweno rode to the front at once.

  “I know those men!” cried Sweno, when he had barely seen them; “their squadron was the first to strike on Prince Waldemar at Golamb; those are Charnyetski’s men. He must be here himself!”

  These words produced an impression; deep silence followed in the ranks, only the horses shook their bridle-bits.

  “I sniff some ambush,” continued Sweno. “There are too few of them to meet us, but there must be others hidden in the woods.”

  He turned here to Kanneberg: “Your worthiness, let us return.”

  “You give good counsel,” answered the colonel, frowning. “It was not worth while to set out if we must return at sight of a few ragged fellows. Why did we not return at sight of one? Forward!”

  The first Swedish rank moved at that moment with the greatest regularity; after it the second, the third, the fourth. The distance between the two detachments was becoming less.

  “Cock your muskets!” commanded Kanneberg.

  The Swedish muskets moved like one; their iron necks were stretched toward the Polish horsemen.

  But before the muskets thundered, the Polish horsemen turned their horses and began to flee in a disorderly group.

  “Forward!” cried Kanneberg.

  The division moved forward on a gallop, so that the ground trembled under the heavy hoofs of the horses.

  The forest was filled with the shouts of pursuers and pursued. After half an hour of chasing, either because the Swedish horses were better, or those of the Poles were wearied by some journey, the distance between the two bodies was decreasing.

  But at once something wonderful happened. The Polish band, at first disorderly, did not scatter more and more as the flight continued, but on the contrary, they fled in ever better order, in ranks growing more even, as if the very speed of the horses brought the riders into line.

  Sweno saw this, urged on his horse, reached Kanneberg, and called out,—

  “Your worthiness, that is an uncommon party; those are regular soldiers, fleeing designedly and leading us to an ambush.”

  “Will there be devils in the ambush, or men?” asked Kanneberg.

  The road rose somewhat and became ever wider, the forest thinner, and at the end of the road was to be seen an unoccupied field, or rather a great open space, surrounded on all sides by a dense, deep gray pine-wood.

  The Polish horsemen increased their pace in turn, and it transpired that hitherto they had gone slowly of purpose; for now in a short time they pushed forward so rapidly that the Swedish leader knew that he could never overtake them. But when he had come to the middle of the open plain and saw that the enemy were almost touching the other end of it, he began to restrain his men and slacken speed.

  But, oh marvel! the Poles, instead of sinking in the opposite forest, wheeled around at the very edge of the half-circle and returned on a gallop toward the Swedes, putting themselves at once in such splendid battle order that they roused wonder even in their opponents.

  “It is true!” cried Kanneberg, “those are regular soldiers. They turned as if on parade. What do they want for the hundredth time?”

  “They are attacking us!” cried Sweno.

  In fact, the squadron was moving forward at a trot. The little knight on the cream-colored steed shouted something to his men, pushed forward, again reined in his horse, gave signs with his sabre; evidently he was the leader.

  “They are attacking really!” said Kanneberg, with astonishment.

  And now the horses, with ears dropped back, were coming at the greatest speed, stretched out so that their bellies almost touched the ground. Their riders bent forward to their shoulders, and were hidden behind the horse manes. The Swedes standing in the first rank saw only hundreds of distended horse-nostrils and burning eyes. A whirlwind does not move as that squadron tore on.

  “God with us! Sweden! Fire!” commanded Kanneberg, raising his sword.

  All the muskets thundered; but at that very moment the Polish squadron fell into the smoke with such impetus that it hurled to the right and the left the first Swedish ranks, and drove itself into the density of men and horses, as a wedge is driven into a cleft log. A terrible whirl was made, breastplate struck breast-plate, sabre struck rapier; and the rattle, the whining of horses
, the groan of dying men roused every echo, so that the whole pine-wood began to give back the sounds of the battle, as the steep cliffs of mountains give back the thunder.

  The Swedes were confused for a time, especially since a considerable number of them fell from the first blow; but soon recovering, they went powerfully against the enemy. Their flanks came together; and since the Polish squadron was pushing ahead anyhow, for it wished to pass through with a thrust, it was soon surrounded. The Swedish centre yielded before the squadron, but the flanks pressed on it with the greater power, unable to break it; for it defended itself with rage and with all that incomparable adroitness which made the Polish cavalry so terrible in hand-to-hand conflict. Sabres toiled then against rapiers, bodies fell thickly; but the victory was just turning to the Swedish side when suddenly from under the dark wall of the pinewood rolled out another squadron, and moved forward at once with a shout.