“You should hang up that morion in a church.”
“I will pursue him, even to the end of the world!” said Kmita.
To this the hetman answered: “See what news I have received today after the battle!”
Kmita read aloud the following words—
The King of Sweden has moved from Elblang; he is marching on Zamost, thence to Lvoff against Yan Kazimir. Come, your worthiness, with all your forces, to save king and country, for I cannot hold out alone.
A moment of silence.
“Will you go with us, or will you go with the Tartars to Taurogi?”
Kmita closed his eyes. He remembered the words of Father Kordetski, and what Volodyovski had told him of Pan Yan, and said—
“Let private affairs wait! I will meet the enemy at the side of the country!”
The hetman pressed Pan Andrei’s head. “You are a brother to me!” said he; “and because I am old, receive my blessing.”
LXVIII
At a time when all living men in the Commonwealth were mounting their horses Karl Gustav stayed continually in Prussia, busied in capturing the towns of that province and in negotiating with the elector.
After an easy and unexpected conquest, the quick soldier soon saw that the Swedish lion had swallowed more than his stomach could carry. After the return of Yan Kazimir he lost hope of retaining the Commonwealth; but while making a mental abdication of the whole, he wished at least to retain the greater part of his conquest, and above all Royal Prussia—a province fruitful, dotted with large towns, wealthy, and adjoining his own Pomerania. But as that province was first to defend itself, so did it continue faithful to its lord and the Commonwealth. The return of Yan Kazimir, and the war begun by the confederation of Tyshovtsi might revive the courage of Prussia, confirm it in loyalty, give it will for endurance; therefore Karl Gustav determined to crush the uprising, and to wipe out Kazimir’s forces so as to take from Prussians the hope of resistance.
He had to do this for the sake of the elector, who was ever ready to side with the stronger. The King of Sweden knew him thoroughly, and doubted not for a moment that if the fortune of Yan Kazimir should preponderate, the elector would be on his side again.
When, therefore, the siege of Marienburg advanced slowly—for the more it was attacked the more stubbornly did Pan Weiher defend it—Karl Gustav marched to the Commonwealth, so as to reach Yan Kazimir again, even in the remotest corner of the land.
And since with him deed followed decision as swiftly as thunder follows lightning, he raised his army disposed in towns; and before anyone in the Commonwealth had looked around, before the news of his march had spread, he had passed Warsaw and had rushed into the greatest blaze of conflagration.
Driven by anger, revenge, and bitterness, he moved on like a storm. Behind him ten thousand horse trampled the fields, which were still covered with snow; and taking the infantry from the garrisons, he went on, like a whirlwind, toward the far south of the Commonwealth.
On the road he burned and pursued. He was not now that recent Karl Gustav, the kindly, affable, and joyous lord, clapping his hands at Polish cavalry, winking at feasts, and praising the soldiers. Now, wherever he showed himself the blood of peasants and nobles flowed in a torrent. On the road he annihilated “parties,” hanged prisoners, spared no man.
But as when, in the thick of the pinewoods, a mighty bear rushes forward with heavy body crushing branches and brush on the way, while wolves follow after, and not daring to block his path, pursue, press nearer and nearer behind, so did those “parties” pursuing the armies of Karl join in throngs denser and denser, and follow the Swedes as a shadow a man, and still more enduringly than a shadow, for they followed in the day and the night, in fair and foul weather; before him too bridges were ruined, provisions destroyed, so that he had to march as in a desert, without a place for his head or anything with which to give strength to his body when hungry.
Karl Gustav noted quickly how terrible his task was. The war spread around him as widely as the sea spreads around a ship lost in the waters. Prussia was on fire; on fire was Great Poland, which had first accepted his sovereignty, and first wished to throw off the Swedish yoke; Little Poland was on fire, and so were Russia, Lithuania, and Jmud. In the castles and large towns the Swedes maintained themselves yet, as if on islands; but the villages, the forests, the fields, the rivers, were already in Polish hands. Not merely a single man, or small detachments, but a whole regiment might not leave the main Swedish army for two hours; for if it did the regiment vanished without tidings, and prisoners who fell into the hands of peasants died in terrible tortures.
In vain had Karl Gustav given orders to proclaim in villages and towns that whoso of peasants should bring an armed noble, living or dead, would receive freedom forever and land as a reward; for peasants, as well as nobles and townsmen, marched off to the woods. Men from the mountains, men from deep forests, men from meadows and fields, hid in the woods, formed ambushes on the roads against the Swedes, fell upon the smaller garrisons, and cut scouting-parties to pieces. Flails, forks, and scythes, no less than the sabres of nobles, were streaming with Swedish blood.
All the more did wrath rise in the heart of Karl, that a few months before he had gathered in that country so easily; hence he could hardly understand what had happened, whence these
