Mazovia

“ But, as often as he looks at her, he sheds tears thinking of his dead one; and then he turns against the Germans, to seek vengeance for the terrible wrong which they wrought on him. No man loved his own wife more than he up to that time in all Mazovia, and he has slain a host of Germans already in revenge for her. ”

“ The death of Danveld will be heralded throughout all Mazovia. In the face of that they will cease complaints. Evidently they will search for Yurand's daughter, but since Yurand himself wrote that she was not in our hands suspicion will not fall on us. We must be brave and shut their jaws, for they will think, if we do so, that were we guilty no man of us would dare go to them. ”

“ Here it is a question of Danusia, and of speed. Here we must act in a breath and quietly, so as not to call peril on our heads by inquiring; after that, as you have said, we are to rush with what breath is in our horses to Mazovia. ”

“ The beasts of the wilderness, driven from both sides by the extended wings of the circle, filled the forest plain more and more densely. No sight like that could be seen in foreign parts, or even in other Polish lands, where there were no such wild forests as in Mazovia. The Knights of the Cross, though they had been in Lithuania, where at times bisons by striking an army produced confusion in it, wondered not a little at the immense number of beasts, but especially did De Lorche wonder. ”

“ The princess barely remembered his face, but she recalled the letter easily and the whole affair connected with it. She knew besides what had happened at the neighboring Mazovian court: she had heard of Yurand, and the kidnapping of his daughter, the marriage of Zbyshko and his deadly duel with Rotgier. Her curiosity was roused greatly by all these details, just as it would have been by a narrative of knighthood, or by one of those ballads which were sung by minstrels among the Germans, or by choristers in Mazovia. ”

“ Anna Danuta alone, having experienced the Order's cruel injustice in her family, hated the Knights from her whole soul. So when the abbot inquired about Mazovia and its affairs she fell to accusing the Knights of the Cross bitterly.
"What is to be done in a principality which has such neighbors? There is peace, as it were; embassies and messages pass, but still we cannot be sure of the day or the hour. The man at the border who lies down to sleep in the evening never knows but he may wake up in bonds, or with a sword-edge at his throat, or a burning roof above his head. ”

“ The fields lay untilled, fierce hunger increased in the land; but it twisted most the entrails of the Swedes, for they were confined in towns behind closed gates, and could not go to the open country. At last breath was failing in their bosoms.
In Mazovia the condition was the same. There the Barkshoe people dwelling in forest gloom came out of their wildernesses, blocked the roads, seized provisions and couriers. In Podlyasye a numerous small nobility marched in thousands either to Sapyeha or to Lithuania. Lyubelsk was in the hands of the confederates. ”

“ The Mazovians were pleased at this, and again more than one of them said: "Such men will not limp on the field of combat, and if truth and God are on their side the brothers of the Order will not bear away sound bones from this struggle." ”

“ But the hail of bullets did not stop the attack for a moment; and the nobles, with the cry of “Mazovians victorious!” rushed with sabres into the centre of the quadrangle; after them came the land infantry, servants armed with poles, pickaxes, and scythes. The quadrangle was broken in a twinkle, and hewing began. Swedes and Poles were so mingled together that they formed one gigantic mass, which squirmed, twisted, and rolled in its own blood between the Kazanovski Palace, the house of Radzeyovski, and the Cracow gate. ”

“ This passed so quickly that Matsko, Zbyshko, Hlava, and those Mazovians who had come as volunteers, were amazed at the skill of that people, and they understood then for the first time why neither pinewoods nor swamps nor rivers could stop Lithuanian onsets. When they had come out of the water no man put off his clothing, no man threw off a sheepskin or wolf-hide; each warrior dried himself standing with his back to the sun till steam rose from him as from a tarpit ”

“ But the Bohemian, Hlawa, now approached with two of Zbyszko's retainers in order to take it off from the deceased, therefore the curious surrounded Zbyszko, praising and extolling him to the skies, because they justly thought that his fame would redound to the credit of the whole Mazovian and Polish knighthood. Meanwhile the shield and axe were taken from him, to lighten his burden, and Mrokota of Mocarzew unbuckled his helmet and covered his hair, wet with perspiration, with a cap of scarlet cloth. ”

“ In the reign of Sigismund was effected the incorporation of the duchy of Masovia with the Polish crown, after an independent existence of five hundred years. In 1526 the male line of the ancient dynasty became extinct, and on the 26th of August Sigismund received the homage of the Masovians at Warsaw, the capital of the duchy and ere long of the whole kingdom. Almost every acre of densely populated Masovia was in the hands of her sturdy, ultra-conservative squires, in point of culture far below their brethren in Great and Little Poland. ”

“ The understandings of his peasants are opened to all useful knowledge. He does not put books of science and speculation into their hands, to consume their time in vain pursuits: he gives them the Bible, and implements of industry, to afford them the means of knowing and of practising their duty. All Masovia around his palace blooms like a garden. ”

“ Warsaw is built upon two sides of the river, the ancient town looking from a height across the broad stream to the suburb of Praga. In Praga—a hundred years ago—the Russians, under Suvaroff, slew thirteen thousand Poles; in the river between Praga and the citadel two thousand were drowned. Less than forty years ago a crowd of Poles assembled in the square in front of the castle to protest against the tyranny of their conquerors. They were unarmed, and when the Russian soldiery fired upon them they stood and cheered, and refused to disperse. ”

“ I have already told you that on the Vistula, half-way between the German fortress of Thorn and the Galician frontier, stands the great city of Warsaw. [153] It is not only a great place of manufactures, but a powerful fortress and the capital of Russian Poland, which contains twelve million people—Poles, Germans, Russians, and half a score other races. Amongst these mixed peoples Germany had many friends who would spy for her, and otherwise help her to win the city. ”

“ It was Mazeppa, the unfortunate chieftain whose frightful ride through the tangled thickets of an uncultivated country, bound naked to a wild horse, was described with so much graphic power by the poet, and has been so often represented in paintings and engravings.
Mazeppa was a Polish gentleman. He was brought up as a page in the family of the King of Poland. When he became a man he mortally offended a certain Polish nobleman by some improprieties in which he became involved with the nobleman's wife. ”

“ The Jews of Poland had indeed once been paramount in Europe, but the Cossack massacres and the disruption of the kingdom had laid them low, and they spawned beggars who wandered through Europe, preaching and wheedling with equal hyper-subtlety. My father at any rate escaped mendicancy, for he managed to obtain a tiny farm in the north-east of Lithuania, though what with the exactions of the Prince of the estate, and the brutalities of the Russian regiments quartered in the neighborhood, his life was bitter as the waters of Marah. ”

“ In Galicia, Cracow, escaping the general shipwreck, is constituted ‘for all time coming’ (à perpétuité) a free, neutral and independent town. The transformation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw into the kingdom of Poland, under the Russian crown, leaves the name of the country still diplomatically existing, and it leaves it also as the nucleus of reconstruction, the centre of attraction. The Prussian division gets the name of Grand Duchy of Posen, that it may preserve a distinct character in the whole monarchy of Frederick II. ”

“ Warsaw has earned the flowers that grace it today. Though battered by the chaos of the second World War and stifled by the strictures of the Cold War, the people of Poland have continued to rebuild their beloved capital. Brick by brick, building by building, the beauty and majesty that defined Warsaw for centuries are being reborn to a generation of Poles who have just recently discovered the blessings of freedom. ”

“ If the destiny of Poland, as a nation, be eventful and yet obscure, the destiny of individuals has often proved under the Muscovite rule to be more tragic and even more obscure. The Polish party in emigration, who now welcome Count Zamoyski, have great cause to congratulate themselves that their ‘civic hero’—the best and worthiest of their patriots—has not been sent to expiate a life devoted to his country’s good in the [Pg viii] fortress of Akatouïa, or in some of the desolate wastes of the Russian Empire in the East. ”

“ My mind was full of Vera, for I had a horrible dread that she would be forced against her will to submit to marriage with the Tsar. I hastened therefore to Mazeppa’s lodging, for well I knew that if there was anything to know, whether of Vera or of anything else, Mazeppa would be the one to know the first news and the last.
‘A ghost!’ he said, as I entered and greeted him; ‘one risen from the tomb indeed, and limping, by the saints—what, wounded? Whom now hast thou found to brawl with?’
‘It is true that I have fought: one day I will tell thee all there is to tell. ”

“ The day after my arrival I hired a man and a carriage, the latter being an absolute necessity at Warsaw, where in my time, at all events, it was impossible to go on foot. I reached the capital of Poland at the end of October, 1765.
My first call was on Prince Adam Czartoryski, Lieutenant of Podolia, for whom I had an introduction. I found him before a table covered with papers, surrounded by forty or fifty persons, in an immense library which he had made into his bedroom. He was married to a very pretty woman, but had not yet had a child by her because she was too thin for his taste. ”

“ Throughout my travels I have found that romance and picturesqueness are seldom separated from dirt, and, fortunately, the former may often outbalance the latter. The world of romance became gently insistent as the railroad left the teeming coalfields of Prussian Poland behind and passed on to places famous in the history of the Kingdom of Poland—Cracow, still a centre of the refined and gracious intellectuality which characterizes Polish nobility. ”

“ These by their sublime strife shall at last, O Lord, give to man a feeling higher and more divine, a holier charity, and a larger brotherhood, in exchange for that sharp sword which men have plunged into their breast. Such is this Polish land of thine, O Jesu Christ! Our love of man has caused our death, and men have seen the corpse of Poland carried to the [Pg 254] tomb; but when the third day comes, the light shall shine, and shine through all the ages yet to be. Think you, that he who loves, in dying, disappears for evermore? ”

“ It is a matter of history that the division of Poland into three saved many families from complete ruin. For some suffered confiscation in the kingdom of Poland and saved their property in Galicia; others, again in Posen had estates in Masovia, which even Russian justice could not lay hands upon—that gay justice of 1832, which declared that, in protesting against the want of faith of their conquerors, the Poles had broken faith. ”

“ They broke into wild indignation when Mazeppa unfolded to them his plan, most of them refusing to join in the revolt, and threatening to seize him and deliver him, bound hand and foot, to the czar. Some two thousand in all adhered to Mazeppa, and for a time it seemed as if a bloody battle would take place between the two [Pg 153] sections of the tribe, but in the end the chief and his followers made their way to the Swedish camp, while the others marched back and put themselves under the command of the nearest Russian general. ”

“ Warsaw, again—for no one in this generation can dissociate it from Russia and call it Polish only—with its glorious position on the Vistula in the midst of its great plain, though not so ancient and inspiring as Cracow, in Galicia, is full of moving appeal to the national and historic sense for those who visit it for the first time, and especially, as in my own case, when entering the empire by that route. I have seen Warsaw in spring, summer, and winter, and always felt its [Pg 30] charm ”

“ Zamora belongs to the days when towns, like men, always wore armour. To-day{87} she is broken and war-worn and old; but if her sword is rusted and her shield broken, she may well boast it was in the service of Spain.
As we jolt over the old bridge, above the weirs of the Duero, and climb the steep street that leads into the town, we need no consultation of the records to tell us that we are here in the old Castile of the knightly days, that we shall find few memories of artists and poets, few of statesmen and great rulers, but many of hard fighters and holy priests. ”