Mustachio, still attempted to hold out Astrakhan, but was poisoned by his own men, who purchased pardon by surrendering the city to the Russians, and the other revolted towns fell without resistance on the death of Stanko. Such was the catastrophe of this memorable rebellion, which, origi nating in private revenge, had shaken the Russian throne, and for the first time shown the nobles how easily the abject submission of their enslaved peasants might be inflamed, by the promise of emancipation held out by an artful leader, into a spirit of revolt which could only be repressed by a war of extermination. The barbarities of Dolgoruki, indeed, effectually quenched the spark of liberty for the time; but the example was remembered and followed with fatal effect, a century later, in the rebellion of Pugatchef. A considerable section, however of the Don-Cossacks (headed by Yacolof, who had betrayed Stanko Razin, and now succeeded him as Ataman) had remained throughout faithful to the Czar; and the weight of Russian vengeance, after opposition in arms had ceased, fell rather on the wretched serfs, in whom fury had been succeeded by panic and consternation, than on an armed and warlike race, still capable of defending themselves if driven to desperation. The Cossacks were, however, deprived of a considerable portion of their territory, and brought more immediately under subjection to the Russian crown, by the appointment of procurators to reside in the principal stanitzas; while their numbers were divided by the requisition of Cossack corps to serve as gendarmerie in the interior of the empire; and the equality on which they prided themselves, infringed by the introduction of gradations of military rank. These precautions, and the remembrance of their recent defeat, retained them for a number of years in submission to the Czar.

But an important revolution was on the point of taking place in the poli tical position of their brethren of the Dniepr, the Zaporofskis, and Cossacks of that part of the Ukraine which the peace of Andrussow had left in the power of Poland. They had remained for a short time in a state of sullen tranquillity; till the abdication of John Casimir, and the election of the weak Michael Coribut

as his successor, again called their turbulent spirit into action. The hereditary estates of the new King (the first Piast, or native Pole, who had filled the throne for more than three centuries) lay principally in Ukraine and Podolia, exposed to instant devastation in the event of a Cossack war; and the Cossacks, relying on the timidity of Michael and the unsettled state of the monarchy, presented a petition to the Diet, through their Ataman, Doroscensko, in which they demanded that the Ukraine should be released from its dependent position and vassalage to the nobility, and admitted as a new province, with equal rights and suffrages in the Diet, into the Polish confederation; and that the Cossacks themselves, while retaining their ancient privileges and independent jurisdiction, in compensation for their military service on the frontier, should in all other respects be considered as Poles. These apparently reasonable demands were instantly and haughtily rejected by the Diet; and the Grand-Marshal, the famous John Sobieski, was dispatched with an army to coerce the Ukraine: but the forces which he was able to levy in the distracted provinces of Poland, were not sufficiently numerous to keep the field against Doroscensko, who, being powerfully supported by the Tartars, not only maintained himself in his own territories, but gradually became master of great part of Podolia. The event of the former war had, however, demonstrated the impracticability of the Cossacks becoming permanently independent of Poland without foreign support; while the increasing weakness and dissension to which that country was a prey, at once impressed upon their chiefs the policy of a separation which might preserve them from being involved in the ruin of a falling monarchy, and secured the impunity of the attempt. A negotiation was accordingly opened, under the mediation of the Tartar Khan, with the Sultan Mohammed IV., the renown of whose military power had been raised to the highest pitch by the late victorious termination of the war in Candia; and, in 1672, the Ataman presented himself in person at the Sublime Porte, and having been invested with the sovereignty of the Ukraine, on the same terms as the principalities of Moldavia

and Wallachia were held by their waiwodes, received from the Sultan the horsetails and robe, as a voluntary vassal of the Ottoman empire.

The immediate consequence of this step was a rupture between the Porte and Poland, which was invaded by the Sultan in person with 100,000 men, besides a countless host of Tartar and Cossack irregulars; a force to which the Poles, whose civil wars were then at their height, were unable to oppose any adequate resistance. So inveterate was the spirit of faction which pervaded the country, that the governor of Kaminiek, who was an adherent of the party opposed to Sobieski, refused to receive the reinforcements and supplies sent him by the Grand-Marshal; and the impregnable fortress under his command, the key of Poland on that side, was obliged to surrender after a siege of a few days. Leopol shared the same fate; and in less than six weeks, the Turks found themselves in undisputed possession of the whole of Podolia. The imbecile King Michael, terrified at the progress of the enemy, (whose light troops ravaged the country up to the walls of Lublin, then the royal residence,) and jealous of Sobieski, hastily concluded a humiliating peace, by which he acknowledged the Cossacks as subject allies of the Porte, bound himself to pay an annual tribute, and ceded all the recent Turkish conquests in Podolia and Volhynia, with the exception of Leopol. But the Diet refused to ratify the degrading compact; and Mohammed, who had returned to his capital in triumph af. ter delegating to Doroscensko the lieutenancy of his new territories, was informed, on demanding the first instalment of the tribute, that he had only acquired the useless signature of a degraded king. The war recommenced in 1673; but the Turks succeeded in retaining the greater part of their conquests, notwithstanding a severe defeat which they received between Kaminiek and Choczin from

*

Sobieski, whose election to the crown of Poland, on the death of Michael, took place the following year. But a new belligerent now appeared on the scene, in the person of the Czar Alexis, who had taken part in the preceding contest as an auxiliary of Poland, by sending the Don-Cossacks to create a diversion by attacking the Krim, and openly declared against the Porte on receiving a requisition to evacuate Kiow and that part of the Ukraine which he possessed in virtue of the treaty of Andrussow, but which the Sultan claimed as an appendage to his recent accession of territory in that quarter. The correspondence between the courts of Moscow and Constantinople on this occasion is curious, and gives a more favourable idea of the courtesy of Ottoman than of Rus sian diplomacy: the Czar styles the Sultan "a Mohammedan dog, and son of a dog,"-language which the minister of the Porte justly characterises in his reply as "indecent, injurious, and unusual among kings and mo. narchs"-at the same time expressing astonishment that the Czar, "who was far from holding the first rank among Christian potentates," should venture to apply terms "which might cost him his dominions," to a sovereign so much his superior in power! War forthwith broke out: a numerous Russian army appeared in the Ukraine, and invested the fortress of Czehryn, the residence of Doroscensko; but the Russian troops of that epoch were formidable only by their numbers, and the national hatred entertained against them by the Poles, prevented their receiving any cordial co-operation. The struggle, therefore, though occasionally marked by bloody encounters, was continued several years without producing any decisive alteration, as the Turks contented themselves with defending their conquests; till, in 1676, the dissensions among the Cossacks themselves, who were dissatisfied with the arbitrary authority assumed by Doroscensko, enabled the

Poles to possess themselves of the Western Ukraine; while the Russian general Romanodofski, attacking Czehryn in the absence of the Turkish grand army, made himself master of that important place, capturing in it the person and treasures of the Ataman, who purchased pardon by once more changing his allegiance, and receiving investiture at the hands of the Czar. But these successes of the Russians were displeasing to Sobieski, who, dreading their becoming masters of the whole Ukraine, and anxious moreover to restore tranquillity to his own states, concluded a separate peace at the end of the year, by which the disputed territory underwent a fresh partition; the western part being restored to Poland, while the southern, with Kaminiek and part of Podolia, remained in the possession of the Turks.

The Russians, who had been entirely passed over in this arrangement, exclaimed against it as a perfidious breach of faith on the part of the Poles: and, entering the Ukraine in the depth of winter, reduced the greatest part of the country, with the assistance of Doroscensko's partisans, before the advance of the Turkish army in the following spring under the Grand-Vizir, the famous Kara Mustapha Kioprili, whose career, six years later, was cut short by Sobieski before the walls of Vienna. The Turks were accompanied by George Khmiel niçki, son of the former Ataman of that name, who had been confined in the Seven Towers at the instigation of Doroscensko, but on his defection was released by the Sultan, and invested with the dignity of Ataman, in which capacity he now made his appearance to re-establish the Turkish ascendency in the Ukraine, and was joined by a considerable number of the Cossacks. The open country was speedily overrun by the Turks, but their progress was arrested by the strong ramparts of Czehryn; and after pressing the siege for two months, and losing many of his men in a night attack, Kara Mustapha abandoned his baggage and artillery, and closed the campaign of 1677 by an inglorious retreat across the Danube. But the time was not yet come when the prowess of the Turks was compelled to submit to defeat: their forces reentered the Ukraine the next year

with augmented numbers and resolution; and, in defiance of all the efforts of Romanodofski to relieve it, Czehryn was taken by storm, and the garrison of 30,000 Russians and Cossacks put to the sword. The main Russian army, struck with panic, abandoned its positions, and retreated in dismay across the frontier, pursued by the Turks, who then, for the first and only time, trode the soil of Russia as conquerors; and the Czar Feodor (who had succeeded Alexis in 1676) hastily assembled troops to oppose the progress of the invaders towards his capital; but the exhausted state of the country, which Romanodofski had wasted in his retreat, had already compelled the Vizir to retire; and on the approach of winter the Russians gradually re-occupied great part of their conquests. But, notwithstanding these successes, the war had become unpopular and burdensome to the Turks, who derived no equivalent advantage for the expense of sending armies into a remote province to contend for the supremacy over fickle vassals against an enemy whose resources were near at hand; and a pacification was finally concluded in 1680-1, by which, in return for some concessions to the Tartar Khan, Czehryn and the other Turkish possessions in the Ukraine were resigned to Russia, and the river Samara made the boundary of the two empires; while Doroscensko, distrusted by all parties alike, sunk into obscurity, and was succeeded as Ataman by Ivan Samuelowitz, a Cossack leader of great reputation and experience. It was not till five years later that the claims of Poland were finally adjusted by a definitive treaty with Russia, which ratified the truce of -Andrussow, and acknowledged the sovereignty of the Czar over the whole Ukraine. The whole of the Cossack territory was thus re-united to the Muscovite monarchy, after having been separated from it since the first conquests of the Tartars; and the Cossack annals, from this time, are necessarily incorporated with the history of Russia.

The overthrow of the Turks before Vienna, in 1683, was hailed by all Christendom as the prelude to the downfal of the Ottoman power. Russia joined the league against the Porte in 1685-6, and sent an army of 300,000 men under Prince Basil Gal

litzin, the favourite of the Regent Sophia, to invade the territories of the Tartar Khan, to which the possession of the Ukraine offered an easy access. The advance of this mighty host through the Nogai steppes encountered no armed opposition; but the country, for the space of two hundred miles, had been swept bare of every thing which could afford subsistence to an enemy; and no sooner had famine compelled Gallitzin to commence his retreat, than his divisions were enveloped and assailed by nomad cavalry, whose arrows, like those of their Parthian forefathers, dealt destruction among the ranks of their exhausted foes. This disastrous expedition cost the Russians 40,000 men,* and nearly all their horses and artillery; but its failure was ascribed by their commanders to the treason of the Cossack Ataman, whom they accused of having maintained, from within the Russian camp, a correspondence with the Khan, and recommended to him the plan of defence which was adopted; and Samuelowitz was summoned to answer the charge before the assembly of his people. The judicial process which followed, is probably the only Cossack deliberative council of which the details have been preserved: the inferior atamans, the staroshines or elders, the polkovniks or colonels, and the chiefs of the different stanitzas, met in the camp on the Samara; the proofs of their leader's alleged delinquency were laid before them; and, after a solemn investigation, Samuelowitz was declared guilty, deprived of the ensigns of his dignity, and given over for punishment to the Russians, by whom he was sent, with his only surviving son, to Siberia; while the vacant office was conferred, by the influence of Gallitzin, on the lieutenant of the fallen chief, the celebrated Mazeppa. The romantic history of this personage has made his name and early adventures too familiarly known to English readers to need recital. From his hatred to the Poles, and the ascendency which his talents and edu

cation procured him among the rude chiefs of the Cossacks, he had been, throughout the troubles of the Ukraine, a powerful auxiliary to the Russians, at whose instigation he is accused of having suborned the condemnation of his predecessor;-an act of perfidy which, if justly ascribed to him, was amply avenged by retributive justice in the conclusion of his own career. Under his advice and direction, a second armament was set on foot for the invasion of the Krim in 1689, during the absence of the Khan on the frontiers of Hungary. The whole force of the Cossacks, amounting to 50,000 men, joined the Russians on the border; but though, on this occasion, the invaders succeeded in forcing the defences of the isthmus after a sanguinary conflict with the Nooradin-Sultan,† and penetrated within sight of Perekop, they were amused by the Tartars with negotiations till the failure of their provisions compelled them a second time to retire with loss. The establishment of a line of fortified posts along the Samara, to check the future incursions of the Tartars, was the sole result of those two ill-conducted expeditions, which failed even in obtaining from the Khan the abandonment of the degrading tribute of 60,000 rubles, which he still annually demanded from Russia; but the revolution which took place at Moscow at the end of the year, by transferring the reins of government from Sophia to Peter, speedily gave a fresh impulse to the hitherto unorganized mass of Russian power.

Mazeppa, who had accompanied Gallitzin to Moscow, was an eyewitness of the revolution, and of the disgrace of his patron; but his politic accession to the party of Peter procured him fresh rewards and honours; and, on the conclusion of the advantageous peace of 1699 with the Porte, the Cossacks, who had done distinguished service in the war as Russian partisans, had their privileges anew confirmed and extended, while the cordon of the newly instituted order of St Andrew was conferred on their

Ataman. The unity of this branch of the Cossack family had been in the mean time restored, by the re-union of the remaining Cossacks of the Polish Ukraine, who, in 1691, migrated in a body over the Dniepr into the Russian dominions: but this prosperity was of short continuance. The plans of reform which Peter had projected for every part of his dominions were carried on with fresh energy at the return of peace, and their operation was not long in extending itself to the Ukraine. An attempt (in 1701) to impose a capitation tax was so vehemently resisted by the Cossacks, who rightly regarded it as the first step to the establishment of slavery, that the scheme was for the time abandoned; but the still more obnoxious proposition of including them in the new military organization, and dividing them into regiments, trained and equipped in the European manner, was pressed with greater pertinacity; and resentment for a brutal threat with which Peter, in one of his habitual fits of intoxication, replied to the remonstrances of Mazeppa, is stated by contemporary historians to have goaded the Ataman to the fatal determination of throwing off the yoke of Russia. But the Cossacks, always restless when not employed in war, were curbed by the constant presence of Russian troops on their frontier; the free communication with their brethren on the Don, which they had hitherto enjoyed through the intermediate Cossack settlements of the Slobode- Ukraine, was purposely intercepted by the location of Russian military colonies in that quarter, ostensibly as a check on the Tartars; and it was not till 1707, when the victories of Charles XII. seemed to threaten the dismemberment of the Muscovite empire, that Mazeppa ventured to attempt the execution of his designs, by opening a correspondence with the Swedish monarch, and also with the Porte. These machinations were detected, and revealed to Peter by two polkovniks of the faction adverse to Mazeppa; but such was the confidence still reposed by the Czar in the fidelity of the Ataman, that he delivered these two unfortunate officers, as traitors, to the vengeance of their chief, by whose orders they

But

were put to death by repeated strokes of a mallet or mace, the ordinary Cossack punishment for sedition. when, on the advance of Charles towards the Ukraine in the following year, the mask was at length thrown off, Mazeppa was dismayed by finding that none of his followers, excepting his personal adherents and the wild Zaporofskis of the setsha (whom he had gained over by largesses) were disposed to brave the wrath of the Czar. Abandoned by the greater part of his troops, he joined the Swedish camp with 7000 Cossacks only,* rather as a fugitive than an ally; while the Russians under Menzikoff, aided by the bulk of the Cossacks, found no difficulty in capturing Bathurin, the stronghold of Mazeppa, whose parti sans were every where consigned to the wheel or the gibbet. The events of the succeeding campaign, till the hopes both of Charles and Mazeppa were extinguished on the field of Pultava, are matter of general history: 12,000 Cossacks and Zaporofskis perished in the battle and pursuit ; but the Ataman escaped to Bender, where he died in 1709, while the sword and the scaffold were busy in completing the destruction of his adherents. The setsha of the Zaporofskis, in the islets of the Dniepr, hitherto inviolate by the foot of an enemy, was forced by the Russians, and its inhabitants slaughtered, without distinction of age or sex. Thousands of Cossacks were dragged in chains to the shores of the Baltic, to labour on the canals and other public works; and though a nominal Ataman was appointed in the room of Mazeppa, he was declared subordinate in authority to Menzikoff, who fixed his residence in Bathurin, and assumed the viceroyalty of the Ukraine. A remnant of the Zaporofskis, to the number of 4000, who escaped from the slaughter and captivity of their comrades, took refuge, with their koschevoi-ataman, Horodenko, in the territories of the Tartar Khan, who assigned them some lands on the banks of the Kaminka, a river falling into the Dniepr, in the vicinity of their ancient settlements.

The revolt of Mazeppa was in its results a deathblow to the independence of the Ukraine, which thenceforth fell