Text, accompanied by a photograph, describing the ruins of Ostrog castle located near the Kyiv-Brest railway station. Ostrog was once the residence of the Ostrogski princes. It used to be a merchant town, whose history, linked to the fate of the Sanguszkos and the Ostrogskis, is given later in the article. Also recalled is the Jesuit college where the body of Karol Chodkiewicz was laid to rest (Source: "Ziemia. Tygodnik Krajoznawczy Ilustrowany', Warsaw 1910, no. 41, pp. 3, 8-9, after: Wielkopolska Biblioteka Cyfrowa).

A modernised reading of the text

Mansions, castles and palaces. Castle ruins in Ostrog

Twelve versts from the Kyiv-Brest railway station now lies the district town of Ostrog, once the famous residence of the Ostrogski princes in Volhynia. In the 16th century, it was known as a very lively trading town; it even had a famous printing house at that time, founded by Konstantin Ostrogski, Kyiv's voivode, son of a famous Lithuanian hetman in history. In this printing house, in 1551, Ivan Fedorov, a deacon exiled from Moscow, produced the first Bible in the Old Slavonic language. As early as the 15th century a defensive castle stood on a lofty hill in Ostrog, with an Orthodox church built by Vasyl Fedorovich Ostrogski in 1448; several years ago its beautiful ruins still stood, as can be seen in the attached drawing; now an Orthodox church has been built in their place, thus obliterating any trace of an interesting monument to the past, of which, however, a huge tower, a remnant of the former fortifications of the now defunct castle, has survived.

And this castle, the seat of the Ostrogski dukes, had an interesting page in its history, shedding excellent light on the character of the people and their mutual relations in the mid-16th century. Princess Beata, the widow of Prince Elijah Ostrogski, lived in the castle at that time, with her daughter Halška (Elisabeth), for whose hand Prince Dmitri Sanguszko, a notorious troublemaker of his time, was competing. Both mother and daughter were not in his favour and defended themselves as best they could against his insistent efforts, but Sanguszko had a strong supporter in the person of Prince Vasyl Ostrogski, brother of the late Prince Elijah.

When his wife Beata hid from them that she could not dispose of her daughter's hand, whose main guardian by the will of her late father is King Sigismund Augustus himself, then Prince Vasily, seeing that all persuasions and insistence on his part to break her mother's stubbornness had no effect, resorted to a more radical measure: behold, one day he bursts into the Ostrogski castle together with Prince Dmitry at the head of dozens of armed court cossacks, and, having laid several of the duchess's servants dead at the gate, takes possession of the castle and gives it over to his cossacks for booty.

And when," writes Łukasz Górnicki, a contemporary of this rape which was famous throughout Poland at the time, "the Cossacks had blunted their guns on the blood of innocent people, when, not saturated with cruelty but exhausted with work, they could no longer chop or shoot, Prince Vasily and Prince Dmitri ordered that the keys to the gates and to all the other buildings should be handed over to them. When this happened, the Cossacks followed the custom of plundering, which they also showed off in murder".

After the robbery, both men stood before the terrified princess Beata and in a long, exquisite speech, full of eloquent phrases, asked her to give her daughter's hand to prince Dmitri, and then, when the words did not have the desired effect, prince Vasily called a priest, whom he ordered to marry immediately. However, when the priest brought to him declared that he could not give the wedding, because he did not see the consent of the maiden, and advised to wait until the next day, then prince Vasily said:

"It is not for your advice, priest, that you have been summoned here, but if you do what you are told and do not want to, then this mace will bring you your will". The poor priest", Górnicki continues, "seeing not only the Duchess, but also himself being raped, began to speak again the words proper to the marriage, and the maiden's uncle, Prince Vasily, answered, as is customary at baptisms. The young lady's hand was taken and bound with a stole, during which time the young duchess cried out to God and the people that she was being unlawfully raped.

The ensuing case came before the royal court, which sentenced Dmitri to infamy and sent out universals for his capture; the condemned man then fled to Bohemia, where he was pursued and murdered by Zborowski, castellan of Kalisz. Halszka, meanwhile, sadly ended her life in madness. Until recently, there was another beautiful reminder of the past in Ostrog: the mighty walls of the Jesuit college, founded by Anna Chodkiewiczowa, Karol's wife.

It was in the vaults of the Jesuit church at this college that his corpse, transported from Kamieniec Podolski 14 months after the hero's death at Chocim, was laid to rest. In addition to his husband, the body of his wife, founder of the college and church, was also laid to rest there. After the abolition of the Jesuits in 1772, the school continued to be run by Basilian priests, but after the third partition it was closed and all the college buildings were given to the Orthodox clergy.

Since 1820, when a terrible fire destroyed these walls, their remains have stood unattended, disappearing more and more, dismantled barbarously by the local inhabitants; finally, in 1903, only the remnants of the foundations were taken out of the ground.