Poland: A Novel Part 11

They left the monastery at about eleven o'clock on a cold, bl.u.s.tery night when the Swedish guards would be having a difficult time keeping warm. Moving with extreme caution, they crept down a gully that carried rain water away from the walls, came upon a dozing guard, whom Cyprjan himself strangled, and then to the protected embankment on which the two cannon rested.

For more than fifteen minutes they huddled close to it, speaking no words but surveying the situation, and when each of the nine knew exactly what he must do in the next blazing moments, they swarmed upon the cannon, killed the guards, piled their sacks of powder, and retreated to light the fuse. It required about a minute and forty seconds for the tiny flame to negotiate the length of fuse, and during this awful suspense Swedish soldiers, alerted by the killings, began running toward the embankment, and Cyprjan heard himself praying, 'Beloved G.o.d, delay them!' They were not delayed, for with loud cries they burst into the emplacement, but the writhing fuse reached there first, and with a tremendous explosion the two cannon and the fifteen running Swedes were shattered and tossed high in the air.

On Christmas Day the infuriated Swedes mounted a ma.s.sive attack, which was repulsed by the iron-willed monks, so during the night of 26 December the enemy began to withdraw. Three days later the only sign that the Swedes had ever been there was the extensive damage to the eastern wall and the blackened scar where the two major cannon had been.

On that day the sacred image of the Virgin, black and radiant and victorious, was paraded through the monastery grounds and across the battlefield outside the gates, for her triumph had been complete. The faltering courage of Poland was revived and men began to see some hope that their homeland, ravaged though it was, might be rescued.

After their defense of Czestochowa the three widowers-Cyprjan, Lukasz and Jan-from the destroyed village of Bukowo allied themselves with similarly devastated patriots who vowed that Poland must not perish.

They formed a tatterdemalion army, lacking in food, clothing and arms, but they did occasionally gain some small victory by hara.s.sing the Swedes in night forays and daring ambuscades. However, the enemy was powerful and cleverly led, so that the Poles were forced to retreat more than they advanced, and by late March of 1656 this particular band of irregulars had been practically driven out of Poland proper.

They withdrew from one vantage point to the next, always breathing hard, always short of supplies and, what was worst of all, facing each week some new enemy whose troops were fresh. This week they had to stand off rampaging Cossacks; next week the King of Sweden himself led the charge against them-and always they were defeated, but always they tired the enemy and made him wonder when this dreadful war, which had once seemed so easy, would end.

Sometimes at night during these fugitive years when there had been little food and no comfort, Cyprjan would awaken with a sense of strangulation at his throat. He would bolt upright, gasping for air, and in the darkness he would wrestle with the specters that haunted him and all of Poland: the devastation of the land, the endless killing of the people, the burning of the villages. But then his images would become more personal, and he would see his lovely daughter slain in her castle, and the hideous death of Zofia Mniszech, and then he would see Lukasz's tame bear, riddled with lances they said, and he would begin to tremble as he thought of all that lost wonder, and he would cross the boards where they were trying to sleep that night and rouse Lukasz from his sleep: 'I was thinking of your bear, Lukasz, and the pierogi Da.n.u.sia used to make.' The men would remain silent for a while, and then Cyprjan would vow: 'By G.o.d, Lukasz, they'll be avenged.' But when he was in his bed again, the choking would return and he could not sleep.

Once when they were camped near Lwow, the major city of the Ukrainian area in which he held his largest estates, he came upon another man of some importance who also could not sleep. It was the king himself, Jan Kazimir, tortured by the calamities that beset his kingdom, and he wanted to talk, but not with Cyprjan and not even with Lukasz, the petty knight, but with Jan of the Beech Trees.

'What is it like,' he asked in the spring darkness. 'As a peasant, how do you live?'

'We get up at dawn,' Jan began.

'As I do,' the king said.

'And we work all day, and at sunset we go to bed.'

'What do you eat?'

'Cabbage, beets, we grind our own flour.'

'I mean, what meats?'

'We never eat meat. Well, at Easter, maybe one chicken.'

'And what do you work at, Jan?'

'Whatever the master tells us. Then six weeks each year for the duke. And three weeks for you.'

'What do you work at?'

'We till the fields. We sow the grain. We harvest. And then we go to bed.'

The king could scarcely believe what he was being told, and all through the night he interrogated Jan, even demanding to know how he got his clothes, who a.s.sisted his wife in childbirth, what medicines he used, and this led to a peculiarly meaningful exchange.

'Jan, tell me again, what do you do when you fall sick?'

'We die.'

Two days later the king informed Cyprjan that he wanted him, Lukasz and especially Jan to be present in the cathedral at Lwow, where in front of a treasured portrait of the Virgin Mary he was going to make an important statement, and when the four tattered magnates were a.s.sembled, and the seventeen lesser n.o.bles and the hundred peasants and the townsmen and even the Jews, he made this pledge: 'When with grief in my heart I hear of the oppression which our peasants suffer and I see the tears with which they pray for relief, I think, Blessed Mother of G.o.d, that it is your Son, a just and merciful judge, who has been punis.h.i.+ng my kingdom with pestilences, wars and other failures, and I know in my heart that we, and all of us here, have been guilty.

'Therefore, I promise and vow that after peace has been restored, I will do my best to prevent further misfortunes, and I promise now on bended knee before you that I will free our peasants from all unjust burdens and hards.h.i.+ps. Help me, Merciful Lady and Queen, enlist on my behalf the grace of your Son to help me fulfill this vow, which I make willingly before my magnates, my people and my peasants.'

Lukasz and Jan were impressed by this Vow of Lwow, but Cyprjan and the magnates whispered knowingly: 'Clever thing for the king to tell his troops when the war is going badly. But when we win we can force him to rescind.'

In the dark weeks that followed, there was little talk of winning, for a series of new blows struck the poor country, almost destroying the will of men like Cyprjan and Lukasz to continue their fight. From the west the newly powerful state of Brandenburg, scenting a chance to make a kill, came roaring in with many troops and guns to tear off its share of Poland. From the east the Cossacks, seeing their traditional enemy about to be dismembered, launched an attack to seize the Ukraine. In Lithuania the Radziwills, satisfied that the union with Poland could not survive, volunteered to build a new Lithuania under Swedish protection, and most dreadful of all, from the turbulent state of Transylvania in the south a man of terrible power, Gyorgy Rakoczy, marched his troops to pick off his share of the spoils. Like hungry wolves on a stormy wasteland who turn to attack one of their own who has been wounded, the nations gathered to dismember Poland.

By a grotesque coincidence the King of Sweden a.s.sembled the leaders of these predators at the ruined castle of Krzyztopor, where in the desecrated chapel he brought in tables and chairs and sleeping arrangements for the generals and their advisers. And there, in the only part of the great fortress that still had a roof, the victors met to divide the spoils. The miners met amidst the ruins.

The King of Sweden and Rakoczy dominated the proceedings, of course, but it was the political adviser who accompanied the Brandenburg generals who exerted the subtlest influence. He was Wolfgang von Eschl, a tall, thin, clean-shaven man of icy intellect whose ancestors had been familiar with Polish problems, and once the gross details of who was to receive what had been agreed upon, he more or less took command, his penetrating questions and crisp decisions introducing structure into the discussion.

RADZIWILL: We seek a free Lithuania protected by Sweden.

VON ESCHL: I doubt that guarantees will ever signify much in this part of Europe. Each state must be viable within its own integrity.

KING OF SWEDEN: Are you questioning our intentions?

VON ESCHL: No, your power. It seems great now, almost unopposable. But it cannot remain that way for long.

KING OF SWEDEN: What will subdue it?

VON ESCHL: Time. Russia.

KING OF SWEDEN: We will handle Russia, when the time comes.

VON ESCHL: No one will handle Russia. You will accommodate yourself to Russia as we will have to, and all the others here.

COSSACK: We will never surrender to Russia.

VON ESCHL: You most of all.

RAKOCZY: What will you do to help Transylvania if the Turks decide to attack us?

VON ESCHL: Nothing.

RAKOCZY: Is that true, Sire?

KING OF SWEDEN: We have no fight with Turkey.

RAKOCZY: But I do.

VON ESCHL: Then you must protect yourself. We're giving you most of southern Poland. Use it creatively to build protection.

RAKOCZY: But we can protect ourselves only if we all stand together.

VON ESCHL: We stand together on this day to part.i.tion Poland. After that's done, each must protect himself.

RAKOCZY: Are we not building a grand alliance?

VON ESCHL: No.

KING OF SWEDEN: Let us agree, then. Sweden will take all the Baltic coast down to Danzig. The Germans get all the west, including as much of Silesia as they wish. You Cossacks get a free hand in the Ukraine. Rakoczy gets all of southern Poland. And Radziwill gets his free Lithuania. Shall we leave a small central area around Warsaw for the Poles themselves?

VON ESCHL: A nation which cannot defend itself has no right to exist.

RAKOCZY: I agree. Remove Poland from the map. Move all our borders in till they meet.

VON ESCHL: Excellent proposal. Poland will always require leaders.h.i.+p from outside, and the German states are prepared to provide it.

From the day that the roof had been placed atop the castle at Krzyztopor, bats had inhabited the rafters, and as this fateful day drew to a close, they began to stir themselves and waken for the night. One by one they left their hiding places, circled through the near-deserted church and flew out for their foraging. They created a stir with their wings and an interruption with their soft stutters, as if they were discussing the decisions of that day, but after a while they were gone and the resolutions continued.

KING OF SWEDEN: We have the nation subdued except for one small trouble spot. That difficult town of Zamosc on the eastern frontier. I suppose you'll all join me in subduing it?

RAKOCZY: I must attend to Krakow. I intend making it a secondary capital, you know.

VON ESCHL: The Germans will not fight that far east.

KING OF SWEDEN: You Cossacks will. It's on your doorstep.

COSSACK: I led our siege of Zamosc in 1648. Forty days, and they knocked us back. We have no taste for Zamosc, because we consider it a Polish town.

KING OF SWEDEN: Don't you see that as long as it stands free- COSSACK: We have no interest in Zamosc. None whatever.

KING OF SWEDEN: Then you agree with me that we ought to leave a small free Poland at the center?

VON ESCHL: There is no justification for a free Poland of any size, any character. You must listen to me. If we allow any kind of Poland to exist, we shall have only trouble with her. The Poles are a most difficult people, most stubborn. They can't govern themselves and they don't allow anyone else to govern them. They must be removed from the face of Europe, and the German states will discharge their responsibilities in achieving this. But you men must do your duty, too. Zamosc must be reduced by you Swedes. Eliminated. Rakoczy says he will capture Warsaw. The Cossacks will do their duty, I'm sure. And Radziwill can be depended upon. Gentlemen, there must be no hesitation now. This troublesome sore must be cauterized ... deeply ... permanently. Is it agreed?

ALL: It is agreed.

Gyorgy Rakoczy discharged his obligation brilliantly, but with a brutality Poland had not witnessed hitherto; even the Tatar invasions of 1241 had been gentle compared to the savage devastation wrought by the Transylvanians. The slaughter was so terrible that one priest wrote afterward: It seemed that they were determined to kill even the stones, for they spat on them and urinated on them and burned them with fire. People were killed thoughtlessly, not in anger but because they were there. I saw them kill eleven nuns for no reason whatever, and scores of children. They killed pigs and chickens in the same way, and there was nothing of value they overlooked. One man in our town had a gold tooth, which they cut out of his mouth before they killed him, hacking and jabbing with their daggers.

Oh G.o.d, I cried in the midst of the devastation, why have You permitted this in a Poland which has always cherished You? Where shall I live now, with my church burned, my village destroyed, my town in ashes and all my paris.h.i.+oners dead?

The lament of this priest was in no way hyperbole. In these awful years the population of Poland dropped from ten million to six million, which meant that in every town and village four people out of ten were killed. Farms were ravaged; cattle were slain; every item of value was stolen; every human process by which people live together in some kind of reasonable order was disrupted. In a hundred churches, only five or six priests survived to say the Ma.s.s, and in those same churches not a piece of golden ornament or silver remained. And in the towns all the buildings in which the elders met, and the councillors, were leveled.

The tempestuous success of the allied armies had one curious consequence: the few Polish defenders were compressed ever more tightly into the eastern corridor, where, with their backs to the wall, they determined that the decisive battle, the one that would end everything, would be fought in the vicinity of Zamosc, that remarkable walled city built in one year by one man with his own funds and his own driving energy. He was the Magnate Zamoyski, wise before his time, a patriot of glowing character who had visualized the necessity of some permanent fortified city on the frontier-a city that would be defensible against Russians, Turks, Cossacks, Hungarians, Swedes, all of whom would at one time or another seek to subdue it, all of whom would fail.

When Cyprjan's raggle-taggle troops were still fifteen miles south of the town, he told them: 'You are not about to enter a fort. This is a real town, and a most beautiful one. It was built by an Italian architect who gave it a chain of lovely arcades cool in summer, protecting in winter. I love Zamosc and would like to end my days sitting in the grand square, drinking a little wine and watching the girls as they do their shopping. My daughter Barbara ...' As he visualized her pa.s.sing through Zamosc and stopping at the Italian arcade, tears came to his eyes. Now there was no Barbara, there was no Zofia Mniszech, there was no Castle Gorka-there was nothing but the human resolve not to allow this fearful drift to continue any longer.

'Men,' he said, 'when we reach Zamosc, there is nothing more. We stop them here, or we ...' He said: 'We stop them here.'

Very soberly his men marched inside the walls of Zamosc, where many like them had gathered, and whereas the fortifications were not immensely thick-not half as thick as those at Krzyztopor-they encompa.s.sed the entire town, so that the town itself and all within became the fort, with human will power forming an extra chain of bastions immensely more resistant than the walls of Krzyztopor.

'Here we have a fighting chance,' Cyprjan a.s.sured his men, and because of his leaders.h.i.+p they were not terrified in early November when the King of Sweden moved his entire force before the walls to begin the methodical bombardment. The first rain of cannonb.a.l.l.s frightened the inhabitants, but Cyprjan ran amongst them with heartening news: 'The Cossacks are not partic.i.p.ating! Rakoczy's men are not here! We face no Germans! We can hold them off!'

When it became apparent that the king had not brought enough cannon to reduce the walls, the defenders actually made two sorties, one led by Lukasz of Bukowo, which damaged the besiegers considerably, and in the following weeks the Swedes became apprehensive about their chances of ever breaking down the walls of Zamosc.

The day came when the King of Sweden realized that he must lose this battle, and with it, his opportunity to erase Poland from the map of Europe. The stubborn resistance of men like Cyprjan of Gorka, when all was lost, when there was not a chance of victory, had weakened the coalition and dissipated its force. Even the Swedish army, incomparably the best in Europe at that time, was worn down by the years of war. The only sensible thing to do was withdraw and return to Sweden.

As the retreat started, a terrible climax to the war occurred, for a large detachment of Swedes became confused, or received wrong instructions, for they found themselves without heavy armor and were easily surrounded by Poles streaming out of the town in a victorious chase, and so embittered were the Polish troops, who had seen their villages destroyed and their women slaughtered, that a furious battle ensued in which the Swedes were annihilated.

It was never known how it started, but some Polish peasant, blood-red with anger, cried to a partner: 'They swallowed our gold coins to keep them from their officers,' and these two men began to rip open the bellies of the dead Swedes, and in the intestines of the very first man they gutted they found two Austrian thalers, and word spread like fire among the troops, and a general gutting of the corpses began. It was in this horrible scene that Jan of the Beech Trees, whose family had been cremated in the sack of Bukowo, found himself four large pieces of gold, which he gave to his master Lukasz, and it would be this wealth wrenched from the gut of Sweden that would enable Lukasz to build a new home along the Vistula.

In these hectic years, magnates like Cyprjan slowly became aware of a redoubtable man named Jerzy Lubomirski, who had the gift of a.s.sociating with himself patriots of the most diverse quality-other magnates, gentry, Jewish merchants, burghers from the towns, peasants and mercenary troops-and with this rabble he began to win battle after battle against superior troops of the Swedish-German-Transylvanian coalition. Lubomirski became a name to utter with respect, and Cyprjan remembered that as a girl, Zofia had been in love with him. Others informed him that Lubomirski had suffered fearfully at the hands of the enemy: 'From his castle at Wisnicz the Swedes carried away one hundred and fifty-two wagons of paintings, jewelry and furniture. Rakoczy's men burned his castle at Rzeszow. And the Germans destroyed two of his biggest castles up north. He is a man of vengeance.'

When the siege of Zamosc ended with the Swedish troops in retreat, this Lubomirski conceived the daring idea of defeating Rakoczy's forces not by a frontal a.s.sault, which the Poles would surely lose, but rather by a foray into Rakoczy's own backyard, and with Cyprjan's help he a.s.sembled a wild and rugged army that marched right out of Poland and into the heart of Transylvania, where they created so much havoc that the fearsome Rakoczy had to scurry back to protect his national interests.

Too late! Lubomirski, displaying unusual talent as a general, continued to destroy Transylvanian property and at the same time evade bloodthirsty Rakoczy. Indeed, Lubomirski left Transylvania in such shambles that the Turks from the south, to restore order in what was essentially their territory, would ultimately have to invade it and kill the terrible Rakoczy as no longer useful to their cause.

So in the autumn of 1658 the widowers Cyprjan, Lukasz and Jan came slowly and painfully back to Bukowo, where the two castles stood in ruins and the village consisted of one cottage rebuilt by an enterprising peasant who had tilled his field for winter planting.

Cyprjan, surveying the desolation, listened to reports from his various outlying towns and villages. All were destroyed, and Lukasz, standing with him, started to weep, but Cyprjan consoled him, telling those about him: 'A Pole is a man born with a sword in his right hand, a brick in his left. When the battle is over, he starts to rebuild.'

And rebuild they did: Castle Gorka, upon the old foundations but with improved conveniences; the village itself, with cottages in the time-honored tradition; and for Lukasz, not the little castle, which was now beyond repair, but a big, strong house halfway between a farmhouse and a minor mansion. Poland's left hand was doing excellent work.

Of course, the men needed wives to inhabit their new homes and lend them grace, and prudent Jan of the Beech Trees was the first to solve his problem. Stolidly he walked from village to village, inquiring as to whether any widows had been left by the war, and finally he found a woman of thirty, but she was frighteningly pretty and he surmised that he would never be able to hold her, so he pa.s.sed on. In the third village, and not one belonging to either Lukasz or Cyprjan, he found Alusia, a fine woman left with two children whom the Swedes had not slain, and within ten minutes of meeting her he asked if she and the children would consent to live with him: 'I work hard and I'll build you a st.u.r.dy cottage.' Since she had no better prospects at the moment, nor the likelihood of any in the future, she accepted, and the four started walking home, the two children shying away from Jan, the stranger who was now their father.

Jan's life, even with his new wife and children, was modified in no way by the generous oath the king had made in the Lwow cathedral. No reforms of any kind were inst.i.tuted; indeed, the peasants found themselves burdened with extra obligations, less time for themselves, and the impossibility of finding even a chicken at Easter. The king had wanted to respect his pledge, but the magnates had warned him: 'The war devastated our estates so sorely that we must have more work from our peasants, not less,' and they spoke so forcefully, Jan Kazimir realized that if he opposed them he would be booted out altogether, so he did nothing.

Lukasz solved his marriage problem in much the same way as Jan, except that instead of visiting villages, he rode from one small castle to the next, inquiring as to the fortunes of war, and in several he met men like himself who had survived but whose families had not. At Baranow, down the river, he found such a member of the gentry, a man older than himself, who said that he believed two sisters had survived in a small town near Tarn.o.brzeg, so they mounted their horses and rode to this town, and it did indeed contain two sisters who desperately needed husbands of quality, but there was some discussion as to which sister should marry which man, and Lukasz proposed a simple solution. They would put two beans in a hat, one white and one black, and the older sister would draw-black for Lukasz, white for the Baranow man-and this seemed the only practical solution; since none of the four could read, written ballots were impossible.

The drawing took place and Lukasz was won by Zosienka, the younger sister, who was not unhappy with her award. 'Do you like animals?' Lukasz asked, and when she said she did, he told her that he had found a baby bear in the Forest of Szczek, at which she chuckled: 'Oh, you're the man who had the bear and the otter! I'd love to have an otter!' and he explained: 'Otters aren't so easy, but we'll find something to play with the bear.'

Cyprjan's problem was solved in an equally practical way. Many fine estates were in such ruin that their owners, lacking money, had no chance of restoring them, and others had been owned by men and women slain in the carnage, so that magnates like Cyprjan, whose other estates yielded a little income, were in a position to extend their holdings.

There was such an estate ab.u.t.ting the roadway that ran from Lublin to Zamosc. It took its name from a village of exceptional attractiveness called Lubon, a word which carried an implication of love or loveliness or a thing to be cherished, but cynics averred that it meant only a kind of sweet plum. At any rate, it had a castle of distinction, and as soon as Cyprjan saw it and realized its nearness to Zamosc, a town which now had extra meaning for him, he decided to buy it. But when he approached the owner, Halka, he found her to be an attractive widow with a daughter of about the age Barbara had been when she married Ossolinski, so instead of offering to buy the estate and its castle, he proposed to Halka and married her, knowing that together with her daughter they could restore the line of Gorka.

But shortly after their marriage he ceased using the name Gorka and was never again referred to in that way. The change occurred because the papal legate who had spoken so well of him to the French amba.s.sador did the same in his reports to Rome, so the Pope announced that he was 'conferring upon Cyprjan of Gorka, who had defended the Faith so valiantly at both Czestochowa and Zamosc, the t.i.tle of Count,' and out of his love for his new bride he took the name Lubonski. Henceforth the master of Castle Gorka would be Count Lubonski.

So the rebuilding of homes and families in the Bukowo district prospered, but there were some losses that could never be restored, not even if the survivors carried bricks in both hands. When the Swedes had retreated from Poland in 1657 they took with them 2,183 wagonloads of old books, the maps, the paintings from the castles, the gold and silver work from the cathedrals, the furniture, the family heirlooms, the acc.u.mulation of centuries of good living. The culture of Sweden would be nurtured by the heritage of Poland.

Fortunately, this grand historical record pa.s.sed into the hands of people who appreciated and protected it. Items of significance were catalogued, so that in subsequent years, anyone wanting to study Polish history could go to Swedish museums and libraries.

The golden necklace bearing the six amber droplets was not lost. In its paper folder, wrapped inside the canvas cloth, it remained in Wagon 307 of the Krzyztopor h.o.a.rd till it reached Sweden, and may now be seen-in all the beauty it possessed back in 1409 when it was first a.s.sembled and in 1655 when it was taken from the corpse of Barbara Ossolinska-as it sleeps in its velvet case in a Stockholm museum.

V.

From the South