“Brothers, let us rejoice! the hour of victories and miracles is drawing near!”
And a moment later he exclaimed: “Under Thy protection we take refuge, Our Mother, Our Lady, Our Queen!”
Meanwhile the Swedish cloud had changed into an immeasurable serpent, which was crawling forward ever nearer. Its terrible curves were visible. It twisted, uncoiled; at one time it glittered under the light with its gleaming steel scales, fit another it grew dark, crawled, crawled on, emerged from the distance.
Soon eyes looking from the walls could distinguish everything in detail. In advance came the cavalry, after it infantry in quadrangles; each regiment formed a long rectangular body, over which rose a smaller one formed of erect spears; farther on, behind, after the infantry, came cannon with jaws turned rearward and inclined to the earth.
Their slowly moving barrels, black or yellowish, shone with evil omen in the sun; behind them clattered over the uneven road the powder-boxes and the endless row of wagons with tents and every manner of military appliance.
Dreadful but beautiful was that advance of a regular army, which moved before the eyes of the people on Yasna Gora, as if to terrify them. A little later the cavalry separated from the rest of the army and approached at a trot, trembling like waves moved by wind. They broke soon into a number of greater and smaller parties. Some pushed toward the fortress; some in the twinkle of an eye scattered through the neighboring villages in pursuit of plunder; others began to ride around the fortress, to examine the walls, study the locality, occupy the buildings which were nearest. Single horsemen flew back continually as fast as a horse could gallop from the larger parties to the deep divisions of infantry to inform the officers where they might dispose themselves.
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.