Amongst other unfortunate results of the failure of the confederates' plan of operations, badly concerted by the foreign general Dumouriez, who was defeated by Sauvarof, and which proved so disastrous in its consequences to the confederation of Bar, Sava, who from the first had disapproved of the arrangements in question, being suddenly pursued by the Mite of Sauvarof 's army, consisting of far superior forces and a numerous train of artillery, was driven on the night of the 25th April, (1771), between the defiles of Szrensk. Thus hemmed in within the narrow limits of two dykes, the intrepid partizan warrior faced about, and resolved either to die on the spot or to cut a free passage for himself and his troops over the bodies of his pursuers. The conflict was fierce and desperate on either side, and lasted the whole of the following day. Sava repeatedly rallied his cavalry under the murderous Russian fire of grape-shot and musketry; he took, lost, and retook five times in succession the fatal dyke: and having at last found a lateral passage towards Przasnysz, he succeeded in striking down all that opposed his exit at this point, and had mounted to the roof of a house, to give from y thence the last orders to his already victorious troops, when a gun-shot shattered his leg. Fearing that this accident might damp the ardour of his soldiers, he had himself carried amongst them on a litter, encouraging them by his presence, and directing their final attack. He had, indeed, the satisfaction of beholding the Russians beaten and pursued, but unable longer to support the increasing agony of his wound, aggravated by the motion of the litter, he gave orders to his troops to continue their march, and had himself secretly conveyed into the interior of a neighbouring forest. But a Jewish surgeon who attended him gave information of his retreat; he was delivered up to the Russian Colonel Salomon, whom Sava had often defeated; and who, astonished at the capture he had thus made, treated, it is said, with all possible kindness the unhappy chief, to whom he ordered that every attention should be paid. But Sava, exasperated by pain, and disdaining to owe any kind of obligation to a Russian, whom he never by any chance spared, tore the bandages from his wounds, opened them afresh, and enlarged them with his nails, pertinaciously refusing to accept of the projBfered aid. Subsequently he was claimed by Sauvarof, who, in revenge for the repeated discomfitures which his lieutenants had met with at the hands of the now helpless Sava, overwhelmed him with insult, treated him with cruelty, and finally, exasperated by his haughty answers, had him put to death.
Such was the end of this terrible partizan chief, who, with his own hand, killed thirty-two Russians, defeated them several times in the field, and who contemplated raising the whole of the Cossacks in open insurrection against Russia. In order to form some idea of Sava's military capacity, it may be remarked that, in the short space of five months, having scarcely 1,800 men, he had destroyed three Russian divisions, had taken fifteen pieces of cannon, two military chests, one hundred military waggons, eighty officers, and some standards: and all this at a period when the Russian army was in its highest state of efficiency and discipline.
His advice to the confederates had always been that king Poniatowski should be dethroned or killed without much ado, and that Repnin and Drevitch should, if possible, be caught alive, in order that they might be torn to pieces limb from limb. The latter had ordered the right hand to be severed from each of three hundred confederate prisoners, and it is said that he himself cut off the hands of nine of these unfortunate victims, whom he afterwards paraded through the streets of Warsaw. Sava, by way of retaliation, had the soldiers of this Russian man-butcher put to the sword without mercy.
Kazimir Pulawski, Sava, and Zaremba were beyond all doubt the three most able chieftains of the Confederation of Bar. Pulawsld defeated Sauvarof once, and was in his turn twice defeated, but rose again more formidable than ever. We have just mentioned the fate of Sava.
Zaremba, formerly a major in the army, was never once beaten nor taken by surprise. Impatient of any superior command, he could never be brought to make his operations subservient to any combined or paramount plan of attack; consequently, he always acted individually, or in a manner on his own account. At a later period, nevertheless, losing all hope of ultimate success, he deserted the cause of the Confederation, abandoned his troops, and went over to the Prussians, by whom as well as by the Russians he allowed himself to be corrupted.
In the course of the struggle against this famous Confederation, the Russians lost upwards of 65,000 of their best troops.