With Fire and Sword

The opening volume of Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy plunges into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of 1648, as the great Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky sets the eastern borderlands ablaze. Lieutenant Jan Skrzetuski, a brave and loyal officer, is caught between war and his love for Helena Kurcewicz, whose beauty also draws the fierce Cossack leader Bohun. Across sieges, escapes, and pitched battles, Sienkiewicz brings a whole vanished world to life, from reckless nobles to steppe warriors. First published in 1884, the novel made him a national hero and launched the most beloved epic in Polish fiction. Jeremiah Curtin’s translation appears here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.