CHAPTER XXXII.

BUT it was the retreat of a lion needing room for a
spring.

The prince purposely allowed Krivonos to cross so as to
inflict on him the greater defeat. In the very beginning of
the battle he had the cavalry turned and urged on as if in
flight, seeing which the men of the lower country and the
mob broke their ranks to overtake and surround him.
Then Yeremi turned suddenly, and with his whole cavalry
struck them at once so terribly that they were unable to
resist. The prince's troops pursued them five miles to the
crossing, then over the bridges, the embankment, and two
miles and a half to the camp, cutting and killing them with-
out mercy. The hero of the day was the sixteen-year-old
Pan Aksak, who gave the first blow and produced the first
disorder. Only with such an army, old and trained, could
the prince use such stratagems, and feign flight which in any
other ranks might become real. This being the case, the sec-
ond day ended still more disastrously for Krivonos than the
first. All his field-pieces were taken, and a number of flags,
-- among them several royal flags captured by the Cossacks
at Korsun. If the infantry of Koritski and Osinski with the
cannon of Vurtsel could have followed the cavalry, the camp
would have been taken at a blow. But before they came up
it was night, and the enemy had already retreated a consider-
able distance, so that it was impossible to reach them. But
Zatsvilikhovski captured half the camp, and with it enor-
mous supplies of arms and provisions. The crowd seized
Krivonos twice, wishing to give him up to the prince; and
the promise of an immediate return to Hmelnitski barely
sufficed to save him. He fled therefore with the remaining
half of his tabor, with a decimated army, beaten and in
despair, and did not halt till he reached Makhnovka, where
when Hmelnitski came up, in the moment of his first anger,
he ordered him to be chained by the neck to a cannon.
But when his first anger had passed the Zaporojian hot-
man remembered that the unfortunate Krivonos had covered
Volynia with blood, captuired Polonnoe, and sent thousands
of nobles to the other world, left their bodies without burial,