The text describes the castle in Buczacz on the left bank of the Strypa River, the former seat of the Buczacki family, important in the Jagiellonian times. The history of Mikołaj Buczacki, chamberlain of Podolia in the times of Sigismund Augustus, is recalled, as well as the later history of the castle, including its falling into ruins (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1875, Series 2, T:15, pp. 376-377, after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text

Buczacz Castle

This once magnificent seat of the famous Jagiellonian Buczacz family, on the left bank of the Strypa river, in Galicia, in the Stanislav region, today in ruins, only the magnificence of its remains reminds us of the former grandeur and splendour of the knight's nest. Here Mikolaj Buczacki, chamberlain of Podolia during the reign of Sigismund Augustus, lived with his wife Anna Radziwiłłówna, and their daughter Katarzyna, born in this marriage, later bequeathed the castle and the town of Buczacz to the Potocki family, having given her hand in marriage to Andrzej Potocki, castellan of Kamieniec.

Here, in 1648, the Cossacks resisted and, unable to take the fortified castle by storm, only let the surrounding villages go up in smoke. Here, after the capture of Kamieniec in 1672, Mohammed IV encamped nearby, threatening the country, weakened by government and civil unrest. It was here, on 18 October that year, that the Treaty of Bucharest was concluded with the Turks, ceding the whole of Podolia to the infidels, a treaty whose humiliating conditions were only abolished by Sobieski in the Peace of Żórawno, 1676.

It was here that John III, encamped in 1687, gave war councils with a view to regaining Kamieniec, and from here he set off on his expedition on 26 August. However, the Turks sacked the Bucharest castle several times and it was badly damaged, so that by the end of the 17th century it was barely habitable. Later, it was supported by Mikolaj Potocki, the alderman of Kaniów, known for his sternness and eccentricities, who filled the whole of Ruthenia with the terror of his cruelty, but in return he built a church and a Basilian monastery in Buczacz, with a convocation for 10 noble children, built two brick churches and generously endowed the local parish.

Today, all that is left of these former greatness and ruins, just like the gold-bearing sand which, according to legend, was once extracted by the peasants from the surrounding streams, are only memories and piles of rubble, an eloquent testimony to the insignificance of everything human.