Przemyśl

“ The III. and II. Armies were mean- time to pursue their attacks.
During the following days, from May 30 to June 3, Przemysl was stormed (see PRZEMYSL) . Throughout this period hard fighting was also taking place immediately S.E. of the fortress and on the San between Przemysl and Rudnik. In the latter area it was the Rus- sians who took the initiative. Since the capture of the Sieniawa bridge-head by the III. Caucasian Corps, it became clear that strong forces were being concentrated against the XI. Army, and that the Russian IX. Corps in the LHanow-Rudnik area was being reenforced. ”

“ Besides holding up the German offensive in Poland, she had made herself mistress of all East Galicia, Przemysl having fallen to General Selivanoff on 22nd March after an investment of five months, thus releasing 100,000 men to reinforce the armies under Ivanoff, Dmitrieff, and Brussiloff—then battling for the passes which led through the Carpathians into the Plain of Hungary. Przemysl alone yielded 126,000 Austrian prisoners, including the commander, General von Kusmanek, and 1000 guns. ”

“ The bishop of Przemyśl was lord of 18 villages and 3 towns, and the archbishop of Lwów of 29 villages and 5 towns. [303] The wealthiest of the Polish prelates were the archbishop of Gniezno, primate of Poland, and the bishops of Płock and Cracow. The archbishop of Gniezno was grand lord of 200 villages; 30 in the county of Gniezno, 20 in the Palatinate of Łęczyce, and 130 in Mazovia in the Palatinates of Rawa and Mazovia, covering 20 square miles. [304] The bishop of Płock was the owner of the most extensive landed possessions in Mazovia. His estate consisted of 232 villages and 6 towns. ”

“ The scouts attributed the interest taken by the lads in the trooper under guard solely to the fellowship of airmen.
“All aboard,” hailed Salisky, at sight of the young pilots; “we must be pushing on.”
“Where away?” called Billy.
“‘Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,’” quoted the scout. “But,” he instantly added, good-naturedly, “we expect to visit some new birds in an old nest.”
The inference was plain enough that the aeroplanes would be headed for the Przemysl fortress, and the direction taken by order speedily proved it. ”

“ Henry, however, died soon (1290) ; after a short reign of the Duke of Great Poland, Przemyslaw II (who was crowned King of Poland by consent of Pope Bonifacius VIII, but murdered by the Brandenburgers in the very same year, 1296) , and the five years' government of the Bohemian King, Wenceslaus, the indefatigable pretender Ladislaus Lokietek, having gathered the chivalry of Little Poland round the national standard, succeeded in getting hold of the Polish territory. ”

“ Perhaps he had enough selfishness in his nature to be glad that the evil sights were hidden from his eyes. His old craving for journeying amid narrow streets came upon him here in Warsaw and held him fascinated. Knowing nothing of the city or its environment, he visited the castle, the barracks, the Saxon gardens, watched the winding river Vistula and the Praga suburb beyond, and did not fail to spy out the old town, lying beneath the guns of the fortress, a maze of red roofs and tortuous streets and alleys wherein the outcasts were [217] hiding. ”

“ Legend again asserts that Přemysl made a first-class husband and ruler (he probably did exactly as his wife told him) and his descendants reigned with varying fortunes, until the first years of the fourteenth century—a very good innings for the lineage of Přemysl, the sturdy farmer, and that far-seeing lady Libuša, his wife. During those centuries the Czechs had consolidated into an important kingdom; from a misty chaos of heathen Slavonic tribes had grown a people brave and generous, with a culture all its own, and above all with a surpassing gift of expressing itself in music. ”

“ As long as Peremyshl held out, the local Jews constantly circulated rumours of an Austrian return, and the Russian tenure of Galicia remained precarious. The practical difficulties offered to the Russians by Peremyshl were very great; for the one double railway line westward runs through the town, so that all military and Red Cross communications have been indefinitely lengthened.
My friend "Wiggins" did his part toward the taking of Peremyshl. The air-postmen, on their long journey to the fortress, are often shot at and sometimes brought down. ”

“ There is a young Englishman living in Union Street, the son of a poor clergyman who died in the service of the poor. This lad you will take into your own house and treat as your own son. It is my desire and must be gratified. Remember that he is the son of a gentleman and treat him as such. There will be time enough afterwards to tell you how you must act in the interests of our people at Warsaw. This affair is our own and not of politics at all. As God is in heaven, but for my daughter you, Maxim Gogol, would not be alive this night. ”

“ It was the hour of the mid-day dinner—for Polish hours are the hours of the early Victorian meals. Horses and men were alike at rest. The horses nibbled at the thin grass, while the men sat by the water and ate their gray bread, which only tastes of dampness and carraway-seeds. It was late autumn, and the sun shone feebly through a yellow haze. The scene was not exhilarating. The Vistula, to put it plainly, is a dismal river. Poland is a dismal country. A witty Frenchman, who knew it well, once said that it is a country to die for, but not to live in. ”

“ There seems to have been nothing of beauty or interest in individual Přemysls to break the monotony of endless quarrels between brother claimants to the throne and appeals of unsuccessful rivals to their German neighbour, whose decision would be entirely guided by the desire for a further weakening of Bohemia. ”

“ Presburg (52) , the ancient capital of Hungary, close to the Austrian frontier, on the Danube, by rail 40 m. E. of Vienna; is a pleasant town, with a cathedral, a town-house, and a Franciscan church, all of the 13th century, the old Parliament House, and a ruined royal castle; manufactures beer, dynamite, and starch, and trades largely in live stock and corn. ”

“ It is a Russian custom, imported among others into the free kingdom of Poland, when the great empire of the north cast the shadow of its protecting wing over the land that is watered by the Vistula. So, no man may come or go in Warsaw without having his movements carefully noted by one who is directly responsible to the authorities for the good name of the house under his care. ”

“ He only carried the pressure far enough to clear the road, and, as soon as the second company of the Guides appeared in the gap to form his rear-guard a general movement began across the valley towards the Sorágh Gul; the Sikhs, Dogras and half a company of the Guides covering the transport on the south side, the second company of the Guides, breathless but athirst for battle, holding the road behind it, and the Bakót men still running like hounds over the great shale slopes on the north hacking down the flying Saris with their knives or shooting them like rabbits at a dozen yards. ”

“ Charles Prevost answered his doubts and questions with real and kindly anxiety to enlighten him, now explaining curious things, now making instructive remarks which opened new and wide horizons before the boy's virgin mind. But in spite of the Fleming's kindness, which sometimes seemed natural and at other times only courtly manners which had become a second nature, the child's innate sharpness showed him that Prevost always hid him from the gaze of the people ”

“ Among the mass of persons that thus swarmed in the main street of Presburg, like ants upon the chief passage to the anthill, in seeming confusion in which each individual atom has, nevertheless, its own purpose and design, was a young man, whose striking personal appearance continually attracted attention among those who crossed his path, and caused many a head to turn and gaze after him, even in that favoured land where beauty of the most romantic kind is common among all classes. ”

“ Oh, my dear, my dear, you know we love each other."
"Yes, we love each other. But, Paul, Paul," and her voice fell to a frightened whisper, "there is Kremburg!"
"Kremburg?"
"Yes." She freed herself from his arms and stood apart. "There is Kremburg. Can I buy happiness and let the liberty of Kremburg be the cost? For that is how it stands. If I go with you—and, my dear one, I would come so gladly, oh, so gladly! But if I do, then Kremburg falls to Austria and her independence ends." ”

“ The boundless plains of Hungary, wearying the eye with their unmarked horizon, told her the more that she was utterly alone. The great city of Pesth, with its clatter of horses and its hum of men, dinned always in her ears a word of new foreboding. ‘For ever, for ever,’ she heard this alone of all the whirl of the city’s life. The very magnificence of building and of street terrified her. She cried in her heart for the woods of Zlarin and the desolation of her childish life. ”

“ As Poland, and the neighbors to the south, were already Christian, and even the Bohemian Czechs were mostly Converted, pious wishes as to Preussen, we may fancy, were a constant feeling: but no effort hitherto, if efforts were made, had come to anything. Let some daring missionary go to preach in that country, his reception is of the worst, or perhaps he is met on the frontier with menaces, and forbidden to preach at all; except sorrow and lost labor, nothing has yet proved attainable. ”

“ He who goes to Presburg without venturing further, need not flatter himself that he has made any, even the slightest acquaintance with the manners and usages of the Hungarians. The town is not a Hungarian, but a German town; the people are Germans, the language is German, and the style of living is German. ”

“ The little ruined shop, in itself a contradiction of the cry, rang out and clattered with the noise until it seemed to Fevrier that it must surely pierce across the country into Metz and pluck the Mareschal in his headquarters from his diffidence. But they were only fifty deserters in a deserted village, lost in the darkness, and more likely to be overheard by the Prussian sentries than by any of their own blood. ”

“ The village? Pastor Harms's village—do you mean, Hermannsburg? Yes. It is like many others. Two long lines of cottages, the little river Oerze cutting it in two, beautiful old trees shading it,—that is the village. The cottages are not near each other; gardens and fields lie between; and at the gable of every house is a wooden horse or horse's head; from the old Saxon times, you know. No dirt and no squalor and no beggars nor misery to be seen in Hermannsburg. ”

“ Bretislav, the wily prelate, had succeeded in winning the favor of the emperor, and so was declared the ruler of Bohemia. Bishop Bretislav, with a large army of German troops, now came to Bohemia to secure the throne, meeting the rightful ruler at Zdik. The Bohemian lords, who shortly before had sworn that they would lay down their lives for their prince, now treacherously forsook him, going over to the side of the usurper, and Premysl was obliged to flee, leaving the ambitious prelate master of the field. Bretislav also conquered Moravia, taking Vladislav, the brother of Premysl, prisoner. ”

“ You will be at the Niederwald while I am dressing.”
She shook hands with old General Uhrich, who was going back to the citadel, before she answered him.
“Oh, yes, we are going to Görsdorf, of course, but not to the castle. You remember our picnic there, when we had dinner in a vault? Some day Edmond will rebuild the house. We shall stay at the châlet for some time, and afterwards we go on to Metz. I think that I should like that. There is always something eerie about a place which you can’t get into and can’t get out of.” ”

“ Polish extremists, however, not content with these indubitably Polish districts, are already laying claim to the lower reaches of the Vistula and to Danzig as the port of the historical Poland; and there is a further tendency in certain Russian circles to regard the whole province of East Prussia as part of the natural spoils of war. ”

“ A new generation had grown up in Poland, men not nobles nor serfs, but a race of patriots familiar with the stirring literature of their century. They had seen their land broken into fragments and then ground fine by a proud and infatuated nobility. They had seen their pusillanimous kings one after another yielding to the insolent demands for their territory. Polish territory extended eastward into the Ukraine; now that must be cut off and dropped into the lap of Russia. ”

“ The town gave to the Revolution an unusually large proportion of troops and many of the great leaders.
During the Revolution, although Fredericksburg men were the leaders of the Army, no fighting occurred here and the period was not one of danger for the town, but was one of anxiety for the inhabitants. ”

“ The happy couple lived in the enjoyment of unchangeable love; according to the fashion of those times, when the instinct which united hearts was as firm and durable, as the mortar and cement with which they built their indestructible strongholds. Duke Primislaus soon became one of the most accomplished and valiant knights of his time, and the Bohemian Court the most splendid in Germany. By degrees, many knights and nobles, and multitudes of people from all quarters of the empire, drew to it; so that Vizegrad became too narrow for its inhabitants ”

“ The constant struggle between the Přemyslides had very often obliged them to seek aid from the powerful nobles, who from having been government officials had gradually become territorial magnates, as they demanded and received large grants of land from the princes whose cause they favoured. ”