Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  The simple fact was that Brat Piotr was fun. His unbounded imagination inspired others, not the leaders of the monastery, to be sure, and certainly not his brother-in-law Lukasz, but all the younger monks and the lads like Janko.

  ‘I’m always glad,’ old Jan told his wife, ‘when Piotr leaves. He is not good for the boy,’ but Alusia replied: ‘All work isn’t good for him, either.’

  They were engaged in this mild argument one April morning when their lord, Lukasz from the mansion, appeared, bubbling with good news: ‘Jan! We’re going to Vienna!’

  Jan, two years younger than Lukasz by the calendar, fifty years older when the burdens of time were considered, said: ‘Vienna’s too far.’

  ‘No! The king himself has ordered Count Lubonski to represent him on an important mission. And the count ordered me to help him, and now I’m ordering you to help me. We leave on Thursday.’

  ‘Are you sure you want me? I won’t be of much help.’

  ‘Jan, we’ve been in all the battles together. I trust you.’ And the two old men reflected on the endless warfare they had known, and Lukasz, with obvious enthusiasm, told Alusia: ‘One night at Czestochowa we crept out, Jan and me, and we blew up the Swedish guns. You never heard such a bang when they exploded. And in Transylvania one morning just Jan and me, we captured an entire village, and do you remember how terrified we were when we realized that no Polish troops were behind us?’

  Their lives had been one unbroken battle conducted over the face of eastern Europe, with interludes now and then for the rebuilding of their homes, which some new enemy would destroy, and they had good reason to believe that this would be the nature of life in Poland for as far into the future as they could imagine. Now the battleground was Vienna, a new one, but the enemy was Turkey, an old one.

  ‘On Thursday we ride west to Krakow, where we’ll meet the king, then over the mountains to Vienna.’

  All his life Jan had been obedient to the orders of those who owned him and he was obedient now: ‘Thursday morning, I’ll be ready.’ But after Lukasz left, it became apparent to Alusia that her tired old husband was not prepared for this lengthy and dangerous trip, and when he failed to rise early the next day she knew that something was seriously wrong. She sent for the women who advised on such matters, but by the time they reached the cottage Jan was out of bed and packing the small amount of gear he would be taking with him: his good knife for hand-to-hand battle if that became necessary, a stout cudgel he had raised in the forest—an ash tree into which he had imbedded jagged chunks of iron while the tree was still growing, so that the spikes became an integral part of the club—and a pair of rude leather shoes for use in the mountains.

  It was a pitiful collection to represent a lifetime of labor, but that is what he had, and in the past it had served him well.

  However, at noon on Wednesday the old man had no appetite for his turnips and kasha, and by sunset it was quite clear that he was not going to rise next morning from his bed, so Alusia sent Janko running to the mansion to inform Lukasz that Jan of the Beech Trees was far too sick to leave for Vienna, or for anywhere else. This news displeased the master, who came himself to the cottage to ascertain what the true situation was, and just as he entered the low door, his face ascowl, the old man gasped, tried to rise on his left elbow, and fell back dead.

  At that moment there was a commotion in the village square, and those about the deathbed heard young Janko shouting: ‘Here comes Brat Piotr!’ and indeed it was the lanky friar, and when disgruntled Lukasz left the cottage, saddened only because he had lost a man who had served him so well, he saw Jan’s brother-in-law ambling along with children at his heels, and on the spur of the moment he cried: ‘Piotr! We leave for Vienna in the morning!’ and the friar’s face became brighter and wider than the setting sun’s: ‘Ah! What a glorious adventure! Vienna?’ But immediately he became practical: ‘Do I get a horse?’ Satisfied on this point, he then asked: ‘Do I get arms?’ And when he learned that he would be given a lance, he grasped Janko’s hands and jumped up and down like a wooden doll on a string: ‘I’m going to war! I’m to be a knight!’

  From the village of Bukowo to the imperial city of Vienna was a distance of two hundred and eighty miles, and in the last days of April and the first of May in the year 1683 the land was as filled with beauty as it had ever been. The route of the travelers—the elderly count, the petty nobleman and the rather ridiculous friar, accompanied by a small detachment of soldiers who tended the extra horses—took them west to the ancient town of Cieszyn, which everyone called Chzn, as if it contained no vowels. This fine town, which guarded the area’s only low pass through the mountains, had a tumbling river coming down the middle. The emissaries bought what provisions they would be needing on the ride to Vienna, packing their bags with the good sausages made there and the hard black bread filled with caraway.

  On a bright spring morning they moved into Moravia, that gentle flower garden of eastern Europe, and slowly made their way along a roadway which had been used for a thousand years and by a hundred thousand adventurers. Lipnik, Olomouc, Brno and Nikolsburg appeared where expected and with the friendly reception accorded any potential ally who promised assistance against the Turks, whose armies moved closer week by week.

  Among the people it was a tense, uneasy season, but with the land it was a time of glory, as if it wanted to remind its owners of what a paradise they had. Lukasz and Piotr were enchanted by the grape arbors; north of the Carpathians, grapes could not be grown, and their mouths watered to think of what those vines would be producing in September if the Turks allowed these grapes to mature. They were equally preoccupied with Moravia’s specialty, the vast fields covered with poles along which sturdy strings had been stretched and up which grew the hops with which much of Europe flavored its beer.

  And since all Poles loved flowers as much as they did music, the travelers were awed by the richness of the blooms that covered the Moravian hillsides. This was a land of plenty, and Lukasz asked the count: ‘How does it happen that Moravia is not joined to Poland, or the other way around?’ and Lubonski answered correctly: ‘The Czechs and Moravians are such stubborn Protestants that no good can come from them.’

  ‘Are the people of Vienna Protestant too?’

  ‘No, thank God. They acknowledge the true church, which is why Jan Sobieski must come here to save them.’ And Lukasz said with some enthusiasm: ‘This Moravia is well worth saving.’

  From Nikolsburg the travelers dropped due south toward Vienna, but as they rode they were met by Austrian soldiers who demanded to know their reason for being on the road at a time when Turkish forces might appear at any moment, and when Count Lubonski explained that they came with assurances from King Jan Sobieski, the troops were delighted and began cheering, for they knew that by themselves alone they could never repel the Turks.

  Lubonski and his unusual team were to be taken directly into the city, but since they could not reach it before gates were closed for the night, they camped at dusk some miles north, and in the morning they were awed by an experience which not even Warsaw or Krakow, grand as they were, could provide. Over flat land they approached the Danube River, and as they crossed it on a ferry they could see for themselves how broad and swift it was, how magnificent a river. When they landed on the south bank they assumed they were in Vienna.

  Instead, they were in a large cluster of outlying villages, and from the way the defenses of the city were being hastily constructed, it was obvious that all this valuable territory was going to be surrendered when the Turks mounted their siege. ‘Are you giving this up?’ Lubonski asked in amazement.

  ‘We have no other choice,’ one of the soldiers said. ‘There,’ he said as he pointed directly ahead, over arid land that contained not a single structure, to where the walls of the great city rose. ‘There, inside those walls is where we make our stand.’

  Not one of the Poles could have visualized what a remarkable thing had been done at Vienna, since t
hey had supposed it was going to be like any of the cities they had seen in their wars. But not at all. For a distance of about half a mile from the stout walls of the inner city, every building had been eliminated. There was not a shed, not a barn, not even the meanest house in which an invader could take refuge as he crept closer to the walls. Vienna was surrounded by a broad strip of emptiness in which a blade of grass became conspicuous and a mark of landscape. What was equally important, where this flat empty land joined the walls, a glacis had been constructed, a sloping, stone-covered, perfectly smooth rise, up which any attacker would have to scramble, finding no toehold or handhold as he crawled into the muzzles of the waiting guns. To subdue Vienna was not going to be easy.

  The walls of the city, which completely encircled it, contained a dozen or so major towers, beautifully interlocked so that the firing from one covered the approaches of the other, and some two dozen smaller towers that supported the majors. In addition, an enormous canal had been dug—a river in itself, really—bringing an arm of the Danube right up to the city walls on the north and east, forming a moat of enormous width and depth.

  But when Lubonski and his men entered the city itself they were struck by how small it was, and Lukasz, who noted such things, said: ‘Two-thirds of Vienna lies outside the walls, and that’s to be surrendered. It’s this small central nut that counts, but it will face hell when the Turks surround it.’

  Before noon on their first day inside the walls, they met Hieronim Lubomirski, relative of the great Jerzy Lubomirski of Wisnicz, under whom Lubonski and Lukasz had invaded Transylvania in 1657. Like his predecessor, he was a daring man, commander of three thousand Poles who had come to the defense of Vienna more than a year ago. From the moment the visitors started talking with him they were assured that he intended staying at his post regardless of what happened to the city.

  But he was not hopeful. As he conducted his fellow Poles through the city, he pointed out its manifest weaknesses. Once when a carriage passed bearing some important personage to the palace, he said: ‘Before the summer is out, we’ll be eating those horses.’

  ‘Is food so short?’ Lubonski asked.

  ‘Space for storing it properly is.’

  ‘You’ll have plenty of water, with that arm of the Danube.’

  ‘It stops outside the walls. First thing Kara Mustafa will do is deny us that water.’

  ‘Is he an able general?’

  ‘He’s a Köprülü. Those Albanian bastards who’ve given the Turks such able leadership.’

  ‘I believe he’s not a Köprülü himself,’ Lubonski corrected. ‘He’s married to the sister of the great Köprülü who died a few years back.’

  ‘One and the same. They’re a tremendous family, with victories from Venice to Kiev. And Kara Mustafa intends to improve the family record.’

  ‘Can he capture the city?’ Lubonski asked, and General Lubomirski stopped his inspection, turned to face the two Polish noblemen, and said with grave emphasis: ‘If we are restricted to our present forces, Kara Mustafa will subdue Vienna by the middle of July. Men like me will be slaughtered. Everything of value will be taken from the city. The people will be allowed to live, most of them, but they’ll have to convert to Islam. The churches will become mosques, and the city will be used as a great base from which to subdue the rest of Europe.’

  ‘But these walls? The excellent glacis? The moats? Do they count for nothing?’

  Lubonski asked these agitating questions as they were entering a small, beautiful street near the cathedral, Anna Gasse it was called, and at the far end, where a broader street intruded, they halted before a fine old house on which, set into the wall facing the street, there was a handsomely carved stone bearing the legend:

  ANNA GASSE

  22

  1648

  Lubomirski indicated the house and said: ‘Don’t those walls seem solid?’ With his knuckle he tapped the carved stone, which returned no echo.

  ‘They look strong,’ Lubonski said.

  Then Lubomirski did a strange thing. Standing close to the wall, he hammered with his heel on the surface of the roadway and said: ‘Down there is where the Turks will defeat us,’ and when Lukasz asked: ‘What do you mean?’ he explained: ‘They have the best sappers in the world, and on the day the siege begins Kara Mustafa will take one look at our walls, and especially at the glacis at the end of that open space, and he’ll tell his men: “It is impossible for us to march up to the walls and reduce them,” so he will put his sappers to work.’

  ‘But how can they get to the walls?’ Lukasz asked. ‘To undermine them?’

  ‘They will start far, far out there, even beyond the empty space, and they will dig like swift moles under all that protected area, right under it, and they will come up three feet below the cellar of this house’—and again he thumped on the roadway with his boot—‘and they will pile enormous sacks of powder right under this house, and one day in mid-July they will ignite the whole damned thing … this house and that and that … and into our city they’ll swarm and massacre us all.’

  Very carefully Lubonski looked about him, and when he was satisfied that no Austrian soldiers or officials were listening, he asked: ‘What about our leadership?’

  ‘I think Emperor Leopold will scamper out of the city with his women at the first threat. He always does. But this Rüdiger von Starhemberg, who will be left in command, is a very dependable man. If Poland and Germany fail to send help, and Vienna falls, as it would have to, I expect Von Starhemberg to be standing beside me when the Turks come rushing in. I would be appalled if he wasn’t.’ He hesitated, shook his head, and added: ‘It would be unthinkable for him to desert me.’

  When they returned to Lubomirski’s headquarters, Lubonski bored in with the question which had immediate import: ‘Will the other allies send troops to help?’ and now the general became downright enthusiastic: ‘Duke Charles of Lorraine is as dependable as the rising of the sun. He promises to bring twenty-three thousand additional Austrians from all parts of the country, and I assure you he will. Prince Waldeck of the German states will bring us at least twenty-eight thousand. Bavarians, Thuringians, Saxons and Swabians. He’s a grand general, and I trust him. Now please tell me what Sobieski will do.’

  Lubonski felt, and correctly, that the safety of Vienna and Europe depended upon what happened in the next few months, and he believed that a man as brave as Lubomirski deserved a completely honest statement: ‘Sobieski has promised thirty-four thousand and the Seym has authorized this number.’

  ‘Splendid! With that reinforcement we have a chance.’

  ‘But as you know, promises on paper, sworn to on word of honor, do shrink when a final count is made.’

  ‘What will the Polish thirty-four thousand shrink to?’

  ‘I’d be happy if we mount twenty-six thousand.’

  ‘I’d be happy to receive them.’

  ‘With them, do we have a chance?’

  ‘It becomes a race.’ With his expressive hands he indicated compass directions. ‘Will Sobieski and the Poles reach here from the north before Kara Mustafa’s sappers blow us to hell from the south?’ He paused to allow the gravity of his remark to sink in, then asked bluntly: ‘Tell me honestly. When is the earliest that Sobieski can leave Krakow?’

  ‘August fifteenth.’

  ‘Good God!’ Lubomirski gasped. ‘That may be too late.’

  ‘But he will come in great strength … and with his winged hussars … and with the knowledge on both sides that he has already defeated the Turks three times.’

  Lubomirski studied this response, and made small strategic patterns with his hands, as if he were disposing his troops. ‘We will have a fighting chance to hold out. Not good. We’ll be eating the horses before long. But we will have a chance … if you hurry.’

  In the remaining weeks of May and June, all the hurrying was done by the Turks pressing in from the east and south. They won a significant victory at Gyor, then routed General
Lubomirski’s Polish volunteers at Bratislava, and on the thirteenth of July approached Vienna with an army that had originally contained about 300,000 men, including even servants and muleteers, but which now had some 115,000 who could be called fighting units.

  They were an extraordinary army representing an extraordinary state. Turkey, whose center of power continued to be Constantinople, was governed by Sultan Muhammad IV, who had ascended the throne at the age of six. This meant, of course, that the extensive empire had to be governed by a regency, in this case one person, the boy’s mother, one of those terrible, remorseless women more capable of ruling than most of the men with whom she had to deal.

  After watching the grandeur of Turkey decline through the in-eptness of her assistants, she had started to promote from rank to rank a man of notable ability, the Albanian Köprülü whose freedom from the palace intrigue of the capital kept him relatively able to govern in an honest manner. And from a nation near dissolution from bad government, he had built an empire that reached from Italy east to Russia, from Persia north to Hungary, encompassing such European nations as Greece, Macedonia, Albania and Bulgaria.

  The Sultan, meanwhile, had seemed to be concerned only with his own interests: women and hunting. To assuage the former hunger he had enormous seraglios, but even when they were crammed with the most delightful houris from eleven nations, his principal joy continued to be hunting. He had extensive preserves throughout Europe, each area larger than Belgium or Holland, in which only he was allowed to hunt. On one historic occasion he dragooned ten thousand Christian inhabitants of an area to serve as his bearers over a period of three weeks, during which he shot or shot at several thousand deer, bear and buffalo. In one part of Bulgaria his Christian slaves served as custodians for a herd of eleven thousand buffalo, which were reserved for him.

  The various Köprülüs responsible for governing the empire had adopted a simple policy: ‘Keep the idiot happy, for as long as he lives, we live.’ In the days of rapid expansion this tactic worked, for they managed exceedingly well and captured fortresses which the Christians had deemed impregnable; whole nations fell into the Turkish grip and the possibility of further conquests seemed endless. But starting in 1681 this irresponsible Sultan began to see that as his troops pressed forward on significant cities like Vienna, Christian retaliation would become inescapable, so he began to caution Kara Mustafa, his grand vizier of the moment: ‘Take all of Hungary. It’s a miserable land unable to govern itself. And take Poland too, if you will, because it has no future. But do not try to capture Vienna, because if you do, you will arouse the sleeping dragons.’