Rapid synopsis of With Fire and the Sword if anyone needs it

 

The time is around 1650. The place, what is now the Ukraine.

There are two main characters, Jan Skrzetuski, upright, honourable and likeable Polish Szlachcic, and Jurij Bohun, dashing and wild Cossack. They clash over the love of Helena Kurcewiczówna. Helena has been raised by her aunt alongside her five male cousins, who are friendly with Bohun, and go on raids with him into enemy territory. However, the Roszłogi estate belongs to Helena, not her aunt, who has cut a deal with Bohun that if he marries Helena, he will permit her aunt and cousins to continue to have use of the house. This arrangement is one that Helena now abhors, having seen Bohun kill a man in front of her.

Jan, meantime, accidentally saves the life of Bohdan Chmielnicki, a rebel Cossack. He meets up with other major characters Onufry Zagłoba and Longin Podbipięta. On the road they meet up with Helena and her aunt whose carriage is stuck and broken in a stream. This was the point at which I started thinking Helena a pretty poor sap as it’s only about two feet deep, and the horses are standing hock deep, which is not good for horses at all.  Anyway, Jan to the rescue, carrying Helena out, and they are much enamoured of each other. They then dance together and Helena behaves most immodestly in front of Bohun who goes off in a right royal Cossack snit. Jan makes a deal with the old princess that he gets the girl and the old woman gets Rozłogi.

The upshot is that Bohun joins up with Chmielnicki as a rebel, comes back and kills all the Kurcewiczowie who betrayed their oath about Helena. He is planning to marry her anyway.  Zagłoba rescues her, dressed as a boy, from being abducted by Bohun, but Bohun still takes her from where she was left for safety. Rozłogi is burned by looting peasants, Jan has a crisis of faith, but adheres to stern duty because he’s that sort of man.

One of his other friends is Michał Wołodyjowski, also known as the little knight as he is short and slight. Jan’s man, crony, and chief scrounger is a youth called Rzędzian who has larcenous instincts and a talent for healing.

Various excitements like Jan being held captive by Chmielnicki, Bohun half-killing Rzędzian, and being half killed by Wołodyjowski, Jan’s friends rescuing Helena from the witch with whom Bohun had left her, Jan’s commander, Prince Jeremi, impaling envoys, and a nasty siege in which Podbipięta dies and Jan escapes to get reinforcements are the substance of the book, set against the background of the Chmielnicki uprising. The love triangle however permeates the book and gives the tragedy of the fight of Pole vs Cossack a poignant context.

At the end, Bohun is captured, and Jeremi, at first inclined to impale him, hands him over to Jan instead, glossed over in the book but a moving scene in the film.  I’ve gone with the film mostly, with some input from the book.