Charles was consequently enlisted, to his intense joy. I got him a little pony, and arms proportioned to his size, and he fought by my side like a lion in every encounter.
After the fight at Piaskowa-Scala we returned to the camp, having fortunately found some provisions. The night was so dark that we were obliged to light torches, which the soldiers carried at certain distances. Passing before a pine-tree, the new horse I was riding suddenly shied and nearly threw me. I looked to see what had frightened him, and discovered a black object hanging from a branch of the tree. I called a soldier to bring his torch, that we might find out what it was. The light fell on the hanging form; it was my dear dog, Cæsar. On the trunk of the tree was fastened a paper with this inscription: “We hang the dog until we can hang his master.” I was thunderstruck. Al-Mansour, Cæsar, both my friends in one day, perhaps at the very same hour! “Nothing, then, is left to me!” I exclaimed with bitterness, feeling that my poor dog was quite cold—“nothing, not even those poor faithful beasts who loved me so much.”
“Yes,” said a voice in my ear, “a countryman is left to you, and, if you will, a friend!”
I turned round; it was little Charles, who was holding out his hand to me with looks full of sadness and sympathy. I pressed the child’s hand. “Charles!” I exclaimed, “we will try and avenge them.” And spurring my horse, I left the fatal spot far behind me in a few minutes.
A day or two later we went to join the larger corps of General Chmielinski at the camp at Tedczyjowa. When I say “camp” I make a mistake. None existed; we had only a few miserable tents and hardly any baggage. The men slept by parties of ten in the woods, on the cold ground, with such coverings or sheepskins as they could get together; many had only cloth cloaks. At break of day the réveil sounded, ordinarily at the entrance of some glade where the vedettes could embrace a wide space. At the first bugle sound the soldiers emerged from the forest. The men were gentle and sad. The indomitable and calm energy of their souls was reflected on their faces, though blanched with cold and worn with hunger and sufferings of every description. They had a kind of interior brightness in their look that cast over them a sort of sacred halo, before which I believe the veriest sceptic would have bowed with reverence. These men were all possessed with one idea: to die for their faith and their country. Nothing else, indeed, was left for them. The struggle was becoming more hopeless every day, and they knew it; yet they never dreamt of giving it up. The roll-call over and the sentries relieved, Father Benvenuto came in the midst of us, and every knee was bowed before the sacred sign he bore—the sign of our redemption. There was indeed something glorious in that prayer in the open air, joined in audibly by all those men, united in one thought and in one wish, who were fighting with the certainty of eventual defeat, but who only asked of God the grace not to falter or turn back from the path which duty and the love of their country had marked out for them, albeit that path might have no issue but exile or death. Happy were those who fell in battle! They went at once to swell the glorious army of martyrs. The others, when not hanged, chained in a long and mournful procession, were sent to Siberia after that terrible word of farewell addressed to fathers and mothers, and wives and children, gathered sobbing by the roadside: “Do nie widzenia!”—Never to meet again. Many of these poor fellows were fastened to an iron bar, sometimes ten of them together, and carried off in the direction of Kiew. Those who survived the horrors of the march or the lash of their drivers were taken across Greater Russia. A “soteria,” or company, of Cossacks surrounded these innocent men on every side as they toiled on and on, loaded with chains and treated worse than the vilest criminals. The lance and the whip were the only answer to pleas of exhaustion or sickness. A resigned silence was the sole refuge from the brutality of their escort, whose only orders were not to spare the blood of those Polish dogs. Any complaint brought down a hailstorm of blows on the unfortunate victims, even when not followed by death. Truly, the sufferings endured by the Poles will never be known till the day when all things shall be revealed.
When we arrived at the camp we found that Father Benvenuto had preceded us by four or five hours. He had been commissioned to receive about one hundred volunteers who had arrived that morning from Galicia. The greater part of them were dressed in the gray kontusz (or Bradenburg greatcoat), with the large leathern girdle of a géral (a mountaineer). On their heads they wore the roqatka (a kind of square cap, something like the czapka of the Lancers). They generally had a common fowling-piece with two barrels, and a little hatchet in their waistbands. Each had a canvas bag and a hunting-pouch. These might be considered as the flower of the flock. They were mostly students from Lemberg and Cracow. Others were peasants dressed in short tunics with scythes in their hands. These were the kopynicry (or mowers), half-soldiers, half-peasants, and famous in all the struggles of Poland. Besides these there were men of every age and condition of life, but all animated with the same patriotic spirit: citizens, villagers, Catholics, Protestants, Jews even, some wearing black coats, others workmen’s blouses. Their arms were as varied as their costumes: parade swords, sabres blunted in the great wars with Napoleon, old muskets of Sobieski’s days, halberds, and even old French weapons. Some had only hunting-knives and sticks. This curious assemblage of discordant elements, which anywhere else would have seemed grotesque, assumed under the circumstances an imposing, and even a touching, character.
At the extreme end of the glade Father Benvenuto was praying before a great Christ stretched on his cross. When he rose he fastened an amaranth and white flag (which was the Polish banner) to the end of a lance. This flag bore on one side the picture of Notre Dame de Czenstochowa, the patroness of Poland; on the other a Lithuanian cavalier with the white eagle. He fixed the lance in the ground before the cross, and then made a sign to the volunteers to lay down their arms and draw near. When each had taken his place the good priest remained for a moment in silent prayer and recollection. His thin cheeks with their prominent cheekbones, his long white beard, his forehead furrowed with wrinkles and glorious wounds, and his tall and commanding figure gave him an appearance of energy, strength, and majesty which impressed the beholders with deep and affectionate veneration.
“Brothers!” at last he said, “it is a holy and yet a fearful cause to which you are about to devote yourselves. It is one beyond mere vulgar or animal courage; and before you enroll yourselves in our ranks—before, in fact, you engage yourselves any further in the matter—it is right you should know and fully realize what awaits you and what is expected of you.”
The patriots listened respectfully, their heads bare, standing before the crucifix and the banner. Around them, and as if to protect them, stretched the virgin forests, those fortresses of the Polish insurgents, while the sun shed its pale rays over the whole scene.
“What you have to expect,” continued the good father, “is this: You will suffer daily from hunger, for we have no stores; you will have to sleep on the bare ground, for we have no tents; you will have to march more often with bare feet than with shoes and stockings; you will shiver with cold under clothes which will be utterly insufficient to protect you from the rigors of this climate. If you are wounded, you will fall into the hands of the Muscovites, who will torture you. If you are afraid and refuse to go forward, your own comrades have orders to shoot you.”