As Bogdan Hmelnitski raises the Cossacks and Tatars against the Polish Commonwealth, the young knight Yan Skshetuski fights to save the woman he loves, Helena, from the Cossack chief Bogun. Around them gather the boastful old Zagloba, the gentle giant Longinus and the stern Prince Yeremi Vishnyevetski, in battles, sieges and escapes across the steppe.
The first of Sienkiewicz’s Polish trilogy, by the 1905 Nobel laureate; its view of Cossacks and Tatars is a Polish patriot’s. Download the free EPUB.