INTRODUCTION.
THE NIGHT OF CHRISTMAS EVE:
TARASS BOOLBA:
COSSACK TALES,
BY
NICHOLAS GOGOL.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL RUSSIAN
BY
GEORGE TOLSTOY.
LONDON
JAMES BLACKWOOD, PATERNOSTER ROW.
INTRODUCTION.
A historical sketch placed before a workof fiction must seem, to many, a very inconsistentthing, and yet the title of the present volume,"COSSACK TALES," obliges the translator togive a short account of this sometime warlikerace. Such an account is the more wanted, asnot only in England, but in all Europe, thenotion exists that the Cossacks were somethinglike a Deus ex machinâ, emerging from space atthe moment requisite to put a stop to the triumphsif Napoleon I., to drive back to their respectivehomes the motley array of the twenty nations hebrought into Russia, to pitch their tents in theChamps Élysées, to put all things right in Paris,and then to vanish once more into space, where,for more than four centuries, Europe had neverso much as perceived their existence.
The invasion of the Tartars in the middle ofthe thirteenth century took place when Russiawas torn asunder by two kindred and yet hostilebranches of the house of Rurick: the youngerbranch had settled in the northern (at the presenttime the middle) part of the country; the elder,after many struggles and reverses, had succeededin regaining its inheritance, the ancient metropolisKieff, and the whole of the southern principalities.Both branches bore a revengeful remembrance oftheir mutual feuds, and while the elder viewedwith jealousy the gradual rise of the northernprinces, the latter envied the firm grasp withwhich the southern princes clutched their longdisputed sway. Hence it came that, when hordesof Tartars overran the northern principalities,the princes of the South lent no ear to the entreatiesof their northern brethren for help.Hence, also, the reason of these latter remaininginert and submissive to their recent conquerors,the Tartars, when those conquerors laid wastethe fertile territories which extended along thesouth of Russia.
Soon afterwards, the trans-Carpathian parts ofRussia, Red Russia, i.e., Galicia, Lodomeria, &c.,ceased to be any longer accounted as forming partof Russia. The marshy tracts of land to theeast of Poland, White Russia, formed a new anddistinct power, Lithuania, soon destined to mergeinto Poland. The north of Russia, Great Russia,had yet two centuries more to endure the yokeof the Tartars. At this time Southern or LittleRussia, called also Ukraine (i.e., the borders), gavebirth to a new race, the Cossacks.
The princes of Southern Russia had forsakentheir subjects, and gone into Lithuania to seekfor a less disturbed dominion than that over acountry exposed to the incessant depredations ofthe Crimean Tartars, and converted into thebattle-field of these Tartars with the Russiansand the Poles. Their subjects were thus leftbehind without anybody to look to for protection,or for guidance, in defence of their homes, andrevenge for their country being annually wastedby fire and sword by their Crimean neighbours.Reduced to despair at seeing their homes burntto ashes, their wives and children carried awayby those s