ORLYK,S PRO-POLISH ORIENTATION
While the Porte was casting about for ways to establish Orlyk and his men on the Right Bank, the Hetman responded to his Muslim patrons’ efforts in an initially Uncooperativeand then increasingly antagonistic manner.
During 1713, the Hetman’s correspondence was sprinkled with recurrent denunciations of his Muslim allies. “Perserve me, O Lord, lest I perish,” he wrote in a private letter, likening his stay on Ottoman territory with that of the Jews in Egypt.34 Shortly after the Kalabalikt the Hetman openly exhorted the Zaporozhians not to cooperate with the Tatars because Muslims, “from the very inception of their accursed religion are the primary enemies of Christendom and seek nothing more than to destroy the Christian people.”35A similar theme was repeated in Orlyk’s secret correspondence with Marcin Kalinowski, the Polish field commander on the Right Bank. The Cossack Hetman requested Kalinowski to refrain from attacking the Zaporozhians who had moved into the area because this would only bring the Tatars to the aid of the Cossacks and, in the final result, it would be the civilian, Christian population of the area which would suffer most.36
In October, 1713, Orlyk expressed his attitude toward the Muslims even more categorically. In a letter to von Miillern, Charles XIΓs foreign minister, the Hetman requested that:
If His Majesty the Swedish King should make peace with August II, then I would dare to request His Majesty that I, the Host and Ukraine, previously included in that treaty, should not be shamefully abandoned to Muslim slavery... as I absolutely do not agree to Turkish protection over Ukraine.37
Orlyk’s antipathy toward the Muslims went even further. The Hetman proposed to Charles XII that now was the time to conclude peace with Peter I so that the two monarchs could strike against the Ottomans together:
For what could be more pleasing to God and simultaneously agreeable and desirable to the general expectations of all Christianity than if His Royal Majesty concluded peace with Moscow, combined His armies with hers and (together) turned against the major enemies of the Christian people (i.e., the Ottomans).38
It is doubtful whether this idea was seriously considered.
However, the point of this and of similar statements was to show the Hetman’s distrust of the infidel and the earnestness of his desire to be disassociated from him.How sincere were Orlyk’s tirades against the Tatars and the Ottomans? And why were they flaunted publicly? Undoubtedly, the Hetman’s personal antagonism to the Muslims was deep and genuine. And it was certainly an attitude of long standing. But, the harshness and timing of Orlyk’s anti-Muslim outbursts indicated that there were also other reasons for making them.
Ottoman patronage and Russian propaganda had associated the emigres, Orlyk felt, too closely with the traditional enemies of Christendom; this could only harm the emigres’ cause both in Ukraine and in all of Europe. What distressed Orlyk even more, however, was the fact that his close association with the Ottomans and Tatars blocked the way to a rapprochement with August II and the Polish Commonwealth, since any Cossack-Turkiccooperation was bound to raise the suspicions of the Poles. Therefore, the antiMuslim tirades, especially those propounding the unification of all Christians against the Turk, were destined as much for Polish ears as for those of his immediate correspondents. Orlyk had to prove that he and his men would not be Ottoman puppets should they be allowed to settle in Ukraine.
The reasoning which led the Hetman to turn his back on the Porte and its efforts to obtain the Right Bank and to offer his services to August II and the Poles, who obviously had no sympathy for the cause Orlyk represented, was complicated. As long as the possibility existed that the Porte might free entire Ukraine “on both banks of the Dnieper” from Russian control, Orlyk was willing to cooperate with the Ottomans. No matter what formal relationship this large, self-governing area might establish with the Porte, it would be strong enough to maintain a great degree of autonomy if not total independence. However, when it became evident that the Porte was interested only in the Right Bank, ravaged, depopulated and clearly destined for complete dependence on the Khan and the Porte, such a possibility was unacceptable to the Hetman for whom total dependence on the infidel was personally and politically abhorrent.
The efforts to reach an understanding with official Poland reflected Orlyk’s conviction that sooner or later Charles XII himself would be forced into an agreement with August II. In such a situation, it would Bfc not the Porte, which Orlyk suspected was not ready to fight for the area, but these two men who would decide the fate of the Right Bank. The Hetman had no illusions about the Poles agreeing to an independent Cossack state, but he felt that if the Cossacks had to accept a sovereign, a weak, Christian Polish Commonwealth would be preferable to the infidel Sultan or autocratic Tsar. Therefore, Orlyk’s goal was to gain the confidence of August II and his ministers, avoid the enmity of the Porte as long as possible, and hope that would allow Orlyk and his men to settle on the Right Bank.
The response of the Poles—Chomentowski, Sieniawski, August II, and the sejm—to Orlyk’s overtures was uniform: initially they met the proposals with caution and then rejected them. Stanisiaw Rzewuski, the Crown Field Hetman, formulated what was probably the most widespread opinion among the Polish magnates, especially those with lands in the east:
Some consider that it might be helpful to the public welfare to maintain a Zaporozhian militia, at least on probation, so as not to leave it under Turkish rule; others, however, (feel) that, on the basis of the many Cossack revolts and betrayals, they do not wish to accept these men into Ukraine, because of their infidelity.39
In view of these doubts, Orlyk redoubled his protestations of good intent and loyalty to the Commonwealth, continuing at the same time to emphasize his anti-Muslim attitudes. But apparently the Hetman, who was in Adrianople during the negotiations, was not on the best of terms with Chomentowski and his colleagues. One of them, Franciszek Gosciecki, noted in verse these scathing remarks about the Cossack Hetman and his role:
In the manner of a Hetman, the traitor accepted the bulava (Hetman’s mace)
In the footsteps of his dead master. He ruled over the Cossacks
Who, under Mazepa’s banners, had taken money from the Turk.
These (Cossacks) had nothing to return home for, except maybe death.
They preferred to nestle under the Porte’s protection. And it was for these fugitives that Turkey energetically demanded a housewarming in Polish Ukraine.40
Thus, the last real chance for a Ukrainian Cossack accommodation within the Polish Commonwealth was met with suspicion and derision, assuring the exclusion of Orlyk and the Cossacks from the Right Bank and leaving the area vulnerable to the expansionist appetites of the Commonwealth’s aggressive neighbors.