(Cambridge Concise Histories) Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki - A Concise History of Poland-Cambridge University Press (2006)

In truth, the Ukraine had been like this for centuries, but the sharpening cultural and religious divides enhanced the nostalgia for a mythical Golden Age when the Kievan lands had been harmoniously ruled by their own Orthodox princes. For their part, the Catholic and Catholicized nobility saw in the Orthodox an element of instability and rebellion. The Cossacks, including the thousands of petty nobles or would-be nobles counted among their ranks, were valuable in times of war; but in periods of peace, they were deemed a menace, both to colonization and to liberty. There were many among the Cossacks who looked naively to the monarchy, especially Wladyslaw IV, to improve their condition. Wladyslaw himself sympathized with the Cossacks and saw in them a potent ally in his dreams of a strengthened kingship. He saw his chance in the outbreak of war between Turkey and Venice in 1645. If he could engineer Poland’s involvement, he would leave the Sejm with no choice but to vote campaign monies. Success would allow him to strengthen the monarchy and assure his son of the throne. Instead, the Sejm got wind of his plans and forced him to promise to disband the troops he was raising. Undeterred, Wladyslaw cut a secret deal with the Cossacks. He would double their register to 12,000 and grant near-autonomy to the Ukraine if only they would help provoke a conflict with Turkey’s vassals, the Crimean Tatars.

This fantastic exercise was rendered meaningless by the deaths, first of the king’s only son, Sigismund Casimir, in August 1 647, then, the following May, of the king himself. The powder-keg of the Ukraine had already exploded. A private feud between a Polish official and Bohdan Khmel’nytskyi, one of those party to the clandestine dealings with the king, escalated beyond all control. Much of the Crown army was wiped out in May 1648; hurriedly reconstituted, bolstered by private militias, placed under the orders of a demoralisingly divided committee of squabbling nobles, it fled in panic before a joint Tatar-Cossack force in September.

Khmel’nytskyi, far from provoking the Tatars, looked to their support - though they were not prepared to allow him to become too powerful. His periodic bids to impose control over Moldavia were bound to suck in the Turks. Whether he wanted an independent Ukraine, or a looser relationship with his more powerful neighbours, remains uncertain. He could scarcely control the forces he had unleashed. At its height, his rebellion numbered some

150,000 armed men, mainly peasants who loathed their Polish masters and the Jews who dominated much of Ukrainian commerce as the szlachta's economic agents. The swing of the pendulum in the Poles' favour, marked by the victory of Wladyslaw’s successor and half-brother, John II Casimir, at Beresteczko, in June т 65 1, was nullified by the massacre of most of the Polish regular army at Batoh a year later.

The hitherto cautious Russians now seized their chance. In January 1654, by the Union of Pereiaslav, the Ukraine placed itself under Tsar Alexei’s protection. An irresistible Russian invasion

14 Kazimierz Dolnv, the St Nicholas town house and warehouse (kamienica pod sw. Mikotajem), built by the Przybyla merchant family in 161 5. Kazimierz Dolny on the middle Vistula grew rich as a staging-point for Polish exports, mainly grain, in the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries. Like so many Polish towns, it never fully recovered from the devastating impact of the ‘Deluge’, the invasions precipitated by the Swedish onslaught of 2655. This photograph, taken in tyoo, conveys an impression of the decayed grandeur of the town. Today, the town, much restored, is something of an artistic Mecca and a tourist trap.

followed. By August 1655, most of Lithuania was overrun. Wilno was almost totally destroyed by fire. The Russian advance precipitated an invasion by Charles X of Sweden, alarmed by its implications for his Baltic position. He also had a splendid opportunity to eliminate, once and for all, the Polish Vasas’ claims on Sweden. With the fall of Warsaw in September to Charles; with mass defections among the Polish nobility; and with John Casimir’s flight to Silesia, the Commonwealth seemed about to disintegrate. Indeed, at Radnot in Hungary, on 6 December 1656, Sweden and Transylvania agreed to carve up the Commonwealth between themselves, the Ukraine and Brandenburg. Brandenburg’s ruler, Frederick William, the ‘Great Elector’, was awaiting his chance to cement Ducal Prussia to the Brandenburg heartland by acquiring Royal, Polish Prussia. All that would have remained would have been a small principality under Swedish protection, carved out of Lithuania for Boguslaw Radziwill, protege of Charles and the Elector.