Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/522

84 the Grand Prince, liked the experienced Polish nobility, who were as stubborn in battle as the Lithuanians and Jmud men, and besides, better armed and better disciplined. Some were urged on by hatred for the ancient foes of the Polish race, and still others by compassion. "Listen to us, listen!" cried the Jmud people to kings, princes, and all nations. "We have been free and are people of good blood, but the Order wants to turn us into captives! They are not working for our souls, but for our land and our property. Our misery is such that we must beg or become robbers! How can they wash us in the water of baptism when their own hands are foul? We desire baptism, but not in blood and with the sword; we want religion, but we want it of the kind which is taught by honorable rulers like Yagello and Vitold. Hear us and save us, for we are perishing! The Knights of the Cross withhold baptism so as to oppress the more easily. Not priests are they sending, but hangmen; they have taken bees, cattle, all the fruits of the earth from us; now we are not permitted to fish, or to kill a wild beast in the forest. We are imploring! Listen to us! for look, they have bent our once free necks to night work at their castles; they have borne away our children as hostages; they dishonor our wives and daughters before the eyes of their husbands and fathers. It would be more fitting for us to groan than to speak! Our families they have burned with fire; they have taken off to Prussia men of high standing, great persons,—the Korkutsie, Vassygin, Svolek, and Sangayla; they murder us, and are gulping our blood as if they were wolves. Oh, listen to us! We are in every case human beings, not wild beasts. Why is it that we turn to implore the Holy Father to command that we be christened by Polish bishops? Because with our whole spirit we are thirsting for Christian baptism, but baptism in the water of love, not in the warm blood of extermination."

Thus and similarly did the Jmud people complain; hence, when their complaints were heard at the court of Mazovia straightway a number of tens of knights and nobles decided to go and assist them, understanding that there was no need to ask Prince Yanush for permission, even for this reason that his wife was Vitold's sister. Universal rage of heart boiled up when they learned from Bronish and the others that many noble youths who were hostages in Prussia, unable to endure the insults and cruelties inflicted on them by the Knights, had committed suicide.