The movie ends with the Cossacks victorious and entering Dubno. There, the Cossacks who left the siege to go home, rejoin the battle and large numbers of men and horses, both Cossack and Polish, are pushed over the edge to their deaths in the river below. Taras Bulba encounters his son on the field of battle and kills him for his betrayal before joining the general retreat to the edge of a cliff. When the Polish commander realizes the weakness of the Cossacks against the raiding force, he orders his whole army to attack. Meanwhile, the Cossacks have grown bored with the inactivity of the siege and a large number of them have departed for home. To save her, Andriy agrees to lead a raiding party to bring cattle into the starving city. He is captured and she is condemned to be burned at the stake for the crime of loving a Cossack. Hunger and disease set in and Andriy, fearing for the life of his Polish lover, sneaks into the city in an attempt to rescue her. Instead, the Cossacks attack the Polish army and drive it back into the city. Taras embraces Andriy’s lead and plans to betray the Poles and take back the Ukraine.Īssuming command of the Cossacks, Taras leads them to Dubno, where the Poles are expecting him to join them. Andriy and his accuser ride and jump their horses over a chasm until God chooses which one is right by having the accuser fall to his death. This is a serious offense that can only be resolved by a test of courage. When Andriy objects, he is accused of being a coward. There, word comes that the Poles want the Cossacks to raise an army to help them in a new war in the Baltic region. Ultimately, the brothers are forced to flee Kiev, returning to their father’s house on the Ukrainian steppes. There, the eldest son, Andriy, falls in love with a Polish princess Natalia Dubrov (played by Christine Kaufmann), to the ire of the locals, who treat the Cossack brothers like scum of the earth. Several years later, Taras sends his two sons, Andriy (Tony Curtis) and Ostap (Perry Lopez) to the academy at Kiev, to obtain a Polish education. Taras Bulba, one of the Cossack officers, returns home to raise his family but now it is under Polish dominion. As a result, the Poles become masters of Ukraine and the Cossacks are subjugated. However, it turns out that the Poles were merely holding back so that they could treacherously attack the Cossacks after they won the battle for them. The Poles are losing until the Cossacks arrive to save the day. It starts with a battle raging between the Turks and the Poles. The film opens in the 16th century, when Russia and Eastern Europe were divided into small sections and principalities that fought each other or against one enemy: in this case, Turkey.