After their failure to recoup their losses by means of force and with Tatar aid, the Mazepist emigres attempted, through the mediation of the Ottoman Porte, to attain their goals by diplomatic means.

The basis for these efforts was created by the Ottoman victory over the Russians at the Prut River in 1711. In the ensuing peace talks, “The issue of Ukraine,” according to the noted Polish historian, Jozef Feldman, “would push all other problems into the back­ground.” ¹ How and why this issue played such a crucial role in the negotiations needs, therefore, to be examined more closely.

Alarmed by the concentration of his enemies in the south, Peter I launched a pre-emptive attack into the Rumanian principalities. However, the Tsar’s haste and over-confidence led to disastrous blunders. Rushing ahead with his troops, Peter I outdistanced his source of supplies and reinforcements. Furthermore, he miscalcu­lated the amount of support that the hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia would be able to provide (shades of Charles XIΓs mis­takes in Ukraine!). As a result, in July of 1711, the Tsar and his entire army found themselves in Moldavia, near the Prut River, surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by the Ottomans and Tatars.

For the Porte, long worried by Russian expansion to the south, this was an opportunity to inflict a crushing blow on its enemies. But, instead of capturing and/or destroying the Tsar and his army, Mehmet Baltaci, the Grand Vizir, allowed the Russians to with­draw. In return, Peter I promised to surrender the Azov fortress to the Porte, destroy Taganrog and other Russian fortresses on the Dnieper, withdraw from Ukraine and cease interfering in Ukrain­ian and Polish affairs.² Blessed with the benefits of hindsight, his­torians will always be amazed by the opportunities which the Grand Vizir allowed to slip through his fingers at the Prut. None­theless, from the Ottoman point of view, it seemed that the con­cessions which Mehmet Baltaci won from the Russians were a great success, for they appeared to provide the Porte with a long- sought prize—control of the Black Sea littoral.

Despite the Russian concessions, however, it was clear to the Porte that its current advantage in the Black Sea area was only temporary and that it would take more than the Tsar’s promises to transform these temporary gains into permanent ones. In consider­ing the means to establish their hold firmly on the area, the Otto­mans resurrected an oft-attempted project: the creation of a vassal Cossack state in Ukraine. During the hetmancies of Bohdan Khmel­nytskyi (1648-1657), of his son, Iuras (1659-1663), and of Petro Doroshenko (1665-1666), the Porte had attempted to implement such a plan.³ But Ukrainian internal politics and Russian inter­vention foiled these attempts. Now, in 1711, it appeared that an ideal time had arrived to attempt once more to create a vassal Cos­sack state. It was for this reason that the Ottomans suddenly evinced an intense interest in the Ukrainian issue and in Orlyk and his followers.

There was, however, one problem which had to be resolved before the Ukrainians and the Porte could come to an understand­ing. That problem was Charles XII of Sweden. The Swedish King was not pleased by the Ottoman interest in the Ukrainian emigres; he feared that it might involve the Porte in protracted negotiations with the Tsar and divert it from continuing the war against Russia. If this occurred, Charles XII would lose his only opportunity to strike at Peter in his vulnerable southern flank. This approach was directly opposed to that of Mehmet Baltaci who was now com­mitted to securing the Ottoman Empire’s northern frontier by means of negotiations based on the Prut Treaty. A clash between the Grand Vizir and the Swedish King was inevitable.

In the ensuing conflict, Orlyk was caught in the middle. The Porte and the Tatar Khan invited him, indeed, they insisted that he come to Constantinople for talks.⁴ Meanwhile, Charles XII, who considered the Hetman to be his vassal, forbade him to go. The King argued that, “The Porte is hardly willing or able to liberate your fatherland from the Muscovite yoke; it is evident that it can hardly force the Muscovites to fulfill the articles according to which it (Ukraine) would return to its ancient state.”⁵

While Orlyk himself sided with Charles XII, the Starshyna and the Zaporozhians insisted that the Hetman and a Cossack delega­tion go to Constantinople.