The tramp and neighing of horses, the shouts, the exclamations, the murmur of thousands of voices, and the dull thump of cannon, came distinctly to the ears of the besieged, who till that moment were standing quietly on the wall, as if for a spectacle, looking with astonished eyes at that great movement and deploying of the enemy’s troops.
At last the infantry regiments arrived and began to wander around the fortress, seeking places best fitted for fortification. Now they struck, on Chenstohovka, an estate near the cloister, in which there were no troops, only peasants living in huts.
A regiment of Finns, who had come first, fell savagely on the defenceless peasants. They pulled them out of the huts by the hair, and simply cut down those who resisted; the rest of the people driven from the manor-house were pursued by cavalry and scattered to the four winds.
A messenger was sent with Miller’s summons to surrender; he had already sounded his trumpet before the gates of the church; but the defenders, at sight of the slaughter and cruelty of the soldiers in Chenstohova, answered with cannon fire.
Now, when the people of the town had been driven out of all the nearer buildings, and the Swedes had disposed themselves therein, it behooved to destroy them with all haste, so that the enemy might not injure the cloister under cover of those buildings. Therefore the walls of the cloister began to smoke all around like the sides of a ship surrounded by a storm and by robbers. The roar of cannon shook the air till the walls of the cloister were trembling, and glass in the windows of the church and other buildings was rattling. Fiery balls in the form of whitish cloudlets describing ill-omened arcs fell on the Swedish places of refuge, they broke rafters, roofs, walls; and columns of smoke were soon rising from the places into which balls had descended.
Conflagration had enwrapped the buildings. Barely had the Swedish regiments taken possession when they fled from the new quarters with all breath, and, uncertain of their positions, hurried about in various directions. Disorder began to creep among them; they removed the cannon not yet mounted, so as to save them from being struck. Miller was amazed; he had not expected such a reception, nor such gunners on Yasna Gora.
Meanwhile night came, and since he needed to bring the army into order, he sent a trumpeter with a request for a cessation. The fathers agreed to that readily.
In the morning, however, they burned another enormous storehouse with great supplies of provisions, in which building the Westland regiment had taken its quarters. The fire caught the building so quickly, the shots fell, one after another, with such precision that the Westlanders were unable to carry off their muskets or ammunition, which exploded, hurling far around burning brands.
The Swedes did not sleep that night; they made preparations, entrenchments for the guns, filled baskets with earth, formed a camp. The soldiers, though trained during so many years in so many battles, and by nature valiant and enduring, did not wait for the following day with joy. The first day had brought defeat.
The cannon of the cloister caused such loss among the Swedes that the oldest warriors were confounded, attributing this to careless approach to the fortress, and to going too near the walls.
But the next day, even should it bring victory, did not promise glory; for what was the capture of an inconsiderable fortress and a cloister to the conquerors of so many famed cities, a hundred times better fortified? The greed of rich plunder alone upheld their willingness, but that oppressive alarm with which the allied Polish squadrons had approached this greatly renowned Yasna Gora was imparted in a mysterious way to the Swedes. Some of them trembled at the thought of sacrilege, while others feared something indefinite, which they could not explain, and which was known under the general name of enchantment. Miller himself believed in it; why should not the soldiers believe?
It was noticed that when Miller was approaching the church of Saint Barbara, the horse under him slipped suddenly, started back, distended his nostrils, pricked up his ears, snorted with fright, and refused to advance. The old general showed no personal alarm; still the next day he assigned that place to the Prince of Hesse, and marched himself with the heavier guns to the northern side of the cloister, toward the village of Chenstohova; there he made intrenchments during the night, so as to attack in the morning.
Barely had light begun to gleam in the sky when heavy artillery firing began; but this time the Swedish guns opened first. The enemy did not think of making a breach in the walls at once, so as to rush through it to storm; he wanted only to terrify, to cover the church and the cloister with balls, to set fire, to dismount cannon, to kill people, to spread alarm.
A procession went out again on the walls of the fortress, for nothing strengthened the combatants like a view of the Holy Sacrament, and the monks marching forward with it calmly. The guns of the cloister answered—thunder for thunder, lightning for lightning, so far as the defenders were able, so far as breath held out in the breast. The very earth seemed to tremble in its foundations. A sea of smoke stretched over the cloister and the church.
What moments, what sights for men who had never in their lives beheld the bloody face of war! and there were many such in the fortress. That unbroken roar, lightnings, smoke, the howling of balls tearing the air, the terrible hiss
