John Tuman Jr

The Sword of Retribution John Tuman Jr

The year is 1648 and the most powerful empire in Eastern Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, is in turmoil. Cossacks revolt and defeat one Polish army after the other. Serfs attack and kill their Jewish landlords; death and destruction sweep the land. A once peaceful and prosperous society is turned upside down. In the midst of this turmoil, meet a young Cossack, Ivan Dosiak, known as the Red Wolf. Ride with Ivan and smell the blood, smoke, and gunpowder; hear the cries and screams of wounded and dying men and horses as Ivan and the Cossacks blast and hack their way through the ranks of the famous Polish Winged Hussars. Travel with Red Wolf as he leads his Cossack brothers on one of history's greatest sea raids against the Tatar slave-trading stronghold of Caffa. In Caffa, the Cossacks battle Tatar warriors, destroy the city, and free 20,000 Christian slaves. Be with Ivan as he and the Cossacks wipe out a Polish army at the battle of Yellow Waters and then defeat an even larger army at the battle of Korsum to mark the beginning of the end of the Polish empire. See Ivan Dosiak and the whole Cossack army triumphantly enter Kiev on Christmas Day, 1648, to herald the birth of a new nation, Ukraine. The Sword of Retribution rivals Nikolai Gogol's, "Taras Bulba," and Henryk Sienkiewicz's, "With Fire and Sword." Using new scholarly research on 17th century Poland, the author paints a realistic picture of the tyranny of the Polish nobility, the greed of the Jewish Arendators, the misery of the serf, and the fierce determination of the Ukrainian Cossacks.