Then he went off, and after him Kmita, Volodyovski, and Roh Kovalski.
“Gracious, gracious!” said Zagloba, “and before you can look around he bellows in your ear like a bear. Beautiful end to an embassy! Others give honor with a cup at parting, but he with the gallows! Let him hang dogs, not nobles! O my God! how grievously we have sinned against our king, who was a father, is a father, and will be a father, for there is a Yagyellon heart in him. And such a king traitors deserted, and went to make friendship with scarecrows from beyond the sea. We are served rightly, for we were not worthy of anything better. Gibbets! gibbets! He is fenced in, and we have squeezed him like curds in a bag, so that whey is coming out, and still he threatens with sword and gibbet. Wait awhile! The Cossack caught a Tartar, and the Tartar has him by the head. It will be closer for you yet.—Roh, I wanted to give you a slap on the face or fifty blows on a carpet, but I forgive you now since you acted so like a cavalier and promised to hunt him still farther. Let me kiss you, for I am delighted with you.”
“Uncle is still glad!” said Roh.
“The gibbet and the sword! And he told that to my eyes,” said Zagloba again, after a while. “You have protection! The wolf protects in the same fashion a sheep for his own eating. And when does he say that? Now, when there is goose skin on his own back. Let him take his Laplanders for counsellors, and with them seek Satan’s aid. But the Most Holy Lady will help us, as she did Pan Bobola in Sandomir when powder threw him and his horse across the Vistula, and he was not hurt. He looked around to see where he was, and arrived in time to dine with the priest. With such help we will pull them all by the necks like lobsters out of a wicker trap.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
Almost twenty days passed. The king remained continually at the junction of the rivers, and sent couriers to fortresses and commands in every direction toward Cracow and Warsaw, with orders for all to hasten to him with assistance. They sent him also provisions by the Vistula in as great quantities as possible, but insufficient. After ten days the Swedes began to eat horse-flesh; despair seized the king and the generals at thought of what would happen when the cavalry should lose their horses, and when there would be no beasts to draw cannon. From every side too there came unpleasant news. The whole country was blazing with war, as if some one had poured pitch over it and set fire. Inferior commands and garrisons could not hasten to give aid, for they were not able to leave the towns and villages. Lithuania, held hitherto by the iron hand of Pontus de la Gardie, rose as one man. Great Poland, which had yielded first of all, was the first to throw off the yoke, and shone before the whole Commonwealth as an example of endurance, resolve, and enthusiasm. Parties of nobles and peasants rushed not only on the garrisons in villages, but even attacked towns. In vain did the Swedes take terrible vengeance on the country, in vain did they cut off the hands of prisoners, in vain did they send up villages in smoke, cut settlements to pieces, raise gibbets, bring instruments of torture from Germany to torture insurgents. Whoso had to suffer, suffered; whoso had to die, died; but if he was a noble, he died with a sabre; if a peasant, with a scythe in his hand. And Swedish blood was flowing throughout all Great Poland; the peasants were living in the forests, even women rushed to arms; punishments merely roused vengeance and increased rage. Kulesha, Jegotski, and the voevoda of Podlyasye moved through the country like flames, and besides their parties all the pine-woods were filled with other parties. The fields lay untilled, fierce hunger increased in the land; but it twisted most the entrails of the Swedes, for they were confined in towns behind closed gates, and could not go to the open country. At last breath was failing in their bosoms.
In Mazovia the condition was the same. There the Barkshoe people dwelling in forest gloom came out of their wildernesses, blocked the roads, seized provisions and couriers. In Podlyasye a numerous small nobility marched in thousands either to Sapyeha or to Lithuania. Lyubelsk was in the hands of the confederates. From the distant Russias came Tartars, and with them the Cossacks constrained to obedience.
Therefore all were certain that if not in a week in a month, if not in a month in two, that river fork in which Karl Gustav had halted with the main army of the Swedes would be turned into one great tomb to the glory of the nation; a great lesson for those who would attack the Commonwealth.
The end of the war was foreseen already; there were some who said that one way of salvation alone remained to Karl,—to ransom himself and give Swedish Livland to the Commonwealth.
But suddenly the fortune of Karl and the Swedes was bettered. Marienburg, besieged hitherto in vain, surrendered, March 20, to Steinbock. His powerful and valiant army had then no occupation, and could hasten to the rescue of the king.