On the next day the governor despatched four men and a corporal to arrest the count, who, however, managed to arrest them instead, and to shut them up in his cellar. These were duly followed by a regular detachment of troops, who approached the house with as much circumspection as though it had been a fortress. Beniowski went out to meet them, and killed three of their number; the rest ran away. Then came another detachment, with a cannon. The officer in command allowed Beniowski to approach within fifteen paces, as though willing to hold a parley; but when they had got so near, the confederates suddenly opened fire, and those of the soldiers who did not fall down in terror, ran away outright, so that the cannon became the property of the insurgents. The latter then re-formed their ranks and marched straight upon the fort. The sentinel, seeing the cannon in their hands, mistook them for the detachment which had left in the morning, and lowered the drawbridge. Beniowski, as soon as he found himself inside the place, ran to the governor’s room, with a view of saving him from the violence of the confederates; but the enraged official, incensed at finding himself outwitted, snapped a pistol in his preserver’s face, and sprang at Beniowski’s throat with such violence that the latter was about to defend himself, when one of the confederates spared him the trouble by shooting the unfortunate governor dead. Towards nightfall, however, the Cossacks approached the fort, and prepared to assault it; but their ladders were too short, and the flashes from their muskets serving to betray their position, the confederates were enabled to point their cannon upon them with very destructive effect. On the following day the exiles shut up in a church all the women and children of the city, to the number of about a thousand, and sent word to the eight hundred Cossacks who invested the place, that if they did not at once surrender their arms and give hostages for their peaceable behaviour, the building should be fired. The Cossacks accepted the conditions, and the insurgents remained masters of the place, the former having seven of their number seriously wounded, and nine killed.
Some days after, the exiles took possession of the war corvette, _St. Peter and St. Paul_; and after they had rendered the last honours of war to the poor governor, they occupied themselves in fitting out the vessel. The hostages were then sent back to the city, with the exception of the chancellor’s secretary, who was detained on board to serve as cook, as a punishment for his malicious intentions.