The Deluge. Vol. 1

"And there is no hope," added Kmita, in a hollow voice.

Here they dropped the conversation, for a Swedish division came up convoying wagons, small nobles, and a "requisition." It was a wonderful spectacle. Sitting on horses as fat as bullocks, mustached and bearded troopers rode on in a cloud of dust, with their right hands on their hips, with their hats on the sides of their heads, with tens of geese and hens hanging at their saddles. Looking at their warlike and insolent faces, it was easy to see that they felt like lords, gladsome and safe. But the brotherhood of petty nobles walked at the side of the wagons, not only barefooted, but with heads drooping on their bosoms, abused, troubled, frequently urged forward with whips.

On seeing this, Kmita's lips quivered as in a fever, and he fell to repeating to the noble near whom he was riding, -

"Oh, my hands are itching, my hands are itching, my hands are itching!"

"Quiet, in the name of the Merciful God! you will ruin yourself, me, and my little children."

More than once, however, Pan Andrei had before him sights still more marvellous. Behold at times, among parties of horsemen, he saw marching groups, larger or smaller, of Polish nobles, with armed attendants; these nobles were joyous, singing songs, drunk, and with Swedes and Germans on the footing of "lord brother."

"How is this?" asked Kmita. "They are persecuting some nobles and crushing them, while with others they enter into friendship. It must be that those citizens whom I see among the soldiers are fanatical traitors?"

"Not merely fanatical traitors, but worse, for they are heretics," answered the noble. "They are more grievous to us Catholics than the Swedes; they are the men who plunder most, burn houses, carry off maidens, commit private offences. The whole country is in alarm from them, for everything drops from these men altogether without punishment, and it is easier to get justice from Swedish commanders against a Swede, than against one of our own heretics. Every commandant, if you utter a word, will answer at once, 'I have no right to touch him, for he is not my man; go to your own tribunals.' And what tribunals are there here now, and what execution of law when everything is in Swedish hands? Where the Swede cannot go the heretics will take him, and they are the men chiefly who incite the Swedes against churches and clergy. This is the way in which they punish the country, our mother, for having given them refuge here and freedom for their blasphemous faith when they were persecuted in other Christian lands justly, for their intrigues and abominations."

The noble stopped and looked with alarm at Kmita, -

"But you say that you are from Electoral Prussia, so you may be a Lutheran?"

"God save me from that," answered Pan Andrei. "I am from Prussia, but of a family Catholic for ages, for we went from Lithuania to Prussia."

"Then praise to the Most High, for I was frightened. My dear sir, as to Lithuania there is no lack of dissidents there; and they have a powerful chief in Radzivill, who has turned out so great a traitor that he can come into comparison with Radzeyovski alone."

"May God grant the devils to pull the soul out through his throat before the New Year!" exclaimed Kmita, with venom.

"Amen!" answered the noble, "and also the souls of his servants, his assistants, his executioners, of whom tidings have come even to us, and without whom he would not have dared to bring destruction on this country."

Kmita grew pale and said not a word. He did not ask even-he did not dare to ask-of what assistants, servants, and executioners that noble was speaking.

Travelling slowly, they came to Pultusk late in the evening; there they called Kmita to the bishop's palace or castle to give answer to the commandant.

"I am furnishing horses to the army of his Swedish Grace," said Pan Andrei, "and I have orders with which I am going to Warsaw for money."

Colonel Israel (such was the name of the commandant) smiled under his mustaches and said, -

"Oh, make haste, make haste, and take a wagon for the return, so as to have something to carry that money in!"

"I thank you for the counsel," answered Pan Andrei. "I understand that you are jeering at me; but I will go for my own, even if I have to go to his grace the king!"

"Go! don't give away your own; a very nice sum belongs to you."

"The hour will come when you'll pay me," retorted Kmita, going out.

In the town itself he came on celebrations again, for rejoicing over the capture of Cracow was to last three days. He learned, however, that in Pjasnysh the Swedish triumph was exaggerated, perhaps by design. Charnyetski, the castellan of Kieff, had not fallen into captivity, but had obtained the right of marching from the city with his troops, with arms and lighted matches at the cannon. It was said that he was to retire to Silesia. This was not a great consolation, but still a consolation.

In Pultusk there were considerable forces which were to go thence to the Prussian boundary, under command of Colonel Israel, to alarm the elector; therefore neither the town nor the castle, though very spacious, could furnish lodging for the soldiers. Here too, for the first time, Kmita saw soldiers encamped in a church, – in a splendid Gothic structure, founded almost two hundred years before by Bishop Gijytski, were quartered hireling German infantry. Inside the sanctuary it was flaming with light as on Easter, for on the stone floor were burning fires kindled in various places. Kettles were steaming over the fires. Around kegs of beer were groups of common soldiers, – hardened robbers, who had plundered all Catholic Germany, and of a certainty were not spending their first night in a church. In the church were heard talking and shouting. Hoarse voices were singing camp songs; there sounded also the outcry and merriment of women, who in those days straggled usually in the wake of an army.

Kmita stood in the open door; through the smoke in the midst of ruddy flames he saw the red, mustached faces of soldiers who, inflamed with drink, were sitting on kegs and quaffing beer; some throwing dice or playing cards, some selling church vestments, others embracing low women dressed in bright garments. Uproar, laughter, the clatter of tankards, the sound of muskets, the echoes thundering in the vaults deafened him. His head whirled; he could not believe what his eyes saw; the breath died in his breast; hell would not have more greatly amazed him. At last he clutched his hair and ran out repeating as if in bewilderment, -

"O God, aid us! O God, correct us! O God, deliver us!"

CHAPTER XXXVII

In Warsaw the Swedes had been managing for a long time. Wittemberg, the real governor of the city and the commander of the garrison, was at that moment in Cracow; Radzeyovski carried on the government in his place. Not less than two thousand soldiers were in the city proper surrounded by walls, and in the jurisdictions beyond the walls built up with splendid edifices belonging to the church and the world. The castle and the city were not destroyed; for Pan Vessel, starosta of Makovo, had yielded them up without battle, and he with the garrison disappeared hurriedly, fearing the personal vengeance of Radzeyovski, his enemy.

But when Pan Kmita examined more closely and carefully, he saw on many houses the traces of plundering hands. These were the houses of those citizens who had fled from the city, not wishing to endure foreign rule, or who had offered resistance when the Swedes were breaking over the walls.

Of the lordly structures in the jurisdictions those only retained their former splendor the owners of which stood soul and body with the Swedes. Therefore the Kazanovski Palace remained in all its magnificence, for Radzeyovski had saved that, his own, and the palace of Konyetspolski, the standard-bearer, as well as the edifice reared by Vladislav IV., and which was afterward known as the Kazimirovski Palace. But edifices of the clergy were injured considerably; the Denhof Palace was half wrecked; the chancellor's or the so-called Ossolinski Palace, on Reformatski Street, was plundered to its foundations. German hirelings looked out through its windows; and that costly furniture which the late chancellor had brought from Italy at such outlay, – those Florentine leathers, Dutch tapestry, beautiful cabinets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, pictures, bronze and marble statues, clocks from Venice and Dantzig, and magnificent glasses were either lying in disordered heaps in the yard, or, already packed, were waiting to be taken, when the time came, by the Vistula to Sweden. Guards watched over these precious things, but meanwhile they were being ruined under the wind and rain.

In other cities the same thing might be seen; and though the capital had yielded without battle, still thirty gigantic flat-boats were ready on the Vistula to bear away the plunder.

The city looked like a foreign place. On the streets foreign languages were heard more than Polish; everywhere were met Swedish soldiers, German, French, English, and Scottish mercenaries, in the greatest variety of uniforms, – in hats, in lofty helmets, in kaftans, in breastplates, half breastplates, in stockings, or Swedish boots, with legs as wide as water-buckets. Everywhere a foreign medley, foreign garments, foreign faces, foreign songs. Even the horses had forms different from those to which the eye was accustomed. There had also rushed in a multitude of Armenians with dark faces, and black hair covered with bright skull-caps; they had come to buy plundered articles.

But most astonishing of all was the incalculable number of gypsies, who, it is unknown for what purpose, had gathered after the Swedes from all parts of the country. Their tents stood at the side of the Uyazdovski Palace, and along the monastery jurisdiction, forming as it were a special town of linen houses within a town of walled structures.

In the midst of these various-tongued throngs the inhabitants of the city almost vanished; for their own safety they sat gladly enclosed in their houses, showing themselves rarely, and then passing swiftly along the streets. Only occasionally the carriage of some magnate, hurrying from the Cracow suburbs to the castle, and surrounded by haiduks, Turkish grooms, or troops in Polish dress, gave reminder that the city was Polish.

Only on Sundays and holidays, when the bells announced services, did crowds come forth from the houses, and the capital put on its former appearance, – though even then lines of foreign soldiers stood hedgelike in front of the churches, to look at the women or pull at their dresses when, with downcast eyes, they walked past them. These soldiers laughed, and sometimes sang vile songs just when the priests were singing Mass in the churches.

All this flashed past the astonished eyes of Pan Kmita like jugglery; but he did not warm his place long in Warsaw, for not knowing any man he had no one before whom to open his soul. Even with those Polish nobles who were stopping in the city and living in public houses built during the reign of King Sigismund III. on Dluga Street, Pan Andrei did not associate closely. He conversed, it is true, with this one and that, to learn the news; but all were fanatical adherents of the Swedes, and waiting for the return of Karl Gustav, clung to Radzeyovski and the Swedish officers with the hope of receiving starostaships, confiscated private estates, and profits from church and other recoupments. Each man of them would have been served rightly had some one spat in his eyes, and from this Kmita did not make great effort to restrain himself.

From the townspeople Kmita only heard that they regretted past times, and the good king of the fallen country. The Swedes persecuted them savagely, seized their houses, exacted contributions, imprisoned them. They said also that the guilds had arms secreted, especially the linen-weavers, the butchers, the furriers, and the powerful guild of tailors; that they were looking continually for the return of Yan Kazimir, did not lose hope, and with assistance from outside were ready to attack the Swedes.

Hearing this, Kmita did not believe his own ears. It could not find place in his head that men of mean station and rank should exhibit more love for the country and loyalty to their lawful king than nobles, who ought to bring those sentiments into the world with their birth.

But it was just the nobles and magnates who stood by the Swedes, and the common people who for the greater part wished to resist; and more than once it happened that when the Swedes were driving common people to work at fortifying Warsaw, these common people chose to endure flogging, imprisonment, even death itself, rather than aid in confirming Swedish power.

Beyond Warsaw the country was as noisy as in a beehive. All the roads, the towns, and the hamlets were occupied by soldiers, by attendants of great lords and nobles, and by lords and nobles serving the Swedes. All was captured, gathered in, subdued; everything was as Swedish as if the country had been always in their hands.

Pan Andrei met no people save Swedes, adherents of the Swedes, or people in despair, indifferent, who were convinced to the depth of their souls that all was lost. No one thought of resistance; commands were carried out quietly and promptly one half or a tenth part of which would have been met in times not long past with opposition and protest. Fear had reached that degree that even those who were injured praised loudly the kind protector of the Commonwealth.

Formerly it happened often enough that a noble received his own civil and military deputies of exaction with gun in hand, and at the head of armed servants; now such tributes were imposed as it pleased the Swedes to impose, and the nobles gave them as obediently as sheep give their wool to the shearer. It happened more than once that the same tribute was taken twice. It was vain to use a receipt as defence; it was well if the executing officer did not moisten it in wine and make the man who showed it swallow the paper. That was nothing! "Vivat protector!" cried the noble; and when the officer had departed he ordered his servant to crawl out on the roof and see if another were not coming. And well if only all were ended with Swedish contributions; but worse than the enemy were, in that as in every other land, the traitors. Old private grievances, old offences were brought up; ditches were filled, meadows and forests were seized, and for the friend of the Swedes everything went unpunished. Worst, however, were the dissidents; and they were not all. Armed bands were formed of unfortunates, desperadoes, ruffians, and gamblers. Assisted by Swedish marauders, Germans, and disturbers of all kinds, these bands fell upon peasants and nobles. The country was filled with fires; the armed hand of the soldier was heavy on the towns; in the forest the robber attacked. No one thought of curing the Commonwealth; no one dreamed of rescue, of casting off the yoke; no one had hope.

It happened that Swedish and German plunderers near Sohachev besieged Pan Lushchevski, the starosta of that place, falling upon him at Strugi, his private estate. He, being of a military turn, defended himself vigorously, though an old man. Kmita came just then; and since his patience had on it a sore ready to break at any cause, it broke at Strugi. He permitted the Kyemliches, therefore, "to pound," and fell upon the invaders himself with such vigor that he scattered them, struck them down; no one escaped, even prisoners were drowned at his command. The starosta, to whom the aid was as if it had fallen from heaven, received his deliverer with thanks and honored him at once. Pan Andrei, seeing before him a personage, a statesman, and besides a man of old date, confessed his hatred of the Swedes, and inquired of the starosta what he thought of the future of the Commonwealth, in the hope that he would pour balsam on his soul.

But the starosta viewed the past differently, and said: "My gracious sir, I know not what I should have answered had this question been put when I had ruddy mustaches and a mind clouded by physical humor; but to-day I have gray mustaches, and the experience of seventy years on my shoulders, and I see future things, for I am near the grave; therefore I say that not only we, even if we should correct our errors, but all Europe, cannot break the Swedish power."

"How can that be? Where did it come from?" cried Kmita. "When was Sweden such a power? Are there not more of the Polish people on earth, can we not have a larger army? Has that army yielded at any time to Sweden in bravery?"

"There are ten times as many of our people. God has increased our produce so that in my starostaship of Sohachev more wheat is grown than in all Sweden; and as to bravery, I was at Kirchholm when three thousand hussars of us scattered in the dust eighteen thousand of the best troops of Sweden."

"If that is true," said Kmita, whose eyes flashed at remembrance of Kirchholm, "what earthly causes are there why we should not put an end to them now?"

"First, this," answered the old man, with a deliberate voice, "that we have become small and they have grown great; that they have conquered us with our own hands, as before now they conquered the Germans with Germans. Such is the will of God; and there is no power, I repeat, that can oppose them to-day."

"But if the nobles should come to their senses and rally around their ruler, – if all should seize arms, what would you advise to do then, and what would you do yourself?"

"I should go with others and fall, and I should advise every man to fall; but after that would come times on which it is better not to look."