Russka (60 page)

And although Andrei knew that this view of the Don Cossack state was a little romanticized, he also knew that this communistic democracy was widely favoured by the poorer Cossacks everywhere.

How noble it sounded. A brotherhood of man.

‘Of course,’ the Ox added, ‘we’ll kick out all the Catholics and Jews first: you can’t have a brotherhood of man with them. But then everything will be all right.’

Andrei supposed so. Yet he was not sure. Didn’t he want to get richer? Didn’t he want to become a gentleman and own estates, with ambitious Anna at his side?

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden roar from the edge of the camp. That was the signal. Usually they beat the kettledrums to summon an assembly, but with so many present they were using cannon.

In the space of a few minutes, thousands of men had gathered at the meeting place where the Cossacks’ little wooden church now looked like a carnival float being carried by the crowd.

To loud cries of approval, the head of the camp – the
Ataman
– now led out Bogdan to address them.

He was a big, bluff fellow with a rather coarse, bearded face. He looked like the heavy Cossack squire he was. But when roused he had an unexpected gift for oratory. Now, in a few short sentences, he recounted to them once again his woes, and the disgraceful treatment he had received from the Poles. Everyone knew the tale well, but they wanted to hear it again: it was a question of form, and he did not let them down.

‘Is this, brothers, how brave Cossacks should be treated?’ he bellowed.

‘Never,’ they shouted back.

‘Is this our reward for our services – that we should be asked for our lives in war, and in peace treated worse than any of us would treat a dog?’ the peroration continued. He looked from side to side. ‘Are we to suffer for ever, while the brotherhood, wives, families, children, are butchered – or are we going to fight?’

‘We fight,’ they roared.

Now the
Ataman
stepped forward.

‘I have a proposal, brother Cossacks,’ he cried.

‘Say it!’ a hundred voices yelled back. The matter had long been agreed, but the vote must still take place.

‘I propose that Bogdan Khmelnitsky be elected our grand chief, the representative of all the Cossacks in the Ukraine. I propose he be
Hetman
. Who agrees?’

‘We agree!’ the whole camp shouted.

‘Let the standard be brought forth, then.’

And now even Andrei’s heart missed a beat. They were bringing forward the famous horsetail standard of the Cossacks; and once that was raised, even Polish lords and Ottoman Turks might tremble, for the free Cossacks of the steppe would fight to the death.

‘We march at dawn,’ the
Hetman
announced.

There have in human history, in many countries, been worse years than that of 1648 in Poland.

But in all the long annals of human cruelty and stupidity – which alas do not seem to change – the year 1648 deserves, for several reasons, a particular mention.

It also changed Russian history.

From mid-April the Cossack army – eight thousand Cossacks with four guns, and four thousand more Tatars just behind – advanced up the western side of the great River Dniepr, across the steppe. Ahead of them they carried a huge red banner sewn with an image of the Archangel.

The Poles knew that the Cossack rebels were coming and made preparations.

The Polish military commander, the magnate Potocki, made his headquarters on the west bank about eighty miles below Pereiaslav. From here he sent forward a vanguard in two parts. In the first, under command of his own son, were fifteen hundred Poles together with some twenty-five hundred regular, service Cossacks; in the second, another twenty-five hundred service Cossacks and a contingent of German mercenaries. The idea was that the vanguard was to garrison and refortify Kodak.

It was an act either of foolishness or of extraordinary arrogance to assume that these troops would remain loyal: especially since Bogdan’s agents had already infiltrated them.

The group with the Germans, as soon as they saw the rebels,
voted to join them. They killed two of their officers and the Germans. The next day, May 6, unlucky young Potocki found his Cossacks had gone too, and after a useless stand by a stream known as Yellow Waters, he and his Poles were slaughtered.

The Cossack army came up with the main Polish force ten days later, near the modest town of Khorsun, which lay only some thirty miles south-west of Pereiaslav. Here the combined Cossacks and Tatars fell upon them.

The battle of Khorsun was a complete victory. The elder Potocki and no less than eighty Polish lords were taken. The loot was splendid. The Cossacks also acquired forty-one pieces of artillery and thousands of horses.

News of the victory spread like wildfire. And the Ukraine rose in revolt.

Andrei and Stepan were rich.

They had fought side by side, carving a swathe through the Polish soldiers; where Stepan would plough forward in a blind ecstasy of rage, Andrei had not only fought bravely, but had protected his friend’s back and wisely steered him, so that Bogdan himself had noticed them and remarked: ‘The big one is brave, but the young one’s cunning as well.’

At the end of the battle, when the whole force had erupted into a wild orgy of drinking and dancing, the
Hetman
himself strode over and, in addition to the loot which every Cossack received, presented each of the two men with six of the finest Polish horses.

‘Another battle like this,’ Andrei remarked to his friend, ‘and you’ll be able to buy your farm.’

The richest rewards, however, went to the Tatar cavalry. They were given all the Polish nobles to ransom. Large parties set off with these captives towards the Crimea.

‘The Tatars always get rich,’ Stepan told Andrei.

‘They fight like devils though,’ the young man replied enthusiastically.

‘Perhaps,’ Stepan said sadly. ‘But I know them better than you: just wait and see.’

For Andrei, it was a thrilling time. He had become a fully fledged Cossack, and he felt it. Not only was this an exciting adventure for him personally, but the larger, political events in which he was playing a part were taking a dramatic turn.

For Bogdan’s revolt could not have happened at a better moment for the Ukrainians. Just after the humiliating victory of Khorsun, news reached the camp that the King of Poland had died. In the Polish capital of Warsaw, until a new king was elected, the Catholic primate and the Chancellor were in charge. Bogdan had caught the Commonwealth at its weakest moment.

The whole of eastern Europe was in diplomatic uproar. Messengers flew from the Polish capital to Moscow and to the Ottoman Turks. The Sultan was urged to recall the Tatars, who were his vassals. The Tsar was asked, if he valued peace with Poland, to send troops to attack the Crimean Khan. The Polish nobility was appealed to, to raise troops from their estates.

Meanwhile, in the days that followed the battle, news came from all over the Ukraine of peasants rising against their Polish landlords; and a stream of men started to arrive at the Cossack camp – some mounted and fully equipped, others with no more than the jawbone of a horse tied to a staff – but all longing to do battle.

And in the midst of all this, Bogdan calmly sent messages of his own to the Poles and to the Tsar of Russia, and prepared to play one off against the other.

‘Now we shall see a change,’ Andrei exclaimed to his friend.

‘Perhaps,’ Stepan replied.

It was in the middle of this period of consolidation that Andrei obtained permission to make a brief visit to Russka. He took Stepan with him.

His reasons for going were twofold: he wanted to see that his parents were safe, and he wanted to leave his loot and his horses at the farm. His father might sell some of the horses and keep the money hidden for him.

But in fact,
Hetman
Bogdan was glad to let the young man go, for he had an important mission for him.

‘The magnate Vyshnevetsky owns your village, doesn’t he?’ he asked. ‘Well, I hear he’s collecting men to attack us. Take ten men with you; find out all you can and bring me news.’ He gave Andrei an encouraging smile. ‘You went to a seminary, they tell me.’

‘Yes,
Hetman
’

‘Good. I’ll be watching you next time we fight.’

Andrei knew what that meant. In a year, perhaps, he might even
be made an
esaul
– a Cossack captain. If the rebellion succeeded, the path to fortune might be opening up before him.

The party rode off in high spirits.

How beautiful the country was, as they made their way eastwards over the plain under the warm June sun. Occasionally they encountered stretches of woods and little coppices; sometimes there were willows and pines growing along the banks of the streams. But for the most part they saw only the broad, open steppe, with its delicate, waving feather grass. There was plenty of game, and fish to catch, but they rode steadily, resting at noon, travelling swiftly in the morning and evening.

Although he possessed the fine Polish horses, Andrei preferred to ride his smaller, Cossack steed. Bred for strength and endurance, these sturdy unshod animals could carry a man as much as fifty miles a day across the steppe. By the end of the second day, the party had reached the mighty Dniepr and crossed it by raft. In another day, they would be at Russka.

They came upon the first sign of trouble at mid-morning. It was at one of the tiny wooden forts, smaller than Russka, which served as outposts for the Polish administration. As they approached, the Cossacks saw that the place was deserted, and they would have passed by without stopping if Andrei had not noticed something strange hanging from the open gateway.

It was a Polish official – one could see that at once from his fine clothes. He had been hanged. But the Ukrainian peasants had not been content until they had been cruel; and so they had first killed his wife and children in front of him and then hung their heads, on a rope, round his neck. It was a miserable ending that many Poles were to suffer that summer.

An hour later they came to a Cossack farmstead, not unlike his father’s. This had been burned to the ground and thoroughly looted. But when Andrei began to curse the Poles, Stepan stopped him.

‘Look.’ He picked up an arrow from the ground. ‘It wasn’t the Poles. It was the Tatars on their way back.’

Andrei looked and nodded.

‘We gave them all the Polish nobles,’ he remarked sadly. ‘Wasn’t that enough?’

‘Nothing’s ever enough for the Tatars,’ Stepan replied.

‘Let’s move on,’ Andrei said. He wondered what they would find at Russka.

They rode, for the most part, in silence. The others had sensed Andrei’s anxiety and the whole group pressed ahead as fast as it could.

Only one tiny incident provoked a conversation. This was when a wildcat darted across the path in front of them and disappeared into the long grasses. Andrei would not have thought about it at all, if he had not heard Stepan mutter a curse beside him.

‘What’s the matter, my Ox?’

‘Nothing,’ the huge fellow gruffly replied, but he didn’t sound very convincing.

‘Come on, what is it?’

‘That wildcat: did it look at us?’

Andrei considered.

‘I don’t think so. Why?’

‘Nothing. Perhaps it didn’t.’

Anxious as he was, Andrei could not help smiling. In a superstitious age, in a superstitious land, he had never met anyone like Stepan. Time and again on the campaign, he had seen the big fellow gaze at trees, rocks, the flight of birds, any number of everyday things which had some special, magical significance for him.

‘So what does it mean, where you come from, if a wildcat looks at you?’ he asked with a laugh.

But Stepan would not tell him.

At last, late in the afternoon, they drew close to Russka. Anxiously Andrei looked from side to side, searching for signs of Tatars, but saw nothing.

And then, just before they reached the marshes below Russka, they met a peasant from the forest; and when he told them what he knew, Andrei saw what he must do.

‘Prepare yourselves for a battle,’ he told his men. ‘This will need careful timing,’ he added.

The little fort of Russka was closed tight. Inside, a garrison of twenty Polish soldiers, sent there from Pereiaslav in the general confusion, awaited further instructions.

The fortress also contained Yankel the liquor concessionaire, three Jewish craftsmen and two other Jewish merchants, all with their families. Since the Poles did not trust them, the local Cossacks and peasants had all been left outside, to defend themselves if the Tatars came as best they could.

When they left Pereiaslav, they had been told that the magnate Vyshnevetsky was raising a large force, but since then they had heard nothing of this force’s movements. They had been waiting for news for two days.

The sun was already getting low when, at the edge of the woods, on the Pereiaslav side, they saw the detachment approaching. Shielding their eyes against the sun, it was with huge relief that they saw, from the detachment’s shining uniforms and their splendid mounts, that they were Poles.

From his position behind some bushes, just a hundred yards below the fortress gate, Stepan also watched the Poles approach.

As they came close, the men on the walls called down: ‘Where are you from? What news?’

‘We’re Vyshnevetsky’s men,’ came the welcome Polish reply. ‘His main force is just behind us. Come down and open the gates.’

From behind his bush, the intrepid Stepan grunted: ‘Good. Very good. We’ll kill them all.’

The men from the walls came down and, as their brother Poles reached the gates, opened them.

Then something very strange occurred. Unseen by the defenders, as they opened the gates to the Poles, the huge figure of Stepan, together with about twenty villagers, rushed from their hiding places to swarm into the fort behind the horsemen. Only as they reached the gate itself did the garrison see them, but as they cried out in alarm, the Polish horsemen, instead of turning on the insurgents, jammed the gates open.