Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [205]
And although Andrei knew that this view of the Don Cossack state was a little romanticized, he also knew that this communistic democracy was widely favoured by the poorer Cossacks everywhere.
How noble it sounded. A brotherhood of man.
‘Of course,’ the Ox added, ‘we’ll kick out all the Catholics and Jews first: you can’t have a brotherhood of man with them. But then everything will be all right.’
Andrei supposed so. Yet he was not sure. Didn’t he want to get richer? Didn’t he want to become a gentleman and own estates, with ambitious Anna at his side?
His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden roar from the edge of the camp. That was the signal. Usually they beat the kettledrums to summon an assembly, but with so many present they were using cannon.
In the space of a few minutes, thousands of men had gathered at the meeting place where the Cossacks’ little wooden church now looked like a carnival float being carried by the crowd.
To loud cries of approval, the head of the camp – the Ataman – now led out Bogdan to address them.
He was a big, bluff fellow with a rather coarse, bearded face. He looked like the heavy Cossack squire he was. But when roused he had an unexpected gift for oratory. Now, in a few short sentences, he recounted to them once again his woes, and the disgraceful treatment he had received from the Poles. Everyone knew the tale well, but they wanted to hear it again: it was a question of form, and he did not let them down.
‘Is this, brothers, how brave Cossacks should be treated?’ he bellowed.
‘Never,’ they shouted back.
‘Is this our reward for our services – that we should be asked for our lives in war, and in peace treated worse than any of us would treat a dog?’ the peroration continued. He looked from side to side. ‘Are we to suffer for ever, while the brotherhood, wives, families, children, are butchered – or are we going to fight?’
‘We fight,’ they roared.
Now the Ataman stepped forward.
‘I have a proposal, brother Cossacks,’ he cried.
‘Say it!’ a hundred voices yelled back. The matter had long been agreed, but the vote must still take place.
‘I propose that Bogdan Khmelnitsky be elected our grand chief, the representative of all the Cossacks in the Ukraine. I propose he be Hetman. Who agrees?’
‘We agree!’ the whole camp shouted.
‘Let the standard be brought forth, then.’
And now even Andrei’s heart missed a beat. They were bringing forward the famous horsetail standard of the Cossacks; and once that was raised, even Polish lords and Ottoman Turks might tremble, for the free Cossacks of the steppe would fight to the death.
‘We march at dawn,’ the Hetman announced.
There have in human history, in many countries, been worse years than that of 1648 in Poland.
But in all the long annals of human cruelty and stupidity – which alas do not seem to change – the year 1648 deserves, for several reasons, a particular mention.
It also changed Russian history.
From mid-April the Cossack army – eight thousand Cossacks with four guns, and four thousand more Tatars just behind – advanced up the western side of the great River Dniepr, across the steppe. Ahead of them they carried a huge red banner sewn with an image of the Archangel.
The Poles knew that the Cossack rebels were coming and made preparations.
The Polish military commander, the magnate Potocki, made his headquarters on the west bank about eighty miles below Pereiaslav. From here he sent forward a vanguard in two parts. In the first, under command of his own son, were fifteen hundred Poles together with some twenty-five hundred regular, service Cossacks; in the second, another twenty-five hundred service Cossacks and a contingent of German mercenaries. The idea was that the vanguard was to garrison and refortify Kodak.
It was an act either of foolishness or of extraordinary arrogance to assume