Poland полностью

The incorporation of the area into Poland in 1569 had been followed by an influx of landless Polish szlachta eager to carve out estates for themselves in this fertile and underpopulated land. They were closely followed by Catholic clergy and large numbers of Jews, for the most part brought in by Polish landowners to act as middlemen, agents, rent collectors and innkeepers—all of which made them odious to the locals. This was particularly true of the Cossacks, who found themselves in a position not unlike that of the American Indians in the nineteenth century—the newcomers were settling and farming land which they considered to be common, and pushing them further and further into frontier territory.

The Cossacks were not so much a people as a way of life. The very name ‘Cossack’ derives from a Turkish-Tatar word denoting a free soldier, and that just about defines their identity and seminomadic way of life. The spiritual home of the Cossacks of western Ukraine, the Zaporozhian Host, was the Sich, a commune ruled by elected elders on the Zaporozhe, the islands beyond the rapids of the river Dnieper. The population of the Sich was variable, as almost anyone could be a Cossack if he wished.

The Cossacks inhabited a frontier zone constantly open to attack from the Principality of Moldavia, whose rulers owed allegiance alternatively to Poland, Turkey and Hungary, or from the Khanate of the Crimean Tatars, with its capital at Bakhchisaray, which was separated from the Commonwealth by a broad stretch of no-man’sland known as the Wild Plains. The Tatars were nominally subjects of the Sultan. Every spring their raiding parties or tchambouls set off along three trails running north into Muscovy, north-west into Poland, and west into Ukraine, burning and looting as they went. They took valuables and livestock, and above all people, leaving behind only the old or infirm. They would then return to the Crimea whence the wealthy would be ransomed and the rest shipped to the slave markets of Istanbul.

Although the Tatars were a nuisance, they never represented a serious threat on their own. But they could, and sometimes did, join up with an Ottoman army marching up through Moldavia, thereby effectively outflanking any Polish defence. Ever since the 1520s, when the Turks had ousted Venice and the Knights of St John from the eastern Mediterranean and taken over much of the Balkans, Moldavia and Ukraine presented a tempting theatre for expansion. The Commonwealth was directly threatened, and responded with two moves. In 1593 a Polish expedition placed a friendly vassal on the Moldavian throne and a pax polonica was imposed on the area, affording some security to the south-eastern reaches of the Commonwealth.

The other measure taken in the 1590s was the transformation of the Cossack community of the Zaporozhian Sich into an army, defined by a ‘register’ listing the number and pay of serving Cossacks. But while ‘His Majesty’s Zaporozhian Army’ wore the title with pride, it remained unaccountable, and instead of parrying Tatar raids, the Cossacks preferred to conduct their own. They would push into the Crimea or else climb into longboats, sail down the Dnieper and molest Turkish cities on the Black Sea. In 1606 they raided Kilia, Akerman and Varna. In 1608 they captured Perekop. In 1615 they sacked Trebizond and attacked Istanbul itself.

Relations between the Commonwealth and the Porte grew increasingly sour, and in 1620 Iskander Pasha invaded Moldavia. A small Polish force under Hetman żółkiewski set off in support of the vassal prince. The Poles were defeated, żólłiewski was killed and Field-Hetman Koniecpolski was taken prisoner. Tatar tchambouls swarmed into Poland as far as Lwów, in the rear of a second Polish army which had dug in at Chocim to hold off the Turks. Although the Poles managed to drive the Ottoman forces back then and on a similar occasion ten years later, the whole area remained vulnerable.

Nor had the creation of the Zaporozhian Army solved the internal problems of Ukraine. The Cossacks saw themselves as loyal subjects of the king, and they had a particular affection for Władysław IV. But they were constantly at loggerheads with local authorities, the landed szlachta and the agents of large estates who kept trying to pin non-register Cossacks down to the status of peasants. In 1630 the register was raised to 8,000, but the Poles were wary of letting the Cossacks grow too strong; relatively minor grievances were regularly translated into mutinies which were an excuse for organised banditry. In 1637, after one such mutiny, the register was reduced to 6,000. A fortress was built at Kudak on a bend in the Dnieper, from which a Polish garrison kept an eye on movements in the Sich.