The valiant Yanish Pasha tried to renew the battle, but the terror of panic had seized on his men; efforts were useless. The ranks were broken and shivered, pushed back, beaten, trampled, slashed; they could not come to order. At last they burst, as an overstrained chain bursts, and like single links men flew from one another in every direction, howling, shouting, throwing down their weapons, and covering their heads with their hands. The cavalry pursue them; and they, not finding space sufficient for flight singly, gather at times into a dense mass, on whose shoulders ride the cavalry, swimming in blood. Pan Mushalski, the bowman, struck the valiant Yanish Pasha such a sabre-blow on the neck that his spinal marrow gushed forth and stained his silk shirt and the silver scales on his armor.
The irregular janissaries, beaten by the Polish infantry, and a part of the cavalry which was scattered in the very beginning of the battle, in fact, a whole Turkish throng, fled now to the opposite side of the camp, where there was a rugged ravine some tens of feet deep. Terror drove the mad men to that place. Many rushed over the precipice, “not to escape death, but death at the hands of the Poles.” Pan Bidzinski blocked the road to this despairing throng; but the avalanche of fugitives tore him away with it, and threw him to the bottom of the precipice, which after a time was filled almost to the top with piles of slain, wounded, and suffocated men.
From this place rose terrible groans; bodies were quivering, kicking one another, or clawing with their fingers in the spasms of death. Those groans were heard until evening; until evening those bodies were moving, but more and more slowly, less and less noticeably, till at dark there was silence.
Awful were the results of the blow of the hussars. Eight thousand janissaries, slain with swords, lay near the ditch surrounding the tents of Hussein Pasha, not counting those who perished in the flight, or at the foot of the precipice. The Polish cavalry were in the tents; Pan Sobieski had triumphed. The trumpets were raising the hoarse sounds of victory, when the battle raged up again on a sudden.
After the breaking of the janissaries the vizir, Hussein Pasha, at the head of his mounted guards and of all that were left of the cavalry, fled through the gate leading to Yassy; but when the squadrons of Dmitri Vishnyevetski, the field hetman, caught him outside and began to hew without mercy, he turned back to the camp to seek escape elsewhere, just as a wild beast surrounded in a forest looks for some outlet. He turned with such speed that he scattered in a moment the light squadron of Cossacks, put to disorder the infantry, occupied partly in plundering the camp, and came within “half a pistol-shot” of the hetman himself.
“In the very camp,” wrote Pan Sobieski, afterward, “we were near defeat, the avoidance of which should be ascribed to the extraordinary resolution of the hussars.”
In fact, the pressure of the Turks was tremendous, produced as it was under the influence of utter despair, and the more terrible that it was entirely unexpected; but the hussars, not cooled yet after the heat of battle, rushed at them on the spot, with the greatest vigor. Prusinovski’s squadron moved first, and that brought the attackers to a stand; after it rushed Pan Yan with his men, then the whole army—cavalry, infantry, camp-followers—everyone as he was, everyone where he was—all rushed with the greatest rage on the enemy, and there was a battle, somewhat disordered, but not yielding in fury to the attack of the hussars on the janissaries.
When the struggle was over the knights remembered with wonder the bravery of the Turks, who, attacked by Vishnyevetski and the hetmans of Lithuania, surrounded on all sides, defended themselves so madly that though Sobieski permitted the Poles to take prisoners then, they were able to seize barely a handful of captives. When the heavy squadrons scattered them at last, after half an hour’s battle, single groups and later single horsemen fought to the last breath, shouting, “Allah!” Many glorious deeds were done, the memory of which has not perished among men. The field hetman of Lithuania cut down a powerful pasha who had slain Pan Rudomina, Pan Kimbar, and Pan Rdultovski; but the hetman, coming to him unobserved, cut off his head at a blow. Pan Sobieski slew in presence of the army a spahi who had fired a pistol at him. Pan Bidzinski, escaping from the ravine by some miracle, though bruised and wounded, threw himself at once into the whirl of battle, and fought till he fainted from exhaustion. He was sick long, but after some months recovered his health, and went again to the field, with great glory to himself.
Of men less known Pan Rushchyts raged most, taking off horsemen as a wolf seizes sheep from a flock. Pan Yan on his part worked wonders; around him his sons fought like young lions. With sadness and gloom did these knights think afterward of what that swordsman above swordsmen, Pan Michael, would have done on such a day, were it not that for a year he had been in the earth resting in God and in glory. But others, taught in his school, gained sufficient renown for him and themselves on that bloody field.
Two of the old knights of Hreptyoff fell in that renewed battle, Pan Motovidlo and the terrible bowman, Mushalski. A number of balls pierced the breast of Motovidlo simultaneously, and he fell as an oak falls, which has come to its time. Eyewitnesses said that he fell by
