Anonymous ID: bba8e6 Aug. 29, 2023, 6:23 p.m. No.19457211   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>7228

"The first ordeal of the captive was the long march to the Crimea. Often in chains and always on foot, many of the captives died en route. Since on many occasions the Tatar raiding party feared reprisals or, in the seventeenth century, attempts by Cossack bands to free the captives, the marches were hurried. Ill or wounded captives were usually killed rather than be allowed to slow the procession. An Ottoman traveler in the mid-sixteenth century who witnessed one such march of captives from Galicia marveled that any would reach their destination—the slave markets of Kefe. He complained that their treatment was so bad that the mortality rate would unnecessarily drive their price up beyond the reach of potential buyers such as himself. A Polish proverb stated: “Oh how much better to lie on one's bier, than to be a captive on the way to Tartary.”