Thaddeus of Warsaw

by Jane Porter

Next morning at sunrise the troops prepared to march. General Wawrzecki, with his officers, begged permission to pay their personal gratitude to the countess for the hospitality of her reception; but she declined the honor, on the plea of indisposition. In the course of an hour, her son appeared from her apartment and joined the general.

The soldiers filed off through the gates, crossed the bridge, and halted under the walls of Praga. The lines of the camp were drawn and fortified before evening, at which time they found leisure to observe the enemy's strength.

Russia seemed to have exhausted her wide regions to people the narrow shores of the Vistula; from east to west, as far as the eye could reach, her arms were stretched to the horizon. Sobieski looked at them, and then on the handful of intrepid hearts contained in the small circumference of the Polish camp. Sighing heavily, he retired into his tent; and vainly seeking repose, mixed his short and startled slumbers with frequent prayers for the preservation of these last victims to their country.

The hours appeared to stand still. Several times he rose from his bed and went to the door, to see whether the clouds were tinged with any appearance of dawn. All continued dark. He again returned to his marquée, and standing by the lamp which was nearly exhausted, took out his watch, and tried to distinguish the points; but finding that the light burned too feebly, he was pressing the repeating spring, which struck five, when the report of a single musket made him start.

He flew to his tent door, and looking around, saw that all near his quarter was at rest. Suspecting it to be a signal of the enemy, he hurried towards the intrenchments, but found the sentinels in perfect security from any fears respecting the sound, as they supposed it to have proceeded from the town.

Sobieski paid little attention to their opinions, but ascending the nearest bastion to take a wider survey, in a few minutes he discerned, though obscurely, through the gleams of morning, what appeared to be the whole host of Russia advancing in profound silence towards the Polish lines. The instant he made this discovery, he came down, and lost no time in giving orders for the defence; then flying to other parts of the camp, he awakened the commander-in-chief, encouraged the men, and saw that the whole encampment was not only in motion, but prepared for the assault.

In consequence of these prompt arrangements, the assailants were received with a cross-fire of the batteries, and case-shot and musketry from several redoubts, which raked their flanks as they advanced. But in defiance of this shower of bullets, they pressed on with an intrepidity worthy of a better cause, and overleaping the ditch by squadrons, entered the camp. A passage once secured, the Cossacks rushed in by thousands, and spreading themselves in front of the storming party, put every soul to the spear who opposed them.

The Polish works being gained, the enemy turned the cannon on its former masters, and as they rallied to the defence of what remained, swept them down by whole regiments. The noise of artillery thundered from all sides of the camp; the smoke was so great, that it was hardly possible to distinguish friends from foes; nevertheless, the spirits of the Poles flagged not a moment; as fast as one rampart was wrested from them, they threw themselves within another, which was as speedily taken by the help of hurdles, fascines, ladders, and a courage as resistless as it was ferocious, merciless, and sanguinary. Every spot of vantage position was at length lost; and yet the Poles fought like lions; quarter was neither offered to them nor required; they disputed every inch of ground, until they fell upon it in heaps, some lying before the parapets, others filling the ditches and the rest covering the earth, for the enemy to tread on as they cut their passage to the heart of the camp.

Sobieski, almost maddened by the scene, dripping with his own blood and that of his brave friends, was seen in every part of the action; he was in the fosse, defending the trampled bodies of the dying; he was on the dyke, animating the few who survived. Wawrzecki was wounded, and every hope hung upon Thaddeus. His presence and voice infused new energy into the arms of his fainting countrymen; they kept close to his side, until the victors, enraged at the dauntless intrepidity of this young hero, uttered the most fearful imprecations, and rushing on his little phalanx, attacked it with redoubled numbers and fury.

Sobieski sustained the shock with firmness; but wherever he turned his eyes, they were blasted with some object which made them recoil; he beheld his companions and his soldiers strewing the earth, and their triumphant adversaries mounting their dying bodies, as they hastened with loud huzzas to the destruction of Praga, whose gates were now burst open. His eyes grew dim at the sight, and at the very moment in which he tore them from spectacles so deadly to his heart, a Livonian officer struck him with a sabre, to all appearance dead upon the field.