Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  As he slashed about with his long sword, keeping the Tatars at bay, Zygmunt of Bukowo saw his lord’s predicament, dashed through the battle lines, leaped down from his own horse, and shouted: ‘Sir Knight! You are the one to ride!’ Without even pausing to acknowledge the gift, for this was what a liege was expected to do in such circumstances, Krzysztof mounted the new horse and galloped off to join Von Eschl’s Teutonic Knights, who were slaughtering Tatars as they attempted to withdraw with booty gathered from Polish corpses.

  At dusk the humiliated Poles lifted the headless body of their duke, and a rumor started that the corpse was not the duke’s and that he still lived on another part of the battlefield, but Hedwig recognized a scarf she had given him and said: ‘This is my son,’ and she directed the men holding the body: ‘Pull off his left boot,’ and when this was done everyone saw that the foot had six toes.

  Thus died Henryk Pobozny, a man of superpiety who believed that dukes should not run away in moments of danger but should stand and fight for their castles, their people and their God.

  When Pajdar and Kajdu, the victorious Tatar generals, surveyed the battlefield their first impression was that they had gained a total triumph, and the latter cried exultantly: ‘Look at the Polish dead! And we have the duke’s head! We’ll jam it on the end of a staff and carry it down to Hungary. To show Batu Khan what we’ve accomplished.’

  But Vuldai, who had been more personally engaged in the fighting, said: ‘General, our losses before were never so great. That one with red hair, the other in the flowing white tunic, they fight like devils.’

  To this Pajdar responded: ‘The gateway to Europe beckons us. If Batu Khan and his army conquer Hungary, we can ride to where the other ocean flows.’

  Vuldai saw things differently: ‘In Wroclaw we had an easy victory but little booty … few horses. Today we killed many, but again, where are the horses we need? The food supplies? Each battle becomes more difficult and yields us less.’

  General Kajdu countered: ‘It is strange to hear such talk on the night of a great victory. Are you counseling me to retreat?’

  Vuldai said honestly: ‘At this moment, when we count our numbers, can we really call it a victory? If we ride forward another six weeks, we’ll meet armies always larger than before … and ours will be smaller … man by man.’

  Pajdar snapped: ‘Speak forthrightly, what do you advise?’

  Vuldai, counting the enormous losses in his head, said: ‘I say go back to Kiev. That’s our land. We know it. We can rule there forever, protected by the steppes.’

  Pajdar, remembering his promises to Batu Khan, asked: ‘And what about Hungary? Where they’ll be waiting for us. For the march together into Europe.’

  Vuldai said with commendable prescience: ‘On the night of their great victory in Hungary, they’ll be asking these same questions. Believe me.’

  In some irritation Pajdar asked: ‘What would you have me do?’ But before his subordinate could reply, the general confessed: ‘Little warrior, your words have meaning.’ Reaching across his horse’s neck, he grasped Vuldai’s shoulder: ‘Tell me straight, what?’

  The diminutive horseman, whose courage no man could question, told the brothers: ‘Half the army turns south over the mountains into Hungary to provide help if they need it, and they will. Half, back to Kiev with our slaves and our booty.’

  The two brothers indicated that they would stay together, and General Pajdar asked: ‘Which half of the army will you lead?’ and the little captain said: ‘My heart longs for Kiev … and the open steppes,’ but young Pajdar said: ‘Mine longs for wherever the next battle is to be.’

  So it was decided that night that half the Tatar force, under the two fiery generals, would turn south toward the Carpathians, where they would be needed, while the other half, under the command of Vuldai, would deliver the spoils of battle and the slaves to Kiev, where the capital of the Tatar nation would henceforth be.

  While the Tatars were adjusting to their victory, Krzysztof and his German friend were assessing their defeat, and Wolfram von Eschl was almost exultant: ‘We’ve stopped them. We’ve struck terror into their hearts.’

  ‘We’ve lost everything,’ Krzysztof lamented.

  ‘No!’ Von Eschl cried excitedly. ‘We may have lost this battle—’

  ‘We’ve lost every battle,’ Krzysztof corrected. ‘I myself have faced them six times and been defeated six times. Today, worst of all.’

  ‘No, no!’ Von Eschl said, almost pleadingly. ‘With every loss we’ve damaged them more fatally. I hope they continue westward toward the German towns. We’ll massacre them!’ He stopped, grasped his Polish ally by the wrist, and predicted: ‘There is no possibility that those men’—and he pointed toward the Tatar camp where General Pajdar and his aide Vuldai were doing their planning—‘will dare to continue. They’ve seen what determined Poles like you can do when your fury is roused.’ He chuckled at what he was about to say next. ‘And they’ve certainly seen what a company of German knights can do with our big horses and strong lances.’ He came close to flexing his muscles in anticipation of the next battle.

  A fugitive thought crept into Krzysztof’s battle-weary brain, and he considered some moments before expressing it, for he had not explored its implications, but now he said: ‘Wolfram, I wish that you and I could continue standing against them.’

  Without much thinking, Von Eschl said: ‘My company must return to our Christianizing in the north. We’re needed up there.’ But then the meaning of his friend’s comment sank in, and he said: ‘Germans and Poles should be natural allies. Your countryman Conrad of Mazovia realized this when he invited us into his domain to help him civilize it.’ He grew enthusiastic: ‘We Germans could bring you so much. Christianity … books for your monks when they learn to read … strong government … music …’

  ‘We have all those things,’ Krzysztof protested. ‘Our monks can read. We’re Christians now. We’ve been so for three centuries. And as for music …’

  ‘I mean real Christianity,’ Von Eschl said. ‘The direct line from the Pope to the head of our Order to men like me handing it over in consecrated form to men like you.’

  ‘My great-great-grandfather was already Christian.’

  ‘Not really. Poland was never converted in an orderly way. That’s what I mean when I say that we Germans could bring you so much.’

  Krzysztof was not an argumentative man, so he dropped the discussion of Christianity and spoke directly to the problem which concerned him on this night of battle: ‘I meant that with your skill at arms …’

  ‘That we have,’ Von Eschl said. ‘And it’s yours to call upon at any moment. One day soon we’ll have thousands and thousands of our knights along the Baltic, and they’ll always be ready to spring to your defense, as we did this time.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear that,’ Krzysztof said, and with great warmth he clasped Von Eschl’s hands, for he had found in this valiant German knight a man upon whom he could rely and he could foresee many future opportunities when they might be fighting side by side. As they said their last goodbyes Krzysztof was almost ready to concede that by dogged resistance the Christian armies had gained a curious kind of victory over the pagans.

  During Vuldai’s retreat across ravaged Poland, he issued orders to the conquered people: ‘From this day on, when Tatars ride in from the east, you are to throw wide your gates, open your barns, herd your cattle before us so we can choose the best, and stand aside while we search your cottages. If you hesitate even one moment, we will burn and pillage and take your women.’

  In the dreadful years that followed, Golden Krakow would be sacked many times in enforcement of Vuldai’s program, and the Poles were bewildered as to why this terrible scourge could not be resisted, but Poland was not alone in its inability to fend off the invincible thrusts coming out of Asia. Hungary also fell. Bohemia was ravaged; Transylvania and Rumania were powerless to halt the rampages; and even the future Russia lay like a
stricken caterpillar attacked by legions of ants. It would not be until such time as Europe developed its manufacturing, fighting and governing skills that it would generate the power to withstand the constant eruptions out of Asia.

  But it would be precisely in the development of these skills, especially government, that Poland would lag. In the year 1241 all the nations around her were as disorganized as she: the future Germany was a shambles of minor dukedoms; Russia was a vast swampland of petty competitors; France was broken into warring units; Italy would not coalesce for another six hundred years; and England had developed no central tendency around which to unite the various segments of her island.

  Thus Poland was by no means unique in her chaos, but she displayed one ominous difference: whereas other European countries were struggling toward some form of central government and were supporting kings determined to impose their will upon fractious barons, Poland seemed determined to tear down any putative leader who showed signs of being able to consolidate the shattered nation. This abhorrence of central power was recent; in the tenth century Poland had been unified and strong enough to send Christianizing missions to the Baltic lands, but in 1138 a king had intentionally partitioned the nation among his three sons, hoping to avert the fratricidal wars of succession so common at that time. Subsequent ducal partitions rendered the country exceptionally divided and weak.

  So in those centuries when other peoples were taking their first awkward steps in forging political entities like councils and parliaments upon which future greatness would depend, Poland was frustrating attempts by its sturdy middle class to govern itself, for the nation despised central authority and did everything possible to thwart it.

  But there was no nation on earth which prized freedom more. Stubborn men like Krzysztof and Zygmunt in their little castles along the Vistula clung to freedom the way deer in the Forest of Szczek utilized every maneuver to preserve theirs, the way the great dark bear of the same forest fought with claws to stay free. Personal freedom was the lifeblood of Poland, but the supreme irony was that its freedom-loving citizens were not able to develop those governmental forms which would preserve that freedom.

  This time the Poles had saved Europe from invasion by eastern barbarians, and in centuries to come they would repeat the sacrifice, but they could not save themselves.

  As Vuldai prepared to retreat across the Vistula at Sandomierz on his homeward route through Lublin, he learned from a captive that the big red-headed knight who had wreaked so much havoc at the Battle of Legnica was the same who had repulsed his troops in January at Castle Gorka, only a few miles to the south. Inflamed with desire for revenge, Vuldai turned his army abruptly and headed for the castle, and before long his horde had crossed the Vistula and begun their assault upon the fortress.

  With wild and savage grandeur the great destroyers from the east broke down the gates that had once defied them and roared through the rooms, raping and killing. They then piled the castle with limbs from the forest, scattered a pot of oil, and set it ablaze. Every item not stone in this centuries-old building was consumed: roof, ceilings, doorjambs, the bodies of Krzysztof’s womenfolk, the corpses of his grandchildren and even the hunting dogs whose throats had been slit vanished in the conflagration. Castle Gorka was no more.

  Vuldai then led his men into the Forest of Szczek, which they combed for a last crop of fugitives whom they could carry as slaves to Kiev, and among the beech trees they captured toothless Danuta and her attractive daughter Moniczka, both of whom they raped incessantly.

  But this Danuta was a considerable woman, and at the age of twenty-nine she did not fancy spending her days in some savage Tatar camp, so when the speeding army reached Zhitomir, grown careless with its easy victories over undefended villages, she waited till the men who kept her and Moniczka for their pleasure were drunk, and she slit their throats. Appropriating their horses, she and her daughter slipped past the reveling guards and set out across the vast and empty wastes that separated them from the Vistula.

  It was many hours before Vuldai learned of their escape, and in his rage he was disposed to send troops to recover them, but when he was reminded of who the fugitives were, and could visualize them, he held his right hand out, twisting it now this way, now that, and he said: ‘One young and very good, one old and no good. Let them go.’

  So the Tatars returned to their new capital. They had been gone from late December to mid-June, just about half a year, sixty thousand tumultuous horsemen coming out of the steppes to confront nations that had cities and organized patterns of life. In that time, in addition to what Batu Khan was doing in Hungary, the Tatars had destroyed more than four hundred Polish villages, had ravaged sixteen towns and cities, had gutted and burned nearly a hundred isolated castles, and had slain more than a hundred thousand Poles.

  They brought with them from the steppes no new ways of doing things, no inventions, no concepts which would revolutionize life within the lands they conquered. And they took back with them no tangible artifacts which they could use to make their own life better: no process for weaving cloth or putting ideas into written words or building a better wooden plow. They brought nothing and they took nothing.

  Yet in exactly this same year Crusaders from Europe were fighting in the Holy Land about Jerusalem, and from that experience they would bring back ideas and artifacts which would revolutionize Europe, and the Saracens among whom they lived and fought would borrow from them concepts innumerable. It was Poland’s grief that her visitors were Tatars and not Saracens, that her intercourse was not with cultivated Arabs but with explosive barbarians from the vast Asian deserts.

  Explosive? Yes, the Tatars did bring that one thing to Poland, that mysterious poison gas which had so terrified Fat Mieszko. But they did not reveal the formula for its manufacture, so that even this potentially important innovation proved abortive.

  If they did not take back things, they did return with something which would in the end prove more meaningful than mere things: the concept of a city, an orderly collection of human beings who could accomplish results that a horde of wandering individuals never could. Remembering Krakow, they established Karakorum, a city of majestic spaces and beautiful constructions. From later raids they would bring back glittering adornments to embellish it, and upon this example, the other cities of central Asia would be fashioned. Rampaging horsemen can conquer; only the city can civilize.

  And if they brought one concept home, they left one behind, and this was perhaps the major significance of their invasion. From then on, Poles knew that at almost any time, without reason or provocation, barbarians were free to come storming across their indefensible eastern frontier, and this perilous condition would continue for as long as Poland existed.

  * * *

  Along the Vistula, Vuldai’s invasion did have consequences of some importance for the three families of Bukowo. The confusion of dukes who now attempted to rule Poland recognized that in Krzysztof of Gorka they had a champion on whom they could depend, so to help him rebuild his ruined castle and to establish him therein as a bulwark of dependability, they ceded to him tracts of land for which they had little use but which he might make profitable. In this manner he received one town, nine villages and some seven thousand additional peasants whose output would belong principally to him. The deed of grant read:

  I, Duke Boleslaw the Chaste, newly restored to my rightful throne at Krakow, do bestow upon my loyal servant Krzysztof of Castle Gorka, in respect of his innumerable services to me during the recent invasions, lands which pertain to my dukedom. In order to ensure that no other person will be tempted to claim these lands for himself or in any way to convert them to his favor, I have prudently ordered nineteen stones placed firmly in the soil at the places I herein indicate, each stone bearing clearly my initials.

  The first stone, on the banks of the River Vistula near the three oaks. The second stone, placed personally by me at the far end of the village called Minice. The third stone, where the
stream Brochocin crosses the footpath leading to the bishop’s town of Raszow …

  All towns and villages and farms within the area marked by my stones belong henceforth to said Krzysztof, except that all persons pertaining to these towns, villages and farms, save only the wine-makers and the priests, are obliged to work for me during six weeks each year, as follows: after the Easter octave, two weeks; after the Whitsuntide octave, two weeks; and before St. Martin’s day, again two weeks.

  During the summer each adult man must provide five stacks of corn and must cut three cartloads of hay for my use. And whenever I travel in said areas, each village is to provide two carts and two guards. But from this time on, said Krzysztof shall act as judge for the entire area and only in very major cases will any hearings be held in my presence or that of any castellan from Krakow.

  Among his new villages was one rather similar to Bukowo in that it also had a small castle, but in this one the knight had been slain by the Tatars while the lady lived, and Krzysztof went to her and said: ‘Lady Benedykta, it is not the will of God that you should live alone in your castle and I in mine,’ and she agreed, and the line of Gorka was restored.

  At the wedding ceremony, which lasted eleven days, Krzysztof remembered with gratitude the good work performed at various battles by his henchman Zygmunt, and to him he gave Bukowo and its few peasants. At the time this did not seem a generous move, for Bukowo consisted of exactly two reconstructed cottages, but others would be built, and upon that fragile foundation the security of the family of Zygmunt of Bukowo would be established. For the moment he remained a petty knight with only one horse, but that would soon change.

  And what of the peasant Jan of the Forest and his son Jan who had behaved so bravely when the Tatars came, what did they receive as a reward for their service and their heroism? Nothing. They were peasants who had belonged to Krzysztof and now to Zygmunt, and it was their duty to serve, whether in peace or war. They did not even get assistance in the rebuilding of their cottage, for where they slept was their affair.