International brigades of mice and rats join forces to defend the rodents of Poland, threatened with extermination at the paws of cats favoured by the ancient ruler King Popiel, a sybaritic, cowardly ruler⊠The Hag of Discord incites a vicious rivalry between monastic orders, which only the good monksâ common devotion to⊠fortified spirits⊠is able to allay⊠The present translation of the mock epics of Polandâs greatest figure of the Enlightenment, Ignacy Krasicki, brings together the Mouseiad, the Monachomachia, and the Anti-monachomachia â a tongue-in-cheek âretractionâ of the former work by the author, criticised for so roundly (and effectively) satirising the faults of the Church, of which he himself was a prince. Krasicki towers over all forms of eighteenth-century literature in Poland like Voltaire, Swift, Pope, and LaFontaine all rolled into one. While his fables constitute his most well-known works of poetry, in the words of American comparatist Harold Segel, âthe good bishopâs mock-epic poems [âŠ] are the most impressive examples of his literary gifts.â This English translation by Charles S. Kraszewski is rounded off by one of Krasickiâs lesser-known works, The Chocim War, the poetâs only foray into the genre of the serious, Vergilian epic.