With Fire and Sword (Annotated)

With Fire and Sword is a sweeping historical novel set amid the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648, when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was convulsed by war with the Cossacks and Tatars. Sienkiewicz blends martial spectacle, romance, political intrigue, and patriotic mythmaking into a richly textured narrative, written in a vivid, ceremonious prose that recalls epic and chivalric tradition. As the o...