At that moment the grand hetman rushed up at the head of his escort. Flame was shooting from his eyes. He reined in his horse near the voevoda of Rus, and exclaimed—
“At them, now, with God’s aid!”
“At them!” shouted the voevoda of Rus.
And after him the captains repeated the commands. With a terrible noise that forest of lances dropped with one movement toward the heads of the horses, and fifteen squadrons of that cavalry accustomed to crush everything before it moved forward like a giant cloud.
From the time when, in the three days’ battle at Warsaw, the Lithuanian hussars, under Prince Polubinski, split the whole Swedish army like a wedge, and went through it, no one remembered an attack made with such power. Those squadrons started at a trot, but at a distance of two hundred paces the captains commanded: “At a gallop!” The men answering, with a shout, “Strike! Crush!” bent in the saddles, and the horses went at the highest speed. Then that column, moving like a whirlwind, and formed of horses, iron men, and straightened lances, had in it something like the might of an element let loose. And it went like a storm, or a raging river, with roar and outburst. The earth groaned under the weight of it; and if no man had levelled a lance or drawn a sabre, it was evident that the hussars with their very weight and impact would hurl down, trample, and break everything before them, just as a column of wind breaks and crushes a forest. They swept on in this way to the bloody field, covered with bodies, on which the battle was raging. The light squadrons were still struggling on the wings with the Turkish cavalry, which they had succeeded in pushing to the rear considerably, but in the centre the deep ranks of the janissaries stood like an indestructible wall. A number of times the light squadrons had broken themselves against that wall, as a wave rolling on breaks itself against a rocky shore. To crush and destroy it was now the task of the hussars.
A number of thousand of muskets thundered, “as if one man had fired.” A moment more the janissaries fix themselves more firmly on their feet; some blink at sight of the terrible onrush; the hands of some are trembling while holding their spears; the hearts of all are beating like hammers, their teeth are set, their breasts are breathing convulsively. The hussars are just on them; the thundering breath of the horses is heard. Destruction, annihilation, death, are flying at them.
“Allah!” “Jesus, Mary!”—these two shouts meet and mingle as terribly as if they had never burst from men’s breasts till that moment. The living wall trembles, bends, breaks. The dry crash of broken lances drowns for a time every other sound; after that, is heard the bite of iron, the sound, as it were, of thousands of hammers beating with full force on anvils, as of thousands of flails on a floor, and cries singly and collectively, groans, shouts, reports of pistols and guns, the howling of terror. Attackers and attacked mingle together, rolling in an unimaginable whirl. A slaughter follows; from under the chaos blood flows, warm, steaming, filling the air with raw odor.
The first, second, third, and tenth rank of the janissaries are lying like a pavement, trampled with hoofs, pierced with spears, cut with swords. But the white-bearded Kiaya, “Lion of God,” hurls all his men into the boiling of the battle. It is nothing that they are put down like grain before a storm. They fight! Rage seizes them; they breathe death; they desire death. The column of horses’ breasts pushes them, bends, overturns them. They open the bellies of horses with their knives; thousands of sabres cut them without rest; blades rise like lightning and fall on their heads, shoulders, and hands. They cut a horseman on the legs, on the knees; they wind around, and bite like venomous worms; they perish and avenge themselves. Kiaya, “Lion of God,” hurls new ranks again and again into the jaws of death. He encourages them to battle with a cry, and with curved sabre erect he rushes into the chaos himself. With that a gigantic hussar, destroying like a flame everything before him, falls on the white-bearded old man, and standing in his stirrups to hew the more terribly, brings down with an awful sweep a two-handed sword on the gray head. Neither the sabre nor the headpiece forged in Damascus are proof against the blow; and Kiaya, cleft almost to the shoulders, falls to the ground, as if struck by lightning.
Pan Adam, for it was he, had already spread dreadful destruction, for no one could withstand the strength and sullen rage of the man; but now he had given the greatest service by hewing down the old hero, who alone had supported the stubborn battle. The janissaries shouted in a terrible voice on seeing the death of their leader, and more than ten of them aimed muskets at the breast of the cavalier. He turned toward them like dark night; and before other hussars could strike them, the shots roared, Pan Adam reined in his horse and bent in
