Let us return to the time of the Muscovite and Cossack invasion of Lithuania, commonly known as the catastrophic Flood. The GDL army, led by Grand Hetman Jonušas Radvila, beat the Cossacks in the Battle of Loyiv and captured Kiev. This calamity spurred Ukraine's Cossacks to form an alliance with Moscow and sign the Treaty of Pereyaslavl. This posed an imminent threat of conflict between the republic and Russia. In 1654, Russian forces entered GDL territory on the pretext of defending the Cossacks. The victory at Shklov, however, did not prevent the much larger enemy forces from marching into the heart of the country. On August 8, 1655, Vilnius was taken for the first time in history. It was destroyed by the Russian troops. Later, Trakai, Kaunas, Slanim, Grodno, and Lyda met the same fate. Everyone, regardless of age or gender, was handled ruthlessly and brutally.
The nuns believed they were safe at the convent and stayed there to pray. However, Cossacks were everywhere. An excerpt from the memoirs of the King's secretary, Stephen Medeksha: "We went into the parish churches and the convent for the women, because they were the only ones that remained intact, but inside the altars were thrown away, broken, burned in places, books torn, dead bodies scattered from coffins." (...) There was not a single healthy brick house to be found. (...) The roadsides were littered with dead, while villages, towns, and estates had been burned. The raped women lay like pieces of meat all over the city, some with their bodies defiled, bellies torn open, eyes gouged out, lips and noses severed, and intestines tied to trees."
The enemy soldiers were not hesitant to desecrate the crypts, either. The jewellery and riches from the corpses were simply pulled off or hacked off together with the entire part of the body. If they intended to mock a body, they would drag it around town attached to the tail of a horse. The townspeople were forced to evacuate and shelter in the villages.
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