Ogniem i mieczem. English Read online

  INTRODUCTION.

  The history of the origin and career of the two Slav States, Poland andRussia, is interesting not merely because it contains a vast number ofsurprising scenes and marvellous pictures of life, not merely becauseit gives us a kaleidoscope as it were of the acts of men, but becausethese acts in all their variety fall into groups which may be referredeach to its proper source and origin, and each group contains factsthat concern the most serious problems of history and politicaldevelopment.

  The history of these two States should be studied as one, or rather astwo parts of one history, if we are to discover and grasp the meaningof either part fully. When studied as a whole, this history gives usthe life story of the greater portion of the Slav race placed betweentwo hostile forces,--the Germans on the west, the Mongols and Tartarson the east.

  The advance of the Germans on the Slav tribes and later on Polandpresents, perhaps, the best example in history of the methods ofEuropean civilization. The entire Baltic coast from Lubeck eastward wasconverted to Christianity by the Germans at the point of the sword. Theduty of rescuing these people from the errors of paganism formed themoral pretext for conquering them and taking their lands. The warriorwas accompanied by the missionary, followed by the political colonist.The people of the country deprived of their lands were reduced toslavery; and if any escaped this lot, they were men from the higherclasses who joined the conqueror in the capacity of assistantoppressors. The work was long and doubtful. The Germans made manyfailures, for their management was often very bad. The Slavs west ofthe Oder were stubborn, and under good leadership might have beeninvincible; but the leadership did not come, and to the Germans at lastcame the Hohenzollerns.

  For the serious student there is no richer field of labor than thehistory of Poland and the Slavs of the Baltic, which is inseparablefrom the history of Mark Brandenburg and the two military orders, theTeutonic Knights and the Knights of the Sword.

  The conquest of Russia by the Mongols, the subjection of Europeans toAsiatics,--not Asiatics of the south, but warriors from cold regionsled by men of genius; for such were Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and thelieutenants sent to the west,--was an affair of incomparably greatermagnitude than the German wars on the Baltic.

  The physical grip of the Mongol on Russia was irresistible. There wasnothing for the Russian princes to do but submit if they wished topreserve their people from dissolution. They had to bow down to everywhim of the conqueror; suffer indignity, insult, death,--that is, deathof individuals. The Russians endured for a long time without apparentresult. But they were studying their conquerors, mastering theirpolicy; and they mastered it so well that finally the Prince of Moscowmade use of the Mongols to complete the union of eastern Russia andreduce all the provincial princes of the country, his own relatives, tothe position of ordinary landholders subject to himself.

  The difference between the Poles and Russians seems to be this,--thatthe Russians saw through the policy of their enemies, and then overcamethem; while the Poles either did not understand the Germans, or if theydid, did not overcome them, though they had the power.

  This Slav history is interesting to the man of science, it isinteresting also to the practical statesman, because there is nocountry in the Eastern hemisphere whose future may be consideredoutside of Russian influence, no country whose weal or woe may notbecome connected in some way with Russia. At the same time there are nostates studied by so few and misunderstood by so many as the formerCommonwealth of Poland,--whose people, brave and brilliant butpolitically unsuccessful, have received more sympathy than any otherwithin the circle of civilization,--and Russia, whose people instrength of character and intellectual gifts are certainly among thefirst of the Aryan race, though many men have felt free to describethem in terms exceptionally harsh and frequently unjust.

  The leading elements of this history on its western side are Poland,the Catholic Church, Germany; on the eastern side they are Russia,Eastern Orthodoxy, Northern Asia.

  Now let us see what this western history was. In the middle of theninth century Slav tribes of various denominations occupied the entireBaltic coast west of the Vistula; a line drawn from Lubeck to the Elbe,ascending the river to Magdeburg, thence to the western ridge of theBohemian mountains, and passing on in a somewhat irregular course,leaving Carinthia and Styria on the east, gives the boundary betweenthe Germans and the Slavs at that period. Very nearly in the centre ofthe territory north of Bohemia and the Carpathians lived one of anumber of Slav tribes, the Polyane (or men of the plain), who occupiedthe region afterwards called Great Poland by the Poles, and now calledSouth Prussia by the Germans. In this Great Poland political life amongthe Northwestern Slavs began in the second half of the ninth century.About the middle of the tenth, Mechislav (Mieczislaw), the ruler,received Christianity, and the modest title of Count of the GermanEmpire. Boleslav the Brave, his son and successor, extended histerritory to the upper Elbe, from which region its boundary line passedthrough or near Berlin, whence it followed the Oder to the sea. Beforehis death, in 1025, Boleslav wished to be anointed king by the Pope.The ceremony was denied him, therefore he had it performed by bishopsat home. About a century later the western boundary was pushed forwardby Boleslav Wry-mouth (1132-1139) to a point on the Baltic abouthalf-way between Stettin and Lubeck. This was the greatest extension ofPoland to the west. Between this line and the Elbe were Slav tribes;but the region had already become marken (marches) where the intrusiveGermans were struggling for the lands and persons of the Slavs.

  The eastern boundary of Poland at this period served also as thewestern boundary of Russia from the head-waters of the western branchof the river San in the Carpathian Mountains at a point west of Premysl(in the Galicia of to-day) to Brest-Litovsk, from which point theRussian boundary continued toward the northeast till it reached thesea, leaving Pskoff considerably and Yurieff (now Dorpat) slightly tothe east,--that is, on Russian territory. Between Russia, north ofBrest-Litovsk and Poland, was the irregular triangle composing thelands of Lithuanian and Finnish tribes. From the upper San the Russianboundary southward coincided with the Carpathians, including theterritory between the Pruth to its mouth and the Carpathians. Thisboundary between Poland and Russia, established at that period,corresponds as nearly as possible with the line of demarcation betweenthe two peoples at the present day.

  During the two centuries following 1139, Poland continued to lose onthe west and the north, and that process was fairly begun through whichthe Germans finally excluded the Poles from the sea, and turned thecradle of Poland into South Prussia, the name which it bears to-day.

  At the end of the fourteenth century a step was taken by the Polesthrough which it was hoped to win in other places far more than hadbeen lost on the west. Poland turned now to the east; but by leavingher historical basis on the Baltic, by deserting her politicalbirthplace, the only ground where she had a genuine mission, Polandentered upon a career which was certain to end in destruction, unlessshe could win the Russian power by agreement, or bend it by conquest,and then strengthened by this power, turn back and redeem the lostlands of Pomerania and Prussia.

  The first step in the new career was an alliance with Yagello (Yahailo)of Lithuania, from which much was hoped. This event begins a new era inPolish history; to this event we must now give attention, for it wasthe first in a long series which ended in the great outburst describedin this book,--the revolt of the Russians against the Commonwealth.

  To reach the motives of this famous agreement between the Lithuanianprince and the nobles and clergy of Poland,--for these two estates hadbecome the only power in the land,--we must turn to Russia.

  Lithuania of itself was small, and a prince of that country, if itstood alone, would have received scant attention from Poland; but theLithuanian Grand Prince was ruler over all the lands of western Russiaas well as those of his own people.

  What was Russia?

  The definite appearance of Russia in history dates from 862, when Rurikcam
e to Novgorod, invited by the people to rule over them. Oleg, thesuccessor of this prince, transferred his capital from Novgorod toKieff on the Dnieper, which remained the chief city and capital for twocenturies and a half. Rurik's great-grandson, Vladimir, introducedChristianity into Russia at the end of the tenth century. During hislong reign and that of his son Yaroslav the Lawgiver, the boundary wasfixed between Russia and Poland through the places described above, andcoincided very nearly with the watershed dividing the two river-systemsof the Dnieper and the Vistula, and serves to this day as the boundarybetween the Russian and Polish languages and the Eastern and Catholicchurches.

  In 1157 Kieff ceased to be the seat of the Grand Prince, the capital ofRussia. A new centre of activity and government was founded in thenorth,--first at Suzdal, and then at Vladimir, to be transferred laterto Moscow.

  In 1240 the conquest of Russia by the Tartars was complete. Half amillion or more of armed Asiatics had swept over the land, destroyingeverything where they went. A part of this multitude advanced throughPoland, and were stopped in Silesia and Moravia only by the combinedefforts of central Europe. The Tartar dominion lasted about two hundredand fifty years (1240-1490), and during this period great changes tookplace. Russia before the Tartar conquest was a large country, whosewestern boundary was the eastern boundary of Poland; liberated Russiawas a comparatively small country, with its capital at Moscow, andhaving interposed between it and Poland a large state extending fromthe Baltic to the Black Sea,--a state which was composed of two thirdsof that Russia which was ruled before the Tartar conquest by thedescendants of Rurik; a state which included Little, Red, Black, andWhite Russia, more than two thirds of the best lands, and Kieff, withthe majority of the historic towns of pre-Tartar Russia.

  How was this state founded?

  This state was the Lithuanian Russian,--Litva i Rus (Lithuania andRussia), as it is called by the Russians,--and it rose in the followingmanner. In the irregular triangle on the Baltic, between Russia andPoland of the twelfth century, lived tribes of Finnish and Lithuanianstock, about a dozen in number. In the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies these were all conquered,--the Prussian Lithuanians from theNiemen to the Vistula, by the Teutonic Knights, aided by crusadingadventurers from western Europe; the others, Lithuanian and Finnish, bythe Knights of the Sword,--with the exception of two tribes, theLithuanians proper, on the upper waters of the Niemen and itstributaries, and the Jmuds or Samogitians on the right bank of the sameriver, lower down and between the Lithuanians and the sea. These twosmall tribes were destined through their princes--remarkable men in thefullest sense of the word--to play a great part in Russian and Polishhistory. It is needless to say much of the Lithuanians, who are betterknown to scholars than any people, perhaps, of similar numbers inEurope. The main interest in them at present is confined to theirlanguage, which, though very valuable to the philologist and beautifulin itself, has never been used in government or law, and has but onebook considered as belonging to literature,--"The Four Seasons" byDonaleitis.

  Though small, the Lithuanian country, ruled by a number of pettyprinces, was as much given to anarchy as larger aggregations of men.United for a time under Mindog by reason of pressure from outside, theLithuanians rose first to prominence under Gedimin (1315-1340), who ina quarter of a century was able to substitute himself for the pettyprinces of western Russia and extend his power to the south of Kieff.Gedimin was followed by Olgerd, who with his uncle Keistut ruled till1377; during which time the domains of the Lithuanian prince wereextended to the Crimea, and included the whole basin of the Dnieperwith its tributaries, together with the upper Dvina. Gedimin and Olgerdrespected in all places the clergy of the Eastern Church, and thusacquired rule over a great extent of country with comparative ease andrapidity.

  Olgerd, who had completed a great state, left it to his sons and hisbrother Keistut. Yagello (Yahailo), one of these sons, had Keistut putto death; his brothers and cousins fled; Yagello became sole master. Atthis juncture the nobles and clergy of Poland effected an arrangementby which Yagello, on condition of becoming a Catholic, introducing theCatholic religion into Lithuania, and joining the state to Poland, wasto marry the Queen Yadviga (the last survivor of the royal house) andbe crowned king of Poland at Cracow. All these conditions were carriedout, and with the reign of Yagello Polish history assumes an entirelynew character.

  With the establishment by Gedimin and Olgerd of the Lithuanian dynastyand its conquests, there were two Russias instead of one,--WesternRussia, ruled by the house of Gedimin, and Eastern Russia, ruled by thehouse of Rurik. It had become the ambition of the Lithuanian princes tounite all Russia; it had long been the fixed purpose of the princes atMoscow to recover their ancient patrimony, the lands of Vladimir andYaroslav; that is, all western Russia to the Polish frontier;consequently all the lands added by the Lithuanian princes to theirlittle realm on the Niemen and its tributaries. This struggle betweenthe two houses was very bitter, and more than once it seemed as thoughMoscow's day had come, and Vilna was to be the capital of reconstitutedRussia.

  When the question was at this stage, Yagello became King of Poland. Theunion, purely personal at first, became more intimate later on by meansof the two elements of Polish influence, the Church and the nobility.Catholicism was made the religion of the Lithuanians at once; andtwenty-seven years later, at Horodlo, it was settled that theLithuanian Catholics of the higher classes should receive the sameprivileges as the Polish nobility, with whom they were joined by meansof heraldry,--a peculiar arrangement, through which a number ofLithuanian families received the arms of some Polish house, and becamethus associated, as the original inhabitants of America are associatedunder the same _totem_ by the process of adoption.

  Without giving details, for which there is no space here, we statemerely the meaning of all the details. Lithuania struggled persistentlyagainst anything more than a personal union, while Poland struggledjust as persistently for a complete union; but no matter how theLithuanians might gain at one time or another, the personal union undera king influenced by Polish ideas joined to the great weight of theclergy and nobility was too much for them, and the end of the wholestruggle was that under Sigismond Augustus, the last of the Yagellonkings, a diet was held at Lublin in which a union between Poland andLithuania was proclaimed against the protest of a large number of theLithuanians who left the diet. The King, who was hereditary GrandDuke of Lithuania, and childless, made a present to Poland of hisrights,--made Poland his heir. The petty nobility of Lithuania wereplaced on the same legal footing as the princes and men of greathistoric families. Lithuania was assimilated to Poland in institutions.

  The northern part of West Russia was attached to Lithuania, and allsouthern Russia merged directly in Poland. If the work of this diet hadbeen productive of concord, and therefore of strength, Poland mighthave established herself firmly by the sea and won the first place ineastern Europe; but the Commonwealth, either from choice or necessity,was more occupied in struggling with Russians than in standing withfirm foot on the Baltic. Sound statesmanship would have taught thePoles that for them it was a question of life and death to possessPomerania and Prussia, and make the Oder at least their westernboundary. They had the power to do that; they had the power to expelthe two military orders from the coast; but they did not exert it,--aneglect which cost them dear in later times. Moscow would not haveescaped the Poles had they been masters of the Baltic, and had they,instead of fighting with Cossacks and Russians, attached them to theCommonwealth by toleration and justice.

  The whole internal policy of Poland from the coronation of Yagello tothe reign of Vladislav IV. was to assimilate the nobility of Lithuaniaand Russia to that of Poland in political rights and in religiousprofession. The success was complete in the political sense, andpractically so in the religious. The Polish nobility, who were in factthe state, possessed at the time of Yagello's coronation all the land,and owned the labor of the people; later on they ceased to pay taxes ofany kind. It was a great bribe to the nobl
es of Lithuania and Russia tooccupy the same position. The Lithuanians became Catholics at theaccession of Yagello, or soon after; but in Russia, where all belongedto the Orthodox Church, the process was slow, even if sure. The princesOstrorog and Dominik Zaslavski of this book were of Russian familieswhich held their faith for a long time. The parents of Prince YeremiVishnyevetski were Orthodox, and his mother on her death-bed imploredhim to be true to the faith of his ancestors.

  All had been done that could be done with the nobility; but the greatmass of Russian people holding the same faith as the Russians of theEast, whose capital was at Moscow, were not considered reliable;therefore a union of churches was effected, mainly through the formalinitiative of the King Sigismond III. and a few ecclesiastics, butrejected by a great majority of the Russian clergy and people. This newor united church, which retained the Slav language with Eastern customsand liturgy, but recognized the supremacy of the Pope, was made thestate church of Russia.

  From this rose all the religious trouble.

  The Russians, when Hmelnitski appeared, were in the followingcondition: Their land was gone; the power of life and death over themresided in lords, either Poles or Polonized Russians, who generallygave this power to agents or tenants, not infrequently Jews. Alljustice, all administration, all power belonged to the lord or towhomsoever he delegated his authority; there was no appeal. A peoplewith an active communal government of their own in former times werenow reduced to complete slavery. Such was the Russian complaint on thematerial side. On the moral side it was that their masters werefilching their faith from them. Having stripped them of everything inthis life, they were trying to deprive them of life to come.

  The outburst of popular rage against Poland was without example inhistory for intensity and volume, and this would have made the revoltremarkable whatever its motives or objects. But the Cossack war was ofworld-wide importance in view of the issues. The triumph of Polandwould have brought the utter subjection of the Cossacks and the people,with the extinction of Eastern Orthodoxy not only in Russia but inother lands; for the triumph of Poland would have left no place forMoscow on earth but a place of subjection. The triumph of the Cossackswould have brought a mixed government, with religious toleration and aking having means to curb the all-powerful nobles. This was whatHmelnitski sought; this was the dream of Ossolinski the Chancellor;this, if realized, might possibly have saved the Commonwealth, and madeit a constitutional government instead of an association ofirresponsible magnates.

  It turned out that the Cossacks and the uprisen people were not a matchfor the Poles, and it was not in the interest of the Tartars to givethe Cossacks the fruits of victory. It was the policy of the Tartars tobring the Poles into trouble and then rescue them; they wished thePoles to have the upper hand, but barely have it, and be in continualdanger of losing it.

  The battle of Berestechko, instead of giving peace to the Commonwealth,opened a new epoch of trouble. Hmelnitski, the ablest man in Europe atthat time, could be conquered by nothing but death. Though beatenthrough the treachery of the Khan at Berestechko and perhaps also bytreason in his own camp, he rallied, concluded the treaty of BelayaTserkoff, which reduced the Cossack army from forty to twelve thousandmen, but left Hmelnitski hetman of the Zaporojians. That was the greatmistake of the Poles; every success was for them a failure so long asHmelnitski had a legal existence.

  The Poles, though intellectual, sympathetic, brave, and gifted withhigh personal qualities that have made them many friends, have beenalways deficient in collective wisdom; and there is probably no moreastonishing antithesis in Europe than the Poles as individuals and thePoles as a people.

  After Berestechko the Poles entered the Ukraine as masters.Vishnyevetski went as the ruling spirit. To all appearance the time ofhis triumph had come; but one day after dinner he fell ill and diedsuddenly. The verdict of the Russian people was: The Almighty preservedhim through every danger, saved him from every enemy, and by reason ofthe supreme wickedness of "Yarema," reserved him for his own holy andpunishing hand.

  The old order of things was restored in Russia,--landlords, garrisons,Jews; but now came the most striking event in the whole history.

  Moldavia, the northern part of the present kingdom of Romania, was atthat time a separate principality, owning the suzerainty of the Sultan.Formerly it had been a part of the Russian principality of Galich(Galicia), joined to Poland in the reign of Kazimir the Great, butconnected, at the time of our story, with Turkey. The Poles hadintimate relations with the country, and sought to bring it back. TheHospodar was Vassily Lupul, a man of fabulous wealth, according toreport, and the father of two daughters, whose beauty was the wonder ofeastern Europe. Prince Radzivil of Lithuania had married the elder; theyounger, Domna (Domina) Rosanda, was sought in marriage by three menfrom Poland and by Timofei Hmelnitski, the son of Bogdan. The first ofthe Poles was Dmitry Vishnyevetski; the second was Kalinovski, the agedhetman of the Crown, captured by Hmelnitski at Korsun, but now free andmore ambitions than any man in the Commonwealth of half his age, whichwas then near seventy.

  Lupul, who had consented to the marriage of his daughter with youngHmelnitski, preferred Vishnyevetski; whereupon Bogdan exclaimed, "Wewill send a hundred thousand best men with the bridegroom." Thirty-sixthousand Cossacks and Tartars set out for Yassy, the residence ofLupul. Kalinovski, the Polish hetman, with twenty thousand men, barredthe way to young Hmelnitski at Batog on the boundary. It was supposedthat Timofei was attended by a party of only five thousand, andKalinovski intended to finish a rival and destroy the son of an enemyat a blow. This delusion of the hetman was probably caused, but inevery case confirmed, by a letter from Bogdan, in which he stated thathis son, with some attendants, was on his way to marry the daughter ofthe Hospodar; that young men are hot-headed and given to quarrels,blood might be spilled; therefore he asked Kalinovski to withdraw andlet the party pass.

  This was precisely what Kalinovski would not do; he resolved to stopTimofei by force. The first day, five thousand Cossacks and Tartars,while passing to the west, were attacked by the Poles, who pursued themwith cavalry. When a good distance from the camp, a courier rushed tothe hetman with news of a general attack on the rear of the Polisharmy. The Poles returned in haste, pursued in their turn.

  Young Hmelnitski had fallen upon a division of the army in the rear ofthe camp, and almost destroyed it. Darkness brought an end to thestruggle. No eye was closed on either side that night. One half of thePolish army resolved to escape in spite of the hetman. At daybreak theywere marching. "They shall not flee!" said Kalinovski "Stop them withcavalry; open on the cowards with cannon!" One part of the Polish armyhurried to stop the other; there was a discharge of artillery; some ofthe fugitives rushed on, but most of them stopped. Then a seconddischarge of artillery, and a battle began. The Cossacks gazed on thiswonderful scene; when their amazement had passed, they attacked theenemy, and indescribable slaughter began. It was impossible for thePoles to re-form or make effective defence. At this moment thearmy-servants, many of whom were Russians, set fire to the camp.Outnumbered and panic-stricken, thousands of Poles rushed into the Bugand were drowned. The Cossacks, with Berestechko in mind, showed mercyto no man; and of the whole army of twenty thousand, less than fivehundred escaped. The peasants in all the country about killed thefugitives with scythes and clubs. Those who crossed the river wereslaughtered on the other bank; among them was Samuel Kalinovski, son ofthe hetman. Then Kalinovski himself, seeing that all was lost cried, "Ihave no wish to live; I am ashamed to look on the sun of this morning!"and rushed to the thick of the fight. He perished; and a Nogai horsemanraced over the field, while from his saddle-bow depended the head ofthe hetman with its white streaming hair. After the battle the body wasdiscovered; on it the portrait of Domna Rosanda and the letter ofBogdan.

  Farther on, near the Bug, was a division of five thousand Germans undercommand of Marek Sobieski, the gifted chief who had fought at Zbaraj.Attacked in front by the Cossacks, they stood with manful persistencetill K
arach Murza, the Nogai commander, at the head of fourteenthousand men, descended upon them from the hills of Botog like a mightyrain from the clouds or a whirlwind of the desert, as the Ukrainechronicler phrases it. Split in the centre, torn through and through,the weapons dropped from their hands, they were ridden down and sabredby Nogais and Cossacks. Sobieski perished; Pshiyemski, commander ofartillery, was killed.

  A year later the Poles at Jvanyets were in greater straits than everbefore. They were surrounded by Hmelnitski and the Khan so that noescape was possible; but they had more gold to give than had theCossacks. They satisfied those in power, from the Khan downward, withgifts, and covenanted to let them plunder Russia and seize Russiancaptives during six weeks. On these conditions the Tartars desertedHmelnitski, peace was concluded, and the Polish army and king weresaved from captivity.

  This was the last act of the Cossack-Tartar alliance. Hmelnitski nowturned to Moscow; the Zaporojian army took the oath of allegiance toAlexis, father of Peter the Great. Lithuania and western Russia wereoverrun by the forces of Moscow and the Cossacks. The Swedes occupiedWarsaw and Cracow. Karl Gustav, their king, became king of Poland. YanKazimir fled to Silesia.

  Again the Polish king came back, but soon resigned, and ended his lifein France.

  The eastern bank of the Dnieper, with Kieff on the west, went toRussia; but it was not till the reign of Katherine II. that westernRussia was united to the east, and Prussia and Austria received all thelands of Poland proper.

  I feel constrained to ask kindly indulgence from the readers of thissketch. I am greatly afraid that it will seem indefinite and lacking inprecision; but the field to be covered is so great that I wrote withtwo kinds of readers in view,--those who are already well acquaintedwith Slav history, and those who do not know this history yet, but whomay be roused to examine it for themselves. I hope to give a sketch ofthis history in a future not too remote, with an account of the sourcesof original information; so that impartial students, as Americans areby position, may have some assistance in beginning a work of suchcommanding importance as the history of Poland and Russia.

  Jeremiah Curtin.

  Washington, D. C, April 4, 1890.

  WITH FIRE AND SWORD.