Prev | Page: 21
22 23 24 25 26
The chief obstacle which prevented Wladislaus' Turkish plans from maturing, was the impossibility of winning the help of the decisive factor—the Ukrainian Cossacks, who had become too numerous arid powerful to be a willing in strument of Polish policy. Catholic intolerance towards this Or thodox population, in the time of Sigismund III., had combined with the proud and high-handed behaviour of Polish landowners to produce in the Cossacks a spirit of religious, racial and social enmity against the Polish element ; the Polish parliament had not kept the financial terms of its compacts with the Cossacks, re pressions inspired by the border magnates had infuriated them. Already in the earlier years of Wladislaus' reign terrible Cossack revolts had flared up, and been unwisely punished by abolition of ancient privileges Now, instead of letting themselves be made the tools of Wladislaus' anti-Turkish plans, the Cossacks made com mon cause with the Tatars of the Crimea, who were the most im mediate objective of the king's crusading plans; and the reign ended amidst a wave of Cossack insurrection, engineered by the sultan, assisted by Tatar hordes, and led by Bogdan Chmielnicki (q.v.), a country gentleman personally wronged by a Polish offi cial, now the rising hero of Ukrainianism. It was only the re sistance of the brave Polish burghers of Lwow (Lemberg) that stemmed the Cossack and Tatar tide from flooding the inner provinces of Poland; the same patriotic town was to arrest two other invasions—a Russian and a Transylvanian one—in the next few years. But the defence of Lwow only meant a respite, and on Wladislaus' death, his brother and successor, the last of the Polish Vasas, found himself faced by a powerful renewal of Chmielnicki's attack on central Poland.
John Casimir, summoned to the throne from France, where he lived as a priest and had become a cardinal, was obliged to begin his reign by negotiating with his rebel subject Chmielnicki. But Chmielnicki's conditions of peace were so extravagant that the negotiations came to nothing. It was only after a second invasion of Poland, in 1649, by countless hosts of Cossacks and Tatars, that the compact of ZborOw was concluded, by which Chmielnicki was officially recognized as Chief (hetman) of the Cossack community. A general amnesty was also granted, and it was agreed that all official dignities in the Orthodox palatinates of Lithuania should henceforth be held solely by the Orthodox gentry. For the next 18 months Chmiel nicki ruled the Ukraine like a sovereign prince. He made Czehryri, his native place, the Cossack capital, subdivided the country into 16 provinces, and entered into direct relations with foreign powers. The Orthodox patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople were his friends and protectors. His attempt to carve a principality for his son out of Moldavia led to the out break of a third war between suzerain and subject in Feb. 1651. But fortune, so long Bogdan's friend, now deserted him, and at Beresteczko (1651) the Cossack chieftain was utterly routed by Stephen Czarniecki. All hope of an independent Cossackdom was now at an end ; yet it was not Poland but Muscovy which reaped the fruits of Czarnieclu's victory.
Chmielnicki, by suddenly laying bare the nakedness of the Polish republic, had opened the eyes of Muscovy to the fact that her ancient enemy was no longer formidable. Three years after his defeat at Beresteczko, Chmielnicki, abandoned by his Tatar allies and finding himself unable to cope with the Poles single-handed, very reluctantly transferred his allegiance to the tsar, and in the same year the tsar's armies invaded Poland. The war thus begun, and known in Russian history as the Thir teen Years' War, far exceeded even the Thirty Years' War in grossness and brutality.
The Russian War and the Swedish Invasion.—In the summer of 1655, while the Republic was still reeling beneath the shock of the Muscovite invasion, Charles X. of Sweden, on the flimsiest of pretexts, forced a war to gratify his greed of martial glory, and before the year was out his forces had occu pied the capital, the coronation city and the best half of the land. King John Casimir, betrayed and abandoned by his own subjects, fled to Silesia, and profiting by the cataclysm which, for the moment, had swept the Polish State out of existence, the Mus covites quickly appropriated nearly everything which was not already occupied by the Swedes. At this crisis Poland owed her salvation to two events—the formation of a general league against Sweden, brought about by the apprehensive court of Vienna, and a popular outburst of religious enthusiasm on the part of the Polish people. The first of these events, to be dated from the alliance between the emperor Leopold and John Casimir (1657) led to a truce with the tsar and the welcome diversion of all the Mus covite forces against Swedish Livonia. The second event, which began with the heroic and successful defence of the monastery of Czenstochowa by Prior Kordecki against the Swedes, resulted in the return of the king from exile, the formation of a national army, and the recovery of almost all the lost provinces from the Swedes, who were driven back headlong to the sea, where with difficulty they held their own. On the sudden death of Charles X., Poland seized the opportunity of adjusting all her outstanding differences with Sweden. By the peace of Oliva (166o), made under French mediation, John Casimir ceded Livonia, and re nounced all claim to the Swedish crown. The war with Muscovy was then prosecuted with renewed energy and extraordinary suc cess. In 1664 a peace congress was opened, and the prospects of Poland seemed most brilliant; but at the very moment when she needed all her armed strength to sustain her diplomacy, the rebellion of Prince Lubomirski involved her in a dangerous civil war, compelled her to reopen negotiations with the Mus covites and practically to accept the Muscovite terms. By the truce of Andruszowo (1667) Poland received back from Muscovy Vitebsk, Polotsk and Polish Livonia, but ceded in perpetuity Smolensk, Siendierz, Chernigov and the whole of the eastern bank of the Dnieper. The Cossacks of the Dnieper were henceforth to be divided between the dominion of the tsar and the king of Poland. Kiev, the religious metropolis of south-western Russia, was to remain in the hands of Muscovy for two years.