In the following year the new hetman made a treaty at Gadyach with the Commonwealth, and in conjunction with a Polish army defeated Prince Trubetskoi in a battle at Konotop. The Polish Diet annulled now the terms of the treaty concluded with Moscow two years before. Various reasons were alleged for this action; the true reason was that in 1655 the succession to the Polish crown had been offered to Austria, and, though refused in public audience, had been accepted in private by the Emperor for his son Leopold. In the following year Austria advised the Poles unofficially to offer this crown (already disposed of) to the Tsar, and thus induce him to give the Commonwealth a respite, and turn his arms against Sweden.

The Poles followed this advice; the Tsar accepted their offer. When the service required had been rendered the treaty was broken. In the same year, however, Vygovski was deposed by the Cossacks, the treaty of Gadyach rejected, and Yuri Hmelnitski made hetman. The Cossacks were again in agreement with Moscow; but the Poles spared no effort to bring Yuri to their side, and they succeeded through the deposed hetman, Vygovski, who adhered to the Commonwealth so far.

Both sides were preparing their heaviest blows at this juncture, and 1660 brought victory to the Poles. In the beginning of that year Moscow had some success in Lithuania, but was forced back at last toward Smolensk. The best Polish armies, trained in the Swedish struggle, and leaders like Charnyetski, Sapyeha, and Kmita, turned the scale in White Russia. In the Ukraine the Poles, under Lyubomirski and Pototski, were strengthened by Tartars and met the forces of Moscow under Sheremetyeff, with the Cossacks under Yuri Hmelnitski. At the critical moment, and during action, Yuri deserted to the Poles, and secured the defeat of Sheremetyeff, who surrendered at Chudnovo and was sent a Tartar captive to the Crimea.

In all the shifting scenes of the conflict begun by the resolute Bogdan, there was nothing more striking than the conduct and person of Yuri Hmelnitski, who renounced all the work of his father. Great, it is said, was the wonder of the Poles when they saw him enter their camp. Bogdan Hmelnitski, a man of iron will and striking presence, had filled the whole Commonwealth with terror; his son gave way at the very first test put upon him, and in person was, as the Poles said, a dark, puny stripling, more like a timid novice in a monastery than a Cossack. In the words of the captive voevoda, Sheremetyeff, he was better fitted to be a gooseherd than a hetman.

The Polish generals thought now that the conflict was over, and that the garrisons of Moscow would evacuate the Ukraine; but they did not. At this juncture the Polish troops, unpaid for a long time, refused service, revolted, formed what they called a “sacred league,” and lived on the country. The Polish army vanished from the field, and after it the Tartars. Young Hmelnitski turned again to Moscow, and writing to the Tsar, declared that, forced by Cossack colonels, he had joined the Polish king, but wished to return to his former allegiance. Whatever his wishes may have been, he did not escape the Commonwealth; stronger men than he, and among them Vygovski, kept him well in hand. The Ukraine was split into two camps: that west of the river, or at least the Cossacks under Yuri Hmelnitski, obeyed the Commonwealth; the Eastern bank adhered to Moscow.

Two years later, Yuri, the helpless hetman, left his office and took refuge in a cloister. He was succeeded by Teterya, a partisan of Poland, which now made every promise to the leading Cossacks, not as in the old time when the single argument was sabres.

East of the Dnieper another hetman ruled; but there the Poles could take no part in struggles for the office. The rivalry was limited to partisans of Moscow. Besides the two groups of Cossacks on the Dnieper, there remained the Zaporojians. Teterya strove to win these to the Commonwealth, and Yan Kazimir, the king, assembled all the forces he could rally and crossed the Dnieper toward the end of 1663. At first he had success in some degree, but in the following year led back a shattered, hungry army.

Teterya had received a promise from the Zaporojians that they would follow the example of the Eastern Ukraine. The king having failed in his expedition, Teterya declared that peace must be concluded between the Commonwealth and Moscow to save the Ukraine; that the country was reduced to ruin by all parties, neither one of which could subjugate the other; and that to save themselves the Cossacks would be forced to seek protection of the Sultan.

Doroshenko succeeded Teterya in the hetman’s office, and began to carry out this Cossack project. In 1666 he sent a message to the Porte declaring that the Ukraine was at the will of the Sultan.

The Sultan commanded the Khan to march to the Ukraine. Toward the end of that year the Tartars brought aid to the Cossacks, and the joint army swept the field of Polish forces.

Meanwhile negotiations had been pending a long time between the Commonwealth and Moscow. An insurrection under Lyubomirski brought the Poles to terms touching boundaries in the north. In the south Moscow demanded, besides the line of the Dnieper, Kiev and a certain district around it on the west. This the Poles refused stubbornly till Doroshenko’s union with Turkey induced them to yield Kiev to Moscow for two years. On this basis a peace of twenty years was concluded in 1667, at Andrussoff near Smolensk. This peace became permanent afterward, and Kiev remained with Moscow.

In 1668 Yan Kazimir abdicated, hoping to secure the succession to a king in alliance with France, and avoid a conflict with Turkey through French intervention. No foreign candidate, however, found sufficient support, and Olshovski,2 the crafty and ambitious vice-chancellor, proposed at an opportune moment Prince Michael Vishnyevetski, son of the renowned Yeremi, and he was elected in 1669. The new king, of whom a short sketch is given in The Deluge (chapter LXI), was, like Yuri Hmelnitski, the imbecile son of a terrible father. Elected by the lesser nobility in a moment of spite against magnates, he found no support among the latter. Without merit or influence at home, he sought support in Austria, and married a sister of the Emperor Leopold. Powerless in dealing with the Cossacks, to whom his name was detestable, without friends, except among the petty nobles, whose support in that juncture was more damaging than useful, he made a Turkish war certain. It came three years later, when the Sultan marched to support Doroshenko, and began the siege of Kamenyets, described in Pan Michael.

After the fall of Kamenyets, the Turks pushed on to Lvoff, and dictated the peace of Buchach, which gave Podolia and the western bank of the Dnieper, except Kiev and its district, to the Sultan.

The battle of Hotin, described in the epilogue, made Sobieski king in 1674. This election was considered a triumph for France, an enemy of Austria at that time; and during the earlier years of his reign Sobieski was on the French side, and had sound reasons for this policy. In 1674 the Elector of Brandenburg attacked Swedish Pomerania; France supported Sweden, and roused Poland to oppose the Elector, who had fought against Yan Kazimir, his own suzerain. Sobieski, supported by subsidies from France, made levies of troops, went to Dantzig in 1677, concluded with Sweden a secret agreement to make common cause with her and attack the Elector. But in spite of subsidies, preparations, and treaties, the Polish king took no action. Sweden, without an ally, was defeated; Poland lost the last chance of recovering Prussia, and holding thereby an independent position in Europe.

The influence of Austria, the power of the church, and the intrigues of his own wife, bore away Sobieski. He deserted the alliance with France. To the end of his life he served Austria far better than Poland, though not wishing to do so, and died in 1696 complaining of this world, in which, as he said, “sin, malice, and treason are rampant.”

Jeremiah Curtin.

Cahirciveen, County Kerry, Ireland,
August 17, 1893.

Note.—The reign of Sobieski brought to an end that part of Polish history during which the Commonwealth was able to take the initiative in foreign politics. After Sobieski the Poles ceased to be a positive power in Europe.

I have not been able to verify the saying said to have been uttered by Sobieski at Vienna. In the text he is made to say that Pani Wojnina (War’s wife) may give birth to people, but Wojna (War) only destroys them. Who the Pani Wojnina was that Sobieski had in view I am unable to say at this moment, unless she was Peace.

Pan Michael

I

After the close of the Hungarian war, when the marriage of Pan Andrei Kmita and Panna Aleksandra Billevich was celebrated, a cavalier, equally meritorious and famous in the Commonwealth, Pan Michael Volodyovski, colonel of the Lauda squadron, was to enter the bonds of marriage with Panna Anna Borzobogati Krasienski.

But notable hindrances rose, which delayed and put back the affair. The lady was a foster-daughter of Princess Griselda Vishnyevetski, without whose permission Panna Anna would in no wise consent to the wedding. Pan Michael was forced therefore to leave his affianced in Vodokty, by reason of the troubled times, and go alone to Zamost for the consent and the blessing of the princess.

But a favoring star did not guide him: he did not find the princess in Zamost; she had gone to the imperial court in Vienna for the education of her son. The persistent knight followed her even to Vienna, though that took much time. When he had arranged the affair there successfully, he turned homeward in confident hope.

He found troubled times at home: the army was forming a confederacy; in the Ukraine uprisings continued; at the eastern boundary the conflagration had not ceased. New forces were assembled to defend the frontiers even in some fashion. Before Pan Michael had reached Warsaw, he received a commission issued by the voevoda of Rus. Thinking that the country should be preferred at all times to private affairs, he relinquished his plan of immediate marriage and moved to the Ukraine. He campaigned in those regions some years, living in battles, in unspeakable hardships and labor, having barely a chance on occasions to send letters to the expectant lady.

Next he was envoy to the Crimea; then came the unfortunate civil war with Pan Lyubomirski, in which Volodyovski fought on the side of the king against that traitor and infamous man; then he went to the Ukraine a second time under Sobieski.

From these achievements the glory of his name increased in such manner that he was considered on all sides as the first soldier of the Commonwealth, but the years were passing for him in anxiety, sighs, and yearning. At last 1668 came, when he was sent at command of the castellan to rest; at the beginning of the year he went for the cherished lady, and taking her from Vodokty, they set out for Krakow.

They were journeying to Krakow, because Princess Griselda, who had returned from the dominions of the emperor, invited Pan Michael to have the marriage at that place, and offered herself to be mother to the bride.

The Kmitas remained at home, not thinking to receive early news from Pan Michael, and altogether intent on a new guest that was coming to Vodokty. Providence had till that time withheld from them children; now a change was impending, happy and in accordance with their wishes.

That year was surpassingly fruitful. Grain had given such a bountiful yield that the barns could not hold it, and the whole land, in the length and the breadth of it, was covered with stacks. In neighborhoods ravaged by war the young pine groves had grown in one spring more than in two years at other times. There was abundance of game and of mushrooms in the forests, as if the unusual fruitfulness of the earth had been extended to all things that lived on it. Hence the friends of Pan Michael drew happy omens for his marriage also, but the fates ordained otherwise.

II

On a certain beautiful day of autumn Pan Andrei Kmita was sitting under the shady roof of a summerhouse and drinking his after-dinner mead; he gazed at his wife from time to time through the lattice, which was grown over with wild hops. Pani Kmita was walking on a neatly swept path in front of the summerhouse. The lady was unusually stately; bright-haired, with a face serene, almost angelic. She walked slowly and carefully, for there was in her a fullness of dignity and blessing.

Pan Andrei gazed at her with intense love. When she moved, his look turned after her with such attachment as a dog shows his master with his eyes. At moments he smiled, for he was greatly rejoiced at sight of her, and he twirled his mustache upward. At such moments there appeared on his face a certain expression of glad frolicsomeness. It was clear that the soldier was fun-loving by nature, and in years of single life had played many a prank.

Silence in the garden was broken only by the sound of overripe fruit dropping to the earth and the buzzing of insects. The weather had settled marvellously. It was the beginning of September. The sun burned no longer with excessive violence, but cast yet abundant golden rays. In these rays ruddy apples were shining among the gray leaves and hung in such numbers that they hid the branches. The limbs of plum-trees were bending under plums with bluish wax on them.

The first movement of air was shown by the spider-threads fastened to the trees; these swayed with a breeze so slight that it did not stir even the leaves.

Perhaps it was that calm in the world which had so filled Pan Kmita with joyfulness, for his face grew more radiant each moment. At last he took a draught of mead and said to his wife—

“Olenka, but come here! I will tell you something.”

“It may be something that I should not like to hear.”

“As God is dear to me, it is not. Give me your ear.”

Saying this, he seized her by the waist, pressed his mustaches to her bright hair, and whispered, “If a boy, let him be Michael.”

She turned away with face somewhat flushed, and whispered, “But you promised not to object to Heraclius.”