The beginning of the uprising led by Bogdan Khmelnytsky. The uprising of Bogdan Khmelnytsky. New King Jan Casimir

The first military force of the rebels was the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, who elected Khmelnitsky as their hetman. Zaporizhzhya Sich was located on the islands beyond the rapids of the Dnieper and was a kind of "Cossack republic". The main occupation of the Cossacks was military raids on the possessions of the Crimean Khan and the Turkish Sultan. They received money and weapons from the Polish king, but on occasion they were ready to direct their weapons against him. At the same time, the Cossacks more than once took part in hostilities against the Moscow troops.

In addition to the Cossacks, the Ukrainian city Cossacks also joined the detachments of Bohdan Khmelnitsky - the local military service class, united in regiments and on the salary of the Polish king. However, the lists (registers) for receiving money, weapons and clothing from the royal treasury did not include all the city Cossacks. The Cossacks, who were not included in the register, considered themselves unfairly offended.

The Crimean Khan was a temporary ally of the rebels in the fight against the Polish king. He wanted to use the movement of Bogdan Khmelnitsky for his own purposes - to capture booty and receive generous rewards for military services.

Moscow closely followed the events in Ukraine. Back in 1648, Khmelnitsky turned to the Moscow government with a request for help. However, the cautious Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich at first limited himself to sending bread and weapons to the rebellious Cossacks. Moscow diplomats stood up for the Cossacks before the Polish king. Only in 1653, when Khmelnytsky's affairs went very badly, did the tsar order secretly to begin preparations for a big war. The secret became clear after in October 1653 the Zemsky Sobor spoke in favor of the annexation of Ukraine.

In January 1654 the Moscow embassy headed by the boyar V. V. Buturlin took an oath of allegiance from the Ukrainian nobility and representatives of the cities. This historical event took place in the city of Pereyaslavl near Kyiv and was called Pereyaslav Rada. The conditions for the reunification of Ukraine with Russia corresponded to the wishes of the rebels. The tsar raised the number of registered Cossacks to 60,000 and retained autonomy for Ukraine.

By the time of the uprising of Bogdan (or Zinovy) Khmelnitsky in the territory of Southwestern Russia, Polish influence had, in fact, turned into a pronounced feudal exploitation. Great dissatisfaction was caused by the signing and operation of the Brest Union, according to which the Ukrainian Church came under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church. Representatives of the gentry and magnates owned vast territories, and the Russian nobles, who became Polonized and converted to Catholicism, did not lag behind them. For example, the Vyshnevetsky princes completely owned the entire Poltava region. The memoirs of contemporaries say that the local population "had fewer rights than galley slaves."

Beginning in 1625, they periodically flared up, which were quickly suppressed and did not give any noticeable results.

The beginning of the riot

Despite the fact that Bogdan Khmelnitsky was in the position of the Chigirinsky centurion, and he had to experience the boundless terror of the Polish lords.
The details of the incident are interpreted differently in the sources. In particular, information differs about the fate of one of his sons, who was flogged half to death or killed at the age of 10. It is known that the Subbotinsky estate, which Khmelnitsky owned, was ruined and taken away by the elder's assistants. The Polish woman, with whom the Chigirinsky centurion lived after the death of his wife, was taken away in an unknown direction. The Polish court refused to satisfy the centurion's claim on the pretext that the documents for the Subbotinsky estate were not properly executed, and the woman was not his married wife.
To restore justice, Khmelnitsky also met with the king, whom he knew, but he, not wanting to come into conflict with the influential gentry, did not take any action himself. In many historical books and even scientific articles it is mentioned that in response to Khmelnitsky's claims, the king replied: "You have your saber." One way or another, but after that the Chigirinsky centurion went to Zaporozhye.

Hetman Khmelnytsky

Bogdan Khmelnitsky belonged to a respected Cossack family, he received an excellent education and, according to historians, during his studies he demonstrated outstanding talents. Along with this, he was an excellent warrior and fought at the beginning of his military career together with his father. In one of the battles, his father was killed, and Bogdan was captured, from which he did not manage to get out immediately.
The uprising demonstrated not only Khmelnytsky's patriotism and his outstanding gift as a military leader, but also excellent organizational skills. Already on the way to Zaporozhye, he managed to create a small detachment, which, however, managed to defeat several medium-sized Polish military formations.

The course of the uprising and the most striking battles

One of the most acute problems in organizing the Khmelnytsky uprising was the lack of good cavalry at his disposal. Proclaimed hetman in Zaporozhye, Khmelnytsky in this respect counted on attracting the Tatars to his side. Having won Khan Islam-Giray over to his side under the patronage of familiar Tatar murzas, Khmelnitsky accomplished what his predecessors only dreamed of. However, the Tatars at that time had their own reasons to join fighting- Poland stopped paying them the agreed tribute. The beginning of the uprising dates back to January 1648.
The main battles of the first stage of the uprising can be considered the battles at Yellow Waters and the battle of Korsun. The main opponents of the proclaimed hetman were Stefan Potocki and Martyn Kalinovsky. Khmelnytsky ruthlessly defeated the Polish army near Zhovti Vody, deceiving the hopes of the commanders for the Kodak castle, which was a good fortification on the way of the Cossacks. The hetman and his army simply bypassed the fortress, wasting no time and incurring no losses.
The battle of Korsun became an even more difficult defeat for the Poles - not only a twenty-thousandth army was destroyed, but also its commanders were captured, who were later handed over to the Tatars for help and support.

The situation in the territory where the uprising took place periodically changed. In 1648, Vladislav IV, who was tolerant and loyal to the Cossacks, died. Along with this, independent pockets of rebellion broke out, more and more new forces joined the army of Khmelnitsky. Driven to extremes, the peasants and non-registered Cossacks were hardened and sometimes staged a real massacre. The Jews who lived in this area were especially affected. Khmelnitsky, fearing that he would not be able to control the rebellious force that had escaped to freedom, turned to Russia for protection. An additional problem was the internal discord and contempt of the Cossacks for the peasants.
The result of the first stage of the uprising was negotiations during the siege of Lvov and Zamostye. In order to give rest to the army that was tired and suffering from the plague, the hetman lifted the siege, taking an indemnity.
The second stage coincided with the end of the 30 Years' War. In addition, the Crimean Khan, who received gifts from the new king, Jan Casimir, refused to fight further and demanded a peace.
Jan Kazimierz was not going to satisfy Khmelnitsky's demands, but the result of the negotiations was the signing of peace on compromise terms, including:

• the formation of an autonomous Hetmanate with an elected hetman and the supreme authority of the All-Cossack Rada,
• formation of a register of 40 thousand sabers,
• amnesty for the participants of the rebellion,
• prohibition of Jews to stay on the territory of the autonomy.

Despite the careful preparation of the third stage, the battles during this period (since January 1651) went on with varying success. The defeat in the Battle of Berestets led to the need to sign the unfavorable Bila Tserkva peace. After the victory at Batog came the defeat at Zhvanets.
The end was put in place when, after Khmelnytsky's appeal for a protectorate in Moscow, the Zemsky Sobor decided to grant the hetman's request. At the Pereyaslav Rada on January 8, 1654, the Cossacks swore an oath to the Russian sovereign and passed under his hand with all possessions.
The uprising of Khmelnytsky was one of the few in history that were crowned with success. The long-awaited freedom from Polish oppression was obtained.

The unbearable social, religious and national conditions in which the population of Ukraine-Rus was during the period of the “golden rest” (1638-48) created all the prerequisites for an outbreak of popular anger and the beginning of a liberation struggle.

She did not keep herself waiting long. The immediate cause was the violence of representatives of the Polish administration over one registered Cossack - Chigirinsky centurion Bogdan Khmelnitsky.

In the absence of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, a Polish official, the underage Chigirinsky, Chaplinsky, attacked his farm Subbotovo, robbed him, took away his wife (according to some sources, she was not the legal wife, but the concubine of the widower Khmelnitsky) and ordered his servants to flog his young son, after which the boy died a few days later.

Such attacks were a common occurrence in the days of the "golden rest" and, as a rule, took place with complete impunity for Catholic Poles. Chaplinsky's attack also went unpunished. All Khmelnitsky's attempts to restore his rights and punish the rapist not only ended in failure, but Khmelnitsky himself was imprisoned by the Polish authorities.

Thanks to the intercession of influential friends from the foreman of the registered Cossacks, Khmelynitsky was released on bail, but he no longer returned to his duties as a centurion Chigirinsky, and with several "like-minded people" he went "to the Bottom". "Nizom" then called the center of the fugitives who did not submit to the Poles, the Cossacks and Cossacks, located on the island of Butsky, lower along the Dnieper than the official Zaporizhzhya Sich, which at that time was completely under Polish control.

Having reached the "Niz", Khmelnitsky announced that he was starting a fight "with the gentry autocracy" and, according to a contemporary, "everything that is only alive" began to flock to him.

Biography of Khmelnitsky

Before proceeding to a description of further events, it is necessary to say a few words about Bohdan Khmelnitsky himself, who led the uprising and directed the events.

There are many legends, thoughts and tales about Bogdan Khmelnitsky, but accurate biographical data about this outstanding son of Ukraine are very scarce.

It is known with certainty that he comes from a minor Ukrainian Orthodox gentry, since he had his own family coat of arms, which only the gentry had. His father, Mikhail Khmelnitsky, served with the wealthy Polish gentry magnate Zholkevsky, and then with his son-in-law Danilovsky, with whose detachment he took part in the war between Poland and Turkey and died in the battle of Tsetsora in Moldova (in 1620). Together with him was his son Bogdan-Zinovy, who was captured and only two years later was redeemed by his mother from Turkish captivity.

Khmelnitsky received a good education for his time. He studied at one of the Jesuit schools. Which one exactly is unknown. Most likely, in Lvov, this statement is based on data preserved in the archives that the Poles, during negotiations with Khmelnitsky, included in the embassy the Lvov priest-Jesuit Mokrisky, who, as the chronicle says, at one time taught Khmelnitsky "poetics and rhetoric." Rhetoric was taught in the 8th grade of the Jesuit colleges. Consequently, Khmelnytsky completed a full eight-year college course. Further education in the college was already purely theological, and people who did not choose a spiritual career usually completed their education in "rhetoric", that is, in the 8th grade. For that time, this education was not small. Khmelnytsky spoke Tatar and Turkish, which he learned while in captivity in Constantinople. In addition, Polish and Latin, which was taught at the college.

Khmelnytsky spoke and wrote in Russian, that is, in the then "bookish language" (common for Russians and for Ukrainians, with known, however, dialectical deviations), as can be seen from his surviving letters.

What positions did Khmelnitsky hold in Cossack army at the beginning of his career - is unknown. It is also unknown whether he took part in the uprisings of the 1920s and 1930s, although legends attribute him to active participation in these uprisings.

For the first time we meet the name of Khmelnitsky among the four ambassadors to the king after the suppression of the uprising in 1638. It must be assumed that he occupied a prominent position (according to some data of a military clerk), once he got to the embassy to the king. Somewhat later, there is information about his appointment as a centurion Chigirinsky. The fact that Khmelnytsky was appointed to this position by the Poles, and not chosen by the Cossacks, indicates that the Poles considered him loyal and casts doubt on the claims of the legend about his active participation in previous uprisings. If this really happened, then the Poles, of course, would have known about it and would not have agreed to his appointment.

Khmelnitsky was married to the sister of the Nizhyn Colonel Somka - Anna and had several children. Accurate information is about three sons and two daughters. Of the sons, one died from a beating by Chaplinsky, the second (eldest), Timothy was killed in battle, and the third, Yuri, after the death of Khmelnitsky was proclaimed hetman.

By the time of the uprising, Khmelnytsky was a widower and, kidnapped by Chaplinsky, his wife (and according to some sources, a cohabitant) was his second wife and stepmother of his children from his first wife.

The immediate reason for the rise of the Khmelnitsky uprising was, as indicated above, the violence committed against Khmelnitsky and left unpunished. But the reasons lay, of course, not in a personal insult and violence against Khmelnitsky, but in the violence, insults and humiliation that Ukrina-Rus experienced as a result of the social, religious and national oppression of the Commonwealth.

In the foregoing it has been described what exactly these oppressions consisted of, and how they increased all the time, making life unbearable, and therefore there is no need to repeat them.

Motives for the uprising

It is hardly necessary to engage in an analysis of which particular motives were predominant in the uprising: social, religious or national. Some historians stick out the social motive, believing that all the rest are subordinate to it; others, on the contrary, put the national question at the forefront, while still others, finally, consider the religious question to be the main motive for the uprising. In fact, it is most likely that all three causes acted simultaneously, being mutually connected and difficult to separate from one another.

Social oppression was experienced by the entire population, except for the feudal magnate Orthodox elite (such as Kisil, Prince Chetvertinsky), the highest hierarchs of the Orthodox Church and, in part, the Orthodox gentry and foremen of the registered Cossacks.

Everyone suffered from religious oppression and humiliation, not excluding the Orthodox magnates. There is a known case when Prince Ostrozhsky, who victoriously commanded the Polish army in the war with Moscow, was forced to endure humiliation during the celebration of victory only because he was Orthodox.

And, finally, national inequality, which the Poles have always emphasized in every possible way, equally offended all non-Poles, from a serf to a magnate or an Orthodox bishop.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the call of Bohdan Khmelnytsky to free himself from Polish violence found a warm response among the entire population of Ukraine-Rus.

Not all segments of the population understood this liberation in the same way: for the magnates and the gentry, it ended full equation with the Poles-tycoons and the gentry; for part of the registered Cossacks, foremen and wealthy, the release ended in an equation with the gentry, with the preservation of both the first and second cases of social order; and only for the peasantry, the poor Cossacks and the philistinism, the liquidation of the existing social system was inextricably linked with liberation.

Depending on this, a conciliatory, compromise mood existed in a certain part of the population of Ukraine-Rus, which more than once led to capitulation during previous uprisings.

Purpose of the uprising

What was the ultimate goal of the uprising? Historians differ on this issue. The task was quite definite: to be released. What's next for liberation? Some believe that the ultimate goal of the uprising was the creation of a completely independent state; others believe that the goal of the leaders of the uprising was to create an autonomous unit within the borders of the Commonwealth, following the example of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; still others, finally, are of the opinion that the ultimate goal was the creation of an autonomous federal unit with its entry into the Muscovite state.

The option of creating an independent state, which Grushevsky and his school adhere to, does not stand up to any criticism, because from the handwritten letters of Khmelnitsky preserved in the Moscow archives it is clear that already in the first months of the uprising, after brilliant victories over the Poles, Khmelnitsky asked Moscow not only for help, but also consent to the reunification of Ukraine with Moscow. This request for reunification is repeated in the future, both in Khmelnitsky's letters and in numerous documents of that time.

The second option: the creation of a Russian principality, following the example of Lithuania, without a break with Poland, undoubtedly had its supporters, but only among the upper strata of society - the ruling classes. The example of the unlimited freedom of the Polish gentry attracted not only the magnates and the gentry, but also part of the foreman of the registered Cossacks, who dreamed of "nobility", that is, to receive the rights of the gentry. Later, the desire of this group was realized in the so-called "Gadiach Treaty" (1658), according to which unsuccessful attempts were made to create a "Russian Principality" within the Commonwealth.

And, finally, the third option is reunification with Moscow with the preservation of broad autonomy or federation, which, as a result of the uprising, was carried out, although not completely.

This last option is not only historically accurate, but it was also logically inevitable, given both the foreign political situation and the mood of the masses. Having such neighbors as aggressive Turkey, which was then at the zenith of its power, and no less aggressive Poland - at that time one of the strongest states in Europe - Ukraine had no chance to withstand the struggle alone with them, which would have been inevitable if a separate state was created. . Khmelnitsky, regardless of his personal sympathies, about which there are different opinions, of course, understood this very well. He also knew the inclination of the broad masses of the people towards the same faith and consanguineous Moscow. And it is natural that he chose the path of reunification with Moscow.

The international situation at that time was extremely complex and stormy: in England there was a revolution, in France - internal turmoil, the so-called "Fronde"; Germany and central Europe were exhausted and exhausted by the Thirty Years' War. Moscow, shortly before the outbreak of the uprising, concluded with Poland an unfavorable "eternal peace" for itself. It was difficult to count on the violation of this peace and the entry of Moscow into a new war, which would have been inevitable if Moscow had actively taken the side of the rebellious Polish colony - Ukraine, it was difficult.

Nevertheless, Khmelnitsky started the war: the patience of the people was exhausted. Organizing for a campaign on the "volost" (the populated part of Ukraine) the people who arrived to him, Khmelnitsky sent an embassy to the Crimean Khan with a request for help. It was a good time to ask. Crimea was dissatisfied with Poland, as she carelessly paid the annual "gift" with which she paid off the raids; and besides, due to the lack of crops and the loss of livestock, the Tatars were very inclined to replenish their shortcomings by robbery during the war. Khan agreed to help Khmelnitsky and sent at his disposal a detachment of 4,000 people under the command of Tugai Bey.

Khmelnitsky needed Tatar help at first, and he was forced to go for it, although he knew perfectly well that nothing would keep the Tatars from robberies and violence during the campaign. Khmelnytsky even had to send his son Timothy to the Khan as a hostage, because without this, Khan Islam Giray III did not want to send his army. In addition, the presence of the Khan's troops at Khmelnitsky guaranteed him against the possibility of bribery of the Tatars by Poland and a blow to the rear.

By the end of April 1648, Khmelnitsky already had at his disposal 10,000 troops (including the Tatars), with whom he was preparing to move to the “volost”, rejecting all attempts at reconciliation that the Poles made to him.

First of all, he expelled the Polish detachment from Zaporozhye, and the Cossacks proclaimed him hetman and joined his army.

The news of the uprising and the capture of Zaporozhye by the rebels alarmed the Polish administration and they decided to nip the uprising in the bud. Pretending that they want to make peace with Khmelnitsky and promising him mountains of gold, the Poles quickly gathered their forces to fight him. Meanwhile, all of Ukraine, having responded to the calls of Khmelnytsky, was preparing for a fight... The Polish hetman Potocki wrote to the king: would not prepare attempts on the life and property of their lords and owners "...

The crown hetman N. Pototsky, without waiting for the concentration of all his forces, sent a vanguard of 4,000 under the command of his son Stephen, and ordered the registered Cossacks to sail down the Dnieper, in the Kodak region, to meet with the Polish avant-garde and move together to Zaporozhye. The main Polish forces, under the command of the crown hetman himself and his assistant, the crown hetman Kalinovsky, slowly advanced behind the vanguard.

Yellow Waters

Khmelnytsky did not wait for the connection of all Polish forces. He went out to meet them and on April 19 attacked the advanced Polish units. The Poles could not stand the battle, retreated and built a fortified camp in the tract Zhovti Vody in order to expect reinforcements from the registered Cossacks sailing along the Dnieper to join them. But the Cossacks rebelled, killed their own, loyal to the Poles, foreman: General Yesaul Barabash, Colonel Karaimovich and others, and, having chosen Khmelnitsky's friend Filon Jalali as their hetman, joined not the Poles, but Khmelnitsky and took part in the battle that began, which ended in complete defeat of the Poles. Stefan Potocki and the commissar of registered Cossacks Shemberg, who was with him, were captured. Only one soldier survived from the entire Polish army, who managed to escape and bring the news of the defeat at Zhovti Vody and the capture of his son to the crown hetman Pototsky in Cherkassy.

Potocki decided to "punish the rebels approximately" and, not doubting victory, moved towards Khmelnitsky, whose army (about 15,000 Cossacks and 4,000 Tatars) met in the Gorokhovaya Dubrava tract near Korsun.

Korsun

Thanks to the military talent of Khmelnitsky and the well-placed reconnaissance of the rebels, who sympathized with the population, the Poles were forced to take the fight in unfavorable positions, and the Cossacks cut the possible retreat of the Poles in advance and made them impassable: they dug up deep ditches, filled up with cut down trees, dammed the river. As a result, in the battle of May 16, the Cossacks, as well as near Zhovti Vody, completely defeated the Poles and captured the Crown Hetman Potocki and his deputy, the Polish Hetman Kalinovsky. Only a single participant in the Battle of Korsun - the Poles managed to escape. All Polish artillery and huge carts went to the Cossacks as military booty, while the Cossacks gave the captured Polish hetmans to the Tatars, who expected to receive a rich ransom for them.

The news of the two defeats of the Poles quickly spread throughout Ukraine and, as the gentry Bankovsky writes in his memoirs, “not a single gentry remained on his estate in the Dnieper region.” Peasants and philistines began to rush in masses to Khmelnitsky, or, forming partisan detachments, to capture cities and castles with Polish garrisons.

The Lithuanian Chancellor Radziwill describes the situation in Ukraine at the beginning of the summer of 1648 as follows: “not only the Cossacks revolted, but all our subjects in Russia stuck to them and increased the Cossack troops to 70 thousand, and the further, the more they arrive Russian claps "...

Cleansing the Left Bank

The largest magnate of the Left Bank, Vishnevetsky, having learned about the uprising of Khmelnitsky, gathered a large army to move to help Pototsky pacify the uprising. But, approaching the Dnieper, he found all the pores destroyed and, not daring to linger on the Dnieper to cross his army, he moved north, to the Chernihiv region, and only north of Lyubech he managed to cross the Dnieper and lead his army to Volyn, where he arrived after the defeat under Zhovtiye Vody and Korsun. His residence, Lubny, was captured by the rebels, who slaughtered all the Catholics and Jews who were there, who did not manage to leave in time with Vishnevetsky.

About the retreat of Vishnevetsky from the Left Bank, where, being cut off from Poland by the Dnieper, he felt, according to the memoirs of a contemporary, “like in a cage”, many documents have been preserved, from which it is clear that this was not only a retreat of the troops, but also the evacuation of the entire Left Bank. Everything that in one way or another was connected with Poland and its social system was saved from the rebels and left with Vishnevetsky: the gentry, Jewish tenants, Catholics, Uniates. They knew that if only they fell into the hands of the rebels, then they would not be spared.

Rabbi Hannover, a contemporary of the events, describes in great detail, in colorful biblical style, this “exodus” of Jews from the Left Bank together with the Poles, who treated the Jews very well and protected and protected them in every possible way so that they would not fall into the hands of the Cossacks.

About the fate of those who did not have time to join Vishnevetsky, Hannover writes: “many communities that lay beyond the Dnieper, near the places of war, like Pereyaslav, Baryshevka, Piryatin, Lubny, Lokhvitsa, did not have time to escape and were destroyed in the name of God and died among terrible and bitter torments. Some have been flayed and their bodies thrown out to be eaten by dogs; others had their arms and legs cut off, and the bodies were thrown on the road and wagons passed through them and trampled on by their horses ...

The Poles were treated the same way, especially with the priests. Thousands of Jewish souls were killed on the Zadneprovya"...

The information given by Hannover fully coincides with the descriptions of events by other contemporaries, who also give the number of deaths. Grushevsky in his book "Khmelnychchyna in Rozkviti" speaks of two thousand Jews killed in Chernigov, 800 in Gomel, several hundred in Sosnitsa, Baturin, Nosovka and in other cities and towns. Grushevsky’s description of how these pogroms were carried out also survives: “some were cut down, others were ordered to dig holes, and then Jewish wives and children were thrown there and covered with earth, and then the Jews were given muskets and ordered to kill others”...

As a result of this spontaneous pogrom, on the Left Bank in a few weeks in the summer of 1648, all Poles, Jews, Catholics, as well as those from the few Orthodox gentry who sympathized with the Poles and collaborated with them, disappeared.

And the people composed a song that has survived until recently:

“There is no better yak in Ukraine
Nema Lyakh, Nema Pan, Nema Yid
There is no damned union”...

Of the Orthodox gentry, only those survived who joined the uprising, forgetting (albeit temporarily) about their estates and rights over the “claps”, or those who fled and took refuge in Kyiv, the only one of the cities of the Dnieper region, where at that time the power of the king.

One of these, who took refuge in Kyiv, an Orthodox gentry and an ardent supporter of Poland, Yerlich, left the most interesting descriptions of the events of that time. In particular, he describes in detail the uprising of the inhabitants of Kyiv, during which everything that was somehow related to Poland was cut out in Kyiv and churches and Catholic monasteries were destroyed. The only survivors were those who hid in Orthodox monasteries or were part of the Polish Kiev garrison, which, although it could not suppress the uprisings, was still not captured by the rebels led by the Kiev tradesman Polegenkiy.

Organization of power

On the Right Bank, mainly in the Dnieper regions, the same thing happened as on the Left Bank. As a result, a vast region was left without administration and the only force and power in it was the rebel army led by Khmelnitsky.

With this in mind, Khmelnytsky immediately set about creating his own military administrative apparatus. Hetman owned the highest military, judicial and administrative power throughout the territory liberated from the Poles, which was divided into "shelves". “Regiment” was a certain territory, which, in turn, was divided into “hundreds”.

Under the hetman, there was an advisory “rada” (council) of the highest Cossack foreman: the general judge, the general convoy officer (chief of artillery), the general treasurer (in charge of finances), the general clerk (administrative and political affairs), two general captains (hetman’s direct assistants), the general horseman (custodian of the horsetail) and the general cornet (keeper of the banner).

The regiment was ruled by a colonel, chosen by the Cossacks of this regiment, with a regimental captain, a judge, a clerk, a cornet and a baggage officer, who were also chosen by the Cossacks.

A hundred was ruled by an elected centurion with a hundred foreman: captain, clerk, cornet, convoy.

In cities, both regimental and hundreds, there was an elected city chieftain - a representative of the Cossack administration, who managed all the affairs of the city, and in addition there was city self-government - magistrates and town halls, consisting of elected from the city population.

In the villages, which were usually a mixed composition of peasants and Cossacks, there was their own rural self-government, separately for the peasants and separately for the Cossacks. The peasants chose “voit”, and the Cossacks chose “ataman”.

It is curious that this separate self-government of peasants and Cossacks in the villages of the Left-Bank Ukraine survived until the very revolution of 1917, although the titles “voit” and “ataman” were replaced by “headmen”. But the elders were separate: for the Cossacks - the Cossack, for the peasants - the peasant.

Having organized the apparatus of power in the liberated territory in this way, Khmelnitsky, on especially important occasions, gathered a “broad foreman’s council”, in which, in addition to the general foreman, colonels and centurions also took part. The archives preserved data on the convocation of such councils in 1649, 1653 and 1654.

Carrying out his administrative organizational measures, Khmelnitsky perfectly understood that the struggle had not yet ended, but was only just beginning. That is why he feverishly prepared for its continuation, gathered forces and created a disciplined army from them. It was difficult to count on an early open intervention of Moscow. The Tatars, on the other hand, were allies, both unreliable and undesirable: at any time they could change, and besides, they invariably engaged in robberies and violence even when they came as allies.

Poland did not waste time either. Having somewhat recovered from the defeats at Zhovtiye Vody and Korsun, she began to gather her forces to suppress the uprising.

At this time in Poland, after the death of King Vladislav, there was a period of queenlessness and the Polish gentry was completely absorbed in the election campaign. But, despite this, the Poles nevertheless gathered a 40,000-strong army, which moved from Poland to Volhynia, where Vishnevetsky, who had fled from the Left Bank, joined him with his army.

A collective leadership was put at the head of the army - a triumvirate consisting of Polish magnates: the pampered, fat prince Zaslavsky, the scribe and scientist Ostrorog and the 19-year-old prince Konetspolsky. Khmelnytsky ironically said about this triumvirate that “Zaslavsky is a featherbed, Ostrorog is a latina, and Konetspolsky is a child” (child).

In early September, this army, with numerous carts and servants, appeared in Volhynia. The Poles went on this campaign as if on a pleasure trip, confident in advance of an easy victory over the “rebellious slaves,” as they called the rebels.

Khmelnytsky moved out to meet them from Chyhyryn, where he spent the summer months working feverishly to build up an administrative apparatus and an army. Along with him is a detachment of Tatars.

Pilyavsky defeat

Under the small castle of Pilyavka (near the upper Bug), both armies came into contact and a battle began, ending on September 13 with the complete defeat of the Poles. The scattered remnants of the Polish army, leaving all the artillery and carts, fled in the direction of Lvov. Zaslavsky lost his mace, inherited by the Cossacks, and Konetspolsky escaped by disguising himself as a peasant boy. The Poles ran a long way from Pylyavtsy to Lvov in 43 hours, according to the chronicler, “faster than the fastest walkers and entrusting their lives to their feet.” The fugitives did not stay long in Lvov. We collected as much money and valuables as possible from monasteries, churches and townspeople “to pacify the rebellion” and moved on to Zamosc.

Khmelnytsky's army moved slowly behind the fleeing Poles. Having approached Lvov, in which there was a Polish garrison, Khmelnitsky did not take Lvov, which he could take without difficulty, but limited himself to imposing a large indemnity (ransom) and moved on to Zamosc.

The mood in Poland after the Pilyavitsky defeat was close to panic. The chronicler Grabinka describes these moods in the following way: “if many Poles gather at Warsaw, both having hare ears, so their fear of Khmelnytsky’s insult, as if they hear the crackling of a dry tree, then without a soul to Gdansk run and through a dream there are not a single river:” from Khmelnitsky!”

New King Jan Casimir

At this time, a new king, Jan Casimir, brother of the deceased Vladislav, was elected. The new king (a Jesuit bishop before being elected king), given the situation, began to make attempts to reach an agreement with Khmelnitsky, promising the Cossacks various favors and privileges and acted as if they were their defender against the willfulness of the magnates and the gentry. He subtly played on the fact that de and the whole uprising flared up because of this self-will and was directed not against the king, but against the magnates and the gentry. So Khmelnitsky and the foreman were persuaded by the emissaries sent to him by the king.

Khmelnitsky received and listened to the emissaries and assured them that the rebels personally had nothing against the king and that the possibility of an agreement was not ruled out. And he himself with his army, slowly, moved towards Zamost, where the Polish troops were concentrated and fortifications were created by the Poles.

Siege of Zamosc

Having surrounded Zamostye with the Poles in it, Khmelnytsky was in no hurry to unleash a battle, although he had all the data to repeat in Zamostye Pilyavitsy and move on to finish off the Poles in Poland itself, where outbreaks of peasant uprisings against the landowners' oppression had already begun. Galicia and Belarus also began to rise, and insurgent detachments, which the Poles contemptuously called "bands", were already operating there. However, Khmelnytsky did not use the conjuncture, after several weeks he lifted the siege of Zamostye, and, leaving garrisons in Volhynia and Podolia, returned to the Dnieper region.

Kiev celebrations

In December 1648, a solemn entry of Khmelnitsky into Kyiv took place. Accompanied by 1,000 horsemen, Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem, who was then in Kyiv, rode out to meet him with Metropolitan Sylvester Kosov of Kiev. A number of celebrations took place at which Khmelnitsky was glorified as a fighter for Orthodoxy, the students of the Kiev Collegium (founded by Peter Mohyla), read verses in honor of Khmelnitsky in Latin, bells rang in all churches, shot from cannons. Even Metropolitan Sylvester, an ardent supporter of the magnates and a hater of the rebels, delivered a long speech praising the rebels and Khmelnytsky. The mood of the masses was so definitely on the side of the rebels that the metropolitan did not dare not only to speak out against them, but even to refrain from speaking.

The people then throughout Russia-Ukraine sang a new song, like “the Cossacks drove the Lyashka glory to the pid lava” (bench), called all the Poles “pilyavchiki” and unshakably believed in the final overthrow of the Polish yoke and in reunification with Moscow of the same faith.

Without staying long in Kyiv, Khmelnitsky left for Pereyaslav and throughout the winter of 48-49 he was engaged in administrative and military affairs, having contact with both Poland and Moscow. From the first, ambassadors came to him and persuaded him to make peace; Khmelnytsky sent letters and ambassadors to Moscow asking for help and consent to the reunification of Ukraine-Rus with Moscow.

Service and homeliness of Bohdan Khmelnitsky. - Collision with Chaplinsky. - Escape to Zaporozhye. - Diplomacy Khmelnytsky and preparations for the uprising. - Tugai Bey and Crimean aid. - Oversight of the Polish hetmans and the transfer of registered ones. - Victory Zheltovodskaya and Korsunskaya. – The spread of the Khmelnytsky uprising throughout Ukraine. - Polish kinglessness. - Prince Jeremiah Vishnevetsky. – Three Polish regimentaries and their defeat near Pilyavtsi. - Retreat of Bogdan from Lvov and Zamosc. - The general movement of the people into the ranks of the army and the multiplication of registered regiments. - The ruin of Tatar assistance. - The new king. - Adam Kisel and the truce. - People's murmur. – The siege of Zbarazh and the Zborovsky treatise. - Mutual displeasure against him. - The tacit submission of Bohdan Khmelnitsky to the Sultan. - The resumption of the war. - Defeat near Berestechko and Belotserkovsky Treaty. - Marriage of Timothy Khmelnitsky and his death in Moldova. - Treason of Islam Giray and the Zhvanets Treaty.

Ukraine on the eve of the Khmelnytsky uprising

Almost ten years have passed since the defeat at Ust-Starets. The ill-fated Ukraine languished under double oppression, Polish and Jewish. Polish castles and gentry estates multiplied and prospered with free labor and then the Little Russian people. But the deathly silence that prevailed in the region, and the outward humility of this people deceived the puffy gentlemen and the frivolous gentry. Hatred for foreign and heterodox oppressors and a passionate thirst for liberation from them grew in the hearts of the people. The ground for a new, more terrible uprising was ready. All that was missing was a spark to create a huge, all-destroying fire; all that was missing was a man to lift up the whole people and carry them along with them. Finally, such a person appeared in the person of our old acquaintance, Bogdan Khmelnitsky.

As often happens in history, personal resentment, personal scores called him to decisive action, which served as the beginning of great events; for they deeply touched the fraught soil of people's thoughts and aspirations.

Zinovy ​​​​or Bogdan belonged to a well-born Cossack family and was the son of the Chigirinsky centurion Mikhail Khmelnitsky. According to some reports, the gifted young man successfully studied in Lviv or Kiev schools, so that later he stood out not only with his mind, but also with his education among registered Cossacks. Together with his father, Bogdan participated in the Battle of Tsetsor, where his father fell, and his son was carried away into Tatar-Turkish captivity. He spent two years in this captivity, until he managed to free himself (or redeem himself); there he could become closely acquainted with the Tatar customs and language, and even establish friendly relations with some noble persons. All this was very useful to him later. In the era of the previous Cossack uprisings, as a registered officer, he faithfully served the Commonwealth against his relatives. For some time he held the position of a military clerk; and in the era of reconciliation, he is the same Chigirinsky centurion as his father was. From this latter, he also inherited a rather significant estate, located five versts above the Tyasmin River from Chigirin. Mikhail Khmelnitsky founded Subotovo settlement here. He received this estate for his military merits, taking advantage of the favor of the great crown hetman Stanislav Konetspolsky, headman of Chigirinsky. They say that the hetman even made Mikhail his underage. But this hetman's disposition did not pass from father to son. But Bogdan was not only known to King Vladislav himself, but also awarded his trust and honor.

Around that time, the Republic of Venice, pressed by the Turks in its maritime trade and its Mediterranean possessions, decided to arm a large European league against them, and turned to the Polish Commonwealth. The Venetian ambassador Tiepolo, supported by the papal nuncio, zealously excited Vladislav IV to conclude an alliance against the Turks and Crimean Tatars, and pointed out to him the possibility of attracting the Tsar of Moscow, the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia to this alliance. A decisive struggle against the Ottoman Empire had long been the cherished dream of the war-loving Polish king; but what could he do without the consent of the senate and the diet? And neither the nobles nor the gentry resolutely did not want to burden themselves with any sacrifices for the sake of this difficult struggle and deprive themselves of peace so dear to them. Of the nobles, the king managed, however, to persuade the crown chancellor Ossolinsky and the crown hetman Konetspolsky to his side. A secret treaty was concluded with Tiepolo, according to which Venice undertook to pay 500,000 thalers for military expenses over two years; military preparations began and the hiring of jolners under the pretext of necessary measures against the Crimean raids. They planned to let the Cossacks from the Dnieper into the Black Sea; what Tiepolo especially insisted on, hoping to divert the naval forces of the Turks, who were going to take the island of Crete from the Venetians. But in the midst of these negotiations and preparations, in March 1646, Crown Hetman Stanislav Konetspolsky suddenly died, two weeks after (and evil tongues said, as a result of) his marriage, which he entered into in his old age with the young Princess Lubomirskaya. With him, the king was deprived of the main support of the planned enterprise; however, not suddenly abandoned it and continued military preparations. In addition to the Venetian subsidy, they received part of the dowry of the second wife of Vladislav, french princess Maria Ludovica Gonzaga, whom he had married the previous year, 1645. Through proxies, the king entered into secret negotiations with some members of the Cossack elders, mainly with the Cherkassy colonel Barabash and the Chigirinsky centurion Khmelnitsky, who were given a certain amount of money and a written privilege to build a large number of boats for the Cossack Black Sea campaign.

Meanwhile, the intentions and preparations of the king, of course, did not remain secret for long, and aroused strong opposition among the senators and gentry. At the head of this opposition were such influential nobles as the Lithuanian chancellor Albrecht Radivil, crown marshal Luka Stalinsky, Russian voivode Jeremiah Vishnevetsky, voivode Krakow Stan. Lubomirsky, castellan of Krakow Yakov Sobiesky. The full crown hetman Mykola Potocki, now Koniecpolsky's successor, also ended up on the side of the opposition. Chancellor Ossolinsky himself yielded to the stormy expressions of the dissatisfied, who already accused the king of intending to appropriate absolute power for himself with the help of mercenary troops. In view of such a rebuff, the king did not find anything better to do than to solemnly and in writing reject his warlike plans and disband part of the assembled detachments. And the Warsaw Sejm, which was at the end of 1646, went further and decided not only the complete dissolution of the hired detachments, but also the reduction of the royal guard itself, as well as the removal of all foreigners from the king.

Personality and life of Bogdan Khmelnitsky

Under such and such political circumstances, Bohdan Khmelnitsky severed his ties with the Commonwealth and led a new Cossack uprising. This era of his life has largely become the property of legend and it is difficult to restore its historical details. Therefore, we can trace it only in general, the most reliable features.

By all indications, Bogdan was not only a brave, agile Cossack, but also a thrifty host. He managed to bring his Subotovo estate into a flourishing form and populated it with quitrent people. In addition, he procured from the king another neighboring steppe area, which lay across the river, where he set up apiaries, a threshing floor and started a farm, apparently called Subotovka. He had his own house in the city of Chigirin. But he stayed mainly in Subotovo. Here, his hospitable courtyard, filled with servants, cattle, bread and all sorts of supplies, was an example of a prosperous Ukrainian economy. And Bogdan himself, already a widow, having two young sons, Timofey and Yuri, obviously enjoyed honor and respect in his district both in terms of his property status, and even more in his mind, education and as an experienced, experienced person. The registered Cossack foreman of that time had already managed to stand out so much from the environment of the Little Russian people that she noticeably tried to adjoin the privileged class of the Commonwealth, that is, to the pan-gentry, which she imitated both in language, and in lifestyle, and in possessive relations to the embassy or the common people. Such was Khmelnitsky, and if his ambition was far from being satisfied, it was only because, despite his merits, he still had not received either a colonel or even a sub-starostin order, due to the dislike of the closest Polish authorities to him. It was this disposition that caused the fatal clash.

Upon the death of the crown hetman Stanislav Konetspolsky, the Chigirin starostvo passed to his son Alexander, the crown cornet. The latter left as his manager or underage a certain gentry, called from the city. Principality of Lithuania, named after Daniil Chaplinsky. This Chaplinsky was distinguished by a daring character and a passion for profit, for theft, but he was a clever man and knew how to please the old hetman, and even more so his young heir. He was an ardent Catholic, a hater of Orthodoxy, and allowed himself to mock the priests. Hostile to the Cossacks in general, he especially disliked Khmelnitsky, either because he envied his property status and social honor, or because there was rivalry between them in relation to an orphan girl who was brought up in the Bogdan family. It is possible to allow both. The Chigirinsky under-starosta began to oppress the Chigirinsky centurion by all means, and announced a claim to his Subotovsky estate, or at least to a certain part, and lured him out of the crown privileges on this estate and did not return it. One day, in Khmelnitsky's absence, Chaplinsky ran into Subotovo, burned stacks of bread, and kidnapped the mentioned girl, whom he made his wife. On another occasion, in Chigirin, he seized Bogdanov's eldest son, the teenager Timothy, and ordered him to be cruelly flogged with rods in public in the market. Then he seized Bogdan himself, held him in custody for several days and released him only at the request of his wife. More than once, attempts were made on his very life. For example, once on a campaign against the Tatars, some kind of underage slander drove Khmelnitsky to the rear and hit him on the head with a saber, but the iron cap protected him from death, and the villain apologized for mistaking him for a Tatar.

In vain, Khmelnytsky complained to the elder Konetspolsky, and to the head of the registry or the Polish commissioner Shemberg, and to the crown hetman Pototsky: he did not find any justice against Chaplinsky. Finally, Bogdan went to Warsaw and turned to King Vladislav himself, from whom he already had a well-known assignment regarding the Black Sea campaign against the Turks. But the king, due to his insignificant power, could not save Khmelnitsky and the Cossacks in general from the lord's insults; they say that, in his irritation with the nobles, he pointed to his saber, reminding him that the Cossacks themselves were warriors. However, the aforementioned commission, which was not kept secret, probably even more prompted some of the gentlemen to take the side of Chaplinsky in his dispute with Khmelnitsky over the possession of Subotov. Chaplinsky, apparently, managed to make the latter a dangerous person for the Poles and plotting something against them. It is not surprising, therefore, that the crown hetman Potocki and the cornet Konetspolsky ordered the Chigirinsky colonel Krechovsky to take Khmelnitsky into custody. Friendly to this latter, the colonel then begged to give him some freedom for his bail.

Flight of Bogdan to Zaporozhye

Bogdan clearly saw that the aforementioned pans would not leave him alone until they finished him off; and therefore, taking advantage of this freedom, he decided to take a desperate step: to leave for Zaporozhye and from there raise a new uprising. In order not to appear empty-handed before the Cossacks, before leaving his nest, he, with the help of cunning, took possession of some royal letters or privileges (including a letter on building boats for the Black Sea campaign), which were kept by. Cherkasy colonel Barabash. They say that on the feast of St. Nicholas, December 6, 1647, Bogdan invited his now named friend and godfather to Chigirin, gave him a drink and put him to bed; he took a hat and a hustka or scarf (according to another version, the key to hiding) from the sleepy one and sent a messenger to Cherkassk, to the colonel's wife with an order on behalf of her husband to get the aforementioned privileges and hand them over to the messenger. In the morning, before Barabash woke up, the letters were already in the hands of Bogdan. Then, without wasting time, he rode straight to Zaporozhye with his son Timothy, with a certain number of registered Cossacks devoted to him and with several servants.

Having made about 200 miles along the steppe routes, Bogdan first landed on the island of Butsk or Tomakovka. The Cossacks who were here belonged to those who a few years ago, under the command of Ataman Lynchai, rebelled against Barabash and other registered foremen for her excessive selfishness and obsequiousness to the Poles. Khmelnytsky also took part in putting down this rebellion. Although the Lynchaevites did not refuse him hospitality, they treated him suspiciously. In addition, on Tomakovka there was a bail or another guard from the registered Korsun regiment. Therefore, Bogdan soon retired to the Sich itself, which was then located somewhat lower along the Dnieper on a cape or so-called. Nikitin Rog. According to custom, in the winter, a small number of Cossacks remained in the Sich to guard her, with a ataman and a foreman, while the rest dispersed to their steppe farms and winter quarters. Cautious, prudent Bogdan was in no hurry to announce the purpose of his arrival to the Sich, but for the time being limited himself to mysterious meetings with the koshevoi and the foreman, gradually initiating them into his plans and gaining their sympathy.

The flight of Bogdan, of course, could not but cause some anxiety in his homeland among the Polish-Cossack authorities. But he skillfully tried, as far as possible, to dispel his fears and to reject for the time being the adoption of any energetic measures. For this purpose, experienced in writing, Bogdan sent a number of messages or "sheets" to various people explaining his behavior and his intentions, namely, to Colonel Barabash, Polish Commissioner Shemberg, Crown Hetman Pototsky and Chigirinsky headman cornet Konetspolsky. In these sheets, he dwells with particular bitterness on the insults and robberies of Chaplinsky, who forced him to seek salvation in flight; moreover, he connects his personal grievances with the general oppression of the Ukrainian people and Orthodoxy, with the violation of their rights and liberties, approved by royal privileges. At the end of his sheets, he notifies of the imminent departure from the army of Zaporizhzhya to his royal majesty and the clairvoyant pan-senators of a special embassy, ​​which will petition for new confirmation and better execution of the aforementioned privileges. There is no mention of any threats of retaliation. On the contrary, this is a man, unhappy and persecuted, humbly crying out for justice. Such tactics, by all indications, largely achieved their goal, and even the Polish spies, who penetrated into Zaporozhye itself, could not yet tell their patrons anything about Khmelnitsky's plans. However, Bogdan could not yet know and foresee what turn his case would take and what support he would find among the Russian people; and therefore, out of a sense of self-preservation, for the time being he should have had the appearance of humility and devotion to the Commonwealth. So, already from the first steps, he showed that he would not be a simple repetition of the Taras, Pavlyuks, Ostranins and similar ingenuous, unsophisticated politicians who appeared at the head of unsuccessful Ukrainian rebellions. Taught by their example, he took advantage of the onset of winter to prepare both the national soil and the allies for the fight against Poland by spring.

Union of Bogdan with the Crimean Tatars

While working to excite the minds of the Ukrainian people through his friends and Zaporizhzhya envoys, Bogdan, however, did not rely on Ukrainians alone, and at the same time turned for external help to where his predecessors had turned more than once, but without success, namely to the Crimean Horde. And then he set to work with an experienced and skillful hand; moreover, he took advantage of his personal knowledge of the Horde, its customs and practices, as well as the acquaintances once acquired in it and, in general, modern political circumstances. But things did not suddenly improve from this side. Islam Giray (1644-1654), one of the most remarkable Crimean khans, then sat on the khan's throne. Once in Polish captivity, he had the opportunity to know more closely the position of the Commonwealth and the attitude of the Cossacks towards it. Islam-Giray, although he harbored displeasure against King Vladislav, who did not want to pay him the usual commemoration, although Khmelnitsky was aware of the former intention of the king to send Cossacks against the Tatars and Turks, however, at the beginning of the negotiations, he did not attach much importance to the plans and requests of the hitherto little-known Chigirinsky centurion; moreover, he could not undertake a war with Poland without obtaining the prior consent of the Turkish Sultan; and Poland was then at peace with Porto. At one time, Bogdan considered his position so difficult that he thought of leaving Zaporozhye and with close people to seek refuge among the Don Cossacks. But love for the motherland and the influx of fugitives like him from Ukraine to Zaporizhzhya kept him, and forced him to try his luck in an open military enterprise before fleeing to the Don.

The beginning of the Khmelnytsky uprising

To separate Ukraine from Zaporozhye, as we know, at the beginning of the rapids, the Kodak fortress was built and occupied by the Polish garrison; and behind the thresholds, for direct observation of the Sich, the registered regiments took turns guarding. At that time, as mentioned above, this guard was posted by the Korsun regiment; it was located on the large Dnieper island of Butsk or Tomakovka, which lay about 18 versts above Nikitin Rog, where the Sich was then located. Around Khmelnitsky, up to five hundred Ukrainian fugitives or ghouls managed to gather, ready to follow him wherever he leads. In late January or early February 1648, Bogdan, of course, not without an agreement with the Zaporizhzhya foreman, and probably not without help from her in people and weapons, with his desperate ghouls, suddenly attacked the Korsunians, drove them away from Tomakovka, and became fortified here camp. This first decisive and open blow resounded with a distant echo in Ukraine: on the one hand, it aroused excitement and bold expectations in the hearts of the oppressed Little Russian people, and on the other hand, it caused great alarm among the Polish inhabitants, pans and gentry, especially when it became known that that numerous envoys from Zaporozhye from Khmelnitsky scattered throughout the Ukrainian villages in order to excite the people to rebellion and recruit new hunters under the banner of Bogdan. Prompted by the strong requests of the alarmed Ukrainian lords and rulers, the Crown Hetman Mykola Pototsky gathered his quartz army and took rather impressive precautions. So, he issued a stern universal, forbidding any communication with Khmelnitsky and threatening the death of the wives and children who remained at home and the deprivation of property of those young men who decide to flee to Khmelnitsky; to intercept such fugitives, guards were posted along the roads leading to Zaporozhye; the landowning pans received an invitation to arm only reliable castles, and to withdraw cannons and shells from unreliable ones, further strengthen and keep the court banners in readiness in order to attach them to the crown army, and take away weapons from their serfs. By virtue of this order, several thousand self-propelled guns were selected from the vast estates of Prince Jeremiah Vishnevetsky alone. However, it can be assumed that even more claps managed to hide. These measures, in any case, indicate that the Poles now had to deal not with the former peaceful and almost unarmed Russian countryside, but with a people longing for liberation and accustomed to the use of firearms. These measures worked for the first time. The Ukrainian peasants continued to maintain outward calm and humility before the lords, and so far only a few cutthroats, homeless people or who had nothing to lose, continued to leave for Zaporozhye.

Khmelnitsky's squad at that time, apparently, numbered more than one and a half thousand people, and therefore he was diligently engaged in the construction of fortifications around his camp on Tomakovka, deepening ditches and stuffing palisades; saved food supplies and even set up a gunpowder factory. Hetman Potocki did not limit himself to taking measures in Ukraine: having not previously responded to Khmelnitsky's mournful messages, he now turned to Bogdan himself and sent to him more than once, offering to calmly return to his homeland and promising full pardon. Bogdan did not answer and even detained the envoys. Pototsky sent Captain Khmeletsky for negotiations: the latter gave his word of honor that not a hair would fall from Bogdan's head if he left the rebellion. But Khmelnytsky knew well what the Polish word was worth, and this time he dismissed the envoys, presenting through them his conditions for reconciliation, which, however, he gave the appearance of a petition: firstly, that the hetman with the crown army should leave Ukraine; second, remove the Polish colonels and their comrades from the Cossack regiments; thirdly, so that the Cossacks were returned their rights and liberties. This answer makes one guess that Khmelnitsky, by delaying the former envoys, tried to gain time, and that now, under more favorable circumstances, he spoke in a more decisive tone. The fact is that at that time, precisely in the middle of March, Tatar help had already approached him.

Khmelnitsky's first success, that is, the expulsion of the registered pledges and the capture of the island of Tomakovka, was not slow to resonate in the Crimea. Khan became more accessible to his envoys, and negotiations for help revived. (According to some not entirely reliable news, Bogdan allegedly managed to go to the Crimea at that time and personally get along with the khan). In all likelihood, there was no prohibition from Constantinople either when they learned about the efforts of King Vladislav and some nobles to arm the Cossack gulls and throw them on the Turkish shores. However, about that time, the seven-year-old Mahomet IV appeared on the Sultan's throne, and Islam Giray skillfully took advantage of his infancy, already holding a more independent policy towards Porte than his predecessors. This khan was especially prone to raids on neighboring lands to deliver booty to his Tatars, among whom he therefore enjoyed love and devotion. Khmelnitsky deftly touched this weak chord. He incited the Tatars with a promise to give them the entire future Polish full. The negotiations ended with Khmelnitsky sending his young son Timothy as a hostage to the khan and swearing allegiance to the alliance with the Horde (and, perhaps, to some subordination to it). Islam Giray, however, waited for events, and so far did not move himself with his horde, and by the spring he sent his old friend Tugai-bey, the closest to Zaporozhye, Perekop Murza Tugay-bey, with 4,000 legs, to help Khmelnitsky. Bogdan hurried to smuggle some of these Tatars to the right bank of the Dnieper, where they were not slow to seize or drive away the Polish guards and thus open the way for Ukrainian fugitives to Zaporozhye.

At the same time, the ataman, in agreement with Khmelnitsky, pulled the Cossacks from their winter quarters to the Sich from the banks of the Dnieper, Bug, Samara, Konka, etc. An army of horse and foot, numbering up to ten thousand, gathered. When Bogdan arrived here with several ambassadors from the horde of Tugai Bey, it was announced with cannon shots in the evening that the next day the army would gather at the council. On April 19, early in the morning, cannon shots were heard again, then they hit the boilers; so many people gathered that they could not all fit on the Sich Maidan; and therefore they went beyond the ramparts of the fortress to the neighboring field, and there they opened the council. Here the foreman, having announced to the army the beginning of the war with the Poles for the insults and oppressions caused by them, reported on the actions and plans of Khmelnitsky and the alliance he had concluded with the Crimea. Probably, Khmelnitsky immediately showed the Cossacks the royal privileges he had stolen, which the pans did not want to fulfill and even hid them. Extremely excited by all this news and prepared in advance for this, the Rada unanimously shouted out the election of Khmelnitsky as the head of the entire Zaporizhian army. Koshevoy immediately sent a military clerk with several kuren atamans and a noble partnership to the military treasury for hetman's kleynots. They brought a gold-painted banner, a bunchuk with a gilded jackdaw, a silver mace, a silver military seal and copper cauldrons with a dovbosh, and handed them to Khmelnitsky. Having finished the council, the foreman and part of the Cossacks went to the Sich church, listened to the liturgy and a thanksgiving service. Then fire was fired from cannons and muskets; after which the Cossacks dispersed to the kurens for lunch, and Khmelnitsky and his retinue dined at the Koschevoi. After resting after dinner, he and the foreman gathered for advice to the koshevoi and then decided one part of the army to set out with Bogdan on a campaign against Ukraine, and the other to disperse again to their fish and animal trades, but be ready to speak at the first request. The foreman expected that as soon as Bogdan arrived in Ukraine, the city Cossacks would come to him, and his army would greatly increase.

This calculation was well understood by the Polish leaders, and the crown hetman, who at the end of March believed that Khmelnytsky had up to 3,000, wrote to the king: “God forbid that he enter Ukraine with them; then these three thousand would quickly increase to 100,000, and what would we do with the rebels? In accordance with this fear, he waited only for spring to move from Ukraine to Zaporozhye and there to crush the uprising in its very bud; and by the way, in order to divert Zaporozhye, he advised to implement the old idea: to allow them sea raids. But such advice is now too late. Potocki himself stood with his regiment in Cherkasy, and the full hetman Kalinovsky with his in Korsun; the rest of the crown army was located in Kanev, Boguslav and other nearby places on the right-bank Ukraine.

But between the Polish leaders and the pans there was no agreement already in the very plan of action.

The Western Russian Orthodox nobleman Adam Kisel, voivode of Bratslavsky, whom we know, advised Pototsky not to go beyond the thresholds to look for a rebel there, but rather to caress all the Cossacks and appease them with various indulgences and benefits; he advised not to break up the small crown army into detachments, to communicate with the Crimea and Ochakovo, etc. In the same sense, he wrote to the king. Vladislav IV was then in Vilna and from here he followed the beginning of the Cossack movement, receiving various reports. The crown hetman announced his plan to attack Khmelnytsky in two departments: one by the steppe, and the other by the Dnieper. On mature reflection, the king agreed with Kisel's opinion and sent an order not to divide the army and wait for the campaign. But it was too late: the stubborn and arrogant Pototsky had already moved both detachments forward.

Thanks to the Tatar guards, the reports of Polish spies about what was happening in Zaporozhye stopped, and Pototsky did not know either about the oncoming movement of Khmelnitsky, or about his connection with Tugai Bey. Bogdan's enterprise was helped not only by his personal intelligence and experience under favorable political circumstances; but, undoubtedly, a significant share of blind happiness turned out to be on his side in this era. The main enemy leader, i.e., the crown hetman, seemed to set out to make Khmelnitsky's success and victory easier by all means in his power. How well he disposed of the military forces in his hands! Around both hetmans, well-armed quartz regiments, court banners and registered Cossacks gathered - in total no less than 15,000 selected troops by that time, which in skillful hands could crush some four thousand Bogdanov ghouls and Cossacks, even if reinforced by the same number Nogaev. But disregarding the forces of the enemy and not listening to the objections of his comrade Kalinovsky, Pototsky thought of taking a simple military walk and, for the sake of the convenience of the campaign, began to split up his army. He detached six thousand and sent them ahead, handing the leadership to his son Stefan, of course, giving him the opportunity to distinguish himself and earn the hetman's mace in advance, and gave him the Cossack commissar Shemberg as a comrade. The majority of this forward detachment, as if on purpose, was made up of registered Cossack regiments; although at the same time they were again taken to the oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth, it was great frivolity to trust them with the first meeting with their indignant relatives. Moreover, the most advanced detachment was divided into two parts: about 4,000 registered Cossacks with a certain number of hired Germans were put on canoes or river boats, and sent from Cherkas by the Dnieper to Kodak with small guns and with stocks of combat and food supplies; and the other part, up to 2,000 hussar and dragoon cavalry, with the young Pototsky, also went along the steppe road to Kodak, under which these two parts were to join. This second part was supposed to follow not far from the Dnieper coast and constantly keep in touch with the river flotilla. But this connection was soon lost: the cavalry moved slowly with rests; and the flotilla, carried away by the current, went far ahead.

The same Tatar patrols that stopped the Poles from Zaporozhye, on the contrary, helped Bogdan to learn in time from the intercepted and tortured spies about the campaign of the hetmans and the division of their troops into detachments. For the time being, he left aside the fortress of Kodak with its four hundred garrison, and also moved along the right bank of the Dnieper towards Stefan Pototsky. Needless to say, he did not hesitate to take advantage of the separate flotilla of the registered, and sent out quick people who entered into relations with them, and ardently urged them to stand at the same time in defense of their oppressed people and their trampled Cossack rights against the oppressors. Registered regiments at that time, as is known, were commanded by unloved colonels from the Poles or equally unloved Ukrainians who supported the side of the Poles, such as Barabash, who was in this flotilla for the eldest, and Ilyash, who sent the post of military captain here. Due to Pototsky's strange negligence, Krechovsky was also among the foremen, deprived of the Chigirinsky regiment after the flight of Khmelnitsky and, of course, now easily bowed to his side. Beliefs, especially the appearance of the Tatar horde that came to the rescue, had an effect. The registered officers were indignant and killed the hired Germans and their superiors, including Barabash and Ilyash. After that, with the help of their ships, they transported the rest of the Tatars of Tugai Bey to the right bank; and these latter, with the help of their horses, helped them immediately join the camp of Khmelnitsky; guns, food and ammunition were also delivered there from the ships.

Battle of the Yellow Waters

Thus, when Stefan Potocki faced Khmelnitsky, he found himself with his 2,000 against 10 or 12 thousand enemies. But even this was not limited to a change in numbers. Registered Cossacks and dragoons, recruited from the Ukrainians, who were in the land detachment, were not slow to move to Khmelnitsky. Only the Polish banners remained with Potocki, who included less than one thousand people. The meeting took place on the swampy banks of the Zheltye Vody, the left tributary of the Ingulets. Despite the small number of his squad, the young Pototsky and his comrades did not lose courage; they surrounded themselves with a camp of wagons, quickly erected trenches or trenches, put up cannons on them and undertook a desperate defense in the hope of rescue from the main army, where they sent a messenger with the news. But this messenger, intercepted by the Tatar riders, was shown to the Poles from afar, so that they would give up all hope of help. For several days they bravely defended themselves; the lack of food and ammunition forced them to bow to negotiations. Khmelnytsky previously demanded the issuance of guns and hostages; Pototsky agreed the more easily, since without gunpowder the guns were already useless. Negotiations, however, ended in nothing, and the battle resumed. The heavily pressed Poles decided to start a retreat, and the encampment moved across the Knyazhy Bayraki gully; but then they got into the most inconvenient terrain, were surrounded by Cossacks and Tatars, and after a desperate defense, partly exterminated, partly taken prisoner. Among the latter were: Stefan Potocki himself, who soon died of wounds, the Cossack commissar Shemberg, Jan Sapieha, the hussar colonel, later famous Stefan Czarnecki, no less famous later Jan Vyhovsky and some other representatives of the Polish and Western Russian chivalry. This pogrom took place around May 5 .

When a handful of Polish zholners perished in an unequal battle, the hetmans with the main army stood nonchalantly not far from Chigirin, and spent much of their time in drinking parties and banquets; their huge convoy abounded with barrels of honey and wine. The Ukrainian pans who united with them flaunted to each other not only the luxury of their weapons and harness, but also an abundance of all sorts of supplies, expensive dishes and a multitude of parasitic servants. The flattering hangers-on tried to joke about the miserable ghouls, whom, in all likelihood, the advance detachment had already defeated and, burdened with booty, now amuse themselves with the lions in the steppes, slowly sending news. However, this rather long absence of news from his son began to disturb old Potocki. There were already some disturbing rumors; but they were not yet believed. Suddenly a messenger jumped up to him from Grodzitsky, the commandant of the Kodatsky fortress, with a letter notifying him of the connection of the Tatars with the Cossacks, of the betrayal of the river department and the transition of the registered to the side of Khmelnitsky; in conclusion, of course, he asked for reinforcements for his garrison. These news struck the hetman like thunder; from his usual arrogance and self-confidence, he immediately turned to faint-hearted despair for the fate of his son. But instead of hastening to his aid, while there was still time and a handful of the brave still held on, he began to write to the king through Chancellor Ossolinsky, portraying the fatherland in extreme danger from the union of the horde with the Cossacks and begging him to hurry with the destruction of the Commonwealth; otherwise the Commonwealth perished! And then he set off on a return trip to Cherkasy, and only then did a few fugitives who escaped the Zheltovodsky pogrom overtake him. The hetmans hurriedly retreated further, to the middle of the Polish possessions, and in thought they stopped on the banks of the Ros, near the city of Korsun. Here they dug in, having up to 7,000 good troops, and expected to help Prince Jeremiah Vishnevetsky with his six thousandth detachment.

Battle of Korsun

Khmelnytsky and Tugai Bey remained for three days at the site of their Zheltovod victory, preparing for a further campaign and arranging their army, which was significantly increased by newly arrived Tatars and Ukrainian rebels. Then they hurried after the retreating hetmans, and in the middle of May appeared in front of Korsun. The first attacks on the fortified Polish camp were met with frequent cannon fire, from which the attackers suffered significant losses. Polish riders captured several Tatars and one Cossack. The hetman ordered them to be interrogated under torture about the number of enemies. The Cossack assured that 15,000 Ukrainians had come alone, and more and more tens of thousands of Tatars were coming. The gullible and frivolous Potocki was horrified at the thought that the enemy would surround him from all sides, put him under siege and drive him to starvation; and then someone else notified him that the Cossacks wanted to lower the Ros and take away water from the Poles, for which work had already begun. The hetman completely lost his head and decided to leave his trenches. In vain did his comrade Kalinovsky insist on fighting a decisive battle the next day. Potocki would never agree to such a risky step, especially since the next day fell on a Monday. To Kalinovsky's objections, he shouted: "I'm a commoner here, and in my parish the vicar must be silent before me!" The troops were ordered to leave heavy carts, and take only light ones for the camp, according to a known number for each banner. On Tuesday, early in the morning, the army left the camp and set off on a campaign to Boguslav in a camp arranged in 8 detachments with cannons, infantry and dragoons in the front and rear rows and with armored or hussar cavalry on the sides. But in general it moved heavily and discordantly, badly led. The Grand Crown Hetman, who suffered from gout, as usual rode half-drunk in a carriage; and the full hetman was little obeyed; moreover, he did not have good eyesight and was short-sighted. Two roads led to Boguslav, one through fields, straight and open, the other through forests and hills, roundabout. And then Pototsky made the most unfortunate choice: he ordered to go the last way, as more protected from enemies. Among the crown army there were still a number of registered Cossacks, whom the hetman continued to trust, despite the events, and even from them guides were chosen for this roundabout road. These Cossacks already on the eve let Khmelnitsky know about the upcoming campaign for tomorrow and its direction. And he was not slow to take action. Part of the Cossack and Tatar troops secretly that night hurried to take some places along this road, set up ambushes there, notches, dig ditches and pour ramparts. The Cossacks paid special attention to the so-called Steep Beam, which they dug across with a deep ditch with trenches.

As soon as the camp entered the forest area, Cossacks and Tatars attacked it from both sides, showering it with bullets and arrows. Several hundred registered Cossacks and Ukrainian dragoons remaining with the Poles took advantage of the first confusion to join the ranks of the attackers.

The tabor somehow still moved and defended itself until it approached Krutaya Beam. Here he could not overcome the wide and deep ditch. The front wagons descending into the valley stopped, while the rear wagons from the mountain continued to move quickly towards them. There was a terrible commotion. Cossacks and Tatars from all sides began to storm this camp, and finally completely tore it apart and defeated it. The extermination of the Poles was facilitated by the same extravagant hetman, who sternly ordered the chivalry to dismount from their horses and defend themselves on foot, unusual for him. Only those who did not obey this order were saved, and a certain number of servants who led the master's horses and used them to escape. The whole camp and many prisoners became the prey of the victors. Both hetmans were among the latter; of the most prominent lords, their fate was shared by: the castellan of Chernigov, Jan Odzhivolsky, the chief of artillery, Denhof, the young Senyavsky, Khmeletsky, etc. According to a prearranged condition, the Cossacks were content with booty from expensive utensils, weapons, harness, all kinds of gear and supplies; horses and cattle in general were divided in half with the Tatars; and the yasyr or captives were all given into the hands of the Tatars and taken away as slaves to the Crimea, where the wealthy had to wait for a ransom, in an amount precisely determined for each. The Korsun pogrom followed about 10 days after the Zheltovodsky pogrom.

Spread of the uprising across Ukraine

What the Polish hetmans and Ukrainian lords were so afraid of happened: the uprising began to spread rapidly throughout Ukraine. Two defeats of the best Polish troops, Zheltovodsk and Korsun, and the capture of both hetmans made a stunning impression. When the Ukrainian people became convinced with their own eyes that the enemy was not at all as powerful as it had seemed up to that time, then the thirst for revenge and freedom deeply hidden in the hearts of the people arose with extraordinary force and soon overflowed; everywhere began a brutal bloody massacre of the rebellious Ukrainian mob with the gentry and the zh.dovstvo, who did not have time to escape to well-fortified cities and castles. Claps fleeing from the pans began to flock to Khmelnitsky's camp from all sides and sign up as Cossacks. Bogdan, who moved his convoy from Korsun up the Ros, to Belaya Tserkov, found himself at the head of a large army, which he began to organize and arm with the help of weapons, cannons and shells recaptured from the Poles. Having assumed the title of hetman of the Zaporizhian army, he, in addition to the former six registered regiments, began to organize new regiments; appointed by his own power colonels, captains and centurions. From here, he sent his envoys and generalists around Ukraine, calling on the Russian people to unite and rise unanimously against their oppressors, Poles and railways, but not against the king, who allegedly favors the Cossacks himself. The new Cossack hetman was apparently taken by surprise by unexpected luck and was still vaguely aware of his further goals; moreover, as an experienced and elderly man, he did not trust the constancy of happiness, even less the constancy of his predatory allies of the Tatars, and was afraid to call on the fight against him all the forces and means of the Commonwealth, with which he was quite familiar. Therefore, it is not surprising that his further diplomatic attempts to weaken the impression of events in the eyes of the Polish king and the Polish nobility and to warn the common militia or the "Commonwealth Rushen" against him. From the White Church, he wrote a respectful message to King Vladislav, in which he explained his actions by all the same reasons and circumstances, that is, intolerable oppression from the Polish lords and officers, humbly asked the king for forgiveness, promised to continue faithfully serving him and begged him to return the Zaporizhian army his old rights and privileges. From this we can conclude that he had not yet thought of breaking the connection between Ukraine and the Commonwealth. But this message did not find the king alive. Indomitable Sejm opposition, failures, and grief recent years responded very harmfully to the health of Vladislav, who had not yet reached old age. The loss of his seven-year-old dearly beloved son Sigismund, in whom he saw his successor, had a particularly depressing effect on him. The beginning of the Ukrainian rebellion, raised by Khmelnitsky, alarmed the king a lot. From Vilna, half-sick, he went with his court to Warsaw; but the dearly intensified illness delayed him in the town of Merechi, where he died on May 10, therefore, not having lived to see the Korsun defeat; we do not know if he managed to get the news of the Zheltovodsk pogrom. This unexpected death of such a king as Vladislav was a new and perhaps the happiest circumstance for Khmelnitsky. In Poland, the era of kinglessness has begun, with all its worries and turmoil; the state at that time was the least capable of vigorously suppressing the Ukrainian uprising.

Not limited to a message to the king, Khmelnitsky, prolific in letters, at the same time addressed similar conciliatory messages to Prince Dominik Zaslavsky, Prince Jeremiah Vishnevetsky and some other pans. Prince Vishnevetsky treated his envoys more severely than anyone else. He was about to go to the aid of the hetmans when he learned of their defeat near Korsun. Instead of any answer, the prince ordered Khmelnitsky to execute his envoys; and then, seeing his vast left-bank possessions engulfed in rebellion, he left his residence Lubny with 6,000 of his own well-armed troops, headed for Kiev Polissya, and near Lyubech crossed to the right side of the Dnieper. He also had extensive possessions in the Kiev region and Volhynia, and here he began an energetic struggle with the Ukrainian people, calling under his banners the Polish gentry, expelled from their Ukrainian estates. With his cruelty, he surpassed the rebels, without mercy destroying with fire and sword all the villages and inhabitants that fell into his hands. Khmelnytsky, sending detachments in different directions to support the Ukrainians, sent against Vyshnevetsky one of his most enterprising colonels, Maxim Krivonos, and for some time these two opponents fought with varying happiness, competing with each other in the ruin of cities and castles of Podolia and Volhynia. In other places of the same regions, as well as in the Kiev region, Polissya and Lithuania, colonels Krechovsky, Ganzha, Sangirey, Ostap, Golota and others acted more or less successfully. Many cities and castles passed into the hands of the Cossacks, thanks to the assistance of the Orthodox part of their population. In this era, the notorious Kodak fortress fell into the hands of the Cossacks; the Nezhinsky regiment was sent to get it.

The envoys sent by Khmelnytsky with a letter to the king and a statement of Cossack complaints, after the death of this latter, had to submit this letter and complaints to the senate or panam-rada, at the head of which, during the absence of a king, was usually the primate, i.e. Archbishop of Gnezdinsky, who at that time had the importance of the royal governor. At that time, the aged Matvey Lubensky was the primate. The senators who had gathered in Warsaw for the convocation Sejm were in no hurry to respond and, wanting to gain time before the election of a new king, entered into negotiations with Khmelnitsky; for which they appointed a special commission with the famous Adam Kisel at the head. Equipping himself in the Cossack camp, Kissel immediately entered into negotiations with Bogdan, sent his eloquent messages to him and urged him to return with a confession to the bosom of their common motherland, that is, the Commonwealth. Khmelnitsky was not inferior to him in the art of writing humble, affectionate, but empty messages. However, during the negotiations, they agreed to observe a kind of truce, but it did not materialize. Prince Jeremiah Vishnevetsky did not pay any attention to him and continued military operations; in the eyes of Kisel, a detachment of his troops attacked Ostrog, occupied by the Cossacks. Vishnevetsky is still rampant, hangs, impales Ukrainians. Krivonos takes the city of Bar; other Cossack detachments seize Lutsk, Klevan, Olyka, etc. The Cossacks and the embassy, ​​in turn, rage against the gentry, taking gentry women as their wives, and especially ruthlessly slaughter the railways. In order to save their lives, many railways converted to Christianity, but mostly feignedly, and, having fled to Poland, they returned to the faith of their fathers. The chroniclers say that at that time there was not a single railway left in Ukraine at all. In the same way, the gentry, leaving their estates, rushed to save themselves with their wives and children in the depths of Poland; and those who fell into the hands of the rebel serfs were mercilessly beaten.

Meanwhile, the Senate was taking some diplomatic and military measures. He began to write notes to the Crimea, Constantinople, the rulers of Voloshsky and Moldavsky, the Moscow border governors, inclining everyone towards peace or help from the Commonwealth and blaming the traitor and rebel Khmelnitsky for everything. At the same time, it was ordered to the lords with their armed detachments to gather in Glinyany, not far from Lvov. Since both hetmans were in captivity, it was necessary to appoint successors or deputies to them. The general voice of the gentry pointed primarily to the Russian governor, Prince Jeremiah Vishnevetsky; but by his arrogant, hard and quarrelsome character, he made himself many opponents among the noble pans; among them was the Crown Chancellor Ossolinsky. The Senate resorted to an extraordinary measure: instead of two hetmans, he appointed three commanders or regimentaries to the army; namely: the voivode of the Sendomir prince Dominik Zaslavsky, the crown sub-chalice Ostrorog and the crown cornet Alexander Konetspolsky. This unfortunate triumvirate became the subject of ridicule and wit. The Cossacks gave its members such nicknames: Prince Zaslavsky was called “feather bed” for his affectionate, gentle disposition and wealth, Ostrorog - “Latin” for his ability to speak Latin a lot, and Konetspolsky - “child” because of his youth and lack of talents. Vishnevetsky was appointed only one of the military commissars attached to help the three regimintars. The proud governor did not suddenly reconcile himself to such appointments and for some time held himself especially with his army. Some of the pans also joined him with their court banners and povet militia; the other part united with the regimintars. Both armies finally converged together, and then a force of 30-40,000 well-organized jolners was formed, not counting a large number of armed transport servants. The Polish lords gathered for this war with great pomp: they appeared on the roads in outfits and rich weapons, with many servants and carts, richly loaded with food and drink supplies and table utensils. In the camp they had feasts and drinking parties; their self-confidence and carelessness increased greatly at the sight of such a large assembled army.

Khmelnitsky is reproached for losing a lot of time in the White Church, not taking advantage of his victories, and after Korsun he did not rush into the depths of Poland, which was then almost defenseless, in order to end the war with a decisive blow. But such an accusation is hardly justified. The Cossack leader had to organize an army and settle all sorts of internal and external affairs in Ukraine; and his victorious march could be slowed down by the oncoming large fortresses. Moreover, the appeals of the Poles to the Crimea and Constantinople did not remain fruitless. The Sultan still hesitated to take the side of the rebel and restrained the Khan from further assistance to Khmelnitsky. The Moscow government, although sympathetic to his uprising, looked askance at his alliance with the Basurmans. However, it did not give help against the Crimeans, which the Poles demanded on the basis of the last treaty concluded by A. Kisel, but only sent an observation army near the border. Skillful negotiations of Khmelnitsky with Constantinople and Bakhchisarai, however, little by little led to the fact that the Khan, having received the consent of the Sultan, again moved the horde to help the Cossacks, and this time in much larger numbers.

In anticipation of this help, Khmelnitsky again set out on a campaign, went to Konstantinov and took this city. But, having learned about the proximity of the enemy army and not having the Tatars at hand, he retreated, and became a convoy near Pilyavtsy. The Poles took Konstantinov back and set up a fortified camp here. There were frequent meetings and disputes among the military leaders about whether to remain in this place convenient for defense or to advance further. The more cautious ones, including Vishnevetsky, advised them to stay and not go to the Pilyavtsy, a very rugged and swampy area lying near the headwaters of the Sluch. But the opponents overcame them, and it was decided to advance further. The Polish leadership and the incapable triumvirate favored Khmelnitsky's cause in no small way.

Near Pilyavtsy, the Polish army became a convoy not far from the Cossacks in a cramped and uncomfortable place. Daily skirmishes and isolated attacks began; the regimentaries, knowing that the horde had not yet arrived, were all about to strike with all their might at the fortified Cossack camp and the small Pylyavetska fortress, which they contemptuously called "kurnik", but somehow they all hesitated; and Khmelnitsky also shied away from a decisive battle, in anticipation of a horde. With his characteristic resourcefulness, he resorted to cunning. September 21 (new style) on Monday, at sunset, the three thousandth advance Tatar detachment approached him; and the khan was to appear in another three days. Khmelnitsky met the detachment with cannon fire and great noise, which lasted the whole night, as if the khan himself had arrived with a horde; which has already set alarm in the Polish camp. The next day, numerous crowds of Tatars poured out against the Poles, shouting “Allah! Allah!" The separate skirmishes that ensued soon, thanks to reinforcements from both sides, turned into a big battle; it was unfortunate for the Poles, whose leaders were clearly timid and poorly supported each other. They were so little informed that they mistook for the Horde a Cossack naked dressed in Tatar rags, who, together with the Tatars, called for Allah's help. And Khmelnitsky encouraged the Cossack regiments with his usual click: “For the faith, well done, for the faith!” Knocked off the field and convinced of the disadvantage of their location, the Poles lost heart. Regimentaries, commissars and chief colonels at the end of the battle, without dismounting from their horses, committed a military council. It was decided to retreat in a camp to Konstantinov in order to take a more convenient position, and an order was given to make a camp that night, that is, to set up a cart in a certain order. But some noble lords, with Prince Dominic himself at the head, trembling for their expensive belongings, slowly sent him forward under cover of night, and they themselves followed him. Even the movement of the wagons for the camp in the darkness of the night caused no little confusion; and when the news spread that the chiefs were fleeing and leaving the army to sacrifice to the Tatar horde, a terrible panic seized him; the slogan "save yourself, who can!" Entire banners rushed to the horses and indulged in a desperate gallop. The bravest, including Jeremiah Vishnevetsky, were carried away by the general stream and shamefully fled so as not to fall into Tatar captivity.

On the morning of Wednesday, September 23, the Cossacks found the Polish camp deserted and at first did not believe their eyes, fearing an ambush. Convinced of the reality, they diligently began to unload the Polish wagons filled with all sorts of goods. Never before or since have they taken so easily and such a huge booty. There were several thousand wagons, bound with iron, called "skarbniks". The hetman's mace, gilded and decorated with expensive stones, was also found in the camp. After Korsun and Pilyavitsy, the Cossacks wore rich Polish attire; and they collected so many gold, silver things and utensils that they sold whole heaps of them to Kiev and other nearby merchants for a cheap price. The covetous Khmelnitsky, of course, took the lion's share of this booty. After Zhovtiye Vody and Korsun, having reoccupied his Subotovsky estate and the Chigirinsky court, he now sent there, as they say, several barrels filled with silver, some of which he ordered to be buried in hidden places. But even more important than wealth was the high value that the three-time winner of the Poles now received in the eyes of not only his people, but also all his neighbors. When, on the third day after the flight of the Poles, a horde with the Kalga Sultan and Tugay Bey arrived near Pylyavtsy, it seemed that Poland was no longer able to fight the powerful Cossack hetman. She did not have a ready army, and the road to her very heart, that is, to Warsaw, was open. Khmelnitsky, together with the Tatars, really moved in that direction; but on the way to the capital it was necessary to take possession of two strong points, Lvov and Zamosc.

Khmelnitsky's campaign to Lvov

One of the richest trading cities of the Commonwealth, Lviv at the same time was well fortified, equipped with a sufficient number of guns and shells; and its garrison was reinforced by a part of the Polish fugitives from near Pilyavitsy. But in vain the Lvov city authorities begged Jeremiah Vishnevetsky to take over from them; the nobility gathered around him even proclaimed him the great crown hetman. He only helped set up the defense and then left; and the leadership here was handed over to Christopher Grodzitsky, skilled in military affairs. The population of Lvov, which consisted of Catholics, Uniates, Armenians, Jews and Orthodox Rusyns, armed themselves, collected large sums of money for military expenses and quite unanimously decided to defend themselves to the last extreme. The Orthodox themselves were forced to hide their sympathy for the cause of the Cossacks and to help the defense in view of the decisive predominance and enthusiasm of the Catholics. Soon hordes of Tatars and Cossacks appeared; they broke into the suburbs and began the siege of the city and the upper castle. But the citizens bravely defended themselves, and the siege dragged on. After standing here for more than three weeks, Khmelnitsky, apparently sparing the city and evading a decisive attack, agreed to take a large payback (700,000 Polish zlotys), and, having divided it with the Tatars, on October 24 removed his camp.

Siege of Zamosc

Kalga Sultan, burdened with booty and captives, moved to Kamenets; and Khmelnitsky with Tugai Bey went to the fortress of Zamosc, which he besieged with his main forces; meanwhile, separate Tatar and Cossack pens scattered over the neighboring regions of Poland, everywhere spreading horror and devastation.

The invasion of the Cossack and Tatar hordes, as well as rumors about the hostile mood of Moscow, in general, the extreme danger in which the Commonwealth found itself at that time, finally forced the Poles to rush to elect a king. The main contenders were the two brothers of Vladislav IV: Jan Casimir and Karl Ferdinand. Both of them were in the clergy: Casimir, during his wanderings abroad, entered the Jesuit Order and then received the rank of cardinal from the pope, but after the death of his older brother, he nominally assumed the title of King of Sweden; and Karl had the rank of bishop (of Wroclaw, then of Plock). The younger brother generously spent his wealth on treating the gentry and on bribery in order to achieve the crown. He was also supported by some noble pans, for example, the Russian voivode Jeremiah Vishnevetsky, his friend the voivode of Kyiv Tyshkevich, the crown lieutenant-chancellor Leshchinsky, etc. But the party of Jan Casimir was more numerous and stronger. It was headed by the crown chancellor Ossolinsky, and the voivode of Bratslav, Adam Kisel, also belonged to it; she was assiduously supported with her influence by the dowager queen Maria Gonzaga, together with the French ambassador, who had already drawn up a plan for her future marriage from Kazimir. Finally, the Cossacks declared themselves for the latter, and Khmelnytsky, in his messages to the Panama Rada, directly demanded that Jan Casimir be elected king, and Jeremiah Vyshnevetsky would by no means be approved by the crown hetman, and only in that case he promised to stop the war. After many disputes and delays, the senators persuaded Prince Charles to withdraw his candidacy, and, on November 17 of the new style, the electoral Warsaw Sejm settled rather unanimously on the choice of Jan Casimir. Three days later, he swore allegiance to the ordinary pacta conventa. These restrictive conditions for the king, however, this time were supplemented by some more: for example, the royal guard could not be made up of foreigners and must take an oath in the name of the Commonwealth.

Thanks to the courageous defense of the garrison led by Wejer, the siege of Zamość also dragged on. But Weyer urgently demanded help and notified the senators of his plight. Therefore, when the choice of Jan Casimir was secured, the new king, without waiting for the end of all the formalities, hastened to take advantage of Khmelnitsky's declaration of loyalty to himself and sent the Volyn gentry Smyarovsky, whom he knew, near Zamosc with a letter in which he ordered to immediately lift the siege and return to Ukraine, where to expect commissars to negotiate peace terms. Khmelnytsky received the royal envoy with honor and expressed his readiness to fulfill the royal will. Some of the colonels, with Krivonos at the head, and the convoy Chernota, objected to the retreat; but the cunning messenger tried to arouse in Khmelnitsky suspicion of the purity of the intentions of Krivonos himself and his supporters. Probably, the coming winter, the difficulties of the siege and the heavy losses in people also influenced the decision of the hetman, who either did not know or did not want to pay attention to the fact that the fortress was already in a state of emergency due to the onset of famine. Khmelnitsky handed Smyarovsky an answer to the king with an expression of his devotion and humility; and on November 24, he retreated from Zamość, taking a small payback from the Zamoysky burghers for the Tatars of Tugai Bey. The latter went to the steppes, and the Cossack convoy and guns were drawn to Ukraine. Obviously, the Cossack hetman still wavered in his ultimate goals, did not find a foothold for the isolation of Little Russia, and therefore hesitated to break completely with the Commonwealth, expecting something from the newly elected king. In fact, along with the end of the Polish kinglessness, the most favorable conditions for the liberation of Ukraine also ended. The retreat from Lvov and Zamosc is to some extent a turning point from an uninterrupted series of successes to a long, destructive and entangled struggle between two nationalities and two cultures: Russian and Polish.

The liberation of Ukraine from the Poles and the organization of the Cossack army

All Ukraine on the left side of the Dnieper, and along the Sluch and the Southern Bug on the right, at that time was not only cleared of Polish lords and zh.dovstva, but all strong cities and castles in this space were occupied by the Cossacks; the Polish flag did not fly anywhere. Naturally, the Russian people rejoiced that they had forever freed themselves from the Polish-Jewish yoke, and therefore everywhere they triumphantly met and saw off the culprit of their liberation; the priests received him with images and prayers; the bursaks (especially in Kyiv) delivered rhetorical panegyrics to him; moreover, they called him Roksolansky Moses, comparing with the Maccabees, etc.; the common people noisily and joyfully greeted him. And the hetman himself marched through cities and towns on a richly dressed horse, surrounded by colonels and centurions, flaunting luxurious clothes and harness; Behind him were beaten-off Polish banners and maces, and they carried captured gentry women, whom noble and even simple Cossacks for the most part took as their wives. This apparent liberation and these trophies did not come cheap to the people. Fire and sword have already wrought considerable havoc in the country; already a lot of the population died from the sword and captivity, and mainly not from the enemies of the Poles, but from the allies of the Tatars. These predators, so greedy for the yasyr, were not limited to the captivity of the Poles, to which they were entitled by condition; and often captured into captivity and native Russian embassy. They especially took away those young artisans who followed the fashion of the gentry and shaved their heads around, letting go of the chuprin at the top on the Polish model; the Tatars pretended to take them for Poles.

Be that as it may, Bogdan returned to Ukraine almost as a complete master of the country. He drove to Kyiv and bowed to the Kiev shrines, and then went to his place in Chigirin, where he now founded the hetman's residence. Only Pereyaslav sometimes shared this honor with Chigirin. According to some reports, the first thing Khmelnytsky did upon his return to Ukraine was to marry his old affection and kuma, that is, the wife of the elder Chaplinsky, who had escaped, for which he allegedly received permission from a Greek hierarch who stopped in Kyiv on his way to Moscow. Then he continued the organization of the Cossack army, begun after Korsun, which was constantly increasing in volume; since not only the mass of the embassy and peasants were attributed to him, but also many townspeople; and in cities with Magdeburg rights, even burgomasters and raytsy left their orders, shaved their beards and molested the army. According to the chronicler, in every village it was difficult to find someone who either didn’t go himself, or didn’t send a son or a servant-boy to the army; and in another courtyard everyone left, leaving only one person to look after the household. In addition to the militancy inherent in the Little Russian people, in addition to the desire to secure their liberation from the lord's captivity or from serfdom, there was also the lure of huge booty, which the Cossacks enriched themselves in Polish convoys after victories, as well as in Polish and railway farms that were plundered. Along with the influx of people, the military territory itself expanded. The army could no longer confine itself to the former six local regiments of the Kiev province; another regiment would have more than 20,000 Cossacks, and a hundred more than 1,000. Now, on both sides of the Dnieper, new regiments were gradually formed, named after their main cities. Actually, five or six regiments were added on the right-bank Ukraine, which are: Umansky, Lisyansky, Pavolotsky, Kalnitsky and Kievsky, and even in Polissya Ovruchsky. Mostly, they multiplied in the left-bank Ukraine, in which there was only one complete, Pereyaslavsky, before Khmelnitsky; now regiments have formed there: Nezhinsky, Chernigov, Prilutsky, Mirgorodsky, Poltava, Irkleevsky, Ichansky and Zenkovsky. In total, therefore, up to 20 or more registered regiments appeared in this era. Each of them had to be made a regimental foreman, distributed in hundreds to well-known towns and villages, supplied with weapons and ammunition, if possible, etc. , Giryu, Moroz, Ostap, Burlai, etc.

Along with the internal structure of Ukraine and the Cossacks, Bogdan at that time was also diligently engaged in external relations. His successful struggle with Poland attracted general attention to him, and ambassadors from almost all neighboring powers and rulers gathered at his Chigirin residence with congratulations, gifts and various secret offers of friendship, some of alliance against the Poles. There were ambassadors from the Crimean Khan, then from the rulers of Moldavia and Wallachia, from the prince of Semigrad Yuri Rakocha (former pretender to the Polish throne) and finally from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. Khmelnitsky quite skillfully dodged among their various interests and proposals and composed letters of reply to them.

Khmelnytsky's negotiations with the Poles

Jan Casimir, as far as his power and means allowed him, began to prepare an army to suppress the Ukrainian uprising. Contrary to the wishes of the majority of the gentry, he did not approve Vishnevetsky as a hetman, because some of the senators continued to act against him, with Chancellor Ossolinsky at the head; and the new king himself did not favor him, as a former opponent of his candidacy; probably, Khmelnytsky's insistent demands that Vyshnevetsky not be given the hetman's paper did not go unnoticed. While waiting for Potocki and Kalinovsky to be released from Tatar captivity, Jan Casimir took the leadership of military affairs into his own hands. And meanwhile, in January of the coming year 1649, the promised commission was sent to Khmelnitsky for negotiations, headed by the famous Adam Kisel again. When the commission with its retinue crossed the Sluch River near Zvyagl (Novgorod-Volynsky) and entered the Kiev province, that is, Ukraine, it was met by one Cossack colonel (Donets), appointed to accompany her; but on the way to Perelagave, the population received her with hostility and refused to deliver food to her; the people did not want any negotiations with the Poles and considered all relations with them ended. In Pereyaslav, although the hetman himself, together with the foreman, met the commission, with military music and cannon fire (February 9), however, Kisel was immediately convinced that this was no longer the former Khmelnitsky with his assurances of loyalty to the king and the Speech. Commonwealth; now the tone of Bogdan and those around him was much higher and more resolute. Already at the ceremony of presenting him with the hetman's signs on behalf of the king, namely maces and banners, one drunken colonel interrupted Kisel's rhetorical word and scolded the pans. Bogdan himself reacted to these signs with obvious indifference. The ensuing negotiations and meetings did not lead to concessions on his part, despite all the meticulous speeches and persuasion of Kisel. Khmelnitsky, as usual, often got drunk, and then he treated the commissars rudely, demanded the extradition of his enemy Chaplinsky and threatened the Poles with all sorts of disasters; threatened to exterminate the duks and princes and make the king "free" so that he could equally cut off the heads of the guilty and the prince and the Cossack; and he sometimes called himself the "sovereign" and even the "autocrat" of the Russians; He said that before he fought for his own offense, and now he will fight for the Orthodox faith. The colonels boasted of Cossack victories, directly mocked the Poles and said that they were no longer the same, not Zholkiewski, Khodkevichi and Konetspolsky, but Tkhorzhevsky (cowards) and Zaionchkovsky (hares). In vain, too, did the commissars fuss about the release of captured Poles, especially those taken in Kodak, Konstantinov and Bar.

Finally, the commission barely managed to get an agreement to conclude a truce before Trinity Bottom and left, taking with them some of the preliminary peace conditions proposed by the hetman, namely: that the very name of the union should not be in Kyiv or Ukraine, also that there should be no Jesuits and railways, so that the Metropolitan of Kyiv would sit in the Senate, and the voevoda and the castellan would be from the Orthodox, so that the Cossack hetman would be directly subordinate to the king, so that Vyshnevetsky would not be the crown hetman, etc. Khmelnitsky postponed the definition of the Cossack register and other peace conditions until spring, until the general meeting colonels and the entire foreman, and until the future commission, which has to arrive on the Rossava River. The main reason for his intransigence, apparently, was not so much the presence of foreign ambassadors in Pereyaslav at that time and the hope of help from neighbors, but the displeasure of the people or, in fact, the mob, who clearly grumbled at these negotiations and scolded the hetman, fearing that he would not do it again. he gave into serfdom to the Polish lords. Khmelnitsky sometimes expressed to the commissars that from this side of his very life he was in danger and that without the consent of the military council he could not do anything. No matter how unfortunate this time, the embassy Hell. Kissel with the Commission, and no matter how many grandees of this Orthodox Rusyn were condemned, accusing him of almost betraying the Commonwealth and of secret agreements with his fellow tribesman and co-religionist Khmelnitsky (whom some intelligent Poles called "Zaporozhian Machiavel"); however, the king appreciated the work of the aged and already overwhelmed by diseases, the voivode of Bratslavsky, aimed at appeasing; at that time, the governor of Kyiv, Janusz Tyszkiewicz, died, and Jan Casimir gave the Kiev province to Kisel, raising him to the senatorial rank, to the even greater displeasure of his comrades-rada Kunakov, Grabyanka, Samovidets, Velichko, Tvardovsky, Kochovsky, canon Yuzefovich, Yerlich, Albrecht Radzival, Mashkevich:, "Monuments" Kyiv. Commissions, Acts of the South. and Zap. Russia, Acts of Moscow. States, Supplementum ad Hist. Ruњ. monumenta, Southwest Archive. Russia, etc.

Monuments I. Det. 3. Adam Kisel, in a letter to the primate-archbishop of Lubensky dated May 31, 1648, mentions his advice not to divide the Polish army and not to go to Zaporozhye (No. 7). Letter from the Lvov syndic about the Zheltovodsk and Korsun defeat. Here it is reported that Khmelnitsky, who was standing near the White Church, "calls himself already the prince of Russia" (No. 10). Polish interrogation of one of Khmelnytsky's agents sent around Ukraine, namely Yarema Kontsevich. To hide their Cossack rank, the agents "wear their hair down". The clergy help the uprising; for example, Lutsk Bishop Athanasius sent Krivonos 70 gakovnits, 8 half-barrels of gunpowder, 7,000 money to attack Olyka and Dubno. Orthodox priests send messages to each other from city to city. Orthodox philistines in the cities agree among themselves how to help the Cossacks; they promise to set fire to the city when they attack, others to pour sand into cannons, etc. (No. 11). Letter dated June 12 Khmelnitsky to Vladislav IV, then already deceased. Calculation of Cossack complaints filed at the Warsaw Sejm on July 17, signed by Khmelnitsky. responses to these complaints. (Nos. 24, 25 et seq.). Letter from Krivonos dated July 25 to Prince Dominik Zaslavsky, complaining about the villainy of Yeremia Vishnevetsky, who cut off the heads and impaled small people, and pierced the priests' eyes "(No. 30). Kisel's letter to Chancellor Ossolinsky, dated August 9, about his ruin of the Gushcha estate by the Cossacks, moreover, "the railways were all cut out, the yards and taverns were burned" (No. 35). Letter from the Podolsk judge Myaskovsky, dated the same 9th, about the capture of Bar by storm from the Cossacks. ordered the villagers to go "(No. 36). According to Kisel, Krivonos, for his cruelty, was put on a chain and chained to a cannon by order of Khmelnitsky, but then released on bail. Khmelnitsky allegedly had 180,000 Cossacks and 30,000 Tatars in August (No. 38 and 40). About the actions near Konstantinov and Ostrog (Nos. 35, 41, 45, 46, 47, 49). Under Konstantinov, the "brave" pan Chaplinsky (No. 51) is mentioned among the commanders of the detachment of Alexander Konetspolsky. This refutes the legend Velichka about h then after the Yellow Waters Khmelnitsky sent a detachment to Chigirin to capture his enemy, whom he executed. However, Bogdan himself refutes this legend, demanding more than once from the Poles that Chaplinsky be handed over to him. About the negotiations of the Kisel Commission with the Cossacks in Pereyaslav, notes of one of the commissars, Myaskovsky (Nos. 57, 60, and 61). For the conditions awarded by Kisel, see also Kunakov, 288–289, Kakhovskii, 109, and Supplem. ad. Hist. mon. 189. Novitsky "Adam Kisel, Governor of Kyiv". ("Kyiv. Antiquity". 1885. November). The author, by the way, from Ksikga Michalowskiego cites Latin libelous verses about Hell, unloved by the Poles. Kisel and even on his mother. For example: Adde quod matrem olim meretricem Nunc habeat monacham sed incantatricem.

Acts of South.u West. Russia.III. From March 17 Ad. Kissel informs the governor of Putivl about the flight to Zaporozhye of one 1000 or a little more Cherkassy Cossacks; "and their elders have a simple clap, named Khmelnitsky," who thinks to flee to the Don and, together with the Don people, launch a sea raid on Turkish land. (It is possible that at the beginning such a rumor spread not without the participation of Bogdan himself). And on April 24, the same Kisel in a letter to the Moscow boyars informs them that the Polish army went "by the field and the Dnieper" against the traitor Khmelnitsky and expresses the hope for his speedy execution if he does not run away to the Crimea; and in the event of the arrival of the Horde, he recalls that, according to the recently concluded agreement, Moscow troops should come to the aid of the Poles (Nos. 163 and 177). Details about the election and coronation of Jan Casimir (No. 243. Zap. Kunakova).

Acts of Moscow. State. vol. II. News of 1648 - 1649: about the capture of Kodak, about the Zheltovodsk and Korsun battles, about the transition of the leist to Khmelnitsky; strange rumors about the king, such as that he fled to Smolensk, or that he is at one with the Cossacks, although the people stand up for the Orthodox faith. Poles and railways are running for the Dnieper, i.e. from the left side to the right, they are sometimes completely exterminated when a city is taken. Left-bank residents pray to God to be under the royal high hand. Obviously, from the very beginning of this extermination war, the left side has been drawn to Moscow (Nos. 338, 341 - 350). Izvestia of 1650-1653: reports of the Belgorod governor about pestilence in Cherkasy cities; about the campaigns of Timofey Khmelnitsky in Moldova, about the Treaty of Belotserkovsky, about the fact that the right side is drawn to Poland, about the complaints of the inhabitants against Bogdan for his alliance with the Tatars who devastated the land, about the alliance of the Don Cossacks with the Kalmyks against the Tatars, about the colonels of Nizhinsky Iv. Zolotarenka and Poltava Pushkar, on the intervention of Turkey, etc. (Nos. 468, 470, 485, 488, 492 - 497, etc.) Supplementum ad Hist.Rus. monumentu. A station wagon from Warsaw about the royal election and the war with the Cossacks; moreover, it is said that Russia, i.e. the Cossacks, no longer lightly armed with bows and arrows, but now they are with a fiery battle (177). Further letters from Khmelnitsky to Kisel, Zaslavsky, to a senator from near Lvov, to Weyer, the commandant of Zamostye, a letter from the king to Khmelnitsky near Zamostye, etc. Archive Southwest. Russia, part II. vol. I. Nos. XXIX - XXXI, Instructions to the Volhynian ambassadors to the Sejm in March 1649.

According to Kunakov's reports, not one Cossack-Tatar invasion, but also rumors about Moscow's preparations to take Smolensk and other cities, prompted the Poles to hasten to choose a king and order the fortification of Smolensk (Ak. Yuzh. and Zap. Ros. III. pp. 306 - 307).

Regarding the mission of Yakov Smyarovsky and the retreat from Zamostye, see the article by Alexander Krausgar, based on manuscript sources, placed in a Polish collection of 1894 and reported in Russian translation in the December issue Kievan antiquity for 1894. Canon Yuzefovich and Grabyanka speak about solemn meetings to Khmelnitsky upon his return from Zamosc. About the capture of artisans by the Tatars, baring their heads in Polish, reports Samovidets. It is confirmed by the following fact: the aforementioned Starodubets Gr. Klimov near Kiev was captured by the Tatars; but when the Cossacks "saw that he did not have any cold, they took him from the Tatars to themselves." (Acts of the Southern and Western Russia. III. No. 205). About the marriage of Bogdan to his godfather Chaplinskaya (“with the permission of the Patriarch of Tsaregrad”) Grabyanka, Samovidets and Tvardovsky speak. Unlikely details about that in the diary of Kisel's commissars (Monuments. I. div. 3. pp. 335 - 339): as if the fugitive patriarch of Jerusalem, on his way to Moscow, married Khmelnitsky in absentia in Kyiv, since Chaplinskaya was then in Chigirin. He sent her gifts with a monk; but Khmelnitsky's son Timoshka, "a real robber," gave him vodka to drink and shaved his beard, while Khmelnitsky's wife gave him only 50 thalers. The patriarch allegedly gave Bogdan the title of "Highest Prince" and blessed him "to exterminate the Poles in the end." The same patriarch and the marriage of Bogdan are mentioned by Kokhovsky (111). Kunakov speaks of Paisios, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, when he was in Kyiv, blessed Khmelnitsky to establish the Greek faith in Russia, to purify it from the union; that is why Kisel's commission was not successful (it is understandable, therefore, that its above-mentioned hostile attitude towards Paisius). To this Patriarch Paisius Khmelnytsky sent with the Ukrainian elders a secret order composed by the clerk Iv. Vygovsky (Acts of the Southern and Western Russia III. Nos. 243 and 244). In the article list of Kulakov about his embassy in Warsaw, among other things, the main persons of the gentlemen-rada of that time are given; and also curious are his reports about Maria Ludwiga's negotiations with Jan Casimir regarding her marriage to him. (No. 242).

For Pilyavitsy, see Monuments (Nos. 53 and 54), Kunakov, as well as Polish writers Kokhovsky, Mashkevich and Tvardovsky. Apparently, the well-known impostor Jan Faustin Luba fell near Pilyavitsy, according to the conflicting news from Kunakov. (pp. 283, 301 and 303). Kokhovsky reports that after Piliavits Khmelnytsky appropriated the power and power of the sovereign duke (vim ducis et aucloritatem complexus), only without his title. He distributed positions to the people around him, which are: Charnota, Krivonos, Kalina, Evstakhiy, Voronchenko, Loboda, Burlai; but the most influential under him became John Vygovsky, head of the clerkship. This Vygovsky, a gentleman of the Greek religion, had previously served in the Kiev court, was sentenced to death for forgery in acts, but escaped it by the intercession of noble people, and then he entered the army (81) Kokhovsky cites a click: "Well done for faith, !" (And on p. 36 Pototsky's words to Kalinovsky: praesente parocho cesserit jurisdictio vicarii). Kokhovsky was used by the Lvov canon Yuzefovich, which he himself admits when he had to describe in more detail the siege of Lvov by Khmelnitsky and look for other sources (151). Here, by the way, he talks about miraculous visions in Catholic churches and monasteries, foreshadowing salvation from enemies. Woyna Domowa by Samoil Tvardovsky, written in Polish verse and published in 1681, in an old Little Russian translation by Stef. Savetsky, a clerk of the Lubensky regiment, is placed in the IV volume of the Chronicle of Wieliczka, under the title "The Tale of the Cossack War with the Poles". There are some details here. For example, about the capture of Tulchin by Colonel Ganzha, then Ostap, about the murder of Prince Chetvertinsky by his own holots and the capture of his wife by the colonel (12 - 13). This fact is somewhat different in Kochowski (48): Czetwertinius Borovicae in oppido interceptus; violata in conspectu uxore ac enectis liberis, demum ipse a molitore proprio ferrata pil medius proeceditur. (The same is detailed in Yuzefovich. 129). Kochovsky mentions the capture of Kodak (57), erroneously calls him the commandant of the Frenchman Marion, who was Sulima in 1635 when he was first captured. At the end of 1648, Nizhyn Colonel Shumeiko was sent to Kodak by Khmelnitsky, who forced the commandant Grodzitsky to surrender, at the end of 1648 (Mashkevich's diary. "Memoirs". Issue 2. p. 110. Note). About the Kodatsky Castle, its garrison of 600 people and the Dnieper rapids, numbering 12, see Mashkevich on pages 412 - 413 of the translation. Along Mashkevich, the army of Hetman Radivil marched along the Dnieper to Loev in 1649 on canoes, setting up walk-towns on them (438). Ibid in note. on page 416 reference to Geisman "Battle of the Yellow Waters". Saratov. 1890. He indicates a yellow jar against Saksagan, and considers the village of Zholte on the northwestern outskirts of the Verkhnedneprovsky district to be the place of the battle.

We find some, not always reliable, news about these events from Yerlich. For example, regarding the sudden death of Vladislav IV, there was a rumor that while hunting, his haiduk, shooting at a running deer, hit the king chasing him. Registered Cossacks, who betrayed the Poles, "taking off their hats at once", rushed at them. The Cossack commissar Shemberg, who was taken prisoner on Zhovti Vody, was beheaded by the Cossacks. He also reports on the addiction of Nikolai Pototsky to drinks and young pans, about the mass exodus from their estates of the gentry with their wives and children, to Volhynia and Poland after the Korsun defeat, when the serfs rebelled everywhere and began to exterminate the railways and the gentry, rob their yards , rape their wives and daughters (61 - 68). According to Yerlich and Radzivil, a payback of 200,000 zlotys was taken from Lvov, according to Yuzefovich - 700,000 Polish florins, according to Kochovsky - 100,000 imperialium. In the same way, regarding the number of troops, especially the Cossack and Tatar ones, there is a great disagreement in the sources and frequent exaggeration.

Yerlich, an Orthodox but semi-Polish gentry and landowner, hates Khmelnitsky and the rebellious Cossacks. In the same genus, there are various reports from Alberkh Radzivil in his Pamietnikax (vol. II.). Among other things, we learn from them that the Polish ambassadors Kisel and Pac, who returned from Moscow, gave a report on their embassy to the Senate with great ridicule at the Muscovites. He reports on the betrayal of the Russian people during the capture of the cities of Polonny, Zaslav, Ostrog, Korets, Mendzhizhech, Tulchin by the Cossacks, on the beating of the gentry, the townspeople, and especially the railways; his Olyka also fell into the hands of the Cossacks by the betrayal of his subjects. He lists their atrocities, cruelty and blasphemy against Catholic churches and shrines; moreover, he cites the prophecy of a dying boy: quadragesimus octavus mirabilis annus. On the strong influx of the Commonwealth and townspeople into the army and new registered regiments, at Samovidets (19 - 20). Kokhovsky names the XVII Cossack legions, but lists 15, and at the mention of the names of the colonels he leaves some disagreement (115 p.). Grabianka lists 14 regiments with colonels after Zborov. (94). The "Register of the Zaporizhian Army", also compiled after the Zboriv Treaty, lists 16 regiments ("Thurs. Ob. and. and Other." 1874. Book 2). In Acts of Southern and Western Ross. (T. VIII, No. 33) also after Zborov "the hetman ordered sixteen regiments", and here they are listed (on page 351) with the names of the colonels; Ivan Bohun is in charge of two regiments, Kalnitsky and Chernigov.

On the embassy of Smyarovsky and his murder at Yerlich (98). Monuments.I. III. Page 404 and 429. Ksiega Mikhailovsky. Nos. 114 and 115. Manuscript Collection from the library of gr. Khreptovich (239), where the correspondence of the crown hetmans and the king with Khmelnitsky. Ibid. Russian song in Latin letters about Bogdan Khmelnitsky, under 1654 (277). Siege of Zbarazh: Kokhovsky, Tvardovsky, Yuzefovich, Samovidets and Grabyanka. Tvardovsky and Grabianka speak about the gentry who made his way to the king, but they differ in details. Grabianka calls him Skretusky (72). By Tvardovsky and Kokhovsky, Khmelnitsky used during this siege, according to the Moscow custom, a walk-gorod to attack the ramparts, but unsuccessfully; mines and counter mines are mentioned. Yuzefovich counts only 12,000 Poles near Zbarazh, and 300,000 Cossacks and Tatars! Correspondence of the king, khan and Khmelnytsky near Zborov in monuments. I. 3. Nos. 81 - 85.

The Zborow Treaty in S. G. G. and D. III. No. 137. (Here the Polish text and Russian translation are not always accurate). Some news about Zbarazh and Zborov in Acts of Southern and Western Russia. T. III. Nos. 272 ​​- 279, especially No. 301 (Kunakov's report on the siege, battle and treaty, the meeting of the king with the Khan and Khmelnitsky, who allegedly treated the king proudly and dryly during this meeting, then about the indignation of the serfs at Khmelnitsky for the agreement, on on the basis of which Kunakov prophesies the resumption of the war) and 303 (an unsubscribe from the Putivl governors about the same events and the Zborov articles). T. X. No. 6 (also about these articles). Archive of Southwestern Russia. C.P.T.I. No. XXXII. (On the return of Orthodox churches and spiritual estates on the basis of the Zboriv Treaty).

In details about the defeat near Berestechko, the flight of the Khan and Khmelnitsky, the sources are quite contradictory. Some Polish authors say that the khan kept Bogdan as a prisoner. (See Butsinsky. 95). The note of the clerk Grigory Bogdanov repeats the same thing. (Acts of Southern and Western Russia, III. No. 328. p. 446). But the Ukrainian chroniclers, for example, Samovydets and Grabyanka, do not say anything of the kind. Also, Colonel Semyon Savich, the hetman's envoy in Moscow, says nothing about the forcible detention of Khmelnitsky (Acts Yu. and 3. R. III. No. 329). It is more reliable that Khmelnitsky himself did not want to return to his regiments without the Tatars. And the khan, judging partly from the same sources, explained his flight simply by panic. But Mr. Butsinsky points out the news of a Ukrainian writer, according to which the khan fled, seeing treason on the part of the Cossacks and Khmelnitsky, and on this sole basis he believes that the khan's suspicion was not groundlessly(93–94. With reference to the "Brief Historical Description of Little Russia"). The modern plan of the battle near Berestechko, preserved in the briefcase of King Stanislav August, is attached to the first volume by Bantysh-Kamensky.

Bila Tserkva Treaty, Batog, Suceava, Zhvanets and the following: Grabyanka, Samovidets, Velichko, Yuzefovich, Kokhovsky. S. G. G. and D. III. No. 143. Monuments. III. Dep. 3. No. 1 (letter from Kisel to the king dated February 24, 1652, about the Treaty of Bila Tserkva, with advice to treat Khmelnitsky as softly as possible in order to quarrel him with the Tatars), 3 (letter from Stockholm of the former sub-chancellor Radzeevsky to Khmelnitsky on May 30 of the same year moreover, he praises Queen Christina, who can fight the Poles, and therefore it would be good to conclude an alliance with her. This letter was intercepted by the Poles); 4 (on the defeat of the Poles near Batog), 5 (a letter from the Polish hetman Stanislav Potocki to Khmelnitsky in August 1652, with advice to rely on the mercy of the king). Regarding the marriage of Timosh with Roksanda, see Vengrzhenevsky's article "The Wedding of Timofey Khmelnitsky". (Kievskaya Starina. 1887. May). Bogdan's acquisitiveness is evidenced by a document printed in Kyiv. Star.(1901 No. I. under the title "Apiary of B. Khmelnitsky"); it shows that Bogdan took away from a certain Shungan an apiary located in the Black Forest, which was 15 miles away from Chigirin. (Alexander, districts, Kherson, province.). The second wife of Bogdan, the former Chaplinskaya, "by birth Polka", according to the chroniclers (Grabyanka, Tvardovsky), knew how to please him: dressed in a luxurious dress, she brought the guests a burner in golden goblets, and for her husband she ground tobacco in a handle, and she herself, together with got drunk on him. According to Polish rumors, the former Chaplinsky entered into a relationship with a watchmaker from Lvov, and as if they jointly stole from Bogdan one of the barrels of gold buried by him, for which he ordered them both to be hanged. And according to Velichka, this was done in the absence of his father, Timothy, who ordered his stepmother to hang on the gate. By all indications, these news are of a legendary character; which is what Vengrzhenevsky points out in the article cited above. On this occasion, the message of the Greek elder Pavel to Moscow is curious: "On the 10th day of the Maya (1651) the news came to the hetman that his wife was gone, and the hetman was very unhappy about it." (Acts of Southern and Western Russia, III. No. 319. P. 452 ). Velichko speaks about Khmelnitsky's attack on part of the Horde and its pogrom near Mezhyhirya. I. 166.

Tvardovsky (82) and Grabianka (95) speak of Khmelnytsky's allegiance to Turkey. See Kostomarov "Bogdan Khmelnitsky tributary of the Ottoman Porte". (Bulletin of Europe 1878.XII). Around 1878, the author found Min. In. Cases, namely in the Polish Crown Metrika, several acts of 1650-1655, confirming Khmelnitsky's tributary attitude to Turkish Sultan, what are the Turkish letters of Sultan Mahmet and Greek letters with a Latin translation, written by Khmelnitsky to the Crimean Khan. From this correspondence it is clear that Bogdan, even after the oath of allegiance to Moscow, continues to be cunning and explains to the Sultan and Khan his relationship with Moscow simply by contractual conditions for receiving assistance against the Poles. G. Butsinsky in his above-mentioned monograph (p. 84 et seq.) also asserts the Turkish citizenship of Bogdan and is based on the same documents of the Archive of the Mines. In. Del. He cites letters to Bogdan from some Turkish and Tatar nobles and a letter to him from Constantinople Patriarch Parthenius; this patriarch, who received and blessed the ambassadors of Khmelnitsky, who arrived to the Sultan, died a victim of the slander of the rulers of Moldavia and Voloshsky. On this occasion, Mr. Butsinsky refers to the "History of Russia's Relations with the East" by Fr. Nikolsky. By the same time, he refers Cromwell's letter to Bogdan. (With reference to Kyiv. Antiquity 1882 Book. 1.page 212). Documents on Turkish citizenship were later partly printed in the Acts of Southern and Western Russia. See T. XIV. No. 41. (Letter from the Janissary Pasha to Khmelnitsky at the end of 1653).

Plan
Introduction
1 Reasons and reason
1.1 Occasion

2 Beginning of the uprising
2.1 Preparation
2.2 The first victories of the Cossacks
2.3 Early results of the uprising

3 End of the first stage of the war
3.1 Rebel liberation movement
3.2 Letter from Bogdan Khmelnitsky to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich
3.3 Events at the end of 1648

4 Second stage
4.1 Attempted negotiation
4.2 Continuation of the war

5 Third phase of the war
6 Chronology of the rebellion
7 Interpretations of the uprising by historians
8 Mystical interpretations
Bibliography
Khmelnytsky uprising

Introduction

Ancient history Ukraine

The uprising of Khmelnytsky or Khmelnitsky is the name of the national liberation war against Polish domination on the territory of modern Ukraine, which lasted from 1648 to 1654 and was led by Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the hetman (ataman) of the Zaporizhian Grassroots Army. In a shaky alliance with the Crimean Khan, the Zaporozhye Cossacks repeatedly met on the battlefield with the crown armies and gentry mercenary detachments of the Commonwealth. The uprising broke out as a local rebellion of the Zaporizhzhya Sich, but was supported by other Orthodox strata (peasants, townspeople, nobles) and grew into a broad popular movement. Its result was a serious weakening of the influence of the Polish gentry and the Catholic clergy. The struggle against the Poles was carried out with varying success and led to the transfer of the Zaporizhian Army to the citizenship of the Russian kingdom and the beginning of the Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667.

1. Reasons and reason

The strengthening of the political influence of the "gentry oligarchy" and the feudal exploitation of the Polish magnates were especially evident in the territory of Western and Southwestern Russia. Huge latifundia of such magnates as the Konetspolsky, Pototsky, Kalinovsky, Zamoysky and others were created by violent seizures of land. So, Stanislav Konetspolsky owned 170 cities and towns, 740 villages in one Bratslav region. He also owned vast lands on the left bank of the Dnieper. At the same time, the large landownership of the Russian nobility also grew, which by this time was adopting the Catholic religion and becoming Polonized. Among them were the Vyshnevetskys, Kiselis, Ostrohskys and others. and city courtyards, to Adam Kisel - huge estates on the Right Bank, etc.

All this was accompanied by the growth of peasant duties, the infringement of their rights and religious oppression in connection with the adoption of the church union and the subordination of the church to the See of Rome. The French engineer Beauplan, who was in the Polish service from the early 1630s until 1648, in particular, noted that the peasants there are extremely poor, they are forced to give their lord everything he wants; their situation is "worse than that of galley slaves."

The forerunner of the war was the numerous Cossack uprisings of the 1620s and 30s:

Zhmailo uprising of 1625

Fedorovich's uprising of 1630

The Sulima Rebellion of 1635

Pavliuk's uprising of 1637

The uprisings of Ostryanitsa and Guni in 1638

However, all of them were defeated in 1638-1648. the so-called period of "golden peace" was established, when the Cossack uprisings ceased.

The reason for the beginning of the uprising was another manifestation of magnate lawlessness. The agents of the Chigirinsky headman, led by the headman Danil Chaplinsky, took away his Subotov estate from Bogdan Khmelnitsky, ruined the economy, marked his ten-year-old son to death and took his wife away. Khmelnytsky began to look for court and justice for these atrocities, but the Polish judges found that he had not been properly married to his Polish wife, but necessary documents did not have possession of Subbotin. Then Khmelnitsky rushed to Chaplinsky and arranged for him a saber fight, but was treacherously stunned with a club by Chaplinsky's servants who came to the rescue and, as an "instigator", was thrown into Starostinsky prison, from which only his friends released him. An appeal to the Polish king, whom Khmelnitsky knew from previous times, turned out to be unsuccessful, as he replied: "You have your saber ...". Khmelnitsky took the hint in his own way. Irritated and frustrated, Khmelnitsky turned from a homely owner into a leader of the uprising.

2. The beginning of the uprising

2.1. Cooking

In January 1648, Bogdan Khmelnitsky went to the Sich (gathering a serious detachment along the way and even capturing the Polish garrison), where on January 24 he was elected hetman. At the same time, there was an influx of volunteers from all over Ukraine - mostly peasants - for whom the hetman organized "courses" of military training, during which experienced Cossacks taught the volunteers hand-to-hand combat, fencing, shooting and the basics of military tactics. The main problem of Khmelnytsky in terms of preparing for the uprising was the lack of cavalry. In this matter, the hetman counted on an alliance with the Crimean Khan. As a result of negotiations, Islam Giray sent several thousand Tatar horsemen to help the Cossacks. The uprising grew at a rapid pace. Already in February, the Grand Hetman of the Crown (Minister of War) of Poland, Nikolai Pototsky, reported to King Vladislav that “there was not a single village, not a single city in which calls for self-will were not heard and where they did not plan on the life and property of their lords. and tenants." Pototsky and his deputy, full crown hetman Martyn Kalinovsky, led a punitive army against the rebels.

2.2. The first victories of the Cossacks

Towards the army of Khmelnitsky, the son of Nikolai Potocki, Stefan, moved with his detachment. The army of Stefan Pototsky went deep into the steppe and met no resistance. On May 6, 1648, Khmelnitsky attacked her with all his army and utterly defeated the Polish army under the Yellow Waters. Battle of the Yellow Waters was the first significant achievement of the uprising. After the victory, Khmelnytsky's army went to Korsun, but the Poles got ahead of the rebels, attacked the city, plundered it, and slaughtered part of the population. Khmelnytsky decided to catch up with the crown army, and on May 15, 1648, the Polish army, led by Nikolai Pototsky and Martyn Zaslavsky, was ambushed near Korsun (on Gorokhovaya Dubrava) and suffered a crushing defeat. During Battle of Korsun almost twenty thousandth royal army was destroyed by the Cossack-Tatar army; Polish commanders Potocki and Kalinovsky were taken prisoner and given to the Tatars in gratitude for their help.

2.3. The first results of the uprising

As a result of the victories at Zhovti Vody and near Korsun, a significant part of Ukraine was liberated. The large military losses of the Commonwealth favored the further development of the uprising, which embraced new layers of the Ukrainian peasantry, Cossacks and philistines. Peasant and Cossack detachments arose everywhere; the peasants "turned out" in masses. The rebels occupied cities and lord's estates, destroyed the remnants of government and magnate troops. A liberation movement began in Belarus as well. The Cossack detachments sent by Khmelnitsky to Byelorussia played an important role in developing the struggle of the Byelorussian people. So the uprising of 1648 grew into a liberation war of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples against cruel feudal and national oppression.

On May 20, 1648, King Vladislav IV died in Warsaw. The period of "interregnum" began, which played a significant role in subsequent events.

3. Completion of the first stage of the war

3.1. rebel liberation movement

Throughout the summer of 1648, the rebel army, in alliance with the Tatars, almost unhindered continued to liberate the Ukrainian territories from the Polish presence. By the end of July, the Cossacks drove the Poles out of the Left Bank, and at the end of August, having strengthened themselves, liberated three right-bank provinces: Bratslav, Kiev and Podolsk. The liberation mission of the insurgents was accompanied by peasant pogroms: panorama estates were destroyed, lands were burned, and the Polish and Jewish populations were exterminated.

3.2. Letter from Bohdan Khmelnitsky to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich

Most clear, majestic and glorious to the Tsar of Moscow, and to us the lord of merciful pan and kindness.

Likewise, with the contempt of God, it has become that which we ourselves have made and tried about it, at the present time we could, through the messengers of our good health, your royal majesty, see and give our lowest bow. Almighty God has blessed us from your royal majesty, having sent, even if not to us, to Pan Kisel, messages in his needs, which our comrades, our Cossacks, have sent to us, to the troops.

Through which joyfully your royal majesty has come to us, we can see that we are doing a better job for our old-time Greek, for which from ancient hours and for the waves of our crooked merit, from the kings of the old tribute we die and until quiet hours from the godless Aryans we can’t rest.

[T]orets our deliverer Jesus Christ, having stung the crooked gods people and the crooked tears of the orphans of the vigilantes, looking at us with kindness and mercy with his saints, similarly, having sent his holy word, he fought us. They dug up the hole under us, they themselves collapsed into the nusya, but the Lord God helped us to open two troops with their great camps and take three hetmans with live bait with their other sanators: the first one on Zholta Vody, in the field in the middle of the road Zaporozkoy, commissar Shemberk and blue Pan of Krakow did not flow in with a single soul. Then the hetman himself, the great pan of Krakow, from the innocent, kind man pan Martin Kalinovsky, the hetman of the full crown, both fell into captivity near Korsun, and the army of all their quarters is sparingly beaten; we did not take them, the Alethean people took them, who served us [in that world] world from the king of Crimea. It was good for us and your [royal] majesty to know about it, but the singing vision of us came from] Prince Dominik Zaslavsky, who sent begging for peace before us, and from Pan Kisel, governor of Braslav, but the song of the king, our pan, death took, so with reason, but from the cause of the same godless enemies, this is also ours, who eat a lot of kings in our land, for which the land is now empty. Zichim bihmo sobi the autocrat of such a ruler in his land, as your royal greatness, the Orthodox Chrestian king, azali bi, the preliminary prophecy from Christ our God was fulfilled, that everything is in the hands of his holy mercy. In what do we accuse your royal majesty, if the will of God beat for that, and hasten your royal infection, do not be afraid, step on the panship of that, and with all the Zaporozky Army, we are ready to serve your royal majesty, to which we, with our lowest services, seem to be drunk given away.