Boris the Bear-Hunter

As a matter of fact he was not again molested, for the garrison had enough to do in defending the breaches in their walls from the storming party to have any time to search for the escaped prisoner. When his fellow-officers and the men of his regiment came scouring into the town an hour afterwards, flushed with victory, and on plunder and prisoners intent, some of them rushed into the house which had been the hunter's shelter since the early morning, and there they found our friend Boris seated in the kitchen over an excellent breakfast, of which some of them were invited to partake, and waited upon by his benefactress, the Swedish cook.

CHAPTER XXIX.

MAZEPPA

And now the Tsar of Russia, well satisfied with the success of his arms, was for making peace with the King of Sweden. He had made himself master of Ingria and Livonia, but was ready, if necessary, to restore the latter province if he might be allowed to retain the Neva with its two forts of Schlüsselburg and Slotburg.

But Charles XII. would not hear of peace. He would have the Neva forts, he declared, if it should cost him his last soldier to regain them. Then Peter sent ambassadors to the court of St. James in London, to petition for the mediation of Queen Anne. But the ambassadors found the British statesmen, as they declared, too diplomatic and tricky for them, and could get no decided answer. Then the Duke of Marlborough was approached, and handsome bids were made for his good offices, if only he would consent to be peacemaker. The Tsar offered to the duke the title of Prince of Siberia, or of Kief or Vladimir, a large sum of money in gold, and "the finest ruby in Europe." Marlborough did not at once refuse to act as mediator, but, though he seriously considered the proposition, nothing came of Peter's offer, and the matter dropped.

Then the Tsar regretfully realized that there was to be no peace, but that he must make himself ready for war.

The year 1705 began with a victory for Sweden at Gemanerthof, near Mitau; but Peter, hastening up to the front with fresh troops, stormed Mitau and made the honours equal. Neither was there much advantage to either side in 1706, though the Russians were lucky in retiring from the fortress of Grodno, hard pressed by the Swedes, without serious misfortune. Charles himself had awaited the moment when the Russian troops must retire in order to follow them and cut them to pieces, which he probably would have succeeded in doing, but he was delayed for a week by the breaking up of the ice on the River Niemen, and this delay saved the Russians from destruction.

The following year was without military movement on either side, but was spent chiefly in diplomacy—Peter striving for peace, Charles insisting upon war; and when the year went out, it left the latter young monarch occupied in making preparations for the invasion of Russia, and the Tsar equally busy in putting his forces into order for the defence of the fatherland.

Meanwhile Boris, after his terrible experiences in Narva, had been but little engaged in the few military movements of the following year or two, and had spent most of his time at home in Moscow, or rather at Karapselka, with Nancy and the children. His little wolf-maiden was now seven years old, and there was very little of the wolf about her seemingly; for she was as pretty a child as could be found in all Russia. Nevertheless she was strangely and passionately devoted to the woods, and was never so happy as when allowed to accompany her father and mother upon their drives into the forest. In the summer time she would spend the entire day there, wandering about among the pines, or lying couched in a heathery bed at their roots. She was never in the least afraid of wild animals, and loved nothing better than to hear repeated the oft-told tale of her own sojourn among the wolves as a helpless baby. If the truth had been known, she longed in her heart to see a big wolf, and she would undoubtedly have offered to play with it then and there had one appeared, without an atom of fear.

Her little brother Boris, aged six, was a fitting companion to this forest-loving maiden. The boy was the bear-hunter in miniature, strong and hearty, and a stranger to all cravenness.

Nancy and her husband were proud of their children, and were right glad, moreover, to have spent this quiet year with them at Karapselka; for the little ones had not seen much of their father during those troublous war-years. Next year there would be more fighting—any one with his eye on the signs of the times could see that; indeed, half Europe was convinced that 1708 would close with the Swedish king dictating terms of peace from the Kremlin. Why this should have been the opinion of Europe it is difficult to say, for the balance of success up to this point had undoubtedly rested with the Russian arms; but Charles was making great preparations, and was very much in earnest, and his reputation as a successful soldier was very great, and, since he would conduct the new campaign in person, those who knew best made no secret of their conviction that he would carry all before him. As for Charles XII., he himself was perfectly sure that there could be but one end to the struggle. He gave out far and wide that Russia was to be subdued, and that he intended to do it. She was to be forced to disband her new regular armies, and Peter was to be made to restore to the country the Streltsi whom he had abolished, and the old order of things generally. The Neva was to remain, of course, a Swedish river; and as for Dorpat and Narva, and the rest of the places which his fools of generals had allowed Peter to become temporarily possessed of—why, Charles would soon make him disgorge them.

Meanwhile Boris was summoned to the Tsar, who was busy at St. Petersburg building that city under difficulties. Peter wished to send him, he said, on a mission to the hetman of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, to inquire what force the latter could put into the field for the approaching campaign of defence. The hetman bore a name familiar to my readers. He was no other than that Mazeppa whom Voltaire and Byron have made so familiar to readers of poetry as the hero of one of the most romantic episodes ever sung by bard or told as sober truth by historian.

I regret to say that the real Mazeppa was very far from being the romantic hero he is generally supposed to have been. His ride, strapped to the back of a wild horse and pursued by numbers of wolves, is little better than a myth, though founded upon a slight substratum of truth, as will presently be shown.

Born of Cossack parentage, young Mazeppa appears to have served as page to King John Casimir of Poland about the year 1660, twelve years before the birth of Boris; but by reason of his quarrelsome disposition he soon got himself into trouble at court, and retired to his father's estate in Volhynia. Here again Mazeppa fell into disgrace, this time with a neighbouring Polish gentleman. This is where Mazeppa's ride comes in. The Polish neighbour, infuriated at the young Cossack, caused his attendants to strip Mazeppa of his clothes, and to fasten him with thongs to the back of his own horse. In this undignified and uncomfortable position Mazeppa was conveyed to his home, which lay but a mile away, the horse galloping straight to its own stable with its naked master tightly secured to it. After so disgraceful an exposure, Mazeppa disappeared, and he is next heard of as a man of light and leading among the Cossacks of the Ukraine.

The Ukraine3 was a sort of no-man's-land, lying between Pole, Russian, Turk, and Tartar. To this happy retreat fled, in former years, every kind of freebooter, robber, and bad character who had made his own home, whether in Russia or Poland or elsewhere, too hot to hold him. These were the first Cossacks of the Ukraine. As time went on and the Cossacks became numerous, large portions of the fertile soil of the country were reclaimed, and a great proportion of the inhabitants gradually settled down as peaceful agriculturists, tilling their own land. Those Cossacks nearest to Poland became independent vassals of the kings of Poland, and were called "registered Cossacks," because their names were entered in a book as "subjects" of the Polish monarch, though they insisted throughout on their absolute independence, and their hetman or chief considered himself the equal of the king, and brooked no condescension or patronage from him. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, however, the Cossacks threw off the Polish connection and espoused the cause of Russia; the tribe having decided by their votes whether they should enrol themselves under the protectorate of Russia, Poland, or Turkey. Thus the Ukraine became Russian territory, and the Cossacks, though "preserving their privileges," acknowledged the Tsar as their head.

This was the position of affairs when Mazeppa appeared among the Cossacks of the Ukraine.

At this particular juncture there were two hetmans, one being at the head of that larger half of the population which had embraced the protectorate of Russia; the other, chief of a portion of the Cossacks who still coquetted with Pole and Turk and Russian, faithful to none of the three, but always on the look-out for betterment. Mazeppa became secretary to this latter chief. In this capacity he was, a year or two later, despatched to Constantinople with letters to the Sultan containing proposals for the transfer of the allegiance of his wavering master from Russian to Turk.

But Mazeppa never reached Constantinople. He was arrested, papers and all, by agents of the Tsar, and carried off to Moscow. Here, by his diplomatic gifts, Mazeppa not only succeeded in exculpating himself, but contrived so deeply to impress the reigning Tsar, Alexey, Peter's father, with a belief in his merits, that both Alexey and afterwards Peter himself remained his truest friends and benefactors, in spite of every attempt of his enemies—and there were many—to dethrone the idol.

Mazeppa now realized that the Russian was the real "strong man," and that he had espoused the wrong cause. His late employer was arrested and exiled; but a place was found for Mazeppa with the rival hetman, Russia's faithful vassal, Samoilovitch, in whose service he so greatly strengthened his position that in 1687, when Galitsin returned from an unsuccessful campaign in the Crimea, and in order to shield himself threw the blame upon Samoilovitch and his Cossacks, who had been employed to assist him, Mazeppa found means to overthrow his late chief and to get himself elected in his place as hetman of the Cossacks of the Ukraine.

One of Mazeppa's first acts was to hasten to Moscow in order to assure the young Tsar Peter of his loyalty, and, if possible, to make a personal friend of the monarch. In this he proved so successful that, once having accepted and pinned his faith to the Cossack chief, Peter never could be persuaded to doubt his honesty, in spite of every effort to convince him of Mazeppa's perfidy. For many years there was a constant stream of correspondence reaching the Tsar from various sources, warning him of the treacherous disposition of his trusted hetman. All these letters Peter invariably forwarded to Mazeppa, with assurances to the effect that his faith in the latter was quite unshaken. Frequently the Tsar added that the Cossack might consider himself free to deal with his traducers as he pleased. Mazeppa was never backward in taking the hint, and many of his enemies were thus removed out of his way, some with great barbarity.

As for the rights and wrongs of these matters, it is impossible to judge whether Mazeppa was or was not so bad as he was painted. His name is execrated to this day in the national songs and ballads of the Ukraine, where his memory appears to be cordially hated, while the names of his enemies are crowned with all the tribute of honour and love that song can offer. An intimate personal acquaintance of Mazeppa has placed on record his conviction that the famous hetman was always at heart a Pole and detested Russia, and that all his life he was on the look-out for a good opportunity of casting off his allegiance, and transferring it to Pole or Turk or Swede, as soon as any one of these should have proved himself the stronger man. At the same time, in justice to Mazeppa, it must be mentioned that he undoubtedly received more than one invitation from the King of Poland to break with the Tsar, and that he invariably forwarded such proposals to Moscow for Peter's perusal. Probably Mazeppa was a time-server, and was faithful to Russia only so long as Russia appeared to be the rock upon which his house was built. As will presently appear, he eventually, in his old age, made the one great mistake of his life, when his political sagacity, which had befriended him and guided him aright for many a long year, at last failed him and brought about the ruin which his treachery undoubtedly deserved.

Mazeppa received Boris with every mark of honour and respect as the Tsar's emissary. His court at Batourin was that of a king, far more luxurious and refined than that of Peter himself; and Boris was surprised to see the gorgeousness and magnificence of this man, whom he had been accustomed to think of more as a wild Cossack chief than as a monarch surrounded by every luxury and refinement of western civilization.

Mazeppa spoke with tears in his eyes of his love and devotion for Peter, and quite charmed the simple-minded Boris by his eloquent declaration that he would rather be the bear-hunter himself (of whom he said he had heard), and be ever about the person of that most marvellous man, his master, than hetman of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, honourable and dignified though the position might be.

To Boris's questions as to the forces at his disposal and their loyalty to the cause of Russia, Mazeppa replied,—

"My dear man, I have fifty thousand lances; and I would rather each one was buried in my own flesh than turned against the throne of my brother Peter. Why has he sent you? Does he not know that we are brothers, and more than brothers, and that all that I have is his?"

Boris was perfectly satisfied. He could not doubt this man, whose voice shook with feeling as he spoke, and whose eyes were filled with tears when he told of his devotion to the great Tsar, their beloved master.

Then Mazeppa entertained Boris with much talking, of which he was a master, and with a review of those fifty thousand lances of which he had made mention, or as many of them as he could collect at Batourin. Boris was delighted with their wonderful feats of horsemanship. Whole squadrons would dash forward at the charge, the wiry little ponies holding up their heads till their ears touched the Cossacks' bending figures; then, suddenly, every man would dip down sideways till his hand swept the ground, and again with one accord the entire body would recover their original position. Then a company would gallop past, every man kneeling in his saddle; followed by a second, of which each Cossack stood upright. Then a body of men would dash by, spring from their saddles while at the gallop, and spring back again. Then the entire corps would burst into wild, stirring song, and charge, singing, at an imaginary foe. It was a fine sight, and gave Boris much sincere pleasure; and he returned to give his report to the Tsar, convinced that in Mazeppa and his lances Peter possessed a friendly contingent which would prove of immense service during the coming Swedish attack. How Mazeppa acted, and what is the exact value to be attached to moist-eyed protestations of love and faith from a Cossack of the Ukraine, will be seen in the following pages.

CHAPTER XXX.

RUSSIA'S GREAT DAY

In the autumn of 1707, Charles XII. made the first move in the great game which was to decide for ever the supremacy of Sweden or of her great rival of the north of Europe. Charles left his camp near Altstadt with forty-five thousand men, marching through Poland; twenty thousand were sent under Lewenhaupt to Riga, and fifteen thousand to Finland; in all, the Swedish king put in the field eighty thousand of the finest troops in the world.

Passing the winter at Grodno, Charles appeared early in the following summer at Borisof. Here he found a Russian army ready to contest his passage over the river Beresina; but he drove the Tsar's troops before him, and defeated them again at Moghilef, and a third time at Smolensk, which point he reached about September 1708.

He was now but ten days' march from Moscow, and there is no doubt that, had he pushed straight on at this time, he might have, as he had promised, dictated terms of peace from the Kremlin. There is no doubt, also, that the Tsar himself began at this period to entertain grave fears for the final outcome of the struggle, and made proposals of peace which would practically have annulled his successes of the past few years. Had Charles either accepted these terms or marched direct to Moscow, the history of Russia from that day to this would have been written very differently; but, fortunately for the Tsar and for Russia, he did neither the one nor the other, and the reason for this was the conviction of a certain individual of whom we have lately heard that the run of luck which had attended the arms of Russia had received a check.

Mazeppa, watching events from his castle at Batourin, observed with disquietude the rapid and victorious advance of the dashing young soldier whom all Europe at that time hailed as a second Alexander of Macedon. He saw his lord the Tsar, in the person of his advanced guards, driven from pillar to post, and flying before the soldiers of Charles like sheep before the sheep-dog; and the politic soul of Mazeppa quaked within him. Still he waited on, unwilling to take decisive action until there remained no doubt whatever as to the final issue of the struggle. When, however, the Swedish hosts arrived at Smolensk, Mazeppa deemed that the moment had come when it behoved him to declare for the stronger, and he despatched letters secretly to Charles at his camp in that city, offering to place at the disposal of the Swedish monarch his entire strength of fifty thousand lances.

On receiving this communication, Charles immediately altered his plans. He quitted the highroad to Moscow, and turned aside into the Ukraine in order to effect a junction with the Cossacks of Mazeppa.

This movement proved a fatal mistake. The Tsar had not been idle during the last few months, and though his troops had met with no success in their efforts to stop the onward march of Charles's hosts, Peter, with his best officers and an army of about one hundred thousand men, had still to be reckoned with before his Majesty of Sweden could carry out his threat of dictating peace from the palace in Moscow.

No sooner had Charles turned aside into the Ukraine, thereby exposing his flank to the Russian attack, than the Tsar saw his advantage, and hastened towards the Borysthenes, or Dnieper, with all the speed he could, at the head of a strong force of fifty thousand picked troops. His object was to cut off the main Swedish body from communication with the army of Lewenhaupt, which was hastening to join Charles in the Ukraine, at a distance of twelve days' march behind him. With this force was the whole of Charles's supply of provisions, upon which the Swedish host relied for its maintenance during the approaching winter. Peter, with whom was of course his faithful bear-hunter, in command of the Semenofski regiment, fell upon Lewenhaupt near the banks of the river Borysthenes. For three days a stubborn fight dragged on, and the brave Swedes strove to break through the opposing ranks of the equally valiant Russians; and when, at length, they cut their way through, and the general joined his master at the river Desna, he found himself at the head of but four thousand men—the rest of his army of twenty thousand fine troops being either dead on the battle-field or prisoners in the hands of the enemy, who had captured also all the guns and ammunition, and, worst of all, the invaluable convoy of supplies upon which the troops of Charles had relied.

This was a great day for the Tsar, and he celebrated his victory by a grand Te Deum in the cathedral at Moscow, leaving Charles and his famishing troops to winter as best they could in the Ukraine, in company with their perfidious ally Mazeppa, who, instead of fifty thousand lances, had provided but six thousand in all, the rest either preferring to remain loyal to Russia, or else joining Charles, but afterwards deserting. The Swedish army spent a wretched winter in the Ukraine, and Charles lost half his men by hunger and cold.

Before departing for Moscow, the Tsar demolished Mazeppa's castle at Batourin; and from that day to this, or until recent years, the name of Mazeppa has been solemnly cursed once a year in all the churches of Russia.

Mazeppa was safe with Charles, however, having discreetly fled before the Tsar appeared, carrying with him two barrels of gold, in which form he had consolidated the greater portion of his possessions.

The winter was spent by the Tsar, as well as by Boris, in busily preparing for the crisis of Russia's fate—a crisis which could not now be longer delayed, for the enemy was at the gates, and with the spring would commence to knock loudly for admittance. When the troops were collected and drilled into shape, Boris received a signal favour from the Tsar in the command of a contingent of these forces, which he was instructed to conduct southwards to Pultowa, a fortified city on the river Vorskla, which had the advantage of commanding the main road to Moscow as well as that of being close to the base of Charles's operations. Boris had charge of large quantities of provisions and ammunition for the use of the army during the coming season.

The trusty hunter safely reached his destination and took over the command of the garrison at Pultowa. And none too soon, as it turned out; for early in the spring Charles set out upon his march for Moscow, and as a first step towards attaining his end, invested the fortress of Pultowa, of which he expected to make short work. But Charles was not so intimately acquainted with the character of Commandant Boris as you, reader, and I; and all his efforts to bring the brave bear-hunter and his men to submission were unavailing. On the contrary, he found them perfectly ready and willing to meet him, in so far as fighting at close quarters was concerned, and many a time did the Russian troops sally out from behind their protecting walls and give battle to their assailants in the open. On one of these occasions, Boris had the honour of crossing swords a second time with his Swedish Majesty. The two men met at the head of their respective parties, Charles being, as usual, on horseback, the hunter afoot. Charles recognized his former adversary immediately. "Ha!" he cried, "Mr. Russian, we are old friends surely? There was a matter we left unfinished; come, lay on now. I am on horseback; you shall have the first blow!"

Boris did not wait for a second invitation, but aimed one of his bravest slashes at the king's head, which the king neatly turned aside, aiming a furious blow at Boris in return, which went near to lopping off one of the hunter's ears. Then the pair had a cut-and-thrust match, each laying on at his best, until something startled the horse of Charles and it swerved aside, just as the sword of Boris descended from a vicious sweep at Sweden's most precious crest. Most unfortunately for Charles, the sharp blade caught his foot in its descent and inflicted a painful wound, while at the same moment the horse bolted and the duel came to an indecisive termination.

On this occasion, as always, the sortie did no more than vex the besiegers, and the enterprising party of Russians were soon driven back. But Boris found that his men liked these sorties, as a change from the dulness of the siege, and he was not the man to refuse them their pleasure from prudential motives.

But the crisis was now at hand. In June, the Tsar, fearing for the safety of Pultowa, hastened to the relief of the garrison with a force of nearly sixty thousand men. He crossed the Vorskla and established himself upon the same side of that river with the besiegers, arranging his lines so that if the army of Charles should attack him and be worsted in the fight they must be driven back to the angle formed by the junction of the Vorskla and the Borysthenes. Here he strengthened his position with redoubts mounted with heavy artillery, and awaited developments; which he could afford to do, for his troops were amply supplied with provisions and ammunition, whereas what was left of Charles's force—about twenty-five thousand men—were in a wretched condition by reason of the hardships they had endured for many months while roughing it in the Ukraine.