The Lipce villagers’ resistance council forms around a concrete threat: the manor intends to fell woodland at Wolf’s Hollow, which the villagers regard as their own. The episode exposes both the strength and the limits of their collective politics. Their opposition draws on shared injury and customary claims, yet its first prospective leader, Maciej Boryna, initially treats the dispute as a chance to improve his own position. When the danger becomes immediate, however, the villagers’ gathering gives their grievance a force that no private calculation can contain.

The threat to the woodland

The elders approach Maciej Boryna cautiously, sitting in a row and refusing to be hurried into stating their purpose. Kłąb eventually asks whether Boryna is with them. Their concern is the manor’s plan to cut down what they call their wood after Epiphany. Boryna first asks what matter they have come about; the answer makes clear that this is not simply timber being processed at the mill. The wood there, they explain, belongs to someone else, while the manor has sold additional timber at Wolf’s Hollow and means to fell it.

The villagers have little time to deliberate. The trees have already been marked and the forest measured; felling is expected to begin after Three Kings. One speaker insists that the manor will not cut anything without the villagers’ consent. Boryna initially proposes making a complaint to the commissioner, but the elders reject the idea as too slow: by the time the authorities meet and issue a prohibition, they fear, the woodland may already be cut. Their reference to what happened at Dębica gives the warning a precedent, while the image of the manor as a wolf that will take the whole flock if allowed a first bite makes the stakes communal rather than merely financial.

Boryna’s qualified agreement

Boryna voices agreement with the need to resist and is invited to a council at Kłąb’s house the following day, after church, where the farmers are to decide what the community will do. He says he must go to Wola to adjudicate a dispute among relatives dividing a farm, promising to stand by whatever the others decide. The elders leave morose despite his assent: they recognize that agreement in words is not the same as sincere commitment.

The narration makes Boryna’s reservation explicit. He privately reasons that the Voyt, the miller, and the leading farmers will not support the others. He hopes that if the manor hears he is making no demands, it will pay him more quickly over the cow and be more willing to negotiate separately. In his calculation, allowing the squire to fell the trees before the villagers protest might ultimately give him greater leverage: confrontation, court proceedings, and detention could put pressure on the manor. He therefore intends to wait rather than join the council in good faith.

That private strategy complicates Boryna’s public stature. He is a respected farmer whose presence matters to the community, but he also sees the forest dispute through the lens of his own lawsuit and bargaining position. The elders’ invitation recognizes his authority; their subdued departure registers their doubt about how he will use it. The council is thus shaped from the outset by a tension between collective resistance and individual advantage.

From council to collective mobilization

When the villagers later gather in the square before the inn, the crowd waits for the elders to fetch Boryna. His position as the village’s leading farmer makes him the expected leader: the people are reluctant to move without him. The scale of the gathering turns the earlier council’s invitation into a public test of authority. The blacksmith and The Miller attempt to deter the crowd, warning that the whole village may be imprisoned. The villagers disregard them, knowing that both men have interests tied to the manor.

Boryna addresses the assembled farmers and hired hands by naming a history of grievances. The manor, he says, is felling their forest, has refused them employment, and has repeatedly harried them; complaints and court cases have brought no remedy. The planned logging becomes the last straw in a longer account of confiscations and wrongs. His appeal frames resistance as both a matter of right and the only remaining course when the villagers believe no one else will defend them. He calls for the whole village, including anyone able to move, to go together and stop the felling.

The crowd’s response is immediate. Its cry to go to the forest becomes coordinated preparation: people hurry home to change, harness horses, and bring out sleighs. Women lament and children shout amid the movement of animals and vehicles. Within a short time, the villagers assemble on the poplar road, where Boryna is waiting with Płoszka, Kłąb, and other leaders. Farmers, hired hands, women, and older children join the procession, some riding and others going on foot. Poles, pitchforks, flails, and a few scythes are carried above the crowd. Before they set out, Boryna stands on his sleigh, crosses himself, and gives the signal to go.

Significance and limits

The episode links the villagers’ deliberation to direct action without presenting the two as identical. At first, they seek a decision through a council and consider a complaint to the authorities; they conclude that such procedures cannot protect the forest against the speed of the felling. Boryna’s speech converts that distrust into a claim of collective self-defence. The procession’s broad participation makes visible who is implicated in the village’s livelihood and who is willing to risk acting together.

Yet the mobilization does not erase differences of interest or guarantee a common political purpose. Boryna’s earlier plan to let the logging proceed for his own advantage reveals how readily the shared cause can be subordinated to private negotiation. His eventual leadership is therefore significant but not uncomplicated: it gives the crowd a recognized figure around whom to assemble, while the earlier council has already shown that the villagers cannot assume his loyalty. The threatened trees become the point at which those competing calculations meet, and the village’s answer is to act together before the opportunity for resistance disappears.