Song of the Legions (6 page)

“Bar, of course, is in Podolia,” he continued, “a good place to hide out. So there we hid, and from there we would ride out in sorties and raid the enemy. But I fear that even Podolia is lost to us now!”

Young Tanski, who was drunk, took the offensive against Podolia and Podolians, both of which he thoroughly detested. “Esteemed Sir,” Tanski said loudly, so I could hear, “naught grows in the black earth of Podolia but weeds and stones. As for the Podolians themselves, they are a bastard race of dogheads, heretics, Jews, Tartars, traitors, sodomites, blackamoors, Cossacks and Irishmen. The loss of Podolia is no loss at all. The Austrians are welcome to it!”

Everyone laughed – with myself excepted. Tanski and Sierawski collared Elias Tremo and they disappeared together to the kitchen. They were whispering together and making mischief. We were all drunk by this time. Tanski’s mocking of Podolians had angered me greatly. Fury boiled in my chest. The others, in their cups, and spoiling for trouble, encouraged him. As was common in those grand old days, the meal soon became a merry drinking bout. These often ended in quarrels, and since it was our fashion to go armed at all times, blood was often spilled.

“Comrades!” Sierawski staggered in, smirking through his moustaches, “one last course!”

A pig’s head was brought on to the table. Tanski and Sierawski bore it aloft. They were wrapped in white tablecloths, in imitation of priestly vestments, with leather wine bladders set upon their heads for mitres. Tanski fell to his feet before the carcass, genuflecting, and flicking mead from a jug over us all, like holy water, and making the sign of the cross unctuously in the air with a knife and fork.

“
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti!
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!
” Sierawski cried.

“To prayer, my Lord Brothers, and praise the Lord! For it is the Podolian Pope himself! With his communion wafers!” Tanski exclaimed, triumphantly, producing a plate of fried pierogi. They began solemnly intoning a nonsense doggerel song they had invented, and styled ‘the Podolian Psalm.’

“
Ora pro nobis, sancti pierogi di Podolia, Amen!”

The gentlemen and ladies, all in their cups, fell about laughing at this. There were cheers and jeers, and much drunken hilarity. In a rage, I ran at Tanski and struck him hard in the chest. Although he was a big strong fellow, he was thrown across the room, hit his head on a bench, and passed out cold. Turning next on Sierawski, I drew my blade and held the point to his throat.

“To sword, Sir! We came here to drink a toast to the Constitution, but instead you mock me!”

“No! Mercy, Comrade!” Sierawski yelled, throwing up his hands. We declared a truce. Godebski and I picked up Tanski from the floor by his ankles and tossed him into a horse trough to sober him up. Jozef Wybicki, being inclined to more intellectual pursuits than this, took his leave and went to bed. The dashing young chef de cavalry, Elias Tremo, had also vanished. As indeed had Madame.

Tanski staggered back into the dining room, trailing excrescences from the water trough. Various foul liquids ran unhindered over Madame’s fine furniture, and dripped on the parquet floor and the Persian carpets. We tied a white linen napkin around Tanski’s head so that he looked like a Turk. A dark red stain, like wine, gradually spread through the white cloth. After that, we fortified ourselves with more vodka.

We then had an arm-wrestling contest with the servants, thus reducing the few tables and chairs that remained unbroken to matchwood. We had made a wreck of the room. It was heaving with filth and bottles and littered with drunks lying as still as corpses, and groaning like damned souls.

“After the drink, comes the hangover,” Tanski said, clutching his aching head.

“Best to keep drinking, then,” I replied, opening another bottle.

At long last, when all four of us had been felled by vodka, the bell tolled for silentium.

Pepi took a letter from his pocket and read aloud to the army –

“The desire of Her Highness Empress of Russia is to use her armies to return to the Republic, and to Poles, their security and freedom. Each true Pole knows our Fatherland can only be saved by Russia, otherwise we will be enslaved. I urge you, Prince Poniatowski – abandon the Constitution. Join us.

Signed, Severyn Rzewuski, of the Targowica Confederacy.”

A great howl of derision rose from the ranks. The army sat atop a hill beside a place called Zielence, which was near the Russian border. It was a fine windswept sunny day at that. From my seat in the saddle, amongst the lines of cavalry, I had leisure to watch the birds chase heedlessly across the sky, the sun lighting up the white bellies of the clouds as they billowed there like great swollen pierogi. My abiding memory of the day was of feeling ravenously hungry. Once the jeers had died down, he continued.

“Comrades,” Pepi said, “our Russian brothers are coming, to save us! They are ‘hastening to the aid of Poland's Golden Freedom’, in a spirit of brotherly love and affection. Here, on this hill, we shall greet our dear liberators in the same friendly manner.”

This brought a great cheer, and laughter, and we all beat our lances on the ground. While we had been making merry in the taverns of Warsaw, Felix Potocki was in the Kremlin, taking the Judas Kiss from the Great Whore Herself, the Empress. Now the Empress hated two things most of all in this world – Poles and Revolutions. A Polish Revolution was not therefore a thing calculated to win her approval. Rather, it roused her to a rage that would terrify a horde of Cossacks. Such anger in women far exceeds that which mere men are capable of. She sent an army without even bothering to declare war.

Felix rode back across the border at the head of a body of Russian troops. On 14 May 1792, a year after the Constitution was signed, we were thunderstruck by a betrayal that lives in infamy to this day –
Targowica
. At the village of that accursed name, in Podolia, Felix and other traitors, under Russian orders, vowed to destroy the Constitution at any cost.

“Lord Rzewuski,” Pepi told the army, holding up the letter, “not daring to show his face again in Warsaw, thoughtfully wrote me this letter, urging me, and all of you, to join the nest of Targowica traitors.”

There were shouts of ‘No!’ and ‘For shame!’ Pepi stilled them with a wave of his hand.

“Comrades, here is my reply –

“Mr. Rzewuski, I cannot follow your advice to betray the nation. As a sworn soldier, and a man of honour, my duty is to defend our beloved motherland to the death!”

There was another great shout of approval, and the letter was circulated through our camp, for our signatures. Tanski, Sierawski, and all the other fellows signed up. I paused as I put pen to paper. As sure as night follows day, the letter would pass directly to the desk of the Russian Ambassador.

During that same year since the Third of May, Tanski and I had been promoted to Warrant Officers. This puffed us up like peacocks. We were quite unjustified in our vanity and conceit, for the position of Warrant Officer holds less power and honour than emptying bed-pans.

Of course, Godebski had the best of it. With his rival, Lieutenant Tremo, away at the war, he was staying behind in Warsaw to guard the lovely widow Madame L from the depredations of any invaders. He was writing love letters by a warm fire, not huddled on that blasted windy hill, signing his own death warrant. I signed the letter anyway, and passed it on to the next man in line.

Targowica was the worst treason, of course, nothing less than civil war. With Potocki's treachery, Podolia had, in effect, gone over to Russia. The flood of Podolian volunteers slowed to a trickle. Few dared defy their overlord, to whom they owed clan allegiance. But still, there were a few of us here at Zielence, standing in the King’s ranks, fighting for the Republic.

“Hey, look, Blumer,” Tanski said scathingly, “why, another Podolian has deigned to turn up! That makes two of you! It’s that bastard Zayonczek!”

It was indeed General Zayonczek, the chief of the cavalry, and our chief. We watched him as he came thundering past on a magnificent white stallion. He doffed his czapka and brandished his sabre in the air.

“For the Constitution, boys! For Poland!” he roared at us, as he hurtled by at breakneck speed. He was a dashing officer, known for two things – his beautiful wife, and his extremist political views, some of which were so insane as to put the French revolutionaries in the shade. It was said that
he actually believed women should be allowed to vote
.

“Mad Jacobin bastard,” we spat after him. It was widely speculated that General Zayonczek's wife, a great beauty, and as rare a piece of womanflesh as ever walked the earth, had inclined him to such great lengths of folly. Tanski, Sierawski and I ruminated on this awhile as we sat our horses. Sierawski was idling with us, sharing a pipe, having excused himself from digging ditches, or whatever menial task it was his engineers were about.

“Perhaps there is something to be said about your Podolia after all, Blumer,” Tanski reflected. “Whilst Podolian men are all ignorant hairy brutes, such as your good self, the women are reputed to be finely-made, feisty amazons.”

“Soon enough we can find out for ourselves,” Sierawski said. “After we lose this war, as we surely will, we can hide out in Podolia, as old Jozef Wybicki did when he lost the last one. For the place is so barren and Godforsaken our enemies will not trouble themselves to seek after us there, even if they vowed to follow us to the ends of the earth.”

“Aye,” said Tanski, “the only drawback to his splendid plan that I can see is that the food and the weather in Podolia are even worse than they are in Siberia.”

“The arse speaks to the bishop,” I snarled, “but the bishop just speaks to himself!”

We were not confident. We had our swords, lances and muskets, and our horses, but the King possessed no foundries for cannon, so we had a scant few of those. We lacked powder and ammunition. Our nation's entire army numbered barely forty-five thousand untried recruits, fewer than half the number that the Russians could put in the field.

So Felix's Podolian army would certainly have been welcome standing alongside us at Zielence that June morning, as allies, and not as yet another enemy. As it was we faced the Russians, outnumbered three to one, as they stared up at us from the bottom of that hill. A hill that seemed to shrink smaller and smaller with every minute that passed, and every endless detachment of Russians that arrived at the foot of it.

As it came to pass, Felix’s army contented itself with some brigandry. They looted and burned several villages, hanged and murdered a few men, and raped any women they could lay their hands on. But they stayed in the south. They did not venture north to the Russian border to fight us. Wisely, they had left the actual fighting to the Russians, led by the infamous Suvarov.

Suvarov, in command of a Russian army of one hundred thousand battle-hardened and fanatical men, had marched north from the Ottoman Empire, where he had spent the last few years mercilessly butchering the Turks.

This was our adversary. Suvarov. We were enthralled and obsessed by this devil, this talisman, this sorcerer and harbinger of doom. Suvarov! Suvarov! Suvarov! Such magic in one man's name.

“If only we had such a man to lead us,” we said.

“Suvarov is called ‘the Invincible’,” Sierawski, the know-it-all, said unhelpfully. “The common folks believe he has dark powers and the evil eye. They say he's a sorcerer, who sold his soul to the Devil. He can turn himself into a werewolf, or a giant vampire bat, and he feeds on the bodies of the dead.”

“Damn it!” I snapped. “Don't you have a latrine to dig, boy?” Although Sierawski's story was stuff and nonsense, the worst village gossip, there was no denying that Suvarov was evil. Suvarov was, in truth, the diabolic emissary of the most swinish and degenerate tyranny to have been unleashed upon Europe since Attila the Hun.

But Sierawski was not finished. “They say this man Suvarov, the Invincible, has great vigour of character, and a nature bordering on insanity. He is a genuine barbarian, a fanatic, and his army, that you see at the foot of this puny hill, resembles him in its character, as dogs grow to resemble their masters,” he concluded mordantly.

A ripple of fear was spreading through the ranks from all of this talk. Yet another phalanx of grey-coated Russians arrived at the foot of the hill and began setting up cannons, mortars and bombards.

“Suvarov is not here, Comrades!” I called, loudly. “His arse is too sore, from being f-cked by the Devil!” I announced. It was a wild and blatant lie.

Then, miraculously, Suvarov's spell seemed to break. For it was true. Word spread. Suvarov was not here. Suvarov was really not here. My words, spoken in jest, were true. Suvarov had left this day at Zielence to lesser generals. Nevertheless, with Suvarov absent, presumably in his cups, that still left three or four thousand of us facing ten thousand of them – the best odds we were likely to get in this war.

Thus, for all this idle talk, our little army ended the morning where it began. We sat at the top of the hill, and waited for the Russians to attack. Our infantry were in the centre, with the cavalry on the wings, as was the convention of war at the time. Our new, and untried, brigade of cadets was on the left-hand side – traditionally, the place reserved for the weakest units. Down in the valley, regiment after regiment of Russians had been gathering since seven in the morning – infantry, cavalry, cannon, and Cossacks.

Tanski rode off for news, and came haring back, his face grim, his horse’s hooves throwing clods of earth into the air. His horse thundered in at such a speed that I feared he would ride me down, but at the last possible instant, he wheeled it around, turning on a tynf, and bringing the beast to an abrupt halt. I had to admit, it was done in a fine style. My own riding was good, but workmanlike. I rode well, but Tanski rode like a Sarmatian prince on the steppes of Arabia.

He brought bad news – more treachery!

“Our Lithuanian brothers have deserted us, the beet-eating bastards!” he spat from his saddle. “The Lithuanian army has gone over to the Russians, and Targowica! We've lost a third of our strength, at a stroke, before we've even fired a shot! Damn those cowardly, treacherous, sodomitical, beet-eating bastards to hell!” Tanski exclaimed. This drew angry looks, curses, threats – a number of the men in our Polish ranks were Lithuanians, including General
Kosciuszko
himself, and, unfortunately for Tanski, our Lieutenant.

“God Damn it, boy!” the Lieutenant screamed, “I'm from Vilnius myself!” Tanski hastily apologised.

Discretion being the better part of valour, he rode back to his platoon as quickly as he came.

Over the hill, we could hear the artillery fire. It was a strange sound. Each cannon shot was like a giant beating a stone floor with a hammer, followed by a long roll of thunder. The echo lasted a damnably long time, rolling like the waves of an invisible sea. The roar of the massed batteries together sounded like a raging ocean.

Our horses’ ears twitched at each rumble. Having been well broken in, they were used to the sound, and as for us, our nerve held. It is vital to treat a horse well at the sound of shot, whether musket or cannon. Coax it, comfort it, and cajole it. Never beat or threaten or chastise it. That will teach the horse fear, and fear breeds fear, until it becomes ingrained. Likewise, you must not allow your own fear to infect it, at which even the stoutest animal can take flight. If the master is a coward, how can the servant be expected to be brave?