Night had fallen over Slavowitz.
Excitement was prevailing both within and without the Diet.
Beneath a glorious starlit sky in the great Zapolyska Square, which fronted the broad and stately flight of steps leading up to the entrance of the Sobieskium or Diet-house, now ablaze with light, was a vast concourse of people, awaiting the stroke of twelve; for at midnight the vote was to be taken on the Secular Appropriation Bill—a measure which had been fiercely debated night after night during the course of five weeks.
Poles, Muscovites, and Jews formed the bulk of this throng, but there was a considerable sprinkling of other elements. Tartars, Cossacks, Hungarians, Roumanians, Servians—representatives of all the motley nationalities of Eastern Europe, elbowed and jostled each other, talking, singing and cursing in a very Babel of tongues.
Diverse, however, as was the crowd, it fell politically into two sharp divisions, the one eager for the passing of the bill, the other eager for its defeat. There was no neutral party in that square.
So high did the spirit of faction run that Zabern's landau on its appearance was overturned by a body of malevolent Muscovites, and the marshal was compelled to lay about him with his sabre till the military came to his rescue.
The indignant Poles retaliated a few minutes later by making an onset upon Lipski, and that deputy escaped only after a severe mauling.
The game once begun was continued by both factions, so that it became almost impossible for the succeeding deputies to reach the Sobieskium, except under police or military escort, or unless attended by a strong circle of their own adherents.
Cheers were given by the hostile sections as their respective favorites were seen safely mounting the steps of the Diet-house beneath the brilliant light of the suspended lamps; the singing of the Polish and the Russian Anthems went on simultaneously all over the square; there were ugly rushes, displays of fisticuffs, scenes of wild disorder, that continued to deepen as the night advanced and the throng increased.
Dorislas, who commanded the mounted cuirassiers drawn up four deep all round the Sobieskium, was obliged to accord the crowd considerable license, lest a too frequent interference on the part of the military should lead to worse mischief.