Volodyovski, having previously requested the old colonels and Pan Yan to look after the men during the attack, enjoyed himself to the full in the first rank. And every moment some Swedish hat fell before him in the throng, as if it had dived into the ground; sometimes a rapier, torn from the hand of a horseman, flew whistling above the rank, and at the same instant was heard the piercing cry of a man, and again a hat fell; a second took its place, then a third the place of the second; but Volodyovski pushed ever forward. His eyes glittered like two ill-omened sparks, but he was not carried away and did not forget himself; at moments, when he had no one at sword's length in front of him, he turned his face and blade somewhat to the right or left, and destroyed in the twinkle of an eye a horseman, with a movement apparently trifling; and he was terrible through these slight and lightning movements which were almost not human. As a woman pulling hemp disappears in it and is hidden completely, but by the falling stalks her road is known easily, so he vanished from the eye for a time in the throng of large men; but where soldiers were falling like stalks under the sickle of the harvester who cuts near the ground, there was Pan Michael. Pan Stanislav and the gloomy Yuzva Butrym, called Footless, followed hard in his track. At length the Swedish rear ranks began to push out from between the fences to the broad grass-plot before the church and the bell-tower, and after them came the front ranks. Now was heard the command of the officer, who wished evidently to bring all his men into action at once; and the oblong rectangular body of horsemen stretched out, deployed in the twinkle of an eye, into a long line to present its whole front. But Pan Yan, who directed the battle and led the squadron, did not imitate the Swede; he rushed forward with a dense column which, striking the now weaker line, broke it, as if with a wedge, and turned swiftly to the right toward the church, taking with this movement the rear of one half of the Swedes, while on the other half Mirski and Stankyevich sprang with the reserve in which were a part of the Lauda men and all of Kovalski's dragoons. Two battles now began; but they did not last long. The left wing, on which Pan Yan had struck, was unable to form, and scattered first; the right, in which was the commanding officer, resisted longer, but being too much extended, it began to break, to fall into disorder, and at last followed the example of the left wing. The grass-plot was broad, but unfortunately was enclosed on all sides by a lofty fence; and the church-servants closed and propped the opposite gate when they saw what was taking place.