[ETW AAR] "A Farmer's Son," or, "With the 5th"
A Brief History;
I can still recall the crescent-laden banners of the Ottoman Empire's patrolling cavalry as they rode past my home as a boy. Those were sad times; those of us who embraced Allah and Mohammed's teachings were given respite from taxation. The rest of us, who retained our Catholic or Orthodox faiths, were taxed double to make up for this.
I would have to run inside as the local Magistrate surrounded the house and huddle with my three brothers and sister as my Father paid the taxes in crops, money, livestock, or whatever form he could.
It was 1699, when I was just 12 years old, that the new Magistrate came to collect taxes. A corrupt young man, distant cousin to a sultan, he stood a head shorter than my father. His guards, however, did not look impressed. My father was a giant; a head over two meters with shoulders as wide as the doorways. He was to made an example of that day.
The Magistrate ordered him to pay four times our normal tax, and we had nowhere near enough to pay; much less feed ourselves. So the Magistrate had my father blinded, his eyes gouged out by hot knives; as he screamed in pain my two older brothers were slain trying to free my father. My sister was hauled off as payment, and my baby brother and I were left to care for my blind father on a farm too large for us to tend.
This was life in Ottoman Moldavia. For three years we dispatched messages to the Czarina to the North, but Russia was about to crumble; enemies to the West and South threatened rural Russia, while Russia's Navy was pummeled at Sea.
All three years my village paid taxes to the Magistrate at the tip of a spear or bayonet. Yet all three years the state of Ottoman control over Moldavia and the coast of the Black Sea slipped. Russia's ceding of the Crimea in early 1702 shook the Ottoman Empire as Austria slipped down the coast of Dalmatia towards Greece.
Then war came to us. For decades we had heard of a loose confederation of men to the west, but apart from trade with their eastern farmers we had no contact with them. That all changed in a period of days.
"Aleksy," my brother shrieked one morning, waking me up. I had been sick and bed ridden for a week, and was just beginning to recover. "Aleksy, come quick! Horsemen!"
"What kind of horsemen?"
"They look like soldiers. They're passing on the road, and some are headed this way!"
"What soldiers? Why? They were just here two months ago for their taxes. Is it the Russians?"
"No, I don't think so Alek; but here they are, at the door!"
The sound of hooves surrounded the well outside the front door. A man in a large cloak and wearing gold spurs approached, still mounted, as soon as Aleksy opened the door.
"Hello boy. Where is the man of the House?"
"My father is blind sir. The local Magistrate saw to that when we could not pay taxes."
"I see. Well no matter of that, lad. The local Magistrate is dead. King August of Poland has seen to that. We now control Moldavia, and have driven the Ottoman lords south, past the mountains. What is your name lad?"
"I am Aleksy Szczuka, sir."
"I need a Scout Aleksy. Someone who knows Moldavia, and more importantly these parts. You can not be more than sixteen? Seventeen?"
"I am fifteen, sir; but my father and brother, I cannot leave them."
"I will compensate your father for your service, boy; I swear it."
That was the day I met the Polish General Pawel Lampicki, a man who would shape the lives not only of myself and my friends, but who would revitalize all of Northern and Eastern Europe in the face of Prussian oppression.
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