Song of the Legions

by Michael Large

  The Prince slumped in the saddle, alone, crestfallen, desolate. What foreign force from without could not achieve, treachery from within had brought about. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Before our very eyes the regiments drifted away, as the summer snows melt before the rays of the sun. Officers broke their swords in rage. Some took their own lives from the shame. Soldiers threw away their muskets and burned or buried their colours. Only a few hundred die-hards like us remained. A horseshoe of angry riders rallied around our tattered standards on the deserted plain. All the while the enemy grew nearer.

  “God’s nails!” Tanski railed, “The King wants to spare our blood, does he? I say it's our own blood to spill! We are all free men in this army. We have no conscripts or slaves here, as the Russians do! It's my right and my duty to die for the Motherland! A pox on the Bullock, and long live the Republic!” he cried, drawing his sword.

  “We are in a fine pickle here, boys,” Sierawski spat, “We are damned if we do, and damned if we don't. For if we ride on, we disobey our King, but if we surrender, we betray our oath and our country,” he said. Then Sierawski shrugged, and he too drew his sword. “Well, the hell with it, to betray a traitor is no treason, and, more to the point, I'm damned if I'll run a step further from these blasted barbarians, who could not even read a constitution, let alone write themselves one. An oath is an oath!”

  They eyed me expectantly.

  “What say you, O'Blumer the Irishman?”

  I cast a glance at the band of angry patriots that remained. “That's Blumerowski to you, comrades,” I replied. “Well, here we are, vastly outnumbered, the army in pieces, betrayed by our King, our glorious Constitution trampled underfoot, without any hope of any foreign aid whatever. In short, without a dog's chance in hell. Against such odds, even Hercules is an arsehole. Why, I say we fight on, of course!”

  When a Pole has made up his mind, nothing can shift him. “If we are to fight on,” I added, for I always had an eye for the details, even then, “we shall need both a general, and a new king. And we will find both our new king and our general sitting there yonder.”

  I referred, of course, to Prince Poniatowski, who was sitting sulking, like Achilles in his tent, not ten yards away. As one man, our eyes were transfixed upon our Prince. He was bareheaded and his silk cravat, in red-and-white, hung crumpled at his breast. From it hung that hunk of silver that his uncle had awarded him, the Medal of the Virtuti Militari.

  Pepi rode with a retinue of the greatest worthies in the land – crimson ones, princelings and lords from the noblest families in the Republic. They were dripping with money. Every pistol had an ivory handle, every sword a gold hilt. Many of them wore full-length sable kontusz coats, in the old style. But gold will bend before iron, as the corn bends beneath the scythe. These great lords of old Poland stood helpless and crestfallen. They were as broken and bereft as we of the ordinary soldiery. We watched them as they gathered around the heartbroken Prince like anxious parents around an invalid child.

  So Pepi’s servants brought him his tiny harpsichord. The Prince was wont to play this in times of great joy, which were rare enough, or, as was more common with us, in times of great sorrow. At Zielence he had played it as the Russian cannonballs rained down on our heads. Now he sat before the harpsichord, for all the world as forlorn as the Wandering Jew himself. Tears ran down his cheeks and fell on to the ivory notes of the keyboard.

  Abruptly, the silence was broken as Pepi struck up our mazurka. In that moment we recalled that glorious Third of May in Warsaw, marching along to the Royal Castle with the crowds cheering and the pipes playing and the sun shining, and all the girls gazing at us adoringly, and the citizens doffing their caps respectfully. One and all we soldiers took this for a sign from the Almighty. We elbowed aside the venerable noble lords and courtiers who surrounded our Prince.

  “Away with you, grandad,” Sierawski snapped at a balding nobleman, “this is no time for handwringing like an old woman! Old Poland is on her last legs – again!”

  “Show some respect, young man! I am the High Chamberlain of Lithuania!”

  “I don't care if you're the Lord Mayor of Krakow himself!” Sierawski bawled, shoving the Chamberlain roughly aside. “Make way there old man!”

  Pepi raised an eyebrow at me, but carried on playing.

  “Good day to you, comrade. I see that you have something in mind for me. What do your men aim to do? Raise me up on a shield like a Roman Emperor?”

  “These are your men, Majesty, not mine,” I retorted bluntly, “and, if I read my history aright, you would not be the first Polish King to be elected on the battlefield by his troops, after the incumbent was found wanting.”

  At this, Pepi became angered. “I bid you, my good comrade, to remember that Stanislaus-August is our lawful King. He is more to me than a mere uncle. As you all know, upon the death of my father, I had the honour to be adopted by the King, as His ward – His son. Since that day, more than twenty years ago, I have lived in my uncle's household, and I have been the happy recipient of such love, affection and care, that His Majesty could not have been a better father to me than if I had been his own natural son.”

  No one heeded him. The spark caught root and blazed into a fire. A hubbub arose. The rabble of soldiers, invigorated with new hope, beat their lances on the ground and began loosing joy-shots in the air. Up went the cry –

  “Long Live King Jozef! King Jozef of Poland!”

  Oh, such sweet sorrow to have heard those words, and I should have given my very soul to have seen it come to pass. It was not to be, and it was never to be.

  The assembled worthies fell to earnest debating. At last, after some politicking, they inclined to the view of the soldiers, and joined in the general acclamation. Even the old High Chamberlain was persuaded. Pepi ceased playing and gently closed the lid of his harpsichord. He waved his hands for quiet, and finding none, he mounted his horse. Standing upright in the saddle, he demanded silence. It was denied him.

  He cried out, unheard, above the chaos and the din – “What would you have me do, Sirs? Depose my own uncle? Impossible!”

  But we would have none of it, and bore him aloft like a trophy, in spite of his vehement protests, our reluctant king. For, is it not the truth, and a wise proverb, that only the man who does not want to be a king, is truly fit to be one?

  CHAPTER TEN

  MARKUSZEM, 26 AUGUST 1792

  “Pepi should have taken the crown,” I said, as the Russian soldiers lined up.

  “We shall be lucky to have any crowns upon our heads at all by the end of this day, or any heads upon our shoulders, for that matter,” Tanski replied gloomily.

  No sooner had the Commander departed for exile in Leipzig, than the Prussians, our supposed allies, also hastening to our aid, had invaded us from the West – skewering the country in two. After them, the Austrian armies were lining up to provide further friendly aid from the south. With all of these friends hastening to our aid, Russians, Prussians, and Austrians, it was just as well we had no enemies!

  Now all of the cities had fallen – Danzig, Vilnius, Warsaw, and finally Krakow. Sierawski noted that his home town held out longest with grim satisfaction. We last partisans, a few thousand of us under Prince Poniatowski, had fought on awhile. We were a ragged enough band of insane cavalry, and we paid court to the lady of death. Only her sweet kiss could cleanse the sins of defeat and dishonour.

  We were run to earth at a dusty hole named Markuszem. We were holed up at one end of a valley. Sunset fell upon us from above, spitting red through the blazing white clouds. Ahead of us, the Russian cannon were wreathed in grey, with great gasping mouths like beasts. We had no reserves nor allies, we had only prayers and dreams. Against the cannon fire we matched our rosary beads. As the noose tightened at Markuszem gallows, Pepi lowered his lance with the swallow-tailed pennon and charged. He charged across the waste, with the storks and herons of those marshes squawking and clattering angrily into the a
ir before him. As he disappeared into the midst of the Russians, they parted before him like a grinning mouth, with the cannon fire churning up the earth like a foaming ocean. Then the teeth of the beast closed in around him.

  “The Prince must not die!” cried one of the officers. “To me, you men!”

  Tanski and Sierawski and I exchanged incredulous stares before the Russian guns.

  “He means you!” we all said, grinning, and pointing at one another, before setting spurs to our horses, and without further ado we three charged into the whirling maelstrom.

  This officer spurred his horse hard, drawing blood. We did likewise, and our horses fairly flew, not Pegasus himself could have covered the ground so fast. In a trice we had caught up with him, and our dear Prince Pepi. Unnerved, the Russian infantry scattered before us, just as the birds had flown, moments before. Pepi was unhorsed and was assaulting a battery of cannon, quite alone, on foot. The gunners, naturally, were reluctant to surrender their gun to a lone madman. For gunners, as you know, are as proud of their guns and limbers as cavalry are of their steeds, or infantry of their colours. A number of these fellows surrounded the Prince, who held them at bay with his sword.

  As we approached, we saw that the Prince had laid his czapka across the still smoking mouth of the cannon – the sign of capture! As he did so, one of the gunners stole upon him from behind, wielding an axe. I rode this treacherous fellow down, trampling him with my horse, and shot a second in the face with my pistol. Fortunately, the remaining gunners fled at the sight of us, conceiving that they were the object of a more general assault. But close by we heard the coarse shouts of the Cossacks, counter-attacking. We glimpsed their ragged beards and bloody lances through the haze of gunsmoke.

  “We have them, boys!” cried Pepi, deluded in his despair.

  “Indeed, Sire,” said the high-born officer who had led us to the rescue. He spoke like a courtier, in a smooth and calm drawling voice. “Perhaps we might continue the chase by horse?”

  I caught Pepi by the collar and hoisted him up onto his bloodied horse. Spatters of gore streaked its pure white flanks. The high-born officer took the bridle from me and led Pepi off without a backward glance at us. Then the Prince's shame-faced bodyguards reappeared from the mist, surrounding him with a thicket of friendly swords as he had lately been enclosed by the deadly blades of our foes. Pepi, thus ensconced, was carried from the battlefield. To what fate we knew not – to foreign exile? To hide in the cellars of ruined palaces? Or walled up in the tomb of an impenetrable gulag? We were left behind to cover Pepi’s escape.

  “So what do we do now?” Tanski spat angrily. “Those noble bastards have left us high and dry!” There were about one hundred horse remaining, with no officers, and the Russians closing in like the Red Sea over Pharaoh’s chariots.

  “Comrades!” I raised my sword, “form on me!” They needed no second invitation, for a drowning man cares not for the quality of the rope.

  “Where the hell are we going, Blumer?” Sierawski demanded.

  “Where else? To the arse of the earth, comrade!” I shouted back. “To Podolia!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PODOLIA, SEPTEMBER 1793

  Thus I rode back to the wild land of my birth. I had dreamed of riding back as the chief of a regiment of cavalry. In my mind’s eye I pictured it clear as a Canaletto. Bright flags, burnished swords, bands playing, girls flinging rose-petals under our horses’ hooves... Be careful what you wish for, comrades. I rode home, a lowly warrant officer, at the head of a ragged band of defeated men. Our dirty and bloodied standards draped about us like funeral shrouds. Our horses limped, our swords were rusted, and our broken lances trailed along the ground. We no longer knew if we were deserters or patriots. We gazed at the black-earthed fields. The harvest was over, and they were fallow now.

  We rode on by a walled village – a village of penniless nobles, the kind of place where they wore wooden swords, and pulled their ploughs by hand. My mother hailed from such a village as this. These noble brothers and sisters, fallen on hard times, degenerated to a condition of wretched destitution below even that of serfdom. Old Poland was studded with these rotten boroughs in those days, like maggots in a good cheese, spreading their rot. Each wretched hovel was distinguished only from peasants’ huts by their wooden porch, proudly displaying their coat of arms. Everywhere, on every porch, was the double cross - the Pilawa.

  These were Felix Potocki’s clansmen. We would find no refuge here. A tattered militia of ragged scarecrows came out to meet us, afoot, dressed in threadbare crimson robes, armed with scythes, wheel-lock muskets, arquebuses that might have seen service at the crusades, wooden swords, and Cossack lances. My men, filthy and exhausted as they were, regarded them with disdain.

  This Targowica rabble would lend us no aid, nor lift a finger to assist us, not even permit us to water at their troughs and wells. After fruitless hours of tense argument, conducted at swordpoint, we moved on, for we would not butcher or rob our own countrymen.

  As we took our leave, however, we gloried in the visitation of angels. Two young women of the village ran after us. They were barefoot, and their cheeks were sunken with hunger, but their eyes shone at our sight. Both were tall, straight backed, majestic girls, one raven and one redhead. The raven haired girl pressed a wineskin into my hands, together with a hogshead and a bag of potatoes. The second, a haughty, tawny creature, her hair the colour of amber and Russian gold, had similar presents for Tanski and Sierawski. Greatly heartened, we kissed their slender hands and thanked them a thousand times. Then they melted away into the gathering dark.

  A heavy sky hung overhead, the winter moon staring blank as a dead man’s eye in the grey firmament. Twardowski’s moon. We nodded our greetings, and crossed ourselves and rode on. It was almost dusk when I called a halt at the lee of a small river in the shelter of a stunted coppice of hanging trees. Mine was a savage country, ravaged by war, plague and famine. Yet it was also a fertile country. We Podolians ploughed our tears back into the black dirt and now it was growing rich and fat. So, naturally, cruel eyes and jealous hearts sought to wrest our land from us. It is not enough to be brave and true. If you wish to eat the fruits of your labours you must be strong and ruthless, comrades. Otherwise, you shall eat only hunger in the pit of your stomach.

  Hunger was eating up my little troop, and would consume it whole if I should permit it. An army marches on its stomach, after all, as Napoleon said. My men – they were mine, for, in truth, they could be nobody else’s now – had fallen into a shambles. Some lay on the ground, moaning, others sat weeping with their heads in their hands. Weapons, uniforms, knapsacks lay strewn about in the worst disorder imaginable. Yet, with a start, I realised I could still have my homecoming.

  “Tanski! Sierawski!” I roared. “Get off your skinny arses!” With a few clouts with the flat of my sword I stirred them into action. “Collect up all of the food and water and bring it to me. Have the men attend to their horses. Get a fire started.”

  Tanski blinked. “Won’t the Russians see it?”

  The land was as flat as a pancake, they would see us anyway. They would catch up with us sooner or later, but in the meantime, we would wash and eat and warm ourselves and water our horses. If they caught us now, in our disordered state, we were dead anyway. I did not relate any of this to Tanski, he could work it out for himself.

  “You have your orders, Tanski,” I barked, “I shall not ask you again.” To my surprise, he obeyed without further question. I think it was a relief for both of us. It took a good hour, but I roused the exhausted troops to action. I posted sentries and then we unhitched our horses, drew water for them, pitched shelters, and lit fires. Sierawski even dug a latrine. After posting sentries and pickets I had the men swab their uniforms, polish their brasses and clean their weapons and their tack, bridles, and saddles, and so forth. The men worked painfully slowly, as if in a dream. Yet it had the desired effect. The exercise warmed our cold bodies and restored
a sense of order and pride, and distracted our minds from the dire nature of our plight.

  Oh, our poor, abused horses! My own horse was named ‘Muszka’ which means ‘Little Fly’ in our tongue, for he is a troublesome beast, always sticking his nose where it does not belong. As soon as I could I attended to my dear nag. I had sorely neglected him of late, owing to the lamentable end to the campaign. As I unhitched the saddle, Muszka blew out his guts with a great angry snort, tossed his mane, and danced on the spot, letting out a fart as loud as a gunshot. With immense relief and utter joy I saw that, by some miracle, there were no saddle sores.

  I am no heavy-footed rider. I ride lightly enough, but I am a big heavy man, accoutered with heavy sword, musket, and pistols withal. We had been campaigning hard for months with little respite. When I removed the bridle from his mouth there was dried blood crusted on the bit, and I felt a deep pang of burning shame.

  For all of the ill-treatment he had suffered at my hands, I apologised unreservedly to the nag, with an endless stream of soothing words in a soft, low voice. At first, he remained in ill humour, but permitted my examination of him. He did not attempt to kick or bite me as I examined his feet. One by one, I removed the clods of mud, and nicked the accumulated stones from his shoes, before wiping the nails of his hooves with a rag.