So, "Praise the Lord," repeated Koniecpolski. Secure in the knowledge that what might be blasphemy for a peasant or a butcher was not for a grand hetman.
The storm clouds were coming fast. The Poles would start charging furiously now, while the soil was still firm enough that their horses could move across it. The condition of the ground was already bad—terribly so for cannon balls—but it wasn't bad enough that Polish warhorses would disobey their masters. A horse could handle such terrain, even if they didn't like it. They wouldn't be galloping, of course. But even a hussar charge at the speed of a canter could hammer down an opponent if they failed to stand their ground.
That was Gustav Adolf's great concern. Modern infantry could withstand cavalry if they were trained and seasoned, which these troops were—provided they retained their confidence. And there was nothing that would faster erode a unit's morale than the feeling they were alone, isolated, with their commanders nowhere to be seen.
The feeling, in short, that a heavy rain would bring.
The king of Sweden knew exactly what Koniecpolski would do now. The grand hetman would push his hussars to the utmost in order to take advantage of whatever period existed between the arrival of the rain and the subsequent obscuring of the battlefield and the point at which the rain turned the ground so muddy that cavalry were effectively unusable.
The morale of his troops. That was everything, now. He had to do whatever was necessary to keep them from faltering.
Without even realizing he was doing so, Gustav Adolf eased his sword in and out of its scabbard in order to make sure it would come forth easily if he needed it. Then he did the same with his pistols in their saddle holsters.
* * *
Anders Jönsson knew how to read the signs. He swiveled in the saddle and gave his little unit of Scotsmen a fierce and commanding look.
You know what's probably coming. Be ready!
Then he faced forward again. Were it not completely inappropriate in the presence of his monarch, Anders would have shouted his sentiments aloud—and been echoed by a dozen Scot throats.
Fuck!
Chapter 37
The first hussar charge was driven back with a horrible slaughter. This was the first time Stanislaw Koniecpolski had faced the new rifled muskets massed on a battlefield, and he'd underestimated their effectiveness. They could be reloaded as quickly as smoothbore muskets but had two or even three times the effective range. He understood now why the Swedes had such a seemingly-perilous dearth of pikemen. They had only one pike for every two muskets, where the usual ratio was one-to-one or even two-to-one in favor of the long spears.
But those slender ranks of pikemen were enough, given the horrific rate of fire being maintained by the riflemen they were protecting.
Koniecpolski almost lost the battle, right then and there. He surely would have, had he followed his natural urge to hurl more hussars at the enemy. He'd won battles before with that simple tactic, and more than one of them. Hussars were terrifying in a full charge, on their immense horses and with the wings expanding their apparent size and their huge lances. They were like something out of legend. Mounted knights of fable, with the ferocity of ancient warriors.
But not this battle. The Swedes stood their ground and gunned down the Polish cavalry. Shot them and shot and shot them. Not more than twenty or thirty even managed to reach the enemy lines, and they were either killed or driven off by the pikes soon enough.
The grand hetman couldn't afford such casualties. Not even hussars could withstand losses like these, if they kept up.
"Call them back!" he bellowed to his aides. As they raced off to carry out his orders, Koniecpolski turned to the commander of his Cossack units, Severyn Skoropadsky.
"I need you to relieve the pressure, Ataman. Make no frontal attacks, you understand. Just harass them and keep them off balance for . . ."
He paused to gauge the sky. "Perhaps half an hour. Or a bit longer."
Skoropadsky had a little smile on his face, with perhaps a trace of derision. As if Cossacks were dumb enough to imitate blockhead Polish hussars! Cossacks were raiders of the steppes. Like Tatars and the Mongols before them, their style of warfare was fluid. They mostly used firearms now instead of bows, but their tactics were still basically those of mounted archers.
But if there was any derision in that smile, it was only a trace and more the product of Cossack habit than any disrespect for Koniecpolski himself. The grand hetman of Poland and Lithuania was well-regarded by the Commonwealth's registered Cossacks. Koniecpolski had played a major role in the Polish campaign to crush the Cossack rebellion in 1630 led by Taras Fedorovych. No Cossack doubted that Koniecpolski would have completely crushed the rebels had that been what he saw as his duty. But during the negotiations that finally produced a treaty in August, Koniecpolski had opposed harsh reprisals against the Cossack rebels. He'd thought that the long-standing tensions between Poland-Lithuania and the Cossack hosts would never end until the Commonwealth changed its policies toward the Cossacks.