Song of the Legions Read Free

instructor, and in due course became rich.
     
    Eventually the old mercenary retired and settled down in Poland. When asked why he had not stayed on in Russia, he would indignantly reply that only a fool would do such a thing, to live under a tyrant, when he could live in liberty! Poland was a democracy, where a man could say and do as he pleased. A man need not fear the dungeon, the knout, nor the gulag. This was my grandfather, the old hypocrite. Compared to my father, however, the man was a paragon of virtue.
     
    My father, the Count Peter Blumer, was named after the self-same tyrant that my grandfather served. His career was even more disgraceful. For my father served in Felix Potocki's private army. By his ruthless conduct and rapacious greed, he quickly rose to a high rank, becoming the chief rent-collector for the Potocki clan.
     
    By treaty, the Austrians had ruled Podolia, this land they had stolen from Poland, for the past fourteen years. But it was Felix Potocki, not the Hapsburgs, that ruled our roost. Podolia was after all far enough away from Vienna for them not to care what went on, so long as they were paid their dues.
     
    Felix was Our Lord Brother. He was a krolik , a petty king or warlord, and the head of the powerful Potocki family. Their emblem, the Pilawa cross, a double cross , was everywhere. It hung from the door of his castles and palaces, from our door, on the uniforms of Felix’s soldiers, and above my father’s heart. Felix had a formidable private army. Naturally it had its own officer corps, in which my father was numbered as a general. My father commanded regiments of Cossack and Tartar mercenaries, whose primary duty was to police – that is, terrorise – the peasants.
     
    A magnate, a great landowner, and the richest man in Europe, Felix owned so many castles and palaces across Poland, Austria and France that he scarcely had time to remember them all. He had a magnificent palace in Warsaw that stood right beside the King’s own palace (and was bigger than it, to boot) that he rarely ever visited. On Felix’s rent roll were hundreds of towns, cities, farms and villages. He was so fabulously wealthy that it was rumoured he was an alchemist, and had discovered the secret of turning lead into gold. Of course this was nonsense. The source of this vast wealth was very simple to anyone with eyes to see – my father and his Cossacks were the very devil at collecting those rents!
     
    Felix himself was a cultured and learned man of letters, a pious God-fearing man, a patron of the arts, a philanthropist, always doing great charitable works, a senator, and a politician. In short – a scoundrel!
     
    At fourteen I was old enough to decide my fate for myself – so long as my father approved of my decision, of course. Although I wished to be a soldier, I preferred to enlist in a military academy, for the sake of my education, rather than to serve Felix. My father, much to my surprise, declared this an admirable choice.
     
    Now it was time to cut me loose from my mother’s apron strings. I had grown into a great bull-necked youth, with scarcely more sense than a horse, and as great a thirst for drink and mounting. I could bend two iron horseshoes in my great fists. My bulky frame cast a black shadow over the old wooden house. I stomped around the house like a golem, or a wild beast. I could ride, and shoot, and handle a sword.
     
    For all that, I was apt at book learning, and a keen scholar. Raised a true gentleman, I spoke French like a Frenchman and Latin like a priest. From my grandfather I learned every English oath and curse. At my father’s insistence I spoke tolerable German. I had read the Greek poets and the French philosophers, and I always ate fish on a Friday.
     
    “God bless you, Ignatius, my son,” my mother said, holding my hand, on which I wore the ring with the cross of rubies. The red stones shone in the white morning sunlight. She embraced me for the last time. Then I