In the Service of a Treacherous State

The ink of the repressive legislation passed by the Polish nobles’ Sejm, which followed the widespread Cossack-peasant unruliness of the Nalyvaiko-Loboda uprising, was barely dry when King Zygmunt III again realized he needed Cossack reg­iments for his wars.

A greater Cossack involvement came in Muscovy as The Time of Trouble continued. The great social upheaval that was tearing Muscovite society apart did not end with Bolotnikov’s death. The rebels had claimed to act on behalf of “Tsar Dmitry” as a tactical ruse and in August 1607 Shortlybefore the fall of Tula a third false Dmitry appeared, this time as a foreign plot.

Nothing is known for certain about the new imposter who replaced Bolotnikov as the leader of the uprising.

Zygmunt III of Poland and Lithuania-Rus invaded Mus­covy in the spring of 1609. With the recent unsuccessful nobles’ revolt led by Zebrzydowski in 1607 still fresh in their minds, the nobility mounted a strong opposition in the Sejm and re­fused to vote funds for the war. The King needed Cossack sup­port, and his call to arms in Ukraine was answered by thousands of impoverished Cossacks, and others seeking to improve their fortunes. It seems as if anyone with a weapon became an instant Cossack, and by the winter of 1611 some 30,000 had joined the King’s banner. We have written reports of the King receiving news that 7,000 “of the best” Cossacks were on their way from Ukraine, and in the summer of the same year 4,000 Zaporo- zhians arrived flying the king’s colors—3,000 of them cavalry— and a few weeks later 2,500 more arrived under Ataman Kul- baba. In addition a Cossack corps of 15,000 men was clearing the Siverian region of Shuisky s troops with the capture of strongholds at Chernihiv, Novhorod-Siversky, Poche, Bransk, and Kozelsk.

Cossacks were fighting since several thousand Ukrainian Cos­sacks left the false Dmitry s army and joined King Zygmunt for promises of pay. When this was not forthcoming, they broke off on looting expeditions joined by Commonwealth troops.

Tsar Basil Shuisky found himself in a difficult situation, and in February arrived at an agreement with Gustavus Adol­phus of Sweden. In return for renouncing all claims to Livonia and ceding a border area, a 6,000 man Swedish army under Jakob de la Gardie marched into Muscovy. Together with Shuisky s troops they cleared the northern region of rebel forces and drove the false Dmitry from Tushino; he was killed soon after by one of his bodyguards in a personal dispute. The joint Swedish-Muscovite force was defeated by Hetman Stanislaw Zolkiewski in July 1610 in the battle of Klushino, and in the same month Shuiskywas deposed by a group of boyars and forced into a monastery to become a monk. Fearing the revo­lution more than a foreign occupation, the new government, under a committee of seven boyars led by Prince Theodore Mstislavsky, decided to come to terms with the Common­wealth. InAugust 1610 Hetman Zolkiewskiwas called to occupy Moscow, and in August 1610 Zygmunt s son Wladyslavwas in­vited to become Tsar of Muscovy on condition that he convert to Greek Orthodoxy, the Commonwealthwas to return the re­cent conquests in western Muscovy, and the Swedes to be driven from the Baltic coast. This was an opportunity for Zyg- munt III to extend his authority over a great territory, and not one to be missed. Understandably Hetman Zolkiewski promptly agreed on Prince Wladyslav s behalf to the terms posed by the boyars.

Religious fanaticism, however, prevailed. King Zygmunt III refused to allow his son to convert, instead claiming the Mos­cow throne for himself as a Roman Catholic monarch, with the intention to introduce Catholicism into Muscovy.

At this point the anti-Catholic and anti-foreign reaction began to spread, when Patriarch Hermogen launched a new ap­peal to protect the Greek Orthodox faith from the Catholic and Protestant foreigners. A new army was formed in Nizhny Nov­gorod and other towns of the northeast, inspired and organized by burghers such as Kuzma Minin, a butcher by trade. By Sep­tember 1612 the new Muscovite army, led by Pozharsky and Minin, reached the capital and laid siege to the kremlin, which fell in early November of the same year. Some Cossacks joined Pozharsky, while the majority, not heeding the Patriarchs appeal, headed south to continue the fight against the Muscovite aris­tocracy. The following year a Zemsky Sobor (the Assembly of the Land) was attended by 500-700 delegates of the upper and middle service gentry, town burghers as well as a dozen token state serfs from the northern government estates. The sixteen- year-old son of Metropolitan Philaret, Michael Romanov was elected as Tsar and was crowned on 21 July 1613. The false Dmitry s wife Marina and her son were given refuge by Ivan Zarutsky s Cossacks, who had retreated to the southern Don and Volga steppe and continued the struggle.

Insubordination and disorder now broke out in the south­eastern provinces of the Polish Commonwealth. With their ranks swelled by unpaid veterans of the Livonian and Muscovite campaigns, the Ukrainian town and Zaporozhian Cossacks re­newed their raids on both the noble estates as well as the Mus­lim lands. These belligerent activities had subsided somewhat but with the end of Zygmunt s campaigns they were renewed with an unprecedented vigor. With a rising Tatar and Ottoman threat the Commonwealth had no choice but to rely once more on Cossacksupport. Moreover, the unpaid Crown troops had also organized themselves into a rebellious “confederation” and could not be relied upon. Nevertheless, the Polish Sejm appointed a commission in 1614, with an armed force at its disposal provided by the great landowners of southern Rus and Ukraine, in an attempt to curb the Cossacks by interfering with their tradition of electing commanders, limiting their mo­bility between the towns and Zaporozhia, and banning the Black Sea expeditions against Ottoman installations. The Za- porozhian Cossacks had just conducted a second raid on the suburbs of Constantinople and the King was under pressure from the outraged Sultan to curb their activities. Cossackraids were also beginning to reach the Lithuanian-Belarus border, but an outright confrontation with the Commonwealth was avoided thanks in part to a Zaporozhian Hetman with the given Cossack name of Sahaidachny.²⁵ A minor nobleman born as Petro Konashevich from the region of Peremyshl, Sahaidachny had studied in the Rus Orthodox academy in Ostroh before making his way to Zaporozhia, where he first comes to our at­tention as leading the naval expedition against Kaffa in 1616.

In 1617 Zygmunt III opened a new campaign against Mus­covy and again approached the Cossacks for support. Wishing to seek accommodation with the Commonwealth, Sahaidachny agreed to participate in the war on condition all restrictions against the Cossacks be lifted. Receiving such an assurance the Cossacks set out for Moscow in the following year, a 20,0OO- man army commanded by Sahaidachny. His mission was to march on Moscow, where fighting already was going on, and provide the King’s son Wladyslavwith much needed support. Passing through Severia the Cossacks sacked Putivl, Livni and Elets, causing great harm and destroying several churches and monasteries. Other towns also fell and pushing towards Moscow Sahaidachny defeated a force sent by Tsar Michael Ro­manov to block his way, and by September he had joined up with Prince Wladyslavs army. Sahaidachny was a strict disci­plinarian—during a campaign a Cossack leaders word was law—and used capital punishment for many infractions and disobediences.

The war was cut short by the Treaty of Deulino in 1619. In a symbolic procession, Sahaidachny returned to Kyiv to be recognized by Zygmunt III as his Royal Cossack Hetman of Ukraine. His political Strategywas working. He was now directly under the King’s command and could claim he no longer was dependent on the Polish Crown Hetman. Exploiting the King s need for manpower, Sahaidachnyhad demonstrated that Cos­sacks could be made to serve the Crowns interests and soon they would gain a grudging respect from the nobility. The Com­monwealth Sejm continued to express alarm at Cossack “un­ruliness” and the potential danger they posed to the aristocratic order. Commissions were being set up on a regular basis, led by great landowners and supported by their powerful armies, which attempted, with some success, to restrict Cossack strength and activities. King Batory s example of placing a Cossack reg­iment on a payroll register had continued under Zygmunt III and was expanded during the wars with Muscovy. Now the Royal Commission established in 1619 demanded, among other restrictions, that the number of Registered Cossacks be reduced to 3,000 men, and that the Zaporozhian Cossacks cease attack­ing the Ottoman Empire with which the Commonwealth was trying to establish close relations. The Thirty Years’ War (1618— 1648) between the Catholics and Protestants had just begun and the Catholic Commonwealth was seeking a free hand in the west. Sahaidachny decided to accept the commission s dic­tated conditions and avoid any future conflict, realizing that it was a question of time before the nobility would join the King and seek Cossack support.

Sahaidachny s attempts at introducing state-like rules for “law and order,” and his strategy of cooperation with the Com­monwealth, were not shared by the key Cossack institution— the Zaporozhian army. In a “rada” held in the Sich in the autumn of 1619 Sahaidachny was deposed and replaced by one Jiakiv Borodavka (“The Wart”) as Cossack Hetman, relegating Sa- haidachny to the rank of a colonel.²⁶ In the meantime the Portes war with Persia had ended and the young Sultan Osman II was advised this was the time to launch a major campaign against Christian Europe, which was becoming bogged down in the Thirty Years’ War. The Polish Commonwealth lay on the right flank of an Ottoman invasion of (central) Europe and would have to be neutralized. The Sultan saw it as an easy prize and it would be first to feel the wrath of the great Ottoman army.

While the newly elected Hetman Borodavka was declaring to the Cossacks that he was “ready to go with them not only to the sea but even to hell,” Sahaidachny saw an opportunity to reintroduce—in violation of commonwealth policy—an im­portant state institution ofprincely Rus, the Greek Orthodox Church. Its hierarchy had been destroyed by its own backward­ness, the Union of Brest, and Zygmunt Ill’s persecution during whose reign it was outlawed. Even before the creation of the Greek Catholic (“Uniate”) Church, most of the high nobility of Rus continued to convert to Roman Catholicism, as la­mented by the Orthodox Archbishop Meleti Smotrytsky of Polatsk in his “Lament of the Orthodox Church (“Trenos”). Addressing her “sons,” who had abandoned her, he asked, rhe­torically:

Where is now the priceless stone ruby which shone like a light in my crown among other precious stones, like the sun among the stars? Where is the princely house of Ostrog which shone above all others with the light of devotion to the old faith? Where are the other precious stones of my crown, the glorious houses of the princes of Rus, the priceless diamonds and sapphires? Where are the children of the princes Lutsky, Zazlavsky, Zbarazhsky, Vyshn- evetsky, Sangushko, Chartorysky, Pronsky, Masalsky, Lukomsky, Ruzinsky, and countless others, impossible to count? Where are my other jewels? I mean the old noble houses of Rus?

The Archbishop lists many other old families of Rus, whose children had become Roman Catholics and implacable foes of the Cossack Brotherhood. Ironically, and confirming the trend, Smotrytsky himself converted to the Union and died as the Greek CatholicArchbishop of Hierapolis. The Patriarch of Rus had already abandoned Kyiv for the safety of Muscovy and with the desertion of the ruling feudal nobility the Kyiv-Rus state had become dismantled, not to return again. In its place a new and different peoples’ society was emerging carved out of the Ukrainian steppe by the Cossack saber.

The Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophanes, had gone to Moscowpassing through the land of the Tatars in order to con­secrate the Tsar s father, Metropolitan Filaret Romanov, as the Patriarch of Muscovy. The Patriarch was then invited to Kyiv, where representatives of Ukraine and Belarus gathered for a meeting at which candidates for metropolitan and bishops were chosen. All bishoprics had by now Uniate bishops with the ex­ception ofLvivwhere the bishop remained Orthodox. The cer­emony took place at night behind closed doors, with few wit­nesses and with Sahaidachnys Cossackregiment guarding the location. On his way south and protected from King Zygmunt by a strong force of Sahaidachny^,s Cossacks, the Patriarch or­dained two more bishops for Lutsk and Kholm. In all, a met­ropolitan and five bishops were consecrated with a sixth bishop, Avamios, installed at Pinskthus restoring in full the traditional episcopate of Rus. The re-establishment of the ^aFaith of Rus” would provide an important rallying point for future anti­Catholic and anti-Polish uprisings.

While Sahaidachnywas busy protecting the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Ottoman Sultan Oman II was preparing the con­quest of the Polish Commonwealth. An opportunity to break his treaty with King Zygmunt III arose when the Polish gov­ernment decided to support the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II against the Transylvanian Prince Gabor Bethlen, who was a member of the Protestant League and the Sultan s vassal. A free- booting Polish regiment of volunteers who served for loot had been organized by a noble called Alexander Lisowski during the Muscovite wars, and though he was killed in 1616 the light cavalry unit continued to carry his name and was referred to as Lisowski s “Cossacks.” The king found them useful for unofficial clandestine operations, and in 1619 they invaded Transylvania and defeated Gabor Bethlens army. Rumors were also spreading that a “huge” Cossackfleet would again attack Ottoman ports, which in fact did occur in July 1620 when the Cossacks pene­trated the suburbs of Constantinople.

In the spring of 1620 the Porte reacted and declared war on the Catholic Commonwealth as the Ottoman commander Iskender Pasha set out for Moldavia with a large army, sup­ported by a Tatar horde and Gabor Bethlen s Protestant Tran­sylvanians. His first objective was to overthrow the Moldavia hospodar Gaspar Gratsiani who had allied himself with Zyg- munt III. On hearing of the Ottoman advance, the Polish Crown Hetman Zolkiewski crossed the Dnister River in Sep­tember and marched into Moldavia to block the anticipated in­vasion. Counting on Gratsiani s army, Zolkiewski only came with 5000 Crown troops and a token Cossackregiment of 1600 men sent by Sahaidachny. The Moldavians in turn counted on a strong Commonwealth army, and when they saw Solkiewski s meager force most deserted to join the Turks. Now Zolkiewski committed another tactical blunder. Instead of withdrawing with his small force, he pitched camp on the field of Tsetsora (Cecora) near the CapitalJassy and waited for the Ottoman ad­vance.

Iskender Pasha arrived at the end of September with a large army—Supposedlythe Crimean and Nogay Tatar hordes themselves stood at 60,000 horsemen—and during the first two encounters Zolkiewski suffered reversals. Then during the night following the second battle, Gaspar Gratsiani fled with his men accompanied by many Polish troops. Zolkiewski real­ized belatedly that he could not hold out and began a defensive retreat towards the Dnister, but during the night as they camped close to the river many of his men again took flight. Then on 7 October 1620 before they could cross to the other side Zol- Idewski s meager force was attacked and annihilated with Zolk- iewski himself killed in the fighting. Only about 1,000 men sur­vived the battle. Field Hetman Stanislaw Koniecpolski and many prominent lords of the realm were taken prisoner, among them a young registered town Cossackby the name of Bohdan Khmelnitsky. While Tatar detachments took the opportunity to loot Podilia, Volin, and Galicia, the Ottoman army halted at the Dnister River. Iskender Pasha had fulfilled his instructions: to secure Moldavia for the main Turkish invasion, which would be led by the young Sultan Osman II himself.

A semi-panic seized the Polish authorities as they realized they did not have enough trained troops to halt the coming tide. The Ukrainian Cossacks were now needed more than ever and a sum of 100,000 gold zlotys was voted by the nobility to raise a 20,000 man Cossack army—a bargain at the price, since it normally would have paid for only 1,000 mercenaries or Crown troops. Naval raids became “permitted” and indeed encouraged to draw off enemy resources. Most Cossacks hastened to join the land forces gathering in Ukraine and southern Rus under Hetman Borodavka. Sanctioned by the fact they were now offi­cially in the King s service (but not yet paid) the Cossacks began to expropriate provisions from the nobility for men and horses; gunpowder, lead and other supplies. In the meantime limited action was undertaken when a Cossack expedition captured Akkerman (Bilhorod), providing additional supplies and other booty and liberated 3,000 captives destined for the slave mar­kets. Most Cossacks lived just above the poverty line, and war booty was about the only way to obtain new arms, clothing and ammunition which they were expected to provide themselves. Asmall Zaporozhian fleet of 16 “tchaikas” also took to the sea. Cossackbattles and fighting techniques were rarely described or commented upon by Polish government officials or by other nobility since any praise of the commoners was thought to lessen their own importance. It is instructive therefore to read foreign commentators who were eyewitness and in close prox­imity to Cossack action. The French envoy to the Porte, Philippe de Harley the Count of Cesy, has provided us with his observations on some Cossackraids on the Ottoman shores of the Black Sea such as when in June 1620, learning that most of the Ottoman men-at-war had gone to accompany the sultan to the Danube delta, 16 “tchaikas” approached Constantinople. “It is indescribable how great the panic was here. Sixteen Cos­sack ships have passed by in the last few days. Having reached the Column of Pompey at the mouth of the Black Sea (the Bosphorus) they destroyed Qaramusal, burned down and plun­dered the local villages.”²⁷ Evidently Cossackpresence was well known in the area.

The vizier s deputy put together a fleet of forty ships, but not daring to attack the “tchaikas,” he returned to Constantino­ple. The Cossackboats were attacked by another Ottoman fleet which suffered heavy casualties and several “tchaikas” were cap­tured with Cossackprisoners brought before the Sultan on the Danube delta, where they were promptly dealt with as recorded by the Ottoman chronicler Naima:

For such a glorious victory he (the Ottoman commander of the fleet) was twice rewarded with gorgeous fur coats, and similar re­wards went to the 18 Janissary officers of the fleet. The army, using the captured scoundrels for amusement, made some of them the targets of their bows and arrows: the sultan himself pierced a few of them with his own arrows. Others were pulled apart by elephants; some were designated to be torn apart by hooks, drawn and quartered, and subjected to Otherbrutal tor­tures.²⁸

One of the Cossacks, a convert from Islam of unknown eth­nicity, was chopped alive into small pieces.

These were but skirmishes and the greatest Cossack tri­umph was to come in the great battle of Khotyn. By early August 1621 Sultan Osmans vast army of some 200,000 thousand men (probably exaggerated) had crossed the Danube and in a few weeks the Turks were in the vicinity of Akkerman. The Polish army was still gathering but Borodavkas Cossacks had already crossed the Dnister River, captured the Moldavian hospodar s own guard and were devastating the Moldavian countryside for supplies and spoils of war. By 20 August the Polish Common­wealth army, some 56,000 men led by the Lithuanian-Rus Het­man Khodkevich had also crossed the Dnister and pitched camp near Khotyn, waiting to be joined by the Cossack army which then stood at 33,000 men and 22 cannons, and was joined a few weeks later by Sahaidachny^,s regiment of 3,000 men.²⁹

The Cossacks soon demonstrated their typical energy and daring, which did much to lift the outnumbered Polish army’s spirits. Not wishing to engage his main force, Hetman Borodavka had broken up a part of the Cossack army into de­tachments of several hundred men each to harass the enemy, gather supplies, and carry out reconnaissance. They did not seem to have been too successful against the vastly superior enemy, however, but the exploits of a 300-man detachment soon spread like wildfire throughout the Polish and Cossack camps. It is an account which would have been ascribed to ex­aggerated rumor had it not been recorded by the Hapsburg envoy called Schoberg who was in the Ottoman camp at the time, as well as by the Turkish chronicler Naima.

An engagement began when the Tatars intercepted one of Borodavkas Cossack detachment of some 300 men who were on their way back to camp from a foraging expedition for sup­plies. Unable to overpower them the Tatars sent for support from the Ottoman army, which arrived in great strength. The Cossacks decided to split into two groups with a hundred taking up position at the mouth of a cave overlooking the Prut River. Theyhad probably found themselves before an Ottoman army on the march to new positions and no doubt assumed that such a large force would pass them by, but their position began to be attacked. After several days of sustained and unsuccessful assaults, met by deadly Cossack musket fire with thousands of Janissaries dead and wounded, the Sultan himself called off the attacks. Waiting until the wind was in a favorable direction, Osman ordered that bonfires be lit and fed with what was prob­ably gunpowder, and great quantities of smoke began to accu­mulate in the cave. As the Cossacks came stumbling out over­come with the acrid smoke, they were attacked by Janissary swordsmen, and all perished in a fight without quarter being asked or given.

The other 200 man Cossack detachment had in the mean­time crossed the Prut River and taken up positions in a thick forest where they were followed by a large Ottoman force with artillery. The attack began at daybreak but after a days fighting the Cossack position was still intact. It is known that Sultan Osman II himself directed the attacks, perched on a seat above the river offering a rich reward for every Cossackhead brought to him. The Turks again lost several thousand men from the deadly Cossack musket fire as artillery against their forest po­sition was of little use. Realizing they were facing a large Ot­toman force of elite Janissary infantry, during the night the sur­viving 60 Cossacks withdrew deeper into the forest. At daybreak they began to form a “tabor” camp, digging the soft forest soil with their sabers and covering the wagons with the moist dirt. The defenses were completed just in time, when they were at­tacked by orders of the infuriated Sultan who had decided to squash the puny force that had caused him so many casualties. The attacks lasted until sunset when the 30 remaining Cossacks, most wounded, were over-run, taken prisoner and brought be­fore the Sultan. A few managed to slip out of the “tabor” and make their way to the Polish camp where they recounted how the 300-man Zaporozhian detachment had occupied the Sultan and his Janissaries for the best part of the week. In all, about 100 Cossacks were taken prisoner from the various patrols and foraging expeditions and were put to a cruel death, with the Sultan himself taking part. Osman II, however, could not de­prive the 300 Cossacks of their glory, which would be compared to the Spartans at Thermopylae by Prince Wladyslav^,s con­temporary biographer, Eberhard Wanenberg: “They surpass by far... the finest men and the glory of the Lacedaemonians. Those numbered three hundred and were in the gorge of Ther­mopylae; these (the Cossacks) numbered only 60 men and in an open field gave hard battle to an army equal in multitude to that of Xerxes.”³⁰ It is through these rare surviving accounts, not always precise, that we get a glimpse of the stuff that the Zaporozhian Cossacks were made of and their general fighting abilities.

Sahaidachny had not yet joined the Cossack army, and searching for their camp, his detachment became involved in a skirmish in which he received a bullet in the arm. When he fi­nally arrived in the Cossack camp, he found the men displeased with Borodovka s conduct of the war such as his decision to di­vide a part of the army into detachments which had suffered casualties. Particularlyworrisome was his neglect to obtain enough forage for the horses, which were dying in large num­bers. Borodavka was removed by a Cossack “rada” and Sahai- dachny again elected as hetman, who immediately reversed Borodavka s policies and entered into full cooperation with the Polish high command. The day after Sahaidachny s arrival Sultan Osmans army reached Khotyn and immediately attacked the Cossack camp, which was in a forward position and not yet fully fortified. Supported by several Polish regiments, for the next two days the Cossacks beat back all assaults, several times leaving their camp to attack the enemy. In rare praise from a Polish nobleman we have a letter from Jakub Sobieski where he observed that the Turks “turned all their fury against the Za- porozhian Cossacks” who “very bravely sustained all that im­petus.” The Sultans men had a special incentive to attack the Cossacks remembering that there was still a prize of 50 ducats for every Cossackhead.

Three days later, on 4 September, the entire Ottoman army advanced against the Cossack camp, this time under the direct gaze of the Sultan. Again they were beaten back with heavy losses, and supported by the Poles, the Cossacks counter­attacked and knocked out the Janissaries from their positions, destroyed artillery by spiking the guns and drove the remaining Turks out of their camp. The Cossacks failed to follow through, however, which saved the Sultan from a complete fiasco. Most were at the poverty line and when they saw the Turks’ ample supplies and possessions they could not refrain from looting the captured camp; they were also running out of supplies such as gunpowder, bullets and cannon balls. This allowed the Turks to regroup, and it was now the Cossacks’ turn to be driven from the Ottoman camp. However, several notable dignitaries were taken prisoner and it is said that the Sultan broke down in tears of rage when he heard of the defeat of his prized Janis­saries.

Osman now decided to bide his time. The Nogay Tatars were sent beyond the Dnister River to sever the Polish and Cos­sack lines of supply and communication, while the Ottoman forces launched periodic attacks and artillery bombardments to wear down the defenders. Food supplies for men and horses began to run out and animals sickened and died. Supplies of gunpowder and lead were also running low. A major night sortie to take the Turks by surprise failed due to a rainstorm that ren­dered muskets and pistols useless, and two other assaults were also beaten back. A third attack, however, drove the Turks from their camp which was again lost when the Cossacks cut short the pursuit to load up on supplies enabling the Turks to regroup and drive them out. The old Crown Hetman Khodkevich died on 24 September and when spies brought word of the death, the Sultan launched a major attack on both the Polish and Cos­sack camps but again without success. Four days later Osman decided to mount a final and an all-out assault on the enemy positions which would either destroy the Cossack and Polish armies or put an end to his plans of conquest. After much bloody fighting during which the Sultan sent wave after wave of infantry and cavalry the Ottoman army was driven back. This was the final battle in the Khotyn encounter, which lasted for 39 days. The Turks had suffered large losses and had lost all hope of a victory, but the Polish and Cossack armies were also in bad shape. Gunpowder and cannon balls were running low, and in spite of urgent appeals the anticipated arrival of the no­bility never materialized.

A peace treaty was signed on 9 October 1621 between King Zygmunt III and Sultan Osman II, a key condition being that the commonwealth keep the Cossacks in check, particu­larly their damaging Black Sea expeditions. The Cossacks had played a major role in saving Poland and much of Europe, which was beginning to be embroiled in the Thirty Years’ War. Al­though supported by the King’s army they were the key authors ofhalting the Ottoman invasion and were recognized as such by Polish participants who lauded Cossack military exploits, courage and valor. Their fame began to spread beyond the con­fines of the Commonwealth, and King GustavAdolfus of Swe­den referred to them as “noble knights and warriors, masters of the Dnipro and the Black Sea.” Closer to home no such official recognition would be forthcoming from either the King or the nobility. Thus in his speech to the Sejm in 1622, Marshall Jakub Sobieski, who had lauded Cossackbravery a year before, now praised the Polish army for the victory without a single reference to the Cossacks. Following the conclusion of peace Hetman Sahaidachny returned to Kyivwhere in spite of being treated by the King’s personal physician he soon died from the arm wound received at Khotyn.³¹ King Zygmunt III now reneged on the promises he had made to Sahaidachny and the Cossack army. Theywere, after all, mostly commoners and not even Catholics to boot, to whom the word of a gentleman was not binding.