Land Guard (Straż Ziemska)

The Land Guard (Straż Ziemska) is the police force of the Russian administration in Congress Poland that enters Lipce in pursuit of Rocho. Its role is defined through a specific village search rather than a sustained institutional portrait: gendarmes arrive at Antek Boryna’s cottage, inspect the household and other homes, question villagers, and leave without finding the person they seek. The episode makes imperial authority physically present in the village, but also shows how its power depends on information and cooperation it cannot simply command.

Institutional identity

A note in the novel identifies a gendarme as a policeman belonging to the Land Guard (Straż Ziemska). The force answers to the district governor and forms part of the Russian imperial administration in Congress Poland. This places it within a chain of state authority beyond Lipce, rather than among the village’s own institutions or customary decision-makers. The distinction matters in the search: the gendarmes arrive as representatives of an external administration, empowered to enter homes and question residents, while the villagers watch and discuss their conduct among themselves.

The narrative offers no detailed account of the force’s organization, ranks, or ordinary duties. Its institutional character instead emerges through jurisdiction and procedure. The gendarmes’ authority allows them to conduct a search across private cottages and their adjoining spaces; their dependence on local knowledge, however, becomes apparent when repeated inquiries produce no result. The Land Guard is thus recognizable not through an abstract description of police administration but through the encounter between official power and a community that knows one another’s homes, movements, and loyalties.

Arrival in Lipce

The search begins amid unease. Dogs bark more loudly in the farmsteads, children peer out from orchards and behind fences, and women gather in quiet conversation with visible apprehension. Although one villager has heard that the army may be coming from the woods, the force that reaches Antek’s home is identified as gendarmes. The difference between rumor and arrival gives the episode its first tension: the village senses an approaching authority before it knows exactly what is happening.

At Antek’s cottage, the warning is direct. The gendarmes are already near the pond and are coming for him, news that makes Rocho recognize that he may be their actual object. Hanka stands at the threshold and weeps. Antek rises from the bench and answers the order to open the door by saying that it is already open. The exchange establishes the immediate stakes without explaining the wider case against Rocho: the officers have come to search, and Antek’s household is now exposed to their scrutiny.

The search and its limits

The gendarmes enter the cottage while guards go to inspect the orchard and outbuildings. Antek has to open up and show them everything. Hanka remains by the window nursing her youngest child as the officers search the home; the villagers have gathered in the road, watching in silence. The scene places inspection, domestic vulnerability, and public observation side by side. The search reaches into ordinary household space, but it also unfolds before an audience that will later compare accounts of what happened.

The officers examine every corner, including beneath the beds, but find nothing. Their failure does not end the operation at once. They go from cottage to cottage, looking around and questioning everyone they can, while a warning makes clear that anyone found to be hiding Rocho could be taken along with him. Antek says that he understands the warning but does not know what it concerns. The authorities can extend suspicion beyond their named target; the threat makes the consequences of concealment a matter for the whole household.

The search continues until sunset. By then, herds are returning from pasture and the gendarmes ride away without accomplishing their purpose. The village’s relief is immediate, and conversation replaces the silence of the roadside. Residents recount what happened at the Kłąbs’ and at Grzela’s, each with a claim to have seen events clearly and to have been less afraid—or more provocative—than the others. The failed operation becomes shared local knowledge, circulated through competing eyewitness accounts.

Authority and the village community

The episode presents the Land Guard (Straż Ziemska) as an arm of state power capable of entering homes, inspecting property, questioning residents, and threatening detention. Yet the search does not establish that the force can readily secure the cooperation or information it needs. Officers examine multiple homes and leave empty-handed; villagers observe, remember, and retell the operation. The contrast is not proof that the community defeats the state, but it shows the practical limits of coercion when the sought person is not found and local knowledge remains elusive.

That contrast resonates with the novel’s broader depiction of Lipce as a community already burdened by disputes over land, work, and authority. In another conflict, villagers describe unsuccessful appeals to courts and officials while insisting on their claim to the forest; in a separate discussion, they consider acting together to discourage German buyers from acquiring Podlesie. These episodes do not identify the Land Guard as an actor in those disputes. They do, however, place the search within a narrative world where official power, local claims, and collective action repeatedly meet without becoming the same thing. The gendarmes’ visit gives that tension a domestic scale: the administration reaches the cottage door, while the village’s response takes shape in watching, remembering, and speaking together.