"That is well, and I have acted in like manner," added Pan Serafin. "Young men, though it is quiet now on the borders, hurry off to Tartar trails in the hope of adventure, but it is ghastly and woful in places where each man is mourning for some one."
Pan Gideon put his hand to his forehead where he held it rather long, till at length he said sadly,--
"Only a peasant or a magnate can live in the Ukraine. When an onrush of pagans strikes that country the peasant flees to a forest and can live for some months in it like a wild beast; the magnate can live, for he has troops and strong castles of his own to protect him. But even then--the Jolkievskis lived in those regions and perished, the Danilovitches lived there and perished. Of the Sobieskis, the brother of our gracious King Yan perished also. And how many others! One of the Vishnievetskis squirmed on a hook in Stambul till he died there. Prince Koretski was beaten to death with iron rods. The Kalinovskis are gone,--and before them the Herburts and the Yaglovetskis paid their blood tribute. How many of the Sieninskis have died at various periods, and once they possessed almost the whole country--what a graveyard! Were I to recount all the names I could not finish till morning. And were I to give the names, not of magnates alone but of nobles, a month would not suffice me."
"True! true! So that a man wonders why the Lord God has thus multiplied those Turks and Tartars. So many of them have been killed that when an earthtiller works in the springtime his ploughshare bites at every step on the skull of a pagan. Dear God! Even our present king has crushed them to death in such numbers that their blood would form a large river, and still they are coming."
These words had truth in them. The Commonwealth, rent by disorder and unruliness, could not have strong armies sufficient to end in one mighty struggle the Tartar-Turk avalanche. For that matter, all Europe could not command such an army. Still, the Commonwealth was inhabited by men of great daring, who would not yield their throats willingly to the knife of the eastern attacker. On the contrary, to that terrible region bristling with grave-mounds, and reeking with blood at the borders, Red Russia, Podolia, and the Ukraine, new waves of Polish settlers followed each after the other; these not only stirred up fertile lands, but their own craving for endless wars, battles, and adventures.
"The Poles," wrote an old chronicler, "go to Russia for skirmishes with Tartars."[[1]]
So from Mazovia went peasants; daring nobles went also, for each one of whom it was shameful "to die in his bed like a peasant." And there grew up in those red lands mighty magnates, who, not satisfied with action even there, went frequently much farther--to Wallachia, or the Crimea, seeking victory, power, death, salvation, and glory.
It was even said that the Poles did not wish one great war that would end the whole question. Though this was not true, still, continual disturbance was dear to that daring generation--but the invader on his part paid with blood dearly for his venture.
Neither the Dobrudja nor Belgorod lands, nor the Crimean reed barrens could support their wild Tartar denizens, hence hunger drove them to the border where rich booty was waiting, but death was waiting also, very often.
The flames of fire lighted up invasions unknown yet to history. Single regiments cut into bits with their sabres and trampled into dust under horsehoofs detachments surpassing them tenfold in number. Only swiftness beyond reckoning could save the invaders; in general when a Tartar band was overtaken by troops of the Commonwealth it was lost beyond rescue.