294 EUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



whence they soon removed farther south to an island at the junction of the 

 Chertomlik. 



The Cossacks do not constitute a ftimily fundamentally distinct in speech or 

 descent from the other Slavs of the steppes. The resemhlance of the word 

 Cherkasi to Cherkess (Circassian) gave rise to the erroneous theory of their 

 Caucasian origin ; but at the same time the term Cossack is really Tatar, and 

 Petcheneg, Khazar, and Kara-Kalpak elements were doubtless early assimilated by 

 them, before they were formed into organized communities. The typical Cossacks 

 are the Zaporogs and their descendants, who still claim the title of " Good 

 Cossacks." These were organized in lainns, or septs, under a common hetman 

 (from the German Ilaupinuuui, or head-man), a sort of dictator, whose powers were 

 limited only by common usage. The smallest group constituted a comuume, with 

 power to enforce its own laws, so that the Hetman Khmelnitzkiy could say, 

 " Wherever there are three Cossacks the delinquent is judged by the two others." 

 In their expeditions drunkards were expelled from the camp, and on these occasions 

 they employed the tahor, or chariot, borrowed from the Bohemians, and with which 

 they often broke the ranks of the enemy. Their greatest bond of union was the 

 common danger, and their love of the steppe, which they swept with their swift 

 and hardy ponies. " All are welcome who, for the Christian faith, are willing to 

 be impaled, broken on the wheel, quartered, all who are ready to endure all 

 manner of tortures, and have no fear of death." Such was the proclamation of the 

 Zaporog head-men, who, after becoming defenders of the faith, aspired also to the 

 championship of their "mother," Ukrania, and its freedom. 



This "frontier" region between the Slavs and Tatars shifted* its borders with 

 the vicissitudes of war and armed colonisation. Much of the space between the 

 " black lands " and the coast had become a perfect desert, and even in the second 

 half of the seventeenth century it was agreed that an area of about 20,000 square 

 miles between the Dnieper, Tasmin, and Dniester should remain unpeopled as a 

 neutral zone between the Slav and Tatar lands. Later on the Polish nobles held 

 out every inducement to the peasantry to settle in this wilderness, impunity from 

 all crimes, and free possession of the soil. Attracted by these promises, the serfs 

 poured in in hundreds of thousands, towns and villages were founded along the 

 river banks, the steppe was reclaimed under the magic spell of liberty. But when 

 the lords wished to resume their lands, and again reduce the peasantry to the 

 condition of serfs, they found they had to do with Cossacks who claimed to be free, 

 and the attempt served only to precipitate the ruin of Poland itself. The 

 autonomy of the Little Russian Hetmanship was recognised in 1649, and in 1654 

 it was transferred by the treaty of Pereyaslav from Polish to Muscovite protection. 

 But its freedom was not long respected. The Boyards complained that their 

 runaway serfs sought refuge in Ukrania, and Peter the Great demanded the 

 extradition of the Don emigrants to whom the Zaporogs had given hospitality. 

 The Little Russian Cossacks had become an obstacle to Muscovite centralization, 

 and their confederacy was crushed. Thousands of Cossacks perished by forced 

 labour on the shores of Lake Ladoga under Peter the Great. In ] 765 Catherine IT. 



