The Relations of the Crimean Khanate with the Ukrainian Cossacks, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

and Muscovy during the Reign of Khan Islam Giray III (1644-1654)

by

Sait Ocakli

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto

© Copyright by Sait Ocakli 2017

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The Relations of the Crimean Khanate with the Ukrainian

Cossacks, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy

during the Reign of Khan Islam Giray III (1644-1654)

Sait Ocakli

Doctor of Philosophy

Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto

2017

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the relations of the Crimean Khanate with the Ukrainian Cossacks, the

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy during the reign of Khan Islam Giray III (1644

- 1654). Islam Giray’s reign coincided with some of the most turbulent years of the Crimean

Khanate’s history. Shortly after his accession to the throne in summer 1644, a quarrel between

his nobles and palace guards during the return from a Circassian campaign turned into an

exhausting civil war between him and his nobility. The Khanate’s relations with its northern

neighbours were also deteriorating as Warsaw and Moscow decided to take action against the

attacks of the Tatars and stopped tribute/gifts payments to Crimea. Under these circumstances,

the Cossack rebellion of 1648 against the Commonwealth under the leadership of Bohdan

Xmel’nyc’kyj was a golden opportunity for Islam Giray to reassert his position as ruler in

Crimea and strengthen the Khanate’s position in eastern European affairs. While the khan gave

military support to the Ukrainian Cossacks throughout their war with the Commonwealth, he was

never willing to allow the collapse of Warsaw’s authority over Ukraine. Instead he aimed to be a

mediator between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth forcing them to agree to peace treaties

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that would reconcile their contending demands. Islam Giray also intended to ally with Warsaw

and Xmel’nyc’kyj for the conquest and partition of Muscovy, acquiring the Volga patrimony of

the Golden Horde, Kazan and Astrakhan, for the Khanate. However, as the Cossacks and the

Commonwealth were overwhelmed by their mutual problems, they were uninterested in

participating in an anti-Muscovite alliance. Eventually, a decisive blow to Islam Giray’s

mediatory position and his anti-Muscovite schemes came as the Ukrainian Cossacks could not

reach a settlement with Warsaw and decided to submit to Muscovy in 1654. Now, towards the

end of his reign, the khan found himself at a crossroads between maintaining his alliance with

the Ukrainian Cossacks and taking sides with the Commonwealth against the Ukrainian-

Muscovite rapprochement.

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Acknowledgments First I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Professor Victor Ostapchuk for his

role in my academic development during my graduate studies. Without his patience, guidance

and support, I would have not been able to complete the doctoral program. His lectures and

seminars greatly contributed to my development as a scholar. He also most generously allowed

me to benefit from his collection of copies of manuscripts and archival materials. Professor

Ostapchuk carefully read and substantially commented on the various drafts of my thesis for

which I am truly indebted to him. However, I alone remain responsible for any remaining

shortcomings in this doctoral dissertation.

I am also grateful to Professor Frank Sysyn for serving on my thesis committee and sparing his

precious time for my thesis drafts. He provided invaluable advice not only during the writing, but

also during the research process. His vast knowledge, especially of Polish and Ukrainian history,

has been very useful for this dissertation.

I would like to thank Professor Paul R. Magocsi for agreeing to participate as the non-committee

member in my dissertation defense and in the process providing me with valuable feedback on

my thesis. I am also thankful to him for allowing me to attend his lectures on Ukrainian history

during the coursework portion of my doctoral program.

It was a privilege to have Professor Michael Khodarkovsky of Loyola University Chicago as the

external appraiser. I owe special thanks to him for his constructive feedback on my dissertation

in his written appraisal and his insightful comments and questions during the oral defense.

I would like to thank the Late Professor Halil İnalcık, who encouraged me to turn my academic

interests to the relations of the Crimean Khanate with its northern neighbours. He wanted to read

my dissertation but passed away last year. May God bless him with a place in Paradise.

My sincere appreciation goes to Professor Özer Ergenç, who made helpful suggestions and

comments on my reading of Ottoman Turkish documents.

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Mrs. Anna Sousa have always been very approachable, helpful and friendly from the first day

that I set foot in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. Her administrative

support has played a pivotal role in the completion of my graduate studies.

A great debt of thankfulness belongs to Maryna Kravets, who gave me valuable advice during

the research and writing of my dissertation. Thanks to conversations I had with Maryna, I have

been able to understand terms and phrases in Polish, Ukrainian and Russian historical texts.

This dissertation has been made possible by the financial assistance of the University of Toronto,

the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations and the Avie Bennett Award Program.

I would especially like to thank Mr. Avie Bennett for setting up an award fund to support young

researchers including me. I hope many other young researchers benefit his benevolent fund in

future and express their gratitude to a beautiful hearted person such as him.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to my parents for their endless support and confidence.

While I was pursuing graduate studies away from Turkey, my mother and my father helped to

keep my moral high. I regret for not being with them when my sister passed away. I always

remember my beloved sister and miss her calling me “abi.”

Last, but certainly not least, I am grateful to my wife, Nuray, and my son, Mehmet Berke, for

their patience, confidence, encouragement and support throughout my studies. As a companion

and fellow graduate student, Nuray endured many difficulties and took much responsibility,

especially at the times that I had to fully concentrate on research and writing. And, Mehmet

Berke had to grow up in a household where two graduate students had to finish their studies.

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Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents vi List of Maps vii Note on Nomenclature and Terminology viii Abbreviations x Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Reign of Islam Giray III before the Crimean Tatar-Ukrainian Cossack Rapprochement of 1648 20

1.1 Disorder in the Crimean Khanate 21 1.2 Relations with the Commonwealth 28 1.3 Relations with Muscovy 47 1.4 Conclusion 61

Chapter 2: Crimean Tatar Involvement in the War between the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth (1648-1649) 63

2.1 Early Relations between Islam Giray III and Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj: Was the Khan an Ally or Suzerain of the Hetman? 64 2.2 The Campaigns of 1648 82 2.3 The Campaign of Summer 1649: The Battles of Zbaraž and Zboriv 92 2.4 The Commonwealth and Ukrainian Cossack Missions to the Ottoman Porte 117 2.5 Conclusion 139

Chapter 3: Ceasefire (September 1649-February 1651) 142 3.1 Arbitration between the Commonwealth and the Ukrainian Cossacks 143 3.2 Crimean Campaign Plans against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks 155 3.3 The Campaign against Moldavia in Summer 1650 180 3.4 Relations between Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Ottoman Porte 186 3.5 Conclusion 203

Chapter 4: Crimean Tatar Involvement in the War between the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth (June 1651-June 1654) 205

4.1 The Campaign of Summer 1651 and its Aftermath 206 4.2 The Battle of Žvanec’ and its Outcomes 234 4.3 Crimean Reaction to the Ukrainian-Muscovite Rapprochement at Perejaslav in 1654 244 4.4 Conclusion 272

Conclusion 275 Chronology 286 Glossary 293 Bibliography 297

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List of Maps

Map 1 The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Crimean Khanate c. 1648 319

Map 2 The Xmel’nyc’kyj Uprising c. 1648 320

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Note on Nomenclature and Terminology

The Crimean Khanate was the name of a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire ruled by the Giray

dynasty (directly descended from Chinggis Khan) with not only internal autonomy, but its own

military and even, to a great extent, own foreign policy. It combined sedentary and nomadic

social and political life. The rulers of the Khanate considered the Crimean peninsula as the

heartland of their state, though the steppes to the north belonged to the Khanate and part of the

North Caucasus was in vassalage to it. This dissertation uses the Crimean Khanate, Crimea and

Khanate interchangeably to denote the state ruled by the khans of the Giray dynasty. In the third

quarter of the fifteenth century the Ottoman Empire took the Crimean Khanate under its

protection, establishing direct rule over the southern coast of the peninsula and certain places

along the Azov Sea, such as Azak and Taman. For the central authority of the Ottoman Empire,

this dissertation uses the Ottoman Porte and more often simply the Porte.

Crimean and Ottoman place names are given in their historical form (e.g., Akmescid for

Simferopol’, Gözleve for Jevpatorija, Orkapı for Perekop, Azak for Azov, Özi for Očakiv,

Akkerman for Bilhorod-Dnistrovs’kyj). On first occurrence in each chapter the modern forms of

such place names are given in parentheses after their historical form.

Dates that have been given in the sources according to the Islamic calendar are usually presented

first in their Gregorian calendar equivalent and then in the original form in parentheses. Dates in

the Julian calendar are indicated with O.S. for old style; the Gregorian calendar equivalent is

then given in parentheses.

For Crimean Tatar and Ottoman Turkish, a transcription system based on the Modern Turkish

alphabet is used. When necessary ‘ayns are indicated by a left single quote (‘). Plural forms of

Crimean and Ottoman terms are given with the English plural suffix (e.g., mirzas instead of

mirzalar).

Finding proper political and geographic terms for a multiethnic and dual political structure such

as the Commonwealth of the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania is not easy

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(throughout this work referred to as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and most often as

simply the Commonwealth). When the Commonwealth was founded with the Union of Lublin in

1569, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ceded Podlasie (Podlachia) and its southern territories—the

provinces of Kyiv, Volyn’ (Volhynia), and Braclav to the Kingdom of Poland. Therefore the

administration of these southern territories that were predominantly populated by Ruthenians (an

old name for Ukrainians in the context of Ukraine, and Belorusians in the context of the Grand

Duchy of Lithuania and Belarus) passed to the Polish monarchs and nobility. As the Grand

Duchy of Lithuania no longer had immediate borders with the Tatars and the Ottoman Empire,

the function of administering relations with the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman Empire fell into

the hands of the Kingdom of Poland. However, in the course of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion, at

times the residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (predominantly Belorusians Ruthenians, but

also ethnic Lithuanians and others) were also involved in the conflict against the Cossack-Tatar

allies. In order to prevent confusion, this dissertation usually uses the Commonwealth’s

authorities (even Commonwealth) or Warsaw in order to refer to the decision-making entity.

However, since it was the Kingdom of Poland that was usually de facto if not de jure involved

with the Cossacks and the neighbors to its south, Polish Crown or simply the Crown, as well as

Poland and Polish, are also used in place of Commonwealth. Ukraine is used to designate the

territories of the Kingdom of Poland predominantly populated by Ukrainian Ruthenians—the

provinces of Kyiv, Černihiv, Braclav, Podolia, and the Zaporižžja region. Ukrainian Cossacks is

used to designate Cossacks in these lands in general—Zaporozhian Cossacks and so-called

registered and town Cossacks.

The rulers of the Commonwealth—in the same person Kings of Poland and Grand Dukes of

Lithuania—are given in their Polish forms: Władysław IV and Jan Kazimierz II. Accepted

English equivalents are used for terms such as nobility for szlachta, Diet for Sejm, dietine for

sejmik, and palatinate for województwo.

Unless accepted English forms are available (e.g., Moscow, tsar, Hrushevsky), East Slavic

geographic and personal names are transliterated according to the International System. Terms

that have no proper English equivalent are given in italics (e.g., voevoda, hospodar).

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Abbreviations AGAD Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (Central Archives of Historical Records),

Warsaw

Akty JuZR Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye

arxeografičeskoju komissieju. 15 vols. St. Petersburg, 1861 - 1892.

Akty ZR Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii Zapadnoj Rossii sobrannye i izdannye

arxeografičeskoju komissieju. 5 vols. St. Petersburg, 1846 - 1853.

Arxiv JuZR Arxiv Jugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, izdavaemyj komissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov. 8

pts, 34 vols. Kyiv, 1894 - 1914.

AMG Akty Moskovskago gosudarstva, izdannye Imperatorskoju akademieju nauk. 3

vols. St. Petersburg: Typografiia Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk, 1890 - 1901.

DBX Dokumenty Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, 1648 - 1657. Edited by I. Kryp”jakevyč

and I. Butyč. Kyiv: Akademiji Nauk Ukrajins’koji RSR, 1961.

DOVUN Dokumenty ob osvoboditel’noj vojne ukrainskogo naroda, 1648-1654 gg. Edited

by P. Gudzenko, A. Kasimenko, and C. Pil’kevič. Kyiv: Akademiia Nauk URSR,

Instytut Istorii, 1965.

Dz. Koz. Dział Kozacki, AGAD

Dz. Tat. Dział Tatarski, AGAD

Dz. Tur. Dział Turecki, AGAD

KRO Kabardino-russkie otnošenija v 16-18 vv. 2 vols. Edited by T. Kumykov and E.

Kuševa. Moscow, Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1957.

MdiKx Materialy dlja istorii Krymskago xanstva izvlečennyja, po rasporjaženiju

imperatorskoj akademii nauk, iz Moskovskago glavnogo arxiva Ministerstva

xi

inostrannyx del. Edited by Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Huseyn Feyzxanov.

St. Petersburg, 1864.

PdsKxsMg Pamjatniki diplomatičeskix snošeni Krymskago xanstva s Moskovskim

gosudarstvom v XVI-XVII v.v. Edited by Fedor Laškov. Simferopol’: Tipografija

Gazety Krym, 1891.

PIKK Pamjatniki izdannyje kievskoju kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov. 3 vols.

Kyiv, 1897-1898.

PIVK Pamjatniki izdannyje vremennoj kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov. 4 vols.

Kyiv, 1846-1859.

RGADA Rossijskyj Gosuderstvennyj Arxiv Drevnix Aktov (Russian State Archive of

Ancient Acts), Moscow

SGGD Sobranie gosudarstvennyx gramot i dogovorov, xranjaščixsja v gosudarstvennoj

kollegii inostrannyx del. 5 pts. Moscow, 1813-94.

VUR Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej dokumenty i materialy. 3 vols. Edited by P.

Gruzenko, M. Kozyrenko, A. Pola, I. Butič and M. Repecaja. Moscow:

Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1953.

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Introduction

In the first half of the seventeenth century, the Crimean Khanate endeavored to be an important

actor in eastern European affairs. As the Khanate received tribute/gifts1 payments from Moscow

and Warsaw, its forces participated in Ottoman campaigns against the Safavid Iran, Muscovy

and the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. The Tatars also supplied Ottoman slave markets by

raiding their northern neighbours. The Crimean Tatar raids into Muscovite lands also helped the

Commonwealth force Muscovy to seek reconciliation and end the war of 1632-4 over Smolensk.

However, as Crimean khans such as Mehmed Giray III (r. 1623-8) and Inayet Giray (r. 1635-7)

were annoyed by Ottoman support for the Bucak Tatars who increased their power as a rival

Tatar domain in the lands between the rivers of Danube and Dnister at the northwest corner of

the Black Sea region, the Khanate was drawn into conflict with the Ottoman Porte. These

confrontations eventually caused both of these khans to lose their throne. After the execution of

Inayet Giray by the order of the Porte in 1637, Bahadir Giray ascended to the throne with

Ottoman support, but his reign did not last long. Following the death of Bahadir Giray in 1641,

two of his brothers, namely Mehmed and Islam, fell into a succession struggle against one

another. While Mehmed Giray, securing the support of the grand vizier and prevailed in the

1 At the height of the Golden Horde’s power in the thirtheenth and early fourteenth century, the rulers of eastern European polities were its vassals and paid tribute to it. The Chinggisid Crimean khans seeing themselves as the heirs of the Golden Horde, wanted to maintain the practice of receiving tribute payment from Poland, Lithuania and Muscovy. Tribute payment was related to haraj (Tur. haraç) the Islamic tax levied upon non-Muslim communities who were subjects of an Islamic state. The Muscovite state did not want to maintain the old practice of vassalage and thus refrained from referring to the payments as tribute (vyxod, a translation of haraj). Instead, Moscow preferred to use the word “present” or “gift” (Rus. pominki) and considered it a payment to the khan for his promise to prevent his subjects from raiding its lands. In a similar vein, the Polish kings, considering themselves as free rulers, referred to payments to the Crimean khans as “presents” or “gifts” (Pol. upominki). The Crimean khans used a number of words for these payments (e.g., tıyış, ulug hazine, vergü, pişkeş and hedaya), variously meaning tribute or gift, though officially they always viewed them as tribute. For a discussion of these payments see Halil İnalcık, “Power Relationship between Russia, the Crimea and the Ottoman Empire as Reflected in Titulature,” in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire, ed. Halil İnalcık (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993): 394-8; Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania: International Diplomacy and the European Periphery, a Study of Peace Treaties Followed by Annotated Documents, ed. Dariusz Kołodziejczyk (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 504-6. Because of their ambiguous nature, throughout this thesis these payments are almost always referred to as “tribute/gifts.”

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struggle to gain the throne, nearly three years later Islam Giray, with the help of his long-time

aide Sefer Gazi Agha, managed to replace Mehmed Giray IV (r. 1641-4, 1654-66).2

2 The Ottoman chronicler Mustafa Naima explains that after Bahadır Giray’s death Grand Vizier Kemankeş Kara Mustafa Pasha helped Mehmed Giray acquire the Crimean throne and arranged for the banishment of Islam Giray to Çanakkale (Hisar-ı Sultaniye) at the Dardanelles. Islam Giray resided in the fortress with Sefer Gazi Agha, who served as his tutor (atalık) and then later his chamberlain (eşik agası) during his term as the heir-apparent to the Crimean throne, or kalgay. According to Seyyid Muhammed Rıza, Sefer Gazi Agha was the son of Hanmirza Agha who was from among the ranks of either Ottoman or Crimean palace guards (kapu kulı). Before serving Islam Giray, Sefer Gazi Agha was the master of the horse stable (mirahur) of another Crimean prince, Hüsam Giray. Dedicating himself to the struggle of his tutee, Sefer Gazi Agha established connections with Ottoman dignitaries to topple Mehmed Giray IV and enthrone Islam Giray. Naima recounts that in a conversation with the current highest ranking member of the Ottoman ulama, Şeyhülislam Ebu Said Efendi of the Ottoman Empire, Sefer Gazi Agha claimed that although Islam Giray was the rightful candidate to the throne, the grand vizier Kemankeş Kara Mustafa Pasha supported the younger brother Mehmed Giray because of his grudge against Islam Giray. He added that the enthronement of the younger brother instead of the older one was against the Chingisid custom of succession. When, after his opponents’ plot, Kara Mustafa Pasha was executed in early 1644, Sefer Gazi Agha wanted to use the opportunity and went to Istanbul to convince the new power holders to replace Mehmed Giray with Islam Giray. However the Ottoman governor of Kefe (Caffa, Feodosia) Islam Pasha spoiled Sefer Gazi Agha’s attempt by sending his own son to the Porte with a letter of the reigning khan complaining that since Islam Giray spread false rumours in Crimea about his allegedly imminent arrival in Crimea as the new khan, the people would possibly fail to remain loyal to his own rule. In this letter, the khan suggested that the Porte send Islam Giray to a distant place. The new grand vizier Sultanzade Mehmed Pasha agreed with Mehmed Giray’s concerns and ordered a galley to move Islam Giray and his tutor Sefer Gazi Agha from Çanakkale to the island of Rhodes. However, Sefer Gazi Agha had no intention to give up. Another opportunity presented itself when Islam Pasha was executed for ravaging the Circassian domains and oppressing the residents of Kefe. Mehmed Giray was also deposed for his failure in government affairs. As Dariusz Kołodziejczyk explains, Mehmed Giray pleased neither the Porte nor his own subjects. While the Porte expected the khan to obey the peace with the Commonwealth, the the khan’s subjects demanded that he to launch campaigns that would provide spoils. In addition, King Władysław sent a letter to the Porte in late 1643-early 1644 (Şevval 1053) complaining about the Crimean khan and asked for the removal of the Bucak Tatars to another place. In this context, as the Gazette de France claims, the Porte deposed Mehmed Giray because of perpetual complaints of the Commonwealth authorities about Tatar attacks. Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen also emphasizes the role of the king in the Ottoman decision to dismiss Mehmed Giray. Meanwhile, Sefer Gazi Agha approached Cinci Hüseyin Efendi who played and influential role in Sultan Ibrahim’s appointments and dismissals. Accordingly as Seyyid Muhammed Rıza recounts, only sixty-four days after his banishment to Rhodes, Islam Giray ascended to the throne in June-July 1644 (Rebi‘ülahir 1054). The Gazette de France relates that the deposed khan Mehmed Giray went to Kefe to go in exile by the same Ottoman galley that brought Islam Giray to Crimea. In addition, the Ottoman and Crimean chroniclers provide some information about Islam Giray’s life before his rise to power. According to their account, after spending several years as a captive in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Islam Giray was released and resided in Yambol in Ottoman Bulgaria. When Bahadır Giray ascended to the throne in 1637, he appointed his brother Islam Giray as his kalgay. During his term as the kalgay, he accompanied Khan Bahadır Giray in a campaign in 1641 against the Don Cossacks, who had in 1637 occupied the Ottoman outpost of Azak (Azov) at the month of the Don River, and in 1639 he joined his brother in suppressing the Mangıt (Mansur) tribe. See Naima Mustafa Efendi. Târih-i Naîmâ: Ravzatü'l-Hüseyn fî hulâsati ahbâri'l-hâfikayn, ed. Mehmet İpşirli (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2007), 798, 993, 1005-6; Seyyid Muhammed Rıza, Es-Seb üs-seyyar fil-akhbar-ı mülük üt-tatar, ili sem’ planet soderžavščij istoriju krymskix xanov ot Mengli Girej Xana piervogo do Mengli Girej Xana vtorogo, ed. Mirza Kasımbek (Kazan, 1882), 160-1, 171; Zeynep Aycibin, “Katip Çelebi, Fezleke: Tahlil ve Metin” (PhD dissertation, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, 2007), 926; Gazette de France, no 138, Constantinople, 27 August 1644; Johann Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reichs in Europa, vol. 4 (Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1856), 523; Janusz Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1988), 106; Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania Treaties, 154-5.

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Islam Giray reigned for a decade from 1644 to 1654 that overlapped with one of the most chaotic

periods in eastern European history that was ignited by the Ukrainian Cossack uprising of 1648

against the Commonwealth under the leadership of Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj (official title, Hetman

of the Zaporozhian Host, 1648-57). Because Xmel’nyc’kyj turned to Islam Giray and the Porte

for support, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian historians have also written about Crimean and

Ottoman attitudes towards the struggle between him and the Commonwealth. However, in their

analysis of the position of the Tatars and the Porte, these scholars have not given close attention

to Ottoman and Crimean primary sources. The present dissertation proposes that a close scrutiny

of Crimean and Ottoman diplomatic correspondence originating in the circle of Islam Giray and

the reigning Ottoman sultans namely Ibrahim (r. 1640-8) and Mehmed IV (r. 1648-87) and other

materials including Ottoman and Crimean chronicles would help understand the perspective of

the Tatars and the Porte on Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion of 1648 and the subsequent struggle

between the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth until the death of Islam Giray in late

June 1654, which occurred nearly five months after the Cossack council at Perejaslav decided to

submit to Muscovy.

Sources

One of the aims of this dissertation is to bring into play Crimean and Ottoman and diplomatic

correspondence preserved in Polish and Turkish archives, as well as Crimean and Ottoman

chronicles. Original copies of the letters of the khan, his entourage and other Tatar dignitaries

that were sent to the Commonwealth are preserved in the Tatar section (Dział tatarski) of the

Royal Archive of Warsaw (Archiwum Koronne Warszawskie), a fond of the Central Archives of

Historical Records in Warsaw (Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych [AGAD]). Letters of Ottoman

sultans, grand viziers and other Ottoman dignitaries are located in the Turkish section (Dział

turecki) of the same fond of AGAD. The documents covering a period of approximately three and

a half centuries between the mid-fifteenth and late eighteenth century are organized according to

box (karton), folder (teczka) and number.3 On the basis of the previous work of the Polish

interpreter and diplomat Samuel Otwinowski (1575-1650?) and the eighteenth century Polish

3 Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania Treaties, 91.

4

interpreter Antoni Krutta, Zygmunt Abrahamowicz published a catalogue of the documents in

the Turkish section between 1455 and 1672.4 Among the documents in the Turkish section,

original copies of letters of sultans Ibrahim and Mehmed IV and grand viziers Nevesinli Salih

Pasha, Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha and Sofu Mehmed Pasha shed light on the relations of the Porte

with the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth before and during Xmel’nyc’kyj’s

rebellion. These letters also reveal that the Ottomans did not have a consistent policy in northern

affairs during Xmel’nyc’kyj rebellion of 1648-54. The Tatar section of AGAD includes several

letters of Islam Giray and his entourage to the Commonwealth before and after the Cossack

rebellion of 1648. The Khanate’s letters that dated before Xmel’nyc’kyj’s uprising suggest that

after his accession to the throne in summer 1644, Islam Giray tried to restore peaceful relations

with the Comm onwealth that began to deteriorate after the Khanate’s forces were defeated by

Stanisław Koniecpolski’s army at Oxmativ. The Khanate’s letters that were written after the

conclusion of the Treaty of Zboriv of 1649 between the Cossack-Tatar allies and the

Commonwealth suggest how Islam Giray gained a mediatory position in the relations between

Xmel’nyc’kyj and Warsaw and tried to take advantage of his new position to conclude an anti-

Muscovite alliance with the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth. In addition, ms. 609 of

the Czartoryski Library (Biblioteka Czartoryskich) in Cracow contains original texts of Crimean

diplomatic letters, including Islam Giray’s letter to King Jan Kazimierz II (r. 1648-68) that

provides information on the khan’s position in the face of the proposal of the Commonwealth to

conclude an alliance against Xmel’nyc’kyj and Muscovy after the former’s submission to the

latter in 1654.

The Topkapı Palace Museum Archive in Istanbul (Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivi) also has a

collection of dispatches from the Porte to its officials who were serving in the northern Black Sea

region and correspondence between Crimea and the Porte. Victor Ostapchuk points out that the

Archive of the Topkapı Palace Museum with one hundred thousand documents or more should

have had thousands of the letters of Crimean khans and dignitaries. However, because of

4 Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, Katalog dokumentów tureckich, Dokumenty do dziejów Polski i krajów ościennych w latach 1455-1672 (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawn. Naukowe, 1959); Hacer Topakbaş, “Polonya Arşivlerinden Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD) ve Osmanlı Tarihine Dair Belge Kolleksiyonları,” Hacettepe Üniversitesi Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi 16 (Spring 2012): 218.

5

discarding and deterioration only about 200 remain.5 Due to the reorganization of the catalogue

by the administration of the archive researchers today have limited access to the documents in

Topkapı Palace Museum Archive. Nonetheless, the present dissertation has managed to use a

number of documents provided by the archive’s administration. These documents are mainly

relevant to the defensive preparations of the Porte and its officials against the King of Poland and

Grand Duke of Lithuania Władysław IV’s anti-Ottoman war plans in 1645-6 as well as to the

early stage of the Cossack rebellion of 1648.

I also performed research in the Ottoman Archives of the Turkish Prime Ministry (Başbakanlık

Osmanlı Arşivi) but could not find and materials on the relations of the Khanate with its northern

neighbours during Islam Giray’s reign. The mühimme defters (registers of orders issued by the

Porte) are known as one of the main Ottoman archival documentary sources but they do not give

much information on our topic. In relation to the reign of Islam Giray, there are a few documents

in the mühimme defter no. 90 (1056/1646-7) and 91 (1056/1646) mentioning warnings to local

Ottoman officials about the danger of Cossack raids. No mühimme defters are extant for the

period between 1647 and 1654. In addition, the military and foreign affairs sections of the Ali

Emiri and the İbnülemin fonds on do not have any relevant documents. Historians such as Halil

İnalcık, Alexandre Bennigsen, Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Victor Ostapchuk and others also

did research in the Ottoman Archives of the Turkish Prime Ministry but found nothing

significant on the Islam Giray and Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj period.

Most of the two hundred or so letters of Crimean khans and Ottoman officials to the Porte found

in the Topkapı Palace Museum Archive were published by Alexandre Bennigsen, Chantal

Lemercier-Quelquejay and a number of other scholars in Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives

du Musée du Palais de Topkapı (Crimean Khanate in the Archives of the Topkapı Museum

Palace).6 This volume gives full and partial translations and some facsimiles of nearly twenty

documents related to our topic. These include dispatches from local Ottoman officials in the

northern Black Sea region to the Porte presenting information about the early stages of the

Cossack rebellion, the course of the wars between the Cossack-Tatar armies and the

5 Victor Ostapchuk, “The Publication of Documents on the Crimean Khanate in the Topkapi Sarayi: New Sources forthe History of the Black Sea Basin,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 6 (December 1982): 502. 6 Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives du Musée du Palais de Topkapı, eds. A. Bennigsen, P. N. Boratav, D. Desaive and C. Lemercier-Quelquejay (Paris: Mouton, 1978).

6

Commonwealth between 1647 and 1653 and contending perceptions of the local Ottoman

officials with regard to Xmel’nyc’kyj’s uprising. The study also includes some letters from Islam

Giray to the Porte giving information about the Khanate’s attitude toward Ottoman officials in

the region and their relations with Xmel’nyc’kyj. Among the documents, a letter from

Xmel’nyc’kyj to the Porte of February 1653 sheds light on Ottoman-Cossack relations on the eve

of the campaign of autumn-winter 1653. This document also suggests that the Cossack leader

maintained his appeal to the Porte to secure the support of the Tatars against the Commonwealth.

However, since the documents do not bear dates, one must pay close attention to their content

and historical context in order to determine their relevance to the course of events. On the basis

of the documents from Topkapı Palace Museum Archives that have been introduced by

Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay in this study, some scholars also

published articles on the relations of the Porte and the Tatars with Xmel’nyc’kyj.7

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Czech Iranist and Ottomanist, Jan Rypka, published letters

of the Porte to Xmel’nyc’kyj and Islam Giray preserved in the Göttingen Codex, Turc. 29.

Among the documents are the letters of the sultan and Grand Vizier Melek Ahmed Pasha

(February-March 1651), a letter of the sultan (July 1651) and a letter from Grand Vizier

Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha (December 1652). Rypka gave the Ottoman texts of these letters in

printed Arabic letters with some facsimiles and their translations into German or Czech.8 These

documents from the Göttingen Codex are important for analyzing the Ottoman view of the

struggle between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth and Crimea’s role in it.

Another major source of published archival materials is Materialy dlja istorii krymskogo xanstva

(Materials for the History of the Crimean Khanate) edited by Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov and

7 András Riedlmayer and Victor Ostapchuk, “Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Porte: A Document from the Ottoman Archives,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 8 (December 1984): 453-73; Victor Ostapchuk, “Political-Personal Intrigue on the Ottoman Frontier in Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Relations with the Porte: The Case of Ramazan Beg vs. Veli Beg,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 33-34 (2008-2009): 365-79; Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, “Les relations entre la Porte ottomane et les cosaques Zaporogues au milieu du XVIIe siècle. Une lettre inédite de Bohdan Hmelnickij au Padichah ottoman,” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 11/3 (July-September 1970): 454-61; Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, “Three Ottoman Documents Concerning Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1 (1977): 347-58. 8 Jan Rypka, “Z korespondence Vysoké Porty s Bohdanem Chmelnickym,” in Sbornik vënovany Jaroslavu Bidlovi, Profesörü Karlovy University śedesátym narozeninám, ed. Milos Weingart et al. (Prague, 1928): 346-50, 482-98; Jan Rypka, “Weitere Beitrage zur Korrespondenz der Hohen Pforte mit Bohdan Chmel'nyckyj.” Archiv Orientalni 2 (1930): 262-83; Jan Rypka, “Další příspěvek ke korespondenci Vysoké Porty s Bohdanem Chmelnickým,” Časopis Národního Musea 105 (1931): 209-31.

7

Hüseyin Feyzhanov. This volume contains printed Arabic-letter texts of nearly four hundred

letters of Crimean khans and dignitaries found at the time of compilation in the Moscow State

Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.9 This collection contains not only correspondence

between the Crimean Khanate and the Muscovite state, but also the letters of Islam Giray and his

entourage to the Commonwealth. In an appendix (mülhakat) with undated letters there are

several letters of Islam Giray and other Crimean notables to the Commonwealth. A close

scrutiny of these documents suggests that the Khanate’s grievances about the kings’ refusal to

deliver the payment of tribute/gifts, give favourable treatment to the Tatar envoys and send

embassies to Crimea propelled Islam Giray and his entourage to see the Cossack rebellion as an

opportunity to settle scores with the Commonwealth. In addition, the correspondence between

the Khanate and the Muscovite state in the compilation sheds light on the controversial issues

between Bagçasaray and Moscow, such as the payment of tribute/gifts to Crimea and the Don

Cossack attacks against the Tatars. Among these documents, a letter of Islam Giray to Aleksej

Mixajlovič (r. 1645-76) also helps us understand the Khanate’s approach towards the submission

of the hetman to the tsar’s authority.

Crimean and Ottoman chronicles are another body of primary sources for the reign of Islam

Giray. Hacı Mehmed Senai’s work entitled Tarih-i Islam Giray Han (History of Khan Islam

Giray) covers the domestic and foreign affairs of the Crimean Khanate under Islam Giray from 6

July 1644 (1 Cemaziyelevvel 1054) to 30 July 1650 (1 Şa‘ban 1060). Zygmunt Abrahamowicz

published the unicum manuscript of Senai’s chronicle preserved in the British Library in partial

facsimile, printed Arabic-letter text, Polish translation and commentary.10 Nearly two decades

later, Kemal Kongurat (Useinov) and Ferhad Turanlı published translations of Senai’s chronicle

into Russian and Ukrainian respectively.11 While Kongurat confines the scope of his work to

9 Materialy dlja istorii Krymskago xanstva izvlečennyja, po rasporjaženiju Imperatorskoj akademii nauk, iz Moskovskago glavnogo arxiva Ministerstva inostrannyx del (Henceforth MdiKx), eds. Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Huseyn Feyzxanov (St. Petersburg, 1864). Most of these documents are today preserved in Moscow in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (Rossijskyj Gosuderstvennyj Arxiv Drevnix Aktov [henceforth RGADA]). However some of them were transfered to Poland in 1923 as a result of the Polish-Soviet Treaty of Riga (1921). These are today the original Crimean documents referred to at the beginning of this section that are housed in AGAD. See Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania Treaties, 245-6. 10 Hacı Mehmed Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja III, ed. and trans. Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, with additional commentary by Olgierd Górka and Zbigniew Wójcik (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1971). 11 Hacı Mehmed Senai, Kniga poxodov istorija xana Isljam Giraja tret’ego, ed. Kemal Kongurat (Useinov) (Simferepol’: Krymučpedgiz, 1998); Ferhad Turanly, Litopysy tvory M. Sena’ji ta H. Sultana jak istoryčni džerela

8

translation and a short glossary, Turanlı provides a Latin-letter transcription, partial facsimile,

printed Arabic-letter text and commentary. Senai gives a comprehensive account of the

participation of the Tatars in the Cossack campaigns of 1648-9 and the making of the Treaty of

Zboriv (1649). He also treats the Porte’s reaction to the involvement of the Khanate in the

Cossack-Polish wars of 1648 and the Khanate’s refusal to withdraw its support from the

Ukrainian Cossacks. In addition, Senai’s chronicle refers to Sefer Gazi Agha’s role in tempting

Islam Giray to plan to conquer Kazan and Astrakhan from Muscovy.

It is also possible to find valuable information about Ottoman and Crimean viewpoints on the

Cossack rebellion of 1648 in Ravzatü'l-Hüseyn Fî Hulâsati Ahbâri'l-Hâfikayn (Hüseyin’s garden

with a summary of the news for Orient and Occident) by Mustafa Naima (commonly referred to

as simply the Tarih-i Naima [Chronicle of Naima]) and the Fezleke (Summary) by Katip Çelebi.

While Mehmed İpşirli edited and transcribed the Tarih-i Naima into the Latin alphabet, Zeyneb

Aycibin did a similar work on the Fezleke as a dissertation.12 Lewis Thomas states that Naima

incorporated nearly all of the Fezleke and Şarih al-Manarzade’s unfinished chronicle entitled the

Vakayiname (Chronicle) into his manuscript. Serving at Mufti Ebu Said’s fief (arpalık) at

Gallipoli, Şarih al-Manarzade was acquainted with Islam Giray and his tutor Sefer Gazi Agha

during their banishment to Çanakkale after losing a succession struggle with Mehmed Giray in

1641. Şarih al-Manarzade relates how Islam Giray together with Sefer Gazi Agha struggled to

eventually to capture the Crimean throne.13 According to a printed catalogue of manuscripts in

Istanbul Libraries, a copy of Şarih al-Manarzade’s chronicle was in Fatih Library as ms. 658.14

In 1956 the Turkish authorities transferred all manuscripts at Fatih to the Süleymaniye Library.

Unfortunately the current catalogue of Süleymaniye Library has no record on Şarih al-

Manarzade’s manuscript. For this reason, one needs to rely on what Naima conveyed from Şarih

al-Manarzade in relation to Islam Giray’s life. Katip Çelebi and his continuer Naima present an

account of Islam Giray’s accession to the throne, his campaigns and campaign plans against the

(Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut Ukrajins’koji Arxeohrafiji ta Džereloznastva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2008). 12 Zeynep Aycibin, “Katip Çelebi, Fezleke: Tahlil ve Metin” (PhD dissertation, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, 2007); Naima Mustafa Efendi. Târih-i Naîmâ: Ravzatü'l-Hüseyn fî hulâsati ahbâri'l-hâfikayn, ed. Mehmet İpşirli (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2007). 13 Lewis V. Thomas, A Study of Naima, ed. Norman Itzkowitz (New York: New York University Press,1972), 132. 14 İstanbul Kütüphaneleri Tarih-Coğrafya Yazmaları Katalogları, 2 vols, ed. Maarif Vekilliği Kütüphaneler Müdürlüğü Tasnif Komisyonu (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1944), 119-20.

9

Circassians, Kalmyks and Don Cossacks, the beginning of the Cossack-Tatar alliance and

Ottoman-Cossack relations. Their chronicles also present a detailed account of the campaign of

autumn-winter 1653 from the Khanate’s perspective. They cover the negotiations of the khan’s

representatives with the Commonwealth’s authorities and the conditions that the Khanate put

forward in order to conclude peace at Žvanec’ in December 1653.

In addition, the Sahaif ül-ahbar (Pages of the Chronicle) covering events from the emergence of

humankind to the year 1673 was written in Arabic by a seventeenth century Ottoman dignitary

Müneccimbaşı Ahmed ibn Lütfullah. The Ottoman poet Ahmed Nedim (1681-1730) made an

abridged Ottoman Turkish translation of this manuscript that was published in three volumes in

1868-9.15 Concerning Ottoman and Crimean perspectives on the Cossack-Polish wars of 1648-

1654, Müneccimbaşı largely relies on the Fezleke, but he also explains the reason why the khan’s

representative at the Ottoman court objected the Porte’s negotiations with Xmel’nyc’kyj to take

Ukraine under its protection in 1652-3. Another chronicle that covers the reign of Islam Giray is

Es-Seb üs-Seyyar fil-ahbar-ı mülük üt-tatar (Seven planets on the history of the Tatar rulers)

written by Seyyid Muhammed Rıza, an eighteenth century Crimean notable. This chronicle,

covering from Chingis Khan’s time until the beginning of Mengli Giray II’s reign in 1737, gives

information about the civil war in Crimea and the expedition against the Circassians during the

early reign of Islam Giray. A nineteenth century Azerbaijani intellectual Mirza Kazembek edited

and published Seyyid Muhammed Rıza’s manuscript.16 Umdet üt-tevarih is another general

chronicle covering the history of the Mongol Empire and the Crimean Khanate written by a

Crimean dignitary, Abdülgaffar Kırımi, in 1744-5. The Turkish historian Necib Asım (Yazıksız)

published a printed Ottoman script of this chronicle as a supplement to the Türk Tarih Encümeni

Mecmuası (Journal of the Turkish Historical Association) in 1925.17 Abdülgaffar Kırımi only

makes a very brief mention of Islam Giray, mainly about his captive years in the Commonwealth

and briefly refers to the relations between Islam Giray and Xmel’nyc’kyj telling how the former

granted the title of hetman to the latter. The great seventeenth-century Ottoman traveller Evliya

15 Müneccimbaşı Ahmed ibn Lütfullah, Sahaif ül-ahbar fi vekayi-ül-a‘sâr, 2 vols., trans. by Ahmed Nedim from Arabic to Ottoman Turkish (Istanbul: Matbaa-ı Amire, 1285/1868-9). 16 Seyyid Muhammed Rıza, es-Seb üs-seyyar fil-akhbar-ı mülük üt-tatar, ili sem’ planet soderžavščij istoriju krymskix xanov ot Mengli Girej Xana piervogo do Mengli Girej Xana vtorogo, ed. Mirza Kasımbek (Kazan, 1882). 17 Uli Schamiloglu, “The Umdet ül-ahbar and the Turkic Narrative Sources for the Golden Horde and the Later Golden Horde,” in Central Asian Monuments, ed. Hasan B. Paksoy (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1992), 88; Abdülgaffar Kırımi, Umdet üt-tevarih, ed. Necib Asım, supplement to Türk Tarih Encümeni Mecmuası (Istanbul: 1343/1924-25).

10

Çelebi’s description of political and military organization of the Tatars and his comments on the

Danubian venture of the Cossacks present cursory information on the Crimean and Ottoman

attitude towards Xmel’nyc’kyj. This is found in vol. 7 of his ten-volume Seyahatname (Book of

Travels), transcribed into Latin script by a team of scholars under Robert Dankoff.18

The seventeenth century Crimean poet Can-Muhammed Efendi’s poem is a literary work

recounting the famous Tatar noble Togay Beg’s participation in the campaigns of 1648-9 against

the Commonwealth. While Osman Akçokraklı discovered that poetic work in Kapsyhor village

of Crimea in 1925 and published its Ukrainian translation in a journal, he provided neither a

facsimile of the original text, nor its transcription and printed version of Arabic script. As the

resident of Kapsyhor Hacı Ali who found the manuscript refused to sell it, three people who

were in the company of Akçokraklı reproduced the poem hastily in three to four hours. The

chronological list of the khans in the poem and its type of the paper suggest that this was not an

original but rather a late eighteenth or early nineteenth-century copy.19

Turning to sources from beyond the areal of our topic, Gazette de France and Moderate

Intelligencer are two major foreign periodicals that provided coverage on the Cossack-Polish

wars of 1648-1654. Having Cardinal Richelieu’s support, the French physician Théophraste

Renaudot founded the Gazette de France in 1631.20 This periodical maintaining close relations

with the French government printed weekly reports from several political centres of Europe such

as Warsaw, Vienna, Hamburg and Constantinople. Since the majority of the reports on Crimean

involvement in the Cossack-Polish wars came from Warsaw, it is necessary to approach these

reports with caution because they could have reflected the perspective of the Commonwealth’s

authorities on the course of events. Similarly, John Dillingham’s Moderate Intelligencer

published weekly reports on foreign news from 1645 to 1649.21 Although its coverage is not as

broad as that of the Gazette de France, the Moderate Intelligencer also gives information on the

Crimean Khanate’s role in the struggle between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth.

18 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, vol. 7 eds. Robert Dankoff, Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman (Istanbul: Yapıkredi Yayınları, 2003), 191-271. 19 Osman Akçokraklı (Akchokrakly), “Tatars’ka poema Džan-Muxamedova: pro poxid Isljam Gireja II (III) spilno z Bohdanom Xmel’nyc’kym na Polščy 1648 - 49 r.r.,” Sxidnyj svit 3 (1930): 163-70. 20 Jack Censer, The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment (London, New York: Routledge, 1994), 15. 21 Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641-1649 (New York: The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1996), 39-40.

11

On the basis of the posol’skie knigi (envoy books) preserved in fond no. 123, Krymskie dela

(Crimean dossiers), of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (Rossijskij gosudarstvennyj

arxiv drevnix aktov [RGADA]) in Moscow, Sagit Faizov published transcriptions and Russian

translations of eight friendly letters (muhabbetnames) from Islam Giray and Mehmed Giray to

Aleksej Mixajlovič and Jan Kazimierz22 Faizov along with Mixail Mejer published a similar

work on the correspondence of Zülfikar Agha, who served as a translator at the Porte, with the

Muscovite state preserved in fond no. 89, Tureckie dela (Turkish dossiers) of RGADA.23 Zülfikar

Agha’s letters to Muscovy suggest that although the sea raids of the Don Cossacks against

Ottoman domains continued to be a controversial matter in the relations between Moscow and

the Porte, the Ottomans did not want to be involved in confrontation against Muscovy.

The published documents from Polish and Russian archives also provide information on the

relations of the Tatars and the Porte with their northern neighbours. In these publications, one

can find dispatches and reports of Polish and Muscovite officials, diplomats and dignitaries,

letters of Polish kings and Muscovite tsars, as well as Polish and Muscovite translations of letters

of Islam Giray, his entourage, Tatar dignitaries, Ottoman sultans and officials.24

22 Sagit Faizov, Pis’ma xanov Islam-Gireya III i Muxammed-Gireya IV k carju Alekseju Mixajloviču i korolju Janu Kazymyru 1654-1658 (Moscow: Gumanitarij, 2003). 23 Mixail Mejer and Sagit Faizov, Pis’ma perevodčika osmanskix padišaxov Zul’fikara-agi carjam Mixailu Fedoroviču i Alekseju Mixajloviču 1640-1656 (Moscow: Moskovskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 2008). 24 The compilations of Polish and Russian archival materials for the present dissertation are: Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vols. 3, 8, 10, 14 (St. Petersburg, 1861, 1873, 1878, 1889); Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii Zapadnoj Rossii, vol. 5, (St. Petersburg: 1853); Akty Moskovskago gosudarstva, izdannye Imperatorskoju akademieju nauk, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg, 1894); Arxiv Jugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, izdavaemyj komissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, pt. 3, vol. 4 (Kyiv, 1914); Jakuba Michałowskiego, wojskiego lubelskiego a później kasztelana bieckiego Księga Pamiętnicza (1647-1655), ed. Antoni Z. Helcel. (Kraków, 1864); Pamjatniki izdannyje vremennoj kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, vols. 1, 2, 3 (Kyiv, 1848, 1846, 1852); Pamjatniki izdannyje kievskoju kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, vols. 1, 2, 3 (Kyiv, 1898, 1897, 1898); Karol Szajnocha, Dwa lata dziejów naszych, 1646, 1648, vols. 1, 2 (L’viv, 1865, 1869); Pamjatniki diplomatičeskix snošenij Krymskago xanstva s Moskovskim gosudarstvom v XVI-XVII v.v., ed. Fedor Laškov (Simferopol’: Tipografija Gazety Krym, 1891); Reestr delam Krymskago dvora s 1474 po 1779 goda, ed. N. N. Bantyš-Kamenskij, (Simferopol’: Tipografija Tavričesk. Gubernsk. Pravlenija, 1893); Donskie dela, vols. 2, 3, 4 (St. Petersburg, 1906, 1909, 1913); Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12 (L’viv: 1911); Vossojedinenije Ukrainy s Rossiej: dokumenty i materialy, vols. 2, 3, eds. P. P. Gruzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, A. A. Novosel’skij, A.L. Sidorov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1953); Kabardino-russkie otnošenija v 16-18 vv., vol. 1 eds. T. Kumykov and E. Kuševa (Moscow, Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1957); Dokumenty Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, 1648-1657, eds. I. Kryp”jakevyč and I. Butyč (Kyiv: Akademiji Nauk Ukrajins’koji RSR, 1961); Dokumenty ob osvoboditel’noj vojne ukrainskogo naroda, 1648-1654 gg., eds. P. P. Grudzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, C. D. Pil’kevič (Kyiv: Akademiia Nauk URSR, Instytut Istorii, 1965); Korespondencja Stanisława Koniecpolskiego hetmana wielkiego koronnego 1632-1646, ed. Agnieszka Biedrzycka (Kraków: Societas Vistulana, 2005); Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1658 rr, 3 vols., ed. Jurij Mycyk (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznavstva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2012, 2013, 2014).

12

The diaries of Albrycht Radziwiłł and Stanisław Oświęcim are also important published primary

sources giving information on the Tatars through the lens of the Commonwealth’s authorities.25

While the former presents an account of the Commonwealth’s relations with Crimea and the

Porte between 1632 and 1656, the latter gives a similar account from 1643 to 1651. In addition,

the French military officer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan who served as an artillery officer

in the Crown army of the Kingdom of Poland between 1630 and 1647-8 wrote on the political,

social and military organization of the Khanate and the Ukrainian Cossacks.26 Pierre Chevalier

who served as a secretary of the French mission in Poland at some point between 1648 and 1654

presented an account of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion from 1648 to the conclusion of the Treaty of

Bila Cerkva between the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth in late September 1651.27

Concerning the participation of the Crimean Tatars in Xmel’nyc’kyj’s Danubian venture, one

needs to consult the work of the Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin that has been translated into

German and supplied with notes.28 Another important work on the Danubian affairs was written

by Transylvanian chronicler Georg Kraus giving some cursory information about the relations of

the Khanate with Transylvania and the Danubian hospodars.29 Nathan Hanover, a Jewish

resident of the Commonwealth who departed for Germany after the outset of the Cossack

rebellion of 1648, kept an account of rumours about the struggle between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the

Commonwealth.30 In his account, Hanover makes mention of interesting rumours about the role

of the Tatars in the Cossack uprising. The early eighteenth century Ukrainian chronicles or the

so-called Cossack chronicles are another type of source for Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion. Among

these chronicles, this dissertation looks into the anonymous Eyewitness Chronicle (Litopys

25 Stanisława Oświęcima Diariusz 1643- 1651, ed. Wiktor Czermak (Kraków: Wydawnictwa Komisyi Historycznej Akademii Umiejętności, 1907); Albrycht Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach w Polsce. vols. 2 and 3, eds. Adam Przvboś and Roman Żelewski (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1980). 26 Guillaume le Vasseur Beauplan, A Description of Ukraine, trans. Andrew B. Pernal and Dennis F. Esar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 27 Pierre Chevalier, A Discourse of the Original, Countrey, Manners, Government and Religion of the Cossacks with another of the Precopian Tartars. And the History of the Wars of the Cossacks against Poland, trans. Edward Brown (London, 1672). 28 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau: Die Moldauische Chronik des Miron Costin 1593-1661, trans., intr., ed. Adolf Armbruster (Graz, Wien, Köln: Verlag Styria, 1980). 29 Georg Kraus, Siebenbürgische Chronik des Schässburger Stadtschreibers, vol. 1, trans. The History Commission of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (Vienna: 1862). 30 Nathan Hanover, Abyss of Despair, trans. Abraham J. Mesch (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1950.

13

samovydcja) and the chronicles of Hryhorij Hrabjanka and Samijlo Velyčko.31 Although these

chroniclers were not contemporaries of Xmel’nyc’kyj and are considered to be controversial

sources of information,32 it is important to be aware of their accounts of the role of the Tatars as

well as their interpretation of the Cossack rebellion, for these accounts had a great influence on

early Ukrainian historiography.

Studies

The Crimean Khanate, formally a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, but with the right to engage in

direct relations with foreign states and with its own military, was in the seventeenth century still

a formidable diplomatic and military power vis-à-vis not only Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy,

but also to an extent Safavid Iran and the Habsburg Empire. Yet historical scholarship had not

devoted adequate attention to this longest lasting successor state to Chinggis Khan’s world

empire in general, let alone the reign of Khan Islam Giray III. In Ukrainian, Polish, Russian and

Western historiography, one can find only a few book-length works on the history of the

Crimean Khanate or some aspect of it.33 In 1895 Wiktor Czermak published his groundbreaking

dissertation on King Władysław’s war plans against the Ottoman Empire.34 There, Czermak

explains how Władysław intended to use Crown Grand Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski’s

victory against the invading Tatars at Oxmativ on 30 January 1644 to revive his earlier plans for

31 Litopys samovydcja, ed. Jaroslav Dzyra (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1971); Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv Hustyns’kyj litopys, Samijla Velyčka, Hrabjanky, eds. Volodymyr Krekoten’, Valerij Ševčuk and Roman Ivančenko (Kyiv: Dnipro, 2006). 32 For a discussion of the early eighteenth century Ukrainian chronicles, see Dmytro Doroshenko, “A Survey of Ukrainian Historiography,” The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the US 5-6 (1957): 44-52; John Basarab, Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1982), 62-74. 33 On the basis of his works on the Ottoman Empire and the Golden Horde, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, a nineteenth-century Austrian orientalist, published Geschichte der Chane der Krim unter Osmanischer Herrschaft (Vienna, 1856). Nearly three decades after Hammer, a Russian orientalist Vasilij Smirnov produced Krymskoe xanstvo pod verxovenstvom otomanskoj porty do načala XVIII veka (St. Petersburg: 1887), reprint edited by Svetlana F. Oreškova (Moscow: Rubeži XXI, 2005). While Hammer and Smirnov used Ottoman and Crimean chronicles and some archival sources, they have made mention of Islam Giray’s reign only for a few pages. In Polish, Abdullah Soysal wrote a popular book Z Dziejow Krymu: polityka, kultura, emigracja (Warsaw: Wschód, 1938). Nearly half a century later, Leszek Podhorodecki published a similar though more comprehensive work Chanat Krymski i jego stosunki z Polska w XV-XVIII w (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedz, 1987). Again, both of these authors provide very limited information on the involvement of the Tatars and Islam Giray in Xmel’nyc’kyj uprising of 1648. 34 Wiktor Czermak, Plany wojny tureckiej Władysława IV (Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 1895).

14

a war against the Ottomans and Crimean Tatars. On the basis of published and unpublished

materials from Polish archives and the works of other Polish historians, Czermak shows how

Islam Giray and the Porte avoided going to war against the Commonwealth despite provocations

by the king. Czermak’s work is helpful for looking into Crimea’s relations with Warsaw on the

eve of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion. Another late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Polish

historian of Ludwik Kubala published a number of studies on the Cossack uprising of 1648 and

the deteriorating relations between the Commonwealth and Muscovy after the 1654 treaty of

Perejaslav and beginning of Muscovite suzerainty over Ukraine.35 Especially his work on the

wars between the Commonwealth and Muscovy in 1654-5 uses published materials from Polish

archives extensively to describe the sojourn of Polish embassies in Crimea and Istanbul. Shortly

after Kubala, Władysław Tomkiewicz produced a monograph on an important Polish magnate

Jeremi Wiśniowiecki.36 While his work provides cursory information on Crimean involvement in

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s campaigns against the Commonwealth’s armies, it is an important source for

understanding Crimea’s relations with Warsaw between 1644 and 1651.

In the eighth and ninth volumes of his fundamental work on the history of Ukraine, Mykhailo

Hrushevsky analyzes Xmel’nyc’kyj’s relations with Islam Giray, the Tatars and the Porte on the

basis of many published and unpublished primary sources from Polish and Russian archives and

manuscript libraries. He gives a thorough account of how Xmel’nyc’kyj established contacts

with the Tatars and convinced Islam Giray to conclude an alliance against the Commonwealth.

Hrushevsky also examines the role of the Tatars in the Cossack campaigns of 1648-54. A team

of scholars with the support of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the Universities of

Alberta and Toronto edited and translated these into English.37 Prior to Hrushevsky, Nikolaj

Kostomarov and Petr Bucinskij produced biographies of Xmel’nyc’kyj maintaining that

35 Ludwik Kubala, Szkice historyczne. 2 vols. (L’viv: Nakład Księgarni Gubrynowicza I. Schmidta, 1880); Kubala, Wojna Moskiewska r. 1654 - 1655 (Warsaw: Gebethner and Wolff, 1910); Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński. (Warsaw: Księgarnia Zakładu Nar. im. Ossolińskich, 1924). 36 Władysław Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (1612-1651) (Warsaw: Nakładem Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego, 1933). 37 Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8: The Cossack Age, 1626-1650, trans. by Marta D. Olynyk, ed. by Frank E. Sysyn (Edmonton andToronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2002); Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1: The Cossack Age, 1650-1653, trans. Bohdan Struminski, eds. Serhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn, with the assistance of Uliana M. Pasicznyk (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2005); Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1: The Cossack Age, 1654-1657, trans. Marta Daria Olynyk, eds. Serhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2008).

15

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s aim to secure the help of the Khanate and stop the excesses of the Tatars in

Ukraine were primary motives for the Cossack leader in having ties with the Porte.38

In the 1930s, Olgierd Górka wrote critical essays on the treatment of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion

from 1648 to 1651 in secondary sources. In 1986 Wieslaw Majewski published Górka’s essays

with an annotated bibliography.39 According to Górka’s analysis, on the basis of the Russian

census of Crimea in 1783, many studies have exaggerated the size of the Tatar armies that

participated in the campaigns of 1648-9. In the meantime in 1935, Stefan Kuczyński criticized

Górka’s analysis on the number of the Tatar troops that participated in the Cossack campaign of

1649 by referring to seventeenth century traveler accounts and other Polish reports.40

Shortly after the Second World War, Bohdan Baranowski published an important article and a

book on the relations of the Commonwealth with Crimea between 1632 and 1648.41 Using many

sources including documents from Polish archives and Polish translations of Ottoman and

Crimean letters to the Commonwealth from the Central Archives of Historical Records in

Warsaw as well, his works shed light on Islam Giray’s relations with the Commonwealth and

Ukraine on the eve of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion. Baranowski looks into the influence of

Władysław’s war plans on Warsaw’s relations with the Crimean Khanate and the Porte.

Simultaneously with Baranowski’s studies, Aleksej Novosel’skij used unpublished Muscovite

envoy reports about Crimea and the Nogays from Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in

Moscow and wrote a very substantial monograph on Muscovy’s relations with Crimea and the

Nogays in the first half of the seventeenth century.42 It includes an account of how Islam Giray,

after counseling with his associates and nobles, turned down the Porte’s call to join its Venetian

campaign and instead, upon Xmel’nyc’kyj’s request, went to help the Ukrainian Cossacks.

Novosel’skij produced a similar study for the second half of the seventeenth century.43 Although

38 Petr Bucinskij, O Bogdane Xmel’nickom (Xarkiv: Tipografija M. Zil’berberga, 1882); Nikolaj Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vols. 9-11 of Sobranie sočinenij (St. Petersbug: Tipografija M. M. Stasjuleviča, 1904) 39 Olgierd Górka, “Ogniem i mieczem” a rzeczywistość historyczna (Warsaw: Wydawnictwe Ministertwa Obrony Narodowej, 1986). 40 Stefan M. Kuczyński, “Tatarzy pod Zbarażem,” Przegląd Historyczno-Wojskowy 8/1 (1935): 121-44. 41 Bohdan Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie w latach 1632-1648 (Łódź, 1949). 42 Aleksej Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami v pervoj polovine XVII veka (Moscow: Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1948). 43 Aleksej A. Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami vo vtoroj polovine XVII veka,” in Issledovanija po istorii epoxi feodalizma (Moscow: Nauka, 1994).

16

this later work is not as comprehensive, it is especially useful for presenting Muscovite envoy

reports with various accounts of Crimea’s reaction to the Ukrainian-Muscovite rapprochement

and the Treaty of Perejaslav.

In 1948 and 1953 Omeljan Pritsak published two articles on the origins of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s

relations with the Ottoman Empire.44 On the basis of the Ottoman chronicler Naima’s account

and a copy of the so-called Ottoman-Cossack agreement published in a collection of the state

charters and treaties held in the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry,45 his articles suggest a new

interpretation on the origins of Ottoman-Cossack relations during Xmel’nyc’kyj’s uprising and

Ottoman approach to Crimean participation in the Cossack campaigns of 1648. Much later,

Edgar Hösch and Zygmunt Abrahamowicz criticized Pritsak’s analysis.46 Pritsak answered his

critics by writing another article in defence of his earlier argument.47

Since the Second World War period, a number of monographs on the Cossack rebellion of 1648-

54 and biographies of Xmel’nyc’kyj, the Polish kings Władysław and Jan Kazimierz and other

leading figures were produced.48 As part of its celebrations connected with the three-hundredth

anniversary of the “reunification” of Ukraine with Russia, the Soviet authorities sponsored

several edited volumes works on Xmel’nyc’kyj and his submission to Muscovy.49 However,

these biographies and monographs give only cursory and mostly biased information on the role

of the Tatars in the struggle between Ukraine and the Commonwealth. Like Novosel’skij,

44 Omeljan Pritsak, “Sojuz Xmel’nyc’koho z Tureččynoju 1648 roku pp.,” Zapysky naukovoho tovarystva imeny Ševčenka 156 (1948): 143-64; Omeljan Pritsak, “Das erste türkisch-ukrainische Bündnis,” Oriens 6 (1953): 266-98. 45 Sobranie gosudarstvennyx gramot i dogovorov xranjaščixsja v gosudarstvennoj kollegii inostrannyx del, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1822), 444-7. 46 Edgar Hösch, “Der Türkisch-Kosakische Vertrag von 1648,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 27 (1980): 233-43; Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, “Comments on Three Letters by Khan Islam Geray III to the Porte (1651),” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 14 (1990): 137-8. 47 Omeljan Pritsak, “Šče raz pro sojuz Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho z Tureččynoju,” Ukrajins’kyj arxeohrafičnyj ščoričnyk 5 (1993): 177-92. 48 Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 2nd ed., revised (L’viv: Vydavnyctvo Svit, 1990) originally published in 1954; Volodymyr Holobuc’kij (Golobuckij), Diplomatičeskaja istorija osvoboditel’noj vojny ukrainskogo naroda pod rukovodstvom Xmel’nickogo (1648-1654 gg.) (Kyiv: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo Političeskoj Literatury USSR, 1962); Adam Kersten, Stefan Czarniecki, 1599-1665 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa obrony narodowej, 1963); Zbigniew Wójcik, Dzikie Pola w Ogniu: o Kozaczyźnie w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1968); Tadeusz Wasilewski, Jan Kazimierz (Warsaw: Zamek Królewski w Warszawie, 1985); Janusz Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1988). 49 A. I. Baranovič, L. S. Gaponenko, I. B. Grekov, K. G. Guslistyj, eds., Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej 1654-1954: sbornik statej (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954); Igor’ Grekov, Vladimir Koroljuk and Il’ja Miller, Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej v 1654 (Moscow: Gosudarst. izdatel’stvo političeskoj literatury, 1954).

17

Gennadij Sanin made use of Muscovite ambassadorial reports about Crimea and the Nogays

preserved in Russian archives and presented a monograph on the relations of Muscovy and

Ukraine with Crimea in the mid-seventeenth century.50 His work gives an account of the reaction

of Islam Giray and his entourage to the Muscovite-Ukrainian rapprochement in 1653-4.

Although the author repeats the prejudiced approach of the Russian and Soviet historical opinion

about the Tatars, his access to Russian archival materials makes his study worthy of attention.

After the collapse of communism, Polish and especially Ukrainian studies on the Cossack

rebellion and campaigns proliferated.51 However, most of these studies failed to bring new

sources but reproduce the interpretation of the earlier works. Except for the monographs by Ivan

Storoženko and Larysa Pricak, these works, reiterating how Islam Giray betrayed his Cossack

allies several times, incline to denounce the role of the Tatars in Xmel’nyc’kyj’s struggle. Some

of them have also frequently used primary and secondary sources without providing reference to

them. For example, Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov present lengthy quotations in their

works, but unfortunately without providing any references. Taking such problems into account,

the present dissertation still considers these works useful for understanding Ukrainian and Polish

historical opinion on Islam Giray. Bringing mostly Polish archives into the picture, two

significant studies Jaroslav Fedoruk present new interpretation of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s relations with

Crimea at the early stage of his struggle and Ottoman and Crimean reaction to the Muscovite-

Ukrainian rapprochement along with changing political circumstances in Europe.52

50 Gennadij Sanin, Otnošenija Rossii i Ukrainy s Krymskim Xanstvom v seredine XVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1987). 51 Ihor Svešnikov, Bytva pid Berestečkom (L’viv: Slovo, 1993); Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret (Kyiv: Lybid’, 1995), Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj (Kyiv: Vydavnyčy dim Al’ternatyvy, 2003); Ivan Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1: Voejenni diji 1648-1652 (Dnipropetrovs’k: Vydavnyctvo Dnipropetrovs’koho deržavnoho universytetu, 1996), Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj i Zaporoz’ka Sič kincja XVI-seredyny XVII stolit’, vol. 2 (Dniprodžyns’k: Vydavnyčyj dim “Andrij”, 2007); Zbigniew Wójcik, Jan Kazimierz Waza (Wrocław, Warsaw, Kraków: Zakład Nar. im. Ossolińskich, 1997); Henryk Wisner, Janusz Radziwiłł 1612-1655: wojewoda wileński, hetman wielki litewski (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Mada, 2000); Larysa Pricak, Osnovni mižnarodni dohovory Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho 1648-1657rr. (Xarkiv: Akta, 2003); Tomasz Ciesielski, Od Batohu do Żwanca wojna na Ukrainie, Podolu i o Mołdawię 1652-1653 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo inforteditions, 2005); Romuald Romański, Beresteczko 1651 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2007); Wojciech Długołęcki, Batoh 1652 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2008); Dariusz Milewski, Wyprawa na Suczawę 1653 (Zabrze: Wydawnictwo inforteditions, 2007); Milewski, Rywalizacja polsko-kozacka o Mołdawię w dobie powstania Bohdana Chmielnickiego (1648-1653) (Zabrze: Wydawnictwo inforteditions, 2011); Romuald Romański, Książę Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2009). 52 Jaroslav Fedoruk, Zovnišn’opolityčna dijal’nist’ Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho i formuvannja joho polityčnoji prohramy (1648- serpen’ 1649 rr.) (L’viv: Akademija Nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji, 1993); Jaroslav Fedoruk, Mižnardona dyplomatija i polityka Ukrajiny 1654-1657, pt. 1: 1654 rik (L’viv: Nacional’na

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In 2011 Dariusz Kołodziejczyk published a large volume with major Crimean chancery

documents addressed to Poland-Lithuania called ‘ahdnames (letters of oath) in facsimile,

transcription, translation and with long introductory chapters on diplomatic relations between the

Khanate and the Commonwealth over more than three centuries.53 Among these are two

‘ahdnames issued by Islam Giray to the Commonwealth in 1649 and 1654 respectively—they

are important primary sources for examining the Crimean perspective of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s

rebellion. The documents are also important because they shed light on the changing attitude of

the Khanate towards the Cossack rebellion in Islam Giray’s reign. The author also presents a

review of literature on Crimea’s relations with the Commonwealth.

Overview of the Dissertation Structure

This dissertation analyzes the relations of the Crimean Khanate with the Ukrainian Cossacks, the

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy in the reign of Islam Giray (1644-54). It

examines interpretations of the involvement of the Tatars in the Cossack rebellion found in

Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and Western secondary literature and then brings into play published

and unpublished primary sources from Polish, Ottoman and Russian archives and manuscript

libraries as well as underused Crimean and Ottoman chronicles in order to understand the

Crimean and Ottoman perceptions of their northern neighbours during Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion

from 1648 to 1654 that overlapped with Islam Giray’s reign.

The present study consists of four chapters. Chapter One gives an account of domestic and

foreign affairs of Crimea from Islam Giray’s accession to the throne in summer 1644 to the

beginning of the conflict between Ukraine and the Commonwealth in early 1648. This chapter

helps the reader understand the internal and external conditions that made the khan agree to the

request of help from Xmel’nyc’kyj in his struggle against the Commonwealth.

akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznavstva imeni M. Hruševs’koho, L’vivs’ke viddilennja, 1996). 53Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania Treaties.

19

Chapter Two looks into the role of the Tatars in the victorious campaigns of the Ukrainian

Cossacks in 1648-9 and the peace agreement between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth’s

authorities at Zboriv in August 1649. This chapter also gives an overview of scholarly debates on

Ottoman attitude towards Xmel’nyc’kyj and Crimean support for him.

Chapter Three examines how Islam Giray and his entourage tried to make Xmel’nyc’kyj and the

Commonwealth’s authorities obey the Peace of Zboriv and convince them to support his idea of

forming an offensive alliance against Muscovy during the ceasefire period between the Treaty of

Zboriv to the escalation of the conflicts between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth in

summer 1651. It also investigates Islam Giray’s attempts to receive help from Xmel’nyc’kyj for

his expedition plans against the Don Cossacks and the Tatar-Cossack venture against Moldavia

in August 1650. This chapter finishes with a survey of new developments in Ottoman-Cossack

relationship and its impact on the relations between the khan and Xmel’nyc’kyj.

Chapter Four begins with a survey of the published and unpublished primary sources on the role

of the khan in the Cossack-Tatar debacle at the battle of Berestečko in summer 1651. Then the

chapter treats Crimean involvement in Xmel’nyc’kyj’s attempts to gain a foothold in the

Danubian region. Growing tensions between Islam Giray and the Ottomans in relation to the

northern Black Sea affairs are also introduced. Then with the help of Ottoman chronicles, the

chapter presents the participation of the Tatars in the Cossack campaign of autumn-winter 1653

and the khan’s attempt to make Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth reconcile at Žvanec’. The

final section of this chapter analyzes Crimean and Ottoman reaction to the submission of Ukraine

to the tsar’s authority and requests to the Khanate by the king’s envoys for help against

Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Muscovite state in 1654.

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Chapter 1

The Reign of Islam Giray III before the Tatar-Cossack

Rapprochement of 1648

After his accession to the throne in June 1644, Islam Giray III would be confronted by problems

in domestic and foreign affairs. He started his rule by quelling the supporters of his predecessor

and contender (and eventual successor), Mehmed Giray IV (r. 1641-4, 1654-66). Later, the long-

time power struggle between the palace guards (kapu kulı) and the Tatar mirzas would evolve

into a major revolt of the tribal nobility against all actors of central authority including Islam

Giray and his kalgay Kırım Giray. Drought and epidemics in the early years of his reign made

Islam Giray’s position in the Crimean Khanate even more precarious. It was only three years

later that the khan would manage to end this rebellion with a fragile peace. In the middle of

domestic turmoil, Islam Giray would also be confronted by the plans of the Commonwealth

leadership to provoke a war with Crimea and the Ottoman Empire. As a part of his initiative

against Crimea and the Ottoman Porte, King Władysław IV (r. 1632-48) would continue his

attempts to make an offensive alliance with Venice and Muscovy and instigate the Ukrainian

Cossacks to launch expeditions in the Black Sea. The Commonwealth hoped to provoke Crimea

to start a war by refusing several requests of the khan and his entourage to restore peace and

receive tribute/gifts payments. At the same time, the Muscovite state under the leadership of the

newly enthroned Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovič (r. 1645-76) would continue to strengthen the southern

defence line and even venture a campaign against the khanate and its nomadic dependencies as

far as Orkapı (Perekop) as a reprisal for earlier Tatar and Nogay attacks. The Muscovite state

would also follow a more resolute policy against Crimea with regard to payment of tribute/gifts,

treatment of embassies, and accurate rendering of the tsar’s titulature in correspondence issued

by the Crimean chancery.

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Therefore the steadfast attitude of the Commonwealth and Muscovy in their relations with

Crimea and the looming prospect of an alliance between his northern neighbours put the khan

into a difficult position. On one hand, the tribal nobility insisted on launching a campaign against

neighbouring regions in order to compensate its losses from famine, epidemics and civil war. On

the other hand, because the Porte was burdened with court struggles and an inconclusive war

with Venice over Crete it ordered the khan to keep the Tatars under discipline lest they provoke a

war with the Commonwealth. Given this situation, Islam Giray preferred to comply with

Ottoman orders and restrain his nobility. However, in early 1648 the Tatar mirzas became

increasingly impatient to launch an expedition and pressed the khan to dispatch envoys to

Istanbul in order to receive permission to attack the Commonwealth. This chapter aims to give an

account of Islam Giray’s reign between summer 1644 and early 1648 in order to understand

domestic and foreign issues of the Crimean Khanate prior to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion.

The chapter first looks into the rebellion of the tribal nobility against the khan and then examines

deteriorating relations of Crimea with the Commonwealth and Muscovy. It also tries to address

similarities and differences in the northern policies of Crimea and the Porte.

1.1. Disorder in the Crimean Khanate

Fearing the rage of Islam Giray, many supporters of the ousted khan Mehmed Giray fled from

the Crimean Khanate into the realms directly controlled by the Ottomans or the steppe beyond

the khanate’s control.1 Those who remained in Crimea tried to reconcile with the new khan and

his entourage so that they could preserve their lives and property. In the meantime, many of the

opposing nobles were persecuted and their wealth was confiscated. However, Islam Giray’s

authority in Crimea remained precarious. Therefore the khan supposedly decided to silence the

malcontents and increase his popularity by launching raiding expeditions against Muscovy or the

Commonwealth.2 Before embarking on such a campaign against one of his northern neighbours,

Islam Giray intervened into the long-time rivalry between two princes of the Janey Circassians,

Hakaşmak (Akçomak) and his brother Antonok. Previously, in the reign of Bahadır Giray (r.

1 Bohdan Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie w latach 1632–1648 (Łódź, 1949), 154. 2 Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 155.

22

1637-41), Antonok gained the support of the Tatars and defeated Hakaşmak who was then forced

to escape to the Ottoman controlled fortress of Azak (Azov). Although Bahadır Giray asked

Siyavuş Pasha, the commander of the fortress, to surrender the fugitive, the pasha refused and

instead dispatched him to Istanbul, where he was recognized as the chieftain of the Circassians.

As a result Bahadır Giray had no choice other than to end his support for Antonok and accept

Hakaşmak. While Hakaşmak regained his position as the chieftain of the Janey Circassians, he

could not eliminate his brother Antonok. For this reason, Hakaşmak approached Islam Giray

shortly after the beginning of the latter’s reign and attempted to convince him to come to the

Circassian country in order to eliminate Antonok. Meanwhile, Antonok entered into contact with

Islam Giray making various promises to the khan and in this way succeeded in drawing the khan

to his side against Hakaşmak. After crossing the strait between Kerch and Taman with his army,

the khan headed to the Circassian country and spent the winter there. Thereafter, the Tatar army

invaded and plundered Hakaşmak’s realms; the khan captured and executed Hakaşmak, and

made Antonok the chieftain of the Circassians.3 According to Hacı Mehmed Senai’s chronicle of

Islam Giray’s reign, the khan started the Circassian expedition on the first day of Kanun-ı evvel

(1 December 1644 O.S./11 December 1644 N.S.).4 Senai recounts with satisfaction that while the

former khans could not find the opportunity to take revenge upon Hakaşmak for his disobedience

to the Giray dynasty, now his life was finally put to an end. He continues that the Circassian

princes, accordingly, offered servitude and subservience (‘arz-ı ‘ubudiyyet ve ita‘at edüp) to the

khan and brought gifts to him. Islam Giray returned to Crimea in spring 1645 bringing many

captives and abundant spoils. He also sent a number of slaves as a gift to Sultan Ibrahim.5 Since

Islam Giray supported Antonok against the Ottoman client, Hakaşmak, it is possible to claim that

the khan followed a course independent of the Ottoman authorities.6

However, on the way back from the Caucasus, the palace guards and the tribal nobility fell into a

violent dispute ostensibly over sharing the spoils. Thus the longstanding rivalry between the

3 Naima Mustafa Efendi. Târih-i Naîmâ: Ravzatü'l-Hüseyn fî hulâsati ahbâri'l-hâfikayn, ed. Mehmet İpşirli (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2007), 1026; Hacı Mehmed Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja III, ed. Zygmunt Abrahamowicz (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1971), tx. 8-9, tr. 93-4; Seyyid Muhammed Rıza, Es-Seb üs-seyyar fil-akhbar-ı mülük üt-tatar, ili sem’ planet soderžavščij istoriju krymskix xanov ot Mengli Girej Xana piervogo do Mengli Girej Xana vtorogo, ed. Mirza Kasımbek (Kazan, 1882), 162. 4 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 8, tr. 93, 158 fn. 126. 5 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 9-10, tr. 94-5. 6 Vasilij Smirnov, Krymskoe xanstvo pod verxovenstvom Otomanskoj Porty do načala XVIII veka (S-Peterburg: 1887), reprint and ed. Svetlana F. Oreškova (Moscow: Rubeži XXI, 2005), 399.

23

palace guards and the tribal nobility for power and influence escalated into a devastating civil

war. Whereas the palace guards found support in the person of the kalgay Kırım Giray, the

khan's vizier Sefer Gazi Agha allied with the Tatar mirzas in order to eliminate the power of the

palace guards in state affairs. Stanisław Oświęcim7 relates that when the Tatar army returned

from the Circassian campaign, the khan appropriated all captives and kalgay Kırım Giray gave

only a small number of the captives to the mirzas, and thus the mirzas fell into a dispute with the

central authority.8 In addition, as member of a special service class standing in proximity to the

centre of power and striving to increase their influence in state affairs, the palace guards were

annoyed with Sefer Gazi Agha’s influence at the court of the khan, enjoying close relations with

the khan. Therefore the palace guards with the support of kalgay Kırım Giray allegedly incited

Islam Giray to remove Sefer Gazi Agha from the office of vizier. Until that time, the khan

seemed removed from the conflict between the palace guards and the vizier. However, when he

consented to dismiss Sefer Gazi Agha and appointed Ramazan Agha as the new vizier in summer

1645 the former escaped to Kefe (Caffa, Feodosija) and sought refuge with the Ottoman pasha

there. Learning that Islam Giray asked the pasha to detain and execute him, Sefer Gazi Agha fled

Kefe, joined the rebellious mirzas and moved to Orkapı in order to act in alliance with the

Nogays.9

On the basis of reports of Muscovite officials, the Russian historian Aleksej Novosel’skij

presents an elaborate description of the conflict between the palace guards and the tribal nobility.

According to the Muscovite envoys Timofej Karaulov and Grjaznoj Akišev, some mirzas, aghas,

courtiers and other dignitaries met kalgay Kırım Giray at the Alma River in summer 1645 in

order to complain about Sefer Gazi Agha for trying to undermine the mirzas and the aghas and

reducing the stipends of some courtiers or stopping the payment stipends to other courtiers. They

also asked for the dismissal of Sefer Gazi Agha and otherwise threatened to march to Bagçasaray

and kill the vizier. As Kırım Giray conveyed this message to the khan, Islam Giray dismissed

Sefer Gazi Agha and appointed Ramazan Agha in his place. Another report by the Muscovite

agents Ivan Skorovarov and Gr. Gončarov report that the kalgay and the palace guards intended

7 Stanisław Oświęcim (b. 1605 - d. 1657) was a leading Polish noble. He served as marshal of the court for Crown Grand Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski and recorded a diary on Koniecpolski’s political and military affairs. 8 Stanisława Oświęcima Diariusz 1643-1651, ed. Wiktor Czermak (Kraków: Wydawnictwa Komisyi Historycznej Akademii Umiejętności, 1907), 89-90. 9 Smirnov, Krymskoe xanstvo, 385-6.

24

to kill Sefer Gazi Agha, but the khan helped him escape to Kefe so that he could not be killed.10

It is possible to infer from Novosel’skij’s analysis of the Muscovite reports that not only the

palace guards but some mirzas were uncomfortable with Sefer Gazi Agha having too much

power in state affairs. The Muscovite reports also suggest that Islam Giray did not voluntarily act

in accordance with the request of the palace guards against Sefer Gazi Agha but indeed he was

forced by them to take action against his former tutor and long-time aide.

The Muscovite reports give different information about the khan’s position in the conflict

between the tribal nobility and the party of the kalgay and the palace guards. The previously

mentioned report of Skorovarov relates that the unruly mirzas assembled an army and marched

across Crimea. They encountered the army under the kalgay Kırım Giray and besieged it near the

mountains between Karasuv and Akmescid. In the meantime, Islam Giray came to the help of his

kalgay and negotiated with the rebellious nobles. At that time, the khan tried not to become a

party to the conflict and instead to reconcile the contending parties. However, upon the refusal

by the khan to surrender some of his entourage including his new vizier Ramazan Agha, the

mirzas passed through the Isthmus of Or, or Perekop, and went to the steppes.11

According to the report of Karaulov and Akišev, the rebellious nobles abandoned Islam Giray

and started living in the steppe to the north of Crimea. They resented that the captives from the

campaigns against Muscovy and the Circassians were allotted among the khan’s entourage and

the palace guards while the mirzas did not receive any. The mirzas also wanted the Crimean

leadership to dismiss Ramazan Agha and restore Sefer Gazi Agha to the vizierate. Islam Giray

did not agree to their demands and started preparations for a battle with them. The khan with his

kalgay and nureddin and his forces proceeded to Akmescid in August 1645 and fought with the

rebellious nobles between Akmescid and Karasuv. Defeated by the khan’s army, the mirzas once

again withdrew to the steppe north of Orkapı.12 Unlike Skorovarov, Karaulov and Akišev do not

mention any attempt of the khan to seek reconciliation between the palace guards and the tribal

nobility. On the basis of their report, it is possible to state that not only the kalgay but also the

10 Aleksej Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami v pervoj polovine XVII veka (Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1948), 344. 11 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 345. 12 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 345-6.

25

khan and the nureddin took the side of the palace guards against the tribal nobility and thus Islam

Giray had always been one of the parties in this conflict from the beginning.

The Ottoman chronicler Mustafa Naima’s account about the conflict between Islam Giray and

the unruly nobility resembles Skorovarov’s report with one exception. He relates that when Sefer

Gazi Agha and the mirzas fell into a dispute with the palace guards, they besieged the khan and

renounced their allegiance to him. As the reconcilers (sing. muslih) attempted to settle peace

between the conflicting parties, the rebellious nobles asked Islam Giray to surrender some of his

entourage including the vizier Ramazan Agha and promised to restore their allegiance to the

khan. Upon the refusal of their demands, the mirzas withdrew beyond the Isthmus of Or, where

they settled in and proceeded to raid Muscovy.13 Unlike Skorovarov, Naima does not speak of

the arbitration of the khan in the conflict between the palace guards and the rebellious nobles.

The other Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not also provide much information on this matter.

Therefore it remains uncertain whether Islam Giray remained outside this conflict for a while but

was then forced to take the side of the palace guards against the nobility.

Aiming to take advantage of the change in the Muscovite throne in autumn 1645, Islam Giray

offered the rebellious nobles to organize an expedition against Muscovy. Accordingly, the

contending parties concluded a temporary peace and started campaign preparations against

Muscovy.14 Thanks to the hostilities against Muscovy, this truce continued until the end of 1646

when there was an unsuccessful attempt of the Tatar ulema to mediate a permanent peace. In the

meantime, Islam Giray complained to the Porte about the disobedience of the mirzas of the Şirin,

Sicivut and Dayırlı tribes15 and asked its permission to bring a few mirzas of the Mansur

13 Naima, Târih, 1099. 14 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 346-7. 15 Tribes played an important role in the political and social life of the Crimean Khanate. Like their Golden Horde predecessors, the Crimean khans were dependent on the cooperation of the four ruling tribes, namely the Şirin, Argın, Barın and Kıpçak. The leaders of these tribes bore the title of karaçı-beg. Concerning the meaning and etimology of the word karaçı, the scholars have suggested different explanations. According to one view, the word karaçı is the combination of the Tatar verb kara- meaning “to look, watch” and the suffix -çı. Therefore, the word karaçı can be translated to mean watchman or guardian. Another view suggests that the word karaçı refers to “commoner or any non-Chingisid.” By the seventeenth century other tribes such as the the Mansur and Sicivut gained power in the affairs of the Crimean Khanate and challenged the status of the Şirin, Argın, Barın and Kıpçak as the four ruling tribes. Therefore the number and names of the ruling tribes changed in the Crimean Khanate. While Hacı Mehmed Senai recounts that the Şirin, Mansur, Sicivut and Argın were the four ruling tribes of the Crimean Khanate, Abdülgaffar Kırımi states that the Şirin, Mansur, Barın and Sicivut consisted of the four ruling tribes. On the basis of the letters of the Crimean khans and dignitaries, Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov increases the number of the ruling tribes from four to five by claiming that the ruling tribes were Şirin, Mansur, Argın, Sicivut and

26

(Mangıt) tribe from Istanbul to Crimea. The khan supposedly intended to undermine the unruly

nobles by allying with the mirzas of the Mansur tribe who had been persecuted by the former

khan, Bahadır Giray. However, the nobility disliked Islam Giray’s intention to bring the Mansur

mirzas back to Crimea and thus fought another battle with the khanate’s army at Orkapı in May

1647. The rebellious mirzas fled to the steppe outside Orkapı and took refuge with the Nogays

when the khan with his kalgay and nureddin marched against them in July 1647. They also sent

envoys to Istanbul to complain about the khan for heavy taxes. At the outset of August 1647, the

Porte dispatched an official to Crimea in order to learn about the reasons of the conflict between

the khan and the nobility. The khan further irritated the mirzas by appropriating their possessions

in favour of his nureddin Gazi Giray. In the meantime, the khan replaced Ramazan Agha with

Mehmed Agha as his vizier. However, at this time, the Mansur mirzas objected to this

appointment because the khan did not ask the opinion of the tribal nobility before changing his

vizier. Accordingly, Sulemşa Mirza, the chieftain of the Mansur tribe, abandoned the khan and

allied with the unruly mirzas.16 In Oświęcim’s words, the mirzas of the Şirin made a military

covenant with the Nogays and Sulemşa Mirza’s sons. They marched against the khan’s quarters

in Bagçasaray and massacred many supporters of the khan.17 Therefore Islam Giray’s attempt to

manipulate the Mansur mirzas against the disobedient mirzas backfired.

At this time, Islam Giray did not intend to start a new confrontation and decided to seek

reconciliation with the tribal nobility. Sefer Gazi Agha and the mirzas as well wanted to end this

tiresome struggle. According to the letter of Adam Kysil’18 to the Muscovite voevoda of Putyvl’

Barın. Tribes also constituted an important part of the military of the Crimean Khanate and participate in the campaigns of the Crimean khans. For example, according to Evliya Çelebi, the Şirin could gather an army of 20,000 cavalry. He also recounts that while the cavalry of the Şirin and Dayir tribes were positioned on the right wing of the army, those of the Mansur and Sicivut were on the left wing of the army. Concerning the relations of the khan with the tribes, Halil İnalcık states that representing the interests of the pastoral nomadic life, the tribes acted in union to protect their interests against the central authority of the Crimean Khanate. However, since the tribes also competed against each other to increase their influence in Crimea, the khans also benefited from rivalry among them in order to curb their power. See Uli Schamiloghlu, “Tribal Politics and Social Organization in the Golden Horde” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1986); Beatrice Manz. “The Clans of the Crimean Khanate, 1466-1532,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2 (September 1978): 282-309; Halil İnalcık, “The Khan and The Tribal Aristocracy: The Crimean Khanate under Sahib Giray I,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3 (1979-1980): 445-66; Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, vol. 8, eds. Robert Dankoff, Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman (Istanbul: Yapıkredi Yayınları, 2003), 13-7. 16 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 388-9. 17 Oświęcim, 209-10. 18 Adam Kysil’ (b. 1600 - d. 1653) was a Ruthenian magnate and the castellan of Kyiv who would later play a major role as the Commonwealth’s main negotiator with Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj.

27

Aleksej Dolgorukij in the beginning of January 1648, when many of the Şirin mirzas perished in

the battles with the khan’s forces, Sefer Gazi Agha agreed to reconcile with the khan.19 Senai

recounts that the khan and the rebellious nobility made peace on 28 November 1647 (1st day of

Zilka‘de 1057). Islam Giray restored the vizierate to Sefer Gazi Agha and assigned Togay Beg,

one of the leading unruly mirzas, as the commander of Orkapı.20

Based on the report of I. Lutovinov who was a former Muscovite officer in Astrakhan but fell

captive to the Tatars in spring 1646, Novosel’skij argues that the cause of the civil war was not

limited to the disagreement of between the palace guards and the tribal nobility with regard to the

sharing of campaign spoils or their long-time rivalry over power and influence. According to

him, the contending parties had also different views on foreign affairs and relations with the

Ottomans. While the khan and the palace guards wanted to have good relations with the Porte

and obeyed Ottoman orders to refrain from attacking neighbouring countries, the tribal nobility

was against such intervention by the Ottomans into Crimean affairs.21 With regard to

Novosel’skij’s analysis on the attitude of the khan and the mirzas towards the Porte, it can be

stated that while the khan and tribal nobility were alike averse to Ottoman interference, Islam

Giray knew that he had to compromise with Istanbul in order to maintain his rule. Otherwise, the

Ottomans would possibly attempt to depose him and place a more obedient Giray prince on the

Crimean throne. At the same time, both the khan and the mirzas saw no harm in taking

advantage of an opportunity to use Ottoman power and appealed to the Porte against each other.

19 Adam Kysil’ to Aleksej Dolgorukij, 8 January 1648 [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1861), 105 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]. 20 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 16-7, tr. 100-1. 21 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 390-1; Novosel’skij’s argument about the pro-Ottoman attitude of the khan is at odds with the nineteenth century Russian historian of the Crimean Khanate, Vasilij Smirnov’s description of Islam Giray. On the basis of Naima’s account, Smirnov related that Islam Giray was brought from the Rhodes first to Istanbul to have an audience with Sultan Ibrahim. The sultan told Islam Giray about his appointment as the khan and asked him to remain loyal to the Porte. The new appointee reportedly thanked the sultan and assured him about his loyalty. After leaving the sultan’s presence, Islam Giray also had a conversation with Grand Vizier Sultanzade Mehmed Pasha. He purportedly spoke to the grand vizier arrogantly warning him not to intervene into Crimean affairs and instruct him how to carry out relations with the neighbouring countries. Mehmed Pasha did not argue against Islam Giray’s words and expressed his hope that there would be no intervention into Crimean affairs. On the basis of Naima’s account of the conversation between Islam Giray and the grand vizier, Smirnov describes Islam Giray as a defiant khan whose actions reminded those of one of his predecessors namely Gazi Giray II (r. 1588-96, 1597-1606). Without referring to a source, Ahatanhel Kryms’kyj as a Ukrainian Orientalist of the late Imperial Russia/early Soviet era portrays Islam Giray as an independent ruler from the chaotic Porte. See Naima, Târih, 1007; Vasilij Smirnov, Krymskoe xanstvo pod verxovenstvom Otomanskoj Porty do načala XVIII veka (St. Petersburg: 1887), reprint and ed. Svetlana F. Oreškova (Moscow: Rubeži XXI, 2005), 383; Ahatanhel Kryms’kyj, Studii z Krymu I - IX (Kyiv, 1930), 5.

28

Therefore, concerning Ottoman interference in Crimean affairs, it is possible to claim that Islam

Giray and the nobility acted with pragmatism.

1.2. Relations with the Commonwealth

The relations between Crimea and the Commonwealth in the reign of Islam Giray developed in

the shadow of King Władysław’s war plans against the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the plans of the

king date back the accession of the khan to the throne. Władysław intended to start a war with

the Porte and Crimea in order to increase his prestige and royal power over the nobility in the

Commonwealth. Therefore the victory of the Polish army and the Ukrainian Cossacks over the

invading Tatars at Oxmativ on 30 January 1644 encouraged the king to increase his attempt to

convince the Commonwealth dignitaries and nobility for a war with the Ottomans and Crimea.

Upon Władysław’s request, the Commonwealth Senate convened on 29 February 1644 and

decided to stop delivering the payment of tribute/gifts to the Tatars.22 The king hoped that refusal

to pay tribute/gifts would provoke the Tatars to attack the Commonwealth again and thus make it

easier to acquire the consent of the nobility to collect funds and start preparations for a war with

Crimea and that the Porte would not remain neutral but instead involve itself in the war between

Crimea and the Commonwealth.

Therefore, besides the struggle against the rebellious mirzas, Islam Giray was faced with the

refusal of the Commonwealth to pay customary tribute/gifts. In autumn 1644, the khan sent

Mustafa Beg to Warsaw with his letters to the king and chancellor in order to inform them about

his accession to the throne and convey his desire to have peaceful and friendly relations with the

Commonwealth.23 Islam Giray promised to keep peace unless the Commonwealth acted contrary

22 Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 148; Ludwik Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński (Warsaw: Księgarnia Zakładu Nar. im. Ossolińskich, 1924), 176; Władysław Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (1612-1651) (Warsaw: Nakładem Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego, 1933), 50; Władysław Czapliński, Władysław IV i jego czasy (Poland: Wiedza Powszechna, 1972), 360. 23 Islam Giray to Władysław IV, c. late August-early September 1644, Bagçasaray [Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Dział Tatarski, k. 63, t. 41, no. 504 (henceforth AGAD, Dz. Tat)]; Islam Giray to Chancellor Ossoliński, c. late August-early September 1644, Bagçasaray [Materialy dlja istorii Krymskago xanstva izvlečennyja, po rasporjaženiju Imperatorskoj akademii nauk, iz Moskovskago glavnogo arxiva Ministerstva inostrannyx del, eds. Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Huseyn Feyzxanov (St. Petersburg, 1864), no. 94 (henceforth MdiKx)]; Theatrum Europaeum, vol. 5, 1643-1647, 594.

29

to the previous sworn pact and failed to pay tribute/gifts. The khan also asked that the Cossacks

not be allowed to sail out from the Dnipro River to the Black Sea and damage Ottoman and Tatar

property. In addition, the Polish cavalry and the Ukrainian Cossacks should not harm Tatar

envoys travelling between Crimea and Muscovy. The kalgay Kırım Giray also sent his servant

Kırım Gazi Beg with a letter nearly identical in content to the letter of the khan to the king.24

There were also letters of the vizier Sefer Gazi Agha and the treasurer (hazinedar) Arslan Agha

announcing the khan’s enthronement and requesting the payment of tribute/gifts.25

Władysław, hoping to provoke the khan to launch a campaign against the Commonwealth or at

least authorize the Tatars to attack the Commonwealth, detained the khan’s envoy Mustafa

Beg.26 The king also dispatched an embassy with his letter to the Porte, declaring that the

Commonwealth restrained the Cossacks and asking that the Tatars be kept under firm control to

preserve peace between the two countries. He also wrote that the payment of tribute/gifts to the

khan was not his obligation though he acknowledged that he had paid them thus far because his

ancestors promised to do so. Besides, the king expressed his displeasure about the return of the

Bucak Tatars from exile in Crimea to their former dwellings between the Dnister and Danube

Rivers. He requested that they again be removed from the Bucak.27 However, the Ottoman and

Crimean chronicles and other sources do not provide information about how the Porte responded

to the king’s complaints about the Tatars.

Since the decision of the Senate to cease payment of tribute/gifts had to be confirmed by the

Diet, in February 1645 Władysław summoned the Diet with this purpose. As being one of the

confidants of the king in his plans for a war against Crimea and the Ottoman Empire, Crown

Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński delivered a speech at the Diet calling for war with the Tatars. The

king also needed the approval of the Diet in order to levy taxes for funding troops. However, the

24 Kalgay Kırım Giray to Władysław, 25 August-2 September 1644 (2nd decade of Cemaziyelahir 1054), Akmescid [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 60, t. 69, no. 74]. 25 Sefer Gazi Agha to Władysław, c. late August-early September 1644 [MdiKx, nos. 95]; Arslan Agha to Władysław, c. late August-early September 1644 [MdiKx, nos. 96]. 26 Crimean Khanate and the Commonwealth: International Diplomacy and the European Periphery, The. A Study of Peace Treaties Followed by Annotated Documents, ed. Dariusz Kołodziejczyk (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 155. 27 Zeynep Aycibin, “Katip Çelebi, Fezleke: Tahlil ve Metin” (PhD dissertation, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, 2007), 932; Naima, Târih, 1018.

30

Diet adjourned at the end of March without agreeing to his proposals.28 Władysław was not

inclined to give up and decided to search for allies that would have the enthusiasm and capability

to finance his war plans. Thus, when he approached the Pope to ask for monies, the Venetian

government sent Giovanni Tiepolo to Warsaw in summer 1645 and offered the king monetary

aid.29 At that time, a war in the Mediterranean between Venice and the Ottomans had recently

started over the control of the strategic island of Crete. Accordingly, the Venetian government

considered the Commonwealth as a potential ally against the Ottoman Empire. As far as the king

was concerned, Venetian money would free him from the complicated and lengthy procedures of

the Diet for the allocation of funds and recruitment of troops.30 Contrary to the expectation of the

king, suspending the payment of customary tribute/gifts did not suffice to provoke the Tatars.

Therefore, probably with the instigation of the Venetian envoy, Władysław began to think of

using the Ukrainian Cossacks to provoke a war with the Tatars.31 According to the plan, the king

would dispatch his agents to Ukraine to incite the Cossacks to launch ostensibly unauthorized

expeditions in the Black Sea. In retaliation, the Tatars would attack the Commonwealth, and

hence the nobility of the Commonwealth would have no choice other than retaliating and

declaring war against Crimea and then the Ottoman Empire.

Islam Giray also reportedly dispatched embassies to Istanbul in December 1644 and July 1645 in

order to complain about Warsaw’s refusal to pay annual tribute/gifts and receive permission to

attack the Commonwealth.32 In the meantime, in January 1645 rumours circulated that while the

Tatars marched through Moldavia and then entered the Commonwealth, Crown Grand Hetman

Stanisław Koniecpolski assembled an army and repulsed the invaders.33 The Tatars eventually

received permission from the Ottomans in July 1645 to make an incursion into the

Commonwealth.34 When a member of the entourage of Stanisław Koniecpolski, purportedly

28 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński , 177; Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 50-1; Karol Szajnocha, Dwa lata dziejów naszych, 1646, 1648, vol. 1 (L'viv, 1865), 136-7; Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8: The Cossack Age, 1626-1650, trans. by Marta D. Olynyk, ed. by Frank E. Sysyn (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2002), 264; Władysław Czapliński, “The Reign of Władysław IV, 1632-48,” in The Cambridge History of Poland, vol. 1, eds. W. D. Reddaway, J. H. Penson, O. Halecki and R. Dyboski (New York: Octagon Books, 1971), 500. 29 Czapliński, “The Reign of Władysław IV,” 500. 30 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 330. 31 Adam Kersten, Hieronim Radziejowski: Studium wladzy i opozycji (Warszawa: Państwowy Inst. Wyd., 1988), 96. 32 Oświęcim, 68-9, 77. 33 Gazette de France, No 18, Warsaw, 2 January 1645. 34 Oświęcim, 77-78.

31

chanced upon a Tatar envoy named Mehmed Mirza at Akkerman and asked him if the Tatars

received permission from the Ottomans to attack the Commonwealth, Mehmed Mirza confirmed

the rumour.35 According to Oświęcim, after receiving news about the conquest of the fortress of

Canea in Crete by the Ottoman fleet,36 the Porte allowed the khan to go to war against the

Commonwealth. Then Islam Giray called upon the Crimeans, the Nogays and the Bucak Tatars

to initiate campaign preparations.37 Meanwhile, as Gazette de France reported, twenty six

thousand Tatars entered the Commonwealth lands in summer 1645, but Stanisław Koniecpolski’s

troops again prevented them from going further. The Commonwealth’s authorities also learned

from Tatar captives that the Porte had ordered the khan to launch raids and obtain captives to be

sent to Istanbul to serve in the newly built galleys prepared for war with Venice in the coming

year.38 Rumours also circulated that 120,000 Tatars under the khan’s command were prepared to

go to war against the Commonwealth because the Porte demanded that the Tatars bring slaves to

serve as rowers in its navy.39 Stanisław Koniecpolski also received news about campaign

preparations in Crimea and wrote a letter to the grand vizier asking him to restrain the Tatars. He

warned that if the Tatars crossed the borders of the Commonwealth, the Cossacks would be

permitted to set out with their boats onto the Black Sea.40 By that time, the Porte had already

started the war with Venice over Crete and feared another war would be too great a burden.

Therefore, as Oświęcim recounts, expecting the arrival of a strong Christian navy, the Ottomans

understood that it would be difficult to keep Canea under their control against such a powerful

enemy.41 It seems that the Porte took Koniecpolski’s threat seriously and dispatched another

order to Crimea prohibiting the Tatars from attacking the Commonwealth. In addition, Islam

Giray was warned about a possible Cossack expedition in the Black Sea. The civil war in Crimea

35 Oświęcim, 81. 36 Kenneth Setton explains that the Ottoman fleet set out from the Dardanelles at the end of April 1645 and arrived at the western headland of Crete in late June 1645. After capturing the island of Todero (mod. Theodoroi) off the coast of western Crete, the Ottomans marched to Canea (mod. Chania or Hania) located nearly 100 kilometers west of the fortress of Candia (mod. Heraklion). After nearly two-months of siege, the Ottomans managed to capture Canea on 22 August 1645. See Kenneth Setton, Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1991), 126-7. 37 Oświęcim, 83. 38 Gazette de France, No 132, Warsaw, 24 August 1645. 39 Gazette de France, No 150, Warsaw, 1 October 1645; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 178. 40 Gazette de France, No 150, Warsaw, 1 October 1645; Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 53; Jan Widacki, Kniaź Jarema (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1997), 86. 41 Oświęcim, 94.

32

also made the Tatars stop their attacks in late summer 1645.42 According to Ludwik Kubala, as

the Ottomans suspected that the Moldavian hospodar might support Warsaw, they abandoned the

idea of permitting the Tatars to attack the Commonwealth and instead on 16 July 1645 ordered

the khan to launch an expedition against Muscovy. At the same time, the king was not worried

about the Tatars because the khan had difficulty in establishing authority over his people and the

supporters of the ousted khan Mehmed Giray, who escaped to the Bucak region and were waiting

for an opportunity to return to Crimea and dethrone Islam Giray.43

Władysław and his entourage intended to persuade the Muscovite state to join the alliance

against the Tatars. Therefore, in September 1644 the chancellor and a group of senators, who

were confidants of the king in his war plans, made an offer to the Muscovite envoys Aleksej

L’vov and Grigorij Puškin that an alliance against the Muslims should be concluded.44 However,

the Muscovite envoys complained that the Ukrainian Cossacks joined the Tatars and raided the

Muscovite borderlands in recent times.45 In 1645, Władysław dispatched Gabriel Stęmpkowski,

the castellan of Braclav, to Moscow with the purpose of repeating his proposal to conclude an

alliance against the Tatars and invite Muscovite envoys to Warsaw.46 However, the Muscovites

did not give a sure answer to the envoy and maintained normal relations with Crimea during the

last days of Tsar Mixail Fedorovič. Seeing off Stęmpkowski to the Commonwealth in August

1645, the newly enthroned tsar Aleksej Mixajlovič asked the Polish envoy to report to the king

that the Ukrainian Cossacks ravaged the district of Voronež and intended to attack other

Muscovite domains in alliance with the Tatars.47 Consequently, Władysław’s efforts in 1645 to

conclude an anti-Tatar alliance with Muscovy was not reciprocated by Moscow.

Meanwhile, the Porte allowed the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu to act as an intermediary

between Istanbul and Warsaw. The Commonwealth received the news that Lupu decided to

42 Oświęcim, 89-90, 94-5. 43 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 178-9. 44 Boris N. Floria, “Plany wojny tureckiej Władysława IV a Rosja (1644 - 1646),” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 36 (1991): 134-5. 45 Boris N. Florja, “Zaporožskoe kazačestvo i Krym pered vosstaniem Xmel’nyckogo (ros.),” Issledovanija po istorii Ukrainy i Belorussii, 1 (1995): 56. 46 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 330; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 182; Mirosław Nagielski, “Stęmpkowski, Gabriel,” Polski Słownik Biograficzny, v 43, pt.1, ed. Władysław Konopczyński et al (Warsaw and Kraków: Polska Akademia NAUK, 2004), 384; Albrycht Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach w Polsce, vol. 2, 1637-1646, eds. Adam Przyboś and Roman Żelewski (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1980), 486. 47 Florja, “Zaporožskoe kazačestvo i Krym,” 56.

33

support the war plans of the king, dispatch messengers to Warsaw and prepare for a rebellion

against the Porte in order to renounce his allegiance to the Ottoman state.48 In fact, the hospodar

was playing both sides against the middle. In September 1645, he wrote to Stanisław

Koniecpolski that the Ottomans asked him whether the Cossacks would really go out to sea or

not, and that in case the news about Cossack preparations was confirmed, the Porte would order

the khan, the pasha of Silistra and the Dobruca Tatars to launch an expedition against the

Commonwealth. He added that the sultan sent a kaftan and a saber to the khan not as a sign of

his permission to attack the Commonwealth, but instead as a gesture of gratitude for the captives

and other gifts that the khan sent to Istanbul after his return from the Circassian campaign. Thus,

Lupu tried to assure that the Ottomans were adhering to the peace with Warsaw and they had not

yet given permission to the khan to launch an expedition against it.49

Upon learning from the Moldavian hospodar in late August 1645 that Władysław allowed the

Cossacks to go out to sea, the Porte ordered its regional officials to get information in the region

of Özi (Očakiv) and send out scouts in order to confirm the authenticity of the news about the

king’s permission for a Cossack expedition. The regional officials were to share the relevant

information with Istanbul and embark on defence preparations before the Cossacks had actually

gone out to sea. The Ottomans also decided to assemble an army including troops based near the

Danube, the Cebelü Tatars50 and the Bucak Tatars. However, the regional officials were also

48 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 181. 49 Oświęcim, 86-7. 50 The Italian traveller Lazaro Soranzo in his account on the Ottomans explains that the Cebelü (Giebeli) Tatars lived in the Dobruca region near Silistra and their population was around two thousand. According to him, these Tatars were called “Cebelü” because they wore war helmets and body armour. They also carried a scimitar and a bow. When the Ottoman authorities called the Crimean Tatars to their assistance, they charged the Cebelü Tatars with the duty of helping the Crimean Tatars cross the Danube River. According to the Ahmet Akgündüz, the Porte settled the Tatars in Dobruca and the administrative district (sancak) of Vize as early as the reign of Sultan Mehmed II. Each group of thirty Tatars was registered as a military unit (ocak). While five of them were sent on military campaigns as the Cebelü troops, the remaining twenty-five Tatars stayed behind as kind of auxiliary troops (yamak) and provided some payment to the campaigning Cebelü Tatars in order to cover their campaign expenditures. The leaders of these Tatars was called agha (aga). As an example of their service to the Ottomans, in late March 1572, the governor (beg) of Silistra was ordered to send Cebelü Tatars with their aghas to help the governor (mirliva) of Klis (modern Croatia) allegedly defend his borders against a rebelling chief of militia troops (martolosbaşı) of the fortress of Zadar on the Adriatic Sea. See Lazaro Soranzo, The Ottoman of Lazaro Soranzo, trans. Abraham Hartwell (London, 1603), 25; Ahmet Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, vol. 7, book 1 (Istanbul: Osmanlı Araştırma Vakfı, 1994), 710; 12 numaralı mühimme defteri, 978-979/1570-1572, ed. Necati Aktaş et al. (Ankara: Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü, 1996), no. 1079.

34

ordered to restrain everyone from raiding the Commonwealth and keep the Bucak Tatars under

firm control before the letter of the hospodar could be verified.51

At the beginning of 1646, Władysław took counsel with Stanisław Koniecpolski and a group of

senators about the possibility of starting a war against the Turks and the Tatars.52 He allegedly

thought that Koniecpolski as an ardent supporter of a full-scale war against the Tatars would

agree to encourage the Cossacks to organize an expedition against Ottoman domains and the

Tatars. However, Koniecpolski not only wanted to limit the scope of war with the Tatars, he

even objected to any unprovoked action. According to him, only after a Tatar invasion should the

Cossacks be allowed to undertake an expedition. At the same time, Koniecpolski proposed to the

king and the Senate his plan of action to eliminate the Crimean Khanate and to this end form a

league with Muscovy. According to his scheme, if the war were to succeed, Warsaw would

receive the Ottoman territories adjacent to the Black Sea, from Crimea to the Danube, and in

return would leave the Crimean peninsula to Muscovy.53 Although Koniecpolski opposed

implementation of a war plan without the approval of the Diet, he supposedly received news

about negotiations of the Cossacks with the Tatars to overthrow the Polish rule and regain their

old liberties. Therefore he proposed to launch an expedition with the Cossacks against the Tatars

to prevent the realization of a Cossack-Tatar alliance. However, the Crown grand hetman

unexpectedly died on 11 March 1646 before his plan could be put into effect.54

As Muscovite-Crimean relations continued to deteriorate in early 1646, the Muscovite state

leaned towards the idea of cooperating with Warsaw against Crimea. In the face of Tatar raids,

the Muscovite frontier voevodas appealed to Crown Field Hetman Mikołaj Potocki for help.55

Potocki then marched with his army to intercept the returning Tatars, who were burdened with

51 A certain Mehmed to Grand Vizier Sultanzade Mehmed Pasha, 13 September 1645 (22 Receb 1055) [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 5978 in Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives du Musée du Palais de Topkapı, eds. A. Bennigsen, P. N. Boratav, D. Desaive and C. Lemercier-Quelquejay (Paris: Mouton, 1978), 167-8]. 52 Czapliński, Władysław IV, 363. 53 Wiktor Czermak, Plany wojny tureckiej Władysława IV (Kraków, 1895), 70; Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 151; Kersten, Hieronim Radziejowski, 96-7; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 182-3; Widacki, Kniaź Jarema, 90-1; Henry Wisner, Władysław IV Waza (Wrocław, Warszawa, Kraków: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1995), 104; Boris N. Florja, “Osmanskaja imperija, Krym i strany Vostočnoj Evropy vo vtoroj polovine 30-x – 40-x gg. XVII v.,” in Osmanskaja imperija i strany central’noj, vostočnoj i jugo-vostočnoy Evropy v XVII v., vol. 1. eds. G. G. Litavrin, L. E. Semenova, S. F. Oreškova and B. N. Florja (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademjia Nauk ISB, 1998), 165-6. 54 Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 152; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 367-8. 55 Henryk Wisner, “Dyplomacja Polska w latach 1572-1648,” in Historia dyplomacji polskiej, vol. 2, ed. Zbigniew Wójcik (Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982), 101.

35

booty. The king possibly expected that if Potocki ambushed the Tatars, the Khanate would be

provoked for further conflict with the Commonwealth.56 However, the harsh winter prevented

the Poles from advancing towards the Tatars, who were indeed very close to the Polish camp; in

that campaign, many Poles and their horses died from severe cold.57 Potocki’s attempt to link his

campaign failure to severe winter is unconvincing because the same winter paralyzed the Tatars

who were on a tiresome return.58 Nonetheless, Potocki became the new confidant of the king in

his plans against Crimea and the Ottoman Empire. While he was not originally enthusiastic about

the war plans of the king,59 upon the death of Koniecpolski Potocki allegedly became receptive

to the war plans of the king—in return for receiving Koniecpolski’s offices, that of the Crown

grand hetman and the castellan of Kraków, he promised to fulfill the orders of the king against

the Tatars.60 Accordingly, in his letter to the king in November 1647, Potocki reported that the

Porte sent an army and its pashas to the Danube to winter in Silistra and ordered the khan to

prepare his army for a campaign against the Commonwealth.61 He also warned the king about

possible Tatar raids into Podillja because the Porte asked the Tatars to deliver some thousand

slaves for manning the fleet as oarsmen.62 It is possible to argue that Potocki tried to keep the

menace from the Ottomans and the Tatars in the foreground as Władysław was negotiating with

the uncompromising nobility about levying an army.63

A Muscovite embassy under Vasilij Strešnev arrived in Warsaw in January 1646 and nearly two

months later had an audience before Władysław and the Diet. The Muscovite envoy claimed that

Sultan Ibrahim sent his messengers to Islam Giray asking him to collect prisoners from Muscovy

or the Commonwealth to employ as rowers in Ottoman galleys. They continued that Aleksej

Mixajlovič was in favour of an alliance with the king against the Tatars and assigned a large

frontier army under Nikita Odojevskij and Vasilij Šeremetev to help the Poles in case of a Tatar

56 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 268. 57 Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 54-55; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 182; Czapliński, Władysław IV, 363; Sergej Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii, vol. 10 (St. Petersburg: Izdanie Tovariščestva Obščestvennaja Pol’za, 1890), 1502-3. 58 Widacki, Kniaź Jarema, 87. 59 Mirosław Nagielski, “Mikołaj Potocki,” in Hetmani Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów, ed. Mirosław Nagielski (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 1995), 158. 60 Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 158. 61 Mikołaj Potocki to Władysław, 2 November 1647, Bar [Michałowski, wojskiego lubelskiego a później kasztelana bieckiego Księga Pamiętnicza (1647–1655), ed. Antoni Z. Helcel. (Kraków, 1864), 1-2]. 62 Moderate Intelligencer, No 101, Danzig, January 1647. 63 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 269.

36

attack. The tsar also asked the king to allow the Ukrainian Cossacks to join his anticipated

campaign against the Tatars. After the negotiations with the Muscovite embassy, Warsaw

supposedly promised that Hetman Mikołaj Potocki would act in unison with the Muscovite

frontier voevodas. However, the Muscovite envoys were also told that the Ukrainian Cossacks

could not currently provide help on the excuse that they burned their boats and the approval of

the Diet was needed in order to authorize them to go to sea.64

Nearly simultaneously with the presence of the Muscovite embassy in Warsaw, a Tatar envoy,

Islam Agha came to Poland in February 1646 and received an audience with the king on 24

April.65 Islam Agha reportedly kissed the tip of the king’s garment and made a speech asking for

peace between two countries.66 The envoy delivered Islam Giray’s ‘ahdname (letter of oath) to

Władysław, and letter to Chancellor Ossoliński. Both the ‘ahdname and letter of Islam Giray had

similar content. The khan complained about the detention of his envoys, the non-payment of

customary tribute/gifts, and Cossack raids against the Tatars.67 The khan also wrote to Hetman

Koniecpolski, who was known to have a decisive voice in eastern affairs.68 In his diary, Albrycht

Radziwiłł claims that the Turks and Tatars had respect for the Crown grand hetman.69 In

addition, the Gazette de France reported that the khan asked the king to show good treatment to

Islam Agha and send him back promptly. The Tatar envoy was instructed to prevent the

emergence of an alliance between Warsaw and Moscow against Crimea and the Ottoman

Empire, because Warsaw and Moscow negotiated for a joint campaign against the Porte that was

already embroiled in a war against Venice over Crete.70

64 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 364-5; Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii, vol. 10, 1501-3. 65 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 2, 492; Kołodziejczyk, Crimean Khanate and the Commonwealth,156; Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 165. 66 Gazette de France, no. 47, Special Note, 11 May 1646 and no. 50, Special Note, 18 May 1646. 67 The ‘ahdname (imperial letter of oath) of Islam Giray to Władysław, February 1646, Bagçasaray [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 63, t. 54, no. 521 in Kołodziejczyk, Crimean Khanate and the Commonwealth, 948-53]; one can find the Ottoman/Crimean Tatar text of the khan’s ‘ahdname in MdiKx, no. 341; Islam Giray to Chancellor Ossoliński, February 1646, Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 342]; according to Kołodziejczyk, while the khan’s‘ahdname does not bear a date, it was possibly issued in February 1646 because the letter of the kalgay that was dispatched with the embassy of Islam Agha was drawn in 3rd decade of Zilhicce 1055 (7-16 February 1646). See Kołodziejczyk, Crimean Khanate and the Commonwealth, 948 n. 1. 68 Islam Giray to Stanisław Koniecpolski, delivered on 23 March 1646 at Brodach [Korespondencja Stanisława Koniecpolskiego hetmana wielkiego koronnego 1632-1646, ed. Agnieszka Biedrzycka (Kraków: Societas Vistulana, 2005), 689-90]; Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 166. 69 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 2, 483-4. 70 Gazette de France, no. 50, Special Note, 18 May 1646.

37

In addition, envoys of the kalgay Kırım Giray and nureddin Gazi Giray accompanied Islam Agha

with letters similar in content to those of the khan.71 Kırım Giray also complained to the king

about ‘Azamet Mirza,72 who received permission from the king and Koniecpolski to attack the

Tatars who roamed near Özi. He demanded from the Commonwealth to punish the culprits and

restore the Tatars their property. He repeated his concerns about ‘Azamet Mirza in his letter to

Koniecpolski.73 Lastly, the vizier Ramazan Agha wrote to Koniecpolski about the payment of

tribute/gifts and his efforts to convince Islam Giray, his kalgay and nureddin to uphold the sworn

peace and not to send troops against the Commonwealth.74

Once again, Władysław had no intention to restore peace with Crimea and intended to assemble

an army without seeking the permission of the Diet. However, the senators thwarted this

intention of the king and forced him to summon the Diet in autumn 1646.75 Planning to take

advantage of growing Muscovite-Tatar tension to conclude an alliance with Moscow, Władysław

summoned the Diet in October 1646. While the king supposedly expected the nobility to support

his war plans, the nobles were concerned that the king would use the idea of war against the

Ottoman Empire as a pretext to increase his power and thus limit the freedom of the nobility.76 In

addition, fearing that the Ottomans would first defeat the Muscovites and then order the Tatars to

enter the Commonwealth with a huge army, the nobility consented only to a defensive war.77

Despite such concerns of the nobility, the king had already embarked on war preparations to

settle accounts with the Tatars so that they could no longer threaten the Commonwealth. The

king and his immediate circle also placed great hope in establishing a broad alliance against the

Porte and the Tatars. According to the Theatrum Europaeum, it was expected that a great

71 Kalgay Kırım Giray to Władysław, 7-16 February 1646 (3rd decade of Zilhicce 1055), Akmescid [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 63, t. 38, no. 501; an Ottoman/Crimean Tatar text of the kalgay’s letter is available in MdiKx, no. 343]; Nureddin Gazi Giray to Władysław, February 1646 [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 63, t. 11, no. 469]. 72 ‘Azamet Mirza was originally a Nogay mirza. When Khan Bahadır Giray persecuted the Nogays in 1638, ‘Azamet Mirza took refuge with the Commonwealth’s authorities and then participated in campaigns against the Tatars. See Kołodziejczyk, Crimean Khanate and the Commonwealth, 148; Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie… 1632–1648, 79. 73 Kalgay Kırım Giray to Stanisław Koniecpolski, delivered on 23 March 1646 at Brodach [Korespondencja Stanisława, 690-1]. 74 Ramazan Agha to Stanisław Koniecpolski, delivered on 23 March 1646 at Brodach [Korespondencja Stanisława Koniecpolskiego, 691]. 75 Czapliński, “The Reign of Władysław IV, 1632-48,” 501; Widacki, Kniaź Jarema, 95. 76 Widacki, Kniaź Jarema, 95. 77 Moderate Intelligencer, no. 94, Danzig, 13 November 1646.

38

Christian army would consist of 100,000 Muscovite, 10,000 Moldavian and 30,000 Wallachian

soldiers and 150,000 troops from the Commonwealth.78

The Muscovite state started to think about cooperating with the Commonwealth against the

Tatars when Muscovy became the target of Tatar attacks shortly after Aleksej Mixajlovič’s

accession to the throne. However, since an agreement with Muscovy might require the

Commonwealth to make territorial concessions to Muscovy, the Lithuanian nobility showed

greater opposition to an agreement with Muscovy, because redrawing the borders with Muscovy

would affect the Lithuanian component of the Commonwealth.79 The Lithuanian nobles were

irritated that the Commonwealth compelled them to cede the Trubčevsk area to Muscovy.80 The

Lithuanians were not concerned about the Tatars as much as the Commonwealth was because

their lands were less vulnerable to their attacks.81 Eventually, Władysław was compelled at the

Diet in autumn 1646 to abandon his plan to assemble an army.

In this context, the Russian historian Boris Florja explains that the cautious policy of the Porte

helped the Commonwealth nobility muster unanimous opposition to the war plans of the king.82

While the king and his pro-war supporters wanted to benefit from the appearance of small units

of the Tatars near the borders in order to show that Crimea and the Ottomans were preparing for

a confrontation with the Commonwealth, the Ottomans remained vigilant against any movement

in the northern Black Sea region and ordered the Tatars not to provoke a war. In April 1646,

Sultan Ibrahim assigned the governor (beglerbegi) of Özi, Siyavuş Pasha, with the task of taking

measures to protect all the Ottoman possessions on the Black Sea shores from the mouth of the

Dnipro to Boğazhisar (“Bosporus fortress,” i.e., probably Rumeli Hisarı).83 The sultan informed

the pasha that all the Ottoman officials and military units in the region were put under his

78 Theatrum Europaeum, vol. 5, 1643-1647, 1084. 79 Frank Sysyn, Between Poland and the Ukraine: the Dilemma of Adam Kysil, 1600-1653 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 131-2. 80 Sysyn, Between Poland, 128, 133-4; Henryk Wisner, Janusz Radziwiłł 1612-1655, (Warsaw: Mada, 2000), 80-1; Kersten, Hieronim Radziejowski, 86, 111-4. 81 Henryk Wisner, “Litwa i plany wojny tureckiej Władysława IV. Rok 1946,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 85 (1978): 278; when the Union of Lublin of 1569 founded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania agreed to cede Podlasie (Podlachia) and its southern territories Volyn’, Kyiv and Braclav to the Kingdom of Poland. Thereafter, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had no immediate borders with the Tatars and the Ottoman Empire. 82 Florja, “Osmanskaja imperija, Krym i strany,” 169. 83 Sultan Ibrahim’s order to Vizier Siyavuş Pasha, 17-26 April 1646 (1st decade of Rebi‘ülevvel 1056), Istanbul [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 1101/2].

39

command and ordered him to take all measures against possible Cossack raids. Thereupon,

Sultan Ibrahim sent a number of orders exhorting Siyavuş Pasha to continue his task diligently.84

Besides, the sultan wrote to the mirzas of the Bucak Tatars in July 1646 that the Ukrainian

Cossacks were preparing to go out to sea and ordered them to help Siyavuş Pasha protect the

environs of Özi. He also warned the Bucak Tatars to refrain from any unprovoked incursions into

the Commonwealth.85 The letters of the sultan suggest that the Porte received news about the

permission of the king to the Cossacks to launch naval expeditions in the Black Sea. As Dariusz

Kołodziejczyk recounts, the Venetian envoys in Istanbul saw no harm in exposing their attempts

to encourage the Commonwealth to join an anti-Ottoman alliance as they wished to compel the

Ottomans to seek reconciliation. Since the Porte was worried about the possibility of fighting

against Venice and the Commonwealth simultaneously, in addition to the Bucak Tatars, it

ordered Islam Giray not to provoke the Commonwealth. The khan obeyed the order because he

was equally worried about a possible alliance between Muscovy and the Commonwealth.86

On the basis of the Venetian envoy Giovanni Soranzo’s reports from Istanbul, Wiktor Czermak

explains that while the Moldavian hospodar wrote to Istanbul that he exerted influence over the

Diet in its decision to cancel the war plans of the king, the Porte asked him to convince the

Commonwealth to dispatch an embassy to Istanbul. Since the hospodar received a favourable

answer from the Commonwealth, the Porte waited for the arrival of the Polish embassy to

Istanbul. The Polish envoy reportedly came to Istanbul at the beginning of November 1646 and

received an audience with the vizier giving him assurances about the king’s intention to have

peaceful and friendly relations with the Ottoman Empire. The vizier was very pleased with these

statements and treated the envoy favourably until his departure from Istanbul on 25 November.87

84 Sultan Ibrahim’s order to Vizier Siyavuş Pasha, 25 June - 4 July 1646 (2nd decade of Cemaziyelevvel 1056), Istanbul [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 610/16]; Sultan Ibrahim’s orders to Vizier Siyavuş Pasha, 29 March 7 April 1646 (2nd decade of Sefer 1056) [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 5207/50], 6 - 14 June 1646 (3rd decade of Rebi‘ülahir 1056) [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 5207/51], 17 - 26 May 1646 (1st decade of Rebi‘ülahir 1056) [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 5207/52], 15 - 24 June 1646 (1st decade of Cemaziyelevvel 1056) [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 5207/53], 5 - 14 July 1646 (3rd decade of Cemaziyelevvel 1056) [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 5207/54], 4 - 12 August 1646 (3rd decade of Cemaziyelahir 1056) [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 5207/55]. 85 Sultan Ibrahim’s order to Vizier Siyavuş Pasha, 5 - 14 July 1646 (3rd decade of Cemaziyelevvel 1056) [Topkapı Sarayı Arşivi, E 610/17 in Ali Aktan, Osmanlı Paleografyası ve Siyasi Yazışmalar (Istanbul: Osmanlılar İlim ve İrfan Vakfı Yayınları, 1995), 204-5]. 86 Kołodziejczyk, Crimean Khanate and the Commonwealth, 156. 87 Giovanni Soranzo’s reports to Venice about the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu’s involvement into the conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Commonwealth, 8 and 22 September 1646, 2 October 1646, 22 and 29

40

Kubala relates that the Polish envoy brought letters from Chancellor Ossoliński and Hetman

Potocki. While the chancellor purportedly interceded for the Moldavian hospodar, whose

daughter was a hostage in Istanbul to guarantee his father’s allegiance to the Ottoman Empire,

the hetman accused the khan of attacking Muscovy and asked for the resettlement of the Bucak

Tatars to Crimea. The vizier reportedly treated the Polish envoy well and took him to have an

audience with the sultan and conveyed the complaints about the khan.88 Regarding the Polish

mission, the nineteenth century Austrian scholar of Ottoman history Joseph von Hammer-

Purgstall recounts that upon the complaints of the king, the Commonwealth was assured that the

Porte would take measures to stop the attacks of the Tatars and obey the treaties loyally and

advised him not to worry as long as he pays his tribute/gifts [i.e., to Crimea].89

Towards the end of 1646, Mehmed Chavush was dispatched to the Commonwealth with letters

of the sultan and Grand Vizier Salih Pasha. Shortly after his arrival in Warsaw in the last days of

January 1647, the Ottoman envoy received an audience with the king and presented the letters of

the sultan and the grand vizier.90 In his letter, Sultan Ibrahim assured the king that both he and

the khan remain committed to peaceful and friendly relations with the Commonwealth. If the

king bans the Ukrainian Cossacks from launching naval expeditions and pays the customary

tribute/gifts to the khan, the sultan promised to keep the Bucak Tatars and the khan under firm

control; but the khan had reported that the king did not send tribute/gifts for one or two years and

detained his envoy. The Cossacks also did not stop attacking the Tatars. The sultan added that he

did not know whether the khan attacked the Commonwealth, but that he had dispatched an order

to the khan stating that if the king obeyed the previous pact and sent his annual tribute/gifts the

Tatars should uphold the peace and refrain from hostility towards the Commonwealth. The sultan

also informed that he ordered his regional officials on the Danube to keep the Bucak Tatars

under firm control.91 Similar in content to the letter of the sultan, the grand vizier’s letter also

November 1646 [Documente privitóre la istoria românilor, vol. 4, pt. 2, ed. E. de Hurmuzaki (Bucharest, 1884), 555-9 in Czermak, Plany wojny, 260-1]. 88 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 242. 89 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches: Grossentheils aus bisher unbenützten Handschriften und Archiven, vol. 3 (Pesth: C.A. Hartleben, 1835), 283. 90 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 242. 91 Sultan İbrahim to Władysław, 20-29 November 1646 (2nd decade of Şevval 1056), Istanbul [AGAD, Dz. Tur., k. 75, t. 392, no. 687].

41

conveyed that the khan complained about the subjects of the king seizing cattle herds belonging

to the Tatars who roamed in the steppes to the north of Crimea.92

In early 1647, Władysław complained to the Porte about the frequent attacks of the Bucak Tatars

and repeated his earlier request for the removal of the Bucak Tatars to Crimea as an assurance of

friendship and peace between the Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire.93 When the news of

the rejection of the king’s war plans by the Diet and a possible improvement of Ottoman-Polish

relations reached Crimea, Islam Giray dispatched ‘Ali Beg to the Commonwealth; three days

after his arrival in Warsaw on 14 March 1647, the Tatar envoy was granted an audience by the

king.94 He delivered the letters of the khan to the king and the chancellor. In his letters Islam

Giray related that since he firmly restrained the Tatars and the Nogays, nobody from Crimea had

raided the Commonwealth so far. He continued that the envoy of the king, who visited Istanbul

to conclude peace in accordance with the old pacts, consented to the payment of tribute/gifts to

the Crimean Khanate and returned to the Commonwealth in the company of an Ottoman envoy.

According to the khan’s letter, Sultan Ibrahim also wrote to Crimea that the Porte negotiated the

matter of tribute/gifts with the king and advised the khan to send an embassy to the

Commonwealth in order to arrange the receiving of tribute/gifts. The sultan also explained that if

the Commonwealth paid tribute/gifts, then the khan should restrain the Tatars. Failure to pay

tribute/gifts was an act contrary to the peace treaty. The khan reiterated that the king should send

his envoy back without delay and pay tribute/gifts. He also expressed resentment that Jeremi

Wiśniowiecki intercepted and detained his envoys who were on a mission to Moscow.

Imprisonment of ambassadors was an improper action; these envoys should be found and

released immediately.95 In addition to the letter of the khan, the kalgay Kırım Giray and the

vizier Ramazan Agha also sent letters to the king.96

92 Grand Vizier Salih Pasha to Władysław, 20-29 November 1646 (2nd decade of Şevval 1056), Istanbul [AGAD, Dz. Tur., k. 75, t. 393, no. 688]. 93 Władysław to Sultan Ibrahim, 10 February 1647, Warsaw [Michałowski, 828-9]; Kubala gives Polish translation and summary of some parts of the Latin text of the king’s letter to the sultan in Jerzy Ossoliński, 243. 94 Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 184. 95 Islam Giray to Władysław, 9 December 1646 - 7 January 1647 (Zilka‘de 1056) Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 111]; Islam Giray to Chancellor Ossoliński, 9 December 1646 - 7 January 1647 (Zilka‘de 1056) Bagçasaray [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 63, t. 58, no. 528]. 96 Kalgay Kırım Giray to Władysław, c. late 1646-early 1647, Akmescid [MdiKx, no. 343]; Vizier Ramazan Agha to Władysław, c. late 1646-early 1647 [MdiKx, no. 344].

42

Since Władysław had no intention to restore peaceful relations with the Tatars, he did not show

any sign of wish to pay tribute/gifts and instead detained ‘Ali Beg in a castle in Mazovia.97 The

Tatar envoy was told to wait for the decision of the Diet in May 1647.98 Apparently the dietines

decided to refrain from hostility with the Porte and limited the scope of war preparations to the

Tatars, yet the final decision would be made at the Diet in May 1647.99 However, as the

members of the Diet did not consent to start an unprovoked war with the Tatars, the Diet ended

in fiasco for the king and his supporters.100 Shortly after the Diet of 1647, ‘Ali Beg, having

waited more than three months under detention, was brought to the presence of the king. The

envoy tried to assure the king of Islam Giray’s willingness to have friendly relations and asked

for the payment of overdue tribute/gifts. Władysław answered that the Commonwealth would not

pay the khan to protect its lands from Tatar attacks. The chancellor also urged ‘Ali Beg not to

talk about the payment of tribute/gifts. The king rebuffed the attempt of the envoy to kiss his

hand claiming that only Christian dignitaries could have this privilege. ‘Ali Beg had to content

himself with bowing his head to the floor three times and kissing the tip of the king’s garment.101

Dissatisfied with the poor reception given by the king, ‘Ali Beg allegedly threatened at his

departure that the Tatars would return with Ottoman support and search for the payment of

tribute/gifts. He was told that the Commonwealth would encounter the Tatars with adequate

force, and that instead of paying tribute/gifts, the Crown would use its funds for protecting the

Commonwealth.102 Therefore the last Tatar embassy before the outbreak of the Cossack uprising

of 1648 failed to convince the Commonwealth to restore peace and pay tribute/gifts.

Władysław also supposedly wrote to the Porte that he should no longer be asked for the payment

of tribute/gifts because such requests violated the dignity of the royal majesty of the ruler of the

Commonwealth. It was also wrong to name this payment as haracz (tribute)103 since the king

97 Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 184. 98 Wisner, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 113. 99 Gazette de France, no. 43, Warsaw, 20 March 1647. 100 Gazette de France, no. 74, Warsaw, 2 June 1647; Czermak, Plany wojny, 298; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 237-52. 101 Gazette de France, no. 89, Warsaw, 30 June 1647; Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 186; Wisner, Władysław IV, 109; Wisner, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 113. 102 Gazette de France, no. 93, Warsaw, 5 July 1647; Moderate Intelligencer, no. 126, Warsaw, 5 July 1647; Theatrum Europaeum, vol. 5, 1643-1647, 1306; Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 176. 103 Of course haracz is the Polish form of the Turkish-Tatar word haraç (Arabic, haraj) referring to the ancient tax that was levied by the Muslim rulers on their non-Muslim subjects. It also refers to the annual tribute payment from non-Muslim princes and monarchs to the Ottoman sultan and the Crimean khans.

43

governed a free nation under the grace of God. The king was an independent ruler, who was

taught to command rather than to pay tribute. He continued that the Commonwealth had the

courage and power to defend itself against the Tatar attacks.104

Aiming to conclude an alliance with the Commonwealth against Crimea, the Muscovite envoys

arrived in Warsaw December 1646 - January 1647 with the letter of the tsar proposing to found a

common front against the Tatars.105 In response, Adam Kysil’ was sent to Moscow in summer

1647. However, in the meantime the Crimean leadership managed to renew peace with Muscovy

and thereby thwarted the establishment of an anti-Tatar alliance between Warsaw and Moscow.

Therefore Kysil’ could not persuade the Muscovite state to make an alliance against Crimea and

hinder the restoration of peace with the Tatars.106 He also failed to convince the Muscovites to

suspend the payment of tribute/gifts to the Tatars.107 The Muscovite officials told Kysil’ that

they had already reconciled with the Tatars in spring 1647 because they could wait no longer for

a decisive response from the Commonwealth for their proposal to make an alliance against the

Tatars.108 Once the Tatars stopped their attacks against Muscovy, the latter lost interest in the

king’s plans for a war on Crimea. Nonetheless, Kysil’ managed to outline an agreement with the

Muscovites stipulating that Muscovy and the Commonwealth would come to one another’s aid in

case of Tatar attacks. Each party would also interdict the Tatars if they attempted to pass through

its territory in order to attack the other’s realm.109

Meanwhile, the Ottomans were also watching the negotiations between Muscovy and the

Commonwealth carefully. According to Kubala, they received news about the developments in

the Commonwealth from their spies among the Armenian merchants in the Commonwealth, and

had contacts with Crimea, the Bucak Tatars and the frontier pashas in the northern Black Sea

region. Besides, the European residents in Istanbul were giving information to the Porte about

the affairs of various Christian monarchs.110 A certain vizier named Fazlullah Pasha wrote to

104 Czermak, Plany wojny, 292-3. 105 Wisner, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 102. 106 Frank Sysyn, “A Speech before the Tsar: Adam Kysil’s Oration on August 28, 1647 (N.S.),” in Między Wschodem a Zachodem Rzeczpospolita XVI-XVIII w., ed. Zbigniew Wójcik (Warszawa: Historia pro Futuro, 1993), 135, 141. 107 Sysyn, Between Poland, 139. 108 Wisner, Władysław IV, 120. 109 Sysyn, Between Poland, 138; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 251. 110 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 240.

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Siyavuş Pasha that many rumours circulated in the public about the Commonwealth and

Muscovy and requested him to send spies to investigate these rumours.111 Murtaza Beg as the

governor (mirliva) of the fortress of Kılburun reported to his superiors that 5,000 or 6,000

Cossacks arrived at their headquarters on the Dnipro and boarded on their boats. He consulted

with Ottoman officials at Özi and they decided to send reconnaissance units and the Nogays to

capture informants in order to learn about the intention of the Cossacks.112 Later, Murtaza Beg

reported the results of this intelligence gathering activity. The captured informants revealed that

the Don Cossacks were planning to make an incursion against Crimea and the Commonwealth

were eager to help the Muscovites. While the Cossacks had prepared fifty boats to go out on the

Black Sea, it was not known when the expedition would take place.113

Since the king failed to convince his nobility and the Muscovite state to start a war with Crimea,

he and his aides decided to resort to a provocation that would trigger a war and present the

implacable dignitaries with a fait accompli.114 Therefore they decided to initiate the plans of the

deceased Stanislaw Koniecpolski to organize punitive expeditions against the Tatars. As the

Polish historian Bohdan Baranowski states, since Crimea did not have adequate pastures to feed

its livestock, when the weather became warmer the Tatars would bring their herds out to the

steppe outside Crimea and graze their flocks there throughout the summer. However, since the

relations between Commonwealth and Crimea deteriorated due to the war plans of the king, the

Commonwealth tolerated Cossack attacks against these Tatar nomads. Islam Giray also

complained about these attacks in his letters. Seeing that the small-scale Cossack raids worried

the Tatars, Władysław intended to authorize Polish troops to provide support to the Cossacks in

order to organize greater expeditions and seize greater numbers of livestock from the Tatars,

111 A certain vizier Fazlullah Pasha to Vizier Siyavuş Pasha, 1647 (1057) [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 5116 in Nigar Anafarta, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ile Lehistan (Polonya) arasındaki münasebetlerle ilgili tarihi belgeler (Istanbul, 1979), 16]. 112 Murtaza Beg to an unnamed Ottoman vizier, winter of 1647-1648 [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 11489 in Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives, 169]. 113 Murtaza Beg to an unnamed Ottoman official, c. late 1647-early 1648 [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 4391/1 in Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives, 171]; Victor Ostapchuk, “The Publication of Documents on the Crimean Khanate in the Topkapi Sarayi: New Sources for the History of the Black Sea Basin,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 6 (December 1982): 512-3. 114 Florja, “Osmanskaja imperija, Krym i strany,” 171.

45

ravage the Tatar camps and thereby provoke a war.115 Since the frontier magnates were the most

affected by Tatar attacks, the king could rely on their support of these plans.116

In autumn 1647, Aleksander Koniecpolski, son of the late Stanislaw Koniecpolski, and Jeremi

Wiśniowiecki launched two separate expeditions in the steppe. While the former marched as far

as Özi and captured several informants and many thousands of horses and cattle; the latter,

having learned that the Tatars and the Nogays were roaming in the steppe beyond the lower

reaches of the Dnipro in Right-Bank Ukraine near the Čornyj Lis and were preparing to attack

towns, decided to cut their expedition short and return without confronting the Tatars.117 The

Tatars did not allegedly take action against the expeditions of Koniecpolski and Wiśniowiecki.118

Although it is not certain that these expeditions were carried out in accordance with his war

plans, Władysław should have been interested in winning the support of either Koniecpolski or

Wiśniowiecki or both of them.119 Since Islam Giray was burdened with the rebellion of the Tatar

nobility, he could not retaliate against the Commonwealth for refusal to send tribute/gifts

payments and for Koniecpolski’s and Wiśniowiecki’s incursions against the Tatars and instead,

in November 1647 only wrote letters of protest concerning these expeditions to Władysław and

Crown Grand Hetman Potocki asking for punishment of the culprits.120 Consequently, the

ventures of these frontier magnates did not suffice to provoke a Tatar retaliation.121

115 Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 195-6; Widacki, Kniaź Jarema, 88; Inalcık has also pointed out that the Cossacks routinely attacked the Tatars and the Nogays who grazed their livestock along the Dnipro. While the Commonwealth aimed to establish new settlements and promote farming in the steppes of the northern Black Sea region with the help of the Cossacks, the Tatars who played an important role in suppying meat to Istanbul grazed their livestock in these steppes and often crossed into the territories of the Commonwealth. These contending goals of the Commonwealth’s authorities and the Tatars led to recurrent conflicts in the region. The Porte and the Commonwealth even concluded an agreement in 1564 to prevent the Tatars from violating the borders of the Commonwealth, though in vain. See Halil İnalcık, “The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300-1600,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, vol. 1, eds. Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 295. 116 Władysław Czapliński, Na dworze króla Władysława IV (Poland: Książka i Wiedza, 1959), 407. 117 Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 178-9; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 270-1; the voevoda of Xotmyžsk Sen’ka Bolxovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 17 February 1648 [Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej: dokumenty i materialy (VUR), vol. 2, eds. P. P. Gruzenko, M. K. Kozyrenko, A. P. Pola, I. L. Butič and M. G. Repecaja (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1953), 10]. 118 Wisner, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 113. 119 Sysyn, Between Poland, 142; Widacki, Kniaź Jarema, 102. 120 Albrycht Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach w Polsce, vol. 3, 1647-1656, eds. Adam Przyboś and Roman Żelewski (Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1980), 55; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 271; Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 180. 121 Miron Korduba, “Jeremias Wiśniowiecki im Lichte der neuen Forschung,” Zeitschrift für Osteuropäische Geschichte 35 (1934): 237.

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In early 1648, Islam Giray achieved a delicate peace with the unruly mirzas, reaching an

agreement with them at a general council of war aimed at launching an expedition against the

Commonwealth.122 Accordingly, the khan dispatched messengers to the Porte to receive

permission for a campaign while the desire of the Tatars for such campaign was increasing.123

Adam Kysil’ reported to the Muscovites in early 1648 that the grand vizier received the Tatar

envoys and asked them about the negotiations between the Commonwealth and Muscovy.

However, concealing that they knew anything about the ongoing negotiations between Moscow

and Warsaw, the envoys feigned ignorance for which the grand vizier reprimanded them noting

that they lived very close to these infidels (gavurs) and should know more. The grand vizier

added that it was not possible to start a war with the Commonwealth or Muscovy while the war

with Venice was still ongoing.124 In addition to the setbacks in the Venetian war over Crete, the

Ottoman authorities were troubled by the court struggles that even resulted in to rumours that the

sultan had been strangled by his opponents.125 The Muscovite voevodas of Sevsk Zamjatnja

Leont’ev and Ivan Kobyl’skoj reported that the Porte received the news that Moscow and

Warsaw made an alliance and assembled many troops to go against Crimea and the Ottomans

were trying to prevent the residents of Istanbul from fleeing to other parts of the empire. The

report added that although the Porte encouraged the Tatars to launch expeditions against the

Commonwealth and Muscovy in 1644 and 1645, it now did not want to be involved in a war and

thus ordered the khan not to attack Muscovy.126 In a similar vein, Adam Kysil’ wrote to Aleksej

Dolgorukij that the Ottoman state forbade Islam Giray from attacking the Commonwealth and

Muscovy.127 As the Polish historian Władysław Czapliński relates, an Ottoman mission also set

out to Warsaw at the end of 1647 in order to restore peaceful relations. The king pretended to

accept the Ottoman offer of peace but concealed the Porte’s letter from his nobility.128

122 Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 180. 123 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 271. 124 Adam Kysil’ to Aleksej Dolgorukij, 13 January 1648 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 109]; the excerpt from the agreement with Adam Kysil’, 1648 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 129]. 125 The Polish colonel Stanisław Broniewski to the voevoda of Xotmyžsk Sen’ka Bolxovskij, 7 December 1647, Hadjač [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 92-3]; Adam Kysil’ to Aleksej Dolgorukij, February 1648 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 131-2]. 126 Report of Zamjatnja Leont’ev and Ivan Kobyl’skoj about Ottoman affairs, 13 February 1648 [Akty Moskovskago gosudarstva, izdannye Imperatorskoju akademieju nauk, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Typografija Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk, 1894), 191-2 (henceforth AMG)]. 127 Adam Kysil’ to Aleksej Dolgorukij, 4 January 1648 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 105]. 128 Czapliński, Władysław IV i jego czasy, 374.

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Eventually, the desire of the mirzas to launch raids outweighed the Ottoman prohibition. While

Crown Grand Hetman Potocki requested the nobility to prepare against possible Tatar attacks

because the khan and his mirzas were preparing a campaign,129 an army of Očakiv and Crimean

Tatars and Nogays were reportedly intending to march against the Commonwealth.130 The Tatars

began to appear near the Dnipro more frequently. On 21 January 1648, while the Tatars allegedly

appeared on the left bank of the Dnipro near Poltava, they were defeated by the Polish forces.131

Islam Giray refrained from openly supporting these ventures and did not launch a major

campaign against the Commonwealth in accordance with Ottoman orders. This was the situation

of the Tatars before an opportunity presented itself with the outbreak of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s uprising

and the arrival of the Cossack envoys to Crimea seeking help against the Commonwealth.

1.3. Relations with Muscovy

When Islam Giray arrived in Crimea in August 1644 to start his reign,132 Tsar Mixail Fedorovič

was occupied with strengthening his southern defence against Tatar raids. By continuing the

building of a new defensive line, the Muscovite state aimed to hamper the movement of the

Tatars in southern Muscovy, but it was a work in progress and had some weak points that the

Tatars exploited until its completion in the 1650s.133 However, Muscovy started to reap the fruits

129 Mikołaj Potocki’s proclamation (universal) to the Polish nobility, 31 December 1647, Bar [Arxiv Jugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, izdavaemyj komissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, pt. 3, vol. 4 (Kyiv, 1914), 1 (henceforth Arxiv JuZR)]. 130 Jurij Dolgorukij’s report about Ukrainian and Crimean affairs, 10 March 1648 [AMG, vol. 2, 197]. 131 The colonel of Hadjač Mikołaj Zarecki to the Muscovite voevoda of Belgorod Timofej Buturlin, 29 January 1648 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 115]. 132 Gazette de France, No 138, Constantinople, 27 August 1644; Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 5, tr. 91. 133 Starting in the late fifteenth century, the Muscovite authorities constructed a series of defensive lines called zasečnaja čerta (abatis line) in order to protect their southern regions against Tatar attacks. Abatis lines consisted of wooden ramparts, earthen walls, watch towers and garrison towns. These defensive works connected natural obstacles such as swamps, impenetrable forests and so on. The patrolling units were deployed along the abatis lines in order to observe human movement. The Great Abatis Line (bol’šaja zasečnaja čerta) that was completed in the 1560s streched from the Žizdra River to Tula, Belev and Rjazan’. With the annexation of Kazan and Astrakhan in the 1550s, the Muscovites started to populate the territories in the south of the Oka River. The Tatars and the Nogays benefited from the increase of the population beyond the Oka and directed their plunder and slave-capturing raids against the new settlers. As the problem of Tatar raids became more acute during the Smolensk war between Muscovy and the Commonwealth (1632-4), the Muscovite authorities was forced to start to build a new defensive line in 1635. The government had devoted much effort to construct new garrison towns and defensive works such as earth and wooden ramparts and moats from Kozlov on the banks of the Voronež River to Oxtyrka. As the town of Belgorod was the centre of these defensive works, this new southern defensive line was also called Belgorodskaja čerta (Belgorod line). See Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 363; Brian Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500-1700 (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), 44-7, 78-95; Peter Brown, “Command and

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of its defensive line and became increasingly confident in its relations with Crimea. Before the

arrival of the new khan in Crimea, the Tatars had already resolved to mount an expedition against

Muscovy and started campaign preparations. According to Senai, Islam Giray authorized

Kutluşah Mirza to lead this expedition.134 Meanwhile, Mixail Fedorovič dispatched Timofej

Karaulov and Grjaznoj Akišev to Crimea in summer 1644 to congratulate Islam Giray for his

accession to the throne and to protest the Tatar attacks against Muscovite borders and the errors

in Crimean rendering of the tsar’s titulature.135 However, the khan decided to wait until the end

of the campaign before starting negotiations with the Muscovite state. And so, after the return of

the Tatars from the campaign in autumn 1644, he sent his envoy to Moscow with a letter of

friendship (muhabbetname) in order to make the official notification of his accession to the

throne. He expressed a desire to have good relations with the tsar and asked the Muscovite state

to send the great treasure (ulug hazine) and other customary gifts.136

Mixail Fedorovič agreed to the khan’s offer to restore peaceful relations and sent his envoys

Uraz-Mehmed and Kurmiš to Crimea with his response letter and gifts. Accordingly, Islam Giray

granted an audience to the embassy and swore on the Koran in the presence of the Muscovite

hostages Grigorij Nironov and Mikita Golovnin.137 He gave an ‘ahdname to Nironov and

Golovnin, and assigned Mehmedşah Beg to receive the great treasure and other gifts at the place

of exchange (Crim. Tat. almaşuv; Rus. rozmen) at Valujka.138 Also Laçin Beg was sent to

Control in the Seventeenth-Century Russian Army,” in Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1500-1800, ed. Brian Davies (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012), 294-5. 134 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 5, tr. 91. 135 Reestr delam Krymskago dvora s 1474 po 1779 goda, ed. N. N. Bantyš-Kamenskij, (Simferopol’: Tipografija Tavričesk. Gubernsk. Pravlenija, 1893), 113. 136 The master of threshold (eşik agası) of Kalgay Kırım Giray, Islam Agha, to Mixail Fedorovič, 25 August-2 September 1644 (3rd decade of Cemaziyelahir 1054) [MdiKx, no. 97]; Sefer Gazi Agha to Mixail Fedorovič, c. late August-early September 1644 [MdiKx, no. 98]; according to Crimean perspective, ulug hazine (literally “great treasure”) was a tribute that the Muscovite state had to pay every year to the Crimean khans as they once did to the Golden Horde khans. However, the Muscovite state considered ulug hazine as annual gifts so that the khans would restrain their Tatar and Nogay subjects from attacking the domains of the tsars. See Halil Inalcık, “Power Relationships between Russia, the Crimea and the Ottoman Empire as Reflected in Titulature,” in The Middle and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Turkish Studies, 1993), 373-4, 396; Natalia Królikowska, “Sovereignty and Subordination in Crimean-Ottoman Relations (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries), in The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, eds. Gábor Kármán and Lovro Kunčević (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2013), 49-50. 137 Islam Giray to Mixail Fedorovič, 30 December 1644 (1st day of Zilka‘de 1054), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 99]; Nureddin Gazi Giray to Mixail Fedorovič, 30 December 1644 (1st day of Zilka‘de 1054), Kaçısaray (?) [MdiKx, no. 100]; Sefer Gazi Agha to Mixail Fedorovič, 30 December 1644 (1st day of Zilka‘de 1054), [MdiKx, no. 101]. 138 According to the diplomatic practice between Muscovy and Crimea in the seventeenth century, the khan and the tsar were to select hostages from among their prominent subjects and exchange them as a guarantee against the

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Moscow in order to notify of the assignment of Mehmedşah Beg to receive the great treasure.

Then the Muscovite envoys Stepan Proestev and Kalistrat Akinfeev were assigned to transport

the old Tatar hostages and the new Muscovite hostages Timofej Karaulov and Grjaznoj Akišev

to Valujka. The Muscovite envoys would receive their former hostages Grigorij Nironov and

Mikita Golovnin from the Tatars in order to return them to Moscow.139

Upon the death of Mixail Fedorovič on 12 July 1645, his son Aleksej acceded to the Muscovite

throne. As Hammer recounts, the new tsar sent Stefan Vasilij with gifts to Istanbul in order to

provide notification of his accession. The Porte welcomed the Muscovite envoy and assigned an

officer to accompany them on their way back to Moscow. The Ottoman envoy was instructed to

convey the sultan’s congratulation to Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovič and assure him of the intention of

the Ottoman state to maintain friendship with Muscovy. The Porte also asked the tsar to restrain

the Don Cossack raids and pay customary tribute/gifts to the khan.140

Aleksej Mixajlovič also sent a mission to Crimea in order to notify of his accession to the throne

and deliver some gifts. However, Islam Giray refrained from giving an audience to the

Muscovite envoys and postponed diplomatic relations with the new tsar because the khan had

concluded a peace with the rebellious nobility and was planning to attack the Commonwealth or

Muscovy in order to meet the demands of the mirzas for an expedition.141 As far as the khan was

concerned, the Muscovite-Crimean peace lapsed with the death of Mixail Fedorovič, since the

peace that he concluded with Mixail Fedorovič was valid until the death of one of the rulers.

Therefore until the new tsar managed to renew peace with Crimea the khan was relieved from his

obligation to keep the Tatars under control or refrain from attacking Muscovy. As Novosel’skij

violation of a peace treaty and Muscovite refusal to pay tribute/gifts. The Tatars brought their hostages to Valujka and there in exchange received hostages and payment of tribute/gifts from the Muscovite state. This diplomatic practice of hostage exchange was supposed to happen every year. Until the next time of exchange the Muscovite hostages lived under detainment in Crimea, and the Tatar hostages were kept in Muscovy. The Muscovite state was expected to pay salaries to its hostages who were residing in Crimea, and provide food, beverages and accommodation to the Tatar hostages who were hosted in Moscow. See George Vernadsky, The Tsardom of Moscow 1547-1682, pt. 1 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1969), 14; Vladimir Boguslavskij, Slavjanskaja Enciklopedija XVII vek, vol. 1 (Moscow: Olma Press, 2004), 202-3; Tat’jana Arxipova, Gosudarstvennost’ Rossii: slovar’-spravočnik, dolžonosti,činy, zvanija, tituly i čerkovnye sany Rossii koneč XV veka – fevral’ 1917 goda , vol. 5, pt. 1, (Moscow: Nauka, 2005), 196. 139 Reestr delam Krymskago, 113. 140 Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen, vol. 3, 247. 141 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 347-8.

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explains, Islam Giray wanted to use the change in the Muscovite throne as an opportunity to

authorize the Tatars to launch raids into Muscovy.

In December 1645, Islam Giray assigned the nureddin Gazi Giray as commander of the

campaign against Muscovy. Senai relates that Gazi Giray marched with his “countless” troops

across the steppe and attacked Muscovy at the harshest time of the winter. According to him, the

nureddin inflicted unprecedented damage on Muscovy and defeated the Muscovite army. After

the Tatars reportedly seized many captives and abundant booty, the tsar agreed to deliver the

annual treasure 142 in full. The Muscovite authorities would also send gifts to the Giray princes

and other Crimean dignitaries and mirzas in accordance with their position. The chronicler adds

that the army of the nureddin endured the difficulties of the winter but managed to return to

Crimea.143 On the basis of the more detailed Muscovite reports, Novosel’skij gives a different

and more convincing version of this campaign. According to him, the nureddin lost many mirzas

and one-third of his army and returned to Crimea with a small number of captives.144

On the basis of Ottoman archival materials, Hammer explains that when Islam Giray informed

Istanbul that the Tatars raided Muscovite lands and captured more than one hundred Cossacks,

Grand Vizier Nevesinli Salih Pasha accepted this fait accompli but in 19 March-16 April 1646

(Sefer 1056) wrote to the khan145 warning him to cease any further attacks since the new tsar

exchanged embassies with the Ottoman state. The khan wrote another letter to the Porte that the

Muscovite state started to repair the fortification of the Don Cossacks at Čerkassk and asked for

permission to launch a campaign. The Porte approved and therefore the khan marched to

Čerkassk and wrote a letter to Istanbul informing of his successful campaign. Again in Sefer

1056, Islam Giray was rewarded with a congratulatory letter (tebrikname) of the sultan. Also in

Receb 1056 (13 August-11 September 1646) the grand vizier wrote to the khan advising him to

watch the movements of the Cossacks closely.146 While Hammer does not explain the sudden

142 Senai calls this payment cizye, that is, uses that name of the tax that non-Muslims owed to an Islamic state. 143 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 11-2, tr. 96-7. 144 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 353; concerning the debacle of the nureddin, Sergej Solov’ev as a historian of the late imperial Russia ironically states that when the Tatars congratulated the new tsar for his accession to the throne by raiding Muscovite territories at the end of 1645, the Muscovite army intercepted them near Ryl’sk and forced them to return by the same route that they had arrived. See Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii, vol. 10, 1500. 145 Hammer-Purgstall erroneously writes that Safer 1056 corresponded to May 1646. 146 Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen, vol. 3, 282-3; Hammer-Purgstall found these correspondences between Islam Giray and the Ottoman authorities in a collection of Ottoman documents compiled by Reis

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shift in the attitude of the Porte, it can be surmised that since the Ottomans were under the threat

of Cossack naval raids as stated earlier in this chapter, they might have been alarmed by the

khan’s report about the campaign preparations of the Don Cossacks and approved the expedition

of the Tatars against the Don Cossacks.

In response to the Tatar campaign, the Muscovite state resolved at the beginning of 1646 to

launch a punitive expedition against Crimea and the Tatars roaming in the steppe. On the basis of

Muscovite sources, Novosel’skij relates that After Aleksej Mixajlovič ordered the voevoda of

Kursk Semen Požarskij to go to Astrakhan and assemble an army of Astrakhan musket-bearing

troops and cavalry, some groups of pro-Muscovite Tatars, Great Nogays and Kabardians,

Požarskij managed to collect at least 20,000 troops.147 The Muscovite state instructed Požarskij

to fight with the Tatars who roamed in the steppe outside Crimea, and if possible, march to

Orkapı, but not approach Azak and other Ottoman possessions. In accordance with the

Muscovite orders, Požarskij went with this army to the Don region and united with the Don

Cossacks and Muscovite troops coming from Voronež. However he fell into disagreement with

the Don Cossacks regarding the objectives of the campaign. While Požarskij insisted on obeying

the orders of the tsar, the Don Cossacks did not listen to his warnings and launched a failed

expedition against Azak. Therefore the Don Cossacks made the expedition against Azak in

defiance of the order of the tsar. After the setback at Azak, the Don Cossacks joined the Great

Nogays and other Tatar allies of Muscovy against pro-khanate Nogays and Azak Tatars who

wandered around the territories located one day’s journey from Azak. Požarskij’s army also

participated in this action and allegedly captured 7,000 prisoners and a large number of livestock.

In June 1646, the nureddin Gazi Giray came to the environs of the Don River and attacked the

Kabardian allies of the Muscovites. However, the Crimean army was forced to retreat by the

arrival of relief troops of Požarskij’s reinforcements and the Don Cossacks. In early August

1646, the Muscovites and their Cossack and Kabardian allies encountered Gazi Giray near the

environs of the Kagal’nik River.148 Both parties suffered heavy casualties. While the Muscovite

Muhammed (Mehmed) Efendi. While Hammer-Purgstall states that he benefitted from Reis Muhammed Efendi’s work while writing on the reign of Sultan Ibrahim, he does not explain how and where he received this work. See Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen, vol. 3, 11. 147 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 373, 380. 148 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 380-1; at the battle near the Kagal’nik, the Ottoman governor (mirliva) of Azak Mustafa Beg reportedly hastened to the help of the nureddin with infantry and cavalry soldiers equipped with cannons. According to the Don Cossack and Muscovite reports, at the Kagal’nik, the nureddin’s army consisting of

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forces retreated to Čerkassk, Gazi Giray withdrew to Azak. Consequently, the objective of the

nureddin to retaliate for the Muscovite campaign against pro-Crimean Nogay and Tatar nomads

did not bear much fruit while resulting in the deaths of many mirzas and warriors. Although the

Muscovite offensive of 1646 ended without overwhelming success, the Muscovite state managed

to make the Tatars stop their attacks against Muscovy. In the meantime, Islam Giray did not

respond to the call of the nureddin for help and stayed with his forces at Orkapı because he

feared that the Commonwealth or Muscovy would attack Crimea 149

The Crimean chronicler Senai provides a different version of these events. When the governor

(mirliva) of Azak Mustafa Beg sent a messenger to Crimea requesting aid, Islam Giray appointed

his nureddin Gazi Giray to march with the Tatar army to help the Ottomans at Azak. As the

Tatars reportedly bravely fought with the besiegers, only a small number of Cossacks managed

to escape and Mustafa Beg praised Gazi Giray for his support and gave him gifts.150 It seems that

while Senai speaks of the unsuccessful offensive of the Don Cossacks against Azak, he does not

make mention of other encounters such as the battle near the Kagal’nik River.

In the early days of the Muscovite campaign, Islam Giray tried to renew peace with Aleksej

because he feared that the Muscovite-Polish negotiations would lead to formation of an anti-

Tatar alliance. The khan swore on the Koran to confirm his allegiance to the ‘ahdname in the

presence of the Muscovite envoys, Timofej Karaulov and Grjaznoj Akišev.151 He also sent the

8,000 Crimean and Azak Tatar cavalry with 2,000 janissaries fought against 6,000 troops of Požarskij and 1,100 Kabardians. See Mixail Šiškin’s petition about the awards for his service, 3 January 1648 [AMG, vol. 2, 187-8]. In contrast to Novosel’skij’s presentation of a modest number for the size of the Muscovite army, the Ottoman chronicler Naima relates that the Muscovite state assembled 80,000 troops and attacked the Tatars and the Ottoman fortress of Azak. It can be said that Naima’s account on the number of the Muscovite troops was not reliable given the fact that instead of calling upon a general mobilization, the tsar considered it sufficient to order Požarskij to collect troops in Astrakhan and other southern Muscovite regions. It is unlikely that a Muscovite voevoda could raise a large number of troops in the more sparsely populated borderlands to the tune of 80,000. Naima’s chronicle also differs from Novosel’skij’s analysis concerning the purpose of the Muscovite campaign. According to the chronicler, learning in 2nd decade of Cemaziyelevvel 1056 (25 June-4 July 1646) about Muscovite campaign preparations against both the Tatars and the Ottoman fortress of Azak, the Porte assigned the vizier Musa Pasha for the defence of Azak and sent galley with janissary and cavalry troops to Azak. The Ottomans repelled the offensive, purportedly killed 8,000 enemy troops and captured 400. Naima also briefly refers to the role of the Tatars in this conflict mentioning that the khan dispatched troops to help in the defence of Azak. See Naima, Târih, 1099. 149 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 382, 384-5; Boris Florja, “K istorii russko-osmanskix otnošenij v seredine 40-x gg. XVII v.,” Etudes classiques 2 (1991): 76-77. 150 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 14-5, tr. 98-9. 151 The şartname (instrument of peace) of Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 17 February 1646 - 5 February 1647 (1056), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 104]; Sefer Gazi Agha to Aleksej Mixajlovič, without date [MdiKx, no. 335]; a Muscovite translation of the şartname of the khan to the tsar is available in Pamjatniki diplomatičeskix snošeni

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Muscovite envoy Ivan Skorovarov back to Moscow in the company of his envoy Hürremşah

Mirza to deliver his ‘ahdname and finalize the Muscovite-Crimean negotiations. According to

the new peace, the khan promised not to attack the Muscovite towns and lands and agreed to

restrain his kalgay and nureddin, other Giray princes, the mirzas and the Tatar and Nogay tribes

from attacking Muscovy. If any damage were to be done by the Tatars, the khan pledged to

punish the culprits, return the prisoners and restore the property to Muscovy. He also promised to

provide safe passage to merchants and envoys. In return, the Muscovite state should send the

customary treasure and all other gifts to the khan and all other Tatar and Nogay dignitaries in

accordance with the registers that were prepared during the reign of Bahadır Giray.152

The Tatar envoy Hürremşah Mirza was also entrusted with a letter of the khan to the tsar asking

for some additional payments from Muscovy. The kalgay and the nureddin also sent their envoys

with letters to the tsar. Both Islam Giray and his kalgay and nureddin expressed resentment that

some Tatar dignitaries received either poor quality or an incomplete number of sables, furs and

other gifts. They also expressed concerns about the Don Cossacks, who went to sea with seven or

eight şaykas and attacked two Ottoman galleys that were on their way to Azak. The Ottomans

repulsed the Don Cossacks by killing many of them and capturing two of their şaykas. Because

of the Don Cossack attack against Ottoman vessels and Muscovy’s failure to deliver good quality

and complete payment of gifts, the nureddin Gazi Giray launched an expedition to Muscovy.

According to the account of the khan and his kalgay, after the return of the nureddin from his

campaign, the Muscovite envoys Timafey Karaulav (Timofej Karaulov) and Graznoyn Ekişav

(Grjaznoj Akišev) appealed to renew peace and conveyed a message of the tsar appealing for the

restoration of friendly relations with Crimea. The letters of the khan and his kalgay suggest that

only after Aleksej Mixajlovič proposed to restore peaceful relations did the khan enact the

previously mentioned ‘ahdname. Both the khan and his kalgay and nureddin also stressed that

two years of treasure remained unpaid.153

Krymskago xanstva s Moskovskim gosudarstvom v XVI-XVII v.v. (PdsKxsMg), ed. Fedor Laškov (Simferopol’: Tipografija Gazety Krym, 1891), no. 52. Laškov gives the date of the document as February 1646. 152 Reestr delam Krymskago, 118; Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 397. 153 Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 17 February 1646 - 5 February 1647 (1056), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 105]; Kalgay Kırım Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 27 April-6 May 1646 (2nd decade of Rebi‘ülevvel 1056), Akmescid [MdiKx, no. 106]; Nureddin Gazi Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 27 April-6 May 1646 (2nd decade of Rebi‘ülevvel 1056), Kazısaray [MdiKx, no. 107]; both the letters of the khan and his kalgay and nureddin have nearly identical content. Therefore, although the letter of the khan lacks a full date, on the basis of the letters of the kalgay and nureddin it can be stated that it is dated to late April-early May 1646.

54

On the basis of Muscovite reports on relations with the Ottoman Empire, Sergej Solov’ev as a

Russian historian of the late Imperial era recounts that on 27 January 1647, Grand Vizier Salih

Pasha complained to the Muscovite envoy Alferij Kuzovlev that on the basis of the confession of

a captive it became known that in accordance with the tsar’s order, the Don Cossacks prepared

300 boats at Čerkassk for a naval campaign against Crimea and the Tatars. He demanded that the

Muscovite state send messengers to the Cossacks in order to prevent them from going to sea and

suggested that the Porte could help the Muscovite envoys to go to Azak en route to the Don

region. However, the Muscovite envoy answered in the typical fashion when it came to the Don

Cossacks, namely, that they were thieves and traitors who did not obey the decrees of the tsar

and sought nothing other than theft. The grand vizier was not convinced by this argument and

insisted on his suggestion that the Muscovite authorities should send messengers to the Don

Cossacks. In addition, Sultan Ibrahim wrote to Aleksej Mixajlovič about the removal of the Don

Cossacks from Čerkassk and the payment of tribute/gifts to the khan. The tsar answered as

before—that the Don Cossacks did not listen to his commands. He also wrote that the Muscovite

state restored relations with Crimea for the sake of its friendship with the Ottoman state but if the

khan did not keep to his oath again, Muscovy would not tolerate him.154

Referring to the same Muscovite reports used by Solov’ev, Novosel’skij relates that when the

vizier threatened to launch an expedition against the Don Cossacks if the Muscovites fails to

remove the Don Cossacks from Čerkassk and send tribute/gifts to the khan, the Muscovite envoy

demanded that Islam Giray release all captives and pay compensation for the damage caused by

the Tatars during their campaign against Muscovy in 1645. The vizier argued that the tsar should

have asked help from the Porte instead of settling accounts with the Tatars. On the basis of this

conversation between the grand vizier and the envoy, Novosel’skij claims that the Ottomans did

not hide that they supported the campaigns of the Tatars in 1644 and 1645.155

Concerning the attitude of the Porte towards the Muscovite embassy, Hammer relates that the

tsar’s envoy who came to express grievances against the Tatars was not treated well. While the

sultan allegedly intended to order the execution of the Muscovite envoys in his presence, the

grand vizier managed to convince him only to imprison the envoys. The khan’s letter

154 Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii, vol. 10, 1499-1500. 155 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 385-6.

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complaining about Muscovy increased the anger of the sultan and thus extended the detention of

the Muscovite envoys.156 While Hammer does not even provide an approximate date for the

arrival of the Muscovite embassy, it can be surmised that this tense audience between the sultan

and the Muscovite messengers took place during or after the Muscovite campaign against

Crimea and the Tatars and the failed Don Cossack attack against Azak in summer 1646.

In spring 1647, 1,500 Don Cossacks reportedly launched a naval expedition with fifty boats and

raided the Tatars who roamed under Temrjuk and Arbatok.157 A few months later, the Don

Cossacks again went to sea, now against Crimea with thirty-three boats. However, their

campaign started with a mishap as sixteen of their boats were damaged by stormy weather. Local

Ottoman forces with their Tatar, Nogay and Circassian allies also surprised the Don Cossacks at

the mouth of the Don River. However, the forces of Mustafa Beg were repulsed by the Don

Cossacks. Only a few days later, Mustafa Beg returned back with his troops by land and another

force led by ‘Ali Agha came by sea with cannons and firearms. The Don Cossacks repelled the

Ottoman offensive again and even chased the retreating vessels. Therefore the Ottoman action

against the Don Cossacks ended in failure and Mustafa Beg returned to Azak.158

In the meantime, the Tatar envoy Hürremşah Mirza was carrying out negotiations with the

Muscovite state in Moscow in order to renew peace between Muscovy and Crimea. However, the

negotiations came to an impasse because both parties did not want to concede any of their

demands. While Hürremşah Mirza requested some additional payments from Muscovy and

threatened with war in case of refusal, the Muscovite state asserted that the payment of

tribute/gifts should be reduced to the amount that the deceased tsar Mixail Fedorovič agreed to

deliver in 1613. Since Hürremşah Mirza did not agree to the Muscovite demands, he was

detained in Moscow until spring 1646. The Muscovite state later abandoned their demand to

156 Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen, vol. 3, 283. 157 The Don Cossack ataman Kirej Stepanov’s report on military affairs, 27 May 1646 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 675-6]; the fortress of Arabat (Arbatok) was built at the southernmost section of Arabat Spit. The remnants of the fortress is located in the north of the village Akmonay (modern Kamenskoe). However Temrjuk was located on the Taman peninsula on the other side of Kerch Straits. Since Arbatok and Temrjuk were at a great distance from one another, it is puzzling that the Don Cossacks raided both of these two places simultaneously. 158 Report of the Don Atamans and Cossacks to Aleksej Mixajlovič about their failed offensive against the Crimeans and the repulsed attack of the Crimeans against Čerkassk, 15 November 1647 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 769-70]; the petition of the Don Cossacks to Aleksej Mixajlovič for help against the Crimeans, 15 November 1647 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 772-3]; the petition of the Don Cossacks to Aleksej Mixajlovič for help against the offensive of the Crimeans, 6 February 1648 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 789-90].

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reduce the payment of tribute/gifts. However they managed to make the Tatar envoy accept a

restriction on the size of embassies to Muscovy and decrease the stipends paid to Tatar envoys.

Accordingly, the tsar would accept embassies only from the khan, the kalgay and the nureddin

and finance the hospitality expenses only of these three; the tsar would respond only to their

letters. Hürremşah Mirza also agreed to renounce the claims for the payment of the treasure in

1644 and 1645. The Muscovite authorities refused to send the treasure for these years because

the Tatars ravaged the Muscovite lands in these years. Muscovy agreed to pay the treasure every

year in return for a stoppage of Tatar raids. Hürremşah Mirza made peace with the Muscovite

leadership in accordance with these conditions and the courier of the tsar Ivan Plakidin came to

Crimea in June 1647 with the purpose of receiving the approval of the khan for the peace that

Hürremşah Mirza negotiated with the Muscovite state.159

Accordingly, Islam Giray enacted his ‘ahdname in September 1647 by swearing an oath of

allegiance to the peace treaty in the presence of the Muscovite officials, Timofej Karaulov, Ivan

Plakidin and Grjaznoj Akišev.160 He again promised to restrain all Tatars and Nogays from going

to war against the Muscovite territories and frontier cities, and treat Muscovite envoys with due

respect. The new peace also stipulated that the khan, the kalgay and the nureddin each would

have the right to dispatch one envoy apiece to Muscovy, and each envoy could be accompanied

by twelve servants. Therefore an embassy would consist of thirty-nine people at most. Similarly,

the khan, the kalgay and the nureddin could each assign only one courier (çapkun) to go to the

place of exchange at Valujka in order to receive the treasure and exchange hostages. Each

courier could have three servants. It would mean that the size of an exchange mission could not

exceed twelve people. Novosel’skij emphasizes that the Muscovite officials had worked for

years to reduce the size of Tatar embassies without success until this time.161 Thanks to the new

peace treaty, the financial burden of Tatar embassies would become more bearable for the

Muscovite treasury.

159 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 397-400. 160 The şartname (instrument of peace) of Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 11 - 20 September 1647 (2nd decade of Şaban 1057), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 112]; Laškov published a Muscovite translation of the document with the date “Şa‘ban 1057” (1 - 29 September 1647) in PdsKxsMg, no. 54. 161 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 402.

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Only after the renewal of the peace did the Muscovite authorities agree to commence the

diplomatic procedure of hostage exchange and tribute/gifts payment. In September 1646, Islam

Giray assigned Ibrahim Agha as the courier to inform the Muscovite authorities that Mehmedşah

Beg was ordered to bring the present Muscovite hostages to the place of exchange. He also asked

that the great treasure and all other gifts should be prepared and sent to the place of exchange by

20 Ramadan AH (19 October 1647) because it would be difficult for the Tatar envoys to wait for

a longer time. The khan also protested the decision of the Muscovite state to stop giving food and

beverage to couriers.162 Thereafter, the Muscovite state sent Timofej Xotunskij and Ivan

Stepankov as their hostages who would live in Crimea until the time of the next hostage

exchange and payment of tribute/gifts. They returned the old Tatar hostages to exchange them

with the new ones and received the Muscovite officials Karaulov and Akišev who would return

to Muscovy after spending more than two years as hostages in Crimea.163

Despite the renewed peace of autumn 1647, Muscovite-Crimean relations continued to be

dominated by disputes over the payment of the treasure and other tribute/gifts. In late February /

early March 1648, the khan and his entourage complained to the tsar that many Tatar mirzas and

dignitaries received poor quality and incomplete gifts.164 According to the Crimean leadership,

although Muscovy cheated the Tatars and thus undermined the peace, Islam Giray did not stop

friendly relations with Aleksej Mixajlovič and assigned Bulat Agha to go to the place of

exchange in order to get the treasure and the hostages from Muscovy. The khan demanded from

the tsar to procure and bring the unpaid treasure of two years to the place of exchange by the end

of May 1648. He stated that the Muscovite state delivered the payment of treasure only for two

years within six years between the Hidjri years of 1053 (22 March 1643-9 March 1644) and 1058

(27 January 1648-14 January 1649). Muscovy refused to pay tribute/gifts for 1644 and 1645

because the Tatars attacked the tsar’s domains in these years. While the Crimean leadership did

not explicitly express that it agreed to renounce its claims for the payment of treasure for two

years because the Tatars attacked the Muscovite territories in these years, Islam Giray agreed to

demand only the payment of tribute/gifts for two years only instead for four years. When Crimea

162 Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 20 September 1647 (20 Şa‘ban 1057), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 113]. 163 Reestr delam Krymskago, 119-20. 164 Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 26 February - 6 March 1648 (1st decade of Sefer 1058), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 114]; Nureddin Gazi Giray to to Aleksej Mixajlovič, March 1648 (March 1058), Kaçısaray [MdiKx, no. 115]; Sefer Gazi Agha to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 26 February - 25 March 1648 (Sefer 1058) [MdiKx, no. 116].

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requested the payment of incomplete treasure and gifts, Muscovy claimed that it delivered the

payment in accordance with the new treaty that they made with Hürremşah Mirza. Therefore the

Muscovite state sent less payment of tribute/gifts than the Crimean leadership expected. At this

point the khan informed the Muscovite leadership that Hürremşah Mirza was imprisoned for

exceeding his authority and insisted that the incomplete payment of treasure and gifts should be

delivered according to the registers that were prepared during the reign of Bahadır Giray. In his

reply to the khan, Aleksej Mixajlovič categorically objected to the accusations of the Tatars

about the payment of treasure and other gifts. According to him, the Muscovite officials brought

the treasure and all gifts completely and in good quality to the entourage of the khan and all other

Tatar dignitaries who were registered in the records of the treasure and gifts. The tsar also

insisted that the Muscovite state would provide provisions and accommodation for the envoys

and the couriers of only the khan, the kalgay and the nureddin.165

Competition for hegemony over the Nogays continued to be a contentious issue between Crimea

and Muscovy. In the 1630s, the Kalmyks increased their pressure on the Great Nogays and made

them continue their southward migration, moving from Astrakhan to the lands west of the Don

River and in the North Caucasus. During his journey in the Caucasus in 1666, the Ottoman

traveller, Evliya Çelebi, observed that several Nogay groups had separated from the Great

Nogays and migrated to the North Caucasus because of Kalmyk pressure.166 The Muscovites

tried to bring these Nogays back to the Astrakhan region and persuade the Little Nogays through

the mediation of the Kabardian lords to renounce their allegiance to the khan and migrate to the

lands subject to Muscovy.167 The Muscovites attained some success because some of the Little

Nogay mirzas shifted their allegiance to the tsar in 1645 and refused to participate in the

campaign of the nureddin against the Muscovite forces of Požarskij in 1646.168 Two years later,

the Muscovites convinced the Little Nogay mirza ‘Ali Xorošaev with his brothers and uluses to

renounce their allegiance to the Crimean khan and submit to Muscovite suzerainty.169 In

165 Aleksej Mixajlovič to Islam Giray, c. early 1648, Moscow (?) [MdiKx, no. 117]. 166 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, vol. 7, eds. Robert Dankoff, Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman (Istanbul: Yapıkredi Yayınları, 2003), 270-92. 167 Danijal Kidirnijazov and Zuxra Musaurova, Očerki istorii nogaycev XV-XVIII vv. (Maxačkala: Izdat. dom Narody Dagestana, 2003), 198. 168 The voevoda of Tersk Venediktko Obolenskoj’s report to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 20 December 1645 [Kabardino-russkie otnošenija v 16-18 vv., vol. 1 (Moscow, 1957), 265-6 (henceforth KRO)]; Venediktko Obolenskoj’s report to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 15 - 26 December 1646 [KRO, vol. 1, 278-9]. 169 Danijal Kidirnjazov, Nogaycy Dagestana i Severnogo Kavkaza (Maxačkala: ZAO Dagpress, 1998), 32-3.

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addition, while some groups of the Great Nogays joined the campaign of the nureddin in 1646,

they later restored their allegiance to Muscovy.170

The Muscovite policy aimed at gaining the allegiance of the Nogays was a threat to the

prerogative of the khans as the rulers of all Tatar and Nogay peoples that was reflected in their

titulature. The khan accused the tsar of writing letters to the mirzas of the Urmehmed Nogays

and sending one of his boyars and some Don Cossacks to persuade them to shift their allegiance

to Muscovy; the boyar was arrested and delivered to the Crimean leadership.171 The Urmehmed

Nogays originally belonged to the Great Nogays. In 1642, all of the Great Nogays, except the

Urmehmed Nogays, made an agreement with the Muscovite state and returned to their former

pastures around the Volga River. Thereupon, the Urmehmed Nogays were allowed by the former

khan Mehmed Giray to roam in the steppe outside Orkapı.172 When the khan reportedly

assembled his army at Orkapı to defend Crimea against an attack from the Commonwealth or

Muscovy, he ordered the Urmehmed Nogays to migrate to Crimea.173 However, the Urmehmed

Nogays allegedly objected to the khan’s order to go to the Crimean side of Orkapı and continued

to roam around the Moločna River; thereupon Islam Giray seized their women and children in

order to force them to go to Crimea.174 It is possible to surmise that the khan used the concerns

about campaign preparations of his northern neighbours as a pretext to force the Urmehmed

Nogays to live in Crimea and prevent them from renouncing their allegiance to Crimea.

In response to the accusation of the khan about flirtation between the Muscovite officials and the

Urmehmed Nogays, Aleksej Mixajlovič asked Islam Giray to send the imprisoned boyar back to

Moscow and promised to investigate the matter.175 Although the tsar did not take responsibility

for the incident, the reports of the Muscovite officials show that both the tsar and his predecessor

dispatched representatives to the mirzas of the Urmehmed Nogays and tried to convince them to

170 Kusainova, Russko-nogayskie otnošenija, 193. 171 Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 26 February - 6 March 1648 (1st decade of Sefer 1058), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 114]; Nureddin Gazi Giray to to Aleksej Mixajlovič, March 1648 (March 1058), Kaçısaray [MdiKx, no. 115]; Reestr delam Krymskago, 121. 172 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 357. 173 Report of the Don Cossacks to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 31 July 1646 [Donskie dela, vol. 2, 907]; report of the Don Cossacks to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 27 July 1646 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 3, 145]; Aleksej Mixajlovič to the Don Cossaks, August 1646 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 178]. 174 The oral testimony of the Tatar prisoner Džumali Dojunov, 16 August 1646 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 170]. 175 Aleksej Mixajlovič to Islam Giray, c. early 1648, Moscow (?) [MdiKx, no. 117].

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restore their allegiance to Muscovy. While some of the Urmehmed mirzas were allegedly

inclined to accept the Muscovite offer, other mirzas declined to restore their allegiance to

Muscovy, seized the envoys of the tsar and sent them to the khan.176 In short, it can be stated that

the Muscovite state could not separate the Urmehmed Nogays from Crimea.

Meanwhile, the Muscovite diplomacy was involved in negotiations with the Kalmyks so that

they would no longer be a threat to Muscovy. Konstantin Maksimov, a post-Soviet era historian

of Muscovite-Kalmyk relations, recounts that especially after the Muscovite voevodas of

Astrakhan and Samara launched an expedition against the Kalmyks in order to punish their

attempt to establish control over the Nogays and made them move to the east of the Yayik River,

the Kalmyk leaders sent envoys to submit under Muscovy in summer 1645. While the Kalmyk

envoys could not receive an audience with Mixail Fedorovič who was seriously ill and soon died,

the Muscovite state carried out negotiations with the Kalmyks to convince them to submit to the

tsar’s authority and channel Kalmyk attacks against Crimea. However, Muscovite-Kalmyk

negotiations of 1646 resulted in failure because of Muscovy’s unwillingness to favour the

Kalmyks over the Bashkirs over the possession of pastures in upper reaches of the Yayik.

Nonetheless, negotiations resumed between the parties in 1648 and the Muscovites reportedly

managed to convince the Kalmyks to promise to refrain from roaming in Bashkir lands, going to

war against Muscovite towns and regions, fighting against the Muscovite people and capturing

them. In return, the Kalmyks would be allowed to roam along the Yayik River and the Bashkirs

were ordered not to harm the Kalmyks.177 After years of negotiations, the Muscovites managed

to persuade the Kalmyks to limit their nomadizing to the steppes of the Yayik.178

As the Kalmyks also dispatched an embassy to the Don Cossacks to negotiate about their

campaign plans against Crimea and the Nogays, regardless of the refusal of the Don Cossacks to

176 The Don Cossack Ataman Panko Fedorov to Mixail Fedorovič, summer 1645 [AMG, vol. 2, 149]; report of the Don Cossacks to Mixail Fedorovič about Tatar affairs, early 1648 [AMG, vol. 2, 195-6]; report of the Don Atamans and Cossacks to Mixail Fedorovič about the relations with the Tatars, 15 June 1645 [Donskie dela, vol. 2, 654]; report of the Don Cossacks to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 5 Feburary 1648 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 813]; report of the Don Atamans and Cossacks to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 7 Feburary 1648 [Donskie dela, vol. 3, 827]. 177 Konstantin Maksimov, Kalmykia in Russia’s Past and Present National Policies and Administrative System (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2008), 40-1. 178 Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 95.

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join them, they crossed the Don River in February 1648 in order to attack the Nogays.179 While

the Urmehmed Nogays managed to escape to Crimea before the Kalmyks could catch them, the

Crimean Tatars reportedly thought that the Muscovite state played a part in the expedition of the

Kalmyks.180 Since the Kalmyks failed to proceed due to severe winter and could not find

anything to feed their horses in the steppe, they aborted the campaign and returned.181

In his letter to the Porte, Islam Giray reported about the Kalmyk expedition by stating that when

a certain part of the Great Nogays intending to avenge upon the Nogays who roamed around the

steppes of the Dnipro River brought some Kalmyks and stole horses from the Nogays beyond the

Moločna River, the Crimean Tatars set out to encounter the Kalmyks, but could not catch them

since they had already escaped. He added that since the Kalmyks did not have fixed dwellings, it

was impossible to seek revenge upon them. According to the khan, the Don Cossacks helped the

Kalmyks cross the Don River. Therefore the khan resolved to march to the Don River in order to

destroy the villages and forts of the Don Cossacks.182

1.4. Conclusion

During the first three and half years of his rule, Islam Giray was occupied with the rebellion of

the mirzas and the tension with the Commonwealth and Muscovy. King Władysław made every

effort to persuade his recalcitrant nobility to go to war with the Crimean Khanate and provoke

the Tatars by refusing to deliver the customary tribute/gifts and authorizing his warmongering

frontier magnates Aleksander Koniecpolski and Jeremi Wiśniowiecki to organize punitive

expeditions against the Tatars. In this situation the khan tried to reconcile with the

Commonwealth through diplomatic channels as he was restrained by the exhausting civil war

with the mirzas and the categorical prohibitions of the Porte. However, neither could the king

draw the Tatars into a war, nor could the khan make the Commonwealth resume the payment of

179 Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600-1711 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), 88. 180 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 394. 181 Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds, 88. 182 Islam Giray to an unnamed Ottoman official (probably the grand vizier), c. early 1648 [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, 14-12004 in Fevzi Kurtoğlu, “Kırım Hanlarının İlk Mektupları,” Belleten 3 (1941): 654-5].

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annual tribute/gifts through his successive embassies to the king and his entourage. The

Muscovite state was similarly adamant in opposing the demands of the Tatars for the delivery of

annual treasure to Crimea and reducing the size of Tatar missions to Muscovy. The Muscovites

also competed against Crimea for influence over the Nogays and even tried to reach a settlement

with the Kalmyks to instigate them against Crimea. However, in contrast to the Commonwealth,

Muscovy was more disposed to reach a settlement with Crimea. Therefore the khan made peace

with the tsar ending the de facto state of war between Crimea and Muscovy. Since Władysław

ignored the numerous calls of the khan to renew peace, it would be easier for Islam Giray to give

military help to Xmel’nyc’kyj in his struggle with the Commonwealth. In case the

Commonwealth protested against Crimea’s sending of forces to fight on the side of the Ukrainian

Cossacks, the khan could justify his action by referring to the king’s refusal to send unpaid

tribute/gifts payments, give a proper reception of Tatar embassies and restore good relations with

Crimea. Therefore Islam Giray would have the opportunity not only to avenge the unfriendly

attitude of the king against Crimea during the early phase of his reign, but also to pacify the

disobedient mirzas with whom he recently concluded a fragile peace and satisfy their increasing

demands to launch expeditions to compensate their losses because of epidemics and drought in

Crimea.

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Chapter 2

Crimean Involvement in the War between the Ukrainian Cossacks

and the Commonwealth (1648-1649)

The call for help by Hetman Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Khan Islam Giray at the early stage of his

struggle against the noble order in Polish-ruled Ukraine added a new dimension to the negative

atmosphere and deteriorating relations between Crimea and the Commonwealth. Although

Xmel’nyc’kyj appealed to the Commonwealth’s authorities to seek justice for unfair confiscation

of his property and mistreatment of his family members by the local nobles, he could not achieve

a satisfactory result and then raised the banner of rebellion.1 His call to rise against injustices and

repressive policies of the Commonwealth began to find a response among the Cossacks. Since

King Władysław and his entourage failed to fulfill the promise to restore the Cossacks their

ancient rights and liberties and authorize them to launch naval campaign in the Black Sea as a

part of the war plans against the Sublime Porte and Crimea, the Cossacks became more prone to

rebellion.2 As Xmel’nyc’kyj secured the support of the Cossacks and became their hetman at the

end of January 1648, he dispatched embassies to Crimea in order to request military help against

the authorities of the Commonwealth. In response, Islam Giray agreed to help the Cossacks.

This chapter aims to discuss Islam Giray’s involvement in the Cossack-Polish struggle from the

beginning of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion in early 1648 to the immediate aftermath of the battles of

Zbaraž and Zboriv in August 1649. First, it looks into how the khan developed a policy in

response to the hetman’s request for help against the Commonwealth and analyzes the Tatar

military contribution in the Cossack-Polish wars of 1648 and 1649. The chapter then examines

1 Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8: The Cossack Age 1626-1650, trans. by Marta D. Olynyk, ed. by Frank E. Sysyn (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2002), 316-66. 2 Frank Sysyn, “The Khmel’nyts’kyi Uprising: A Characterization of the Ukrainian Revolt,” Jewish History 17 (2003): 118.

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how the Porte perceived Xmel’nyc’kyj’s uprising and the participation of the Tatars in the

struggle between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth.

2.1. Early Relations between Islam Giray III and Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj: Was

the Khan and Ally or Suzerain of the Hetman?

There has been much written about how Xmel’nyc’kyj as the leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks

requested help from Khan Islam Giray and whether the hetman was an ally of the khan or his

subordinate. The Ukrainian chronicles of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries provided a basis

for the earlier historical studies with regard to these questions. According to the Eyewitness

Chronicle (Ukr. Litopys samovydcja), Xmel’nyc’kyj sent his envoys to the Crimean khan to be in

harmony (Ukr. zhoda) and brotherhood (Ukr. braterstvo).3 The early eighteenth century

chronicler Hryhorij Hrabjanka states that after destroying the garrisons of the Polish troops and

the German mercenaries in the Zaporižžja, Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched messengers to Islam Giray.4

However, the chronicler does not explain what the messengers demanded from the khan and

what sort of cooperation the hetman proposed to make between the Cossacks and the Tatars.

Another eighteenth century Ukrainian chronicler Samijlo Velyčko relates that the hetman

travelled to Crimea and negotiated personally with Islam Giray. According to him, after listening

to the request of the hetman for military support, the khan wanted to consult with his mirzas

about sending his army because he suspected that the Poles dispatched Xmel’nyc’kyj to Crimea

to pull the Tatars to Poland to be destroyed by the Polish army. However, the hetman managed to

secure Islam Giray’s promise to help under heavy conditions such as taking an oath of allegiance

and kissing the saber of the khan in the presence of the khan and the Tatar nobles and leaving his

son Tymiš as a hostage.5 Therefore, unlike the aforementioned chronicles, Velyčko recounts that

the hetman executed face-to-face negotiations with the khan and depicts the relationship between

the khan and the hetman as one between a suzerain and his vassal.

3 Litopys samovydcja, ed. Jaroslav Dzyra (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1971), 48. 4 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv: Hustyns’kyj, Samijla Velyčka, Hrabjanky, eds. Volodymyr Krekoten’, Valerij Ševčuk and Roman Ivančenko (Kyiv: Dnipro, 2006), 889. 5 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv, 223, 229-30.

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Nineteenth-century historians such as Nikolaj Kostomarov and Sergej Solov’ev repeated

Velyčko’s account in which Xmel’nyc’kyj traveled to Crimea and personally negotiated with

Islam Giray.6 A Polish contemporary of Kostomarov and Solov’ev, Karol Szajnocha also writes

that Xmel’nyc’kyj went to Crimea in secrecy to conclude agreement with the Tatars.7 In his

seminal work on Ukrainian-Rus’ history, Mykhailo Hrushevsky shows how historians were

misled by Velyčko’s account. On the basis of the Muscovite voevoda Semen Bolxovskij’s report,

he explains that the hetman sent two missions to Crimea to ask help against the Poles.8 Based on

his analysis, later historians have concurred that the hetman established his relations with Crimea

through his envoys. While Jac’ko Klyša headed the first Cossack mission to Crimea, Kindrat

Burljaj led the second one with the task of asking military help from Islam Giray.9 The late

twentieth century Polish historian Janusz Kaczmarczyk bolsters Hrushevsky’s argument by

bringing into play the testimony of Hacı Mehmed Senai’s chronicle on the reign of Islam Giray.

According to him, the conviction that Xmel’nyc’kyj went to Crimea and engaged direct talks

with Islam Giray arouse from historical studies that used the chronicles of Velyčko and the mid-

seventeenth century Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin.10

Before introducing the Crimean chronicler Senai’s account on how Xmel’nyc’kyj started

diplomatic relations with Islam Giray, it is necessary to outline how historians have interpreted

the relations between the hetman and the khan. Unlike Solov’ev who closely paraphrases

Velyčko’s account on how Xmel’nyc’kyj took an oath of allegiance by kissing the khan’s saber

and gave his son Tymiš as a hostage to the Tatars,11 Kostomarov states that Xmel’nyc’kyj

6 Nikolaj Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 9 of Sobranie sočinenij (St. Petersbug: Tipografija M. M. Stasjuleviča, 1904), 149-52; Sergej Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii, vol. 10 (St. Petersburg: Tovariščestvo Obščestvennaja Pol’za, 1890), 1562-3. 7 Karol Szajnocha, Dwa lata dziejów naszych, 1646, 1648, vol. 2 (L'viv, 1869), 24-5. 8 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 387-8. 9 Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj (L’viv: Vydavnyctvo Svit, 1990), 76; Theodore Mackiw, Xmel’nyččyna v tohočasnyx zaxidn’ojevropejs’kyx džerelax (Ostroh and New York: Ukrajins’ke istoryčne tovarystvo nacional’nyj universytet Ostroz’ka akademiia, 2007), 80; Ivan Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj sojuz 1648 r.,” in Nacional’no-vyzvol’na vijna ukrajins’koho narodu seredyny XVII stolittja, ed. Valerij Smolij (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Heneza, 1998), 82; Dymitri Zlepko, Der grosse Kosakenaufstand 1648 gegen die polnische Herrschaft (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1980), 26. 10 Janusz Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1988), 46-7; Miron Costin recounts how Xmel’nyc’kyj departed Čyhyryn for Perejaslav and then sought refuge with the Zaporozhian Cossacks. According to his account, the hetman went to Crimea in person and told the khan how the Commonwealth tried to provoke a war against Crimea. See Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau: Die Moldauische Chronik des Miron Costin, 1593-1661, ed. A. Armbruster (Graz, Wien and Köln: Verlag Styria, 1980), 174-5. 11 Sergej Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii, vol. 10, 1562.

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declared his willingness to overthrow Polish yoke and offered Islam Giray to conclude friendship

and perpetual alliance and fight for the Muslim faith.12 A contemporary of Kostomarov, Petr

Bucinskij explains that Xmel’nyc’kyj managed to secure the support of a powerful ally such as

the khan thanks to his well-planned and skillful diplomacy.13 Therefore, while by relying on

Velyčko, Solov’ev implicitly describes the hetman as the khan’s subordinate, the other two

nineteenth century historians see the hetman as a more or less a partner of the khan.

Many of the later historians have continued to describe the relations between the hetman and the

khan as essentially an alliance. According to Bohdan Baranowski, the relationship between Islam

Giray and Xmel’nyc’kyj reminded him of the previous alliances with the Cossacks during the

times of Şahin, Canıbeg and Inayet Giray.14 Similarly, Aleksej Novosel’skij explains that

Xmel’nyc’kyj appealed to the Crimean khan at the beginning of 1648 proposing to conclude an

alliance against the Poles and that the formation of this new Cossack-Crimean alliance resembled

the alliance between the Cossacks and the Tatars during the reign of Mehmed Giray and Şahin

Giray in the 1620s.15 In their works on the Cossack rebellion of 1648, Volodymyr Holobuc’kyj

and Ivan Kryp”jakevyč also define the relations between the hetman and the khan as an alliance

(Ukr. and Rus. sojuz).16 Zbigniew Wójcik describes the Cossack-Crimean cooperation of 1648 as

a temporary alliance between two bitter enemies.17 However, in another study he portrays the

Tatars as half allies and half protectors of the Cossacks.18

If we turn to a source contemporary to these event, the Crimean chronicler of the reign of Islam

Giray, Hacı Mehmed Senai, describes the relationship between the khan and the hetman as the

one between a suzerain and his vassal. According to him, while the Polish nobles were about to

12 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 9, 150. 13 Pjotr Bucinskij, O Bogdane Xmel’nickom (Xarkiv: Tipografija M. Zil’berberga, 1882), 42. 14 Bohdan Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie w latach 1632–1648, (Łódź, 1949), 203; Bohdan Baranowski,“Geneza sojuszu kozacko-tatarskiego z 1648 r,” Przegląd Historyczny 37 (1948): 286-7. 15 Aleksej Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami v pervoj polovine XVII veka (Moscow: Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1948), 395-6. 16 Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 148; Volodymyr Holobuc’kyj (Vladimir Golobuckij), Diplomatičeskaja istorija osvoboditel’noj vojny ukrajinskogo naroda 1648-1654 gg. (Kyiv: Gosudarstvennoe izd. političeskoj literatury USSR, 1962), 105. 17 Zbigniew Wójcik, Dzikie Pola w Ogniu: o Kozaczyźnie w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1968), 156. 18 Zbigniew Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska w okresie wojen drugiej połowy XVII wieku 1648-1699,” in Historia Dyplomacji Polskiej, vol. 2: 1572-1795, ed. Zbigniew Wójcik (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982), 182.

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engage in hostility with the Cossacks and were assembling an army to march against and destroy

the Cossacks, Xmel’nyc’kyj sent his envoys to render homage (‘arz-ı ‘ubudiyyet, “presentation

of slavery”) to the khan and complain about the Commonwealth. The chronicler presents

Xmel’nyc’kyj as offering to become a vassal of the khan through his envoys that came to Crimea

in order to obtain help against the Commonwealth. In Senai’s words the khan showed his mercy

(merhamet buyurmak) to the Cossacks because it was customary to forgive those who despite

their previous hostility and sins sought refuge at the door of the great Chinggisid descendants

(der-i devlet-medar-ı Cengiziyane iltica edenlerün her ne kadar ‘adavet-i sabıka ve cerime-i

salifesi dahi olursa).19 Senai also recounts that during the course of the Cossack-Polish wars of

1648-1649, the hetman performed a homage ceremony (‘ubudiyyet merasimi) before the khan20

and dispatched an embassy to Islam Giray conveying his message that he was ready to present

his homage to (‘arz-ı ‘ubudiyyet) and serve for the khan.21 In this respect the Crimean chronicler

repetitively portrays Xmel’nyc’kyj as a subordinate of the khan and therefore emphasizes that

the relationship between the Tatars and the Cossacks was not a case of cooperation between two

equal partners.

It is possible to find information in the accounts of the Ottoman chroniclers Katip Çelebi and,

following him, Mustafa Naima about the beginning of the relations between the khan and the

hetman. Starting with a brief description of the Cossacks and their hostile relations with the

Ottomans, the chroniclers referred to the report of the khan’s envoy, who arrived in Istanbul on

25 April 1648 (1st day of Rebi‘ülahir 1058). The Cossacks lived in a place called Yellow Reeds

(Sarı Kamış), sailed in the Black Sea with their vessels (şaykas), raided and ravaged the Ottoman

shores, and fought against the Ottoman army at Xotyn’. Being subjects of the Polish monarchy,

the Cossacks were dispatched by the reigning king allegedly to help the Venetians in the war

with the Ottomans but failed to pay their salaries and provide provisions. In addition, the

Commonwealth asked the Cossacks to pay some unjustified extraordinary taxes and betrayed

them on several occasions. Eventually, the Cossacks renounced their obedience to the king and

ordered two of their leading men to go to Crimea in order to declare that they severed ties with

19 Hacı Mehmed Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja III, ed. Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, with additional commentary by Olgierd Górka and Zbigniew Wójcik (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1971), tx. 17-8, tr. 101. 20 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 27, tr. 109. 21 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 40, tr. 119.

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the Commonwealth and ask for protection from the khan. They also promised to serve with their

souls and heads for Islam in future wars and requested the khan to accept their solemn oath and

take hostages from them as a guarantee against the violation of the solemn oath. Then Islam

Giray treated the Cossacks very respectfully and accepted their oath.22

The mid-seventeenth century Tatar poet Can-Muhammed Efendi’s work on Islam Giray’s

expeditions in 1648-1649 also presents an account on the course of events leading to the arrival

of the Cossack envoys in Crimea. According to it, the king summoned the Diet where he asked

his nobles to declare a war against the Tatars. He supported his plan of war by claiming that the

treasury had enough money to finance the war, and the Commonwealth would receive support

from Muscovy, the Germans, and the French. While the Diet agreed to the plans of the king,

Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki, who is referred to by Can-Muhammed Efendi as the

commander of the fortress of Bar, suggested to postpone the campaign against the Tatars for one

year in order to pacify the Cossacks first. Receiving authorization from the Diet, Potocki

assembled 80,000 troops to march against the Cossacks. Upon the news about Potocki’s

preparations, Xmel’nyc’kyj also gathered a council where it was decided to turn to the Tatars for

help. Cossack envoys came to Togay Beg23 at Orkapı whereupon he joined them on their way to

Islam Giray in Bagçasaray. When the envoys made known the Cossack request, the khan agreed

to provide help. The Cossack envoys even expressed their desire to accept the Tatar faith, if only

the Tatars would help them.24 While it is not fully clear what Can-Muhammed Efendi meant by

the readiness of the Cossacks to accept the Tatar faith; perhaps rather than accept Islam the poet

was referring to the readiness of the Cossacks to be a vassal of the khan in return for coming to

their help against the Commonwealth?

22 Zeynep Aycibin, “Katip Çelebi, Fezleke: Tahlil ve Metin” (PhD dissertation, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, 2007), 1033-4; Naima Mustafa Efendi, Târih-i Naîmâ: Ravzatü'l-Hüseyn fî hulâsati ahbâri'l-hâfikayn, ed. Mehmet İpşirli (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2007), 1139. Abdülgaffar Kırımi recounts that a valiant Cossack called Xmel’nyc’kyj sought refuge with Islam Giray, and the khan gave him the rank of hetman. While there is no other source to confirm whether Xmel’nyc’kyj sought the approval of the khan to become the leader of the Cossacks, it is possible to infer that Kırımi saw Xmel’nyc’kyj as a subordinate of Islam Giray. However, it is necessary to be cautious about Kırımi’s account because he mistakenly stated that Xmel’nyc’kyj renounced his obedience to Muscovy rather than the Commonwealth. Abdülgaffar Kırımi, Umdet üt-tevarih, ed. Necib Asım, supplement to Türk Tarih Encümeni Mecmuası (Istanbul: AH 1343), 124. 23 According to Hrushevsky, Togay Beg as a noble of the Şirin tribe was the beg of Orkapı. See Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 391. 24 Osman Akçokraklı, “Tatars’ka poema Džan-Muxamedova: pro poxid Isljam Gireja II (III) spilno z Bohdanom Xmel’nyc’kym na Polšču 1648 - 49 r.r.,” Sxidnyj svit 1993 (1): 136.

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Several other historical sources that concur with the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles in defining

the hetman as a subordinate of the khan are rare. The most prominent of these is the letter of the

Muscovite dignitaries Aleksej Trubeckoj, Grigorij Puškin and Nazarej Čistoj to the Ruthenian

magnate and official of the Polish Crown, Adam Kysil’, on 10 March 1648. According to this,

the Muscovite envoys wrote from Crimea to the tsar’s court that four Cossacks went from the

Dnipro to Crimea and paid obeisance (bit’ čelom) to the khan and asked him to accept them as

his subjects (xolopostvo). The report continues that the Cossack envoys promised to be under

perpetual service of the khan and help him in any war after defeating the Commonwealth. Islam

Giray rewarded each envoy with a robe of honour (kaftan), kept them in his company in

Bagçasaray for a week and provided horses for their return to Ukraine.25 It is difficult to find

further examples from other historical sources recounting Xmel’nyc’kyj’s attempt to become a

vassal of Islam Giray.

According to Ivan Storoženko, the joint struggle of the Cossacks and Tatar troops against the

common enemy (i.e., the Commonwealth) promoted the formation of a “brotherhood in arms”

(Ukr. bratstvo po zbroji).26 In their works on Xmel’nyc’kyj, Valerij Smolij and Valerij

Stepankov describe the relations between the hetman and the khan as an alliance (Ukr. sojuz).27

Taras Čuxlib points out that while the relations of the Ukrainian Cossacks with the Polish kings,

the Muscovite tsars and the Swedish monarchs were defined broadly with the words of

protectorate, their relations with the Crimean khans were described as “brotherly alliance” (Ukr.

braters’kyj sojuz).28 Therefore it is possible to state that post-Soviet Ukrainian historians

maintain to describe the relations between Xmel’nyc’kyj and Islam Giray as the one between two

equal partners.

While the hetman possibly referred to the khan as a superior according to diplomatic courtesy

and protocol, this does not necessarily mean that Xmel’nyc’kyj wanted to become a vassal of

25 Aleksej Trubeckoj, Grigorij Puškin and Nazarej Čistoj to Adam Kysil’, 10 March 1648 [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1861), 180 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]; in Muscovite chancery, a servant should address his superior with “čelom biti.” Source: Nancy S. Kollman, “Ritual and Social Drama at the Muscovite Court,” Slavic Review 45 (1986): 498. 26 Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj,” 88. 27 Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret (Kyiv: Lybid’, 1995), 88, 94-5; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj (Kyiv: Vydavnyčy dim Al’ternatyvy, 2003), 103. 28 Taras Čuxlib, Kozaky ta janyčary: Ukrajina u xrystyjans’ko-musul’mans’kyx vijnax 1500-1700 rr. (Kyiv: Kyevo-Mohyljans’ka akademija, 2010), 28.

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Islam Giray. The Ottoman and Crimean chronicles may have attempted to show the khan as the

suzerain of the Cossacks and put the words of submission into the hetman’s mouth in order to

ascribe priority to the role of the khan and the Tatars in the Cossack-Polish war. However, since

the Ukrainian Cossacks were very powerful actors, it would be unlikely that they would become

willing and obedient subjects. In addition, if Islam Giray wanted the Cossacks to remain his

subjects as a provision of the Treaty of Zboriv as Senai recounts, then why did the king agreed to

pay salaries to the Cossacks? Therefore the chronicler’s account depicting Xmel’nyc’kyj and the

Cossacks as Islam Giray’s vassals should be taken with caution.

After agreeing to send an army to help the Cossacks against the Commonwealth, Islam Giray

appointed Togay Beg, the governor of Orkapı, as the commander of that army. Much has been

speculated about the decision of the khan to choose Togay Beg for the mission of helping the

Cossacks. According to Hrabjanka, recalling how his troops were defeated by the Cossacks

exactly a year ago, Togay Beg initially remained reluctant to help Xmel’nyc’kyj. Later, counting

on success, Togay Beg agreed to get involved in the Cossack-Polish conflict.29 Contrary to

Hrabjanka, the contemporary Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin states that Togay Beg

volunteered to command the Tatar army and advised the khan to say, presumably should the

Porte inquire why Tatars were cooperating with the Cossacks, that some Nogays escaped without

his knowledge.30 In other words it was Togay Beg, who encouraged the khan to become

involved in the Cossack-Polish struggle and suggested that as a safeguard against Ottoman

reaction he resort to the customary excuse of the Crimean khans that they could not control their

nomadic subjects.

On the basis of the eighteenth century scholar Petro Symonovskyj’s work,31 Kostomarov states

that Islam Giray planned to send his disobedient subject Togay Beg in order to have the excuse

that the attack made without his consent and ordered Togay Beg march with Xmel’nyc’kyj

instead of declaring war upon the Commonwealth.32 Bucinskij explains that since the Ottoman-

29 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv, 889. 30 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau: Die Moldauische Chronik des Miron Costin, 1593-1661, ed. A. Armbruster (Graz, Wien and Köln: Verlag Styria, 1980), 175-76. 31 Kratkoe opisanie o kozackom malorossijskom narode i voennyx ego delax, sobrannoe iz raznyx istorij inostrannyx: nemeckoj – Bišinga, francuzskoj – Ševal’e, latinskoj – Bezol’di, i rukopicej russkix črez bunčukovago tovarišča Petra Simonoskago 1765 (Moscow, 1847). 32 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 9, 151.

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Polish Peace of 1646 tied his hands, the khan could not himself go on campaign without the

permission of the Porte.33 Thus if the Cossack-Tatar armies failed against the enemy or the

Ottoman state reproached Crimea for attacking the Commonwealth, the khan could place the

blame on Togay Beg and other unruly subjects.34 It was also an opportunity to send Togay Beg

away from Crimea because he was a leading figure of the recent revolt of the tribal nobility

against the khan.35 It was not also clear that the Cossacks were powerful enough to fight against

the Polish forces.36 Under these circumstances, Islam Giray could secure himself from being

involved in a risky war against the Commonwealth and would be able to undermine a strong and

unruly mirza such as Togay Beg’s influence in Crimean affairs.

Islam Giray was not the first khan who appointed Togay Beg to lead an expedition against the

Commonwealth. According to Hrushevsky, the previous khan, Mehmed Giray IV (r. 1641-4),

preferred not to head the Tatar army on a campaign to Ukraine so as not to run asunder of

Ottoman policy of maintaining peace with the Commonwealth. Therefore he appointed Togay

Beg to command the Tatar army in the campaign that resulted in a humiliating defeat at Oxmativ

in late January 1644.37 However, it should be stated that both Mehmed Giray and Islam Giray’s

decision in appointing Togay Beg was not solely related to the concerns of the Crimean khans

about Ottoman reaction. It was also related to his position as the governor of the strategic outpost

of Orkapı. Located at the entrance of Crimea, Orkapı played an important role in the defence of

the peninsula. It was also of use for the khans in communicating with the Nogays and the Tatars

who wandered in the steppe outside the peninsula. Describing its importance, the Ottoman

traveller Evliya Çelebi calls Orkapı the indestructible great rampart (sedd-i sedid) of Crimea.

According to him, Crimea consisted of forty governorships (begliks) and the governorship of

Orkapı was the most powerful of these. He also reports that the governor of Orkapı had 3,000

troops, who carried quivers, wore armour and acted as the vanguard of the Tatar army at

33 Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 42. 34 Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 105. 35 Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 46-7. 36 George Vernadsky, Bohdan, Hetman of Ukraine (New Haven: Yale University Press; London : H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1941), 37-8; Edmund I. Chrząszcz, “Żółte Wody,” in XI. Sprawozdanie Dyrekcji Państwowego Gimnazjum w Jaworowie za rok szkolny 1929/1930, 11. 37 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 264.

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campaigns.38 The Crimean Tatars also used Orkapı as a gathering point for major expeditions.39

For all these reasons, Islam Giray assigned Togay Beg as the commander of the advance units to

help the Cossacks.

There has also been much speculation as to why Islam Giray accepted Xmel’nyc’kyj’s request of

help against the Commonwealth. According to Velyčko and Hrabjanka, since the

Commonwealth refused to send an agreed sum of payment, the khan and the Tatars readily

agreed to provide support to the Cossacks against the Commonwealth.40 Szajnocha explains that

Xmel’nyc’kyj having difficulty in finding outside help turned to Crimea and benefited from the

resentment of the khan for the failure of the Commonwealth in paying tribute/gifts for several

years.41 In similar vein, Kostomarov referring to an anonymous source states that that the khan

was willing to help the hetman because the Poles did not pay tribute to Crimea. He also points

out that the Cossack rebellion of 1648 was of benefit to Crimea because the Cossacks as the

erstwhile enemies of the Tatars reconciled with them and asked for help. Therefore not only the

Tatars would be freed from the menace of their former Cossack adversaries, but also the

Cossacks opened the way to plunder the Commonwealth. In this respect, an expedition against

the Commonwealth seemed to be less risky than the previous ones.42

Later historians also bring up these two issues as the motives of the khan in coming to the aid of

the hetman.43 Some historians add the desire of the khan to plunder the Commonwealth domains

as another motive of the Tatars to take sides with the Cossacks. In this regard, the harvest failure

and the famine made the Tatars think about attacking a neighbouring land in order to compensate

their losses and Islam Giray wanted to appease the mirzas by allowing them to plunder the

Commonwealth under the pretext of helping the Cossacks.44 As discussed in the previous

38 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, vol. 7, eds. Robert Dankoff, Yücel Dağlı and Seyit Ali Kahraman (Istanbul: Yapıkredi Yayınları, 2003), 198, 229. 39 Leslie Collins, “The Military Organization and Tactics of the Crimean Tatars during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, eds. V. J. Parry and M. E. Yapp (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press. 1975), 264. 40 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv, 229, 889. 41 Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 25. 42 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 9, 150-1; Nikolaj Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10 of Sobranie sočinenij (St. Petersbug: Tipografija M. M. Stasjuleviča, 1904), 254. 43 Baranowski,”Geneza sojuszu kozacko-tatarskiego,” 287.; Baranowski, Stosunki polsko-tatarskie, 203; Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 76; Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 46. 44 Mykola Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji Ukrajiny, vol. 4 (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Akademiji Nauk URSR, 1940), 40; Igor’ Grekov, Vladimir Koroljuk and Il’ja Miller, Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej v 1654 (Moscow:

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chapter, the khan managed to conclude a temporary truce with the rebellious mirzas in autumn

1645 by offering them to make a campaign against Muscovy. As the khan reconciled with the

mirzas again in early 1648, envoys from Crimea set out to Istanbul to ask permission to mount an

expedition against the Commonwealth. Therefore, from the perspective of the khan, an alliance

with the Cossacks would be a good opportunity to make his rebellious nobles forget the recent

civil war and their grievances against his rule.

On the basis of the Muscovite reports from Crimea, Novosel’skij explains the origins of the

khan’s involvement in the Cossack rebellion and thus supports the argument that the desire to

plunder the Commonwealth contributed to the decision of the Crimean leadership to agree to

help Xmel’nyc’kyj. Novosel’skij maintains that when the Cossack embassy visited Bagçasaray

to ask for help against the Commonwealth, the Porte requested Islam Giray to send troops to help

the Ottoman forces in the war against Venice over Crete. Accordingly, the khan held a council

with his entourage and the mirzas in order to discuss whether to go to Crete in accordance with

the Ottoman order or to mount a campaign to Ukraine. Eventually the Tatars decided to reject the

Ottoman request on the grounds of prevalent famine and poverty in Crimea. Novosel’skij

considers that Islam Giray’s refusal to join the Ottoman campaign against Venice was

reminiscent of the similar behaviour of the former khan Inayet Giray (r. 1635-7) with regard to

the Ottoman campaign against the Safavid Iran. Both Islam Giray and Inayet Giray were

compelled by their nobility not to comply with the Ottoman campaign decree. The mirzas also

encouraged Islam Giray to accept Xmel’nyc’kyj’s request for help against the Commonwealth.45

It is plausible that the mirzas considered going to war in the nearby Commonwealth as being

easier and more profitable than participating in the more distant Ottoman-Venetian war.

Holobuc’kyj argues that Xmel’nyc’kyj in fact compelled Islam Giray to conclude an alliance

with the Cossacks. He dispatched an embassy to Crimea and disclosed the royal charter proving

the intention of the king to attack Crimea. Then the envoys put two options before the khan:

Gosdarstvennoe izdatel’stvo političeskoj literatury, 1954), 37-8; Smolij and Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 94; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 103; Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 104; Borys Florja, “Osmanskaja imperija, Krym i strany Vostočnoj Evropy vo vtoroj polovine 30-x – 40-x gg. XVII v.,” in G. Litavrin, L. Semenova, S. Oreškova and B. Florja, eds. Osmanskaja imperija i strany central’noj, vostočnoj i jugo-vostočnoj Evropy v XVII v., vol. 1 (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk ISB, 1998), 172; Brian Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500 – 1700 (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), 104. 45 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 395.

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either the Tatars would help the Cossacks or they would be exposed to the joint attacks of the

Cossacks and the Commonwealth. Islam Giray half-heartedly preferred the first option.46 In

Holobuckyj’s view, the khan had no choice other than agreeing to help the Cossacks. At the

same time, the author states that the khan expected a successful alliance with the Cossacks would

reduce his dependence on the Ottoman Empire. Referring to the abovementioned analysis of

Novosel’skij, Holobuc’kyj also claims that the alliance with the Cossacks emboldened the khan

to refuse to send troops to Venice.47 Like Holobuc’kyj, Oleksandr Halenko surmises that Islam

Giray had long term plans in connection with his decision to help the hetman as he planned to

take both Ukraine and Moldavia under his control, and then restore the former lands of the

Golden Horde at the expense of Muscovy.48 However, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do

not provide information to verify or refute these arguments about Islam Giray’s possible motives

in agreeing to support Xmel’nyc’kyj. They only refer to the so-called benign nature of the khan

as his motivation to help the Cossacks.

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s decision to establish close relations with the Tatars and seek their military aid

played an important role in his successes against the Commonwealth. This decision not only

became a milestone in eastern European history but also made the hetman’s rebellion more

successful than former Cossack uprisings.49 Beyond gaining the support of the Tatars as a

psychological asset in his struggle, the hetman certainly had a number of reasons to turn to the

Tatars. Firstly, as many scholars have pointed out, by securing the support of the khan, the

hetman planned to protect his rear against possible Tatar raids from the south, forestall a possible

alliance between Crimea and the Commonwealth and thus make it possible for the Cossacks to

avoid waging a two-front war.50 Secondly, Xmel’nyc’kyj aimed to support his infantry-based

46 Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 96. 47 Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 105-6. 48 O. I. Halenko, “Dyplomatija Kryms’koho xanatu seredyna XV st.-1783,” in Narysy z istoriji dyplomatiji Ukrajiny, eds. O. I. Halenko, Je. Je. Kamins’kyj and M. V. Kirsenko (Kyiv: Vydavnyčy dim Al’ternatyvy, 2001), 253. 49 Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 104; Frank Sysyn, Between Poland and the Ukraine: the Dilemma of Adam Kysil, 1600-1653 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 145. 50 Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 27; Vernadsky, Bohdan, 84; Wójcik, Dzikie Pola, 156; Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 91-7; Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 76, 148; Kučernjuk, Džerela pro, 71; Volodymyr Serhijčuk, Armija Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho (Kyiv: Ahrarna nauka, 1996), 104, 106; E. M. Apanovyč, “Pobedy ukrainskogo naroda nad Pol’sko-šljaxetskimi vojskami na načal’nom etape osvoboditel’noj vojny 1648g.,” in Vossoedinenije Ukrainy s Rossiej 1654-1954, sbornik statej, eds. A. I. Baranovič, L. S. Gaponenko, I. B. Grekov, K. G. Guslistyj (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954), 151; A. Agejev and E. Ustinov, “Osvoboditel’naja vojna Ukrainskogo naroda pod rukovodstvom Bogdana Xmel’nickogo v 1648-1654 gg.,” Voenno istoričeskij žurnal 1 (1979): 21; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “Stanovlennja dyplomatyčnoji služby

75

army with Tatar cavalry against the Polish forces that consisted of sizable number of mounted

soldiers.51 Since the Cossacks did not have enough horses to maintain large cavalry units, their

army was dominated by the infantry and only the reconnaissance units were cavalry.52 The

observations of the seventeenth century French military engineer Guillaume de Beauplan support

these opinions. According to him, while the Cossacks were capable musketeers and seafarers,

they were not among the greatest horsemen. He also wrote that while 100 Cossack infantry in

their closed camp (tabor) could resist 1,000 or more Tatars and Poles, he had witnessed how two

thousand of the best Cossack troops could be defeated by 200 Polish cavalry.53 In the view of

Storoženko, since the infantry-based armies were not suitable to organize rapid offensives

against their adversaries, the Cossacks were obliged to remain in defensive position against the

Polish cavalry. Therefore the lack of a sizable cavalry played some role in the unsuccessful

rebellions of the Cossacks in 1637 and 1638.54 Accordingly Xmel’nyc’kyj expected to overcome

this disadvantage of the Cossacks by bringing allied Tatar cavalry into the battlefield. The Tatar

cavalry, though poorly armed, were good raiders encircling small groups of enemies, ravaging

enemy carts, and causing fear among the Polish troops.55

Thirdly, while Xmel’nyc’kyj saw that the Cossacks could not defeat the Commonwealth without

outside help,56 at the outset of his revolt he could not find assistance from other external powers.

The khan was the only actor who was willing to provide military support. At this point, the

Ukrajins’koji deržavy ta pryncypy jiji funkcionuvannja u roky nacional’noji revoljuciji,” in Istorija Ukrajins’koho kozactva, vol. 1, eds. V. A. Smolij, O. A. Bačyns’ka, O. I. Huržij and V. M. Matjax (Kyiv: Kyjevo-Mohyljans’ka akademija, 2006), 344-5; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji dyplomatyčnoji služby. Zovnišnja polityka urjadu B. Xmel’nyc’koho (1648-1657),” in Narysy z istoriji dyplomatiji Ukrajiny, eds. S. V. Vidnjans’kyj, L. V. Hurbers’kyj; B. I. Humenjuk, A.M. Zlenko (Kyiv: Vydavnyčyj dim Al’ternatyvy, 2001), 137. 51 Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji, vol. 4, 40; Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 76; Ivan Storoženko, “Vojenna doktryna Bohdana Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho (1648 – 1652 rr.),” in Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj ta joho doba, ed. V.A. Smolij (Kyiv: Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, 1996), 62; Larysa Pricak, Osnovni mižnarodni dohovory Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho 1648-1657rr. (Xarkiv: Akta, 2003), 53, 55-6; Theodore Mackiw, “Der ukrainisch-polnische Friedensvertrag von Zboriv in der deutschen Fassung von 1649 und seine Vorgeschichte,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 42 (1993): 24; Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 137. 52 Jurij Tys-Kroxmaljuk, Boji Xmel’nyc’koho: vijs’kovo-istoryčna studija (Munich: Vyd. Bratstva kol. Voljakiv 1-oji Ukr. dyviziji UNA, 1954), 28; Ivan Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1: Voejenni diji 1648-1652 (Dnipropetrovs’k: Vydavnyctvo Dnipropetrovs’koho deržavnoho universytetu, 1996), 95. 53 Guillaume le Vasseur, Sieur de Beauplan. A Description of Ukraine, Ed. and trans. Andrew B. Pernal and Dennis F. Esar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1993), 13. 54 Storoženko, “Vojenna doktryna Bohdana,” 62; Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj,” 82-3; Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1, 287. 55 Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 148. 56 Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 168.

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hetman had no alternative other than turning to the Tatars. As the Ukrainian Cossacks shared

Orthodox faith with the Muscovites, the tsar would seem to be an ideal source of help against

Catholic Commonwealth. Accordingly Xmel’nyc’kyj twice petitioned Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovič

requesting him to send troops to help the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Commonwealth and, as

a pious Orthodox sovereign, extend protection over Ukraine.57 In his response to the hetman, the

tsar expressed his pleasure with the hetman’s promise to serve him in return for sending

Muscovite forces to march against the Polish armies. However, he refused to dispatch forces

against the Commonwealth on the grounds that he and his father and predecessor, Tsar Mixail

Fedorovič, concluded peace with the Commonwealth that they could not violate.58 In a pamphlet

devoted to the anniversary of the “reunification” of Ukraine with Russia, the Soviet historians

Igor’ Grekov, Vladimir Koroljuk and Il’ja Miller speculate that one of the reasons for Muscovy’s

reluctance to accommodate the appeals of the hetman was that Crimea and the Porte would react

to a possible Muscovite-Ukrainian rapprochement by concluding an alliance with the

Commonwealth.59 In similar vein, Kučernjuk surmises that if the Muscovite state had intervened

in the Cossack-Polish conflict, Sweden, Crimea and the Ottoman Empire may have taken into

action to prevent Muscovy from gaining becoming too powerful.60

While the Orthodox hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia also had traditionally good relations

with the Commonwealth, they had problems with the Ukrainian Cossacks thanks to interventions

of the latter in their lands. Therefore the Danubian rulers preferred the Commonwealth over

Xmel’nyc’kyj. The seventeenth century Orthodox clergy and traveller Paul of Aleppo recounts

that while the hetman asked help from the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu and the Wallachian

hospodar Matei Basarab to liberate the Orthodox Cossacks from the slavery under the Jews,

Armenians and Poles, these two Danubian rulers preferred to approach the Poles instead of

fighting for the Orthodox faith.61

57 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 8 June 1648, 3 May 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 207-8, 309]; for English translation of the hetman’s letters to the tsar, see A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, vol. 1, Early Times to the Late Seventeenth Century, eds. George Vernadsky, Ralph Fisher Jr., Alan Ferguson, Andrew Lossky and Sergei Pushkarev (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1972), 296. 58 Aleksej Mixajlovič to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 13 June 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 320-1]; for English translation of the tsar’s letter to the hetman, see A Source Book, 296-7. 59Grekov, Koroljuk and Miller, Vossoedinenie Ukrainy, 54. 60 Kučernjuk, Džerela pro, 40-1. 61 Paul of Aleppo, The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, vol. 1, trans. F. C. Belfour (London, 1836), 173.

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Čuxlib states that Xmel’nyc’kyj turned to Crimea and the Porte for support since at the

beginning of the Cossack rebellion he had no hope of receiving military help from Muscovy or

other foreign powers. According to him, while some Cossack officers were not ready for such a

rapid turn of events and remained wary of any Cossack-Tatar rapprochement, the conclusion of

alliance with Crimea was a strategic victory of the Cossacks because the hetman needed to

establish relations with Crimea in order to approach the Ottomans. As the neighbouring

Ukrainian lands were in the sphere of influence of the Crimean khans, realistically Xmel’nyc’kyj

could develop relations with the Porte only at the initiative/recommendation of Islam Giray.62 It

can be inferred from Čuxlib’s words that another possible motive of the hetman for asking help

from the khan was related to his plans to develop relations with the Ottomans.

It has also been pointed out that Xmel’nyc’kyj’s experience with the Turco-Tatar world

facilitated his relations with the Tatars and the Porte. The chronicler Hrabjanka relates that

Xmel’nyc’kyj fell into the hands of the Tatars at the battle of Ţuţora in 1620 and spent two years

in captivity before a redemption fee was paid to obtain his release.63 In his letter to King

Władysław on 15 August 1649, Xmel’nyc’kyj also spoke of his two year bitter captivity and

release from captivity as a favour from God.64 In his dissertation on the early phase of the

Cossack rebellion, the nineteenth-century German historian Franz Nuoffer claims that

Xmel’nyc’kyj became friends with his future ally Islam Giray during his captivity.65 George

Vernadsky also speculates that Bohdan turned an unfortunate situation such as captivity into his

advantage and learned Turkish making him able to have personal communication with Ottoman

envoys and the Crimean khan. He also found the opportunity to become familiar with Ottoman

political life.66 In similar vein, Kryp”jakevyč surmises that during his captivity Bohdan

established contacts with influential figures who would later help him in his negotiations with the

62 Taras Čuxlib, “‘Cisar turec’kyj dozvoljaje kozac’komu vijs’ku ta joho deržavi plavaty po Čornomu morju...’: polityčni vidnosyny ukrajins’kyx het’maniv z sultanom Mehmedom IV Avdžy,” Ukrajina v Central’no-Sxidnij Evropi 9-10 (2010): 69. 63 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv, 885. 64 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Jan Kazimierz, 15 August 1649 [Michałowski, wojskiego lubelskiego a później kasztelana bieckiego Księga Pamiętnicza (1647–1655), ed. Antoni Helcel (Kraków, 1864), 431-2]. 65 Franz Nuoffer, Die erste phase aufstandes der kosaken unter Chmielnicki in den jahren 1648-1649 (Leipzig, Druck von Alexander Edelmann, 1869), 24. 66 Vernadsky, Bohdan, 17.

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Porte.67 While there are no sources be it Naima or other stating that Xmel’nyc’kyj and Islam

Giray previously knew one another, say in Istanbul, it is possible that the hetman used his

experience of captivity to facilitate relations with Turco-Tatar world.

The Ottoman and Crimean chronicles present an interesting as well as controversial account on

the captivity of the hetman and his relations with the khan. According to Naima, Bohdan was the

prisoner of a dockyard master in the Kasımpaşa district of Istanbul, but he managed to escape

with some Cossack fellows to his country. Later, Xmel’nyc’kyj informed Islam Giray about his

willingness to serve for Islam, performed the evening prayer with the khan and recited Quran in

his presence. Therefore the hetman gained the confidence of the khan. However, after his

Cossack followers learned about his conversion to Islam, they rebelled and attempted to murder

him. Accordingly, he built a church and performed the rituals of Orthodox Christianity in order

to dissipate the suspicion of the Cossacks.68 Hrushevsky considers Naima’s account on

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s life under Ottoman captivity as being unreliable, full of “fantastic and

implausible details.”69 In addition to Naima, Senai speaks of Bohdan’s affection for Islam

referring to him as the commander of the Dnipro Cossacks (Özi Kazağının serdar-ı serefrazı)

who is favourably inclined to Islam and even expressed his intention to convert.70

On the basis of the seventeenth century Polish chronicler Wespazjan Kochowski’s work and the

nineteenth century Polish scholar Józef Sękowski’s collection of extracts from Naima, Nuoffer

relates that since Xmel’nyc’kyj converted to Islam during his captivity, Crimea and the Porte

readily supported him as their coreligionist.71 The Commonwealth possibly spread rumour about

the conversion of the hetman in order to discredit Xmel’nyc’kyj in the eyes of his Cossack

followers, the Ottoman chronicles. Therefore it is necessary to approach the narratives about the

hetman’s conversion to Islam with caution.

In one of his recent articles, Mikhail Kizilov argues against the possibility of the conversion of

the hetman on the basis of Islamic law, which encouraged the integration of the converts into the

67 Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 44; Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, “Tureckaja Politika Bogdana Xmel’nickogo,” Ukrajins’kyj arxeohrafičnyj ščoričnyk 10/11 (2006): 162. 68 Naima, Tarih, 1429. 69 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 379. 70 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 17, tr. 101. 71 Nuoffer, Erste phase, 21.

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Muslim society and did not allow the Muslims to be ransomed.72 Kizilov bases his argument on

the accounts of the Ukrainian chronicles about Bohdan’s release from captivity. According to

this, either the Cossacks exchanged him with some Turkish captives held by them because of

their respect for his deceased father or his mother paid a redemption fee for his release.73

Therefore, according to Kizilov’s interpretation, if Xmel’nyc’kyj had converted to Islam, the

Ottomans would not have ransomed or exchanged him.

Being one of the sources on Xmel’nyc’kyj’s alleged conversion, Naima does not mention

anything about redemption in connection with Xmel’nyc’kyj’s return to Ukraine but instead

speaks of his escape. Of course his escape obviates the issue of a Muslim being ransomed from

slavery, but on the other hand it is not entirely clear why a convert would chose to escape and

live in an environment alien to that of his new faith. In any event, in the chronicle version after

returning Bohdan remained Muslim practicing his faith in secret. However, as Larysa Pricak

states, while Xmel’nyc’kyj’s conversion was unlikely, it may well have been the case that he did

not have any particular antipathy towards Islam and Muslims.74

There is also a lack of certainty about the conditions of the agreement between Islam Giray and

Xmel’nyc’kyj. Jan Uliński and Stanisław Jaskólski, who were with their master Crown Grand

Hetman Mikołaj Potocki during his captivity at the camp of the Tatars after the battle of Korsun’,

wrote about the terms of the agreement between the Tatars and Xmel’nyc’kyj. According to

them, as Togay Beg spoke for the Cossacks and argued with his captive Potocki, he put forward

three conditions for a reconciliation between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth: recognition

of Cossack autonomy in territories as far as Bila Cerkva, restoration of customary Cossack rights

and liberties, and banning the nobles from having property in the Cossack lands. If the

Commonwealth failed to accept these terms, Togay Beg threatened that the Cossacks and the

Tatars would act on their brotherly pact to fight with each other’s enemy, not only the Polish

king but also the Ottoman sultan.75 The unconfirmed reports of the Gazette de France and

72 Mikhail Kizilov, “The Black Sea and the Slave Trade: The Role of Crimean Maritime Towns in the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” International Journal of Maritime History 17/1 (June 2005): 230, 230 n. 80. 73 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv, 885, 887. 74 Pricak, Osnovni mižnarodni, 40. 75 Jan Uliński and Stanisław Jaskólski to Vice-Chancellor Andrzej Leszczyński, 9 June 1648 [Michałowski, 39]; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 422-3.

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Moderate Intelligencer also relate that the Cossacks made an agreement with the Tatars and

promised to help them shake off the Ottoman yoke after the Tatars would support the Cossacks

against the Commonwealth.76 According to a Polish report, there were two terms of the Cossack-

Tatar agreement. Firstly, the Cossacks would give payment to the Tatars every year in return for

their military support. Secondly, the Tatars would not seize the people of the Orthodox faith, and

instead, only Poles.77 Later, the Commonwealth’s authorities learned that Xmel’nyc’kyj made a

new agreement with Islam Giray in February 1649 by which the Tatars would not be allowed to

seize captives or organize plunder raids in the territories as far as the Vistula River.78

According to the Muscovite voevoda of Belgorod, Timofej Buturlin, Islam Giray agreed to

dispatch 6,000 Tatars under Togay Beg to help the Ukrainian Cossacks in their war against the

Commonwealth while the hetman would send 10,000 troops in future Tatar campaigns against

Moldavia or Muscovy.79 In his report on the Cossack-Polish war of 1648, the Muscovite courier

Grigorij Kunakov relates that Xmel’nyc’kyj concluded an agreement with the mirzas that the

Tatars would receive the prisoners, while the horses and the cattle would be divided in half

between the Tatars and the Cossacks, and the Cossacks would keep other properties.80 The

Cossacks reportedly concluded an agreement with the Tatars to attack together Polish cities and

destroy the Poles, but not to fight or harm “common Belarusian people” (melkix belorusskix

ljudej, a typical Muscovite chancery way of referring to Ruthenians).81 It is difficult to verify

these Polish and Muscovite reports because Crimean and Ottoman chronicles are silent on the

conditions that Islam Giray’s negotiations with the Cossack envoys resulted in, including his

agreement to provide help to the hetman in early 1648.

76 Gazette de France, no. 183, Warsaw, 30 October 1648; Moderate Intelligencer, no. 194, Warsaw, 30 Nov. 1648. 77 Łukasz Głuch Zółkiewski to Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński, 8 June 1648, Dubno [Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 340-1]. 78 Testimony of the messenger carrying a letter from Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Adam Kysil’, 23 May 1649 [Pamjatniki izdannyje kievskoju kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, vol. 1 (St. Petersbug, 1898), 343-4 (henceforth PIKK); Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej: dokumenty i materialy, vol. 2, eds. P. P. Gruzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, A. A. Novosel’skij, A.L. Sidorov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1953), vol. 2, 203-4 (henceforth VUR)]; Albrycht Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach w Polsce, vol. 3, eds. Adam Przvboś and Roman Żelewski (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1980), 192-3. 79 Timofej Buturlin to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 18-19 April 1648 [Akty Moskovskago gosudarstva, izdannye Imperatorskoju akademieju nauk, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Typografija Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk, 1894), vol. 2, 201 (henceforth AMG); VUR, vol. 2, 20]. 80 Grigorij Kunakov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, March 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 282]. 81 Zamjatnja Leont’ev and Ivan Kobyl’skij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 25 May 1648 [AMG, vol. 2, 216-7].

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Based on their analysis of various sources, Smolij and Stepankov outline a number of provisions

of such agreement between the khan and the hetman. Firstly, Islam Giray and Xmel’nyc’kyj

agreed to provide military support against each other’s enemies. Secondly, the Tatars would

neither seize the people of the Orthodox faith as captives nor ravage their dwellings and

churches. Thirdly, the Cossacks would pay the Tatars for their military support and promised not

to attack Crimea and the Tatars. Accordingly Smolij and Stepankov state their disagreement with

the opinion that the hetman agreed to allow the Tatars to undertake plunder raids in Ukraine in

order to secure their military support against the Polish forces.82

In a similar vein, Storoženko brings a number of historical studies and published primary sources

together to outline the conditions of the agreement that had been concluded after the negotiations

between Islam Giray and the Cossack embassy. According to this, while the khan promised to

march with a large army to Ukraine to help the Cossacks and not to seize captives in the lands as

far as and including Bila Cerkva, Cossack units would secure the passage of the Tatars in

Ukraine. The Cossack-Tatar expedition would march as far as Bila Cerkva in order to compel the

Commonwealth authorities to restore the ancient rights and liberties of the Cossacks and deliver

the unpaid tribute/gifts for four years to Crimea.83

In relation to banning the Tatars from doing plunder and slave-capture raids in Ukraine, Halenko

proposes that since the khan saw Ukraine as a part of the king’s lands, he considered himself as

having the right to take prisoners in Ukraine despite his alliance with Xmel’nyc’kyj.84 According

to Larysa Pricak, Xmel’nyc’kyj agreed to leave the fortress of Aslankermen on the lower reaches

of the Dnipro to the Tatars in return for promising not to enter the territories of the Cossack state

without the permission of the hetman.85 Again, in the absence of strong historical evidence, it is

not fully possible to verify or reject these arguments.

82 Smolij and Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 94-5; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja nezaležnoji deržavy,” in Istorija Ukrajiny nove bačennja, vol. 1, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Ukrajina, 1995), 154; Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 138. 83 Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj,” 82; Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1, 91. 84 Halenko, “Dyplomatija Kryms’koho xanatu,” 253. 85 Pricak, Osnovni mižnarodni, 58-60.

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2.2. The Campaigns of 1648

After sending advance units under Togay Beg, Islam Giray started campaign preparations in

spring 1648. At the same time he dispatched embassies to the Commonwealth in order to conceal

his ongoing negotiations with the Cossacks. As Władysław Tomkiewicz relates, a Tatar envoy

delivered a message to Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki that the khan strove to maintain

good relations with the Commonwealth. Calmed by the khan, Potocki preferred to be occupied

with family affairs rather than prepare for war; he did not even become suspicious when there

was a deepening of Cossack-Tatar relations in March 1648 with Islam Giray sending Togay Beg

to Ukraine with Tatar cavalry. Then the same envoy visited Jeremi Wiśniowiecki in Pryluki on

the left bank of the Dnieper in March 1648. He delivered gifts, conveyed assurances of

friendship from the khan and asked the magnate to release three Tatar envoys who were detained

two years earlier on their way to Moscow. However, Wiśniowiecki reportedly saw through the

ruse of the khan, denied the request and detained that envoy.86 Meanwhile the Tatars under

Togay Beg began to arrive in Ukraine to join the Ukrainian Cossacks.

Some scholars view Xmel’nyc’kyj’s contacts with the king prior to the revolt as having alienated

some nobles in Ukraine, who were against the king’s using the Cossacks to increase royal power.

For this reason as the governor (starosta) of Čyhyryn, Aleksander Koniecpolski tolerated his

assistant Daniel Czapliński’s raid against Xmel’nyc’kyj’s estate. While Bohdan sought justice

against seizure of his estate and mistreatment of his family by Czapliński, Koniecpolski thwarted

his appeals to the courts and even tried to arrest him. Accordingly, fearing that the local nobles

would make an attempt on his life, Xmel’nyc’kyj escaped with his supporters to the Zaporižžja.

They set out to the Sich, the Cossack stronghold on the Dnipro River, at that time located at

Mykytyn’ Rih.87 As Xmel’nyc’kyj and his Cossack supporters refused to leave Zaporižžja and

disperse, Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki marched with his troops in mid-April 1648 in

order to quell the rebels. Crown Field Hetman Marcin Kalinowski also brought his forces to

86 Władysław Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (1612-1651) (Warsaw: Nakładem Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego, 1933), 181-2. 87 On the Mykytyn’ Sich, see Taras Čuxlib, “Mykytyns’ka Sič,” in Kozac’ki siči (narysy z istoriji ukrajins’koho kozactva XVI- XIX st.), ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv, Zaporižžja: Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, 1998), 65-85.

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Korsun’. In order to gain a quick victory Potocki hastily sent a vanguard of the Polish army

under his son Stefan against the Cossack-Tatar forces.

In a report to the Porte about this coming war between the Polish nobles and the Cossacks, the

governor (sancakbegi) of Kılburun, Murtaza Beg, wrote that the governor (hakim) of

Kam”janec’, Mikołaj Potocki, had marched against the Cossacks of the Sich (Ada Kazağı88) with

the purpose of destroying them while expressing his willingness to strengthen peaceful and

friendly relations with the Ottoman Empire. The Cossack brigands (Kazak eşkıyası) also

prepared to fight with Potocki. Describing both Potocki and the Cossacks as accursed, Murtaza

Beg expressed his pleasure about the emergence of the animosity between them.89

According to Senai, Islam Giray completed campaign preparations and set out from his court at

Bagçasaray for Ukraine on 11 May 1648 (17 Rebi‘ülahir 1058). As the khan was on his way to

Orkapı, 3,500 Cossacks, who were sailing down the Dnipro, mutinied, killed eighty Polish

officers in their company, and joined the ranks of the rebels. These Cossacks also arrested three

colonels (polkovnik in Senai) and surrendered one of them to Xmel’nyc’kyj and the other two to

Togay Beg. Senai continues that Togay Beg and some other leading Tatar commanders

encountered the Polish camp and defeated it on 15 May 1648 (21 Rebi‘ülahir 1058) after

besieging the Poles for seventeen days.90 While the chronicler does not speak of the location of

the battle, Zygmunt Abrahamowicz explains that here Senai provides an account of the battle at

Žovti Vody where the Polish troops were completely routed.91 Can-Muhammed Efendi’s brief

reference to this battle has the Tatars defeating an army of 40,000 Poles.92

Senai continues that Togay Beg sent a courier to the khan with the message that while an army of

three thousand soldiers marched to help the defeated Polish camp, it was surrounded and

defeated by the Tatars.93 It is plausible that the chronicler refers to the skirmish between the

88 The Ottoman authorities called the Cossacks who lived in these fortified centres on the islands of the Dnipro River, as Ada Kazagı literally “the Island Cossacks.” 89 Murtaza Beg to an unknown Ottoman officer, 1648 [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 12217]: … Lehlüden sual olunursa Kamaniçe hakimi olan Poteski asker cem‘ edüb Ada Kazagı üzerine gelüb ve ortadan Kazagı kaldırub kadimden olan sulh ve salaha istihkam vermek muradın oldugun ve Kazak eşkıyası dahi mezkur Kamaniçe hakimi ile cenk etmek içün cem‘olub devlet-i padişahide bihamdülillahi teala mela‘in birbirlerine düşmandurlar. 90 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 18-20, tr. 102-3. 91 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, 169 f. 240. 92 Akçokraklı, “Tatars’ka poema,” 136. 93 Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja, tx. 20, tr. 103.

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Cossack-Tatar allies and Mikołaj Potocki’s forces near Korsun’ shortly after the battle of Žovti

Vody. Potocki decided to withdraw and did not enter confrontation because he understood that

his army was not powerful enough to wage a war with the Cossack-Tatar army. Thereafter on 26

May 1648 (3 Cemaziyelevvel 1058), Togay Beg defeated 24,000 troops under Potocki’s

command. Senai gloats that the entire Polish campaign treasure fell into the Tatars’ hands and

that even the poorest Tatars began to wear expensive fur coats and acquired many gold ingots. A

number of nobles, including the Polish hetmans Mikołaj Potocki and Marcin Kalinowski, were

also taken prisoner and brought to Çufutkale, which meant “Jewish Fortress” near Bagçasaray.94

Explaining that the confrontation between Togay Beg and Potocki in Senai’s account refers to

the battle at Korsun’, Abrahamowicz treats the chronicler’s words on the size of the Polish army

with reservation. According to him, the Polish army was not more than 5,000 troops. If so, this

means that Senai gives a number for the Polish forces four times larger than the probable actual

number.95

While the Crimean chronicler elaborates the victories and heroic exploits of Togay Beg and his

Tatars over the Poles at Žovti Vody and Korsun’, he does not present any information about the

size of Togay Beg’s army. According to Kunakov’s report to Moscow, while Xmel’nyc’kyj had

800 followers at the outset of his rebellion, nearly one month later, his army grew to 10,000

Cossacks and 8,000 Tatars at Žovti Vody. He continues that Stefan Potocki commanded 2,000

troops.96 Of course the sharp rise in the ranks of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s army from a few hundred in

mid-April to 10,000 in mid-May was due to a great surge in the number of Cossacks who

abandoned the Polish authorities under whom they were serving and joined the uprising. Miron

Costin also recounts that Togay Beg departed Crimea with 7,000 Tatars and the hetman headed

8,000 Cossacks whereas the Polish army composed of 8,000 troops including 3,000 registered

Cossacks. However, since the registered Cossacks shifted their allegiance to the hetman, the

Polish army shrunk to 5,000.97 Thus, the desertion of the registered Cossacks, who made up who

94 Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja, tx. 22-3, tr. 105-6; on Çufutkale, see Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, vol. 7, 224, and A. Kryms’kyj, Studii z Krymu I - IX (Kyiv, 1930), 9-13; on the role of the Jewish community in the Crimean slave trade, see Mikhail Kizilov, “Slaves, Money Lenders, and Prisoner Guards: The Jews and the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Crimean Khanate,” Journal of Jewish Studies 58/2 (Autumn 2007): 189-210; Mikhail Kizilov, “Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea from the Perspective of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources,” Journal of Early Modern History 11/1-2 (2007): 1-31. 95 Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja, 170 n. 264; 171, n. 273. 96 Grigorij Kunakov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, March 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 280-1]. 97 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau, 176.

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made up nearly half of Stefan Potocki’s army, contributed to the Cossack-Tatar victory at Žovti

Vody.

In their historical studies published during the interwar period (1919-1939), some Polish

historians emphasized the contribution of the Tatars at the victorious battles of Žovti Vody and

Korsun’. For example, Aleksander Czołowski claims that it was the betrayal of the Tatars of the

Commonwealth and their help to the hetman that paved the way for the Cossacks to advance

deep into the Commonwealth.98 In similar vein, Izydor E. Chrząszcz states that while the victory

at Žovti Vody encouraged the Tatars to support the Cossacks openly, it increased the dependency

of the hetman on the support of the Tatars in his struggle against the Commonwealth.99

However, other historians have expressed their suspicion about the role of the Tatars by referring

to their belated participation in the battles against the Polish forces. Kostomarov claims that

Togay Beg did not hasten to unite with the Cossacks and did not enter the battle until the

Cossacks proved to be able to stand up against the enemy at Žovti Vody.100 Based on Stefan

Potocki’s report on the war, it has been claimed that Togay Beg’s troops were poorly armed—

most of them did not have a sword, but instead rather primitive weapons made by attaching sharp

animal bones to wooden handles. Only after the first victories of the Cossacks did the khan

dispatch a large number of troops equipped with better weapons.101 In contrast to this view,

Storoženko thinks that alliance with the Tatars was very important for the Cossack rebellion of

1648 because military aid from the Tatars contributed to brilliant victories in the campaigns of

1648 as Tatar cavalry with the Ukrainian (Cossack) infantry, created an operational-strategic

advantage over the army of the Commonwealth.102 He also points out that the highly mobile

Tatar cavalry played a significant role in discouraging Mikołaj Potocki from hastening to help

his son Stefan at Žovti Vody. In addition, Storoženko refers to Evliya Çelebi’s account on how

Togay Beg as the commander of Orkapı had well-equipped troops.103

98 Aleksander Czołowski, “Kudak, przyczynki do założenia i upadku twierdzy,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 40/2 (1926): 180. 99 Chrząszcz, Żółte Wody, 21. 100 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 9, 157. 101 Zlepko, Der grosse Kosakenaufstand, 32; Chrząszcz, Żółte Wody, 16; Tys-Kroxmaljuk, Boji Xmel’nyc’koho, 46, 59; Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj. 76-7; Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 48. 102 Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj,” 82-3, 89; Storoženko, “Vojenno-stratehična meta,” 71. 103 Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj,” 83-4.

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Eventually Xmel’nyc’kyj sent envoys with his letters to Commonwealth expressing his

willingness to return to the service of the king, and asked for some relatively modest

concessions, such as increase in the number of the registered Cossacks, and restitution of church

property to the Orthodox Church and customary rights and liberties to the Cossacks.104 Smolij

and Stepankov claim that the victorious campaign of Xmel’nyc’kyj was overshadowed by the

conflicts with the Tatars who contrary to the agreement between the hetman and the khan carried

out raids to plunder and seize captives. The hetman insisted that the Tatars were allowed to take

only Poles as captives and should not touch Orthodox people. However, the Tatars did not heed

him. Therefore the excesses of the Tatars led the Cossacks to question the merits of the alliance

with the Tatars. Despite such problems with the Tatars, Xmel’nyc’kyj tried to persuade the khan

to continue the offensive against the Commonwealth, but the khan thought that the defeat of the

Polish army at Korsun’ would be sufficient to make the Commonwealth resume the payment of

tribute/gifts. Islam Giray was also instructed by the Porte to keep the war limited and not to

cause a full-fledged war against the Commonwealth. Therefore the khan wrote a letter to the king

in early June 1648 asking him to dispatch the unpaid tribute/gifts and give the Cossacks their

traditional rights and privileges back. According to Smolij and Stepankov, while such attempt of

the khan did not play a determining role in influencing Xmel’nyc’kyj’s plans, it along with a

number of other reasons such as concerns about a potential intervention of the Lithuanian army

into Ukraine and concentration of the Muscovite troops on the Ukrainian-Muscovite border to

help the Polish army to fight against the Tatars possibly influenced the hetman and his associates

in their policies towards the Commonwealth.105

Storoženko claims that the problems with the Tatars and the khan’s attempt to seek reconciliation

with the Commonwealth did not play a role in Xmel’nyc’kyj’s decision to stop the march of his

army at Bila Cerkva. As the goals of the hetman were limited at that time, the hetman was

neither interested in marching as far as Warsaw nor did he have capabilities to realize such an

ambitious objective. The presence of a large Tatar army in the centre of Europe could possibly

cause reaction against the Cossacks among other European powers.106 In a similar vein,

Theodore Mackiw speculates that the rebellion of Orthodox Ukrainians in alliance with the

104 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 421-36. 105 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 128-9. 106 Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1, 87; Storoženko, “Vojenno-stratehična meta,” 67.

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infidel Tatars against the Catholic king of the Commonwealth allegedly caused a sensation in

Central and Western Europe.107 Therefore it is plausible that the hetman did not want to draw

reaction from European powers and preferred not to push to the limit at the early stage of his

struggle against the Commonwealth.

Concerning the participation of the khan in the campaign of spring 1648, the chronicler Senai

recounts that while Togay Beg was engaged in operations against the Polish forces, Islam Giray

had already set out to Ukraine at the head of the main army. According to the information on his

itinerary route in Senai’s chronicle, on 11 May 1648 (17 Rebi‘ülahir 1058) the khan and his

army departed Bagçasaray and one week later arrived at Orkapı. Then on 22 May 1648 (28

Rebi‘ülahir) Islam Giray came to the banks of the Dnipro River (Özi suyu). On the next day part

of the khan’s army crossed the river in boats of the Cossacks, though many Tatars went across on

horseback as they grew impatient waiting for the Cossack vessels. On 24 May 1648 (1st day of

Cemaziyelevvel 1058), the khan’s army reached the shores of the Ankil (i.e., Inhulec’) River

where they encamped. After stopping by Körsön (i.e., Korsun’) on 31 May 1648 (8

Cemaziyelevvel) and Biyale Sergu (i.e., Bila Cerkva) on 1 June 1648 (9 Cemaziyelevvel), the

Tatars reached Berezne and Civate (i.e., Žyvotiv). Eventually, on 11 June 1648 (9

Cemaziyelevvel) Islam Giray ordered the Tatars to prepare for the return to Crimea and the same

day the army of the khan started the return march ravaging the towns and the lands on their way

to home. Three days after his passage to Crimea via Orkapı, on 4 July 1648 (12 Cemaziyelahir

1058) Islam Giray managed to return to Bagçasaray.108 Despite such a detailed account of the

campaign’s itinerary, Senai does not explain why the khan decided to return to Crimea.

When his army was at Žyvotiv, on 12 June Islam Giray wrote a letter to Władysław IV although

it is not clear whether he knew about the death of the king by that time. This letter is important

because it not only presents the perspective of the khan on the course of the Cossack uprising but

also reveals why the khan decided to order the withdrawal of the Tatars to Crimea. Islam Giray

started his letter by stating that when he ascended the Crimean throne and sent his envoys to

reaffirm peaceful and friendly relations with the Commonwealth, the king ignored his proposal

107 Theodore Mackiw, “Povstannja Bohdana Xmeln’nyc’koho ta Zborivs’kyj dohoviru zaxidn’oevropejs’kyx džerelax z 1649 r.,” Ukrajins’kyj istoryk 1-4/124-127 (1995): 155. 108 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 20-30, tr. 103-11.

88

and gave improper responses to the Tatar envoys. The king also refused to pay tribute (vergü) for

four years, and sent Koniecpolski’s son and some other retinues to the territories of the Khanate

to seize property and captives. After all this, the king still complained to the Porte falsely

claiming that he had paid annual tribute to the khan yet nonetheless the Tatars ravaged the

Commonwealth. The khan continued in his letter that because the Commonwealth’s authorities

acted with such deceit, the Dnipro Cossacks (nehr-i Özi Kazagı) rebelled and threw themselves

at his feet. Thereupon, the khan sent some troops to help the Cossacks and even he mounted his

horse. The Tatars fırst routed the Crown grand hetman’s son in the steppes of the Dnipro (Özi

sahrası), then defeated the grand hetman and captured all the nobles who fought in the battle.

When the khan arrived with his army, the Tatars and the Cossacks pleaded him to seize the

opportunity and go to the seat of the king. However, the khan showed mercy upon the

Commonwealth and did not give consent to further devastation. Then he dismissed the Cossacks,

and returned with his army to Crimea. The khan ended his letter by proposing two basic terms of

peace to the king: payment of the tribute arrears for four years, and a promise not to harm the

Cossacks. He also gave the king forty days to send a mission to respond to his call for peace. In

case of acting against these terms for peace or failing to give a response within forty days, Islam

Giray threatened to mount another expedition against the Commonwealth.109

If the khan’s words are to be believed, it is possible to argue that Islam Giray influenced

Xmel’nyc’kyj to stop the hostilities at Bila Cerkva. Besides, as Kostomarov points out, although

the khan agreed to help the Cossacks, he refrained from entering into direct confrontation with

the Commonwealth. However, after the Cossack-Tatar armies proved to be successful in their

early battles with the Polish forces and the hetman sent captives to Crimea, the khan took heart to

send the aforesaid letter to the king in order to inform the Commonwealth of his demands.110 In

109 Islam Giray to Władysław, 12 June 1648, near Civate (Žyvotiv) [Materialy dlja istorii Krymskago xanstva izvlečennyja, po rasporjaženiju Imperatorskoj akademii nauk, iz Moskovskago glavnogo arxiva Ministerstva inostrannyx del, eds. Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Huseyn Feyzxanov (St. Petersburg, 1864), no. 345 (henceforth MdiKx)]; Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Feyzhanov provide and Arabic-letter transliteration of of the khan’s letter in a mixture of Ottoman and Crimean Tatar; one can find a Polish text of the letter in Karol Szajnocha’s Dwa lata, vol. 2, 344-5 and a Latin text in Michałowski, 40-1. A different Latin text of the khan’s letter has been published in PIKK, vol. 1, 222-3. One can find a Latin text of the letter and its Russian translation in Pamjatniki izdannyje vremennoj kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, vol. 1, pt. 3 (Kyiv, 1848), 74-7 (henceforth PIVK). Albrycht Radziwiłł speaks of the content of the letter in his diaries as well, Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 3, 82. 110 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 255.

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response, Primate Maciej Łubieński and the Senate protested to the khan naming the

Commonwealth’s annual payments to the Tatars as tribute (haracz). Not only the king, but also

the nobles and free people of the Commonwealth do not pay anyone tribute. Four years ago the

Tatars had been paid for their service to the king and the crown of Poland. However, since the

former khan dispatched an army to Oxmativ and there the Tatars were defeated by the forces of

the king, the payment was denied. They also condemned the attacks of the Tatars in the lands of

the Commonwealth and expressed that it would not be possible to answer the demands of the

khan for the arrears to the customary payments until the Diet would gather two weeks later

because the Diet was the only authority that could raise the funds to pay tribute/gifts. With

regard to the demand of the khan on behalf of the Cossacks, the Commonwealth’s authorities

wrote that once the Cossacks humbled themselves, they would then be pardoned. Primate Maciej

Łubieński also responded to the threats of the khan to attack the Commonwealth by stating that if

the Tatars attacked again, they would find the Commonwealth prepared.111

While the Commonwealth was absorbed in the process of electing a new king following the

death of Władysław after the battle of Korsun’, Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński chose Adam

Kysil’ to carry out negotiations with Xmel’nyc’kyj. However, as the negotiations did not lead to

an agreement satisfying both parties, in September 1648 a Polish army under Jeremi

Wiśniowiecki united with the troops of three Crown commissioners, Władysław Dominik

Zasławski, Mikolaj Ostroróg and Aleksander Koniecpolski, and marched on Ukraine. The

Cossack-Tatar army encountered the Polish troops at Pyljavci and triumphed over them again. It

has been argued that in this battle the Tatars were a benefit for the hetman as a psychological

asset against the Polish army. For example, on the basis of the seventeenth century Polish

chronicler Samuel Twardowski’s work and Wojciech Miaskowski’s diary, Hrushevsky recounts

how the arrival of the Tatars encouraged the hetman to launch a full-scale attack against the

Polish camp although he had previously thought of pulling back because of the growing strength

of the opposing army. The hetman also made the enemy troops at Pyljavci believe that the Tatars

were present with a larger than actual force by having some of his troops dress up and act like

Tatars. In fact only 3,000 Tatars came to the Cossack camp. Thanks to valour of the Cossacks

111 The Senate of the Commonwealth to Islam Giray, 2 July 1648 [Michałowski, 71]; Primate Maciej Łubieński to Khan Islam Giray, 8 July 1648 [PIKK, vol. 1, 239-240, PIVK, vol. 1, pt. 3, 113-7].

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combined and the deception tactics of the hetman the Polish soldiers panicked and fled in all

directions.112 As Szajnocha suggests, the arrival of only 3,000 Budjak and Dobrudja Tatars was

enough to demoralize the Polish troops.113

The Eyewitness Chronicle emphasizes the excesses of the Tatars in Ukraine during the campaign

of summer 1648—that not only Polish nobles and Jews, but also the common people fell captive

to the Tatars, especially many young artisans who “shaved their heads in the Polish manner with

a forelock on top.”114 In addition to such acts, it has also been believed that the Tatars played a

role in instigating the Cossacks to pursue the Polish army and ravage the Commonwealth after

the battle of Pyljavci. On the basis of his analysis of the Polish councillor of L’viv Samuel

Kuszewicz’s testimony and the seventeenth century Polish chronicler Wespazjan Kochowski’s

history of the reign of Jan Kazimierz II (r. 1648-68), Hrushevsky questions the reliability of such

allegations. According to him, since the Tatars were already burdened with abundant spoils and

many captives after Pyljavci, most likely that they intended to stop fighting and return to Crimea;

it was the rank-and-file Cossacks, who propelled Xmel’nyc’kyj to continue the war. In addition,

the residents of L’viv argued that they did not have a large enough sum of gold that they had

promised to give as redemption payment and offered to surrender their goods and valuables

equal to that sum. While the Tatars accepted money, metal, goods and various supplies in return

for redemption, Togay Beg resented that the value of these items was not worth more than one-

fourth of the sum that the inhabitants had promised to pay. Thus, Hrushevsky suggests that not

only were the Tatars reluctant to take part in the expedition to L’viv after the battle of Pyljavci,

but that also Togay Beg was disappointed in the redemption payment collected from L’viv.115

In his account of the battle of Pyljavci, Senai recounts that when the enemies of religion (i.e., the

Poles) had already set out and envoys from the Dnipro Cossacks came to the court of the khan to

ask for help, on 21 August 1648 (1st day of Şa‘ban 1058) Islam Giray appointed his brother and

kalgay Kırım Giray as the commander of the army to go to help the Cossacks. Then on 28

August (8 Şa‘ban) the kalgay at the head of the Tatar army set out to Ukraine. It should be noted

that this time the khan preferred to stay in Crimea and only send the kalgay. This decision can be

112 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 474. 113 Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 243. 114 Litopys samovydcja, 54. 115 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 479-80, 489.

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explained by Islam Giray’s fears of an imminent Don Cossack attack against Crimea. According

to Senai, Kırım Giray met Xmel’nyc’kyj after the battle at Pyljavci and learned that his arrival

caused confusion and fear among the Polish army. Then Kırım Giray rewarded the hetman and

his entourage with precious garments and agreed with them to march against L’viv. Eventually,

on 11 October (23 Ramazan) the Cossack-Tatar armies laid siege to the town and Kırım Giray

authorized some mirzas to plunder the surrounding lands. After twenty two days of siege, the

residents of L’viv dispatched an embassy to the hetman and asked him to mediate a settlement

between them and the Tatars. They promised to deliver a handsome payment and, in Senai’s

wording, the Islamic poll-tax (cizye) to the Tatars. The kalgay and mirzas agreed to this offer and

appointed Piriş Agha as their envoy to enter L’viv and obtain the payment from the residents.

While the Tatar troops reportedly received eighty carts of cloths, brocade and silk worth 200,000

thalers and shared these among themselves, the kalgay himself received a treasure worth 200,000

gold pieces. Thereupon, he rewarded Togay Beg and Xmel’nyc’kyj with robes of honour (hilʻat-ı

fahire) and fur coats and ordered them to ravage Warsaw and other cities in the Commonwealth.

On 24 October (6 Şevval), Kırım Giray ordered the Tatar army to return to Crimea. After

traversing Moldavia, the kalgay spent part of the winter in the area of Akkerman, which was

under the direct rule of the Ottomans, and in 6-14 January 1649 (3rd decade of Zilhicce 1058)

crossed the Dnipro near Cankerman (i.e., Özi, Očakiv) and eventually arrived at his seat at

Akmescid in Crimea.116 Thus, according to Senai, it was the kalgay who encouraged the hetman

to continue the war. The account of the chronicler also suggests that the Tatars were satisfied

with the redemption payment that they received from the residents of L’viv.

Can-Muhammed Efendi’s poem relates that when the Cossacks envoys once again came to the

khan with the message that a new army had been assembled against Ukraine, Islam Giray raised

a new army under the command of the kalgay, Kırım Giray, and ordered him to join Togay

Beg’s troops. As the Polish forces were concentrated at Albav (Žovti Vody), Kırım Giray went

there. When Togay Beg captured many towns and defeated the enemy, the Poles agreed to pay a

dearly sum of redemption and send an annual payment to Crimea. Every soldier in the army of

116 Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja, tx. 33-8; tr. 114-7.

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the kalgay reportedly returned home in possession of ten captives.117 Like Senai, Can-

Muhammed Efendi does not speak of any complaints of the Tatars about the booty income.

After seeing off the kalgay Kırım Giray to Crimea in late October 1648, Togay Beg and

Xmel’nyc’kyj marched northwest to Zamość in pursuit of Jeremi Wiśniowiecki. However, when

the hetman received the news of the election of Jan Kazimierz as the new king, he convinced the

Tatars to abandon the siege of Zamość in return for a redemption payment by the besieged and

started negotiations with the Commonwealth. The sources gave diverging information on how

Xmel’nyc’kyj intended to deal with Togay Beg and his Tatars after the siege of Zamość.

According to an unconfirmed report in the Gazette de France, the hetman asked Togay Beg to

withdraw with his Tatars to the east of the Dnipro, and for this purpose mobilized 6,000

Cossacks to accompany the Tatars in their crossing the Dnipro.118 15,000 Tatars with Bey-mirza

(i.e., Togay Beg) supposedly remained around Zamość with Xmel’nyc’kyj because Bey-mirza

and the hetman were sworn brothers.119 In a similar vein, Grigorij Unkovskij, a courier of the

tsar to Xmel’nyc’kyj, related that 15,000 Tatars under Togay Beg stayed at the Čornyj Lis near

Čyhyryn.120 In confirmation of these Muscovite reports, Can-Muhammed Efendi’s literary work

recounts that the hetman asked the commander of the army (serasker sultan) or namely Kırım

Giray to allow Togay Beg to stay for a while in Ukraine, and Kırım Giray agreed to the request

of the hetman.121 It is possible infer from these various sources that while Xmel’nyc’kyj

considered the election of a new king as an opportunity to redress his grievances, he still needed

the Tatars as a guarantee against possible encroachments by the Commonwealth.

2.3. The Campaign of Summer 1649: The Battles of Zbaraž and Zboriv

It has been argued that Xmel’nyc’kyj adopted a conciliatory stance towards the Commonwealth

after the campaign of autumn 1648, but that later his ideas about Ukraine’s future vis-à-vis the

117 Akçokraklı, “Tatars’ka poema,” 137. 118 Gazette de France, no. 33, Kraków, 10 February 1649. 119 Fedor Arsen’jev to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 20 December 1648 [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 8 (St. Petersburg, 1873), 282 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]. 120 Grigorij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 3 April 1649 [VUR, vol. 2, 168]. 121 Akçokraklı, “Tatars’ka poema,” 137.

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Commonwealth began to change. During his advance to the fortress of Zamość in pursuit of the

magnate Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, the hetman dispatched his relative Zaxarij and his former tutor,

Jesuit priest Andrzej Humel-Mokrski, to Jan Kazimierz to declare support for his candidacy to

the throne. As the Cossack embassy was travelling to Warsaw, Jan Kazimierz was in the process

of being officially elected as the king of Poland and the grand duke of Lithuania. In his letters to

the Senate and the king-elect, Xmel’nyc’kyj made relatively moderate demands such as abolition

of the Uniate Church, recognition and recovery of the Orthodox Church, a general amnesty for

the participants in the rebellion, restoration of customary rights and privileges of the Cossacks,

increase in the number of the registered Cossacks to 12,000. He also asked that the Cossacks be

given status equal to that of the Commonwealth’s Tatar nobility.122 Following official election of

Jan Kazimierz to the throne, Xmel’nyc’kyj sent an embassy to the Commonwealth in order to

start negotiations between two parties.

After his victorious campaign of autumn 1648 and reaching Zamość, the hetman returned to

Kyiv. Hrushevsky explains that during his sojourn in Kyiv in late 1648 Patriarch Paisios of

Jerusalem and the Kyivan secular and ecclesiastical elites broadened Xmel’nyc’kyj’s political

horizons and thereafter he began to think in terms of an autonomous Rus’ polity. Later, during

negotiations at Perejaslav in February 1649, the Polish delegation under Adam Kysil’ managed

to convince the hetman to return to his earlier more moderate demands from the Commonwealth

that he voiced at Zamość. However, since the Commonwealth’s dignitaries did not agree even to

these demands, the negotiations between Kysil’ and Xmel’nyc’kyj resulted in failure before the

end of the truce in May 1649.123

122 Xmel’nyc’kyj to the Senate of the Commonwealth, 15 November 1648, Zamość [Dokumenty Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, 1648-1657, eds. I. Kryp”jakevyč and I. Butyč (Kyiv: Akademiji Nauk Ukrajins’koji RSR, 1961), 81-3 (hencefoth DBX)]; Xmel’nyc’kyj’s demands conveyed by Andrzej Mokrski to Jan Kazimierz, c. 15 November 1648 Zamość [DBX, 83-4], “Der ukrainisch-polnische Friedensvertrag von Zboriv,” 27; the Tatars of the Commonwealth were the descendants of the Golden Horde Empire, who migrated and settled in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The grand duke of Lithuania, Vytautas, granted them extensive rights and privileges and recognized noble status for their mirzas in return for employing them in military campaigns. On the Tatars of the Commonwealth, see Ja. Ja. Grišin, Pol’sko-Litovskie Tatary: vzgljad čerez veka (Kazan: Tatarskoe knižnoe izdatel’stvo, 2000); Leon Bohdanowicz, “The Polish Tatars,” Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Irelan 44 (1944): 116-21; Leon Bohdanowicz, “The Muslims in Poland: Their Origin, History, and Cultural Life.” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 3 (1942): 163-80; Jan T. Jasion, “The Tatars of Poland: A Brief Historical Sketch.” Hamdard Islamicus 22/4 (1999): 117-22; Andrzej B. Zakrzewski, “Assimilation of Tatars within the Polish Commonwealth, 16th - 18th Centuries,” trans. Phillip Smith, Acta Poloniae Historica 55 (1987): 85-106; Paul K. Zygas, “The Muslim Tatars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and their Architectural Heritage,” Centropa 8/2 (2008): 124-33. 123 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 516-25, 529-52.

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Meanwhile, Chancellor Ossoliński dispatched Kazimierz Gazuba to Crimea in order to protest

the attacks of the Tatars against the Commonwealth and ask for the release of the captive Polish

hetmans and all other nobles.124 Islam Giray ordered the detainment of the envoy, but then in

December 1648 released and sent him back to the Commonwealth with a letter to the new king

Jan Kazimierz II (r. 1648-68). The khan congratulated the king on his accession to the throne and

requested the payment of tribute/gifts that were in arrears, reminding that the Tatars helped the

Cossacks because the Commonwealth failed to send the customary payments.125

Since Xmel’nyc’kyj anticipated that the Commonwealth was about to start preparations for a

campaign against the Cossacks, he dispatched embassies to Islam Giray and other Crimean

dignitaries in spring 1649 in order to request help.126 According to the report of a certain Polish

captive from Crimea to an unnamed Polish noble, Xmel’nyc’kyj asked the khan to give as much

support as possible and not to release the captive Polish hetmans. In return, he promised to give a

handsome payment, and cede all campaign spoils as well as Kam”janec’ to the Tatars.127 The

Muscovite envoys in Crimea learned that in April 1649 the envoys of the hetman came again to

ask for help from the khan. The envoys purportedly said that if the khan failed to give support to

the Cossacks, then the hetman would surrender to the Commonwealth and go to war against the

Tatars. While Islam Giray released Mikołaj Potocki, he started preparations for a new campaign

against the Commonwealth.128 This report suggests that Islam Giray did not want to take the risk

of waging war against both the Commonwealth and the Cossacks and thus agreed to prepare for

a campaign in alliance with the hetman against the Commonwealth.

The Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not make mention of any agreement between the khan

and the hetman or a threat by the Cossack embassy against the khan forcing Islam Giray to help

124 Grigorij Kunakov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, March 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 294]. 125 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, December 1648 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 244-5]; Grigorij Kunakov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, March 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 294]. 126 Nikifor Pleščeev from Putyvl’ to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 13 March 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 288]; Grigorij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 3 April 1649 [VUR, vol. 2, 168]; Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Crimean dignitary Antimir, 10 April 1649 [DBX, 110-1]; Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to the kalgay Kırım Giray, 10 (20) April 1649 [DBX, 112-3, PIKK, vol. 1, 337-8, PIVK, vol. 1, pt. 3, 385-9]; Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to the Tatar dignitary of Orkapı Peri Agha, 11 (21) April 1649 [DBX, 113-4, Michałowski, 390-1]. 127 A Polish captive from Crimea to an unknown Polish noble, May 1649 (?) [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1658 rr, vol. 1 (1648-1649 rr.), ed. Jurij Mycyk (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznavstva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2012), 233]. 128 Dimitrij L’vov and Anisim Trofimov to Moscow, 5 (15) May 1649 [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 1, 611].

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the Cossacks again. Senai states that while on 29 May 1649 (17 Cemaziyelevvel 1059) Islam

Giray ordered that an expedition against the country of the infidels, the Cossack envoys came to

Orkapı to report about the arrival of the Crown army at L’viv and the presence of another force

at Bar. According to the chronicler, Islam Giray marched to Zbaraž after learning from

informants that the enemy was there. Shortly after the Tatars besieged the enemy from all sides,

they were joined by the Cossacks. At a council of war, it was revealed that the Kingdom’s nobles

with an army of 40,000 Polish and German musket-bearing troops were entrenched at Zbaraž. As

the enemy built moats, redoubts, ramparts, towers and other defence works, and placed cannons

on all sides of their camp, it seemed impossible to break into the enemy camp at Zbaraž. For this

reason, the khan and his entourage agreed with the Cossack leadership to place a tight siege and

incessantly harass the enemy camp so that the enemy would be deprived of provisions and

supplies and lose the morale and power to fight. Shortly after the beginning of the siege,

unspecified troops from Akkerman, Bucak and Rumelia joined the army of the khan.129 After

several days of fierce combat, embassies from Zbaraž came to ask for an end to hostilities and in

return for a lifting of the siege they promised to deliver tribute for five years and ransom. The

response was that Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, Aleksander Koniecpolski and Adam Sieniawski should

come to the camp of the khan, and all of their horses and weapons should be surrendered to the

Tatars. Another embassy came from Zbaraž and informed that the three nobles agreed to go to

the khan’s camp but requested hostages for their security. At the last moment the nobles changed

their minds and decided not to go for fear that they would be killed. Therefore this attempt to

stop the hostilities ended without a result. Senai continues how the Polish army at Zbaraž was

exhausted by the firm siege and relentless assaults of the Tatars and the Cossacks. In contrast to

his account on the campaign of 1648, Senai gives a detailed coverage of the Ukrainian Cossacks’

encounters with the Kingdoms’ troops at the battle of Zbaraž. In the remarks of the chronicler,

after learning that the army of the king was nearby, Sefer Gazi Agha advised Islam Giray that

Xmel’nyc’kyj should be informed about the situation and asked him to assign some additional to

continue the siege of the Kingdom’s forces at Zbaraž and mount his horse to march against the

Crown army. He also suggested that Islam Giray appoint Murad Giray Sultan to command the

129 If this information is to be believed, it is significant since it means that Ottoman troops, whether regulars or irregulars, were involved. However, there is not enough solid evidence to state that the Porte was deliberately sending troops (openly or surreptitiously) to aid the Tatars and Cossacks.

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Tatar army at Zbaraž, and move with the rest of his forces to intercept the Crown army before it

came to the help of the Kingdom’s forces at Zbaraž. As the Tatar mirzas sent out scouts to

capture informants and learn the location of the Crown army, they found out that the king’s army

consisted of 30,000 troops. Eventually the khan’s army chanced upon the king and his troops,

surrounded them from all sides and a great battle between two armies ensued. Shortly after the

beginning of the siege, the king realized his miserable situation and dispatched an envoy with his

letter to the camp of the khan in order to ask for mercy. He reportedly admitted his guilt and

expressed his readiness to give Islam Giray whatever he wanted lest the Tatars ravage the

Commonwealth. According to Senai, the king also introduced himself as a humble servant of the

khan and offered to pay the Islamic poll tax (cizye). Since Islamic law grants Muslim rulers the

right to collect poll tax from non-Muslim peoples who lived in their domains, Senai suggests that

in order to escape his plight the king accepted becoming a subordinate of the khan. He continues

that as Islam Giray customarily granted mercy to those who asked for it, he accepted the king’s

appeal on the condition that his vizier Sefer Gazi Agha and the grand chancellor (koca kansalar)

of the king (i.e., Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński) would meet to negotiate peace conditions.

The king agreed to the words of the khan and so Sefer Gazi Agha and Chancellor Ossoliński met

to negotiate. Senai comments that since the Tatars began to raid and plunder the Crown army, the

king was forced to show humility and thus allowed the chancellor to go to Sefer Gazi Agha to

learn the conditions of the Tatars for stopping the hostilities and concluding a peace treaty.130

According to Senai, during these negotiations Sefer Gazi Agha submitted the following

conditions to Chancellor Ossoliński. First, the Tatars should be allowed to seize captives and

launch raids in the Commonwealth. Second, the Commonwealth should pay a sum to the khan as

an indemnity for his campaign expenses. Third, the Cossacks who asked help from the Tatars

were to remain the khan’s subjects. The king should pay the salaries of 40,000 Cossacks (that is,

to raise the Cossack register to this amount). The Commonwealth should not bring any harm to

Cossack villages, towns and lands. Any complaint by the Cossacks would be regarded as a sign

that the Commonwealth had violated the peace treaty. Sefer Gazi Agha added that after the

Commonwealth accepted these conditions, they were also to pay the full amount of the annual

treasure (hazine) regularly. If the Commonwealth acted against the peace treaty or failed to

130 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 39-51, tr. 118-28.

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accept these conditions, the khan would no longer have any mercy for it. Sefer Gazi Agha also

warned that an act against a single warrior of the Tatar army would be considered as an act

against the whole Tatar army and a violation of the peace treaty. The chancellor returned to the

camp of the Crown army in order to convey these conditions. Accordingly, the Commonwealth’s

authorities deciding to continue the negotiations, sending their delegation to deliver part of the

indemnity payment for the khan and giving the son-in-law of the chancellor as a hostage to

ensure the payment in the future. Accordingly, Islam Giray appointed his representative in order

to collect the remainder from the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth’s authorities also

accepted all other conditions proposed by Sefer Gazi Agha and promised to release all Tatar

captives in the Commonwealth. They then drafted a peace document (‘ahdname in the words of

Senai), surrendered hostages and promised to pay the treasure (hazine) and the Islamic poll tax

(cizye) every year without delay. As the Crimean leadership was asked to grant mercy upon the

Kingdom’s army at Zbaraž and raise the siege in return for a payment, the Kingdom’s troops at

Zbaraž would be responsible find the funds for that payment. Islam Giray and his entourage

agreed to these demands. Thereafter, the khan’s army started its withdrawal from Zboriv on 20

August 1649 and marched to Zbaraž. Shortly after uniting with the Tatars who were besieging

the Kingdom’s army at Zbaraž, the khan received the payment to raise the siege and ordered the

whole army to return to Crimea.131

Grand Chancellor of Lithuania Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł interestingly recorded in his diary

that shortly before the above encounter with the khan’s army at Zboriv, the Kingdom’s troops

captured a Tatar and learned from him about the arrival of the khan with a large army. The

captive offered that he be sent to the Tatar camp so that he could try to convince Islam Giray to

declare a ceasefire and start peace negotiations with the Commonwealth. He also advised that the

Crown army should refrain from fighting with the Tatars. However, the captors acted with

disdain at the captive’s words. Radziwiłł claims that if the advice of the captive had been

followed, there would not have been so much bloodshed.132

The official text of the king’s letter that was copied into the Crown records is quite different

from that related in Senai’s account. On the contrary, there Jan Kazimierz reminds the khan that

131 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 53-7, tr. 129-32. 132 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik, vol. 3, 209.

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when he was still a Giray prince, he fell into captivity and received favourable treatment from

the previous king.133 In addition, he expresses his dismay that the khan joined his rebellious

subjects and attacked the Polish army that went to tame the Ruthenian lands. He also promised to

restore friendly relations with the Tatars and send annual payments.134 Hrushevsky suggests that

the version recorded in the Crown records must be different from the original text of the king’s

letter to the khan; in the original there must have been more promises and pledges that were

excised and replaced with reproachful and rebuking language.135

The khan did not hasten to give an answer to the king and the battle between two armies

commenced next day. According to the French military officer Pierre Chevalier who served as a

secretary of the French mission in Poland at some point between 1648 and 1654, instead of

responding to the peace proposal of the king, Islam Giray preferred to order his army to attack

the Crown army because he expected to gain a quick and certain victory. However, as the

onslaught of the Tatars was repulsed by the determination and courage of the Kingdom’s

soldiers, Islam Giray wrote a letter to the king.136 In his letter, the khan expressed his resentment

133 According to the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles, Islam Giray was captured by the Poles at a battle and he was detained by the Polish king in a room for seven years. Kaczmarczyk clearly states that Islam Giray as a Giray prince fell into captivity during a skirmish at the Dnister River in 1629 and gained his freedom five years later. Abdülgaffar Kırımi relates that during his captive years, Islam Giray with one or two thousand Tatars participated in a campaign against the Cossacks upon the invitation of the Commonwealth authorities. According to Naima, Islam Giray and his servants joined a campaign of the Commonwealth against infidel peoples. It is possible to state that these infidel peoples referred to the pagan peoples of Prussia. The chronicler adds that the Polish king gave horses and weapons to the Crimean prince and his troops, and praised Islam Giray’s courage and valour in the campaign. Then Islam Giray gained his freedom by the consent of the Polish king and went to settle in Yambol (Turk. Yanbolu) in Ottoman Bulgaria. Naima and Seyyid Muhammed Rıza also presents another account on Islam Giray’s release from captivity. During Sultan Murad IV’s reign, when the Ottomans were negotiating with the Commonwealth in order to renew peace, Bahadır Giray approached Murtaza Pasha and entreated him with gifts to rescue his brother Islam Giray from captivity. The Commonwealth agreed to exchange Islam Giray with some magnates who were under Ottoman captivity. Eventually the Crimean prince returned from the Commonwealth in the company of the Ottoman envoy Shahin Agha in 1634-5 (1044). It is interesting to note that when Bahadır Giray asked the Ottomans to negotiate his brother’s release during the negotiations with the Commonwealth, he did not occupy any ruling position in Crimea. See Abdülgaffar Kırımi, Umdet ül-tevarih, 164; Naima, Tarih, 798, 1005; Seyyid Muhammed Rıza, Es-Seb üs-seyyar fil-ahbar-ı mülük üt-tatar, ili sem’ planet soderžavščij istoriju krymskix xanov ot Mengli Girej Xana piervogo do Mengli Girej Xana vtorogo t. e. s 871/1466 po 1150/1737, ed. Mirza Kasımbek (Kazan, 1882), 160. 134 Jan Kazimierz to Islam Giray, 15 August 1649 [PIKK, vol. 1, 360-1, PIVK, vol. 1, pt. 3, 454-5, Dokumenty ob osvoboditel’noj vojne ukrainskogo naroda, 1648-1654 gg., eds. P. P. Grudzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, C. D. Pil’kevič (Kyiv: Akademiia Nauk URSR, Instytut Istorii, 1965), 277-8 (henceforth DOVUN)]; Theatrum Europeaum, vol. 6, 1647-1651, 821. 135 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 579. 136 Pierre Chevalier, A Discourse of the Original, Countrey, Manners, Government and Religion of the Cossacks with another of the Precopian Tartars. And the History of the Wars of the Cossacks against Poland, trans. Edward Brown (London, 1672), 94-5.

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that after he acceded to the Crimean throne, the Commonwealth did not send a mission to

Crimea, ignored the khan and his country and failed to renew the peace treaty with Crimea. As

the Commonwealth’s authorities treated Crimea with disdain, the khan marched against the

country of the king. If the king intended to give a hospitable and friendly treatment to the Tatars,

he should dispatch his chancellor to meet the vizier of the khan and convey the wishes of the

king to him.137 In this regard, Islam Giray reportedly lost his enthusiasm to fight after this failed

operation of the Tatars and decided to reconcile with Jan Kazimierz.

In any event, Islam Giray agreed to stop the hostilities and asked the king to dispatch his

chancellor to carry out negotiations with Sefer Gazi Agha. Radziwiłł recounts that the Crimean

vizier argued with the delegates of the king that the Tatars would have rather preferred to be

allies with the king than with his subjects. However, since the Commonwealth did not ask for

help from the Tatars, the khan took the side of the Cossacks upon their invitation. According to

Sefer Gazi Agha, the Commonwealth should have dispatched their envoys to ask for an alliance

before the hetman requested help from the Tatars.138 The vizier possibly reminded the Crown

delegates a letter of Islam Giray written shortly after his accession to the throne. In this letter, the

khan expressed his willingness to increase friendly relations and proposed the former king

Władysław to launch a joint campaign against the Cossacks in order to prevent them from

spoiling the relations between Crimea and the Commonwealth.139

On the basis of the Polish text of the peace treaty, many historians have underlined that the

Treaty of Zboriv was not an official treaty but an act of royal grace. In other words, the king

agreed to approve the demands of his Cossack subjects. Therefore the agreement was considered

as a declaration of the king’s favour to the Cossacks in response to their demands. According to

this declaration, Jan Kazimierz promised to restore all customary Cossacks rights and freedoms,

increase the number of the registered Cossacks to 40,000,140 give autonomy to the Cossacks in

137 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, 15 August 1649 [MdiKx, no. 347]; for the Polish text of the khan’s letter to the king with Russian and Ukrainian translations, see PIKK, vol. 1, 361, PIVK, vol. 1, pt. 3, 456-8, DOVUN, 279-80; Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 3, 211; Theatrum Europeaum, vol. 6, 1647-1651, 821-2. 138 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 3, 211; DOVUN, 251-2. 139 Halil İnalcık, “İslam Giray III,” in Türk Diyanet Vakfı Ansiklopedisi, vol. 23 (Istanbul, 2001), 47. 140 As far as how the number of the registered Cossacks was set at 40,000 by the Treaty of Zboriv, Larysa Pricak presents an interesting surmise suggesting how Islam Giray played a constructive role during the peace negotiations. When the Commonwealth reportedly wanted to define a limit for the number of the registered Cossacks, Xmel’nyc’kyj claimed that preparing the registry list was an internal matter of the Cossacks and did not agree to such

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the provinces of Kyiv, Braclav and Černihiv, and grant amnesty to the Cossacks and their

helpers. The Crown army and Jews would also be denied access to Cossack lands. In relation to

religious issues, the abolition of the Uniate Church and the restoration of the rights and assets of

the Orthodox Church were to be included in the agenda of the approaching Diet. The Orthodox

metropolitan of Kyiv was to have a seat in the Senate of the Commonwealth. Only the nobles of

the Orthodox faith would have the right to hold official positions in the provinces of Kyiv,

Braclav and Černihiv. The Jesuits would not be allowed to live and establish schools in Ukraine.

Lastly, all these provisions were to be submitted to the Diet.141

Although the agreement between Jan Kazimierz and the Cossacks was made to sound as if the

king deigned an act of grace upon his subjects, he actually had no choice other than to cease all

hostilities and start negotiations with Xmel’nyc’kyj. According to Jurij Mycyk, the words in the

text of the Treaty of Zboriv such as the conditionality of the royal grace for the rebels according

to their show of humility and proper obedience in future did not reflect the actual situation.142

Under the duress of the situation at Zboriv, the king had no better alternative other than

exchanging letters with the hetman. Accordingly, the Commonwealth had to agree to the

participation of Cossack delegates in the negotiations between Chancellor Ossoliński and Sefer

Gazi Agha. Therefore the agreement that came out of the negotiations between the Cossacks and

the commissioners of the king should be interpreted taking into account diplomatic protocol and

a demand. Thereupon the khan interfered and made the parties accept the number at 40,000. In Turkic languages, the number “forty” (Tur. kırk) has been widely used in idiomatic expressions, literary texts and sacred contexts in order to intensify a meaning. Accordingly the khan found an interesting solution to meet the demands of both the hetman and the Commonwealth in setting an upper limit of the registered Cossacks. The number “40,000” served as an upper limit in accordance with the desire of the Commonwealth. At the same time this number refers to very large quantities in a figurative sense. It is possible to support Pricak’s claim by giving examples from the Turkish idiomatic expressions concerning the number “forty.” If a person keeps mentioning only one subject, in order to tell how that person is boring it is possible to use the proverb “The bear knows forty stories, they are all about wild pears” (Ayının kırk hikayesi varmış, hepsi ahlat üstüne). The one who split the hair into forty pieces” (kılı kırk yaran) is said to refer a very meticulous person, it is said. Fairy tales also widely use the expression “forty days and forty nights” (kırk gün kırk gece) in order to emphasize longevity of a process. It is possible to give an example how the Crimean chancery employed such an idiomatic usage of numbers in diplomatic correspondence. For example, in his letter to the king from 12 June 1648 referred to above, the khan granted forty days to the Commonwealth to respond or accept his conditions of peace. See Pricak, Osnovni mižnarodni, 119; James W. Redhouse, Redhouse Türkçe/Osmanlıca-İngilizce sözlük / Redhouse Turkish/Ottoman-English, 18th ed. (Istanbul: SEV Matbaacılik ve Yayıncılık, 2000), 103, 650; Islam Giray to Władysław, 12 June 1648 [MdiKx, no. 345]. 141 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 592-5; Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 192-3; Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 107-12; Mackiw, Xmel’nyččyna v tohočasnyx, 56; Wasilewski, Ostatni Waza na Polskim Tronie (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Śląsk, 1984), 86. 142 Jurij Mycyk, Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu seredyny XVII stolittja (Dnipropetrovs’k: VPOP Dnipro, 1996), 96.

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wording used in the seventeenth century. The Cossack leadership in fact compelled the

Commonwealth to agree to the Treaty of Zboriv.

In his publication of documents on relations between Crimea and the Commonwealth, Dariusz

Kołodziejczyk gives both Tatar and Polish texts of the Treaty of Zboriv with translations into

English.143 According to the first article in the Polish text, the king promised to send annual

tribute/gifts through his agents to the envoy of the khan at Kam”janec’. In return, the khan was

expected to restrain his subjects from raiding the Commonwealth. The second article provided

that at the request of the khan, the king promised to forgive the Cossacks for their rebellion and

conclude a separate agreement with them in order to restore their ancient rights and freedoms. In

return, the Cossacks would restore their allegiance to the king. Mutual military aid was stipulated

by the third article. According to the fourth article, as the king requested, the Kingdom’s troops

at Zbaraž would be given safe passage so that they could join the Crown army. However, the

Tatar text has a different order of the points. According to its first article, neither the king nor

anybody from the Commonwealth would engage in any act of hostility against Xmel’nyc’kyj and

the Cossacks. All other issues such as the payment of tribute/gifts to Crimea, mutual military aid

and the Kingdom’s consent for Tatar pasturelands on Right Bank of Dnipro were mentioned in

the second article. In that article, the Commonwealth was also expected to refrain from causing

damage to Ottoman possessions either by sea or land.

That the order of points in the Tatar text is different from that in the Polish text is worthy of

notice. Hrushevsky claims that Islam Giray placed “the satisfaction of the Cossacks” as the first

provision of his treaty with the Commonwealth so as not to completely spoil his relationship

with the Cossacks whom he had just “betrayed.”144 Hrushevsky is possibly right in his argument

that while Islam Giray wanted to make Xmel’nyc’kyj agree to stop hostilities and conclude peace

143 The Polish instrument of the Treaty of Zboriv issued by Jan Kazimierz, 19 August 1649 [Crimean Khanate and the Commonwealth: International Diplomacy and the European Periphery, a Study of Peace Treaties Followed by Annotated Documents, ed. Dariusz Kołodziejczyk (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), 954-8; PIKK, vol. 1, 364-6; PIVK, vol. 1, pt. 3, 465-71]; the Crimean instrument of the Treaty of Zboriv issued by Islam Giray, 10 August-7 September 1649 (Şa‘ban 1059) [Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania Treaties, 959-63]; an eighteenth century Polish translation of Islam Giray’s instrument of peace treaty can be found in Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12: Materijaly do istoriji Ukrajins’koji Kozaččyny, vol. 5], ed. Miron Korduba (L’viv: 1911), 118-9; Abdullah Soysal also gives a modern but poor Polish translation of the khan’s instrument of peace treaty in Jarłyki Krymskie z Czasόw Jana Kazimierza (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Wschodniego w Warszawie, 1939), 21-2. 144 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 588.

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with the Commonwealth, he did not want to jettison his relations with his Cossack allies. At this

point, it is necessary to pay attention to the sharp differences between the Tatar text of the Treaty

of Zboriv and the abovementioned letters of the khan to the king written in June and December

1648. Contrary to his document of the Treaty of Zboriv, the khan’s letters to the king in June and

December 1648 suggest that the Crimean leadership was primarily interested in recounting its

grievances against the Commonwealth and asking for the payment of tribute/gifts arrears for four

years. Only in his letter in June 1648 did the khan briefly ask the king not to cause damage to the

Cossacks. However, in the Tatar text of the Treaty of Zboriv in August 1649, Islam Giray

apparently tried to appease Xmel’nyc’kyj by asking the Commonwealth to refrain from harming

the Cossacks and placing this request as his first condition of the treaty.

Polish, Russian and Ukrainian historians have typically considered that the treacherous khan

unilaterally terminated the hostilities, started peace negotiations with the Crown authorities upon

their promise to resume tribute/gifts payments, then obliged Xmel’nyc’kyj to agree to the

unfavourable Treaty of Zboriv and also threatened to make alliance with the Commonwealth

against the Cossacks if the hetman failed to compromise. Under these circumstances, the hetman

had no choice other than agreeing to become a party to the treaty.145

According to Kaczmarczyk, although the hetman participated in the negotiations between the

vizier and the chancellor, he was only given a secondary role.146 In a similar vein, Mycyk states

that the agreement between the hetman and the king was deliberately made one day after the

145 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 317-8; Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji Ukrajiny, vol. 4, 122-3; Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 104-5, 107, 230; Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 205-6; Miron Korduba, “Der Ukraine Niedergang und Aufschwung,” Zeitschrift für Osteuropäische Geschichte 6 (1932): 58; I. D. Bojko, “Osvobodiel’naja vojna ukrainskogo naroda 1648-1654 gg. i vossojeinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej,” in Vossojedinenije Ukrainy s Rossiej 1654-1954, sbornik statej, eds. A. I. Baranovič, L. S. Gaponenko, I. B. Grekov, K. G. Guslistyj (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954), 119; F. P. Ševčenko, “Dyplomatyčna služba na Ukrajini pid čas vyzvol’noji vijiny 1648-1654 rr.,” in Istoryčni džerela ta jix vykorystannja, vol. 1, eds. I. L. Butyč, I. P. Kryp”jakevyč, F. P. Ševčenko, K. F. Mart’janov (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1964), 97; Peter Bartl, “Der Kosakenstaat und das Osmanische Reich im 17. und in der Ersten Haelfte des 18 Jahrhunderts,” Südostforsschungen 33 (1974): 173; N. F. Kuchernjuk, Džerela pro rosijs’ko-ukrajins’ki polityčni zv”jazky v roky vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1654 (L’viv: L’vivs’kyj deržavnyj universitet, 1980), 94, 109; Mackiw, Xmel’nyččyna v tohočasnyx, 55, 147; Theodore Mackiw, “English press on Liberation War in Ukraine, 1648-49,” The Ukrainian Quarterly 42/3-4 (1986): 248, 251; Theodore Mackiw, “Postannja Bohdana Xmelnyc’koho ta Zborivs’kyj dohovir y zaxidn’oevropejs’kyx džerelax (zakinčennja),” Ukrajins’kyj istoryk 1-4/136-139 (1998): 139-49; Universaly Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho 1648 – 1657, eds. I. P. Kryp”jakevyč and I. L. Butyč (Kyiv: Vydavnyčyj dim Al’ternatyvy, 1998), 19. 146 Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 107.

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agreement between the khan and the king in order to downplay the importance of the agreement

between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth at Zboriv.147

It has also been argued that the Treaty of Zboriv made the khan a key actor in relations between

the Commonwealth and the Cossacks. According to Ludwik Kubala, the first and hardest term of

the Treaty of Zboriv was that Islam Giray would become the guardian and guarantor of the

agreement between Jan Kazimierz and his Cossack subjects.148 Besides, the peace settlement

supposedly made the hetman less dependent on the king than the khan on the Porte because the

rule of the khan was not guaranteed by a foreign power. In addition, the khan practised the same

religion and same religious rites with the Ottomans.149 On the basis of Kubala’s analysis, it can

be stated that while Islam Giray became the guarantor of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s position as the hetman

of the Ukrainian Cossacks vis-à-vis the Commonwealth, he himself did not have such a

guarantor to secure his rule against the Porte. In a similar vein, Tomkiewicz states that if the

Commonwealth failed to comply with the provisions of the agreement, then the khan as the

guarantor of the peace would go to the aid of his Cossack allies.150 Hrushevsky states that while

the khan forced the hetman to reconcile with the Commonwealth, he did not want to lose his

Cossack allies. For this reason Islam Giray wanted a peace settlement that would both satisfy

some of the demands of the Cossacks, while pressure the hetman to make peace. Accordingly,

the khan assumed an intermediary role between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth.151

According to Wójcik, the Treaty of Zboriv made the Cossacks de facto protégées of the khan

while they formally continued to be the subjects of the king.152 On the basis of Senai’s account,

Storoženko portrays the peace as a covenant between two suzerains of the hetman, namely the

khan and the king. Islam Giray promised to assure that the Commonwealth would pay salaries to

the Cossacks and show respect to their ancient rights and liberties.153 As the khan’s letters to the

king on 12 June and December 1648 and his peace document at Zboriv do not confirm Senai’s

147 Mycyk, Džerela z istoriji, 95-6. 148 Ludwik Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 1 (L’viv: Nakład Księgarni Gubrynowicza I. Schmidta, 1880), 143-4, 147; Ludwik Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński (Warsaw: Księgarnia Zakładu Nar. im. Ossolińskich, 1924), 360. 149 Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 1, 153. 150 Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 327. 151 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 588. 152 Zbigniew Wójcik, Jan Kazimierz Waza (Wrocław, Warsaw, Kraków: Zakład Nar. im. Ossolińskich, 1997), 73. 153 Ivan Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj i Zaporoz’ka Sič kincja XVI-seredyny XVII stolit’, vol. 2 (Dniprodzeržyns’k: Vydavnyčyj dim “Andrij”, 2007), 134-5.

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description of the hetman as a subordinate of the khan, Storoženko is possibly mistaken in his

remarks about the khan and the king as co-suzerains of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Unlike these

researchers, Smolij and Stepankov refrain from stating that the Treaty of Zboriv made the

hetman a subordinate of the khan but reiterate that Islam Giray assumed the role of guarantor of

the peace.154 Lev Zaborovskij concurs that the peace settlement gave the khan the right to act as

an arbitrator between the parties. According to him, the conclusion of eternal friendship between

Crimea and the Commonwealth implies that the khan had plans for a campaign Muscovy.155

While the khan and his entourage would try to include the hetman and the king in their plans

against Muscovy, it is not possible to interpret the routine phrase in the Treaty of Zboriv about

the conclusion of eternal friendship with the Commonwealth as an implicit provision of the

treaty proving anti-Muscovite schemes of the Crimean leadership.

Stepankov has argued that the Treaty of Zboriv damaged the future of the Cossack struggle

against the Commonwealth. According to him, the goal of the hetman and the Cossack officers

to achieve the independence of Ukraine from the Commonwealth encountered a strong resistance

from the Crimean dignitaries. For this reason, at a crucial moment of the battle of Zboriv Islam

Giray started negotiations with the king and forced the hetman to follow suit. The conclusion of

eternal friendship between the khan and the king made Crimea an ally of the Commonwealth and

thus nullified the anti-Commonwealth orientation of the Cossack-Tatar alliance. Cossack

Ukraine would not be able to take military action against the Commonwealth without the consent

of the Crimean Khanate and the hetman had to take the interests of the khan and the king into

account before taking actions in the international arena. In this respect, Cossack Ukraine might

be forced by Crimea and the Commonwealth to get involved in undesirable actions in

international realm such as participating in a war against Muscovy.156

Another controversial result of the Treaty of Zboriv was the acquiescence of the Commonwealth

to slave-capture and plunder raids of the Tatars on their return. Chevalier relates that during the

154 Smolij and Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 243; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 204. 155 Lev Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe xanstvo i gorsudarstva Central’noj i Vostočnoj Evropy v 1648-1654 gg.,” in Osmanskaja imperija i strany central’noj, vostočnoj i jugo-vostočnoj Evropy v XVII v., vol. 1, eds. G. Litavrin, L. Semenova, S. Oreškova and B. Florja (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk ISB, 1998), 202. 156 Valerij Stepankov, “Perejaslav 1654 roku: vytoky, sutnist’, nasidky,” in Ukrajina ta Rosija: problemy polityčny i sociokul’turnyx vidnosyn, ed. V.A. Smolij (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, 2003), 93.

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negotiations with Ossoliński, as Sefer Gazi Agha demanded compensation for Tatar losses

during the current campaign, the Commonwealth had to agree to permit the Tatars to raid

settlements during their return to Crimea.157 On the basis of the reports of the Muscovite voevoda

of Putyvl’, Semen Prozorovskij,158 Hrushevsky explains that Xmel’nyc’kyj received a ransom

payment for the Poles and shared it with Islam Giray and the Tatar nobles but he did not give

anything to the Cossack and Tatar commoners. Since the Tatars were displeased with the

hetman’s failure to give them a share, Xmel’nyc’kyj reported to the king about the situation and

asked him to permit the Tatars to launch raids and take captives in the lands beyond the Vistula.

However, Jan Kazimierz did not agree with the hetman’s proposal and ordered Xmel’nyc’kyj to

allow the Tatars to the lands of the Polish nobles who supposedly dragged the Commonwealth

into war against the Cossacks. Thereupon, the hetman reportedly ordered two Cossack officials

Danylo Nečai and Martyn Nebaba to accompany the Nogays and the Tatars either to help choose

captives or to limit their excesses in Ukraine during their return.159 Referring to Radziwiłł’s

account that the khan promised to restrain the Tatars and keep the destruction caused by these

raids to a minimum,160 it has been argued that the Tatars were tacitly granted the right to seize

captives and organize plunder raids in Ukraine.161 Thus, the Tatars were resented for ravaging

settlements and taking captives during their return to Crimea.

The size of the Tatar army that participated in the battles of Zbaraž and Zboriv has also been a

controversial matter among the historians. According to Olgierd Górka, many studies have

overstated the number of the Tatars. In his view there were nearly 40,000 Cossacks and 10,000

to 20,000 Tatars at Zbaraž. Nonetheless he maintains that the khan even with such a small army

played a decisive role at Zboriv and compelled Xmel’nyc’kyj to stop the war against the

Commonwealth because the hetman only had infantry troops at Zbaraž and Zboriv and he was

157 Chevalier, Discourse, 96; Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 12 September 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 352]. 158 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 31 August 1649, 3, 10, 12 September 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 341-2; 342-4; 345-8; 351-2]. 159 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 599-600. 160 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 3, 212. 161 Wasilewski, Ostatni Waza, 86; Wójcik, Dzikie Pola, 182; Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 193; Mackiw, Xmel’nyččyna v tohočasnyx, 58; Mackiw, “English press on Liberation War in Ukraine, 1648-49,” 251; Mycyk, Džerela z istoriji, 96; Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji Ukrajiny, vol. 4, 126; Smolij and Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja,” 166; Pavlo Myxajlyna, Vyzvol’na borot’ba trudovoho naselennja mist Ukrajiny (1569-1654) (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Naukova Dumka, 1975), 167.

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dependent on the Tatar cavalry for military operations against the Crown army. On the basis of

the Russian census of Crimea in 1783, Górka notes that at that time the population of Crimea

was nearly 170,000. Taking into account the loss of lives in the wars of 1769-1774 and the

emigration to the Ottoman lands, he estimates that in 1768 the total population of Crimea was

around 200,000. He increases this number by 30 or 40 percent and surmises that there could have

been at most 290,000 people in Crimea in the mid-seventeenth century. Therefore Islam Giray

could mobilize at most 40,000 troops. Górka adds that historical evidence shows that the

Crimean khans could assemble 15,000 to 20,000 troops in their greatest campaigns. However, he

admits that even a few thousand Tatars could be a great military asset to their allies.162

In a similar vein, historian Myron Korduba claims that since the population of Crimea was not

more than 400,000 at the time of the Russian annexation, it was unlikely to mobilize 100,000

troops from Crimea nearly one and half centuries earlier.163 In his later study Romuald Romański

claims that it was possible to recruit at most 30,000 or 40,000 troops from the whole of Crimea

and that the narratives that the Tatars flooded the steppes like the locusts should be treated as

fairy tales.164 Therefore according to these historians, the account of the chronicles and the battle

reports on the size of the Tatar forces should be treated with reservation.

Stefan Kuczyński notes that Olgierd Górka’s estimate on the number of Tatars at Zbaraž is based

only on the population of the Crimean peninsula, neglecting that there were many Tatar

communities scattered in the 600,000 km2 territory from the Danube to the Ural Mountains.

Therefore Islam Giray had the ability to raise an army of 60,000 troops at Zbaraž. Kuczyński

tries to support his argument by referring to seventeenth century Polish reports and the accounts

of travellers such as Emiddio Dortelli d’Ascoli, Evliya Çelebi and Guillaume de Beauplan.

According to Kuczyński, if the number of Tatars was around 15,000 or 20,000 as Górka claims,

it would be risky for the khan to divide such a small number of troops into two groups leaving

one group at Zbaraž in order to maintain the siege against Jeremi Wiśniowiecki’s army while

162 Olgierd Górka, “Ogniem i mieczem” a rzeczywistość historyczna (Warsaw: Wydawnictwe Ministertwa Obrony Narodowej, 1986), 191, 193-4, 193-4 n. 18, 196, 217. 163 Miron Korduba, “Jeremias Wiśniowiecki im Lichte der neuen Forschung,” Zeitschrift für Osteuropäische Geschichte 8 (1934): 233. 164 Romuald Romański, Wojny kozackie (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2005), 74.

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marching with the other group to intercept the Crown army. Thus the khan should have at least

60,000 troops to undertake two simultaneous military operations.165

On the basis of their analysis of various sources, Mykola Koval’s’kyj and Jurij Mycyk propose

that the khan was able to mobilize an army of 60,000 troops in early May 1649. They add that

this number could reach 100,000 with the participation of the Nogay and Circassian

dependencies. Thus, according to Koval’s’kyj and Mycyk, the historical studies that have

assessed the size of the Tatar army as 100,000 troops can be considered very reliable.166 In

similar vein, Storoženko thinks that there were 15,000 troops in the Polish camp at Zbaraž while

the Cossacks were about 60,000 or 70,000 and the Tatars were not less than 60,000. According

to him, while 20,000 Tatars from Akkerman and the Bucak region also came to Zbaraž, later

40,000 or 50,000 Cossacks and 30,000 Tatars marched to encounter 18,000 to 20,000 Crown

troops.167

In relation to the debates on the numbers of Tatars at Zbaraž and Zboriv, it is possible to surmise

that if the khan could send a vanguard army of 5,000 to 7,000 Tatars under Togay Beg in spring

1648 as Górka estimates,168 he should have been able to gather 50,000 to 70,000 troops for a

general campaign assuming that the khan’s army would be nearly ten times larger than an advance

force. In relation to Korduba and Górka’s speculation on the population of Crimea, it is possible

to argue that both authors do not adequately discuss how recurrent epidemics, famine and other

calamities and wars against Imperial Russia in the eighteenth century might have reduced the

population of the Tatars. For this reason these estimate of the population of Crimea are most likely

mistaken. In addition, it is impossible to determine the extent of the emigration from Crimea to

the Ottoman Empire because the present Ottoman and Crimean historical sources and chronicles

do not provide much information on the matter. Consequently it is not a good idea to take as a basis

the population of Crimea at the time of the Russian annexation in late eighteenth century and

extrapolate back to the mid-seventeenth century.

165 Stefan M. Kuczyński, “Tatarzy pod Zbarażem,” Przegląd Historyczno-Wojskowy 8/1 (1935): 124, 143. 166 Mykola Koval’s’kyj (Nikolaj Koval’skij) and Jurij Mycyk, Analiz arxivnyx istočnikov po istoriiUkrainy XVI-XVII vv. (Dnipropetrovs’k: DGU, 1984), 49-50; Mycyk, Džerela z istoriji, 182. 167 Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1, 223-6. 168 Olgierd Górka, “Ogniem i mieczem”, 238.

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Historians have also debated why Islam Giray unilaterally ceased the hostilities and made peace

with the Commonwealth at Zboriv. According to the prevailing opinion shared by Polish,

Ukrainian and Russian historians, the khan tried to make the best use of the miserable situation

of the Crown army at Zboriv and waited until the Crown army and the Cossacks exhausted each

other, but that it was not in the interest of the Tatars to have one party destroy the other. If the

Cossacks and the Commonwealth could in the future continue to fight one another, the Tatars

would have a permanent opportunity to launch plunder raids in neighbouring territories.169 For

this reason the khan did not allow the Cossacks to strike the final blow against the Crown army

at Zboriv and saved the Commonwealth from a disastrous end.170 The act of the khan also suited

the traditional geopolitics of the Crimean Khanate that was founded on the principle of

maintaining a balance of power between the Commonwealth and Muscovy. If Islam Giray had

permitted the Cossacks to destroy the Commonwealth, Muscovy would have increased its

strength and expanded its territories.171 At the same time the khan would not allow the

Commonwealth to quell the Cossack rebellion completely because a complete recovery of the

Commonwealth was also not in the interest of the Tatars.172

According to the interpretation of Soviet Ukrainian historian Holobuc’kyj, who was forced to

comply with Marxist and Russocentric orthodoxy, the khan was worried about anti-feudal

characteristics of the liberation war of the Ukrainian people. He was also cognizant of

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s secret negotiations with Muscovy for the “reunification” of Ukraine with Russia.

The realization of such a plan was against the interests of the Crimean Khanate and would put an

end to the predatory raids of the Tatars in Ukraine. For this reason, the khan did not want to see

the Ukrainian people gain a victory against the Commonwealth and rushed to conclude peace

169 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 201-2, Mycyk, Džerela z istoriji, 96; Vernadsky, Bohdan, 71; Mackiw, “Ukrainisch-polnische,” 32; Grekov, Koroljuk and Miller, Vossoedinenie Ukrainy, 61; Čuxlib, “‘Cisar turec’kyj,” 70; Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe xanstvo,” 202; Lev Zaborovskij, “Krymskij vopros vo vnešnej politike Rossii i Reči pospolitoj v 40-x – seredine 50-x godov XVII v.,” in Rossija, Pol’ša i pričernomor’e v XV-XVIII vv., ed. B. Rybakov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1979), 265; Dmytro Doroshenko, A Survey of Ukrainian History, ed. and trans. Oleh W. Gerus (Winnipeg: Humeniuk Publication Foundation, 1975), 232. 170 Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 133; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “Meta j osnovni naprjamy zovnišn’oji polityky urjadu Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho,” in Istorija Ukrajins’koho kozactva, vol. 1, eds. V. A. Smolij, O. A. Bačyns’ka, O. I. Huržij and V. M. Matjax (Kyiv: Kyjevo-Mohyljans’ka akademija, 2006), 356. 171 Wójcik, Jan Kazimierz Waza, 71; Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 182; Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 105; Janusz Kaczmarczyk, “Nie tylko ‘krwawe swaty’. Stosunki ukraińsko-mołdawskie w okresie powstania Bohdana Chmielnickiego,” Studia Historyczne 25/2 (1982): 205. 172 Metropolitan Ilarion, Polityčna Pracja Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho (Paris: Vydavnyctvo Naša Kul’tura, 1947), 51.

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with the king.173 Another Soviet Ukrainian scholar Mykola Petrovs’kyj, also following the

Russian-Ukrainian reunification ideology, held that Islam Giray, instead of defeating the Crown

army and ravaging the defenceless the Commonwealth, chose to reconcile with the king because

he knew that the Ukrainian people were striving to unify with the people of Russia.174

A dissident Soviet era Ukrainian scholar Mykhailo Braichevskyi disagrees with the ideological

view of the Russian-Ukrainian reunification by claiming that Muscovy was not a possible ally

but an enemy of the Ukrainian rebellion. Its defensive alliance of 1647 with the Commonwealth

obliged Muscovy to send military support to the Commonwealth in order to quell the Cossack

rebellion. The Muscovite state was in fact preparing to get involved in the conflict on the side of

the Commonwealth and readied its troops in the frontier cities. However, a mass rebellion in

Moscow dissuaded the Muscovites from marching into Ukraine.175 Thus, Braichevskyi did not

see Muscovy as a factor in explaining the behaviour of the khan at Zboriv.

Theodore Mackiw approaches Muscovy in a different way in explaining why the khan rushed to

make peace with the king and forced the hetman to follow the suit. In his view, upon the news

that the Muscovite state decided to respond to the persistent calls of help from the

Commonwealth dispatch its troops to start an expedition against Crimea and the Tatars, the khan

became willing to start peace negotiations.176 It is possible to lend credence to this argument

because the Commonwealth tried to induce Muscovy to send military support against the Tatars

in accordance with the Muscovite-Commonwealth agreement of 1647. In addition, Crimea was

exposed to the Don Cossack attacks in spring 1648 and 1649. For this reason, Islam Giray

possibly hesitated to become embroiled in a prolonged campaign against the Commonwealth and

wanted to return to Crimea so that the peninsula would not remain defenceless. Mackiw also

suggest that there was an Ottoman role since the Porte warned the khan not to provoke the

Commonwealth into making an alliance with Venice and thereby opening up new front in the

inconclusive and costly war over Crete177 However, concurring with prevailing opinion of

173 Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 205. 174 Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji Ukrajiny, 123. 175 Mykhailo Braichevskyi, Annexation or Reunification: critical notes on one conception, trans. and ed. George Kulchycky (Munich: Ukrainisches Institut für Bildungspolitik, 1974), 46. 176 Mackiw, Xmel’nyččyna v tohočasnyx, 40; Mackiw, “English press on Liberation War in Ukraine, 1648-49*,” 256; Mackiw, “Postannja Bohdana,” 84. 177 Mackiw, Xmel’nyččyna v tohočasnyx, 90; Mackiw, “Ukrainisch-polnische,” 32.

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historians, Mackiw points out that the Treaty of Zboriv neither fulfilled the expectation of the

Ukrainian masses to end the Polish yoke, nor matched the military successes of the Cossacks.

The Treaty of Zboriv was a compromise and in fact a victory for the khan since he dictated his

terms to the Cossacks and the Commonwealth.178

Although its hearsay report cannot be confirmed by other sources, the Gazette de France

recounts that as soon as Islam Giray arranged a peace between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the

Commonwealth, he hastened to Crimea upon the news that his brother intended to take

advantage of his absence and end his rule in Crimea.179 In the light of this report, it is possible to

surmise that Islam Giray’s brother and predecessor Mehmed Giray approached the Porte with

entreaties that he again be placed on the Crimean throne.

Islam Giray was also possibly concerned that the Tatar army might not withstand the long

duration of the campaign. It had been two-and-half months since the Tatars started the campaign.

It is plausible that the khan and the Tatars lost their willingness to fight especially after several

failed attempts to storm the encampments of the enemy at Zbaraž and Zboriv. For example,

following an unsuccessful attack against the camp of the Kingdom’s forces at Zbaraž in mid-

July, Sefer Gazi Agha agreed to meet Jeremi Wiśniowiecki. During the negotiations,

Wiśniowiecki reportedly blamed the Cossacks for committing the crime of rebellion and

requested that the Tatars abandon the Cossacks because it was not proper for the khan as a

rightful monarch to support an uprising of subjects against their king. Sefer Gazi Agha did not

pay heed to Wiśniowiecki and insisted on the capitulation of the Kingdom’s army. The Polish

envoys also visited the camp of the khan twice at the end of July and conveyed the message that

the Tatars should stop helping the Cossacks and leave the Commonwealth. However, Islam Giray

believed that the capitulation of the Kingdom’s troops was imminent and firmly refused these

requests.180 Shortly after this event, there were Polish reports informing how the Cossacks and

the Tatars were weary of the prolonged siege and were running out of supplies and therefore

quarrels and mutinies began to occur in their camp. Islam Giray even intended to abort the

178 Mackiw, Xmel’nyččyna v tohočasnyx, 59-60, 147, 170-1; Mackiw, “Postannja Bohdana,” 137. 179 Gazette de France, no. 123, Danzig, 15 September 1649; Gazette de France, no. 126, Danzig, 22 Sept. 1649. 180 Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 319; Jan Widacki, Kniaź Jarema (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1997), 193, 197-8.

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campaign, but later he decided to continue the battle thanks to the entreaties of the hetman.181

While the given Polish reports tried to cover up the difficult situation of the Crown army at

Zboriv in order to raise the spirits of their troops, there might be some truth in their account

because the discipline of the Tatars might have fallen in the face of the wearisome campaign.

Even after the proposal of the king to start peace negotiations at Zboriv, Islam Giray did not

promptly respond and instead ordered his army to launch an offensive against the camp of the

king. However, according to Albrycht Radziwiłł, the Crown army repulsed the offensive and

killed several thousand Tatars.182 The courage, skill and good command of the king supposedly

claimed the lives of more than 10,000 enemies and caused 9,000 to be wounded and such a

heavy blow therefore obliged the khan to respond to the letter of the king.183 Islam Giray was

familiar with the capabilities of the Crown army, and he was unsure whether the Tatar-Cossack

armies would be able to withstand it in a serious confrontation.184 The khan was possibly

convinced that the Cossack-Tatar armies could not achieve an absolute victory against the

Kingdom’s forces at Zbaraž and the Crown army at Zboriv. Accordingly, he decided to make the

best use of the present situation instead of taking the risk of continuing the war with the enemy.

In contrast to prevailing historical interpretation that the khan forced the hetman to reconcile

with the king at Zboriv, Bucinskij claims that the hetman made peace with the king voluntarily.

According to him, it is hard to believe that the khan could commit such a treacherous act without

the hetman’s prior knowledge. It was more profitable for the Tatars to destroy the rich and

prosperous Commonwealth than to conclude an agreement with it. Referring to the account of

the Eyewitness Chronicle on the battle of Zboriv, since Xmel’nyc’kyj did not want a Christian

monarch such as the king to fall into the hands of the infidels (i.e., the Tatars), he reconciled with

the Commonwealth.185 It was Xmel’nyc’kyj who convinced the khan to start negotiations and

not vice versa. When the hetman saw that the Crown army was on the verge of an absolute

defeat, he decided to take action in order to prevent the commoners and the Tatars from

181 Arxiv Jugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, izdavaemyj komissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, pt. 3, vol. 4 (Kyiv, 1914), 295-6, 301-2, 314–5 (henceforth Arxiv JuZR); Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 573; Ludwik Frąś, “Bitwa pod Zborowem w r. 1649,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 46/3-4 (1932): 350. 182 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 3, 211. 183 “La derniere relation,” in Gazette de France, no. 4, 1650. 184 Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 105. 185 Litopys samovydcja, 58.

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triumphing over the Polish nobles and the king. Accordingly, he advised the khan to start

negotiations with the king. In order to justify his action in the eyes of the Cossacks, the hetman

purportedly planned to tell them that since the khan reconciled with the king, then he too had to

follow the suit and conclude peace with the Commonwealth. While the Kingdom’s forces at

Zbaraž were being defeated and the encampment of the king at Zboriv was surrounded by the

Cossacks, the hetman ordered a stop to the battle at a critical moment. According to Bucinskij,

the correspondence of the khan and the hetman with the king proves that Islam Giray did not

betray the Cossacks because while the khan wrote an arrogant letter to Jan Kazimierz,

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s letter to the king was full of expressions of humility and servility.186

Much later than Bucinskij, Stepan Horoško maintains that the contemporaries of the khan did not

confirm the allegations of his betrayal to the hetman. He refers to the Muscovite voevoda of

Brjansk Nikiforko Meščerskij’s report to claim that when Jan Kazimierz offered to the hetman to

make peace, the hetman advised the king to seek reconciliation first with the khan. Thereupon

the Commonwealth made peace with Islam Giray, paying him a handsome sum. He also refers to

the work of the late nineteenth century historian Mixail Juzefozyč on Xmel’nyc’kyj to state that

while the Cossacks besieged the Crown army and got the opportunity to capture the king, they

allowed him to escape because the hetman strictly ordered them not to damage the “sacred king.”

As opposed to the view that the hetman was under the pressure of the khan, Horoško points out

that there was no sign of any complaint about the Tatars in Xmel’nyc’kyj’s letters. On the

contrary the hetman always called the Tatars his brothers who obeyed his orders.187

Larysa Pricak states that Xmel’nyc’kyj did not have the right to conclude an agreement with

King Jan Kazimierz because the hetman was a subject of the hetman, as it was not appropriate

for the king to consider his subject as a negotiating partner. For this reason, Xmel’nyc’kyj asked

Islam Giray to represent his interests vis-à-vis the Commonwealth whereupon the khan readily

forced the king to declare his mercy upon the Cossacks and give them back their ancient rights

and liberties. She draws attention to the agreements of Bila Cerkva in 1651 and Žvanec’ in 1653

in order to emphasize how the khan played a positive role in making the Treaty of Zboriv in

186 Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 66-8. 187 Stephan Horoško, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, dyskusijni pytannja problemni sudžennja (Žaškiv: Vydavec’ S. I. Horoško, 2008), 52; Nikiforko Meščerskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 11 September 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 349-51]; Mixail Juzefoyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyckij (Kyiv, 1872), xiv.

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1649. She claims that the Cossack leadership attained a favourable peace at Zboriv and Žvanec’

thanks to the involvement of the khan in peace negotiations with the Commonwealth. However,

after the catastrophic defeat at Berestečko in June 1651, Xmel’nyc’kyj was obliged to accept the

agreement of Bila Cerkva with the Commonwealth as a result of negotiations in which Islam

Giray did not participate. Therefore, in the absence of an actor who would defend Cossack rights

and liberties against the Commonwealth, the hetman was forced to concede to the Treaty of Bila

Cerkva whose provisions were not as favourable as those of the Treaty of Zboriv. However, the

“treacherous” khan once again carried out negotiations with the king at Žvanec’ in 1653 and

made the Commonwealth renounce the Treaty of Bila Cerkva and restore the Treaty of Zboriv.

In addition, Pricak underlines that the Commonwealth did not agree to compromise with the

Cossacks even after suffering defeats at Žovti Vody and Korsun’ in spring 1648 and called them

rebellious slaves. From their perspective it was inconceivable to negotiate with the Cossacks and

only force could be used against them. For this reason, the hetman needed the khan as a

mediating party between him and the Commonwealth. Being the monarch of the Crimean

Khanate and thereby having equal status with Jan Kazimierz, Islam Giray undertook negotiations

on Xmel’nyc’kyj’s behalf and successfully imposed the Cossack demands on Jan Kazimierz at

Zboriv in summer 1649. Therefore, according to Pricak, blaming the khan for betraying his

Cossack allies at Zboriv is an argument without justification. With regard to the accusation that

Islam Giray frustrated the objective of the hetman to establish an independent Cossack state and

compelled him to accept a limited autonomy within the Commonwealth, she claims that it was

implausible for Xmel’nyc’kyj to pursue such an ambitious goal because of the international

political system in the mid-seventeenth century. As the hetman was deprived of links to one of

the well-established dynasties, the optimum solution for him was to gain a wide political

autonomy as a dependency of a recognized dynasty. Accordingly, Larysa Pricak opposes the

argument that under the influence of Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem and the Kyivan secular and

religious circles during his sojourn in Kyiv in late 1648 Xmel’nyc’kyj decided to pursue more

ambitious goals, such as becoming the saviour of the Orthodox and establishing an independent

Ukrainian polity.188

188 Pricak, Osnovni mižnarodni, 16, 69-71, 91, 94-9, 119.

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Storoženko considers that it was Xmel’nyc’kyj, rather than the khan, who made the initiative to

cease military activity at Zboriv. He claims that when the king and his entourage decided to ask

for peace at Zboriv, in order to protect royal dignity they sought to have the khan, rather than the

hetman, as their negotiating counterpart. However, Islam Giray did not agree to start peace

negotiations in the first place and launched an attack against the Crown army in order to be able

dictate his terms of peace to the king. Thereupon Xmel’nyc’kyj gave the king a chance to escape

from a shameful defeat and wrote him a letter explaining the causes of his rebellion and

promising to serve the king loyally. Although the king accepted the appeal of the hetman, it

would be inappropriate for him as a high royal person to conduct negotiations with his subject.

Therefore, referring to the king’s letter to the hetman from 16 August 1649, Storoženko claims

that Jan Kazimierz agreed to carry out negotiations through the mediation of the khan. According

to Storoženko, the hetman was also a royalist and therefore supported Jan Kazimierz’s candidacy

for the throne. The hetman always separated the king from the magnates and saw the monarchy

as a guarantor of justice in the Commonwealth. Therefore the hetman stopped fighting at Zboriv

lest the king fell captive to the Tatars and his royal dignity be damaged. Jan Kazimierz thanked

his vassal Xmel’nyc’kyj by agreeing to implement the terms of the Treaty of Zboriv.189

Smolij and Stepankov severely criticize Storoženko’s arguments and disagree with the opinion

that Xmel’nyc’kyj undertook reconciliation with the Commonwealth of his own accord.

According to them, the king intentionally chose the khan as his negotiating counterpart and

wrote to him in order to get out of his miserable predicament at Zboriv. By this action, the king

linked the solution of the Cossack problem to a settlement with Crimea. Therefore it was not

Xmel’nyc’kyj but Islam Giray who took control of the relations between the Cossacks and the

Commonwealth. Based on Kunakov’s account,190 Smolij and Stepankov also reiterate how the

hetman quarrelled with the khan after learning about the conclusion of an agreement with the

Commonwealth without consulting the Cossacks. Since it was not the hetman but the khan, who

decided to cease the battle, the vizier, not one of the aides of the hetman, went to meet the

chancellor in order to negotiate the terms of the peace. In order to underline that the hetman

agreed to reconcile with the Commonwealth only under the direct pressure of the khan, Smolij

189 Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1, 229-31; Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 2, 135. 190 Grigorij Kunakov to Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovič, December 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 395].

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and Stepankov also quote the words of Adam Kysil’ that if the khan did not show mercy upon

the Crown army at Zboriv, the hetman would destroy it completely.191

Concerning the question whether the alliance with the Tatars brought more damage than benefit

to the Cossacks, Smolij and Stepankov maintain that the military-political alliance with the

Tatars played an important role in the victories of 1648-9, strengthened the international position

of the Cossacks and spoiled the attempts of the Commonwealth to form an anti-Cossack coalition

with other powers. However, under the pressure of the khan, Xmel’nyc’kyj abandoned the

demand of establishing an independent Ukraine and conceded to having only autonomy in the

provinces of Kyiv, Braclav and Černihiv.192 In addition, the raids of the Tatars in Ukraine caused

economic and cultural decline of the country. Since such excesses of the Tatars happened in the

presence of the Xmel’nyc’kyj’s Cossacks in Ukraine, the hetman lost the confidence of the

Ukrainian masses. Presumably on the basis of Hrabjanka’s chronicle,193 Smolij and Stepankov

also surmise that Crimea wanted to keep the Commonwealth and the Cossacks fighting against

each other in order to neutralize both of his enemies, lessen their military threat against Crimea,

turn Ukraine into a vassal entity of the Khanate and use them in order to conquer Kazan and

Astrakhan and achieve independence from Ottoman Empire. Crimea would not also supposedly

allow the Cossacks to destroy the Commonwealth and declare their independence in Ukraine

because an independent Ukraine would deprive the Tatars of the greatest and most profitable

source of unending plunder and supply for the slave trade.194

In Smolij and Stepankov’s assessment, while Islam Giray benefited the most from the Treaty of

Zboriv, Xmel’nyc’kyj’s and the Cossacks’ gains were more modest. Although the

Commonwealth had to agree to recognize autonomy in Cossack Ukraine, they escaped a

191 Deržavnyj Arxiv u Krakovi (State archive in Kraków), f. 465, Spr. No 31, Ark. 77; quoted in Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “Formuvannja ukrajins’koji deržavnoji ideji ta jiji osoblyvosti,” in Istorija Ukrajins’koho kozactva, vol. 1, eds. V. A. Smolij, O. A. Bačyns’ka, O. I. Huržij and V. M. Matjax (Kyiv: Kyjevo-Mohyljans’ka akademija, 2006), 246; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 201-2. 192 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj socia’no, 243; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 202-3; Smolij and Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja,” 167; Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 138. 193 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv, 901-2. 194 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj socia’no, 214-5, 248; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 187, 206; Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 117, 134, 138; Smolij and Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja,” 166; Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja dyplomatyčnoji,” 344; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “Meta j osnovni naprjamy zovnišn’oji polityky urjadu Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho,” in Istorija Ukrajins’koho kozactva, vol. 1, eds. V. A. Smolij, O. A. Bačyns’ka, O. I. Huržij and V. M. Matjax (Kyiv: Kyjevo-Mohyljans’ka akademija, 2006), 360.

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disastrous situation by paying a large sum of money and allowing the Tatars to plunder towns

and villages and seize captives in Ukraine. In return, Ukraine was not allowed to secede from the

Commonwealth and became an independent entity. Despite their military victory, the Cossacks

had to concede any strivings for independence and instead settle for a degree of autonomy in

some parts of Ukraine while other Ukrainian territories continued to live under Polish hegemony.

The Treaty of Zboriv also showed that the Tatars were opposed to any independence of Ukraine

from the Commonwealth.195

Concerning Islam Giray’s role in undermining the objectives of the hetman at Zboriv and his so-

called treachery to the Cossacks, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not mention any clash

of interests between the khan and the hetman with regard to the ultimate goal of the Cossack

rebellion against the Commonwealth. As discussed in this chapter, the majority of historians

relate how Xmel’nyc’kyj changed the objectives of his struggle under the influence of Patriarch

Paisios and the Kyivan secular and religious intelligentsia during his sojourn in Kyiv after the

campaign of 1648. Again the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not give information on the

conditions upon which Islam Giray agreed to help Xmel’nyc’kyj in early 1648. It is also not

known whether the khan and the hetman revised the terms of their agreement as the political

vistas of the hetman apparently began to change after his stay in Kyiv. However, as stated earlier

in this chapter if, one pays close attention to Islam Giray’s letters to the Commonwealth’s

leadership in June and December 1648, it can be said that the khan was mainly interested in the

payment of overdue tribute/gift to Crimea. Only in his letter in June 1648 did the khan briefly

ask the king not to harm the Ukrainian Cossacks. However, in the Crimean instrument of the

Treaty of Zboriv in August 1649, Islam Giray firmly demanded from the Commonwealth not to

cause damage to the Cossacks. Therefore, although thanks to the Treaty of Zboriv Xmel’nyc’kyj

purportedly gained more rights than his predecessors did in the struggle for independent

Ukraine,196 his aspiration for bigger opportunities such as establishing an autonomous polity in a

more bigger territory was possibly crippled by the khan.

195 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj socia’no, 243-6; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 204-5. 196 Janusz Kaczmarczyk, “Ugoda w Perejasławiu: konieczność czy wybór?,” Studia Historyczne 27/3 (1984): 419.

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2.4. The Commonwealth and Ukrainian Cossack Missions to the Ottoman

Porte

One of the thorny issues about the Cossack-Polish conflict of 1648-9 has been how the Ottomans

shaped their attitude to the Cossack rebellion against the Commonwealth and Tatar involvement

in it. Both Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth tried to influence the Porte in this early phase of

the rebellion. While the hetman intended to persuade the Ottoman authorities to consent to the

support of the Tatars, the king and his officials wanted to make the Porte compel Islam Giray to

abandon the Cossacks.

Looking first at the Commonwealth’s attempts to sway Istanbul, Chancellor Ossoliński advised

Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki to contact the Porte in order to complain about both the

khan’s allowing the Tatars to plunder the Commonwealth and his relations with the Cossacks.

And so Potocki wrote a letter to the Porte noting that although the Cossacks were forbidden to

sail in the Black Sea in accordance to the peace with the Ottomans, they had now rebelled and

united with the Tatars to ravage the Commonwealth. Deputy Grand (ka’im-makam) Vizier

Ahmed Pasha’s response to Potocki’s letter arrived after the battle of Korsun’ where Potocki

along with the Polish Crown Field Hetman Marcin Kalinowski fell captive to the Tatars. And so

his letter was instead delivered into the hands of the chancellor arriving after the battle of

Korsun’ where Potocki along with the other Polish hetman Marcin Kalinowski fell captive to the

Tatars.197

In this response, Ahmed Pasha assured that the Ottoman state neither gave consent to an alliance

between the Cossacks and the Tatars, nor approved any hostile action contrary to peace with the

Commonwealth. He continued that even before the arrival of Potocki’s letter, Sultan Ibrahim (r.

1640-8) had already sent a letter to the khan ordering him to avoid having relations with the

Cossacks and to restrain the Tatars from raiding the Commonwealth’s territories. The vizier

promised that as long as the Commonwealth restrained the Cossacks, paid customary tribute/gifts

(vergü) to the khan, and remained in friendship with Crimea, the Ottomans would keep the Tatars

under firm control and not allow anyone to damage peaceful relations with the

197 Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 31, 89-90; Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 55.

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Commonwealth.198 According to Szajnocha, this letter shows that even before the

Commonwealth started submitting complaints to Istanbul, the Porte had dispatched orders

prohibiting Islam Giray not to attack the Commonwealth.199

Upon the news of the defeat at Žovti Vody, Chancellor Ossoliński decided to take hold of the

situation and started a vigorous diplomacy to spoil the Cossack-Tatar alliance. The chancellor

dispatched a mission to Istanbul with the message that the Porte should order the Tatars to leave

the Commonwealth and return all spoils and captives. He added that while the deceased king

showed patience in the face of the destructive raids of the Tatars out of respect to the sultan,

Islam Giray entered the Commonwealth’s lands in person and attacked in alliance with the

Cossacks.200 The chancellor also asked the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu and the French

authorities and their agents in Istanbul to use their influence at the Ottoman court in order to

separate the Tatars from the Cossacks. Seeing Xmel’nyc’kyj as a threat to his rule in Moldavia,

Lupu added his own note to the chancellor’s letter to Grand Vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha. In

this note the hospodar supported the claims of the Commonwealth that by helping the Cossacks

the khan spoiled the Ottoman-Polish peace and forced the Commonwealth to assemble a large

army. Furthermore he urged the grand vizier to force the Tatars to abandon the Cossacks in order

to restore peace between the Porte and the Commonwealth.201 During his meeting with the

French envoy Louis d’Arpajon in June 1648 near Gdańsk, Grand Chancellor of Lithuania

Radziwiłł also requested the ambassador to ask the French king to convince the Ottomans to

order the Tatars to return home.202

The grand vizier wrote a strongly worded letter to Ossoliński. He related that upon earlier

complaints, the Porte had sent a decree to the khan ordering him return to Crimea, refrain from

causing any damage to the peace with the Commonwealth and keep the Tatars under firm

control. However, the Commonwealth’s authorities reported to the Ottomans that the Tatars

198 Deputy Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha to Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki, 1648 [Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Dział Turecki, k. 75, t. 409, no. 710 (henceforth AGAD, Dz. Tur)]; Szajnocha gives the Latin translation of this letter in Dwa lata, vol. 2, 358-9. 199 Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 90. 200 Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński to a certain Ottoman vizier, 6 June 1648 [Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 355-6; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 269, 446 n. 20]. 201 Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 91-2; Ludwik Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 2 (L’viv: Nakład Księgarni Gubrynowicza I. Schmidta, 1880), 135. 202 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 3, 78-9.

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attacked the Commonwealth again. The grand vizier tried to assure that the sultan, as the

suzerain of the khan and as ultimate ruler of Crimea, adhered to the peace with the king and

would not allow anyone to act against the peace. He repeated that the Porte would not approve

any attacks of the khan and the Tatars as long as the Commonwealth paid customary tribute/gifts

(vergü) and observed the peace. Furthermore, the letter informed that the Porte sent couriers to

Crimea in order to admonish the khan again. If Islam Giray did not heed the new orders of the

Porte, then he would meet the same fate of the recalcitrant brothers Mehmed Giray III (r. 1623-8)

and Şahin Giray. The grand vizier concluded his letter by asking the chancellor to show great

care to the peace between two countries and communicate with him in future.203

On the basis of the compilation of documents in the appendix of Szajnocha’s work,204 Kubala

surmises that the letter of the grand vizier came to Warsaw at the end of June.205 Therefore, when

the grand vizier dispatched his response to the chancellor’s letter, Islam Giray was possibly

already marching through Ukraine. Szajnocha refers to the sudden arrival of an envoy from the

Porte to the khan at Bila Cerkva with a categorical order telling him to withdraw from the

Commonwealth within a few days.206 Rumours also circulated that the Porte obliged the khan to

withdraw from the Commonwealth and ordered him to participate in the Ottoman campaign to

regain Iraq from Safavid Iran.207 According to Hrushevsky, it is doubtful that the khan received a

true, as opposed to a pro forma warning from the Porte, and accordingly retreated to Crimea. The

Tatars wanted to go home because they were tired of the prolonged campaign and were slowed by

their booty and captives.208 Like Hrushevsky, Kubala considered that the Tatars had to withdraw

because of their huge number of captives of the Tatars, but adds that although the Tatars

promised the Cossacks to come back to Ukraine at the end of August, it is doubtful that they

would have been able to fulfill their promise because the Porte sent strict orders to them not to

attack the Commonwealth and the Muscovite army was waiting at the frontier voevodaship of

203 Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha to Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński, c. June-July 1648 [AGAD, Dz. Tur., k. 75, t. 410, no. 711]; Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 93. 204 An unnamed vizier to Mikołaj Potocki, c. summer 1648 [Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 358-9]. 205 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 278. 206 Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 98-9. 207 Gazette de France, no. 114, Danzig, 4 July 1648; Moderate Intelligencer, no. 175, Danzig, 27 June 1648; no. 176 Hamburg, 20 July 1648; Jaroslav Fedoruk, Zovnišn’opolityčna dijal’nist’ Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho i formuvannja joho polityčnoji prohramy (1648 - serpen’ 1649 rr.) (L’viv: Akademija Nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji, 1993), 20. 208 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 430, 430 n. 40

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Putyvl’ for a call for help from the Commonwealth in accordance with the Muscovite-Polish

treaty of 1647. In this context since the Tatars feared the Porte and Muscovy, they would not

have taken the risk of returning to Ukraine in order to help the Cossacks again.209

On 30 June, Chancellor Ossoliński wrote to the Chief Minister of France, Cardinal Jules

Mazarin, expressing disagreement with the view that considered the Ottomans as being opposed

to Tatar participation in the Cossack-Polish war. According to Ossoliński, letters received from

Islam Giray clearly state that the Tatars came to the help of the Cossacks in accordance with the

Porte’s order.210 While it is unlikely that the Porte encouraged the Tatars to enter the

Commonwealth, the khan tried to legitimize his action by referring to his suzerain’s purported

approval. The aforesaid letter of the grand vizier Ahmed Pasha also suggests that on the contrary

the Porte tried to compel the khan to abandon the Cossacks, though in vain. In addition, neither

the letter of the khan to the king of 12 June nor Senai’s account makes mention of any Ottoman

role in either authorizing the khan to go to Ukraine to help the Cossacks, or in obliging him to

return to Crimea.

In the meantime, the Moldavian hospodar reported to the Commonwealth that the grand vizier

sent an order the khan to abort the campaign and cease supporting the Cossacks because of the

fear of descending into a war with the Commonwealth. He continued that three days after the

grand vizier wrote his aforementioned letter to Warsaw, envoys of the khan arrived in Istanbul to

inform of his recent victories. In reaction to this the grand vizier reproached the envoys and

wrote to the hospodar that both the Porte and the Tatars would no longer act contrary to peaceful

and friendly relations with the Commonwealth. The hospodar sent this letter of the grand vizier

to Warsaw and advised the Commonwealth to dispatch a new embassy to Istanbul as soon as

possible and ask for the severe punishment or dethronement of the khan.211

Accordingly, at the Convocation Diet in June-July 1648, it was decided to send new missions to

the Porte in order to repeat the complaints that the khan and his Tatars acted contrary to the

209 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 276. 210 Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński to the French Cardinal Jules Mazarin, 30 June 1648 [DOVUN, 57-60]. 211 An unnamed person to an unnamed person, 1648 [Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 319-21]; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 278.

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peace and ask for the release of the captive hetmans.212 Then Chancellor Ossoliński sent another

embassy to Istanbul to convey his own and Primate Maciej Łubieński’s letters to the grand vizier.

The Moldavian hospodar and the pasha of Silistra were also asked to provide safe passage to the

Crown envoy on his way to Istanbul.213 The Crown envoy to Istanbul was also instructed to

convey a copy of the khan’s letter that was written to the king after the battle of Korsun’ on 12

June 1648. In their letters to the Porte, the Commonwealth’s authorities expressed their

resentments at the khan’s forming an alliance with the Cossacks and sending a large number of

Tatars to ravage the Commonwealth. They requested the dethronement of the khan and the

release of the captive magnates who, in their words, did not have any hostility against the Turks

or even the Tatars and had only been pursuing the rebellious Cossacks. Otherwise the

Commonwealth would completely break peaceful relations with the Ottoman Empire.214

In any event when the Crown envoy set out to Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire was going through a

crisis. The inhabitants of the capital and beyond had already been antagonized by lavish life and

incompetent rule of the sultan and his entourage, imposition of new taxes and setbacks in the

Venetian war. In early August 1648, the janissary corps in alliance with some Ottoman notables

staged a rebellion against Sultan Ibrahim and his grand vizier Ahmed Pasha. Consequently,

Ahmed Pasha was dismissed from the grand vizierate and Sofu Mehmed Pasha was declared as

the new grand vizier. Shortly after Ahmed Pasha was murdered by an angry mob, Sofu Mehmed

Pasha orchestrated the execution of Sultan Ibrahim and placed the slain sultan’s son Mehmed,

still a mere child, on the throne.215 Therefore, as the representative of the new Ottoman

leadership, Sofu Mehmed Pasha would respond to the new letters from the Commonwealth and

212 Julian Bartoszewicz, Pogląd na stosunki Polski z Turcyą i Tatarami (Warsaw: Nakładem Aleksandr Nowolecki, 1860), 140; Pisma polityczne z czasów panowania Jana Kazimierza Wazy, 1648-1668, vol. 1, ed. Stefania Ochmann-Staniszewska (Wrocław, Warsaw, Gdańsk, Łódź: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1989), 5. 213 Primate Maciej Łubieński to Moldavian Hospodar Vasile Lupu, 3 July 1648 [PIKK, vol. 1, 238; PIVK, vol. 1, pt. 3, 110-2]; Crown Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński to Ottoman Pasha of Silistra, c. July 1648 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 245, Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 357]. 214 The Senate of the Commonwealth to Ottoman Vizier Musa Pasha , 1 July 1648 [PIKK, vol. 1, 236-7, PIVK, vol. 1, pt. 3, 105-9]; Primate Maciej Łubieński to A Certain Ottoman Vizier named Musa (?) Pasha, 1 July 1648 [Michałowski, 69-70]. 215 Abdülkadir Özcan, “Hezarpare Ahmed Paşa,” in Türk Diyanet Vakfı Ansiklopedisi, vol. 17 (Istanbul, 1998), 301-2; Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire 1300-1650: the Structure of Power (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 113; Caroline Finkel, The History of the Ottoman Empire, Osman’s Dream (New York : Basic Books, 2006), 233-4; Ekkehard Eickhoff, Venedig, Wien und die Osmanen (Munich: Verlag Georg D. W. Callwey, 1970), 98-102.

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make a decision whether to send a new order to Islam Giray requiring him to restrain the Tatars

from attacking his northern neighbour.

Thus, Sofu Mehmed Pasha wrote to Chancellor Ossoliński that he received and read the copy of

the khan’s letter to the king that the Crown envoy brought to Istanbul. Then the pasha recounted

the complaints of the Commonwealth about how the khan concluded an alliance with the

Cossacks, marched against the Commonwealth and captured the Crown great hetman and some

other magnates. He reminded that when the Porte previously concluded peace with the

Commonwealth, an imperial letter of oath (‘ahdname) was enacted by the sultan promising that

if the king dispatches customary tribute/gifts (vergü) to the khan every year without any delay,

remain in friendship with him, and forbids the Cossacks from sailing out onto the Black Sea,

then the khan and the Tatars will be firmly restrained and never be allowed to attack the

Commonwealth. According to the mentioned copy of the khan’s letter, the king violated peaceful

and friendly relations between Crimea and the Commonwealth by sending the Tatar envoys back

with harsh responses and refusing to pay four years of tribute/gifts in arrears. Since the khan did

not receive these payments, the Porte allowed him to attack the Commonwealth. Sofu Mehmed

Pasha continued that as he understood from the conditions of the peace treaty with the

Commonwealth, if the khan did not receive tribute/gifts and the Cossacks were not restrained,

then he had the right to launch plunder raids and seize captives in the Commonwealth. In this

situation the Commonwealth was violating the peace while the khan was fulfilling his

responsibilities in accordance with the peace treaty. The grand vizier concluded his letter by

advising the Commonwealth to pay customary payments to the khan every year without any

delay and forbid the Cossacks from sailing onto the Black Sea. In return he promised that the

Porte would restrain the khan and the Tatars from attacking the Commonwealth.216 An identical

letter of Sofu Mehmed Pasha was also sent to Primate Łubieński.217

Concerning the difference between the attitudes of Sofu Mehmed Pasha and his predecessor

Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha towards Crimean involvement in the Cossack-Polish war, Senai relates

that after Islam Giray returned to Crimea and the Tatars were celebrating their victories, Ahmed

216 Grand Vizier Sofu Mehmed Pasha to Crown Chancellor Ossoliński, c. August-September 1648 [AGAD, Dz. Tur., k. 75, t. 399, no. 695]. 217 Grand Vizier Sofu Mehmed Pasha to Primate Łubieński, c. August-September 1648 [MdiKx, no. 346].

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Agha, the superior of the palace doorkeepers (kapucular kethüdası), arrived in Crimea with a

harsh message from Grand Vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha. The chronicler expresses derision at

the grand vizier describing him as a person, who was seemingly friendly and loyal to the sultan

but was inwardly quarrelsome and treacherous. Ahmed Agha had an audience with Islam Giray

and arrogantly asked him to send the captive magnates to the Porte. The khan responded that it

would be better to ask his Tatar subjects, who valiantly fought with the enemy, because the

captives belonged to them. The Tatar dignitaries were in consent with the words of the khan and

refused to deliver their prisoners. Ahmed Agha understood that the Tatars would not comply

with the demand of the grand vizier and returned to Istanbul. Upon arrival to the capital, Ahmed

Agha, being unaware of the palace coup, became fearful for his life and disappeared. Thereupon,

the new Ottoman leadership sent Behram Agha, a wise person according to Senai, to Crimea

with some gifts to restore friendly relations. Islam Giray in turn, had one of his experienced

servants named Receb Efendi accompany Behram Agha on his return to Istanbul and convey his

congratulations on Mehmed IV’s accession to the throne. According to the chronicler, Receb

Efendi received exceptionally respectful treatment at the Ottoman court.218

While the Cossacks and the Commonwealth were about to start negotiations, Sultan Mehmed IV

rose to power after a rebellion and his anti-Commonwealth viziers sent orders to the khan to help

the Cossacks to against the Commonwealth.219 According to the reports dispatched to Rome by

Giovanni de Torres, the papal nuncio in Warsaw, when Grand Vizier Sofu Mehmed Pasha’s

letter arrived in January 1649 at the time of the coronation Diet, it was decided that it would be

pointless to send protests to the Porte for the attacks of the Tatars, for as was written in the grand

vizier’s letter, Islam Giray attacked the Commonwealth with the knowledge and even by order of

the Porte.220 Therefore, given the unwillingness of the Ottomans to restrain the Tatars, it was

decided at the coronation Diet to try to make an anti-Tatar alliance with Muscovy in order to

force the Tatars to break with the Cossacks.221

218 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 32-3, tr. 113. 219 Szajnocha, Dwa lata, vol. 2, 163. 220 Dariusz Milewski, Rywalizacja polsko-kozacka o Mołdawię w dobie powstania Bohdana Chmielnickiego 1648 - 1653 (Zabrze: Wydawnictwo Inforteditions, 2011), 58. 221 Stefania Ochmann-Staniszewska and Zdzisław Staniszewski, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej za panowania Jana Kazimierza Wazy, prawo-doktryna- praktyka, vol. 1 (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2000), 13.

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According to Hrushevsky, while it is certain that Crimea communicated with the Porte

concerning its involvement in the Cossack-Polish conflict, there is no reliable source and only

rumours about these contacts. He also briefly presents an account in Marcin Goliński’s

compendium on how Xmel’nyc’kyj’s dissatisfaction with Sultan Ibrahim’s reluctance to support

the Cossacks against the Commonwealth played a role in the janissary coup. According to

Goliński, while the hetman offered to put all of Rus’ under the sultan’s rule and even the

possibility of conquering the rest of the Commonwealth, in return he asked the sultan to grant

him the hospodarship of Moldavia. The sultan preferred to keep his distance from a person such

as Xmel’nyc’kyj who had rebelled against his ruler. Thereupon, Xmel’nyc’kyj repeated his

promises to the janissaries. Though the janissaries rebelled and overthrew Sultan Ibrahim, the

new Ottoman leadership refrained from direct involvement in the Cossack-Polish conflict, but

agreed to send the Tatars in return for the hetman’s consent to give Kam”janec’ and all of Rus’

to the Ottomans. Hrushevsky points out that there is no other source to corroborate Goliński’s

account.222 It is worth noting that the Crimean and Ottoman chronicles do not mention any

indifference of the slain sultan towards the Cossacks that provoked the janissary rebellion. It is

also difficult to explain why the new Ottoman leadership would abandon the cautious policy of

its predecessor and risk getting involved in a conflict with the Commonwealth while the Ottoman

armies were still waging an inconclusive war against Venice.

Holobuc’kyj speculates that the categorical demands of the Commonwealth and their threats to

renounce peaceful relations with the Ottomans made the Porte suspect that Warsaw was seeking

a pretext to provoke a war. Therefore the new Ottoman leadership after the janissary rebellion

abandoned its confrontational attitude towards the khan because of his decision to help the

Cossacks against the Commonwealth.223 In similar vein, on the basis of sharp differences in the

texts of the abovementioned letters of Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha and Sofu Mehmed Pasha to the

Commonwealth, Kaczmarczyk claims that the janissary coup tipped the scales in favour of

condoning Tatar support for the Cossacks. According to him, since the Ottomans were

overwhelmed by a costly war against Venetians and were experiencing a deep internal crisis,

they would not afford to be involved in a confrontation with the Commonwealth. While Grand

222 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 462. 223 Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 177.

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Vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha attempted to restrain the Tatars to no avail, his successor Sofu

Mehmed Pasha preferred not to intervene in the affairs of the khan with regard to the Cossack

rebellion against the Commonwealth. Accordingly, while the Porte during the grand vizierate of

Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha forbade the purchase of slaves from Crimea in order to discourage the

Tatars from supporting the Cossacks, Warsaw learned that after the janissary coup the new

Ottoman leadership reportedly ordered the Tatars to attack the Commonwealth with all their

strength.224

The reports in the Moderate Intelligencer and Gazette de France suggest the following

explanation for the change in the Ottoman attitude towards the participation of the Tatars in the

Cossack-Polish conflict: in spring 1649 the new Ottoman leadership was preparing for a new

offensive against the Venetians. Since the Ottomans needed slaves for rowing service in their

galleys in the struggle with Venice, they tolerated the Tatars support of the Cossacks at Pyljavci.

Supposedly with the help of the Cossacks, the Tatars seized 15,000 captives from the

Commonwealth and sold them to the Ottomans.225

As stated in the beginning of this section, Xmel’nyc’kyj wanted to develop good relations with

the Porte. According to Hrabjanka, as the ambassadors of many rulers visited the hetman

following his return to Ukraine after the battle of Pyljavci, the Porte gave him the title of the

monarch of Rus’ (rus’koho monarxa), sent him robe of honour, saber, banner and mace and

ordered the khan and the pasha of Silistra to provide military help to the Cossacks in case of

need.226 The chronicler does not give any other information why the Ottomans dispatched a

mission to Ukraine and how Xmel’nyc’kyj responded to the Ottoman embassy.

According to Bucinskij, the hetman needed to gain Ottoman favour because the Cossack-Tatar

alliance was dependent on the Porte’s approval. Therefore, after the battle of Korsun’ in summer

1648, Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched an embassy under a Cossack official Džalalij to Istanbul. When

the Cossack envoys arrived in Istanbul, the Ottomans reportedly acted with suspicion towards

them. However, the Cossacks promised to pay tribute similarly to the Moldavians and

Wallachians, send as many slaves as the Ottomans requested, dispatch 10,000 Cossack troops to

224 Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 55-7, 69-70; Kaczmarczyk, “Nie tylko,” 203. 225 Gazette de France, no. 183, Warsaw, 30 October 1648; Moderate Intelligencer, no. 194, Warsaw, 30 Nov. 1648. 226 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv, 896.

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fight against the enemies of the Ottomans and cede Kam”janec’ to the Porte. In return the

Ottomans were asked to allow the Tatars to continue their support of the Cossacks against the

Commonwealth. The Ottomans were eventually tempted by these offers. They would also have

the opportunity to avenge their archenemy the Commonwealth. For these reasons an Ottoman

envoy accompanied the Cossack embassy in its return to Ukraine and arrived at Perejaslav where

he met Xmel’nyc’kyj upon his return from the battle of Pyljavci.227

According to Kostomarov, Xmel’nyc’kyj intended to take advantage of the change in Ottoman

leadership after the janissary coup in August 1648 and decided to establish relations with the

Porte by sending an embassy to Istanbul in autumn 1648 even before the battle of at Pyljavci.

The Cossack mission ended in success and upon his arrival at Perejaslav the hetman talked to the

Ottoman envoy Osman Agha. The Porte informed the hetman through its envoy that the

Ottomans would support the Cossacks,—that the khan and the pasha of Silistra were ordered to

march and aid the Cossacks.228

Both Bucinskij and Kostomarov go on to elaborate that the meeting between the Ottoman envoy

and the hetman at Perejaslav resulted in the conclusion of an agreement and outline the terms of

this agreement. According to them, the Porte promised to give military support and order the

khan to maintain his support to the Cossacks. The agreement also granted maritime trade

privileges and tax exemptions to the Cossacks in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In return,

Xmel’nyc’kyj promised to prevent Ukrainian Cossack incursion in the Black Sea — if anyone of

them launched a naval raid the hetman would punish the culprits. He would also dispatch the

Cossacks with their boats to help the Ottoman authorities in case of any hostile actions from the

Don region. Unlike Bucinskij, Kostomarov maintains that the Porte promised to found an

autonomous Ukraine under Ottoman protection and in return the Ottomans would annex the

domains of the Commonwealth from the Danube to as far north as the city of Lublin.229 It is

difficult to lend credence to such an ambitious plan of territorial expansion as a motive for the

227 Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 114. 228 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 256. 229 Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 114-7; Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 256; Bucinskij presents the provisions of this thirteen point Ottoman-Cossack agreement on the basis of the text of the Ottoman-Cossack agreement that was published in the Polish original and Russian translation in Sobranie gosudarstvennyx gramot i dogovorov xranjaščixsja v gosudarstvennoj kollegii inostrannyx del [Collection of state charters and treaties stored in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs], vol. 3 (Moscow, 1822), 444-7.

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Porte in supporting the Cossacks while the Ottoman armies were in the middle of an exhaustive

war against Venice. It is also questionable that the Ottomans would take the risk triggering an

alliance between the Commonwealth and Venice.

Hrushevsky does not dwell on Ottoman-Cossack relations in 1648 and early 1649; he only

recounts that an Ottoman embassy visited Xmel’nyc’kyj in Ukraine at the beginning of 1649. He

does not inquire why the Porte sent a mission to the hetman and how the audience of the

Ottoman envoy with Xmel’nyc’kyj affected the course of Ottoman-Cossack relations.

Hrushevsky only states, on the basis of correspondence among the Polish officials, that Islam

Giray encouraged the Ottomans to establish relations with the Cossacks.230 In his history of the

Crimean Khanate, Vasilij Smirnov surmises that the khan encouraged the hetman to establish

relations with the Porte and thus it was with his consent that the hetman dispatched the above

mentioned embassy under Džalalij to Istanbul. According to him, the motive of the khan in

advising the hetman to send a mission to Istanbul was twofold. First, he wanted to plunder the

Commonwealth and Moldavia in alliance with the Cossacks. Second, he hoped that the Ottoman-

Cossack relations would discredit Xmel’nyc’kyj in the eyes of his coreligionist Muscovites. With

the Cossacks and Muscovy at odds with one another, Islam Giray would easily persuade

Xmel’nyc’kyj to join him in his plans for a war against the latter.231

While Hrushevsky and Smirnov suggest that the khan encouraged the establishment of relations

between the hetman and the Porte, with latter seeing nefarious motives in the khan, the Ottoman

and Crimean historical sources do not provide any information to support or refute this

argument. And it is certainly implausible that Islam Giray planned to ravage Moldavia, an

Ottoman vassal, yet at the same encouraged Xmel’nyc’kyj to seek closer relations with the Porte.

Contrary to Bucinskij and Kostomarov, Omeljan Pritsak thinks that the abovementioned

Ottoman-Cossack agreement was made prior to early 1649.232 On the basis of Naima’s account

of the hostile relations between Grand Vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha and the Tatars, Pritsak

230 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 526. 231 Vasilij Smirnov, Krymskoe xanstvo pod verxovenstvom Otomanskoj Porty do načala XVIII veka (St. Petersburg: 1887), reprint and ed. Svetlana F. Oreškova (Moscow: Rubeži XXI, 2005), 393. 232 Like Bucinskij, Omeljan Pritsak, “Das erste türkisch-ukrainische Bündnis,” Oriens 6 (1953): 288-91 reprints the text of the Ottoman-Cossack agreement referred to in n. 230, and provides a German translation.

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proposes that the Ottoman-Cossack agreement was concluded in June 1648.233 Before addressing

how Pritsak interprets the beginning of the relations between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Ottomans, it

is necessary to introduce Naima’s account of the dispute between Ahmed Pasha and the Tatars.

The chronicler starts by recounting that the envoy of the khan came to Istanbul in late April 1648

to inform about the Cossack rebellion and their request for help from Islam Giray. He continues

that another envoy came from the khan to convey the news about his campaign against the

Commonwealth. When the envoy informed that the khan seized more than 40,000 captives and

destroyed the fortresses of the ill-omened Rus’ (Rus-ı menhus), contrary to normal practice

Ahmed Pasha did not reward the envoy with a robe of honour and asked why the khan raided the

Rus’ while the Porte was at peace with them. He also ordered the khan to send all captives to the

Ottoman authorities, so that they would be released according to the peace with the Rus’. Then

the grand vizier ordered Cemşid Çavuş, the representative (kapu kethüdası) of the khan at the

Porte, to go to Crimea together with the chief of the Ottoman palace doorkeepers (kapucu başı)

to convey the Ottoman displeasure about the Tatar campaign against the Rus’. After receiving

Cemşid Çavuş and the Ottoman envoy and hearing the message from the Porte, Islam Giray

responded as follows:

We are the servants of the Porte. The Rus’ infidels seemingly desire peace when they are

under pressure. When they found an opportunity, they sailed with their boats (şaykas) and

damaged the Anatolian coasts. There are two empty fortresses there. We had repeatedly

asked [the Porte] to place troops in them and pay their salaries with the fishery income of

the shores. Later, the ill-omened Rus’ occupied these fortresses, garrisoned warrior

Cossacks and built more than twenty outposts. If nothing had been done, they would have

definitely captured the Akkerman province and taken Moldavia. However, three thousand

Cossacks burnt their boats and became our guides. As we raided, forty thousand Cossacks

indisputably submitted themselves to us. We took one of their great hetmans and many

infidels as captives. If Allah wills, I want to make the Rus’ king (Rus kralı), like the

Moldavian hospodar, an appointee of the Ottoman sultan.234

233 Pritsak, “Erste türkisch-ukrainische,” 283. 234 Naima, Tarih, 1139-40.

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Then the Ottoman envoy said that while the Tatars claimed to be the servants of the Porte, they

did not obey his orders. A mirza responded that the Ottomans mistook the deceptions of the

infidels for peace intent and reminded the envoy of their destructive attacks. Thereupon Cemşid

Çavuş and the Ottoman envoy boarded a ship to return to Istanbul.

Pritsak states that, like other Ottoman bureaucrats and intellectuals, by Rus Naima referred to

Cossacks or more generally Ukrainians, whose older name was the collective Rus’ (Ruthenians).

Therefore, when Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha accused the Tatars of violating the peace with the

Rus’, he meant that the ravages of the Tatars in Ukraine might jeopardize the Ottoman-Cossack

agreement that was concluded after the Istanbul sojourn of the Cossack embassy under Džalalij

in summer 1648. The grand vizier reprimanded the Tatars for launching an expedition against

Ukraine and asked Islam Giray to return the Ukrainian captives because the Porte promised the

Cossacks to stop Tatar attacks in accordance with the aforementioned agreement. On the basis of

Naima’s account, Pritsak continues that the Porte agreed to permit the Cossacks to garrison two

fortresses on the Dnipro and build more than twenty outposts in return for protecting the northern

shores of the Black Sea for the Ottoman Empire. According to him, the growing relationship of

the Porte with the hetman and was not aimed at establishing Ottoman suzerainty over Ukraine,

but rather was a consequence of an alliance concluded in 1648 between the Porte and the

Cossacks. To support his claim, Pritsak refers to the above passage of Naima that recounts Islam

Giray’s proposal to turn the Rus’ into Ottoman vassals. In response to this offer Ahmed Pasha

remained silent. Pritsak interprets the silence of the grand vizier as evidence for his assertion that

the Porte and Xmel’nyc’kyj were allies and the Ottoman authorities did not have any intention to

transform Ukraine into a protectorate. In other words, neither Džalalij’s mission to Istanbul nor

the agreement between the sultan and the hetman stipulated the submission of the Cossacks

under Ottoman suzerainty. Islam Giray tried to spoil the direct Ottoman-Cossack agreement and

instead wanted to be an intermediary between the Porte and the Cossacks. Pritsak adds that with

the janissary coup that resulted in the execution of Sultan Ibrahim and pro-Cossack grand vizier

Ahmed Pasha the Ottoman-Cossack agreement of 1648 was effectively revoked.235 Therefore he

believes that the janissary coup left a negative mark on the Ottoman-Cossack relations. In

235 Pritsak, “Erste türkisch-ukrainische,” 279-88; Omeljan Pritsak, “Sojuz Xmel’nyc’koho z Tureččynoju 1648 roku pp.,” Zapysky naukovoho tovarystva imeny Ševčenka 156 (1948): 145-7; Omeljan Pritsak, “Šče raz pro sojuz Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho z Tureččynoju,” Ukrajins’kyj arxeohrafičnyj ščoričnyk 5 (1993): 178-9.

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support of Pritsak, Dymitri Zlepko argues that this episode of short-lived Ottoman-Cossack

rapprochement proved how the Ottoman authorities were then capable of rapidly responding to

changes in their northern sphere of influence.236

Zygmunt Abrahamowicz and Edgar von Hösch criticize Pritsak’s arguments about the so-called

Ottoman-Cossack agreement. Abrahamowicz questions the authenticity of the agreement

document by underlining the fact that the Ottoman copy of the document has not been found so

far to verify the existence of such agreement either in summer 1648 or in early 1649. He points

out that the new sultan Mehmed IV did not speak of this agreement in his letter to Xmel’nyc’kyj

in 1651. According to him, if such an agreement had really been concluded, as the successor of

his father Ibrahim, Mehmed IV should have referred to this agreement in his letter to the hetman.

In other words, the new sultan should have promised in his letter to renew the agreement that his

predecessor made three years before his letter to the hetman.237 Hösch also expresses similar

concerns on the authenticity of the agreement document. He claims that the content and language

of the agreement document are contrary to the long-lasting practices of the Ottoman chancery in

preparing legal documents with non-Muslim polities. According to him, the terms of the

agreement that granted the Cossacks the right of access to the Black Sea clash with the

traditional Ottoman policy that categorically refused to grant foreign vessels the right of such

access until the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774. On the basis of Novosel’skij’s analysis of

Muscovite reports that recounted how Islam Giray declined Ottoman order to join the Venetian

war over Crete, Hösch surmises that it is hard to believe that the refusal of the khan to dispatch

the Tatars to help the Ottoman forces against Venice led the Porte to change their traditional

Black Sea policy and give the Cossacks free access to the sea.238

Whereas Abrahamowicz claims that Rus refers to the Commonwealth administration in Ukraine,

Pritsak responds that there is no basis to Abrahamowicz’s surmise. He argues that the Ottoman-

Cossack agreement of 1648 was not composed contrary to Ottoman chancery practises. Referring

to Lubomyr Hajda’s work on Sultan Mehmed IV’s letter to Petro Dorošenko in 1669, Pritsak

236 Zlepko, Der grosse Kosakenaufstand, 48. 237 Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, “Comments on Three Letters by Khan Islam Geray III to the Porte (1651),” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 14 (1990): 137-8. 238 Edgar Hösch, “Der Türkisch-Kosakische Vertrag von 1648,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 27 (1980): 233-43.

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notes that also then at this later date the sultan did not speak of his previous relations with

Xmel’nyc’kyj. In his two letters to Pylyp Orlyk first in 1711 and then in 1712, Sultan Ahmed III

(r. 1703-1730) mentioned neither Xmel’nyc’kyj nor Dorošenko. Similarly Sultan Mehmed IV’s

letter of 1651 did not necessarily have to mention an earlier episode of Ottoman-Cossack relations.

In addition, according to Pritsak, Abrahamowicz and Hösch give too much credence to the

sincerity of the statesmen in their official correspondences. Although in his letters the grand

vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha seemed to assure the Commonwealth about keeping the Tatars

under firm control, he might not really have intended to stop the Tatars from helping the Cossacks,

that is, the alleged words of the grand vizier were not necessarily true.239

Concerning the question of how the Ottoman authorities used Rus as an appellation, some other

historians share Pritsak’s opinion. In her dissertation on Ukraine, Poland and Muscovy (1648-81)

through the works of the contemporary Ottoman chroniclers, Christa Hilbert explains that the

Ottoman and Crimean sources of the seventeenth century use Rus exclusively as an appellation

for the residents of Ukraine and often as a synonymous with the Cossacks.240 In one of his

editions of excerpts from Evliya Çelebi’s travel account, Robert Dankoff translates the

expressions in relation to Rus as Ukrainians.241 Kemal Özcan and Ferhad Turanly also agree that

the Ottoman historians and chronicles consciously employed this appellation for Ukraine and the

people of Ukraine.242 Therefore it is plausible that Naima used Rus as an ethnonym for Cossacks

or more generally Ruthenians/Ukrainians. However, in his account of the Muscovite campaign

against the Tatars of 1646, Naima also recounts that the Muscovite tsar assembled 80,000 Rus to

march against the fortress of Azak and Crimea.243 Since the Muscovite army that marched

against the Tatars in 1646 consisted of Don Cossacks, musketbearing troops from Astrakhan and

other Muscovite regiments in south, it is unclear whether Naima uses the word Rus only to refer

to the Don Cossacks or more inclusively also to Muscovite voevodas and their forces who

resided in south. Similarly it is again unclear whether Naima used the word Rus only for the

239 Pritsak, “Šče raz pro,” 178-9, 187 n. 57, 63. 240 Christa Hilbert, Osteuropa 1648-1681 bei den zeitgenössischen osmanischen Historikern (PhD diss., University of Göttingen, 1948), 19. 241 Robert Dankoff, The intimate life of an Ottoman statesman : Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588-1662) : as portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of travels (Seyahat-name) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 56. 242 Kemal Özcan and Ferhad Turanly, “Kozac’kyj čynnyk u zovnišnij polityci Vysokoji Porty: Vstanovlennja ukrajins’ko-kryms’koho sojuzu seredyny XVII st., joho značennja ta naslidky,” Sxidnyj Svit 4 (2005): 57 n. 16. 243 Naima, Tarih, 1099.

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Ukrainians per se or the Ukrainian part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth including the

magnates. Unlike Naima, Senai implies that the issue of surrendering the captives to the Porte

was the only reason for the contention between the khan and the grand vizier. He neither

mentions the Rus nor the so-called Ottoman-Rus peace nor does he inform of the identity of the

captives by calling them Polish, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, or Cossack.

Novosel’skij who bases his analysis of the aforementioned dispute between the khan and the

grand vizier primarily on Muscovite sources does not speak of an agreement between the Porte

and Xmel’nyc’kyj. According to him, the Muscovite envoys Timofej Xotunskij and Ivan

Stepanov reported from Crimea that Islam Giray returned to Crimea in June 1648 after he fought

a battle against the Poles near Korsun’. The envoys added that the Tatars brought Polish captives

among whom there were prominent nobles such as Mikołaj Potocki and Marcin Kalinowski.

After consulting with his mirzas and notables, the khan reportedly refused to obey the Porte’s

order that the Tatars should stop the war against the Commonwealth and release the leading

captive magnates. The Tatars also said that they took these captives by risking their “heads and

blood” while the Crimean princes and mirzas did not receive salaries from the Ottoman state.

The Crimean dignitaries resented that although the Ottomans did not pay salaries to them, they

was trying to take away the captive magnates who were their source of income.244 In any event,

since the Muscovite envoys referred to these captives as the Poles, they do not support Pritsak’s

argument that the Ottomans reproached the khan for enslaving Ukrainians.

The Muscovite official Nikifor Pleščeev gives a different account of the abovementioned dispute

between Islam Giray and the Porte after the battle of Korsun’. On the basis of the testimony of

the Muscovites who spent some time in Ottoman captivity, Pleščeev reported that when the khan

sent more than 100,000 Lithuanian captives245 to the Danube, Sultan Ibrahim forbade the

Ottoman subjects from buying these captives and scolded the khan for sending the Crimean

Tatars in war against the Polish lands (Rus. pol’skie zemli) without his knowledge while he was

at peace with the Commonwealth. The khan answered the sultan that he sent his Crimean Tatars

244 Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo, 395. 245 In Muscovite usage Litva, “Lithuania” and litovci “Lithuanians” meant the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and not just ethnic Lithuanians. Even after the Union of Lublin in 1569 when Ukrainian territories of the Grand Duchy passed to the Polish Crown, in Muscovite usage it was common to refer to these former inhabitants of the Grand Duchy, whether Ukrainian, Pole or other, as “Lithuanian.”

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to help the Cossacks against the Poles and the Jews upon the hetman’s request. The khan also

expressed his plan to help the Cossacks install their ruler in the Commonwealth and advised that

the sultan should not be worried about a hostile action from the “Lithuanian people” (litovskie

ljudi) against his domains. After holding the captives at the Danube for two weeks, the new

sultan Mehmed IV wrote to Islam Giray to transport the “Lithuanian” captives possibly into a

regular Ottoman territory.246 However, Pleščeev did not clearly describe who these so-called

Lithuanian captives were. It is unclear whether they were Ukrainians—whether peasants,

townsfolk, or Cossacks—or local Poles, whether nobles or other, or both.

The Moldavian hospodar reportedly informed the Commonwealth that he dispatched his

representative to the Porte and told the Ottoman authorities about the Polish hetmans being held

captive by the khan. The Porte forbade the purchase of the slaves from the Tatars and ordered the

pasha of Silistra to seize these captives from the Tatars.247 In a Muscovite report from Crimea, it

was recounted that the Ottoman state dispatched embassies to Crimea asking for Mikołaj Potocki

and Marcin Kalinowski but the khan declined the Porte’s request and continued to keep Potocki

at the “Jewish Fortress” (i.e., Çufutkale).248 Therefore except for the report of Pleščejev, the

sources clearly suggest that the cause of the conflict between the Porte and the Crimean

leadership was the captives who were identified not as Ruthenians/Ukrainians (Rus) or Cossacks

(kazak), but rather the Polish magnates. It is difficult to give credence to Pritsak’s argument that

the Ottoman authorities reproached Islam Giray for harassing Ukrainians.

Another problem in Naima’s account is the abovementioned promise of the khan to turn the Rus’

into Ottoman subjects. It is questionable that Islam Giray intended to provide the Porte with a

new protectorate near Crimea because, as Valerij Stepankov points out, such an attempt would

not only increase Ottoman presence in the northern Black Sea region and further limit the

freedom of the khan in foreign affairs, but also deprive the Tatars of a vast territory for plunder

raids. 249 If the Ottomans were to extend protection over Ukraine, they would restrain the Tatars

from raiding their new vassal. Therefore Naima’s report that suggests that Islam Giray proposed

246 Nikifor Pleščeev from Putyvl’ to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 15 December 1648 [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 279-80]. 247 Crown Deputy Cupbearer Mikołaj Ostroróg to Primate Łubieński, 4 August 1648 [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 1, 603]. 248 Muscovite report on the situation of the Tatar Čertajko, 7 August 1648 [Rossijskyj Gosuderstvennyj Arxiv Drevnix Aktov, f. 123, op. 1-1648, no. 14, ark. 3-6 (henceforth RGADA); Džerela z istoriji, vol. 1, 604]. 249 Valerij Stepankov, “Miž Moskvoju i Stambulom: čy isnuvala problema vybory protekciji y 1648-1654 rr.?,” Ukrajina v central’no-sxidnij Evropi 4 (2004): 227.

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before the Ottoman envoy that he, the khan, make Xmel’nyc’kyj the Rus’ king (Rus kralı) an

appointee of the Ottoman sultan along the same lines as the Moldavian hospodar should be taken

with caution.

According to Kryp”jakevyč, when it became clear in July 1648 that the negotiations with the

Commonwealth would not yield to a permanent peace, upon the advice of the khan the hetman

embarked on diplomatic relations with the Ottomans. In fact the khan insisted the hetman to have

relations with the Porte because he wanted to increase his influence in Istanbul by making the

Ottomans gain a new ally. From the perspective of the hetman, since Islam Giray was an

unreliable ally, he needed to establish relations with the sultan, the suzerain of the khan, in order

to maintain the support of the Tatars. While the Commonwealth spread news that the hetman

intended to submit Ukraine under Ottoman authority and had even written a letter to the Porte

requesting to make Ukraine his protectorate, Xmel’nyc’kyj had no such objective and his letter

to the Porte was a forged document produced by the Commonwealth. In Kryp”jakevyč’s view,

all that the hetman expected from the Porte was to receive its consent for the Cossack-Tatar

alliance.250

A leading Ukrainian historian of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s foreign relations, Jaroslav Fedoruk considers

that the Porte changed its attitude towards the hetman after the janissary rebellion and decided to

establish relations with him. Before the janissary coup, the Porte preferred to remain neutral

because Venice and Safavid Iran made an alliance and attacked the Ottoman Empire from

opposite directions.251 Therefore the Ottomans could not take the risk of embarking on an

adventure in the north. The Commonwealth anticipated that the Porte would remain neutral and

restrain the Tatars from helping the Cossacks in order not to jeopardize peaceful relations with

the Commonwealth. However, the new Ottoman leadership decided to change its position due to

the new conjuncture with the end of the Thirty Years War. After the Habsburg Empire concluded

peace with Sweden in 1648, the Porte sent an embassy to Vienna and offered to renew peace for

forty years. However, the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand III received the Ottoman embassy

without enthusiasm because he was planning to follow a hawkish policy against the Ottoman

250 Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, “Turec’ka Polityka B. Xmel’nyc’koho (materialy),” Ukrajins’kyj arxeohrafičnyj ščoričnyk 10/11 (2006): 117-8, 122; Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, “Tureckaja Politika,” 162-4. 251 Fedoruk, Zovnišn’opolityčna dijal’nist’, 19-20.

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Empire. Therefore, fearing that the Habsburg Empire and the Commonwealth, including the

Cossacks, would make an alliance against the Ottomans, the Porte purportedly agreed to the

participation of the Tatars alongside the Cossacks in the war against the Commonwealth.252

However, there are certain weaknesses in Fedoruk’s analysis. First, it is dubious why the Porte

needed to abandon its neutral position and adopt a new policy that would provoke the

Commonwealth to ally with Venice instead of using diplomatic means to dissuade them from

such an attempt. Jan Kazimierz could possibly intend to join the Habsburg emperor and attempt

to revive the war plans of the former king Władysław by authorizing the Cossacks to launch

expeditions against Ottoman possessions. By doing this, the king might intend to divert the

attention of the Cossacks from their recent struggle against the Commonwealth.253 However, as

far as reviving the war plans of the former king is concerned, the Commonwealth were divided

into two camps. One party argued that while the Cossacks were restrained from sailing out and

raiding Ottoman domains, the Porte did not honour his promise to keep the Tatars under control

and the Tatars joined the rebels and ravaged the Commonwealth. Thus, the Commonwealth

should settle accounts with the Ottomans and punish them for their failure in preventing the

Tatars from siding with the Cossacks. The other party opposed any anti-Ottoman war plans

because they believed that it was necessary to uphold the peace with the Porte at all costs and

focus only on pacifying the Cossacks.254 Therefore Ottoman support of Crimean involvement in

the Cossack-Polish war would possibly strengthen the hand of the party that wanted to provoke a

war against the Ottomans.

Second, as the nineteenth-century German historian Johann Zinkeisen suggests, despite the

entreaties of the Venetian envoys, the Habsburg emperor was not willing to participate in a

costly war against the Ottomans shortly after the end of the Thirty Years War.255 Therefore the

emperor took a course for peaceful relations with the Ottoman Empire and renewed the Treaty of

Zsitvatorok on 1 July 1649. The reluctance of the emperor in joining a new war after the Thirty

Years War contradict Fedoruk’s surmise that the emperor was harbouring hostile intention against

252 Fedoruk, Zovnišn’opolityčna dijal’nist’, 54. 253 Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 348. 254 Jurij Mycyk, “Dva publicystyčni traktaty pro pryčyny nacional’no-vyzvol’noyj vijny ukrajins’koho narodu seredyny XVII st.,” Ukrajins’kyj istoryčnyj žurnal 6/429 (1999): 127-8, 130-3. 255 Johann W. Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reichs in Europa, vol. 4 (Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1856), 827.

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the Ottoman Empire. Third, for whatever they are worth, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles

are silent in regard to any changing conjuncture in Eastern Europe after the Thirty Year’s Wars

that would influence the Ottoman attitude towards Crimean involvement in the Cossack-Polish

war.

Zaborovskij repeats Kryp”jakevyč’s argument that Xmel’nyc’kyj was not interested in making

Ukraine an Ottoman vassal, but that he simply wanted to gain the favour of the Porte in order to

secure its approval for Tatar support. He surmises that the hetman instructed the Cossack envoys

to convince the Porte possibly to abandon their plan of sending a large number of Tatars in

support of the Ottoman army against the Venetians in spring 1649. While Xmel’nyc’kyj and

Islam Giray hoped to receive support from Istanbul as well, the concentration of Polish troops in

Zbaraž and the naval defeat against Venice in spring 1649 led the Porte to revoke its permission

for Crimean involvement in the struggle between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth. Then

the Ottoman authorities apparently called the khan to return to Crimea. However, they failed to

prevent the Tatars from going to Ukraine and joining the Cossacks.256

Similarly, Čuxlib thinks that Xmel’nyc’kyj considered establishing friendly relations and

securing concrete military help from foreign rulers more important than submitting to Ottoman

authority.257 According to him, maritime privileges that the Porte granted to the Cossack Ukraine

resembles those rights and concessions given to France, Venice, England and Holland in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.258 In other words, Čuxlib interprets that while the Ottomans

treated Xmel’nyc’kyj as an ally, the hetman had no aim to become an Ottoman vassal.

Smolij and Stepankov claim that Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched embassies to the Porte in late May

and early September 1648 in order to ask the Ottoman authorities to restrain the Tatars from

launching plunder raids and seizing captives in Ukraine. Purportedly prior to the campaigns of

1648 the hetman received assurances from the khan that the Tatars would be restrained from

ravaging Ukraine and harming its residents. However, since the hetman saw that the khan failed

to fulfill his promise, he appealed to the Porte in order to stop the Tatar excesses. On the basis of

the Polish archives and the studies of other historians, Smolij and Stepankov consider that from

256 Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe xanstvo,” 200-1. 257 Čuxlib, “‘Cisar turec’kyj,” 72. 258 Čuxlib, Kozaky ta janyčary, 100-1.

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the accession of Mehmed IV to the Ottoman throne in August 1648 until 1649, the hetman sent

three missions to Istanbul in order to strengthen ties with the Porte.259

According to Storoženko, Crimea and the Porte knew about that the war plans of the deceased

king Władysław IV. They apparently learned that the Commonwealth carried out negotiations

with Venice to authorize the Ukrainian Cossacks to launch naval expeditions and with Muscovy

to conclude an offensive alliance against the Ottoman Empire. While the Ottoman state refrained

from declaring war upon the Commonwealth, it allowed the khan to launch a campaign against

the Commonwealth. The khan started campaign preparations but he was worried about a possible

failure against the Polish forces remembering the catastrophic defeat of the Tatars at the battle of

Oxmativ in 1644. Under these circumstances, Islam Giray eagerly agreed to Xmel’nyc’kyj’s

request for military support to the Cossacks. The Porte considered the request of the hetman as

an opportunity to extend its protection over the southern territories of the Commonwealth with

the help of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Therefore the khan agreed to go to the help of the hetman

purportedly with the approval of the Ottomans.260

Regarding the Ottoman-Cossack relations of 1648-9, it is safe to follow Hrushevsky’s approach

and refrain from making arguments on the matter because the existing Ottoman and Crimean

chronicles do not give much information on the exchange of embassies and letters between

Istanbul and Ukraine. In addition, the Porte had neither the capability to get involved in the

northern Black Sea affairs, nor could it play an active role in turning the Tatars against the

Commonwealth. The new grand vizier Sofu Mehmed Pasha along with other new holders of

power were still struggling against the supporters of deposed sultan Ibrahim. While Mehmed

Pasha organized the execution of the ousted sultan, the Porte continued to suffer from fractional

conflicts. The palace cavalry (kapukulı süvarisi) started a rebellion in autumn 1648 because the

Porte delayed paying their salaries and also because the janissaries—their archenemies for power

and influence at the Ottoman court—gained power during the grand vizierate of Mehmed Pasha.

Under the cover of protesting Sultan Ibrahim’s execution, the palace cavalry gathered at the

Atmeydanı near Topkapı Palace, but their rebellion was bloodily suppressed by the janissary

259 Smolij and Stepankov, “Meta j osnovni naprjamy,” 360-1. 260 Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1, 90-91, 100-1; Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj,” 87-8.

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corps.261 According to the unconfirmed report of the Gazette de France, even after losing the

battle against the janissaries, the palace cavalry appealed to Islam Giray for help. Then the

Ottoman state purportedly dispatched messengers to the frontier pashas instructing them to

prevent a possible march of the Tatar army towards Istanbul.262

In addition, while the Ottoman-Venetian war was continuing without any prospect of a

successful conclusion, the defeat of the Ottoman navy by the Venetians at Old Phocaea led to

Sofu Mehmed Pasha’s dismissal from the grand vizierate in May 1649.263 According to a report

from Lublin dated 14 July 1649, because of this defeat and a looming Safavid menace in the east,

the Poles believed that if the Porte earlier had any plans to send its troops to join the Tatars and

go to war against them, now it was forced to abandon them and prohibit the Tatars from going to

help the Cossacks in summer 1649. Therefore the Poles did not lend credence to news that the

army of the khan arrived at Zbaraž. They also thought that even if Islam Giray was at Zbaraž, he

would have already been recalled by the Porte because the Ottomans needed the Tatars after the

tragic defeat by Venice.264 However, this expectation proved to be only half-true. Although the

Porte was not able to provide military support to the Cossacks, Islam Giray decided to march to

Ukraine in alliance with Xmel’nyc’kyj in spring.265 Since the Ottoman authorities were burdened

with domestic and foreign problems, the khan had no reason to fear Ottoman intervention

anymore. They were not in a position to dictate anything against or in favour of the Cossacks—

the khan was free to pursue his own external policy. According to the report of the Habsburg

ambassador Simon Reniger from Istanbul to Vienna, when the khan sent two messengers to the

Porte and announced that he had concluded the Treaty of Zboriv, the envoys were accordingly

given a saber and caftan as a reward for the khan.266 In other words, Islam Giray reported to the

261 Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen, vol. 4, 806-7; Eickhoff, Venedig, 104-5; Marc D. Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 28-9; Abdülkadir Özcan, “Mehmed IV,” in Türk Diyanet Vakfı Ansiklopedisi, vol. 28 (Ankara, 2003), 414; Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, vol. 3 (Pesth: C.A. Hartleben, 1835), 332-9. 262 Gazette de France, no. 8, Venice, 23 December 1648. 263 Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen, 810, 835-6; Eickhoff, Venedig, 62; Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen, vol. 3, 341-6. 264 A certain Polish report from Lublin, 14 July 1649 [Ojczyste spominki w pismach do dziejów dawnéj, vol. 2, ed. Ambroży Grabowski (Kraków: Nakładem Józefa Cypcera), 62]; Wasilewski, Ostatni Waza, 80; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 357, 359; Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 307. 265 Sysyn, Between Poland and Ukraine, 165; Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe xanstvo,” 201. 266 The Habsburg ambassador to the Porte Simon Reniger to Emperor Ferdinand III of Habsburg, 17 October 1649 [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 121-2].

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Ottomans for the sake of formality and the Porte could do nothing more than passively acquiesce

in the face of the khan’s explanation.

Nonetheless the question remains why the Porte dispatched an embassy to visit Xmel’nyc’kyj in

Perejaslav in early 1649. It is possible to surmise that the Porte needed a guarantee that the

Cossacks would not support any intention of the Commonwealth to revive the deceased king

Władysław IV’s war plans and form an alliance against the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean

Khanate. As discussed earlier in this chapter, after the battle of Korsun’ the hetman started

negotiations for reconciliation with the Commonwealth. In the meantime some dignitaries of the

Commonwealth argued in favour of rapprochement with the Cossacks and planned to revive the

anti-Ottoman alliance plans in order to divert the attention of the Cossacks. They resumed their

effort after the battle of Pyljavci and carried out negotiations with Xmel’nyc’kyj and Muscovy,

though in vain. Although the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles and historical sources are silent

on this matter, it can be surmised that the Porte planned to counter the attempts of the

Commonwealth to establish an anti-Ottoman coalition with the support of the Cossacks by

dispatching an embassy to Xmel’nyc’kyj. At that time, the Ottoman authorities possibly wanted

to secure at least the neutrality of the hetman.

2.5. Conclusion

In contrast to the prevailing view that the khan and the hetman were allies, the account of the

Crimean chronicler Senai viewed Xmel’nyc’kyj as Islam Giray’s vassal. Senai also embellishes

how the hetman pledged homage to the khan on several occasions through his own envoys and

by himself in front of the khan’s envoys. However, as pointed out in this chapter, the letter of the

khan to the king of 12 June 1648 does not speak of any willingness of the hetman to submit to

the authority of the khan or any intention of the khan to take the Cossacks under his protection. It

only mentions how the Cossacks requested help from him against the Commonwealth. Besides,

since the Cossacks were very strong players in eastern European affairs and increased their

power and prestige during the campaigns of 1648-9, it is implausible that they would agree to

become subordinates of the khan. For this reason, the attempt of the chronicler to describe

Xmel’nyc’kyj as a vassal of Islam Giray should be approached with caution.

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In relation to the contribution of the Tatars to the victories of 1648, there is no doubt that the

Tatar cavalry helped the Cossack infantry overcome the Polish forces that included excellent

cavalry. Historians have debated over the size of the Tatar army in the campaign of 1649. While

Górka and Korduba believe that the chronicles and early historical studies have overstated the

number of the Tatars at Zbaraž and Zboriv, Mycyk, Kuczyński and Storoženko insist that the

khan could raise an army of 100,000 troops. According to Górka, while an advance army of

5,000 to 7,000 Tatars participated in the campaign of 1648, the khan’s army in the campaign of

summer 1649 consisted of 10,000 to 20,000 troops. Given problematics of the sources, it is not

possible to make a sure assessment of the size of the armies. Nonetheless, if the vanguard army

of the Tatars could consist of 5,000 to 7,000 men as Górka suggests, one can surmise that the

khan could assemble 50,000 to 70,000 assuming that the main army was ten times larger than the

vanguard. Regardless of the debates on the number of the Tatars in the campaigns of 1648-9, the

important role played by the Tatars then in the stunning Cossack successes against the armies of

the Commonwealth is beyond question.

Concerning the historians’ opinion on the changing plans of the hetman after his sojourn in Kyiv

and the khan’s “treachery” at Zboriv, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not give much

information. However, in his letter to the king in June 1648, Islam Giray’s main demand was for

the payment of overdue tribute/gifts, and only in passing did he request that Warsaw not to harm

the Ukrainian Cossacks. In another letter to the Commonwealth’s leadership from December

1648, the khan repeated his requests for tribute/gifts but did not mention the Cossacks. However,

as Hrushevsky points out, the Tatar text of the Treaty of Zboriv suggests that in order to

convince Xmel’nyc’kyj to reconcile with the Commonwealth, Islam Giray asked Jan Kazimierz

as his first condition of peace to abstain from any hostile action against the Ukrainian Cossacks.

By doing this, the khan apparently wanted to make the Cossack leadership give up ambitious

demands, such as establishing a larger and more independent polity in Ukraine.

Another controversial subject is Ottoman perception of the Cossack rebellion. Historians have

inclined to view the janissary rebellion in August 1648 and the subsequent change in the

Ottoman throne as an event that altered the Porte’s attitude towards the Cossacks. According to

Pritsak, Sultan Ibrahim and his grand vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha had a friendly attitude

towards the Cossacks after the Porte concluded an agreement with Xmel’nyc’kyj in summer

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1648. The Ottomans even supported the Cossacks against the excesses of the Tatars in Ukraine.

However, such a positive atmosphere in the Ottoman-Cossack relationship was changed by the

janissary coup that resulted in the execution of Sultan Ibrahim and Ahmed Pasha. The new

leadership under Sultan Mehmed IV and his first grand vizier Sofu Mehmed Pasha were not very

interested in maintaining close relations with the Cossacks in summer 1648. As discussed in this

chapter, Pritsak’s interpretation has been based mainly on his controversial analysis of Naima’s

chronicle and the purported copy of the Ottoman-Cossack agreement. While Abrahamowicz

criticized Pritsak’s words about the account of Naima on the dispute between the khan and the

Porte over the involvement of the Tatars in the Cossack-Polish war in 1648, Hösch attacked

Pritsak’s arguments on the Ottoman-Cossack agreement by questioning the authenticity of the

text of the agreement. In contrast to Pritsak, historians such as Kaczmarczyk and Fedoruk

consider that Grand Vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha did not approve of Crimean involvement in

the Cossack-Polish war and tried in vain to restrain Islam Giray and the Tatars. However, after

the janissary coup, the Porte did not vigorously try to prevent the khan from going to help the

Cossacks and even commenced relations with them by sending an embassy to Ukraine.

As his abovementioned letters to the Commonwealth suggest, Sofu Mehmed Pasha as the first

grand vizier after the janissary coup who did not continue his slain predecessor and rival

Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha’s hostile attitude towards the participation of the Tatars in the Cossack-

Polish war. Therefore it is possible to agree with Kaczmarczyk and Fedoruk that the janissary

rebellion changed Ottoman attitude towards the Cossack-Tatar alliance. The new Ottoman

leadership had to tolerate the cooperation between the khan and the hetman because it was

already burdened by the continuing fractional conflicts and the exhausting Venetian war. It also

exchanged embassies with the hetman and maintained relations with him without putting itself

under much obligation. The plausible primary goal of the Porte was to dissuade Xmel’nyc’kyj

from supporting the intention of some Commonwealth dignitaries to authorize the Cossacks to

launch expeditions against Ottoman possessions and join an anti-Ottoman coalition. The hetman

had no intention to establish binding relations with the Porte such as submitting under Ottoman

protection. He was primarily interested in securing the consent of the Ottoman state for the

Cossack-Tatar alliance. In this respect, it is possible to state that the hetman’s concerns about

maintaining relations with the Tatars was the essence of Ottoman-Cossack relations in 1648-9.

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Chapter 3

Ceasefire (September 1649 – May 1651)

Having attained most of his demands thanks to the Treaty of Zboriv, Islam Giray began to adjust

his attitude towards the Commonwealth into a more friendly direction and preferred to direct his

attention to planning for a campaign against Muscovy.1 Therefore, after his return to Crimea, the

khan tried to compel the Commonwealth and the Ukrainian Cossacks to act in accordance with

the Treaty of Zboriv. However, Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth’s authorities failed to

comply with the terms of the peace and dispatched frequent envoys to Crimea in order to present

their accusations against one another. In addition, when it became clear that neither the hetman

nor the Commonwealth would join a campaign against Muscovy, the Don Cossacks or to the

Caucasus, the Tatars found themselves in the middle of a venture against Moldavia in alliance

with Xmel’nyc’kyj. Since the khan failed to make both parties comply with the peace, tension

between the Commonwealth and the Cossacks again escalated into war in February 1651 paving

the way to the battle of Berestečko. In the meantime, the hetman strove to establish closer

relations with the Ottoman Porte and received promises that it would make Islam Giray continue

to support the Cossacks.

In this context, this chapter analyzes the policies of the khan towards the Commonwealth,

Ukraine, Muscovy and the Don Cossacks during the ceasefire with specific reference to Cossack-

Polish conflicts over the implementation of the Treaty of Zboriv and the campaign plans against

the Don Cossacks and Muscovy. It then investigates why Islam Giray consented to

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s proposal to abort the campaign against Muscovy and instead attack Moldavia

and compares what benefits and risks the Moldavian campaign brought to the Tatars and the

Cossacks. Lastly, the chapter looks into how the growing Cossack-Ottoman relations influenced

Islam Giray’s attitude towards participating in the new round of the Cossack-Polish conflict.

1 Edmund Chrząszcz, Poddanie się Chmielnickiego Turcji w r. 1650 (Jaworów, 1929), 3.

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3.1. Arbitration between the Commonwealth and the Ukrainian Cossacks

Since the Commonwealth and the Ukrainian Cossacks were not pleased with the Treaty of

Zboriv, from the very beginning making both parties fulfill the provisions of the peace proved to

be a challenging task for the khan and his entourage. Although after lengthy debates the Diet

ratified the peace in January 1650, the Catholic clergy were against giving a place in the Senate

to the Orthodox metropolitan of Kyiv. While the magnates were unwilling to implement the

terms of the peace granting back to the Cossacks their ancient rights and liberties, the rank-and-

file Cossacks equally resisted the magnates’ return to their estates in Ukraine. Therefore

Xmel’nyc’kyj needed to maintain relations with Crimea against possible bellicosity from the

Commonwealth because despite Islam Giray’s alleged treason at Zboriv the khan continued to be

the only foreign actor that had both the desire and capability to support the Cossacks.

The hetman hoped that the presence of some Tatars in Ukraine would protect the Cossacks

against encroachment of the Commonwealth in the aftermath of the Treaty of Zboriv. The

Muscovite envoy Grigorij Neronov reported in autumn 1649 that 10,000 Tatars were wandering

near the Čornyj Lis2 and that the Tatars dispatched envoys to Čyhyryn to ask the Cossack leaders

whether the Commonwealth was fulfilling its obligations in accordance with the Treaty of

Zboriv. If the Commonwealth violated the terms of the peace and oppressed the Cossacks, the

hetman should write to the khan about the situation so that the Tatars could come to help the

Cossacks.3 Similarly, the Muscovite voevoda of Vol’noe, Fedor Arsen’ev, wrote to Tsar Aleksej

Mixajlovič on 22 October 1649 that while Islam Giray and his princes returned to Crimea, a

mirza named Koran-Beg with 20,000 Tatars stayed near the Čornyj Lis and that Koran-Beg sent

an embassy to Čyhyryn to ask whether the Tatars needed to remain in Ukraine. Xmel’nyc’kyj

supposedly answered that he had not yet fully concluded peace with the Commonwealth.4

2 The Čornyj Lis (Black Forest) was a large forest located just to the north of the source of the Inhulec’ River. 3 Grigorij Neronov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, October-December 1649, Ukraine [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 8 (St. Petersburg, 1873), 315 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]. 4 Fedor Arsen’ev to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 22 October 1649, Vol’noe [Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej: dokumenty i materialy, vol. 2, eds. P. P. Gudzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, A. A. Novosel’skij, A. L. Sidorov (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1953), 289-90 (henceforth VUR)].

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According to Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, the hetman meant that the Diet had not yet

ratified the Treaty of Zboriv.5 According to a report of the Muscovite voevoda of Putvyl’ Semen

Prozorovskij to Moscow on 9 December 1649, 40,000 Tatars were located near the Čornyj Lis

under the command of Xmel’nyc’kyj in order to protect the hetman from the Poles.6 Later, as a

countermeasure against possible pressure from the delegates of the king during negotiations in

March 1650 about the implementation of the Treaty of Zboriv, a number of Tatar mirzas also

accompanied Xmel’nyc’kyj to Kyiv.7 Islam Giray appeared to support Xmel’nyc’kyj in his

relations with other rulers in the region. For example, the khan reportedly reproached the

Transylvanian prince György Rákóczi II for giving a poor reception to Cossack embassies and

expressed doubts about his sincerity.8

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth was looking for a way to spoil Cossack-Tatar relations. In

autumn 1649, the dietine of Braclav discussed internally the matter of paying tribute/gifts to the

khan and sending lavish gifts to the Tatar mirzas in order to make the Tatars split with the

Cossacks.9 While the king considered these payments to be a humiliating act, they were

necessary to buy the khan’s cooperation and undo the Cossack-Tatar alliance.10 As long as this

alliance continued, the Commonwealth’s domestic and foreign affairs would be dependent on the

actions of the khan.11 It would also be impossible for the Commonwealth to suppress the

Cossack rebellion. Accordingly, in January 1650 Wojciech Bieczyński was entrusted to go to

Crimea with a royal letter. In his letter to Islam Giray, Jan Kazimierz wrote that the tribute/gift

payments had been delivered to Kam”janec’ in accordance with the Treaty of Zboriv. He also

5 Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret (Kyiv: Lybid’, 1995), 252. 6 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 7 December 1649, Putvyl’ [VUR, vol. 2, 294.] 7 Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8: The Cossack Age, 1626-1650, trans. by Marta D. Olynyk, ed. by Frank E. Sysyn (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2002), 648. 8 Islam Giray to György Rákóczi II, 1649 [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1658 rr, vol. 2, ed. Jurij Mycyk (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznavstva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2013), 635]. 9 The Dietine of Braclav Palatinate to Jan Kazimierz, 12 October 1649, Braclav [Arxiv Jugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, izdavaemyj komissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, pt. 3, vol. 4 (Kyiv, 1914), 336-7 (henceforth Arxiv JuZR)]. 10 Łucja Częścik, Sejm Warszawski w 1649-50 roku (Wrocław, Warszawa, Krakowie, Gdańsk: Zakład Narodowy imienia Ossolińskich Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1978), 67. 11 Ludwik Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński (Warsaw: Księgarnia Zakładu Nar. im. Ossolińskich, 1924), 376.

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asked the khan to release Zygmunt Denhoff, who was given as a hostage to the Tatars prior to the

tribute/gift payments, and the captive hetmans Mikołaj Potocki and Marcin Kalinowski.12

In response, Islam Giray ordered an embassy to Warsaw in order to convey his message to the

king. The khan and his vizier Sefer Gazi Agha complained that the Commonwealth failed to

deliver the entire tribute/gift payments to the Tatars. While the king agreed to pay 200,000

thalers to the khan in accordance with the Treaty of Zboriv, he paid only 30,000 thalers in cash at

Zboriv and gave a hostage to the Tatars as a surety for the payment of the remainder. Thereafter

the Commonwealth sent only 6,000 thalers in cash and various items worth 24,000 thalers.

However according to the Tatars, the real value of these items was no more than 10,000 thalers.

Although the khan and his entourage was disappointed in this situation, they accepted the total

value of the payment as 30,000 thalers. Islam Giray currently sent his servant Mehmed Gazi to

collect the remaining 140,000 thousand thalers that was promised by the king at Zboriv and an

additional 40,000 thalers as the promised ransom payment for lifting the siege of the Polish army

at Zbaraž. He demanded that the Commonwealth should send Mehmed Gazi back promptly and

deliver the promised payments in order not to act contrary to the peace so that the khan and his

associates could maintain friendship and brotherly relations with the Commonwealth.13

According to the Gazette de France, the khan’s envoy arrived in Warsaw in March 1650 and

received a satisfactory audience with the king. The Commonwealth also granted the envoy

money and assigned towns that would provide accommodation on his return to Crimea. They

confirmed the peace treaty with Crimea and agreed to pay annual tribute/gifts in cash and

clothes.14 Upon his return, the envoy was reportedly pleased to report to the khan that the

12 Jan Kazimierz to Islam Giray, 18 January 1650 [Dokumenty ob osvoboditel’noj vojne ukrainskogo naroda, 1648-1654 gg., eds. P. P. Grudzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, C. D. Pil’kevič (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1965), 315-6 (henceforth DOVUN)]. 13 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, January-February 1650 [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 14-7]; Sefer Gazi Agha to Jerzy Ossoliński, 1649-50 [Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Dział Tatarski, k. 62, t. 115, no. 447 (henceforth AGAD, Dz. Tat.)]; a text of Sefer Gazi Agha’s letter to Jerzy Ossoliński is available in Materialy dlja istorii Krymskogo xanstva izvlečennyja, po rasporjaženiju Imperatorskoj akademii nauk, iz Moskovskago glavnogo arxiva Ministerstva inostrannyx del, eds. Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Huseyn Feyzxanov (St. Petersburg, 1864), no. 349 (henceforth MdiKx); Polish text of Sefer Gazi Agha’s letter in Michałowski, wojskiego lubelskiego a później kasztelana bieckiego Księga Pamiętnicza (1647–1655), ed. Antoni Helcel (Kraków, 1864), 528-30 bears the date 28 January 1650; Abdullah Soysal also gives a Polish translation of Sefer Gazi Agha’s letter in Jarłyki Krymskie z Czasόw Jana Kazimierza (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Wschodniego w Warszawie, 1939), 48-9. 14 Gazette de France, no. 58, Danzig, 22 March 1650.

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Commonwealth accepted most of his demands.15 At the same time Islam Giray adamantly

argued in favour of granting the Cossacks their customary rights and freedoms by the

Commonwealth. As Stanisław Oświęcim relates, upon Xmel’nyc’kyj’s complaint about violation

of the peace by the dignitaries of the Commonwealth, the khan reportedly threatened to mount an

expedition if he received complaints from the Cossacks for a third time.16

Islam Giray appointed Mustafa Agha to accompany the Crown envoy Bieczyński on his return to

the Commonwealth and convey further letters of the khan to the king. Concerning the relations

between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth, the khan advised the king not to heed the words

of those who aimed to provoke him against the Cossacks. He also asked that Mustafa Agha be

allowed to return to Crimea without delay.17 In response, on 28 June 1650 Jan Kazimierz wrote

to the khan about Bieczyński’s happy return and Mustafa Agha’s mission to the Commonwealth.

From Mustafa Agha, he learned that the Tatars were planning to launch an expedition. Since the

king rules over a free people, he cannot alone decide on serious matters. For this reason, Mustafa

Agha would be held in the Commonwealth until the gathering of the Diet in December 1650.18

While the document does not explicitly say what serious matters were talked between the king

and the Tatar envoy, it is possible to surmise that the khan asked the king not to commit hostile

acts against the Cossacks, the king wanted to negotiate such a demand of the khan with the

dignitaries of the Commonwealth at the Diet. Accordingly, the king wanted to detain Mustafa

Agha until the Diet in December 1650 gathered in order to gain time before deciding on a

response to the demand of the khan about the Cossacks.

The support of the khan for the Cossacks was not unlimited. For example, the situation of the

captive magnates became a controversial matter in Cossack-Tatar relations. Xmel’nyc’kyj

planned to use the redemption of the captive magnates Mikołaj Potocki and Marcin Kalinowski

as a trump card against the Commonwealth in order to compel it to comply with the terms of the

15 Gazette de France, no. 62, Danzig, 29 March 1650. 16 Stanisława Oświęcima Diariusz 1643-1651, ed. Wiktor Czermak (Kraków: Wydawnictwa Komisyi Historycznej Akademii Umiejętności, 1907), 249. 17 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, 1 April 1650, Bagçasaray [Michałowski, 538-40]; according to the Ukrainian summary of the khan’s letter to the king in Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 529 and Jurij Mycyk, “Z džerel do istoriji Osmans’koji imperiji ta Kryms’koho xanstva XVI - peršoji polovyny XVIII st.,” Ukrajina v Central’no-Sxidnij Jevropi 9-10 (2010): 348, the document bears the date May 1650. 18 Jan Kazimierz to Islam Giray, 28 June 1650, Warsaw [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12: Materijaly do istoriji Ukrajins’koji Kozaččyny, vol. 5, ed. Miron Korduba (L’viv: 1911), 131].

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Treaty of Zboriv. While the hetman had also reportedly offered to return Potocki and Kalinowski

so that the king would treat the Cossacks favourably,19 he asked the khan not to ransom these

magnates without his knowledge.20 And so, the Cossacks were shocked by the khan’s decision to

release these magnates from captivity in spring 1650 without Xmel’nyc’kyj’s approval.21 It was

equally surprising to the Commonwealth as, at least according to the account of the Jewish

chronicler Nathan Hanover, they had no idea why Islam Giray suddenly released Potocki and

Kalinowski.22 The khan allegedly granted their freedom without ransom hoping the

Commonwealth’s authorities would reward him for such a generous act.23 Certainly the khan did

not want to alienate the Commonwealth as it was a potential ally in his anti-Muscovite designs.24

Thus the khan’s interests prevailed over those of the hetman regarding Potocki and Kalinowski’s

situation, and the hetman had no choice other than accept this fait accompli. According to the

report of the papal nuncio Juan de Torres to the Vatican in September 1650, Islam Giray ordered

an embassy to Ukraine in August 1650 allegedly with the message that Xmel’nyc’kyj should not

foreswear relations with the Commonwealth, and in response the hetman somewhat softened his

stance towards the representative of the king in Ukraine.25 Therefore, it is possible to argue that

the khan tried to follow a balanced policy between the Commonwealth and the Cossacks with a

keen interest to make both parties stick to the Treaty of Zboriv.

Regarding the peace with the Cossacks, once again the dignitaries of the Commonwealth were

divided into two competing parties. While the warmongering magnates such as Potocki and

Kalinowski did not give credence to negotiations with Xmel’nyc’kyj and argued in favour of

19 Gazette de France, no. 14, Danzig, 1 January 1649. 20 Jaroslav Fedoruk, Zovnišn’opolityčna dijal’nist’ Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho i formuvannja joho polityčnoji prohramy (1648- serpen’ 1649 rr.) (L’viv: Akademija Nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, 1993), 38. 21 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 623; Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1: The Cossack Age, 1650-1653, trans. Bohdan Struminski, eds. Serhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn, with the assistance of Uliana M. Pasicznyk (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2005), 2. 22 Nathan Hanover, Abyss of Despair, trans. Abraham J. Mesch (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1950), 105; Abraham J. Mesch explains that Nathan Hanover was a Jewish resident of the Commonwealth living in the town of Isjaslav in southern Volhynia on the eve of the Cossack rebellion of 1648. After the beginning of the Cossack-Polish wars of 1648, Nathan Hanover escaped to Germany and then wandered in other part of Europe. Therefore, Nathan Hanover was not an eyewitness to the reaction of the Commonwealth to the release of the Polish hetmans Mikołaj Potocki and Marcin Kalinowski by the Tatars. For Nathan Hanover’s biography, see Abraham J. Mesch, “The Life and Work of Nathan Hanover,” in Abyss of Despair, trans. Abraham J. Mesch (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1950), 13-22. 23 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, 1 April 1650, Bagçasaray [Michałowski, 538-40]. 24 Dariusz Milewski, Rywalizacja polsko-kozacka o Mołdawię w dobie powstania Bohdana Chmielnickiego 1648-1653 (Zabrze: Wydawnictwo Inforteditions, 2011), 90. 25 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 56, n. 158.

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starting preparations for another standoff with the Cossacks, Chancellor Ossoliński and Adam

Kysil’ stood for adopting a conciliatory approach. However, with the death of the chancellor in

August 1650, the reconciliation party was weakened in the face of the hawkish party.

Accordingly, Mikołaj Potocki decided to mobilize the army near Kam”janec’. This decision

worried both Xmel’nyc’kyj and Islam Giray. The hetman then began assembling the Cossacks at

Uman’. He also allowed the Tatars to wander in Ukraine in order to use their presence as

leverage against the Commonwealth. For example, according to the final report of the Muscovite

envoy Vasilij Unkovskij written in autumn 1650, Ivan Vyhovs’kyj had notified him that some of

the Akkerman Tatars had been allowed to nomadize around Žovti Vody on the right bank of the

Dnipro, another group of them were around the Vovča River on the left bank of the Dnipro.

According to an agreement between the hetman and the khan, because of either the Kalmyk threat

or destruction of their grass by locusts, another group of the Tatars and their families migrated

from the environs of the Azov Sea to the middle reaches of the Dnipro near Poltava. The hetman

allowed these Tatars to travel to the Cossack towns so that they could meet their needs. The

number of the Tatars were reportedly nearly 12,000.26

When Mikołaj Potocki and Jeremi Wiśniowiecki mobilized an army near Kam”janec’ in August

1650 aiming to march against the Ukrainian Cossacks, they also attempted to win over some

Tatars. They promised the Nogays a handsome payment in return for their support against the

Cossacks.27 These magnates entered into relations with the Nogays against the will of the khan.

A rapprochement between the Commonwealth and the Nogays was dangerous for Ukraine

because the Cossack-Tatar alliance would lose power without the presence of the Nogays, who

were needed in the campaigns especially when the khan hesitated to leave Crimea because of the

Don Cossack and Kalmyk threat.28 When Islam Giray failed to discourage the Nogays from

setting out to join the Polish forces, he urged the hetman to hasten to intercept them before they

merged with the enemy.29 Meanwhile, after learning that the Diet was thinking of mobilizing a

26 Vasilij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, August - December 1650, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 355]; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 132-3. 27 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 25 February 1650, Putyvl’ [VUR, vol. 2, 332-4]; Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 6 September 1650, Putyvl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 360-1]; Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki, 352; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 624. 28 Viktor Brexunenko, “Vytoky kryms’koji polityky Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho,” Ukrajins’kyj istoryčnyj žurnal 403 (1995): 89. 29 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 76.

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new army against the Cossacks, the khan's envoy, Toktamış Agha, together with a Cossack

envoy, was dispatched to the Commonwealth in autumn 1650 with the purpose of convincing the

Commonwealth to adhere to the Treaty of Zboriv.30 It is also interesting to add that the decision

to dispatch an embassy to the Commonwealth came after the kalgay Kırım Giray’s ill-fated

campaign against Muscovy in August 1650. The Polish official Łukasz Miaskowski reported that

on his way to Warsaw, in October 1650 Toktamış Agha visited Mikołaj Potocki and delivered a

letter of the khan to him. In this letter, the khan underlined the concerns of the Cossacks about

the mobilization of troops by the Commonwealth. He warned that the initial provision of his

instrument of at the Treaty of Zboriv with the king was about the Cossacks, thus any open or

secret move against the Cossacks would be regarded as violation of the peace.31 The Tatar envoy

reported to Potocki that the khan was worried about the billeting of the Polish army near the

Cossack lands and the opposition of the Commonwealth’s authorities to obeying the provisions

of the Treaty of Zboriv. Potocki responded that the Polish forces had no hostile intention against

the Cossacks but the Cossacks did not allow the magnates to return to their estates and even

murdered some of them. Toktamış Agha promised to convey Potocki’s concerns to Islam Giray

upon his return to Crimea and then the khan would assess the situation and go against the party

that failed to obey the Treaty of Zboriv. The envoys also presented the letter of the hetman to

Potocki. In his letter, Xmel’nyc’kyj asked for the demobilization of the Polish army. Thereupon,

Toktamış Agha continued his journey to Warsaw.32

In early November 1650, Toktamış Agha received an audience with the king in Warsaw to

convey the letter of the khan. In his letter to Jan Kazimierz, Islam Giray explained that while the

hetman was about to “mount his horse” and join the campaign of the kalgay against Muscovy,

news came about the magnates’ massing troops in two or three places. Xmel’nyc’kyj reported to

the kalgay that he cancelled going on the campaign owing to fear of aggression by the

Commonwealth. However it is not customary for the Tatars to return home without launching

30 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 82-3; Nikolaj Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10 of Sobranie sočinenij (St. Petersbug: Tipografija M. M. Stasjuleviča, 1904), 369-70. 31 Islam Giray to Mikołaj Potocki, c. November 1650, Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 355]; a Polish translation of the khan’s letter to Potocki is available in Soysal, Jarłyki Krymskie, 31-2; Jurij Mycyk introduces a Ukrainian summary of the letter in Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 547. 32 Łukasz Miaskowski, Judge of Podolija to a certain Cupbearer of Sanok, 30 October 1650, Załosice [Ambroży Grabowski, Ojczyste spominki w pismach do dziejów dawnéj, vol. 2 (Kraków: nakładem Józefa Cypcera, 1845), 66-8].

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plunder raids and acquiring booty when they embark on a campaign. The Moldavians had

previously harmed some Tatar mirzas and troops on their return from the campaign of autumn

1648 against the Commonwealth. The Tatars, who had already set out on the campaign to

Muscovy, appealed to the kalgay to seeking revenge and march against Moldavia. After

explaining the reasons for the Moldavian campaign, which will be discussed in fuller detail in a

separate section below, Islam Giray warned that both the king and his magnates should refrain

from provoking a war against the Cossacks. He stated that whoever harmed the Dnipro Cossacks

(Özi Kazagı) was not his friend. The khan also asked the king to quell the Commonwealth’s

nobles who nourished hostility against the Cossacks.33 The khan’s letter suggests that Islam

Giray considered the Commonwealth as being responsible for the refusal of the hetman in

joining the ill-fated campaign against Muscovy of autumn 1650.34 According to Mykhailo

Hrushevsky, it also reasserted that Crimea would prevent any hostile action by the

Commonwealth and its magnates against the Ukrainian Cossacks.35

In October 1650, the Commonwealth sent Bieczyński again with secret instructions to Crimea in

order to seed discord between the khan and the hetman. Mehmed Gazi was also sent back in the

company of the Crown envoy.36 During his audience with Islam Giray, Bieczyński accused the

Cossacks of refusing to adhere to the Treaty of Zboriv and offered to launch a joint punitive

expedition against them. The envoy also presented a royal letter to Islam Giray. According to the

registry of the king’s letter with contents summary provided by Jurij Mycyk, in his letter, Jan

Kazimierz complained that the hetman had violated the Treaty of Zboriv by not allowing the

Commonwealth’s nobles to return to their estates and homes in Ukraine and, moreover, many

prominent nobles were executed by the Cossacks. Xmel’nyc’kyj also reportedly tried to make

alliances with foreign rulers against the Commonwealth and renounced his allegiance to it by

submitting to Ottoman authority. According to the king, while the Polish army during the

summer planned to march against Muscovy, the Cossacks ravaged the Moldavian lands in

33 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, 1650, Bagçasaray [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 62, t. 8, no. 339]; according to Polish text of the khan’s letter in Michałowski, 572-4, the date of the letter is October 1650; Jurij Mycyk gives a Ukrainian summary of the letter in Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 535-6. According to his finding, the letter of the khan is dated 13 November 1650; a Polish translation of the letter is available in Soysal, Jarłyki Krymskie, 26-7. 34 Milewski, Rywalizacja polsko-kozacka, 148. 35 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 83. 36 Łukasz Miaskowski, Judge of Podolija to A certain Cupbearer of Sanok, Załosicach, 30 October 1650 [Grabowski, Ojczyste spominki, vol. 2, 67-8].

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defiance of his will and order. The king also stated that rumours were circulating about the desire

of the khan to again form alliance with the hetman and urged him not to do so. He did not want

to believe that the khan as his brother wanted to enter into brotherly relations with his peasant

and slave (chłop y newolnik).37

Interestingly, a Cossack envoy chanced upon Bieczyński at the khan’s court and disputed with

him, putting forth putting forth Cossack charges against the Commonwealth. After seeing off the

Crown envoy, Islam Giray decided to send Mustafa Agha in order to investigate the mutual

accusations of the Commonwealth and the Cossacks. On the basis of Venetian reports from

Warsaw, Hrushevsky recounts that Islam Giray dispatched to Xmel’nyc’kyj an original of a letter

of the king asking the khan to desert the king’s disobedient Cossack subjects.38 In December

1650, the khan sent Mustafa Agha in the company of Bieczyński to the Commonwealth. The

envoy was entrusted with the letters of the khan and his vizier Sefer Gazi Agha to Jan Kazimierz

and Chancellor Ossoliński, whose death was not yet known in Crimea. In their letters, the khan

and his vizier related how Bieczyński and the Cossacks blamed each other in Bagçasaray for

violating the peace treaty. They also sternly warned the king and the chancellor not to heed those

who were warmongering against the Cossacks. If the king and his dignitaries wronged the

Cossacks, then they would be considered as the party who violated the peace.39

As the Commonwealth and the Cossacks could not reach a settlement to implement the

provisions of the Treaty of Zboriv and the spectre of war loomed, Cossack envoys again began to

visit Crimea with requests for military aid. On the basis of the seventeenth century Polish

chronicler Samuel Grondski and Polish poet Samuel Twardowski’s works, Nikolaj Kostomarov

relates that the hetman reported to the khan about the mobilization of an army under Mikołaj

Potocki and Marcin Kalinowski and asked him to send the Tatars as soon as possible.

37 Jan Kazimierz to Islam Giray, undated (“before the battle of Berestečko”[28-30 June 1651]), Warsaw [Biblioteka Czartoryskich 1657, 511-2; Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 535, Mycyk suggests that the king’s letter to the khan may have been written in October 1650. 38 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 169. 39 Sefer Gazi Agha to Jerzy Ossoliński, November-December 1650, Bagçasaray [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 61, t. 5, no. 336]; Sefer Gazi Agha to Jan Kazimierz, November-December 1650, Bagçasaray [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 62, t. 10, no. 341]; Islam Giray to Jerzy Ossoliński, November-December 1650, Bagçasaray [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 62, t. 11, no. 342]; Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, November-December 1650, Bagçasaray [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 62, t. 13, no. 344; Polish translations of Islam Giray’s and Sefer Gazi Agha’s letters to Jan Kazimierz and Jerzy Ossoliński can be found in Soysal, Jarłyki Krymskie, 24-6, 28-9.

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Xmel’nyc’kyj allegedly promised Islam Giray an easy victory and that he would cede to the

Ottomans all the territories of the Commonwealth from the Dnister to its northern borders.40 He

also wrote to Sübhan Gazi Agha, the governor of Orkapı (Perekop), telling about his anxiety that

the Tatars might abandon the Cossacks because letters and embassies from the Commonwealth

came to Crimea complaining about the Cossacks. Sübhan Gazi Agha responded to the hetman to

assure him that the Tatars would remain loyal to their oath of friendship with the Cossacks and

they would not abandon their friends to the Commonwealth.41

However after clashes between the Cossacks and Polish forces started in February 1651, Islam

Giray did not reportedly act much willing to get involved in the conflict since he hoped to make

the Commonwealth and the Cossacks reconcile according to the Treaty of Zboriv. According to

the report of the Muscovite envoys Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min from Crimea, messengers

from Xmel’nyc’kyj came to ask for help against Mikołaj Potocki. Accordingly, the khan decided

to send several thousand Tatars under the nureddin Gazi Giray and promised the hetman that he

too would march to Ukraine at the head of the main army. Being sent along with two mirzas to

help the Cossacks in mid-February 1651, the nureddin was expected to notify the khan about the

course of the campaign. If the Cossacks overpowered the forces of the Commonwealth, then

Islam Giray would join the campaign. Otherwise, he would remain in Crimea and instruct the

nureddin to retreat with his forces from Ukraine.42 If the Muscovite report is given credit, Islam

Giray possibly predicted that the Commonwealth was preparing a better-prepared and larger

army to counter the Cossack-Tatar alliance, and he did not want to commit himself on the side of

the Cossacks in the face of such a strong enemy.

Meanwhile, as the Gazette de France relates, the king allowed the Tatar envoy to return to

Crimea in spring 1651 with a message that the Commonwealth wanted to remain in friendly

relations with Crimea provided the Tatars abandoned the Cossacks and refrained from helping

them.43 According to Chancellor of Lithuania Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł, the king expressed

40 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 384-5. 41 Sübhan Gazi Agha to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 24 February 1651, Orkapı (?) [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 65, 553; Jurij Mycyk, “Natsional’no-vyzvol’na vijna ukrajins’koho narodu seredyny XVII st. u peršodžerelax,” Ukrajins’kyj istoryčnyj žurnal 6 (1998): 107]. 42 Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min to Moscow, 16 January - 20 August 1651, Crimea [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 557; VUR, vol. 2, 480, 482-3]. 43 Gazette de France, no. 82, Warsaw, 27 May 1651.

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resentment that the khan sought the hetman’s friendship more than that of the king.44 It was in

such a difficult situation that the Crimean leadership attempted to reconcile the parties. While the

prospect of a renewal of the war was looming at the end of 1650 and Xmel’nyc’kyj sent several

embassies to Crimea asking Islam Giray to prepare for another standoff, the khan remained

hesitant in mobilizing his army. On the one hand, in his letter to the Cossack leaders Islam Giray

assured that the Tatars would not abandon the Cossacks and as some troops under Kan-Mambet

(Khan Mehmed) Mirza set out for Ukraine, the khan’s army would be prepared with a month.45

On the other hand, the khan procrastinated in sending help to the Cossacks. Only at the end of

February 1651 under the alleged pressure of the Ottomans, did Islam Giray agree to dispatch the

nureddin Gazi Giray with a small number of troops to join the forces of the hetman. While the

khan eventually set out in mid-May, he purportedly warned the hetman to wait for his arrival

before starting to fight. Similarly, the nureddin was reportedly ordered to refrain from joining

battles before the arrival of the khan’s army and to persuade the Cossacks to reconcile with the

Commonwealth. Therefore, except for an unsuccessful siege to Kam”janec’ and other minor

fights, the Cossack-Tatar army did not encounter the Kingdom’s forces and waited for the arrival

of the khan.46

In the meantime, a Tatar nobleman named Inayetşah Mirza,47 after being captured by the

Kingdom’s troops at a battle around Kopyčynci in May 1651 offered his services to the

Commonwealth’s dignitaries by corresponding with another mirza, who was respected by the

khan and the Tatars, in order to make them abandon the Cossacks. The mirza wrote to the camp

of the Tatars that the hetman deceived the khan by understating the size of the Crown army and

44 Albrycht Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach w Polsce, vol. 3, eds. Adam Przvboś and Roman Żelewski (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1980), 291. 45 Islam Giray to Zaporozhian Army, 1651, Crimea (?); Sefer Gazi Agha to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 1651, Crimea (?) [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1861), 458-9 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]. 46 Greek dignitary Paulos to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 19 May 1651, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 451]; Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 29 May 1651, Putvyl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 454-5]. 47 The name of the Tatar noble is a controversial issue. In his diary of the events of 1643-51, Stanisław Oświęcim presents the name as “Nietyczaj-Murze.” In their biographic work on Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov read the name as “Nitšox-Murza.” Jurij Mycyk suggests that Nitšox-Murza is a probably corrupted version of Inayet Mirza. As a contribution to Mycyk’s comments on this issue, the present study suggests Inayetşah Mirza as another possible version of the name of the mirza. See Oświęcim, 295; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 307; Jurij Mycyk, Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu seredyny XVII stolittja (Dnipropetrovs’k: VPOP Dnipro, 1996), 166.

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in fact the king had enough of troops to defeat the army of the khan.48 Accordingly, the

Commonwealth’s dignitaries exchanged letters with the nureddin and Sübhan Gazi Agha with

the aim of embarking on negotiations for a possible reconciliation. Sübhan Gazi Agha wrote to

Mikołaj Potocki in May or June 1651, expressing the pleasure of the Tatars with Potocki’s

friendly attitude. He related that Potocki’s proposals to conclude an alliance were conveyed to

the nureddin. Then the nureddin demanded that if the Commonwealth wanted a truce with

Crimea, it should send an embassy together with Inayetşah Mirza to the Tatars.49 However, the

Commonwealth refused to send Inayetşah Mirza to the camp of the Tatars fearing that he would

act as an informant for the Tatars concerning the readiness, measures and size of the Crown

army.50 In the meantime, Xmel’nyc’kyj, at a general council on 26 May receiving the consent of

the Cossacks to settle accounts with the Commonwealth, persuaded Islam Giray to take action

despite his unwillingness to get involved in another confrontation.51 Therefore, the last attempt

to reconcile the Commonwealth’s authorities and the Cossacks was doomed to failure and

renewal of the war became unavoidable.

Smolij and Stepankov attribute the reluctance of the khan to the fact that Islam Giray did not

want to see a dramatic shift in the balance of power in Eastern Europe and he wanted the state of

war between the Commonwealth and Ukraine to continue so that the Tatars could maintain

plunder raids in the territories of their northern neighbours.52 It is necessary to remember that the

second chapter of this dissertation shows how these historians propose similar arguments in

order to explain the betrayal of the khan at Zboriv. In their later biography of Xmel’nyc’kyj,

Smolij and Stepankov present a different analysis. According to them, two reasons lie behind the

reluctance of the khan to hasten to the help of his Cossack allies. Firstly, he did not want to

jeopardize his relations with the king lest his plans to make an anti-Muscovite alliance with the

Commonwealth would be spoiled by the renewal of hostilities between the king and the hetman.

Secondly, Islam Giray was worried about the news that the hetman submitted to Ottoman

authority because the Tatars would have to stop plunder raids in Ukraine as an Ottoman tributary

and the khan would lose influence in the relations between Ukraine and the Commonwealth. The

48 Report from the Polish camp near Sokal, 5 June 1651 [DOVUN, 439-43]. 49 Sübhan Gazi Agha to Mikołaj Potocki, no later than May 1651 [DOVUN, 428-9]. 50 Oświęcim, 295. 51 Smolij and Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 309. 52 Smolij and Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 302.

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delay in the march of the khan’s army prevented the Cossacks from launching surprise attacks on

the Polish forces and gave the king an opportunity to collect an unprecedented number of

troops.53

The Crimean and Ottoman chronicles and historical sources are silent on the position of the khan

and his entourage in regard to the escalation of the hostilities between the Cossacks and the

Commonwealth. Therefore it is impossible to verify whether the Tatars were deliberately

reluctant to come to the aid of their Cossack allies and whether they carried out negotiations with

the dignitaries of the Commonwealth without the knowledge of the hetman. However, it is

possible to agree with Smolij and Stepankov that Islam Giray and his associates expected

Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth to obey the provisions of the Treaty of Zboriv and

attached priority to concluding an anti-Muscovite alliance with the Cossacks and Commonwealth

in order to turn the khanate into the dominant power of the steppe region by conquering the

former territories of the Golden Horde Empire such as Kazan and Astrakhan from Muscovy and

eliminating the Don Cossacks who were seen as a Muscovite client and a menace to the khanate

and its subordinate Nogay and Tatar groups roaming in the steppes outside the Crimean

peninsula. The following section presents a discussion of campaign plans of Islam Giray and his

entourage against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks.

3.2. Crimean Campaign Plans against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks

Besides making the Commonwealth and the Cossacks accept and implement the Treaty of

Zboriv as a satisfactory settlement, the embassies and correspondence of the Crimean leadership

aimed to have the hetman and the Commonwealth participate in campaigns against Muscovy and

the Don Cossacks. Islam Giray even wanted to include Sweden in his anti-Muscovite initiative

because he needed a broad coalition as since the second half of the sixteenth century the

capabilities of the Crimean Khanate declined vis-à-vis those of Muscovy.54 The Crimean and

53 Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj (Kyiv: Vydavnyčy dim Al’ternatyvy, 2003), 226-7, 231; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja nezaležnoji deržavy,” in Istorija Ukrajiny nove bačennja, vol. 1, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Ukrajina, 1995), 170. 54 The Crimean Khanate lost the struggle against Muscovy over the former domains of the Golden Horde Empire when Ivan IV annexed Kazan and Astrakhan in the 1550s. While Khan Devlet Giray I (r. 1557-1577) managed to

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Muscovite attitudes towards each other during the Cossack-Polish war of 1648-9 was

ambivalent. On one hand, while the khan and the Tatars left Crimea to participate in the Cossack

campaigns against the Commonwealth in 1648 and 1649, the Don Cossacks mounted expeditions

against Crimea and Tatar possessions and the Muscovite state, suzerain of the Don Cossacks,

failed to prevent their attacks. On the other hand, as the Crimean chronicler Senai recounts, the

Muscovite state dispatched a handsome sum of treasury as tribute/gift payment to the khan

during his sojourn in Orkapı on his way to Ukraine during the campaign of summer 1649.

According to the chronicler, the size of this treasury was more than usual.55 If Senai’s account is

reach Moscow and burn it down in the campaign of 1571, he could not compel Ivan IV to surrender either Kazan or Astrakhan. Therefore, Devlet Giray launched another campaign in 1572 but this time he suffered a defeat. From then on, as Alan Fisher and Chantal Quelquejay-Lemercier argue, the Crimean khans accepted their defeat in the competition against Muscovy over the former territories of the Golden Horde and only participated in Ottoman campaigns against Hungary in the west and Safavid Iran in the east. However, this argument is not completely true. Upon the conclusion of an alliance between Sweden and the Commonwealth in 1578, Mehmet Giray II (r. 1577-1584) sent embassies to Warsaw and Stockholm offering to launch a joint military campaign against Muscovy. He was determined to maintain friendly relations with the Commonwealth, refused to join the Ottoman campaign against the Safavid Iran and even besieged the Ottoman fortress of Kefe in 1583. Because of this the Porte sent a large army and dethroned Mehmed Giray II. Understanding that his forces could not stand up to the Ottoman army, Mehmed Giray II attempted to escape in the steppe to the north of Orkapı, but he was executed by his kalgay Alp Giray. The three sons of the murdered khan, Saadet Giray, Safa Giray and Murad Giray did not recognize the decision of the Ottoman sultan Murad III (r. 1574-1595) appointing Islam Giray II to be the new khan. When they lost the succession struggle against Islam Giray II, Saadet Giray and Safa Giray escaped to the Caucasus. Murad Giray however went to Astrakhan and became the governor of the region under the auspices of Ivan IV. Alexander Bennigsen and Chantal Quelquejay-Lemercier see Murad Giray’s taking refuge with the Muscovite state as a turning point in Muscovite-Crimean relations. According to them, this event tilted the balance of power in favour of Muscovy. The Muscovite authorities saw Mehmed Giray II’s rebellion and Islam Giray II’s unpopular rule as an opportunity to enthrone a puppet khan in Crimea as they had previously done in Kazan and Astrakhan. Gazi Giray II (r. 1588-1607) took heart with the outbreak of war between Muscovy and Sweden, and decided to launch a quick campaign against Moscow in 1591. Although he managed to reach Moscow, Gazi Giray II ordered his troops to withdraw since the Tatars lacked weapons for mounting a siege. After concluding peace with Muscovy in 1594, Gazi Giray II joined the Ottoman campaign against Hungary and increased Crimean influence in the Danubian region. In the first half of the seventeenth century, the Tatars continued to raid Muscovite lands but they could not embark on large campaigns against Muscovy with the purpose of recovering Kazan and Astrakhan. See Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay. “La Moscovie, l'Empire ottoman et la crise successorale de 1577-1588 dans le khanat de Crimée: La tradition nomade contre le modèle des monarchies sédentaires,” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 14/4 (1973): 453-87; Carl Kortepeter, Ottoman Imperialism during the Reformation Europe and the Caucasus (New York: New York University Press, 1972); Carl Kortepeter, “Gazi Giray II, Khan of the Crimea, and Ottoman Policy in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, 1588-94,” The Slavonic and East European Review 44/102 (January 1966): 139-66; Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, “Les Expéditions de Devlet Girây contre Moscou en 1571 et 1572, d'après les documents des Archives ottomanes,” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 13/ 4, (1972): 555-9; Maria Ivanics-Ress, “The Role of the Crimean Tatars in the Habsburg-Ottoman War (1593-1660),” in The Great Ottoman - Turkish Civilization, vol. 1, eds. Güler Eren, Ercüment Kuran, Nejat Göyünç, İlber Ortaylı and Kemal Çiçek (Ankara: Yeni Turkiye, 2000), 302-10; Halil İnalcık, “Osmanlı-Rus Rekabetinin Menşei ve Don-Volga Kanalı Teşebbüsü (1569),” Belleten 12 (1948): 349-402; Alan Fisher, “Muscovite-Ottoman relations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” Humaniora Islamica 1 (1973): 207-13. 55 Hacı Mehmed Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja III, ed. Zygmunt Abrahamowicz (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1971), tx. 39-40; tr. 119.

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given credit, the Muscovites possibly suspected that the Tatars might attack Muscovy and thus

wanted to preempt the khan and his entourage by showering them with such a lavish payment.

The Tatars also continued to receive tribute/gift payment from the Muscovite officials during the

Cossack-Polish war of 1648-9. Shortly after the conclusion of peace with Muscovy in autumn

1647, the Tatar messenger Ibrahim Agha was sent to Muscovy with the news that while

Muhammedşah Mirza was appointed to set out to the place of exchange in order to receive

tribute/gifts payments and that the Muscovite state should dispatch its envoys to deliver

tribute/gifts payments to the place of exchange by the beginning of October. The Muscovite state

then assigned Vasilij Axamašukov and Anisim Trofimov to go to the place of exchange at

Valujka and appointed Timofej Xotunskij and Ivan Stepanov as the new hostages who would

stay in Crimea until the next exchange. The current hostages Timofej Karaulov and Grjaznij

Akišev would also be received from the Tatars at the place of exchange. Thereafter the Crimean

leadership dispatched Isfendiyar to Moscow with the message that the khan swore to the Koran

(šert’) in the presence of the Muscovite envoys. The Muscovite state was also asked to send

tribute/gifts payment in accordance with the registers that were prepared during the reign of

Bahadır Giray, and to deliver additional gifts for twenty two more Tatar aghas. The Muscovite

state was however adamant about refusing to send gifts for people whose names were not in the

registers. The Muscovite officials Vikula Osipov and Semen Gladkij together with a Crimean

Tatar named Abrezak were also ordered to go to Crimea in February-March 1648 with the

complaint that the Tatars attacked Belgorod and other frontier places in southern Muscovy. In

spring 1648, Islam Giray sent Bulat Agha to Moscow complaining about the entreaties of the

Muscovite officials to the Urmehmed Nogays to shift their allegiance from the khan to the tsar,

and asking for tribute/gifts payments in arrears for two years. A few months later, Kırım Gazi

Mirza set out to Moscow with the complaint about the Don Cossacks and the incomplete

tribute/gifts payments.56

The Crimean and Muscovite authorities began the new exchange of hostages and delivery of

tribute/gift payment in autumn 1648. Dimitrij L’vov and Anisim Trofimov were charged with the

duty of taking Mixail Larionov and Ivan Nikitin as the new hostages to be given to the Tatars at

56 Reestr delam Krymskago dvora s 1474 po 1779 goda, ed. N. N. Bantyš-Kamenskij (Simferopol’: Tipografija Tavričesk. Gubernsk. Pravlenija, 1893), 119-22.

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Valujka. They would also deliver the former Tatar hostages Usman Beg and Ramazan to the

Tatars in return for receiving the former Muscovite hostages Timofej Xotunskij and Ivan Stepanov

and providing the new Tatar hostages. The khan accordingly ordered Muhammedşah Mirza to

negotiate with the Muscovite officials about hostage exchange and tribute/gift payment. In summer

1649, the Muscovite envoy Timofej Xotunskij met the Tatars in order to redeem 900 Muscovite

captives. Meanwhile Seyid Ahmed Mirza was sent to Moscow to complain that tribute/gifts were

paid only for one year instead of two, and the Don Cossacks should be rebuked for their attacks

in the Kuban region.57 On the basis of the Crimean-Muscovite correspondence from March 1648

to May 1649 in Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Feyzxanov’s Crimean Tatar document publication, it

can be claimed that payment of tribute/gifts continued to be a controversial issue between

Crimea and Muscovy.58

Therefore, Muscovite-Crimean relations during the Cossack-Polish war of 1648-9 seemed to be

following its usual course as the two sides continued disputes over the size of embassies from

Crimea to Moscow, minor Tatar attacks against Muscovite domains, and payments of tribute/gifts

without delay. As the Muscovites continued to pay tribute/gifts to Crimea, it also negotiated with

the Tatars in order to redeem Muscovite captives.

Crimean participation in the campaigns of the hetman against the Commonwealth in 1648-9 also

relieved the southern frontiers of Muscovy from the attacks of the Tatars.59 The Muscovite state

also remained unresponsive to the calls of the Commonwealth in 1648-9 to put the Muscovite-

Polish agreement of 1647 into action and dispatch the Muscovite armies against Crimea because

the Tatars entered the Commonwealth.60 However, when the khan’s hands became free with the

conclusion of the Treaty of Zboriv, the Tatars could again pose a threat to Muscovite lands.61

The Muscovite state accordingly sent embassies to Ukraine in order to learn whether the Tatar-

Cossack alliance had designs against Muscovy in future.

57 Reestr delam Krymskago dvora, 122-4. 58 MdiKx, nos. 114-120. 59 Aleksej Novosel’skij, Bor’ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami vo vtoroj polovine XVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), 14, 45. 60 L. M. Lyzlov, “Pol’sko-russkie otnošenija v načal’nyj period osvoboditel’noj vojny ukrainskogo naroda 1648-1654 gg, (do Zborovskogo mira),” Kratkie soobščenija 24 (1958): 58-82. 61 Lyzlov, “Pol’sko-russkie otnošenija v period ot zborovskogo mira do zemskogo cobora 1651 g.,” Kratkie soobščenija 27 (1959): 48.

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Although there is no information about the attitude of the Crimean leadership towards the

exchange of embassies between Muscovy and Ukraine during the campaigns of 1648 and 1649,

it is possible to argue that Crimean-Muscovite relations began to deteriorate after the campaign

of summer 1648 because the khan and his entourage were enraged due to the attacks of the Don

Cossacks against Crimea and Tatar nomads at the time when the Tatar forces were away helping

the hetman against the Commonwealth. Islam Giray also wrote to Aleksej Mixajlovič to warn

that Muscovy would be held responsible for any harm or damage to Crimea and the provinces

and countries of the Ottoman state by the Don Cossacks who were under the tsar’s authority.

Complaining how the Don Cossacks waited for the vessels carrying provisions to the Ottoman

outpost of Azov and attacked some Tatar villages on the shores, Islam Giray asked the tsar to

establish firm control on the Don Cossacks. Otherwise, the khan threatened to mobilize all Tatars

and Nogays along with the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Don Cossacks.62

In response to the complaints about Muscovite indifference to the Don Cossack attacks, Aleksej

Mixajlovič claimed that since the Don Cossacks were criminals and thieves who managed to

evade capital punishment, they simply ignored his orders. He also related that when his father

and predecessor Mixail Fedorovič sent one of his prominent officials Ivan Karamyšev to restrain

the Cossacks, he was murdered by them and thrown into the Don River.63

However the Crimean leadership did not give credit to the words of the tsar that the Don

Cossacks acted in defiance of his will. The Crimean leadership sent Canmirza Ulan to Moscow

in early 1650 requesting payment of the whole treasure without delay, the expansion of the size

of the Tatar embassies to Moscow, renunciation of friendship with the Kalmyks and banning

them from nomadizing along the Volga River near Astrakhan.64 Kalgay Kırım Giray blamed

Aleksej Mixajlovič for developing good relations with the Kalmyks and failing to stop the Don

Cossack raids. The local Muscovite officials and their Astrakhan infantry did not hinder the

Kalmyks in their movement along the Volga River whence the Kalmyks attacked Crimea and the

Nogays in the Dnipro steppe. If the Muscovite state did not renounce its peace with the Kalmyks

and stop exchanging envoys with them, then it would be responsible for violating the peace. As

62 Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 22 July 1648 (1 Receb 1058), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 118]. 63 Aleksej Mixajlovič to Kırım Giray, 1648-9 [MdiKx, no. 336]. 64 Reestr delam Krymskago dvora, 127.

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the kalgay also related, when earlier Muscovite in Crimea envoys claimed that the Don Cossacks

were villains and they were not under the control of the tsar, Sefer Gazi Agha asked if the

Muscovite state was not able to control the Don Cossacks and the khan punished them, would

not the tsar be offended? The Muscovite envoys responded that the tsar would not feel offended.

On the basis of this conversation between Sefer Gazi Agha and the Muscovite envoys related by

the kalgay, the latter stated that the tsar should not be saddened by a future campaign of the

Tatars against the Don Cossacks in response to their going out from the tsar’s provinces, sailing

onto to the sea in defiance of the tsar’s orders and damaging the possessions of the Tatars on the

shores of the Black Sea and the countries of the Ottoman padishah.65

The claims of the Crimean leadership about Muscovite-Kalmyk rapprochement were not

groundless. The Muscovite state began to improve relations with the Kalmyks by the mid-

seventeenth century and also advised the Don Cossacks to cooperate with them against Crimea.66

Accordingly, since the Kalmyks were no longer prevented by the Muscovites from crossing the

Volga River, they increased their attacks against the Nogay dependencies of the Crimean

Khanate.67 However, the Muscovite state refrained from giving open support and denied its role

in Kalmyk expeditions against the Nogays. Islam Giray reportedly planned to go on a campaign

with the support of the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Kalmyks. For example, the Muscovite

voevoda of Vol’noe Fedor Arsen’ev reported that the khan asked the hetman to send the

Ukrainian Cossacks to participate in a campaign against the Kalmyks. However, Islam Giray

cancelled the expedition because he reconciled with the Kalmyks, purportedly making an

agreement with them to launch a joint expedition against Muscovy.68

According to Senai, Sefer Gazi Agha influenced the khan to dream of conquering Astrakhan and

Kazan that were under Muscovite rule for nearly a hundred years.69 The Muscovite state learned

that shortly after the return of the Tatars to Crimea the khan wanted to launch a joint expedition

65 Kırım Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 1059 AH or 15 January 1649 - 3 January 1650, Akmescid [MdiKx, no. 124]. 66 Brian Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500-1700 (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), 95. 67 Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600-1711 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), 89-90. 68 Fedor Arsen’ev to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 14 February 1650, Vol’noe [Donskie dela, vol. 4 (St. Petersburg, 1913), 364-5]. 69 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 61, tr. 136.

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with the Ukrainian Cossacks against Muscovy in spring.70 The Muscovite envoy Grigorij

Kunakov also claimed that the Treaty of Zboriv contained of unwritten articles that assured the

khan with passage through the Commonwealth’s territories against his enemies.71 Thus, there are

some grounds to suspect that khan might have indeed sought the support of the Commonwealth

and Xmel’nyc’kyj with the goal of recovering former Golden Horde domains from Muscovy and

installing himself as the only legitimate heir of the Golden Horde.

Although the campaign plans of the khan and his entourage against Muscovy seemed to cause a

deterioration in Crimean-Muscovite relations, the Tatars continued to receive tribute/gift

payments from the Muscovite state. In autumn 1649, Islam Giray with his kalgay and nureddin

swore on the Koran promising to remain in friendship with the tsar and not to initiate any

harmful acts against Muscovy.72 Timofej Buturlin and Ivan Zinov’ev were also assigned in

autumn 1649 to lead tribute/gifts payment to the place of exchange, deliver Grigorij Volkov and

Družina Ogarkov as the new hostages to the Tatars, and return the former Tatar hostage Seyid

Ahmed Mirza and his retinue. Buturlin and Zinovev would take the previous Muscovite hostages

Larionov and Nikitin and new hostages from the Tatars.73 The Tatar envoy Muhammedşah

Mirza accordingly gave his letter of oath to Buturlin and Zinov’ev, declaring that the khan would

uphold his letter of oath, the previous disputes with Muscovy would be forgotten, and the new

hostages would receive good treatment in Crimea. In addition, the khan and his entourage along

with all mirzas, the Tatars and the Nogays would not go to war against Muscovite lands.74

It is interesting to note that the Muscovite state sent the great treasure for two years in a row.

Upon news about the attempts of the khan and his entourage to establish an anti-Muscovite

alliance with the Commonwealth and the Cossacks, the Muscovite state probably wanted to

provide an incentive for the Tatars to abandon their war plans. Thereafter Fedor Xilkov and Ivan

70 Aleksej Mixajlovič to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 3 September 1649, Moscow [VUR, vol. 2, 242]; Semen Prozorvskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 3 September 1649, Putyvl’ [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1861), 343 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]. 71 Grigorij Kunakov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, December 1649, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 395-6, 404-5]. 72 Grigorij Kunakov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, October 1649, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 368]. 73 Reestr delam Krymskago dvora, 125. 74 Muhammedşah Mirza to Timofej Buturlin and Ivan Zinov’ev, 6 December 1648 [Pamiatniki diplomatičeskix snošeni Krymskago xanstva s Moskovskim gosudarstvom v XVI-XVII v.v., ed. F. Laškov (Simferopol’: Tipografija Gazety Krym, 1891), 134-9 (henceforth PdsKxsMg)]; the document was probably misdated as 6 December 1648. It is possible to argue that the correct date is December 1649.

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Nikitin set out to Valujka in autumn 1650 in order to deliver the new hostages Ivan Eljakov and

Timofej Kuz’min and the former Tatar hostages Canmirza and Şah Hüseyin with their retinue to

the place of exchange, and there receive Volkov and Ogarkov and the new Tatar hostages from

the Tatars.75 Therefore, despite the negative atmosphere of Crimean-Muscovite relations, from

the conclusion of the Treaty of Zboriv in August 1649 to the resumption of the Cossack-Polish

war in summer 1651, the Tatars continued to exchange hostages and twice received tribute/gift

payment from Muscovy.

Remembering the expeditions of the Don Cossacks in 1648-9, the khan and his entourage needed

to eliminate the Don Cossacks before embarking on an expedition against Muscovy.76 Therefore,

Islam Giray began to ask Xmel’nyc’kyj to participate in his campaign against the Don Cossacks.

According to the report of the Muscovite voevoda of Ryl’sk Aleška Izmajlov, the khan asked the

hetman in late 1649 to send troops for his campaign against Muscovy reminding how for two

years the Tatars gave support to the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Commonwealth. The khan

also purportedly threatened the hetman that he would march with all Tatars and Nogays against

the Ukrainian Cossacks if the hetman failed to send his army.77 On the basis of different sources

of information, the Muscovite voevoda of Putyvl’ Semen Prozorovskij wrote a number of reports

to Moscow about the intentions of the khan and the hetman. According to these reports, the khan

intended to go to war against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks and asked the hetman to send the

Ukrainian Cossacks to come to the help of the Tatars for his anticipated campaign.78

The Putyvl’ voevoda Prozorovskij also recounted that the sultan sent a saber and a kaftan (robe

of honour) to the khan as a sign of permission for the campaign of the Tatars against Muscovy.79

According to Fedor Arsen’ev’s aforementioned report, the Porte wrote to the hetman asking him

to send 6,000 troops against the Don Cossacks and promised to order the janissary and sipahi

troops to the assistance of the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Commonwealth.80 Similarly, the

75 Reestr delam Krymskago dvora, 128. 76 Viktor Brexunenko, “Dons’ke kozactvo, jak čynnyk zovnišh’noji polityky Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho,” Doba Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, 1995), 123. 77 Aleška Izmajlov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 23 November 1649, Ryl’sk [VUR, vol. 2, 292]. 78 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 30 November 1649, 1 December 1649, 12 December 1649, 17 December 1649, Putyvl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 376-7, 377-8, 379-80, 380-1]. 79 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 12 December 1649, Putyvl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 380-1]. 80 Fedor Arsen’ev to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 14 February 1650, Vol’noe [Donskie dela, vol. 4, 361-2].

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Don Cossacks reported to Moscow that Islam Giray prepared to march in late 1649 with his

Nogay and Circassian dependencies and Ottoman troops against the Don region, and the hetman

sent 12,000 Cossacks to help the khan. In the face of such danger, the Don Cossacks reportedly

started negotiations with the Kalmyks against the Tatars and asked the Muscovite state to send

money and supplies to prepare for defence.81 While neither the voevodas nor the Don Cossacks

explain why the Porte authorized such a belligerent action against Muscovy, it is possible to

surmise that the Ottomans wanted to punish Muscovy or the Don Cossacks for the latter’s sea

raids against their domains. However, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles and historical

sources do not present any information on any permission granted by the Porte for a campaign

against Muscovy or the Don Cossacks.

On 27 March 1650, the Muscovite official Nikolaj Osipov reported that the kalgay Kırım Giray

and nureddin Gazi Giray marched to Orkapı ostensibly to strengthen the defence of the isthmus

between the Black Sea and the Syvash (Hnyle More, “Rotten Sea”) but actually to launch slave

capturing raids.82 However, he misapprehended the situation. The chronicler Senai related that

Islam Giray did indeed embark on an immense project of repairing the defensive works at Orkapı

and travelled from Bagçasaray to Orkapı in May 1650 in order to supervise these works. Nearly

a century earlier, Khan Sahib Giray (r. 1532-51) ordered the construction of a massive moat

around the fortress of Orkapı, however in time the moat was filled with sand and the walls of the

fortress collapsed. The reconstruction was supposedly completed within nine days by employing

a great labour force and a massive amount of building material. Consequently, a very deep and

lengthy new moat was dug between the Black Sea and the Syvash, and the fortress walls were

reinforced in order to strengthen the defence of the entrance to the peninsula. According to

Senai, Islam Giray financed this reconstruction with booty revenue from the campaigns against

the Commonwealth.83 The Muscovite envoys in Crimea, Grigorij Volkov and Družina Ogarkov,

also investigated why the khan went to Orkapı and recorded conflicting testimonies. For example,

while a Don Cossack Danilko Tatarin told them that the khan and his kalgay planned to go to

war against Muscovite frontier towns, two Muscovite officials Artemej Karamyšev and Griška

81 Pan’ka Fedorov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 10 April 1650 [Donskie dela, vol. 4, 442]. 82 Nikolaj Osipov’s report on the events of Crimea during his journey from Crimea to Moscow between 27 March-10 April 1650, Moscow [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 524]. 83 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 59-60, tr. 134-5.

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Gončarov said that the khan had no intention to launch an expedition against Muscovy and that

he only wanted to go to Orkapı.84 It can be stated that Danilko Tatarin as his other fellow Don

Cossacks wanted to convince the Muscovite state to grant permission for a campaign against the

Tatars who were supposedly about to attack Muscovite lands.

The Muscovite voevodas and the Don Cossack leadership were also mistaken about the readiness

of the hetman to give support to the campaign plans of the khan. Xmel’nyc’kyj did not lend

himself to the request of the khan to participate in a campaign against the Don Cossacks, as he

was wary of confronting Muscovy and thereby opening up another front in his struggle. For

example, after the battle of Pyljavci, the hetman did not allow the Tatars to return to Crimea

along the left bank of the Dnipro lest they attacked Muscovite domains; therefore, the Tatars

marched along the Buh River during their withdrawal to Crimea.85 While Islam Giray dispatched

embassies to Xmel’nyc’kyj in winter of 1649-50 asking him to join his anticipated campaign

against the Don Cossacks, the hetman answered that he would not be able to assemble troops to

help the khan.86 According to the Muscovite official Nikolaj Osipov’s testimony on Crimean

affairs, Xmel’nyc’kyj made the excuse that Jeremi Wiśniowiecki did not dissolve his army and

was intending to march into Ukraine.87 The concern of the hetman about Wiśniowiecki’s designs

against Ukraine was not baseless; it was rumoured that the magnate was gathering troops in

order to go to war against the Cossacks and hired the Nogays to make them support the Polish

forces.88 On the basis of his conversations with the hetman’s close associate Ivan Vyhovs’kyj in

early December 1649, the Muscovite envoy Grigorij Neronov reported that Xmel’nyc’kyj wrote

to Islam Giray asking him not to go to war against the Don Cossacks and instead advised the

khan to live in peace with them.89 Of course, Vyhovs’kyj could very well have been aiming to

please the Muscovites by claiming that Xmel’nyc’kyj was doing all he could to prevent Crimea

from attacking the Don Cossacks.

84 Grigorij Volkov and Družina Ogarkov to Moscow, January - 12 November 1650, Crimea [VUR, vol. 2, 329]. 85 Fedor Arsen’ev to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 20 December 1648, Vol’noe [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 282]. 86 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 626; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 212. 87 Nikolaj Osipov’s report on the events of Crimea during his journey from Crimea to Moscow between 27 March-10 April 1650, Moscow [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 525]. 88 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 624. 89 Grigorij Neronov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, October - December 1649, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 317].

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In fact, Xmel’nyc’kyj benefited from such ambitious campaign plans of the khan as it allowed

him to pressure Muscovy and the Don Cossacks and express his resentment of the fact that on

several occasions the Muscovite state and the Don Cossacks failed to help the Ukrainian

Cossacks against the Commonwealth. While the hetman boasted to the Muscovite envoys how

he resisted the attempt of the khan to include the Ukrainian Cossacks in his plans of war with

Muscovy and dissuaded the khan from going to war against Muscovy,90 he did not refrain from

threatening Muscovite envoys and officials and the Don Cossack Host for their failure to give

support to their coreligionist Ukrainian Cossacks and sabotaging the struggle against the

Commonwealth by attacking Crimea and Tatar nomads.91 In the meantime, in autumn 1649

Aleksej Mixajlovič assigned Grigorij Neronov as his envoy to Ukraine and entrusted him with a

letter to deliver to Xmel’nyc’kyj thanking him for preventing Islam Giray from launching an

expedition against Muscovy.92 Since the Muscovite state was worried that the Ukrainian

Cossacks would possibly support the Tatars in their schemes against Muscovy, it refrained from

antagonizing the hetman and even saw him as an actor who could neutralize the attempts of the

Tatars to go to war against Muscovy. Xmel’nyc’kyj saw off Grigorij Neronov in late November

90 Nikiforko Meščerskoj to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 11 September 1649, Brjanskij [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 350]; Bohdan Xmel’nyckyj to Fedor Arsen’ev, 29 September 1649, Čyhyryn [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 359-60]; order issued by the Posol’skij prikaz (Muscovite ambassadorial department) to an unnamed Muscovite envoy to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 1649 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 417]. 91 Semen Prozoroskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 16 September 1648, Putyvl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 353]; Grigorij Neronov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, October - December 1649, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 309-10]. Islam Giray hesitated to launch a campaign against the Commonwealth allegedly because he feared further attacks from the Don when the Tatar army was outside Crimea. According to the letter of an unknown Polish official on 14 June 1649, the khan set out to Orkapı in early June 1649 and held a meeting with the mirzas to discuss whether he should go to Ukraine in order to help the hetman or he should dispatch only a part of his army. Since the Don Cossacks recently launched a naval campaign against Crimea and ravaged nine villages, the mirzas reportedly advised the khan to stay in Crimea fearing that the Don Cossacks would possibly be a greater menace to Crimea in the absence of the Tatar army. Moscow also did not see any need to restrain the Don Cossacks from harassing the Tatars. Therefore Islam Giray would have to make a choice whether to go to help Xmel'nyc'kyj or to stay in Crimea in case of a Don Cossack attack. Xmel'nyc'kyj dispatched a mission to the Don Cossacks in spring 1649 in order to complain that while the Ukrainian Cossacks were prepared to march together with the Tatars against the Commonwealth, the Don Cossacks raided Ottoman possessions and the Tatars. He threatened to destroy the Don Cossacks and their dwellings if they continued their attacks. However the Don Cossack leadership responded to the hetman that they were not afraid of his threats. See Don Cossack ataman Prokofej Ivanov’s testimony, 8 October 1648 [Donskie dela, vol. 4, 276-81]; an anonymous letter from Kam”janec’ [Grabowski, Ojczyste spominki, vol. 2, 51-2]; an anonymous letter to Crown swordsman Michał Zebrzydowski, 14 June 1649, Iaşi [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1658 rr, vol. 1 (1648-1649 rr.), ed. Jurij Mycyk (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznavstva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2012), 249]; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 556-7; Viktor Brexunenko, “Dons’ke kozactvo…polityky Xmel’nyc’koho,” Doba Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, 1995), 125; Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1, 90. 92 Aleksej Mixajlovič to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 3 September 1649, Moscow [VUR, vol. 2, 241-2].

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1649 with a letter to Aleksej Mixajlovič asking him to stop Don Cossack raids against the Tatars

in return for convincing the khan not to go war against Muscovy. The hetman’s letter also

assured that the Crimean Tatars would not attack Muscovite lands.93

According to a Muscovite dispatch, on 1 December 1649 Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched an embassy

headed by Ivan Bondar to Crimea in order to urge Islam Giray abandon the idea of going to war

against the Don Cossacks and live in peace with them.94 Seeing the reluctance of the hetman to

participate in an expedition against the Don Cossacks, the khan wrote a letter to the hetman

asking him to send an embassy to the Don Cossacks in order to convince them to stop their

campaigns against the Tatars and show respect to the khan. According to this letter, although

Xmel’nyc’kyj refused to join the campaign of the khan against the Don Cossacks under the

pretext that he could not assemble the Ukrainian Cossacks, the khan was not offended by the

hetman’s refusal.95 Upon this request of the khan, the hetman sent embassies to the Don

Cossacks in spring and summer 1650, asking them not to launch expeditions against the

Ottomans and the Tatars.96 He also wrote to the kalgay in May 1650 claiming to have sent 5,000

Cossacks against the Don Cossacks, whereupon the latter agreed to become friendly to Crimea

and promised not to undertake their expeditions against Crimea and the Tatar nomads.97 To sum

up, the hetman was challenged by a quandary. On one hand, he might have jeopardized his

alliance with the Tatars because of refusing to support their campaign plans against Muscovy and

the Don Cossacks. On the other hand, on top of his war with the Commonwealth he did not want

to be involved in another venture against the Don Cossacks and their Muscovite suzerain.

Xmel’nyc’kyj tried to solve this quandary by warning, even threatening, the Don Cossacks,

93 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 26 November 1649, Čyhyryn [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 303]; Grigorij Neronov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, October - December 1649, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 309]. 94 Grigorij Neronov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, October - December 1649, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 317]. 95 Islam Giray to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 14 May 1650, Buxlaj (?) [VUR, vol. 2, 361]; a corrupt text of the khan’s letter in Polish along with a Russian translation is available in Donskie dela, vol. 4, 522-3; in addition, Jurij Mycyk gives a Polish text of the letter in “Z dyplomatyčnoho lystuvannja urjadu kryms’koho xanstva (druha polovyna XVI - počatok XVIII stolit’),” Zapysky Naukovoho tovaristva imeni Ševčenka 240 (2000): 481-2. According to Mycyk, the date of the khan’s letter is 29 May 1650. 96 The Don Cossack ataman Naum’ko Vasil’ev to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 24 May 1650 [Donskie dela, vol. 4, 516-7]; Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to the Don Cossacks, 30 March 1650, Čyhyryn [Donskie dela, vol. 4, 520-1]; Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to the Don Cossack atamans, June 1650, Čyhyryn [VUR, vol. 2, 370-1]. 97 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Kırım Giray, 5 May 1650, Čyhyryn [Dokumenty Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, 1648-1657, , eds. I. Kryp”jakevyč and I. Butyč (Kyiv: Akademiji Nauk Ukrajins’koji RSR, 1961), 166-7 (henceforth DBX)] .

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making the Tatars believe that he was ready to lend his support against the Don Cossacks, and at

the same time discouraging them from mounting an expedition against the Don Cossacks.

According to a report of the Muscovite voevoda of Putyvl’ Semen Prozorovskij, shortly after his

return from Zboriv Islam Giray asked the hetman to send several thousand Cossacks to

participate in a campaign to the Caucasus in order to restore his authority over his Circassian

dependencies.98 However neither could the khan persuade the hetman to dispatch Cossack units

nor did he himself go to war against the Circassians. Another report by Semen Prozorovskij

suggests that the khan asked again in summer 1650 for 2,000 or 3,000 Cossacks to help his

campaign against the Circassians.99 In his abovementioned letter to the hetman, the khan

requested Cossack troops who would march as far as Circassia.100 However as the hetman

suspected that the khan intended to march against Muscovy and again procrastinated from

calling for a mobilization of the Cossacks,101 on 15 July 1650 the khan wrote a stern letter to the

hetman informing that an army under the command of the kalgay Kırım Giray was ready to set

out to the Caucasus and insisting on the participation of the Ukrainian Cossacks in the

expedition.102 Xmel’nyc’kyj then agreed to send 6,000 troops to help the Tatars. He also took

measures to head off a possible reaction from Muscovy by writing a letter to Aleksej Mixajlovič

explaining that the expedition had no a hostile intention against Muscovy.103 Meanwhile the

khan wrote to the hetman about his decision to abort the campaign because his Circassian

subjects agreed to renew their allegiance to him.104

During one of his conversations with the Muscovite envoy Vasilij Unkovskij in Ukraine in

summer 1650, Xmel’nyc’kyj reportedly assured that while the khan, his kalgay and other members

of the ruling dynasty called upon the hetman to organize joint expeditions against Muscovy, the

hetman, remembering the tsar’s kindness and rewards (Rus. milost’ i žalovan’e) in the past, was

98 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 30 November 1649, Putyvl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 376-7]; Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 4 October 1649, 7 December 1649, Putyvl’ [VUR, vol. 2, 280-2, 294-5]. 99 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 9 July - 2 August 1650, Putyvl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 421-2]. 100 Islam Giray to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 14 May 1650, Buxlaj [VUR, vol. 2, 361. 101 Mykola Kučernjuk, Džerela pro rosijs’ko-ukrajins’ki polityčni zv’jazky v roky vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1654 (L’viv: L’vivs’kyj deržavnyj universitet, 1980), 44. 102 Islam Giray to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 15 July 1650, Bagçasaray [Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 495-6]. 103 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Aleksej Mixajlovič, Čyhyryn, 1 July 1650 [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 357-8]. 104 Vasilij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, August - December 1650, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 342]; reports of the Polish envoy on his soujourn in Ukraine, July - September 1650 [Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 498-9].

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not willing to be a part of such an action against Muscovy and prohibited the Ukrainian Cossacks

from going to the aid of the khan without his knowledge.105 It can be argued that by referring to

the tsar’s mercy and rewards in the past, the hetman wanted to express his gratitude to the tsar for

allowing the Ukrainian Cossacks to buy grain and other provisions from Muscovy during his

campaigns against the Commonwealth. At the same time, however, the hetman told the

Muscovite envoy about the importance of Tatar support for his struggle in the past and argued

that if he could not conclude an agreement with the khan, he would be in a very difficult

situation against the Poles.106

At the beginning of August 1650, a Tatar envoy arrived in Čyhyryn in order to convey messages of

Islam Giray, the kalgay Kırım Giray and the vizier Sefer Gazi Agha to Xmel’nyc’kyj. Thanking

the hetman for sending the Cossacks to help the Tatars in the Circassian campaign, the khan

explained why he cancelled the campaign. He also informed the hetman that the kalgay was

planning to mobilize all Tatars and Nogays against Muscovy and demanded that he to prepare

the Cossacks to go to the help of the kalgay by mid-August 1650. In case of failure to comply

with this request, Islam Giray threatened to break his alliance with Xmel’nyc’kyj. Kalgay Kırım

Giray and Sefer Gazi Agha also referred to similar issues in their letters to the hetman.107 In

response to this, on the grounds of having little time to prepare for the campaign and the

concentration of the Polish army, the hetman asked the Crimean leadership to postpone the

campaign.108

While the khan wanted to include the Commonwealth in his plans of war against Muscovy in

accordance with the Treaty of Zboriv, the Commonwealth also showed interest in the anti-

Muscovite schemes of the Tatars.109 Especially when the relations with Muscovy began to

deteriorate when Warsaw learned about Muscovite intentions to benefit from the weakened state

of the Commonwealth in the aftermath of the 1649 summer campaign, the latter was inclined to

support the khan in his campaign plans against Muscovy. In early 1650, the Muscovite state

105 Vasilij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, August - December 1650, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 347-8]. 106 Vasilij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, August - December 1650, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 349]. 107 Vasilij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, August - December 1650, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 342]; reports of the Polish envoy on his soujourn in Ukraine, July - September 1650 [Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 498-9]. 108 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 65. 109 Zbigniew Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska w okresie wojen drugiej połowy XVII wieku 1648-1699,” in Historia Dyplomacji Polskiej, vol. 2: 1572-1795, ed. Zbigniew Wójcik (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982), 194.

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dispatched a mission to Warsaw and asked the Commonwealth to cede Smolensk to Muscovy,

punish the magnates who insulted the tsar in their writings and correspondence, and pay

compensation for these insults.110 As Oświęcim relates, the Commonwealth decided to counter

the Muscovite demands by ordering the Crown envoy, Wojciech Bieczyński, to set out to Crimea

in spring 1650 and discuss an alliance against Muscovy with Islam Giray and his entourage. This

mission to Crimea was undertaken with the role of the Tatars during the Polish-Muscovite war of

1633 in mind. The devastating attacks of the Tatars clearly helped the Commonwealth force

Muscovy to conclude the Treaty of Poljanovka in 1634.111 In addition, a possible rapprochement

of the Ukrainian Cossacks with Muscovy and the Don Cossacks would be preempted if

Xmel’nyc’kyj could be drawn into an anti-Muscovite alliance.112 Thus, the king also encouraged

the khan to ask the hetman to join the campaign against Muscovy.113 Under the guise of fulfilling

an earlier promise to the khan, in May 1650 the king wrote to the hetman authorizing him to send

10,000 Ukrainian Cossacks to go with the Tatars against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks.114

Islam Giray equally hoped to benefit from the deteriorating relations between Muscovy and the

Commonwealth in order to convince the latter to give support to campaign plans campaign plans

against Muscovy. In response to Bieczyński’s mission, in spring 1650 Mustafa Agha was sent to

the Commonwealth with gifts and letters from the khan, the kalgay Kırım Giray, the nureddin

Gazi Giray and the vizier Sefer Gazi Agha. In his letter the khan stated his readiness to mobilize

the Tatar army in alliance with the Crown army to conquer fortresses and territories.115 The khan

did not explicitly state in his letter whose fortresses and territories would be conquered by the

Crown army and the Tatars, but it is apparent that he meant the fortresses and territories that

belonged to Muscovy.116 Interestingly, according to the Gazette de France, Mustafa Agha

supposedly tried to convince the king to dispatch his army against Muscovy in coordination with

110 Stefania Ochmann-Staniszewska and Zdzisław Staniszewski, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej za panowania Jana Kazimierza Wazy, prawo-doktryna- praktyka, vol. 1 (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2000), 66-7. 111 Oświęcim, 250; Ludwik Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 1 (L’viv: Nakład Księgarni Gubrynowicza I. Schmidta, 1880), 220. 112 Davies, Warfare, State and Society, 106. 113 Igor’ Grekov, Vladimir Koroljuk and Il’ja Miller, eds. Vossojedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej v 1654 r. (Moscow: Akademija Nauk SSSR, 1954), 63. 114 Jan Kazimierz to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 2 May 1650, Warsaw [DOVUN, 338-40]. 115 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, 1 April 1650, Bagçasaray; Kırım Giray to Jan Kazimierz, 1 April 1650, Akmescid; Gazi Giray to Jan Kazimierz, 1 April 1650, Kaçısaray [Michałowski, 538-40, 540-2]. 116 Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 136.

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the Tatars, conveying a message from the khan that he would make him the ruler of Muscovy

and return the Ukrainian Cossacks to their former state of obedience to the king.117 On the basis

of Polish sources, Ludwik Kubala relates that the Tatar envoy was also instructed to inform the

king verbally that the khan would be satisfied with only taking Kazan and Astrakhan, but if the

Commonwealth refused to go to war against Muscovy, then the Tatars would march against it

together with the Cossacks. Mustafa Agha allegedly told the senators that the Commonwealth

displayed more esteem to the Muscovites than they deserved.118 Referring to the chronicles and

histories of Hryhorij Hrabjanka, Wespazjan Kochowski and Laurentius Rudawski, Kostomarov

recounts that the envoy reported to the Poles that the Tatars would no longer willing to wait

passively and were ready to attack Muscovy with an army of 100,000 troops. According to

Kostomarov, the Poles responded by supporting Mustafa Agha and even agitating for a war with

Muscovy, referring to Muscovy as a common enemy of the Commonwealth and Crimea, and

even a former tributary of the Crimean khans. They also proposed that Islam Giray could realize

the annexation of Astrakhan by uniting with the king against Muscovy.119

According to the Chancellor of Lithuania, Albrycht Radziwiłł, the embassy of Mustafa Agha to

Warsaw compelled the Muscovites to ease tensions with the Commonwealth.120 The dignitaries

of the Commonwealth leaked to a Muscovite envoy the aforementioned purported unwritten

secret provisions of the Treaty of Zboriv that gave the Tatars the right to pass through the

Commonwealth’s territories obviously on their way to attack Muscovy.121 When Aleksej

Mixajlovič learned about these negotiations between Crimea and the Commonwealth, he

renounced demands for territorial concessions and compensations, limited his request to the

respectful treatment of the tsar by the Commonwealth and agreed to renew the Treaty of

Poljanovka with the Commonwealth.122 As the Muscovite state was successfully forced to

abandon its claims, the Commonwealth would no longer need further talks with Crimea about

organizing a joint expedition against Muscovy. Thus, while the khan and his entourage were more

enthusiastic than their Polish allies about forming an anti-Muscovite alliance and bringing about

117 Gazette de France, no. 112, Danzig, 12 July 1650. 118 Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 1, 220. 119 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 360. 120 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 3, 261. 121 Ludwik Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 1 (L’viv: Nakład Księgarni Gubrynowicza I. Schmidta, 1880), 199. 122 Tadeusz Wasilewski, Ostatni Waza na Polskim Tronie (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Śląsk, 1984), 91.

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a rapid outbreak of hostilities, the Commonwealth was satisfied with using a threat of war in

order to force the Muscovites to abandon their claims.123

The khan also wrote to the Commonwealth’s authorities that as Crimea and Sweden have

maintained friendly and brotherly relations and exchanged missions since ancient times, he was

sending to Sweden Mustafa Agha with a letter of friendship (muhabbetname). The khan asked

the Commonwealth to help the Tatar envoy as he passed through its territory on his way to

Sweden.124 Upon his arrival in Stockholm, the Tatar envoy conveyed the letters of the khan,

kalgay Kırım Giray and nureddin Gazi Giray to the Swedish queen, Kristina (r. 1632-54). While

Islam Giray and the kalgay’s letters expressed the desire to have friendly relations and offered to

make an alliance with Sweden, the nureddin’s missive informed of the newly made peace

between Crimea and the Commonwealth and asked the queen to give favourable treatment to the

Tatar embassy. The nureddin also explained that after hearing how the Muscovites treated the

brother of the khan (i.e., the king) arrogantly and maliciously, the khan dispatched the kalgay

with 100,000 troops to go to war against Muscovy. Describing the Muscovites as the enemies of

the Tatars, the nureddin also informed the Swedish queen that the khan was planning to launch

another campaign against Muscovy next spring and asked her to dispatch her army to join the

campaign.125 However, the Swedish queen declined the Crimean leaders’ offer stating that

Sweden was in peaceful relations with Muscovy.126

The Tatar subjects of Muscovy also reportedly encouraged the khan to maintain his anti-

Muscovite plans. A certain Tatar from Kazan, Nurmamet, reportedly visited Crimea and related

that as the Tatars of Kazan and Astrakhan were living in captivity and not allowed to build

mosques, they wanted the khan to rescue them from the Muscovite yoke.127 The Muscovite

envoys Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min also reported from Crimea to Moscow that the khan

123 Lyzlov, “Pol’sko-russkie otnošenija v period,” 57. 124 Islam Giray to Chancellor of the Crown, 30 July - 27 August 1650 (Şa‘ban 1060) [MdiKx, No. 133]; one can find Polish text of the khan’s letter in Michałowski, 565-6 with the date of 22 September 1650; Soysal presents a Polish translation of the letter in Jarłyki Krymskie, 33. 125 Islam Giray to Kristina, 30 July 1650 (Şa‘ban 1060), Bagçasaray [K. V. Zettersteen, Türkische, Tatarische und Persische Urkunden im Schwedischen Reichsarchiv (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1945), no. 145; Kırım Giray to Kristina, c. the end of July 1650, Akmescid [Zettersteen, Türkische, Tatarische und Persische Urkunden, no. 146]; Gazi Giray to Kristina, 1650 (1060), Kazısaray [Zettersteen, Türkische, Tatarische und Persische Urkunden, no. 147]. 126 Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min to Moscow, 16 January - 20 August 1651, Crimea [VUR, vol. 2, 483]. 127 Danila Potapov’s testimony on his return from Crimea, 15 September 1650 [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 532-3].

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was negotiating with the mirzas of the Astrakhan Tatars to convince the latter to migrate to

Crimea.128 While chronicles and archival sources do not give any information to corroborate

these reports, it is not unlikely that many Tatars from Kazan and Astrakhan were be ready to

shift their allegiance from Muscovy to Crimea and would welcome the khan’s plans for a war

with Muscovy.

In mid-June 1650, as expectations in Crimea for an expedition against Muscovy rose again, Sefer

Gazi Agha complained to the Muscovite ambassadors about the failure of the Muscovite state to

observe its agreement with Crimea and talked about the inevitability of war between Muscovy

and Crimea.129 Since Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth were avoiding to commit, Islam

Giray wanted to present them with a fait accompli and had his kalgay, Kırım Giray, set forth on a

campaign against Muscovy on 30 July 1650 (1st day of Şa‘ban 1060) as the commander of the

Tatar army according to Senai.130 At the same time, as the Gazette de France related, while the

Tatar embassy travelled to Ukraine in early August to inform the hetman about the mobilization

of the army under the kalgay, Mehmet Gazi Atalık set out to Warsaw to repeat the call for an

anti-Muscovite campaign and ask for tribute/gift payment in accordance with the Treaty of

Zboriv.131

The envoy was also entrusted with the letters of the khan to the king and the chancellor. In these

letters, Islam Giray wrote that formerly Mustafa Agha was sent to Warsaw to convey a friendly

letter of the khan and also discuss Muscovite affairs. He also carried out negotiations with

Mikołaj Potocki and some other Polish notables about Muscovy. The khan stressed that while he

was waiting for a response regarding Muscovy, the Muscovites gaining much strength did not

remain peaceful. They began to mistreat Tatar envoys and send vessels to attack and drive

peaceful Muslims into captivity. Islam Giray explained in his letter that while he remained

patient in the face of such hostile acts from Muscovy, the Muscovite envoys both demanded

territorial concessions from the Commonwealth and made other arrogant claims against it.

Learning about the Muscovite demands, he ordered all Tatars and Nogays under the command of

128 Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min to Moscow, 16 January - 20 August 1651, Crimea [VUR, vol. 2, 486]. 129 Lev Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe xanstvo i gosudarstva central’noj i vostočnoj Evropy v 1648-1654 gg.,” in Osmanskaja imperija i strany central’noj, vostočnoj i jugo-vostočnoj Evropy v XVII v., vol. 1, eds. G. G. Litavrin, L. E. Semenova, S. F. Oreškova, B. N. Florja (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk ISB, 1998), 206. 130 Senai, Historia Chana Islama, tx. 62, trans. 136-7. 131 Gazette de France, no. 160, Danzig, 20 September 1650.

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the kalgay to march against Muscovy on 26 July 1650 (27 Receb 1060). The khan also asked the

Commonwealth to send at least the army of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Litva ‘askeri) to join

the campaign of the kalgay. He promised to leave all Muscovy under the authority of the king

except for its Muslim territories.132 Sefer Gazi Agha also sent a letter to the chancellor having

identical content with the letters of the khan.133 Clearly, Islam Giray intended to benefit from the

deteriorating relations between Commonwealth and Muscovy and thereby further his plans for a

war with the latter.

As turned out this campaign was ended even before Kırım Giray’s force even the half-way point

of it journey. Senai explains that Kırım Giray cancelled it the Muscovite expedition after moving

as upon reaching the Oveči Vody River134 because a drought made it difficult to find grass to

feed the horses along the route. Thereupon the army of the kalgay turned to Moldavia to take

vengeance on the Moldavians for attacking the Tatars who were passing through Moldavia

during their return from the autumn 1648 campaign. The chronicler states that the Moldavians

violated the peace by committing this hostile act upon the order of their hospodar Vasile

Lupu.135 Don Cossack officers reported a similar, though slightly different version, to Muscovy,

namely that the Tatars could not go further because the destruction of the entire steppe by a fire

that made finding grass difficult.136 The Gazette de France proposes that the kalgay Kırım Giray

and the Tatar mirzas stopped the march against Muscovy because they were worried about a

possible setback due to the fact that the Muscovites were awaiting the Tatars on their own borders

in strength.137 According to rumours were compiled by the Polish official Marcin Goliński, the

Muscovite state sent an embassy to Xmel’nyc’kyj with many gifts so that he would not send the

Ukrainian Cossacks to join the Tatars in this expedition. As to the hetman, he warned the kalgay

132 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, c. autumn 1650, Bagçasaray; Islam Giray to Chancellor of the Crown, c. autumn 1650, Bagçasaray [MdiKx, nos. 350-351]; Polish text of the khan’s letter to the king is available in Michałowski, 555-7 with the date of 27 August 1650; one can find Polish translations of the khan’s letters to the king and the chancellor in Soysal Jarłyki Krymskie, 38-40, 45-6. However, Soysal indicates that these letters are dated 1654 possibly by mistake in the Commonwealth’s chancery. 133 Sefer Gazi Agha to Chancellor of the Crown, autumn 1650 [MdiKx, no. 352]; for Polish translation of Sefer Gazi Agha’s letter to the chancellor, see Soysal, Jarłyki Krymskie, 42-3. 134 In his commentary on Senai’s chronicle, Zygmunt Abrahamowicz explains that the Oveči Vody is a left tributary of the Samara River. See Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja, 198 n. 577. 135 Senai, Historia Chana Islama Gereja, tx. 62, tr. 136-7. 136 The Don Cossack ataman Ondrej Evsev’ev’s testimony on the campaign of the Ukrainian Cossacks, 6 September 1650 [VUR, vol. 2, 409]; Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii, vol. 10, 1608-9. 137 Gazette de France, no. 148, Warsaw, 29 August 1650.

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Kırım Giray not to march against Muscovy because a ready army was awaiting them. Instead, he

proposed to the kalgay to launch a surprise attack against Moldavia.138 A cavalry scout

(staničnik) named Danila Potapov reported to the Muscovites that while the hetman upon the

request of the khan prepared and dispatched an army to join the Tatars to march against

Muscovy, he later refused to continue the campaign on the grounds that the steppe was burnt by

the tsar’s decree and the Muscovites were readily waiting along the frontier. Indeed

Xmel’nyc’kyj apparently received a handsome payment from a Muscovite embassy dispatched

by Boris Repnin a boyar from Belgorod.139

In a letter from late 1650 to Aleksej Mixajlovič, Islam Giray denied that the Tatar army had

intended to go to war against Muscovy. According to the khan, while the Tatars were returning

from the campaign against the Commonwealth, the Moldavians intercepted and harmed some of

them. At that time, it was not possible to exact revenge on the Moldavians promptly because they

fled to mountains and steep places. Accordingly the khan held a council with the Tatar

dignitaries and decided to prepare for a campaign ostensibly against Muscovy in order to fool the

Moldavians. Thereafter the Tatar army marched to the Dnipro and then changed its direction to

Moldavia in secrecy in order to surprise the Moldavians. Concurrent with this letter to the tsar, a

courier was sent to deliver to him a letter of friendship (muhabbetname). The khan also expected

that after the courier arrived in Moscow, the Muscovite state should send the great treasure to the

place of exchange promptly, report to Crimea about the sending of the treasure and send the

courier back.140

The Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin also recounts that while the Tatar army under the

command of the kalgay was ostensibly ordered to march against Muscovy, the real goal of the

Tatars was to punish the Moldavians for the aforementioned reason.141 Although the khan’s

explanation to the tsar seems to concur with the Crimean chronicler’s account, it is possible to

argue that Islam Giray tried to conceal the original anti-Muscovite goal the kalgay’s force in

order not to spoil the relations and therefore hastily dispatched a messenger to Moscow with

138 Marcin Goliński’s notes on the visit of the Muscovite embassy to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and the hetman’s dissuading the Tatars from marching against Muscovy, 4 October 1650 [VUR, vol. 2, 445-7]. 139 Danila Potapov’s testimony on his return from Crimea, 15 September 1650 [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 532]. 140 Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, c. late 1650 - early 1651, Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 132]. 141 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau: Die Moldauische Chronik des Miron Costin 1593-1661, ed. A. Armbruster (Graz, Wien and Köln: Verlag Styria, 1980), 180-1.

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such explanation. However in the previously mentioned letter of the khan to the king and his

chancellor, it was openly stated that the Tatars intended to go to war against Muscovy before

they marched against Moldavia. The khan was possibly worried that the Muscovite state would

respond to the failed attempt by refusing to deliver tribute/gift payment to the place of exchange.

Knowing that Xmel’nyc’kyj gave an audience to the Muscovite envoy and received gifts from

him,142 the Tatars also possibly suspected that the hetman disclosed their campaign plans to the

Muscovite state. Thus, Islam Giray had no choice other than to manipulate the truth.

It has been alleged that Xmel’nyc’kyj played an important role in thwarting the Muscovite

expedition and changing the plans of the khan. According to the eighteenth century Ukrainian

chronicler Hryhorij Hrabjanka, knowing that the Tatars would put pressure on the Ukrainian

Cossacks to go to war against Muscovy in order to take Kazan and Astrakhan, Xmel’nyc’kyj

dispatched messengers to report the intentions of the Tatars to Aleksej Mixajlovič by.143

Hrushevsky explains that Wiśniowiecki’s initiative to hire the Nogays in his plans for an

expedition to Ukraine and Mikołaj Potocki’s mobilization of troops into Podillja strengthened

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s resolve to decline the khan’s persistent call to launch a joint campaign especially

since the hetman considered a campaign against Muscovy, a potential future ally unwise. And

therefore he proposed to Islam Giray to attack Moldavia instead.144 Prior to Hrushevsky,

Oleksandr Vostokov surmised that it was important for the Muscovite state to maintain relations

with the hetman and receive assurances that as long as the khan continued to be an ally of the

Cossacks, the Tatars would not harm Muscovy.145 Much later than Vostokov, Lev Zaborovskij

points out that the Muscovite state dispatched missions to Ukraine in order to receive

information from the hetman about the intention of the khan and his associates to organize large-

scale attacks against Muscovy.146

Many other historians have reiterated Hrushevsky’s argument that in response to Islam Giray’s

persistent calls to launch a joint expedition against Muscovy, Xmel’nyc’kyj skillfully convinced

142 Marcin Goliński’s notes on the visit of the Muscovite embassy to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and the hetman’s dissuading the Tatars from marching against Muscovy, 4 October 1650 [VUR, vol. 2, 445-7]. 143 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv Hustyns’kyj litopys, Samijla Velyčka, Hrabjanky, eds. Volodymyr Krekoten’, Valerij Ševčuk and Roman Ivančenko (Kyiv: Dnipro, 2006), 901-2. 144 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 74-86. 145 Oleksandr Vostokov, “Pervyje snošenija Bogdansa Xmel’nyc’kogo s Moskvoj,” Kievskaja starina 8 (1887): 743. 146 Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe xanstvo,” 203.

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the khan to attack Moldavia. Consequently, the hetman not only avoided an encounter with

Muscovy but also diverted the aggression of the Tatars to Moldavia.147 Mykola Petrovs’kyj

states that in the face of all the rumours about the Tatar-Cossack plans to attack Muscovy

Xmel’nyc’kyj took all measures to avoid an encounter with Muscovy, for otherwise Ukraine

would go under the khan’s control and the annexation of Ukraine to Muscovy would not

happen.148 In contrast to the historians who have considered Xmel’nyc’kyj as the mastermind of

the Moldavian campaign, Smolij and Stepankov claim that when the Muscovite campaign was

aborted due to the hetman’s unwillingness to participate in it, more than 20,000 Tatars asked

their commander the kalgay Kırım Giray to march against Moldavia. The kalgay supposedly

agreed to their proposal because he wanted to punish the Moldavians for, as mentioned above,

attacking the Tatars on their return from the 1648 campaign. Only then did the Cossacks

reluctantly joined the Tatars in their expedition against Moldavia. According to Smolij and

Stepankov, it was not the hetman but the kalgay who was the mastermind behind the Moldavian

campaign.149

Viktor Brexunenko suggests that Islam Giray did not exert much pressure on the hetman to

launch a joint expedition against Muscovy because he himself did not feel ready for such a

war.150 According to him, the khan was not ready to engage a prolonged conflict and instead

intended to launch a preemptive strike in alliance with the Ukrainian Cossacks on the Don

147 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 364; George Vernadsky, Bohdan, Hetman of Ukraine (New Haven: Yale University Press; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1941), 81; Zbigniew Wójcik, Dzikie Pola w Ogniu: o Kozaczyźnie w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1968), 185; Janusz Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1988), 143-4; Janusz Kaczmarczyk, “Nie tylko ‘krwawe swaty’. Stosunki ukraińsko-mołdawskie w okresie powstania Bohdana Chmielnickiego,” Studia Historyczne 25/2 (1982): 206; Jan Seredyka, “Nieudana próba włączenia w 1650 r. Kozaków Zaporoskich do antyrosyjskiego sojuszu polsko-tatarskiego,” in Między Wschodem a Zachodem Rzeczpospolita XVI-XVIII w., eds. Zbigniew Wójcik and Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel (Warszawa: Historia pro Futuro, 1993), 128; Milewski, Rywalizacja polsko-kozacka, 108-9; Dariusz Milewski, “Jerzy Kutnarski - Polak w służbie mołdawskiej i polskiej, Echa Przeszłości 13 (2012): 119; L. E. Semenova, “Dunajskie knjažestva v meždunarodnom kontekste v 50-e gg. XVII v.,” in Russkaja i Ukrainskaja diplomatija v Evrazii: 50-e gody XVII veka, eds. L. Semenova, B. Florja and I. Shwartz (Moscow: Institut slavjanovedenija RAN, 2000), 116. 148 Mykola Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji Ukrajiny, vol. 4 (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Akademiji Nauk URSR, 1940), 131-2, 142. 149 Smolij and Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 276-7; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 217-8. 150 Viktor Brexunenko, “Dons’ke kozactvo...polityky Xmel’nyc’koho,” Doba Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, 1995), 123; Viktor Brexunenko, Stosunki ukrajins’koho kozactva z Donom u XVI- seredyni XVII st. (Kyiv: Zaporožžja RA Tandem-U, 1998), 242.

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region. In this respect, it is possible to claim that Islam Giray’s goal was twofold: to pacify the

Don Cossacks and prevent a possible Muscovite-Ukrainian rapprochement at the same time.151

However, as it was already a while that the Don Cossacks undertook no expeditions, the khan did

not have a pretext to march against them. His plans were also paralyzed by deteriorating relations

of Crimea with his Circassian and Nogay dependencies, negotiations between Jeremi Wiśniowiecki

and the Nogays behind the khan’s back, and the skillful diplomacy of the hetman.152

After the Moldavian campaign, the Crimean leadership reiterated its proposals for waging a joint

campaign in alliance with the Commonwealth against Muscovy. Islam Giray dispatched

Mehmed Gazi Atalık to the Commonwealth in autumn 1650 with his letters to Jan Kazimierz and

Chancellor Andrej Leszczyński. In his letters, the khan asked that the Commonwealth’s

authorities complete procuring supplies in the winter and launch a joint campaign with the Tatars

against Muscovy in spring 1651. If the venture resulted in success, all of Muscovy except for

Kazan, Astrakhan and other Muslim regions would be given to the Commonwealth. The khan

also argued that as Crimea and the Commonwealth established such a high level of brotherly and

friendly relations and were in command of innumerable troops, the Commonwealth should use

the opportunity to annex new lands.153 Volodymyr Holobuc’kyj describes the khan’s proposal to

divide Muscovy between Crimea and the Commonwealth with the Russian proverb: “carving up

the skin of an unkilled bear.”154 Similarly, Sefer Gazi Agha wrote to the chancellor advising him

to encourage the king and the magnates to agree to launch a joint campaign with the Tatars

against Muscovy and promised that the Crimean leadership would help place the king upon the

Muscovite throne.155

151 Brexunenko, “Dons’ke kozactvo...polityky Xmel’nyc’koho,” 128; Brexunenko, Stosunki ukrajins’koho kozactva z Donom, 252. 152 Brexunenko, “Dons’ke kozactvo...polityky Xmel’nyc’koho,” 132; Brexunenko, Stosunki ukrajins’koho kozactva z Donom, 256-7. 153 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, c. late 1650, Bagçasaray [AGAD, Dz. Tat., k. 62, t. 9, no. 340]; for the Polish text of the khan’s letter to the king, see Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 145 with the date of 31 October 1650; Polish text of the khan’s letter with a Russian translation in DOVUN, 350-4; Islam Giray to Chancellor of the Crown, c. late 1650 [MdiKx, no. 353]; for present day Polish translations see Soysal, Jarłyki Krymskie, 35-6, 40-2; Jurij Mycyk presents Ukrainian summaries of these letters in Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 546-7. 154 Volodymyr Holobuc’kyj [Golobuckij], Diplomatičeskaja istorija osvoboditel’noj vojny ukrajinskogo naroda 1648-1654 gg. (Kyiv: Gosudarstvennoe izd. političeskoj literatury USSR, 1962), 259. 155 Sefer Gazi Agha to Chancellor of the Crown, c. late 1650 [MdiKx, no. 354]; for Polish translation of Sefer Gazi Agha’s original letter see Soysal, Jarłyki Krymskie, 36-7.

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The Muscovite state believed that it was the Commonwealth that instigating the Tatars against

Muscovy. According to the report of the Muscovite envoys Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min

from Crimea, the king wrote to the khan provoking him to start a war against Muscovy. The king

purportedly informed the khan about how an uprising in Pskov troubled the Muscovite state and

the Swedish queen was willing to wage war against Muscovy. He also claimed that the queen

would give great gifts to the Tatars. The khan then believed the words of the king and sent his

envoy to Sweden via the Commonwealth.156 In similar vein, the Swedes reportedly disclosed to

the Muscovites that Crimean envoys came to Stockholm in early 1651. The king not only

allowed these envoys to pass through his territory but also dispatched a Jesuit in their company

with the message that he wanted to go to war in alliance with the khan against Moscow and

invited the Swedish queen to join this alliance. However, the queen did not accept the offers of

the khan and the king.157 In addition, as a part of his attempt to convince Muscovy to abolish its

peace with the Commonwealth, in December 1650 Xmel’nyc’kyj told the Muscovite monk

Arsenij Suxanov that the Commonwealth sent an embassy to Crimea in order to provoke the

khan to attack Muscovy.158

Accordingly, the Muscovite assembly of the estates (Zemskij Sobor) in its gathering of February

1651 discussed these supposed attempts by the Commonwealth to provoke the Tatars against

Muscovy.159 When the Muscovite state sent Vasilij Stepankov and Larion Lopuxin to Ukraine in

early 1651 in order to learn about the relations between the khan and the king and their plans

concerning Muscovy, the hetman not only informed the envoys about exchange of embassies and

letters between the Commonwealth and Crimea but also tried to prove his lack of interest in the

khan’s anti-Muscovite plans.160 Similarly, the Commonwealth strived to show Xmel’nyc’kyj as

the accomplice of the Tatars in their plots against Muscovy. It dispatched an embassy to Moscow

156 Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min to Moscow, 16 January - 20 August 1651, Crimea [VUR, vol. 2, 483]. 157 Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii, vol. 10, 1644. 158 Arsenij Suxanov’s report on his journey with Patriarch of Jerusalem Paisios to Jerusalem and his talks with Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 9 May 1649 – 8 December 1650, Ukraine [VUR, vol. 2, 188-9]. 159 Vasilij Latkin, Materialy dlja istorii zemskix soborov XVII stoletija (1619-20, 1648-49 i 1651 godov) (St. Petersburg: Tipografija V. V. Komarova, 1884), 85; Vasilij Latkin, Zemskije sobory drevnej Rusi, ix istorija i organizacija (St.Petersburg: Russkaja skoropečatnja, 1885), 234. 160 The Muscovite envoy Vasilij Stepanov’s memoirs on his mission to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, March 1651, Ukraine [Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 566-8]; Vasilij Stepanov’s memoirs have been reproduced in Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej: dokumenty i materialy, vol. 3, eds. P. P. Gudzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, A. A. Novosel’skij, A. L. Sidorov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954), 15-6 (henceforth VUR).

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in autumn 1650 to discredit the hetman as the enemy of Christians who was prepared to go to

war in support of the khan against Muscovy.161 Another embassy was sent to Moscow in

February 1651 to disclose the correspondence of the khan to the king and his nobles asking the

Commonwealth’s authorities to launch joint expeditions against Muscovy and offering to divide

Muscovy between Crimea and the Commonwealth. This embassy also delivered the

aforementioned letter of the hetman to the kalgay declaring his consent to go to war against

Muscovy.162

It is interesting to note that in the extraordinary meeting of the Commonwealth Diet in December

1650, the deputies expressed their concern that the Tatar embassy to Sweden was indeed a part of

the plan of the khan and the hetman to incite the northern neighbour against the

Commonwealth.163 While the Muscovite state regarded the Tatar embassy to Sweden as a

reflection of the enmity of the Commonwealth towards Muscovy, the Commonwealth saw the

same mission as a Tatar-Cossack attempt to establish a coalition against Warsaw. That is, in their

minds Islam Giray and his Cossack allies deceived the Commonwealth in their request to receive

permission for the Tatar embassy to travel through their territory.

In fact, neither Xmel’nyc’kyj nor the Commonwealth really intended to participate in any anti-

Muscovite scheme. According to Zaborovskij, the Commonwealth was not interested in an

offensive war against Muscovy because it saw Crimea as an unreliable ally.164 However, the

unwillingness of the Commonwealth to participate in an anti-Muscovite campaign is not related

to its perception of the Tatars as untrustworthy allies. In fact, both the Commonwealth and the

hetman benefited from the desire of the khan to go to war against Muscovy, for it allowed them

to discredit each other in the eyes of the Muscovite state. While Xmel’nyc’kyj tried to show how

the Commonwealth was receptive to the war plans of the Tatars in order to gain the support of

161 Excerpt from the report in the ambassadorial registers on the conversation with the Crown envoy Albrycht Prażmowski, 9 October 1650, Moscow [VUR, vol. 2, 447-52]. 162 Reestr delam Krymskago dvora, 131; for Xmel’nyc’kyj’s letter to the kalgay Kırım Giray, see footnote 97. 163 Supplement to the legation at the dietines, c. 23 November 1650, Warsaw [Michałowski, 582]; Ochmann-Staniszewska and Staniszewski, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej, vol. 1, 68. 164 Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe xanstvo,” 204; contrary to Zaborovskij’s interpretation, Bucinskij speculates that when Jan Kazimierz offered to Islam Giray that he make an alliance with the Commonwealth against Muscovy and the Cossacks, the khan reportedly declined the offer of the king because he wanted neither to break off friendly relations with Muscovy and nor to abandon the Cossacks. However, the correspondence of the khan and his entourage with the Commonwealth suggests that the Crimean Khanate was very enthusiastic about forming an anti-Muscovite alliance and refutes Bucinskij’s account. See Bucinskij, O Bogdane Xmel’nickom, 86.

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the Muscovite state and make Muscovy prevent the Don Cossacks from attacking his Tatar

allies, Warsaw wanted to secure Muscovy’s neutrality in its conflict with the Ukrainian Cossacks

by depicting the hetman as a supporter of the plans of the Tatars against Moscow.

As Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth considered the continuing conflict between the

Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth more important than any other matters, the khan’s

willingness to wage war against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks waned. Islam Giray was not

sure that the Tatars alone could overcome the Muscovite armies. Therefore he needed to secure

the support of the Commonwealth forces and the Ukrainian Cossacks. By the mid-seventeenth

century, the Tatars were not powerful enough to realize ambitious goals such as restoring

Astrakhan, Kazan and other former Golden Horde realms. Islam Giray also sought the support of

the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Don Cossacks. However, as he failed to receive support from

Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth, he had no alternative other than postponing his campaign

plans against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks.

3.3. The Campaign againt Moldavia in Summer 1650

According to Miron Costin’s account, when the residents of the Prut region complained about

the devastations of the Tatars who were passing through Moldavia during their return from the

campaign of autumn 1648 against the Commonwealth, the hospodar Vasile Lupu ordered his

commanders with all soldiers of his palace, nobles and burghers to attack the Tatars. Then the

Moldavians descended upon the unsuspecting Tatars near the village of Bratuleni, killed many of

them and seized their captives and booty. The surviving Tatars escaped in the direction of the

Bucak region and then went to Crimea where they complained to the khan about the unexpected

attack of the Moldavians.165 Islam Giray apparently blamed Vasile Lupu for the Moldavian

attack.166 Therefore it is plausible that the Tatars would make use of any opportunity to avenge

the Moldavians. As the Gazette de France relates, during their return from Zboriv in summer

1649, the Tatars headed to the direction of Bar with the intention of attacking Moldavia and

settle scores.167 However, that time they did not realize intent.

165 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau, 179-80. 166 Eduard Baidaus, “War, Diplomacy and Family Affairs in Seventeenth-Century Eastern Europe: Moldavia in the Danubian Policy of Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1648-1653),” Canadian Slavonic Papers 54 (March-June 2012): 34. 167 Gazette de France, no. 136, Danzig, 3 October 1649.

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Janusz Kaczmarczyk does not believe that any intention for revenge on the part of the Tatars

played a significant role in the campaign against Moldavia. He points out that it was not the

Crimean Tatars, but rather the Bucak Tatars who suffered from the Moldavian attack because

they needed to traverse Moldavian lands on their return from L’viv to the Bucak, a region along

the Black Sea shore between the Danube and Dnister rivers. Xmel’nyc’kyj supposedly convinced

the khan to change the direction of the Tatar campaign from Muscovy to Moldavia by advising

him to capture the legendary treasures of the hospodar.168 On the basis of Marcin Goliński’s

recording of rumours, Holobuckyj explains that the hetman persuaded the khan to turn to

Moldavia as a rich country which had not seen war and devastation.169 Eduard Baidaus suggests

also the khan agreed to attack Moldavia because it was prosperous and more vulnerable than

Muscovy.170 In addition, it was less tenable to mount a long expedition against Muscovy with the

risk of returning home with little booty. Therefore, the khan possibly used the Moldavian attack

upon the returning Tatars in autumn 1648 as a pretext both to change the direction of the

campaign from Muscovy to Moldavia and to protect themselves against possible reproaches by

the Porte for attacking one of its vassals.

Vasile Lupu’s letter to the Ottoman governor (sancakbegi) of Özi (Očakiv) also suggests that the

latter dispatched an envoy with his letter to Moldavia to warn the hospodar about the intention of

the Tatars to invade Moldavia and advised him to write about this matter to the Ottomans and the

Wallachian hospodar. The governor hesitated to write to Istanbul because if the Tatar attack did

not occur then he would find himself in a difficult situation.171 In the meantime, Vasile Lupu

failed to prevent the attack of the Tatars against Moldavia. The Tatars reportedly first sacked the

town of Alabalde at the confluence of the Prut and Danube rivers, then “ruined all of the

country” and enslaved many Moldavians.172 According to the same source, contrary to the

hospodar’s order, the Moldavian army did not fight the Tatars, and thus the hospodar fled to the

woods.173

168 Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 97, 144. 169 Holobuc’kyj, Diplomaticeskaja istorija, 255. 170 Baidaus, “War, Diplomacy,” 45-6; Eduard Baidaus, “Štryxy k polytyčeskomu portretu B Xmel’nyckogo v kontekste moldavsko-ukrainskix otnošenij,” Ukrajina v central’no-sxidnij Jevropi 1 (2000): 199-200. 171 Vasile Lupu to Ottoman Beg of Očakiv, 1650 [Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Dział Turecki, k. 76, t. 425, no. 729 (henceforth AGAD, Dz. Tur.)]. 172 Gazette de France, no. 160, Warsaw, 19 September 1650. 173 Gazette de France, no. 162, Warsaw, 29 October 1650.

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The Commonwealth preferred not to get involved in this course of events and did not take any

action against the Tatars and their Cossack allies. They possibly misjudged the situation,

thinking that the Moldavian campaign would draw Islam Giray and Xmel’nyc’kyj into conflict

with the Ottomans and lead them to join an anti-Ottoman alliance.174 Although the hospodar

Vasile Lupu allegedly asked Mikołaj Potocki for help after the beginning of the Cossack-Tatar

attack against Moldavia, he failed to convince him to send his forces to Moldavia against the

Cossack-Tatar army.175 In any event, the hospodar saw that he could not withstand the invaders

and offered to pay a good sum of money to the kalgay Kırım Giray in order to convince him to

end the Tatar ravages of Moldavia. The capital of Moldavia, Iași, had already been burnt and

looted by the Tatars. The kalgay agreed to the hospodar’s proposal and left Moldavia with

abundant booty. Lupu also promised to arrange the marriage of his daughter to Tymiš, the son of

the hetman.

The Moldavian campaign did not provide much benefit for the khan except placating the Tatars

by providing them with the opportunity of seizing booty and slaves and receiving a large sum

from the rulers of Wallachia and Transylvania who wished to avert raids by the Tatars.176 In the

aftermath of the Moldavian campaign, the Tatars and the hetman reportedly sent missions to

these two Danubian principalities asking for tribute payment and otherwise threatening them

with war.177 Except for avenging the attack on the Tatars who were returning home from the

campaign of summer 1648 through Moldavia, Islam Giray seemed to have no political goal in

attacking Moldavia. Unlike the hetman, as we shall see shortly, the khan neither seemed to be

worried about the close relations between Moldavia and the Commonwealth nor perceived the

hospodar as an enemy.178 The hospodar had even carried out negotiations with the Tatars to

arrange Mikołaj Potocki’s and Marcin Kalinowski’s release after the Treaty of Zboriv.179

174 Seredyka, “Nieudana próba włączenia,” 128. 175 Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv, 902. 176 Simon Reniger to Emperor Ferdinand III, 10 October 1650, Istanbul [Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 139]; Georg Kraus, Siebenbürgische Chronik des Schässburger Stadtschreibers, vol. 1 (Vienna: Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1862), 184. 177 Marcin Goliński’s notes on the visit of the Muscovite embassy to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and the hetman’s dissuading the Tatars from marching against Muscovy, 4 October 1650 [VUR, vol. 2, 445-7]. 178 L. E. Semenova, “Moldavija i Valaxija v otnošenijax Porty so stranami regiona v seredine XVII v.,” in Osmanskaja imperija i strany central’noj, vostočnoj i jugo-vostočnoj Evropy v XVII v., vol. 1, eds. G. G. Litavrin, L. E. Semenova, S. F. Oreškova, B. N. Florja (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk ISB, 1998), 235. 179 Vasilij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, August - December 1650, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 326].

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Presumably if the khan had a hostile attitude towards the hospodar, then he would not have

permitted him to mediate in the release of the captive Polish hetmans. Since the Commonwealth

was reportedly dissatisfied with the participation of the Tatars in the campaign against their

Moldavian allies, perhaps the campaign led to a cooling in its relations with Crimea.180

Concerning the benefits of the Moldavian campaign for the hetman, Xmel’nyc’kyj not only

diverted the war fervour of the Tatars from Muscovy but also gained a chance to extend his

influence over Moldavia. Indeed this campaign provided the hetman with an opportunity to

deprive the Commonwealth of an ally. He purportedly had a grudge against the hospodar Vasile

Lupu for helping the Commonwealth since the early days of the Cossack rebellion. As discussed

in the second chapter, the hospodar mediated between the Commonwealth and the Porte in order

to influence it to order the Tatars to abandon the Cossacks. As stated above, he also played an

active role in making Islam Giray release two Polish hetmans from captivity. Therefore, the

Moldavian campaign was expected to help the hetman neutralize the hospodar who cooperated

with the Commonwealth against the Cossacks in 1648-9.

Pierre Chevalier relates that Xmel’nyc’kyj previously approached the Porte, belittling the

hospodar Vasile Lupu as a duplicitous enemy of the Ottomans and reliable friend of the

Commonwealth, and accordingly he received permission from the Porte to attack Moldavia.181

The hetman even allegedly asked the Ottomans to remove Lupu from the throne.182 While the

Porte did not satisfy the hetman’s request and had no intention to allow the hetman to gain

influence in Moldavia, Xmel’nyc’kyj planned to arrange the marriage of his son Tymiš to the

daughter of the hospodar in order to establish dynastic relation with Moldavia.183 Accordingly,

the Cossacks would also be able to turn the trustworthy ally of the Commonwealth against it. As

the papal nuncio Juan de Torres back in March 1649 had written that Xmel’nyc’kyj harboured

plans to establish a coalition with Moldavia and Wallachia against the Commonwealth,184 the

Moldavian campaign provided the first step towards realizing such a plan. The Moldavian

180 Lyzlov, “Pol’sko-russkie otnošenija v period,” 63. 181 Pierre Chevalier, A Discourse of the Original, Countrey, Manners, Government and Religion of the Cossacks with another of the Precopian Tartars. And the History of the Wars of the Cossacks against Poland, trans. Edward Brown (London, 1672), 115-6. 182 Reports of the Polish envoy on his soujourn in Ukraine, July - September 1650 [Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 497]. 183 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 60-1, 95. 184 Baidaus, “Štryxy k polytyčeskomu,” 199.

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campaign could also lead to repercussions for causing his Orthodox coreligionists to fall prey to

the Tatars. The Commonwealth would probably use the Cossack-Tatar attack against Moldavia

in order to discredit Xmel’nyc’kyj in the eyes of the other Christian rulers. Therefore as a part of

his attempt to deny responsibility, the hetman claimed that he had no intention to attack

Moldavia but the khan compelled him to participate in the campaign.185

Besides the Christian world, one would expect the Porte would have been displeased by such a

hostile act against its Danubian vassal. Reciprocating the Ottoman envoy Osman Agha’s visit to

Čyhyryn in summer 1650, the hetman sent Antin Ždanovyč and Pavlo Janenko as his envoys to

the Porte. During the sojourn of the Cossack embassy in Istanbul, the news about the Cossack-

Tatar campaign against Moldavia reached to Istanbul. After the Cossack-Tatar army had

withdrawn from Moldavia, the Commonwealth allegedly encouraged the hospodar Vasile Lupu

to complain to Istanbul about the violent attack on an Ottoman vassal so that the Ottomans would

oblige the Tatars to relinquish their ties with the Cossacks.186 Lupu also expressed his resentment

to the khan that he had difficulty in collecting his tribute payment to the Porte because the Tatars

ravaged his country, seized thousands of horses and cattle and took thousands of his people

captive.187 After his return from hiding in the forests to his capital, Iaşi, the hospodar wrote to

the Porte to complain about the Tatar incursion, but his appeal went without result.188

Both Islam Giray and Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched missions to Istanbul in order to justify their

expedition against Moldavia and head off a possible reaction from the Porte.189 The khan tried to

deny responsibility by claiming that neither had he marched at the head of the army nor had he

dispatched troops against Moldavia, but that rather the unruly Nogays went with the Cossacks

without his permission.190 However, at the same time, according to the report of the Muscovite

envoys Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min from Crimea, an embassy from Moldavia came to

Crimea for the release of the Moldavian captives because the Porte wrote to the khan to release

185 Semenova, “Dunajskie knjažestva,” 116. 186 Henryk Wisner, Janusz Radziwiłł 1612-1655: wojewoda wileński, hetman wielki litewski (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Mada, 2000) 133. 187 Excerpts from the account of Iohann Mayer, the Swedish ambassador to Crimea, May - June 1651 [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 232-3]. 188 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau, 184. 189 Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 139. 190 Andrij Hubryk, “A. Ždanovča 1650 r. do Stambula v konteksti nabuttja Ukrajinoju osmans’koho protektoratu,” Ukraina v Central’no-Sxidnij Evropi 9-10 (2010): 78.

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the Moldavian captives without redemption on the grounds that Moldavia was under Ottoman

protection. Islam Giray allegedly not only ignored the request of the Ottoman state and did not

allow the captives to return home, but also detained the embassy.191 The Porte purportedly

reproached the Cossack mission of spring 1651 under Antin Ždanovyč and Pavlo Janenko for

ravaging his vassal Moldavia and maintaining the alliance with his Tatar subjects.192

Although the Porte was displeased with this action, given its ongoing war with Venice, its

resources were spread too thinly to show a strong reaction to the Cossacks.193 Factional struggles

at the court also continued to distract the Ottomans from northern affairs. The struggle for

regency between Mehmed IV’s mother, Turhan Hatice Sultan, and his grandmother, Kösem

Sultan, paralyzed the Porte. Kösem Sultan supported the former janissary officer Kara Murad to

replace Sofu Mehmed Pasha as the grand vizier following the defeat at the naval battle of Old

Phocaea in May 1649. However, Turhan Hatice Sultan saw Kara Murad Pasha as an ally of her

sworn rival Kösem Sultan and thus developed a hostile attitude towards him. Thereupon, on 5

August 1650 Kara Murad Pasha resigned and left the grand vizierate to Melek Ahmed Pasha.

Meanwhile, Haydaragazade Mehmed Pasha set out from Istanbul at the head of the Ottoman

fleet in May 1650 in order to provide support to the Ottoman army at Crete but he failed to break

the Venetian blockade at the Dardanelles. When Melek Ahmed Pasha assumed the grand

vizierate in August 1650, he was faced with many problems such as setbacks in the war with

Venice, a budget deficit and provincial unrest.194 Therefore, in face of the Porte’s reluctance to

take action against Crimea and the Cossacks, Lupu had no alternative other than to accept the

consequences of the Cossack-Tatar attack against Moldavia.

In early 1651, Xmel’nyc’kyj requested troops from Islam Giray in order to compel the

Moldavian hospodar to fulfill his promise to arrange the wedding of his daughter to the hetman’s

son. However, the khan had no intention of being involved in another venture in the Danubian

region shortly after the Moldavian campaign. In Oświęcim’s remarks, Islam Giray answered that

191 Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min to Moscow, 16 January - 20 August 1651, Crimea [VUR, vol. 2, 481-2]. 192 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 229. 193 Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj (L’viv: Vydavnyctvo Svit, 1990), 151; Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, “Tureckaja Politika Bogdana Xmel’nickogo,” Ukrajins’kyj arxeohrafičnyj ščoričnyk 10/11 (2006): 165; Ivan Butyč, “Dva nevidomi lysty Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho,” Zapysky Naukovoho Tovaristva Ševčenka 222 (1991): 321. 194 Kenneth M. Setton, Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1991), 159.

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he could send only 12,000 troops because the Tatars had recently returned from a tiresome

campaign against Moldavia and they were expecting a new encounter with the Kalmyks. Since

the khan apparently feared that a new campaign against Moldavia would draw Crimea into

another war with the Commonwealth, he advised the hetman not to provoke the Poles and

continue negotiations with it.195

3.4. Relations between Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Ottoman Porte

Shortly after the Treaty of Zboriv, the deceased king Władysław IV’s Ottoman war plans were

considered to revive in order to divert the attention of the Cossacks from the struggle against the

Commonwealth. Accordingly, Chancellor Ossoliński allegedly negotiated with Sefer Gazi Agha

and Xmel’nyc’kyj at Zboriv for a war against the Ottomans and intended to include Venice and

the Habsburg Empire to establish a broader alliance against the Ottoman Empire.196 Islam Giray

was also apparently willing to join an anti-Ottoman alliance because of deteriorating relations

between Crimea and the Porte after the janissary coup of August 1648.197 After a brief moment

195 Oświęcim, 256-7. 196 Wasilewski, Ostatni Waza, 88. 197 According to a report in the Gazette de France, after the execution of Sultan Ibrahim in 1648, the Tatars and the Cossacks resolved to march against the Ottoman Empire in order to establish Islam Giray on the Ottoman throne because he had more right to the Ottoman throne than the child sultan Mehmed IV did. The Theatrum Europeaum also relates that when the Ottomans resented that the khan made peace with the Commonwealth without their knowledge, the khan expressed his dipleasure with the enthronment of an infant on the Ottoman throne. The khan thought that it was his right to become the sultan. In reaction to the Ottoman envoys, who asked why the Tatars did not conquer the entire Commonwealth, Islam Giray allegedly asked why a child was installed on the throne after killing the true sultan, referring to the replacement of the slain sultan Ibrahim with his infant son Mehmed IV. When the hetman sent ten thousand Cossacks with thirty cannons in order to help the khan against the Ottoman Empire, the Porte postponed its grandiose war plans to start a new assault against Venice. Ludwik Kubala states that when the Tatar envoy Mehmed Gazi Atalık came to Warsaw in order to ask for the payment of money that the Commonwealth promised at Zboriv, he reportedly told the king that the khan intended to relinquish Ottoman bondage and assert his rights as the regent of the child sultan. However, Kubala adds that the khan’s letters that the Tatar envoy brought to Warsaw do not speak of any intention of Islam Giray to launch a campaign against the Porte. Similarly, Hrushevsky approaches the narratives about the intention of the khan to march against the Ottomans with suspicion. However, a later historian Lucja Częścik refers to the letters of Polish officials from the Polish archives with regard to the worsening relations between Crimea and the Porte. According to these letters, when the Ottoman envoys asked the khan why he did not cede the territories of the Commonwealth to the Porte, Islam Giray reprimanded the envoys by asking why the true emperor was murdered and a child was placed on his throne. Tadeusz Wasilewski, without referring to any source, states that the khan sent an envoy to Vienna allegedly to seek the cooperation of the Habsburg emperor against the Ottomans.

The Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not make mention of the khan’s opposition to the accession of Mehmed IV to the throne. On the contrary, as mentioned in the second chapter, Senai recounts how the new Ottoman leadership that came to power after the dethronement of Sultan Ibrahim sent Behram Agha in order to repair the relations with Crimea, and Islam Giray dispatched his representative Receb Efendi to participate in the ceremony for Mehmed IV’s accession to the throne. The chronicler also elaborates how the Ottomans showed an unprecedented favourable treatment to Receb Efendi at the court of the sultan. If Senai’s account is given credit,

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of tension with Muscovy after the ambitious demands voiced by the Muscovite embassy in

Warsaw led by Grigorij Puškin, the Commonwealth commenced with an attempt to form a broad

alliance against the Ottomans. Since the Venetians were currently fighting against the Ottomans

over Crete, the Commonwealth considered Venice as a natural part of this alliance. Venice for its

part leaned towards the idea of concluding an alliance with the Commonwealth and the

Ukrainian Cossacks. For this reason, a Venetian mission visited Xmel’nyc’kyj in order to secure

the support of the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Ottomans. On the basis of Italian sources,

Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen explains that Xmel’nyc’kyj was well disposed towards to Venetian

proposals and even promised both to launch naval raids in the Black Sea in return for payment

and to convince Islam Giray to support the Venetians against the Ottomans. However, it appears

that he played a double game since he broke the peace with the Commonwealth again and

established relations with the Porte, which rewarded him with a saber and banner.198 In contrast

to Zinkeisen’s analysis on how the hetman deceived the Venetians pretending to be willing to

participate in a coalition against the Porte, Myron Korduba states that when the Venetians

proposed that he support their anti-Ottoman venture, Xmel’nyc’kyj supposedly made his

participation dependent on the permission of the king and the attitude of the khan.199 Therefore,

then both the khan and the new Ottoman leadership tried to repair Ottoman-Crimean relations damaged during the reign of the former sultan. The Habsburg envoy Simon Reniger also reported from Istanbul on 29 January 1650 that Grand Vizier Melek Ahmed Pasha showed the Moldavian and Wallachian residents the letter of the khan promising to send 100,000 Tatars and 20,000 Cossacks to help the Porte in case of need.

In regard to the rumours that Islam Giray saw himself to be a relative of the slain sultan Ibrahim, neither chronicles and archival sources nor historians elucidate the relationship of the khan with the Ottoman dynasty. Only an Armenian chronicler relates how the khan ordered great celebrations in Crimea in early 1647 for his newborn son from his marriage to the daughter of Sultan Ibrahim. However this narration does not conform to the mate selection patterns of the Ottoman dynasty because the female members of the dynasty were usually married to pashas and other leading figures of Ottoman society. Besides, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not make mention of marital connections between the Ottoman and Giray dynasties. The Commonwealth authorities possibly spread rumours about family ties between Islam Giray and the slain sultan Ibrahim and the khan’s reaction to the execution of the sultan in order to substantiate their discourse of deteriorating Ottoman-Crimean relations and the eagerness of the khan to participate in a coalition against the Porte.

See Gazette de France, no. 88, Danzig, 12 July 1649; Gazette de France, no. 66, Vienna, 9 April 1650; Gazette de France, no. 78, Danzig, 4 June 1650; Simon Reniger to Emperor Ferdinand III, 29 January 1650, Istanbul [Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 127]; Theatrum Europeaum, vol. 6 (1647-1651), 1113; Kubala, Jerzy Ossoliński, 378, 468-9 n. 39; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 29-31; Częścik, Sejm Warszawski w 1649-50, 142; Wasilewski, Ostatni Waza, 92; E. Schütz, “Eine armenische chronik von Kaffa aus der Ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29 (1975): 157. 198 Johann W. Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reichs in Europa, vol. 4 (Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1856), 829-30. 199 Myron Korduba, “Venec’ke posol’stvo do Xmel’nyc’koho,” Zapysky naukovoho tovarystva imeny Ševčenka 78 (1907): 63, 65.

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Xmel’nyc’kyj remained cautious and did not rush into becoming involved in a hostile act against

the Ottomans.

Korduba’s argument is more plausible than that of Zinkeisen because the hetman knew that he

needed Ottoman consent in order to continue his alliance with the Tatars. In his report to

Muscovite authorities, the Troice-Sergieva monastery monk Arsenij Suxanov, who accompanied

the patriarch of Jerusalem, Paisios, on his way home from Moscow, related a meeting with

Xmel’nyc’kyj and some details of the hetman’s relations with the Venetians and Ottomans that

he learned from him. Upon the demand of the king, the Ottoman state wrote to the khan asking

him not to help the Cossacks, but the khan refused to comply with the Porte’s request. The Porte

did not react to this refusal because the Ottomans were overwhelmed with the inconclusive war

with Venice and their situation would get worse if the Crimean Tatars marched against them with

the Cossacks. Suxanov continues his report that when Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched an embassy to

the Porte, in the meantime the Venetians sent an envoy to Ukraine asking the hetman to send the

Cossacks to the Black Sea against the Ottomans. However, the envoy departed Ukraine empty-

handed because the hetman told him that he himself needed troops in his own theatre of

operations. Learning about the failure of the Venetian mission, the grand vizier reportedly sent

an envoy to Ukraine to thank the hetman for refusing to help Venice. Xmel’nyc’kyj sent the

Ottoman envoy back with his ambassador to Istanbul. The Porte received the Cossack mission

with great honour and saw it off with precious gifts. He also dispatched an Ottoman envoy in its

company on the way to Ukraine.200 Suxanov’s interesting report supports Korduba’s argument

that Xmel’nyc’kyj refrained from committing to an anti-Ottoman venture.

Between the conclusion of the Treaty of Zboriv in August 1649 and the outbreak of conflicts

between the Commonwealth and the Cossacks in spring 1651, Xmel’nyc’kyj exchanged missions

and letters with the Ottoman state. Hrushevsky explains that the hetman sent an embassy to the

Porte with the knowledge of the khan in order to display that the Cossacks were continuing their

alliance with the Tatars. According to the historian, following the reconfirmation of the peace

between Muscovy and the Commonwealth in summer 1650, Xmel’nyc’kyj increased his efforts

to have stronger relations with the Porte and turn Ukraine into an Ottoman protectorate along the

200 Arsenij Suxanov’s report on his journey with Patriarch of Jerusalem Paisios to Jerusalem and his talks with Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 9 May 1649–8 December 1650, Ukraine [VUR, vol. 2, 192].

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same lines as Crimea and the Danubian principalities. And so, in the summer of 1650 the hetman

started a diplomatic correspondence with two prominent Ottoman dignitaries, Bektaş Agha, and

the governor of Özi, Murad Pasha. For its part the Porte dispatched Osman Agha to Čyhyryn and

towards the end of July 1650 he met Xmel’nyc’kyj, delivering letters from Bektaş Agha and

Murad Pasha. In them they expressed their pleasure at the hetman’s willingness to maintain good

relations with Crimea and serve the Ottoman state alongside the khan.201 Osman Agha was sent

back with two Cossack officers: Antin Ždanovyč, the colonel of Kyiv, and Pavlo Janenko, a

relative of the hetman, both already mentioned in the previous section. Upon their arrival in

Istanbul, the Cossack envoys delivered letters of the hetman to the sultan, the grand vizier and

Bektaş Agha. In his letter to the Porte, Xmel’nyc’kyj wrote that he received Bektaş Agha’s letter

from Osman Agha and was joyous to learn that the Ottoman state was favourably inclined to him

and the Cossacks, his loyal servants. The hetman expressed his willingness to have friendly

relations with Crimea and serve for the Porte and promised to stop Cossack raids against

Ottoman possessions, and in return he asked for military support in case of a war with the

Commonwealth. He also promised to send information to the Porte and Islam Giray about

developments in the Commonwealth, Muscovy and Transylvania, and restrain anyone who

would attack Ottoman possessions by land or sea.202

To the grand vizier, then still Kara Murad Pasha, Xmel’nyc’kyj wrote that he received Bektaş

Agha’s letter from Osman Agha and was joyous to learn that the Ottoman state was favourably

inclined to him and the Cossacks, his loyal servants. While the Cossacks intended to dispatch

their envoys and offer allegiance to the Porte, later they refrained because they learned that the

Commonwealth’s authorities asked the Ottomans to spoil the friendship and alliance between

Crimea and the Cossacks. Learning that the Commonwealth’s attempts yielded no results, the

hetman dispatched his envoy in the company of Osman Agha. Xmel’nyc’kyj asked the grand

vizier and Bektaş Agha to give favourable treatment to the Cossack envoy, allow the envoy to

receive an audience with the Porte and facilitate the hetman’s intention to acquire protection

201 Vasilij Unkovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, August - December 1650, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 353-4]. 202 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Sultan Mehmed IV, 1650, Ukraine [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 354]; English translation of the hetman’s letter to the sultan in Hrushevsky’s History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 58-60; according to DBX, 177-8, the date of the hetman’s letter to the sultan is 26 July O.S. (5 August) 1650. For a discussion of Ottoman-Cossack relations between August 1649 and May 1651, see Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8, 613; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 48-9, 56-60.

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from the Ottoman state. The hetman promised to maintain eternal friendship and alliance with

the khan and serve for the Porte with utmost loyalty. He did not believe in the Commonwealth

because he was often deceived by it. The hetman’s letter to Bektaş Agha is nearly identical to his

letter to the grand vizier. Differently from his other letters, Xmel’nyc’kyj reported to Bektaş

Agha that while he had sent many letters to Istanbul through Moldavia in order to express his

adherence to the Porte, none of these letters were received or seen by the sultan or other Ottoman

dignitaries. The hetman also explained to Osman Agha why his attempts to establish relations

with the Porte through Moldavia had failed and Bektaş Agha could learn the explanation of the

hetman from Osman Agha when the latter returned to Istanbul.203 Clearly Xmel’nyc’kyj was

complaining about the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu.

On the basis of the Ottoman chroniclers Katip Çelebi and Mustafa Naima, who follows the Katib

Çelebi for these years, it is possible to estimate when the Cossack embassy arrived in Istanbul.

According to their account, it was learned in late August-early September (1st decade of

Ramazan 1060) that the hetman of the Cossacks, who was the subject of the Tatars, sent his

brother and presented homage to the Porte and Islam Giray dispatched his brother with the Tatar

troops to raid Moldavia.204 As Katip Çelebi and Mustafa Naima’s account suggest that the

Cossacks entered into vassalage relations with the Porte while they had already been under the

suzerainty of the khan, it seems to support Taras Čuxlib’s statement that Xmel’nyc’kyj adopted a

policy of polyvassalage (polivasalitetnoji zovnišn’oji polityky) making Ukraine a vassal of several

foreign monarchs simultaneously.205 Given that the Ottoman state was also the suzerain of the

Crimean khans, it can be surmised from Katip Çelebi and Mustafa Naima that Xmel’nyc’kyj

initiated a policy of multi-layered vassalage, or polyvassalage with the khan and the Porte.

However, Victor Ostapchuk casts doubt on Čuxlib’s thesis of polyvassalage. According to him,

while polyvassalage can be used to describe the actual state of the hetman’s foreign policy or as his

tactic in international relations. It cannot be used to describe the hetman’s relations with foreign

203 Butyč, “Dva nevidomi lysty,” 321-5. Date of the letter to the grand vizier is 2 August – other is 3 August 204 Zeynep Aycibin, “Katip Çelebi, Fezleke: Tahlil ve Metin” (PhD dissertation, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, 2007), 1069; Naima Mustafa Efendi. Târih-i Naîmâ: Ravzatü'l-Hüseyn fî hulâsati ahbâri'l-hâfikayn, ed. Mehmet İpşirli (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2007), 1270. 205 Taras Čuxlib, Kozaky i Monarxy: Mižnarodni vidnosyny rann’omodernoji Ukrajins’koji deržavy 1648 - 1721 rr. (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo imeni Oleny Telihy, 2009), 54, 55, 59, 66.

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monarchs as part of a legitimate system recognized by all parties who are simultaneous suzerains

to a given vassal.206

Concerning the mission of Ždanovyč and Janenko, Radziwiłł wrote on 1 September 1650 that

while the king managed to make the Tatars break with the Cossacks, the hetman was “filling up

with hatred” for the Commonwealth and so sent an embassy to Istanbul in order to submit

entirely to the Ottomans. The Cossack envoys were given audience at the Ottoman court and the

Porte dispatched envoys to Ukraine promising to send 100,000 troops in case they were needed

on condition that the Cossacks would refrain from launching raids in the Black Sea.207 On the

basis of Radziwiłł’s account, it is possible to surmise that the Commonwealth considered that

their attempts to spoil Cossack-Tatar relations led the hetman to approach the Porte.

Xmel’nyc’kyj then wrote to the janissary officer Kara Çavuş Mustafa Agha to thank him for

giving favourable treatment of the Cossack envoys, ask the Porte to order the khan to help the

Cossacks and warn the Moldavian hospodar not to side with the Commonwealth. He also stated

that he sent a mission to Muscovy in order to persuade it not to attack Ottoman possessions. The

hetman also asked that Ramazan Beg, the Ottoman governor (sancakbegi) of Kılburun

(Kinburn),208 help the Cossacks in case of hostility from the Commonwealth.209

According to Petr Bucinskij, Xmel’nyc’kyj needed to maintain relations with the Porte after the

Treaty of Zboriv and secure Ottoman support in order to make the Tatars continue to help the

Ukrainian Cossacks. He claims that frequent exchange of embassies and letters between Crimea

and the Commonwealth after the Treaty of Zboriv made the hetman get suspicious of the Tatars

as reliable allies. Xmel’nyc’kyj feared that the khan would abandon the Cossacks and unite with

the Commonwealth against them. Therefore, he considered the Porte as an actor that could break

206 Victor Ostapchuk, “Cossack Ukraine In and Out of Ottoman Orbit, 1648-1681,” in eds. Gábor Kármán and Lovro Kunčević, The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2013), 151. 207 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach, vol. 3, 268. 208 The Ottoman fortress of Kılburun is situated on a narrow strip of land on the left bank of the estuary of the Dnipro River facing another Ottoman fortress named Özi (Očakiv). Kılburun was the centre of the province (sancak) that consisted of both sides of the lower reaches of the Dnipro including the town of Özi. At the end of the sixteenth century, Kılburun became part of the new governor-generalship (beglerbegilik) of Özi. 209 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Kara Çavuş Mustafa Agha, 1 December 1650, Čyhyryn [VUR, vol. 3, 50-1; DBX, 204-5]; English translation of the hetman’s letter to the janissary officer is available in Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 140-1 n. 437.

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the khan’s reluctance to help the Ukrainian Cossacks. The khan, his vizier and the mirzas having

learned about the hetman’s submission to the Ottomans purportedly wrote letters to reassure the

Cossacks about the friendship of the Tatars.210 Other historians have also referred to the alleged

unreliability of the khan as the hetman’s motive to send a mission to the Porte.211

In a similar vein, Ludwik Kubala explains that as Xmel’nyc’kyj exchanged embassies with the

Porte and agreed to become an Ottoman protectorate, the Porte recognized him as the prince of

Rus’ and promised to order the Wallachian and Moldavian hospodars, the Crimean khan and the

pasha of Silistra to be ready to come to the aid of the Cossacks at any time.212 On the basis of the

Polish chroniclers Samuel Twardowski, Wespazjan Kochowski and the Russian state archives,

Kostomarov points out that one of the hetman’s motives for sending an embassy to Istanbul was

his aim to stop Tatar raids in Ukraine. As the Porte dispatched Osman Agha to Čyhyryn to

promise to help the Cossacks to establish a hereditary principality in Ukraine and prevent the

Tatars from raiding in Ukraine, Xmel’nyc’kyj would agree to submit to Ottoman authority, cede

all lands around the Dnister, especially Kam”janec’, and stop the attacks/work to prevent further

attacks {you know which better} of the Don Cossacks and restrain other Cossacks from

launching expeditions in the Black Sea.213 Orest Subtelny surmises that seeing how the Danubian

principalities enjoyed autonomy and other liberties under Ottoman protection, Xmel’nyc’kyj

started to consider having a similar relationship with the Porte as a prospect for Ukraine.214

Of course, the Porte had its reasons to establish relations with Xmel’nyc’kyj. According to Ivan

Kryp”jakevyč, Ottoman-Cossack relations in 1649-50 developed on the initiative of the Porte.

The Ottoman authorities understood the growing importance of the Ukrainian Cossacks and

plausibly upon the advice of the khan started attempts to attract Xmel’nyc’kyj to agree to submit

to Ottoman suzerainty. Shortly after the departure of the Venetian ambassador Alberto Vimina

who tried to incite the hetman against the Ottomans, Osman Agha arrived in Čyhyryn in summer

210 Bucinskij, O Bogdane Xmel'nickom, 125. 211 Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 151; Ivan Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj sojuz 1648 r.,” in Nacional’no-vyzvol’na vijna ukrajins’koho narodu seredyny XVII stolittja, ed. Valerij Smolij (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Heneza, 1998), 86; Smolij and Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 251; Boris Floria, “Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj i Turec’ka protekcija,” Kyivs’ka starovyna 3 (1993): 93-4. 212 Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 1, 234. 213 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 360-1, 368. 214 Orest Subtelny, “Cossack Ukraine and the Turco-Islamic World Rethinking Ukrainian World,” in Rethinking Ukrainian History, ed. Ivan L. Rudnytsky (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1981), 128.

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1650.215 Similarly, Zbigniew Wójcik thinks that possibility of Cossack participation in a crusade

against the Ottomans helped Xmel’nyc’kyj to establish closer relations with the Porte. That is

why the Porte dispatched an embassy to Ukraine in summer 1650 promising to help the Cossacks

at a time when the Venetians and the Commonwealth were fervently negotiating for war plans

against the Porte and trying to include the Cossacks in these plans.216

In addition to the Venetian embassy to Ukraine, the attacks of the Don Cossacks possibly played

some role in making the Porte strengthen ties with Xmel’nyc’kyj. Hrushevsky underlines that the

Porte dispatched an embassy to Ukraine in early 1650 in response to the Cossack mission to

Istanbul shortly after the Treaty of Zboriv. According to him, the Ottoman envoy paid a visit to

Čyhyryn in order to remind the hetman’s earlier promise to prevent the Cossacks from sailing

out to the sea. Ensuring the security of Ottoman lands became the main issue of the negotiations

between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Porte.217 The Porte hoped that the hetman would help eliminate

the Don Cossack threat. According to a Muscovite report, the Ottoman state asked Xmel’nyc’kyj

to “cleanse” the Don River from the Cossacks in return for sending janissary and sipahi troops

against the Commonwealth.218 The Don Cossack leadership also reported to Moscow that Islam

Giray mobilized all Tatars in order to launch a campaign together with the Ottoman troops, the

Circassians, the Nogays and 12,000 Ukrainian Cossacks against the Don Cossacks.219 However,

concerning the Porte’s plan to benefit from Xmel’nyc’kyj in order to neutralize the Don Cossack

menace from the Black Sea, the Ottoman and Crimean sources are silent.

215 Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 151. 216 Zbigniew Wójcik, Dzikie Pola w Ogniu: o Kozaczyźnie w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1968), 185. 217 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 49-50. 218 Fedor Arsen’ev to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 14 February 1650, Vol’noe [Donskie dela, vol. 4, 362]. 219 Pan’ka Fedorov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 10 April 1650 [Donskie dela, vol. 4, 442-3].

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Despite the rumours that the Porte would not help the Cossacks,220 the Porte adopted the idea of

taking Ukraine under Ottoman protection.221 As Xmel’nyc’kyj mobilized his forces for another

standoff with the Commonwealth, an Ottoman envoy came to Čyhyryn in spring 1651 with

letters from Sultan Mehmed IV and Grand Vizier Melek Ahmed Pasha to Xmel’nyc’kyj. The

sultan and the grand vizier wrote to the hetman that the Porte agreed to extend protection over

the Cossacks as long as they remained obedient to the Ottoman Empire. Islam Giray was also

ordered to watch the Commonwealth closely and dispatch the Tatars to help the Cossacks if the

Commonwealth intended to march against Ukraine. In addition, Ramazan Beg and the Tatars of

Akkerman received separate orders to give military help to the Cossacks, and the Moldavian

hospodar was warned to have good relations with Xmel’nyc’kyj.222 In his letter to the khan

220 According to the Gazette de France, the Ottomans refused to help the Cossacks because they did not want to get involved in the affairs of the Commonwealth. The Gazette de France also recounts that according to the testimony of the pasha of Silistra, the Porte decided to treat the Commonwealth kindly, dispatch a messenger to it and order the Tatars not to give support to the Cossacks. The Ottomans also told the Moldavian hospodar not to give his daughter in marriage to the hetman’s son. However, the hospodar resented that the Porte did not protect Moldavia against the Cossacks in the face of the campaign of August 1650. The Ottoman envoy arrived in Warsaw supposedly in order to express the support of the Porte for the decision of the Commonwealth to discipline the Cossacks, suggest help for this purpose and request the king not to support the khan. Stanisław Oświęcim also reported that the Ottomans were displeased with the Cossack-Tatar alliance but they were not able to take action because they were distracted by the Venetian war. See Gazette de France, no. 29, Warsaw, 30 January 1651, no. 32, Warsaw, 6 February 1651, no. 45, Danzig, 8 March 1651; Oświęcim, 256. 221 Jan Rypka, “Z korespondence Vysoké Porty s Bohdanem Chmelnickym,” in Sbornik vënovany Jaroslavu Bidlovi, Profesörü Karlovy University śedesátym narozeninám, ed. Milos Weingart et al. (Prague, 1928): 346-50, 482-98. The document bears the date 12 Şa‘ban 1060 (10 August 1650). However, there has been controversy about whether the document was antedated or not and whether the document was actually sent or not. See Mykhailo Hrushevsky, “Z pryvodu lystuvannja B. Xmel’nyc’koho z Otomans’koju Portoju,” Ukrajina naukovyj žurnal Ukrajinoznavsta 42 (1930): 3-7; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 688-90; Larysa Pricak, Osnovni mižnarodni dohovory Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho 1648-1657rr. (Xarkiv: Akta, 2003), 132-6; Larysa Pricak, “Nevyslana hramota Turec’koho sultana Mehmeda IV vid 10 serpnja 1650 r. het’manu Bohdanu Xmelnyc’komu ta pryčyny jiji nevyslannja,” Sxidnyj svit 2 (2004): 24-6. 222 Mehmed IV to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 22 February-3 March 1651 (1-10 Rebi‘ülevvel 1061), Istanbul [Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Dział Kozacki, no. 30 (henceforth AGAD, Dz. Koz.)]; on the basis of the Ottoman documents in the so-called Göttingen Codex, the Czech historian Jan Rypka published the Porte’s letters to the hetman and the khan in his article “Weitere Beitrage zur Korrespondenz der Hohen Pforte mit Bohdan Chmel'nyckyj,” Archiv Orientalni 2 (1930): 268-73, 273-9”; for a facsimile of the sultan’s letter to the hetman with French and Polish translation, see Nikolaj Kostomarov, “Gramota Sultana Tureckogo Moxammeda IV Bogdanu Xmel’nickomu i vsemu vojsku Zaporožskomu 1650,” in Pamjatniki izdannyje vremennoj kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, vol. 3, pt. 3 (Kyiv, 1852): 436-40 (henceforth PIVK); Nikolaj Kostomarov gives Russian translation of the sultan’s letter in his article “Bogdan Xmel’nickij: dannik ottomanskoj porty,” Vestnik Evropy 13 (December 1878): 807-9; Pamjatniki izdannyje kievskoju kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov (PIKK), vol. 2 (Kyiv, 1897): 585-9 reprints French and Polish translations of the sultan’s letter; Polish translation of the document along with a Russian translation are available in DOVUN, 373-4; for English and Ukrainian translations of the letter see respectively Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 690-2, Pricak Osnovni mižnarodni, 137-40.

Kostomarov misdated the edict of the sultan as December 1650. According to him, the sultan’s letter was sent to Ukraine before the letters of the grand vizier and Bektaş Agha that were dated in 1st decade of Rebi‘ülevvel 1061 (22 February-3 March 1651). In fact, the sultan’s document was dated in 1st decade of Rebi‘ülevvel 1061 just

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written in the first decade of Rebi‘ülevvel 1061, the sultan recounted that the Cossack envoys,

who came through the mediation of a certain servant of the khan, returned to Ukraine, then the

Cossacks dispatched their letter of submission (‘ubudiyetname) to Istanbul and declared their

desire to become Ottoman subjects. As it became necessary to extend protection over the

Cossacks, an imperial order was written to Crimea asking the khan to dispatch spies to the

Commonwealth and pay attention to the protection of the frontiers. Islam Giray was also asked to

keep an eye on the Commonwealth and send the Tatar army against the Commonwealth if it

assembled troops against the Cossacks, who were about to pledge homage (‘arz-ı ubudiyyet) to

the Ottoman state.223 The sultan’s letter suggests that the Tatars previously acted as an

intermediary between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Porte as the khan’s servant helped the Cossack

envoys to travel to Istanbul. The Ottomans, seeing that the Cossacks were in the process of

becoming their protectorate, wanted the Tatars to play an instrumental role in this process. While

Islam Giray expected the hetman to maintain relations with the Porte through Crimea, it is

doubtful that the khan agreed to Ottoman plan to make the Cossacks a vassal by his help. In

addition, Bektaş Agha wrote to Xmel’nyc’kyj to express his pleasure at the submission of the

hetman to Ottoman rule and state that the Ottoman governors of Akkerman (Bilhorod-

Dnistrovs’kyj) and Özi (Očakiv) were ordered to help the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Moldavian

hospodar was severely reprimanded for his hostility towards the hetman.224

Regarding Ottoman-Cossack relations in early 1651, the Habsburg envoy Rudolf Schmidt

reported that Xmel’nyc’kyj maintained relations with the Tatars and sought protection from the

Porte under special terms. The Cossacks wanted to be exempted from paying tribute to Istanbul.

Then the Ottoman state appointed the hetman as prince with no tribute payment obligation but

obliged him to bring his army to Ottoman campaigns and protect the Black Sea region against

any sort of aggression. The Cossacks were also required to send a grand ambassador to Istanbul,

but the Ottomans promised that the Cossack envoy would be respectfully treated just as other

Christian, even royal, envoys. The Porte sent a messenger on 3 March 1651 to Ukraine with a

precious robe of honour (kaftan) to Xmel’nyc’kyj. Another envoy was sent to Crimea with a

as the letters of the grand vizier and Bektaş Agha. Victor Ostapchuk explains that Kostomarov followed Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall who made a mistake in converting the hicri date. See Ostapchuk, “Ottoman Orbit” 134 n. 16. 223 Rypka, “Weitere Beitrage zur,” 280, 282-3. 224 Bucinskij, O Bogdane Xmel’nickom, 125-6.

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saber and a robe of honour to the khan and also an order that the khan should help the Cossacks

against the Commonwealth.225 According to an anonymous report from L’viv in spring 1651, the

Ottomans decided to take the Ukrainian Cossacks under their protection and ordered the frontier

pashas to join the khan when he demanded. The Moldavian and Wallachian hospodars and the

prince of Transylvania allegedly received orders to help the Cossacks and the khan.226

Metropolitan Joasaph of Corinth reported to Moscow that the Ottoman envoy came to

Xmel’nyc’kyj with precious gifts and the hetman dispatched his ambassador to Istanbul. The

Ottoman envoy went through the Wallachian lands and delivered to the hetman the Porte’s

decree promising to send 10,000 Wallachian and Moldavian troops to help the Cossacks.227 In

his missive to Moscow, the Muscovite voevoda of Putyvl’ Semen Prozorovskij wrote that the

Ottoman state dispatched two messengers to the hetman with gifts and offered to send troops in

case of need. After receiving the Ottoman embassy, Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched his ambassador in

its company back to Istanbul. The hetman reportedly thanked the Porte for his message and gifts

but he stated that he would not need the support from Ottoman army and his army could

withstand the Commonwealth.228 According to Simon Reniger’s report in summer 1651, the

Ottomans did not welcome the Cossack embassy this year as warmly as they did in the previous

year. Here too, the hetman thanked the Porte for offering help but stated that he did not need

such help at that moment. He also stated that if the Cossacks lost the war against the

Commonwealth, then he would turn to the Porte for military support.229 If the words of the

Habsburg envoy and the Muscovite voevoda are to be given credit, it can be stated that

Xmel’nyc’kyj was not interested in including Ottoman troops in his struggle but he expected the

Porte to use its influence over the khan to maintain the aid of the Tatars in approaching war

against the Commonwealth. It is also possible to surmise that the Ottomans were disappointed to

see the hetman declining their offer of help and lost their interest in helping the hetman.

However, according to the reports of the Polish officials of May 1651, the Ottomans were not

able to send help because of the rebellion of the cavalry regiments, the ill-fated war against

225 Rudolf Schmidt to Vienna, 10 March 1651, Istanbul [Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 164-5]. 226 A letter of a resident of L’viv on Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj’s talks with Muscovy and his relations with the Porte, 10 April 1651 [DOVUN, 401-2]. 227 Metropolitan Joasaph of Corinth to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 16 May 1651 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 447-8]. 228 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 29 May 1651, Putyvl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 455]. 229 Simon Reniger to Emperor Ferdinand III, 22 June 1651, Istanbul [Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 168].

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Venice over Crete, and the Safavid occupation of Iraq. Islam Giray reportedly returned to Crimea

upon the Ottoman order.230 In addition, the Gazette de France speaks of rumours about the

frustration of the hetman with the news that Porte could not send support because of the

abovementioned reasons.231 Therefore it is not clear whether the Ottomans could not dispatch

any actual military support to the Cossacks despite their earlier promises, or the hetman rejected

a tangible offer. Unfortunately, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles and other sources are silent

on this matter.

When the Ottomans dispatched Süleyman Agha to Crimea notifying of the hetman’s submission

to Ottoman authority and ordering the khan to help the Cossacks, Islam Giray wrote to back of

his decision to send Murad Giray with an advance army and, after completing preparations,

mount his horse to march to Ukraine.232 According to the Gazette de France, a large number of

Tatars were roaming near the Čornyj Lis (les forets noires), and the khan sent an envoy to

Xmel’nyc’kyj confirming his promise of aid in any and all wars.233 In relation to the events of

February 1651, Oświęcim recounts that the khan ordered the nureddin to Ukraine with 10,000

troops but according to secret information he was not willing to fight.234 According to a certain

report from Moldavia, despite the order of the Porte, Islam Giray was not willing to go to help

the Cossacks and sent only the nureddin with no more than 4,000 troops and 10,000 Nogays. The

230 A report from the Polish camp at Sokal, 21 May 1651 [DOVUN, 417-8]; a Polish report on the battle of Kopyčynci, 21 May 1651, Sokal [DOVUN, 418-21]. 231 Gazette de France, no. 85, Warsaw, 5 June 1651. 232 Islam Giray to the Porte, no later than the Battle of Berestečko (28 - 30 June 1651), Bagçasaray (?) [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 3005/2 in Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, “Three Ottoman Documents Concerning Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1 (1977): 348-51]; Lemercier-Quelquejay found two letters of Islam Giray to the Porte in Topkapı Palace Archive with document nos. E 3005/2 and E 3005/4. She published the facsimiles, transliterations and English translations of these letters in Harvard Ukrainian Studies. While the khan’s letters bear no date, Lemercier-Quelquejay thinks that these letters were written before the Treaty of Zboriv (1649). However, in the opinion of Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, Lemercier- Quelquejay misdated the letters. He claims that the letters were dated from March 1651 because the Ottomans strengthened relations with Xmel’nyc’kyj in 1651. In other words, the letters may have been written shortly before or after the battle of Berestečko. Pointing out how the khan announces the death of the kalgay Kırım Giray to the grand vizier in document E 3005/4, Victor Ostapchuk states that since the historical sources show that the kalgay lived after after the battle of Berestečko, these letters are related to the events of 1651. See Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, “Comments on Three Letters by Khan Islam Geray III to the Porte (1651),” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 14 (1990): 136-8; Victor Ostapchuk, “The Publication of Documents on the Crimean Khanate in the Topkapı Sarayı: New Sources for the History of the Black Sea Basin,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 6/4 (December 1982): 514. 233 Gazette de France, no. 39, Warsaw, 20 February 1651. 234 Oświęcim, 261.

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khan also allegedly needed to stay in Crimea in order to take care of state affairs because the

kalgay was on his deathbed.235

Concerning the influence of the Porte’s edict on Cossack-Tatar relations, Kostomarov thinks that

the hetman received the Porte’s edict at a time when he began to anticipate another standoff with

the Commonwealth and was concerned about the attempts of the Commonwealth to win Islam

Giray over to their side. He also became suspicious of the cooling attitude of the khan towards

the Cossacks. Thus Xmel’nyc’kyj asked the Porte to exert its influence over Crimea to fight in

alliance with the Cossacks.236 However, the hetman’s policy to make the Ottomans put pressure

on the Tatars did not prove very productive. While the khan remained reluctant to march against

the Commonwealth, the Porte told him to help the Cossacks and then Islam Giray half-heartedly

promised to march with his army and dispatched a protest to the Commonwealth allegedly for

mistreating his Cossack allies.237

Petrovs’kyj repeats the opinion that since Xmel’nyc’kyj wanted to benefit from Ottoman

influence over Islam Giray in order to make the khan maintain help for the Cossacks, he revived

relations with the Porte. However the hetman could not count on direct military support from the

Ottomans because they were fighting against the Venetians over Crete at that moment and

Ottoman power was in a period of decline.238 Kryp”jakevyč believes that Xmel’nyc’kyj was

interested only in establishing friendly relations with the Porte in order to maintain his alliance

with the Tatars. He continues that the European envoys misinterpreted the exchange of

embassies between Istanbul and Čyhyryn and circulated fantastic rumours about the hetman’s

submission to Ottoman suzerainty. According to him, the negotiations between Xmel’nyc’kyj

and the Porte resulted in conclusion of an agreement of Ottoman-Cossack friendship and the

Ottoman state treated Xmel’nyc’kyj as his equal because the Porte offered the hetman an

agreement as he did to other Christian monarchs. While the Ukrainian Cossacks did not formally

go under Ottoman protection, the Porte still gained benefits from its relations with the hetman as

235 A certain report from Moldavia to a anonymous person, no earlier than 6 May 1651 [Džerela z istoriji, vol. 2, 147-8]. Mycyk thinks that the report was written by the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu. 236 Kostomarov, “Bogdan Xmel’nickij: dannik,” 808. 237 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10, 380. 238 Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji, vol. 4, 139.

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it secured Cossack friendship in order to protect its interests around the Black Sea.239 According

to Wójcik, regardless of the Porte’s motive in strengthening relations with the Cossacks, Ukraine

did not become an Ottoman vassal. In order to get outside help for the unsolved conflict with the

Commonwealth, the hetman maneuvered between major powers around Ukraine. Thus, alliance

with the Porte strengthened the position of Ukraine and secured the help of the Tatars.240

The Polish historian Jan Seredyka explains that in autumn 1650 the Cossack embassy returned

from Istanbul with an Ottoman declaration of support against the Commonwealth and then in

spring 1651 the Porte banned Islam Giray and the Danubian hospodars from concluding

agreements with the Commonwealth.241 However, Smolij and Stepankov maintain that growing

Ottoman-Cossack relations did not help the hetman neutralize the exchange of missions between

the Commonwealth and Crimea because the khan continued his attempts to make an alliance

with the king against Muscovy.242 In spite of Ottoman orders and frequent Cossack embassies to

make the Tatars accelerate their campaign preparations, the khan was not very willing to fulfill

his promise to help.243 From 30 December 1649 to early February 1650, Xmel’nyc’kyj sent four

embassies to Crimea asking for help, but the khan refused to send troops on the excuse of severe

cold.244 Being reluctant to sever his relations with the Commonwealth, the khan procrastinated in

mobilizing his main army until mid-May 1651 and only under the pressure from Istanbul did he

half-heartedly agreed to send 5,000 - 6,000 Tatars under the nureddin Gazi Giray to help the

Cossacks.245 Smolij and Stepankov explain that despite his offer of submission to the Ottomans,

Xmel’nyc’kyj never intended to become an Ottoman vassal. According to them, the Porte’s

decision to take Ukraine under its protection should have been confirmed by the hetman and his

officers at a gathering of the Cossack council. In other words, when the Porte declared its

decision to take Ukraine under his suzerainty, the hetman should have summoned the Cossacks

at a general council and discussed the matter of submitting to Ottoman authority. In case of

agreeing with the Porte’s declaration, Xmel’nyc’kyj and his Cossack followers should have

239 Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 151-2; Kryp”jakevyč, “Tureckaja Politika,” 164-5, 166, 167-9; Kryp”jakevyč, “Turec’ka Polityka,” 135-6. 240 Wójcik, Dzikie Pola, 186. 241 Seredyka, “Nieudana próba włączenia,” 129. 242 Smolij and Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja,” 169-70. 243 Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 139. 244 Smolij and Stepankov, Xmel’nyc’kyj: social’no-političnyj portret, 290-2. 245 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 227, 234-5; Smolij and Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja,” 170.

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taken oath of allegiance to the Ottoman state. However, the hetman refrained from taking such

an oath in spring and summer 1651 because he was overwhelmed by the conflict with the

Commonwealth. Smolij and Stepankov surmise that the hetman made a mistake by rejecting the

Ottoman offer to dispatch troops to help the Cossacks. Xmel’nyc’kyj relying on the strength of

the Cossack army underestimated the mobilization capabilities of the Commonwealth and

overestimated the strength of his alliance with Crimea.246 Smolij and Stepankov surmise that if

the hetman had submitted Ukraine under Ottoman protection, he would not have been exposed to

unfriendly actions of the Tatars and then the Cossacks would have not suffered a catastrophic

defeat at Berestečko. Xmel’nyc’kyj would have also successfully completed his struggle.247

Boris Floria explains that being pleased with Xmel’nyc’kyj’s appeal to be his vassal, in spring

1651 the Ottoman state dispatched a mission to Ukraine with his letter expressing his agreement

to extend protection over the Cossacks and asking the hetman to reciprocate the Ottoman mission

by sending his representatives to Istanbul to take further steps to complete the submission of the

Cossacks to Ottoman rule. However, the hetman did not rush to turn Ukraine into an Ottoman

vassal because he was not an autocrat to dictate decisions to his Cossack fellows and had to seek

their consent. The Cossacks considered the Muslims as their archenemies and would not agree to

enter into Ottoman suzerainty. Floria points out that the Porte was not in a position to make great

financial and military sacrifices in order to ensure the support of the Ukrainian Cossacks. In

addition, Xmel’nyc’kyj would have encountered resistance by the Orthodox Church in case of

his submission to Ottoman authority. Eventually, the hetman did not send a great embassy to

Istanbul in order to establish a vassalage relationship with the Porte, and instead, he was

apparently content with dispatching a low-level mission to Istanbul under the Cossack centurion

named Pavel Kolodnyc’kyj.248

In relation to the question why the hetman rejected the offer of help from the Ottomans, Andrij

Hubryk and Taras Čuxlib claim that Xmel’nyc’kyj suspected that the Porte would compel him to

246 Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 139; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 228-30. 247 Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “Meta j osnovni naprjamy zovnišn’oji polityky urjadu Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho,” in Istorija Ukrajins’koho kozactva, vol. 1, eds. V. A. Smolij, O. A. Bačyns’ka, O. I. Huržij and V. M. Matjax (Kyiv: Kyjevo-Mohyljans’ka akademija, 2006), 362; Valerij Stepankov, “Miž Moskvoju i Stambulom: čy isnuvala problema vybory protekciji y 1648-1654 rr.?,” Ukrajina v central’no-sxidnij Evropi 4 (2004): 229-30. 248 Floria, “Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj i Turec’ka,” 94-7.

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make territorial concessions and other sacrifices in return for sending military help.249 In

addition, Hubryk states that it was also unrealistic to expect mobilization of a large Ottoman

army to go to war in the north while the Porte was in the middle of an exhausting war against

Venice. The Ottomans benefited from having friendly relations with Xmel’nyc’kyj in return for

exerting influence over the Crimean leadership to continue to help the Cossacks. The hetman

distanced Ukraine from anti-Ottoman war plans, relieved the Ottoman armies from a burden of

waging war on several fronts, and freed their hands in the war against Venice. He also helped to

prevent the Don Cossacks from attacking Ottoman possessions.250

However there is no strong evidence to conclude that the Porte attempted to oblige Islam Giray

to mobilize his army to help the hetman in the campaign that would lead to the battle of

Berestečko. First, Ottoman central authority was not strong enough to engage sufficiently in

northern affairs and provide active support to its Cossack allies. While Xmel’nyc’kyj’s relations

with the Porte improved after Melek Ahmed Pasha assumed the grand vizierate in August 1650,

the Ottoman Empire continued to suffer from domestic problems. Melek Ahmed Pasha’s failure

to administer the affairs of the Turcomans and his ill-attempted effort to solve the budget deficit

by devaluing the coin and levying further taxes caused a negative reaction among the population,

eventually leading to his removal from the grand vizierate in August 1651.251 In addition, the

struggle for regency between the mother and the grandmother of the child sultan Mehmed was

still under way. The Ottomans were also busy with building a new fleet for a new assault on

Crete. This new Ottoman fleet taking advantage of the lifting of the Venetian blockade of the

Dardanelles in early 1651 sailed to Crete but in July 1651 it was intercepted and defeated by the

Venetian armada near Naxos and Paros in the Aegean Sea.252

Second, as Victor Ostapchuk brings to our attention with the case of a bitter conflict between two

Ottoman officials, personal rivalry between Ottoman officials in the northern Black Sea region

249 Hubryk, “Dyplomatyčna misija,” 85; Čuxlib, “‘Cisar turec’kyj dozvoljaje,” 98; Čuxlib, “Koncepcija polivasalitetnoji,” 159. 250 Hubryk, “Dyplomatyčna misija,” 86. 251 Robert Dankoff, The intimate life of an Ottoman statesman : Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588-1662) : as portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of travels (Seyahat-name) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 62-83; Caroline Finkel, The History of the Ottoman Empire, Osman’s Dream (New York : Basic Books, 2006), 240-1; Marc D. Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 45-6, 48-9. 252 Setton, Venice, Austria, 163.

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prevented the Porte from establishing a clear attitude towards helping the Cossacks and

compelling Islam Giray to accede to the hetman’s requests for help. A few months before the

battle of Berestečko, Ramazan Beg wrote to Xmel’nyc’kyj in February 1651 that while an

Ottoman officer named Veli Agha attempted to stop the Tatars from going to help the Cossacks,

the nureddin had already set out to Ukraine and presently came to Orkapı.253 It is interesting to

note that although Veli Agha was blamed by Ramazan Beg for being hostile to the Cossacks, as a

part of his attempt to ingratiate himself with the hetman he wrote to Xmel’nyc’kyj that the Tatars

would soon march to help the Cossacks. He also advised the hetman to keep in touch with him in

future.254 Bektaş Agha as a leading figure of the pro-Cossack party at the Ottoman court

appointed Ramazan Beg as the governor of Kılburun but Ramazan Agha was reportedly disliked

by the khan and the Ottoman troops and population of Özi. Accusing Ramazan Beg of causing

trouble in relations with the Cossacks, Crimea and Moldavia, stealing horses and slaves and

sending falsified letters to Xmel’nyc’kyj, the troops of Özi dispatched complaints to the Porte

asking his removal from the governorship of Kılburun.255

In addition, despite growing Ottoman-Cossack relations, the Porte was worried about the

increasing influence of the hetman in the Danubian region. The Ottomans apparently opposed the

marriage between the daughter of Lupu and the son of Xmel’nyc’kyj.256 The abovementioned

report of the Habsburg envoy Rudolf Schmidt explains that the Porte feared that the hospodar

would use marital ties with the hetman’s son to receive military support from the Cossacks and

establish his absolute power in Moldavia.257 This report suggests that the Ottomans were worried

that Lupu might use his relations with Xmel’nyc’kyj to eliminate Ottoman suzerainty.

253 Ramazan Beg to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, February 1651, Očakiv [Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 560-1]; Polish text of Ramazan Beg’s letter along with its Russian translation are available in DOVUN, 386-7. While the text of Ramazan Beg’s letter in Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 560-1 identifies Veli Agha as the person who Ramazan Agha tried to discredit, the version of the letter in DOVUN lacks the name of the person being complained at by Ramazan Agha. However the editors of DOVUN provide a footnote misinterpreting that Ramazan Beg informed Xmel’nyc’kyj against the Crown envoy Wojciech Bieczyński who visited the Porte and Crimea several times, DOVUN, 786 n. 119. 254 Veli Agha to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 1651, Očakiv [Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 559-60]. 255 Victor Ostapchuk, “Political-Personal Intrigue on the Ottoman Frontier in Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Relations with the Porte: The Case of Ramazan Beg vs. Veli Beg,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 33-34 (2008-2009): 368, 372-5. 256 Simon Reniger to Ferdinand III, December1650, Istanbul [Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 149]. 257 Rudolf Schmidt to Vienna, 10 March 1651, Istanbul [Žerela do istorji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 164-5].

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Remembering how the khan refused to dispatch troops, in cooperation with his nobility, to help

the Ottoman army at Crete in spring 1648, it can be surmised that Islam Giray could have acted

in a similar way if he were completely reluctant to mobilize the Tatars. In fact, the khan

continued his attempts to make the Cossacks and the Commonwealth obey the Treaty of Zboriv

even after agreeing to send a vanguard army to help the Cossacks in spring 1651. However, as he

could not prevent the collapse of the negotiations between the hetman and the Commonwealth,

he had no better choice other than siding with Xmel’nyc’kyj. Otherwise, Islam Giray would have

lost the advantageous position that he gained with the Treaty of Zboriv and he would no longer

have been able to act as a mediator between the hetman and the Commonwealth. Therefore, it is

not the Ottomans but his concerns about preserving his position as a mediator in the Cossack-

Polish conflict that led the khan to join the campaign of summer 1651 though without

enthusiasm.

3.5. Conclusion

Islam Giray considered the neutralization of the Don Cossacks and the restoration of Kazan and

Astrakhan from Muscovy as his main objective in the region and tried to make a broad alliance

with the Commonwealth and the Ukrainian Cossacks against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks by

making use of the Treaty of Zboriv. In order to do this, he needed to compel the Commonwealth

and Xmel’nyc’kyj to uphold the Treaty of Zboriv as a satisfactory settlement for both parties.

However, the khan and his entourage could neither make the Commonwealth nor the Cossacks

observe the Treaty of Zboriv. Nor could they mobilize support for an anti-Muscovite alliance or

campaign against the Don Cossacks. It can be also inferred from the persistent calls of the khan

and his entourage for an anti-Muscovite alliance that the Crimean leadership was aware of its

military weakness vis-à-vis Muscovy and remained reluctant to embark on a campaign without

securing the help of the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth. For this reason, the Tatars

under the kalgay Kırım Giray had to cancel the campaign of August 1650 against Muscovy

possibly because they failed to receive support from the hetman. Islam Giray’s letter to Aleksej

Mixajlovič also shows that fearing repercussions from Muscovy, the khan tried to make out that

the campaign of August 1650 had no hostile intention against Muscovy. Eventually, the

obsession to mount an expedition against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks and futile efforts to

include Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth in it drew the Crimean leadership into the

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unintended Moldavian campaign in August 1650. While the Moldavian campaign provided the

Tatars to seize booty and captives in Moldavia and/or receive a large sum from the Moldavian

hospodar to leave his country, Islam Giray was fortunate that the Porte was not in a position to

punish him for such an unauthorized attack against its protectorate.

The Ottomans continued to exchange embassies and letters with Xmel’nyc’kyj but were not fully

ready to accept him as vassal. When the prospect of war began to loom in February 1651, the

Porte did not send its troops to Ukraine and were contented with ordering the khan to help the

Cossacks. The Ottomans possibly recognized the growing power of the Cossacks and wanted to

secure their neutrality at least by having friendly relations with them. There has been also

controversy over whether the hetman actually hoped to see Ottoman troops in Ukraine. While it

is difficult to answer whether the Porte and the hetman intended to fulfill their promises to each

other and have a suzerain-vassal relationship, it can be at least said that Xmel’nyc’kyj attempted

to take advantage of his growing relationship with the Porte and intended to employ Ottoman

influence over the Tatars in order to try to reverse the decreasing enthusiasm of the khan for

helping the Cossacks in their struggle with the Commonwealth.

In addition, since the Ottomans were still burdened with domestic problems and the war with

Venice, they could not do more than send orders to Crimea asking the khan to maintain support

for the Cossacks. However, Islam Giray allegedly did not want to jeopardize his relations with

the Commonwealth, and thus he delayed mobilizing the main army until mid-May 1651.

Although the khan dispatched the nureddin Gazi Giray with several thousand Tatars to Ukraine,

he ordered the nureddin not to encounter the Crown army because he still had hope of arranging

a reconciliation between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth. It is also controversial to what

extent the order of the Porte played a role in making the khan dispatch an advance force under

the nureddin to Ukraine and start his own campaign preparations. It can be surmised that Islam

Giray in fact did not want to stay out of developments as the Cossacks and the Commonwealth

were being dragged into confrontation. If the khan had not taken sides with the hetman, he would

no longer have had a say in Cossack-Polish relations.

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Chapter 4

Crimean Tatar Involvement in the War between the Ukrainian

Cossacks and the Commonwealth (June 1651-June 1654)

As the negotiations between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth failed to establish the Treaty

of Zboriv as a permanent settlement, the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth drifted

back to the battlefield in spring 1651. Accordingly, upon the request of the hetman, Islam Giray

agreed to send the nureddin Gazi Giray with several thousand Tatars to Ukraine, and he himself

had to participate in the battle between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth at Berestečko at

the end of June 1651. Since the battle resulted in the victory of the Commonwealth against the

Cossack-Tatar forces, the khan seemed to lose his position as arbitrator between the hetman and

Warsaw. However, he would not lose his interest in Ukrainian affairs and would maintain ties

with the hetman. Therefore the Tatars would continue to take part in the struggle between the

Cossacks and the Commonwealth in 1652-3 and in the hetman’s Moldovian venture. Islam Giray

sent an army to support Xmel’nyc’kyj in his campaign to make the Moldavian hospodar Vasile

Lupu honour his promise to arrange the wedding of his daughter and the hetman’s son. During

its march to Moldavia in summer 1652, the Cossack-Tatar army encountered the Crown army

under Crown Field Hetman Marcin Kalinowski and defeated it near Batih.

Nearly one year after the battle of Batih, Xmel’nyc’kyj meddled in a new phase of Danubian

affairs as his son Tymiš hastened to Moldavia to help his in-law Vasile Lupu against disobedient

Moldavian nobles and their Wallachian and Transylvanian allies. While the hetman’s Danubian

venture ended in failure as the Cossack army under Tymiš and Vasile Lupu’s troops were

defeated by the unruly Moldavians and their Wallachian and Transylvanian allies in autumn

1653, Xmel’nyc’kyj had to wage another campaign against the Commonwealth. While Islam

Giray again agreed to mobilize at the head of his troops to join the Cossacks against the

Commonwealth, he purportedly forced Xmel’nyc’kyj and King Jan Kazimierz II to restore the

Treaty of Zboriv after the victorious battle of Žvanec’ in late 1653 and thus seemed to regain his

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advantageous position. However, the khan was frustrated by the reluctance of the Cossacks and

the Commonwealth to restore the Peace of Zboriv and the Ukrainian-Muscovite negotiations that

resulted in the submission of the Cossacks to the authority of the tsar.

This chapter aims to analyze the involvement of the Khanate in the exhausting conflict between

Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth from the battle of Berestečko to the reaction of the Tatars

to the Ukrainian-Muscovite rapprochement. It explores historiographical debates and historical

sources on the position of the Tatars on major events such as the battle of Batih, the Danubian

affairs in 1652-3 and the battle of Žvanec’. The chapter looks into how the Khanate attempted to

mediate another peace between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth in the winter of 1653-1654.

It also aims to assess historiographical arguments on why the khan and his entourage preferred

not to jump into establishing a military alliance with Warsaw after learning about the Ukrainian-

Muscovite negotiations that resulted in the tsar’s extending protection over the Ukrainian

Cossacks. In addition, the chapter investigates the reaction of the Crimean leaders towards the

continuing Ottoman-Cossack relations.

4.1. The Campaign of Summer 1651 and its Aftermath

Learning that the khan’s army joined the Cossacks around Vinnycja in June 1651, Jan Kazimierz

gathered a military council and ordered the Crown army to move from Sokal’ on the banks of the

Buh to Berestečko.1 Eventually, the hostile armies clashed in a three-day battle at Berestečko at

the end of June 1651, which ended in a decisive victory of the Crown army over the Cossack-

Tatar allies. On the basis of the eighteenth century Ukrainian chroniclers and the Muscovite and

Polish reports,2 many Ukrainian and Russian historians have claimed that while Islam Giray

1 Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1: The Cossack Age, 1650-1653, trans. Bohdan Struminski, eds. Serhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn, with the assistance of Uliana M. Pasicznyk (Edmonton and Toronto: CIUS Press, 2005), 281-3. 2 For the treatment of the battle of Berestečko in the Ukrainian chronicles and the contemporary Muscovite and Polish reports, see Litopys samovydcja, ed. Jaroslav Dzyra (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1971), 60; Zbirnyk Kozac’kyx litopysiv Hustyns’kyj litopys, Samijla Velyčka, Hrabjanky, eds. Volodymyr Krekoten’, Valerij Ševčuk and Roman Ivančenko (Kyiv: Dnipro, 2006), 907; Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 19 July 1651, Putyvl’ [Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej: dokumenty i materialy, vol. 3, eds. P. P. Gruzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, A. A. Novosel’skij, A.L. Sidorov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954), 95-6 (henceforth VUR)]; the Muscovite courier to Ukraine Grigorij Bogdanov’s notes, August 1651 [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1861), 465-70 (henceforth

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came to the battlefield, he betrayed his Cossack allies again showing no desire to fight actively

with the Crown army and his decision to withdraw from the battlefield was the main cause of the

terrible defeat. The fleeing Tatars also ravaged Ukraine and enslaved many people on their way

to Crimea. While Xmel’nyc’kyj hastened after Islam Giray in order to convince him to return or

at least send the Tatars back to the battle, the khan not only resolutely declined to go back to the

battlefield but also detained the hetman hoping to extradite him to the king in return for captive

mirzas. It has also been alleged that Islam Giray concluded a secret agreement with Jan

Kazimierz before or during the battle and conspired with the Commonwealth’s authorities

against the Cossacks. Islam Giray purportedly carried out negotiations with Jan Kazimierz on the

second day of the battle and promised him to abandon the Cossacks in return for a large sum of

payment and having the right to plunder right-bank Ukraine.3

In contrast to these historians, the nineteenth-century Russian historian, Petr Bucinskij claims

that it was unlikely that the Commonwealth’s authorities bribed the khan to betray his Cossack

Akty JuZR)]; the Cossack officer Semen Savyč’s report in Moscow about the battle between the Cossack-Tatar allies and the Commonwealth at Berestečko, 21 September 1651 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 477-8]; Andrzej Miaskowski to an unknown person, 18 July 1651 [Dokumenty ob osvoboditel’noj vojne ukrainskogo naroda, 1648-1654 gg., eds. P. P. Grudzenko, A. K. Kasimenko, C. D. Pil’kevič (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1965), 567-71 (henceforth DOVUN)]; Johann Hartung’s letter about the battle of Berestečko, 10 July 1651, Warsaw [DOVUN, 539-42]. 3 Nikolaj Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 10 of Sobranie sočinenij (St. Petersbug: Tipografija M. M. Stasjuleviča, 1904), 404; George Vernadsky, Bohdan, Hetman of Ukraine (New Haven: Yale University Press; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1941), 87-8; Ivan Bojko, “Osvoboditel’naja vojna ukrainskogo naroda 1648-1654 gg. i vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej,” in Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej 1654-1954: sbornik statej, eds. A. I. Baranovič, L. S. Gaponenko, I. B. Grekov, K. G. Guslistyj (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954), 130; Igor’ Grekov, Vladimir Koroljuk and Il’ja Miller, Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej v 1654 (Moscow: Gosdarstvennoe izdatel’stvo političeskoj literatury, 1954), 70; Pavlo Myxajlyna, Vyzvol’na borot’ba trudovoho naselennja mist Ukrajiny (1569-1654) (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Naukova Dumka, 1975), 174; A. Ageev and E. Ustinov, “Osvoboditel’naja vojna Ukrainskogo naroda pod rukovodstvom Bogdana Xmel’nickogo v 1648-1654 gg.,” Voenno istoričeskij žurnal 1 (1979): 23; Mykola Kučernjuk, Džerela pro rosijs’ko-ukrajins’ki polityčni zv’jazky v roky vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1654 (L’viv: L’vivs’kyj deržavnyj universitet, 1980), 70, 112; Volodymyr Holobuc’kyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija osvoboditel’noj vojny ukrajinskogo naroda 1648-1654 gg. (Kyiv: Gosudarstvennoe izd. političeskoj literatury USSR, 1962), 297-8; Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj (L’viv: Vydavnyctvo Svit, 1990), 113-4, 117, 149; Ihor Svešnikov, Bytva pid Berestečkom, (L’viv: Slovo, 1993), 113; Andrij Hurbyk, “Spodvyžnyk Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho Anton Ždanovyč,” in Doba Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, 1995), 110; Andrij Hurbyk, “Anton Ždanovyč: polityk, diplomat, polkovodec’,” in Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj ta joho doba, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, 1996), 112; Lev Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe xanstvo i gosudarstva central’noj i vostočnoj Jevropy v 1648-1654 gg.,” in Osmanskaja imperija i strany central’noj, vostočnoj i jugo-vostočnoj Evropy v XVII v., vol. 1, eds. G. G. Litavrin, L. E. Semenova, S. F. Oreškova, B. N. Florja (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk ISB, 1998), 208; while Hrushevsky considers that the betrayal of the khan and the Tatars was the reason of the debacle of Berestečko, he states that the Cossack leaders fabricated the rumours about the detention of the hetman by the khan. See Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 299-303, 306-12.

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allies because pillaging the Commonwealth would be more profitable than receiving payment

from the king. On the basis of the letter of a certain noble to Field Hetman of Lithuania Janusz

Radziwiłł4 and the conversation between the Cossack officer Semen Savyč and the Muscovites5

that recounted how the escaping Tatars threw their booty away and had no time to take their

wounded fellows despite the fact that Islam prescribes its believers not to leave wounded fellows

in enemy hands, Bucinskij discredits the notion of a conspiracy between Islam Giray and

Warsaw against the Cossacks. He also refers to the eighteenth century historian and writer from

Xar’kiv Il’ja Kvitka who recounted how the treachery of some Cossacks caused the khan to flee

from the battlefield.6 According to this report, Xmel’nyc’kyj assigned a Cossack officer named

Hurs’kyj as the commander of the army. However, as Hurs’kyj received noble status from the

Commonwealth’s authorities, he did not fight against the assault of the Crown army and even

caused the king’s troops to attack the Tatars with all their might. Islam Giray, watching the

course of the battle, saw the betrayal of this Cossack officer and then decided to desert the

battlefield. Bucinskij also discredits the rumours about the detention of the hetman by the khan

claiming that there is no alternative source to confirm the incident.7

On the basis of the diaries of Albrycht Radziwiłł and Stanisław Oświęcim8 and the Polish reports

from Berestečko, many Polish historians have pointed out that the crushing firepower of the

Crown artillery and the presence of the German mercenaries contributed to the victory of the

king over the Cossack-Tatar allies. Concerning the detainment of the hetman by the khan, it is

not clear whether the hetman escaped with the khan voluntarily or he was forcibly prevented by

4 A Polish noble’s letter to Field Hetman of Lithuania Janusz Radziwiłł, 24 June 1651, at Reczycą [Starożytności historyczne polskie czyli pisma i pamiętniki do dziejow Dawnej Polski, listy królow i znakomitych męz̀ów, przypowieści, przysłowia i t.p. Zrękopismòw zebrał i przydał Źywoty uczonych polaków, vol. 1, ed. Ambroży Grabowski (Kraków: Nakład i druk Józefa Czecha), 321]. 5 The Cossack officer Semen Savyč’s report in Moscow about the battle between the Cossack-Tatar allies and the Commonwealth at Berestečko, 21 September 1651 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 476-9]; Pierre Chevalier’s chronicle and the Polish officer Andrzej Miaskowski’s letter to Jan Kazimierz also speak of how the Tatars during their withdrawal in great haste did not have time to bury their dead fellows and abandoned the wounded ones. See Pierre Chevalier, A Discourse of the Original, Countrey, Manners, Government and Religion of the Cossacks with another of the Precopian Tartars. And the History of the Wars of the Cossacks against Poland, trans. Edward Brown (London, 1672), 153-4; Andrzej Miaskowski to Jan Kazimierz, 1 August 1651, Lubartów [Pamjatniki izdannyje vremennoj kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, vol. 2, pt. 3, (Kyiv, 1846), 90-3 (henceforth PIVK)]. 6 Petr Bucinskij, O Bogdane Xmel’nickom (Xarkiv: Tipografija M. Zil’berberga, 1882), 93-4. 7 Bucinskij, O Bogdane Xmel’nickom, 94-6. 8 Stanisława Oświęcima Diariusz 1643-1651, ed. Wiktor Czermak (Kraków: Wydawnictwa Komisyi Historycznej Akademii Umiejętności, 1907), 340-1; Albrycht Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik o dziejach w Polsce, vol. 3, eds. Adam Przvboś and Roman Żelewski (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1980), 305-6.

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the khan from going back to the battlefield.9 Some Ukrainian historians also subscribe to the

opinion that the Tatars were compelled to withdraw from the battlefield due to the pressure of the

enemy infantry and artillery. For example, according to Myron Korduba, the diaries, letters and

reports of the Polish officials unanimously relate how the Tatars fought vigorously and carried

the burden of the battle together with the Cossack cavalry while the Cossack infantry failed to

stand up to the German mercenaries, who had experience in using the latest infantry equipment

and techniques during the Thirty Years’ War.10 Since the Tatars had to conduct their military

actions in a place that was confined between the marshes of the Pljašivka rivulet in the northeast

and the vast forest in the southwest,11 the Ukrainian historians Yurii Luciw and Ivan Storoženko

explain that the Tatar cavalry did not have much freedom of movement and fell within the range

of the artillery.12 Considering the Crown army’s rear was protected by the Styr River and its

front was shielded by its artillery, the Tatars did not have much chance to launch an attack on the

enemy from any side and had no choice other than to retreat once they were exposed to the

artillery fire. Shortly after the battle, in both of his letters to the king and the Cossacks, the khan

9 Ludwik Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 2, (L’viv: Nakład Księgarni Gubrynowicza I. Schmidta, 1880), 274, 279; Władysław Tomkiewicz, Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (1612-1651) (Warsaw: Nakładem Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego, 1933), 371-2; Adam Kersten, Stefan Czarniecki, 1599-1665 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa obrony narodowej, 1963), 160; Tadeusz Wasilewski, Jan Kazimierz (Warszaw: Zamek Królewski w Warszawie, 1985), 23; Romuald Romański, Beresteczko 1651 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2007), 190-1, 197, 199; Romański, Książę Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Bellona, 2009), 337; in contrast to these Polish historians, Zbigniew Wójcik concurs with many Ukrainian and Russian historians in seeing the flight of the Tatars from Berestečko as an undoubted act of betrayal that led to the defeat. Similarly, Janusz Kaczmarczyk surmises that while the escape of the Tatars settled the outcome of the battle, Xmel’nyc’kyj’s attempt to make the khan return to Berestečko could have possibly turned the tide of the battle in favour of the Cossacks. He adds that the contending accounts of the historical sources makes it impossible to explain the background and motives of the hetman’s departure from the battlefield. See Zbigniew Wójcik, Dzikie Pola w Ogniu: O Kozaczyźnie w dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1968), 189; Janusz Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1988), 163-4. 10 Miron Korduba, “Der Ukraine Niedergang und Aufschwung,” Zeitschrift für Osteuropäische Geschichte 6 (1932): 203-4; while the Ukrainian historians Mykola Petrovs’kyj, Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov consider the khan’s unwillingness to fight as the reason of the catastrophic defeat of Berestečko, they also express that the inability of the Tatars to withstand the artillery fire of the Crown army led to the desertion of the khan from the battlefield. See Mykola Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji Ukrajiny, vol. 4 (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Akademiji Nauk URSR, 1940), 155-9; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj social’no-političnyj portret (Kyiv: Lybid’, 1995), 321; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj (Kyiv: Vydavnyčy dim Al’ternatyvy, 2003), 251, 255; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja nezaležnoji deržavy,” in Istorija Ukrajiny nove bačennja, vol. 1, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Ukrajina, 1995), 171. 11 Wasilewski, Jan Kazimierz, 21-2. 12 Yurii A. Luciw, “Interpretation: The Secrets of Khmel’nyts’kyi’s Military Greatness,” The Ukrainian Quarterly: A Journal of East European and Asian Affairs 44/1-2 (Spring-Summer 1988): 97; Ivan Storoženko, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, vol. 1: Voejenni diji 1648-1652 (Dnipropetrovs’k: Vydavnyctvo Dnipropetrovs’koho deržavnoho universytetu, 1996), 248.

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explained that the Crown army owed its victory to the inability of the Tatars to fight in woods

and swamps.13

It is also possible that the Kalmyk threat played some role in the reluctance of the khan to fully

commit his forces in the battle at Berestečko. Islam Giray purportedly wanted to withdraw from

Ukraine because he received the news that the Kalmyks were heading toward Crimea in mid-

June 1651.14 According to the Muscovite envoy Aleksej Dernov, 10,000 Kalmyks marched on

Crimea at the end of 1651 and defeated the Tatars killing two Mansur mirzas and capturing a

good number of their horses. As the Kalmyks proceeded to Crimea, the khan and his nureddin

marched to Orkapı and relocated the Nogays from the northern Black Sea steppes into Crimea.15

The Muscovite voevoda of Valujka, Mixajlo Dmitreev, also wrote that 30,000 Kalmyks under

Louzang Tayishi marched against Crimea in autumn 1651.16 Therefore the Kalmyk expeditions

against Crimea and the Nogays in the early 1650s plausibly played a role in discouraging the

khan from staying outside Crimea for a prolonged war against the Commonwealth.

The Porte was shocked by the letters from the Moldavian hospodar and the king about the

victory of the Crown army against the strong Tatar-Cossack army at Berestečko.17 Islam Giray

explained in a letter to the grand vizier that while the Tatars launched a successful offensive on

the camp of the Crown army, captured a number of cannons and killed several thousand Poles,

some of his rear troops panicked and thus the khan left a number of Tatars in the battlefield and

returned to Crimea with his main force. After his return to Crimea, the khan sent Karaş Mirza to

Ukraine with fresh troops. While the Tatars besieged the enemy and made them exhaust their

provisions, the Cossacks attacked with their artillery and infantry. Then Warsaw was obliged to

13 “La nouvelle de faite des rebelles de Pologne par le Prince Radzivil dans la Lithüanie,” in Gazette de France, no. 111, 1651; Oświęcim, 356; DOVUN, 595, 597; Tys-Kroxmaljuk, Boji Xmel’nyc’koho, 142. 14 Oświęcim, 318. 15 Aleksej Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami vo vtoroj polovine XVII veka,” in Issledovanija po istorii epoxi feodalizma (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), 55-6. 16 Aleksej Mixajlovič to Semen Prozorovskij, 9 December 1651, Moscow [VUR, vol. 3, 155]. 17 Vasile Lupu to Mikołaj Potocki, 1 August 1651, Iași [DOVUN, 591-3]; Vasile Lupu to an unknown person, after 13 August 1651 [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1658 rr, vol. 2 (1650-1651 rr.), ed. Jurij Mycyk (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznavstva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2013), 260-3]; Gazette de France, no. 132, Warsaw, 6 September 1651; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 341-2.

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request peace from the Cossacks. Islam Giray concluded his letter that the hetman expressed his

gratitude to the Tatars and promised to serve the Porte.18

The Muscovite envoys Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min reported from Crimea that when

Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched three Cossacks shortly after the debacle of Berestečko, that is on 21

July, to Crimea to request help, Islam Giray sent 3,000 or 4,000 Tatars under Karaş Mirza to

Ukraine on 1 August.19 There are also other Muscovite reports confirming that Karaş Mirza

came with several thousand troops to help the Cossacks at Bila Cerkva.20

In his letter to Mikołaj Potocki after the battle of Berestečko, Islam Giray reiterated that the

panic in his rear troops caused him to flee and criticized the Communwealth for breaking the

oath of peace that had been sworn at Zboriv. He also recalled to Potocki how the Crimean

leaders showed much respect to him during his captivity in Crimea and released him with the

hope that he would mediate between Crimea and the Commonwealth. However, instead of

working for conciliation between the khan and the king, Potocki purportedly violated the peace

and collected troops. The khan concluded his letter that the Communwealth’s authorities should

deliver the annual treasure payment in full and Potocki should release the captive Tatars.21

18 Islam Giray to an unnamed person at the Porte, after 28 September 1651 [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 3005/4 in Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, “Three Ottoman Documents Concerning Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1 (1977): 351-4]. According to Lemercier-Quelquejay, Islam Giray wrote that letter to the grand vizier in the summer of 1649. However, Victor Ostapchuk explains that Lemercier- Quelquejay misdated the letters. In his opinion, the khan’s letter referred to the events of mid-1651 because in the letter the khan reported the death of the kalgay Kırım Giray. Referring to Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Hüseyin Feyzhanov’s publication, Ostapchuk shows that the kalgay Kırım Giray wrote to Muscovy on 18 August 1651 (1 Ramazan 1061). In a similar vein, Zygmunt Abrahamowicz points out that in his letter to the grand vizier, the khan spoke about the Treaty of Bila Cerkva between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth. He surmises that Islam Giray must have learned about the conclusion of the Treaty of Bila Cerkva in the first half of October 1651. Therefore the khan must have reported to the Porte about this news after the first half of October 1651. See Victor Ostapchuk, “The Publication of Documents on the Crimean Khanate in the Topkapı Sarayı: New Sources for the History of the Black Sea Basin,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 6/4 (December 1982): 514; Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, “Comments on Three Letters by Khan Islam Geray III to the Porte (1651),” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 14 (1990): 142; Kırım Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 18 August 1651 (1 Ramazan 1061) [Materialy dlja istorii Krymskago xanstva izvlečennyja, po rasporjaženiju Imperatorskoj akademii nauk, iz Moskovskago glavnogo arxiva Ministerstva inostrannyx del, eds. Vladimir Vel’jaminov-Zernov and Huseyn Feyzxanov (St. Petersburg, 1864), no. 137 (henceforth MdiKx)]. 19 Report of Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min, 16 January-20 August 1651, Crimea [VUR, vol. 2, 486]. 20 Records of interrogation of Ivan Judenkov’s report about military affairs in Ukraine, late September 1651 [VUR, vol. 3, 142]; records of interrogation of Vasilij Gorjagostev on military affairs in Right-Bank Ukraine, 1 October 1651 [VUR, vol. 3, 144]. 21 Islam Giray to Mikołaj Potocki after 30 June 1651 [Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Dział Tatarski, k. 62, t. 117, no. 451 (henceforth AGAD, Dz. Tat.)]; a text of the khan’s letter to Potocki is available in MdiKx, no. 348; Abdullah Zihni Soysal also gives a Polish translation of the khan’s letter in Jarłyki Krymskie z Czasόw Jana Kazimierza (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Wschodniego w Warszawie, 1939), 31-2.

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According to Oświęcim, Islam Giray demanded from Potocki good treatment for the mirzas who

had fallen captive at Berestečko.22

While Islam Giray did not explain the cause of the panic in his army in these letters, he states an

excuse for his withdrawal in another letter to the grand vizier. According to it, in the middle of

the battle, the khan learned that the Nogays were wandering around for plunder, seized horses of

the Dobruca Tatars and deserted the battlefield. He set out to pursue the Nogays to punish them

for their undisciplined action. While the hetman went after the khan and asked him to return or

send his vizier Sefer Gazi Agha to help the Cossacks, the khan did not consent, but did order his

troops to help the Cossacks. Islam Giray visited the Cossack camp and saw that the Crown army

had encamped and fortified itself in an impenetrable place. He offered to the Cossack leaders that

he would send some troops to raid L’viv, Zamość and Halyč so that the Crown army would have

to abandon its stronghold and defend these territories. However, the Cossacks did not agree to

this plan and insisted that the khan stay and continue to besiege the enemy camp. The khan,

frustrated by the refusal of the Cossacks, did not return to the battlefield.23

The Ottomans had no choice other than to accept the khan’s explanation because they were still

paralyzed with court struggle and the ominous war with Venice. According to a contemporary

Polish report, an Ottoman fleet was completely destroyed by the Venetians near Rhodes on 15

July 1651 and the commander of the fleet barely escaped. Shortly before this naval battle,

Xmel’nyc’kyj sent an embassy to Istanbul to give the news about the campaign of the Cossack-

Tatar forces against the Commonwealth and purportedly encouraged the Ottomans to send their

governors to seize Kam”janec’, L’viv and other major cities of the Commonwealth. The

Ottomans were allegedly pleased with this news and rewarded the envoy of the hetman and other

members of the Cossack embassy with a robe of honour (kaftan). However, when the news about

the defeat of the Ottoman fleet reached Istanbul, the Ottomans lost their interest in Cossack

affairs. In addition, when the news about the king’s victory over the Cossack-Tatar allies at

Berestečko reached Istanbul, the Porte detained the hetman’s envoy. Meanwhile, Xmel’nyc’kyj

without waiting for the return of his envoy dispatched another envoy supposedly to ask the

22 Oświęcim, 346. 23 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 310.

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Ottomans to send help as soon as possible.24 As the Porte was paralyzed with the news about the

defeat of the Ottoman fleet by the Venetian armada near Naxos and Paros in the Aegean Sea in

July 1651,25 it would not be able to take action against the khan for his alleged failure to help the

Cossacks at Berestečko. As Zygmunt Abrahamowicz sees it, Islam Giray was “openly mock[ing]

the young sultan on the Ottoman throne and his inept viziers.”26

According to the Gazette de France, nearly one month after Berestečko Xmel’nyc’kyj renewed

his alliance with the khan and convinced him to dispatch new troops to help the Cossacks in the

ensuing clashes.27 It also reported that upon the persistent calls of help by the hetman from his

camp near Bila Cerkva, Islam Giray agreed to send his kalgay with 5,000 Tatars.28 The

Muscovite reports also confirm that several thousand Tatars came to help the Cossacks at Bila

Cerkva.29 Meanwhile, again according to the Gazette de France, the king wrote to Istanbul that

while like his predecessors he observed the peace with the Porte and stopped Cossack raids

against Ottoman domains, the Ottomans intended to take the rebellious Xmel’nyc’kyj under their

protection and even promised to carve out a principality for him from the Commonwealth.30 If

the Gazette de France, is to be believed, given that more than one century ago the Ottomans

carved out the principality of Transylvania from the Hungarian Kingdom, it is would be

understandable that the king might have been worried about the emergence of a pro-Ottoman

Cossack principality.

Since the Cossack leaders and the Commonwealth’s authorities were exhausted and unwilling to

continue the war, the parties agreed to end hostilities and start peace negotiations. Finally,

Xmel’nyc’kyj agreed to the Treaty of Bila Cerkva whose terms were less advantageous than

those of the Treaty of Zboriv. According to Taras Čuxlib, the hetman agreed to restore the

authority of the Commonwealth over Ukraine because he thought that the Tatars might betray

24 Androni Krupicki to Aleksandr Koniecpolski, 6 August 1651, Iași [DOVUN, 598-9]. 25 Kenneth M. Setton, Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1991), 163-4. 26 Zygmunt Abrahamowicz, “Comments on Three Letters by Khan Islam Geray III to the Porte (1651),” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 14 (1990): 143. 27 Gazette de France, no. 132, Warsaw, 6 September 1651. 28 Gazette de France, no. 145, Danzig, 5 October 1651. 29 Luk’jan Klimoskoj’s report about the military affairs in Ukraine, September 1651 [VUR, vol. 3, 140-1]; Ivan Judenkov’s report about the military affairs in Ukraine, the end of September 1651 [VUR, vol. 3, 142-3]; Vasilej Gorjagostev’s report about the military affairs in the Right-Bank Ukraine [VUR, vol. 3, 144-5]. 30 Gazette de France, no. 152, Warsaw, 11 October 1651.

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him again despite orders to the contrary from Istanbul.31 At the same time, fearing that Karaş

Mirza and Mehmed Mirza with 10,000 Tatars joined the Cossacks, the Commonwealth’s

authorities wanted to conclude peace with Xmel’nyc’kyj.32

Islam Giray was frustrated for being excluded from the Treaty of Bila Cerkva.33 He plausibly

feared that Crimea could no longer play a mediating role between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the

Commonwealth. Although Xmel’nyc’kyj consented to sever his ties with the Tatars in

accordance with the Treaty of Bila Cerkva,34 he maintained his contacts with the khan because of

fear that Crimea and the Commonwealth might unite against Ukraine.35 After making the Treaty

of Bila Cerkva, Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched an embassy to Crimea to continue friendship and

brotherhood with the khan.36 In response to Metropolitan Garbriel of Nazareth’s criticism of the

hetman for maintaining his alliance with the Muslim Tatars who ravaged Ukraine, killed

Orthodox Ukrainians and enslaved them, Xmel’nyc’kyj argued that the Cossacks could not

maintain the struggle against the Commonwealth alone.37 Islam Giray also wrote to

Xmel’nyc’kyj to maintain the Cossack-Tatar alliance.38 Therefore neither the hetman nor the

khan had any intention to renounce cooperation between Crimea and the Cossacks as required by

the provisions of the Treaty of Bila Cerkva.

31 Taras Čuxlib, Kozaky i Monarxy: Mižnarodni vidnosyny rann’omodernoji Ukrajins’koji deržavy 1648 – 1721 rr. (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo imeni Oleny Telihy, 2009), 65; Taras Čuxlib, Het’many i Monarxy: Ukrains’ka Deržava v Mižnarodnyx Vidnosynax 1648 – 1714 rr. (Kyiv: Instytyt Istorii Ukrainy, 2003), 64; Taras Čuxlib, “Koncepcija polivasalitetnoji pidlehlosti B. Xmel’nyc’koho ta ukrajins’ko-rosijs’ki vzajemovidnosyny seredyny XVII st.,” in Ukrajina ta Rosija: problemy polityčnyc i sociokul’turnyx vidnosyn, ed. V.A. Smolij (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, 2003), 160; Taras Čuxlib, “‘Cisar turec’kyj dozvoljaje kozac’komu vijs’ku ta joho deržavi plavaty po Čornomu morju...’: polityčni vidnosyny ukrajins’kyx het’maniv z sultanom Mehmedom IV Avdžy,” Ukrajina v Central’no-Sxidnij Jevropi 9-10 (2010): 98. 32 Oświęcim, 369. 33 Gazette de France, no. 3, Warsaw, 28 November 1651. 34 Władysław Czapliński, Dwa sejmy w roku 1652: studium z dziejów rozkładu Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej w XVII wieku (Wrocław: Zakład im. Ossolińskich, 1955), 40. 35 Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji dyplomatyčnoji služby. Zovnišnaja polityka urjadu B. Xmel’nyc’koho (1648-1657)” in Narysy z istoriji dyplomatiji Ukrajiny, eds. S. V. Vidnjans’kyj, L. V. Hurbers’kyj; B. I. Humenjuk, A.M. Zlenko (Kyiv: Vydavnyčyj dim Al’ternatyvy, 2001), 138. 36 Oświęcim, 379. 37 Grigorij Bogdanov’s report to Moscow, 13-14 July 1651 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 461-5]. 38 Islam Giray to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, February 1652, Bagçasaray (?) [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny ukrajins’koho narodu 1648-1658 rr, vol. 3 (1651-1654 rr.), ed. Jurij Mycyk (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznavstva im. M. S. Hruševsꞌkoho, 2014), 16-7].

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After the debacle of Berestečko, Xmel’nyc’kyj sent an embassy to Istanbul to entreat the Porte to

order the Tatars to help the Cossacks.39 As the Muscovite officials learned from Ivan

Vyhovs’kyj, the Ottoman authorities reciprocated this embassy by dispatching Osman Chavush

(Asman Čeuš) to Xmel’nyc’kyj during the Cossack-Polish negotiations at Bila Cerkva and asked

the hetman to render allegiance to the Porte and send troops to fight against Venice. However,

the Cossacks had no willingness either to submit to Ottoman authority or to participate in the war

with Venice.40 According to the copy of the sultan’s letter to the hetman from the end of July

1651 preserved in the Göttingen Codex, an Ottoman envoy set out to Ukraine with a letter in the

name of the sultan recounting that a Cossack envoy had previously arrived at the Ottoman court

with the hetman’s letter of servitude (name-i ‘ubudiyyet) to the Porte. According to it, upon the

hetman’s request for help to the Porte, the Ottomans agreed to dispatch troops from Dobruca.

The hetman was now asked to dispatch new envoys who were to pay respect to the Ottoman

state, be rewarded robes of honour (hil‘ats) and receive the sultan’s letter of oath (‘ahdname).

Advising the hetman to have good relations with the khan, the Porte ordered the hospodars of

Moldavia and Wallachia and the prince of Transylvania to be ready to help the Cossacks.41

In September 1651, Xmel’nyc’kyj wrote to Istanbul that Osman Chavush came to Ukraine

together with the Cossack envoys and gave the Porte’s letter promising to send the khan and

troops from Dobruca. However, the Cossacks did not want to be idle and had a fearful battle with

the Kingdom’s forces that Osman witnessed among other battles, but the help from Crimea and

Dobruca was late so the Cossacks had to make peace with the Commonwealth. The hetman

stated his desire to maintain unbreakable and long-lasting relations with Crimea and expected the

Ottoman state to write to the khan and advise him to continue to help the Cossacks. He also

noted the participation of the nureddin in the battles where he demonstrated bravery as a true

warrior acts, worthy of a great gratitude and much reward.42 In late November-early December

39 Simon Reniger to Ferdinand III, 27 July 1651, Istanbul [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12: Materijaly doistoriji Ukrajins’koji Kozaččyny, vol. 5, ed. Miron Korduba (L’viv: 1911), 169]; Kazimierz W. Wójcicki, Pamiętniki do panowania Zygmunta III, Władysława IV i Jana Kazimierza, vol. 2 (Warszawa: S. Orgelbrand, 1846), 199 quoted in Borys Floria, “Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj i Turec’ka protekcija,” Kyivs’ka starovyna 3 (1993): 97-8. 40 Ivan Judenkov’s report about the military affairs in Ukraine, the end of September 1651 [VUR, vol. 3, 142-3]. 41 Mehmed IV to Xmel’nyc’kyj, 20-29 July 1651 (1st decade of Şa‘ban 1061) [Jan Rypka, “Další příspěvek ke korespondenci Vysoké Porty s Bohdanem Chmelnickým,” Časopis Národního Musea 105 (1931): 215-9]. 42 Xmel’nyc’kyj to Mehmed IV, September 1651, Bila Cerkva [Dokumenty Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, 1648-1657, eds. I. Kryp”jakevyč and I. Butyč (Kyiv: Akademiji Nauk Ukrajins’koji RSR, 1961), 225-6 (hencefoth DBX)]; long before the editors of Dokumenty Bohdana Xmel'nyc'koho, on the basis of the diplomatic register books from the

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1651, the hetman wrote another letter to the sultan indicating that though he had made peace

with the Commonwealth, he wanted to submit to Ottoman suzerainty and end the Polish yoke

over his people. Expecting that the conflict with the Commonwealth would escalate into war, the

hetman asked the Porte for military help, and especially from the khan.43 Thus, the hetman

turned again to the Porte offering to become its subject in exchange for protectorship and most of

all hoping that the Porte would order the Crimean Tatars to help him—this was in the wake of

the very negative reaction by inhabitants of Ukraine to the terms of the Treaty of Bila Cerka that

brought back much of the old Polish order.44

After the conclusion of the Treaty of Bila Cerkva, Islam Giray asked Xmel’nyc’kyj to dispatch

troops for his anticipated campaign against the Kalmyks who frequently raided the Tatars,

seizing their sheep and cattle.45 Following his return from Crimea in early 1652, the Muscovite

envoy Grigorij Gostev recounted that the Kalmyks marched against the Nogays roaming near

Orkapı and skirmished with them and with Tatars under Batırşah Mirza. Gostev continued that as

the Crimean Tatars were worried about the arrival of the Kalmyks, the kalgay aborted his

campaign against the Circassians and returned after hearing about the Kalmyks. All Nogays also

migrated into the Orkapı area. The Crimean Tatars thought that the Kalmyks came with the

knowledge of the tsar and that Muscovite people from Astrakhan helped the Kalmyks cross the

Volga.46 The Muscovite voevoda of Jablonov, Grigorij Kurakin, related that the Tatars were on

full alert for the arrival of the Kalmyks in 1652. The Kalmyks also supposedly made an alliance

with the Don Cossacks and were planning to launch a campaign against Crimea.47 Interestingly,

the Gazette de France provides another scenario: As the kalgay and the nureddin reportedly left

Crown Metrica of the former Moscow Archive of Foreign Affairs, Bucinskij published a translation of the hetman’s letter to the sultan. Kostomarov also gave his own translation in his article about the relations between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Porte. However, Hrushevsky casts doubt on the authenticity of this document. See Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 126-7; Nikolaj Kostomarov, “Bogdan Xmel’nyckij dannik ottomanskoj porty,” Vestnik Evropy 13 (1878): 810-1; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 417-8 n.49. 43 Xmel’nyc’kyj to Mehmed IV, September 1651, Bila Cerkva [Dokumenty Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, 1648-1657, eds. I. Kryp”jakevyč and I. Butyč (Kyiv: Akademiji Nauk Ukrajins’koji RSR, 1961), 225-6 (hencefoth DBX)]; Xmel’nyc’kyj to Mehmed IV, 27 November O.S. (7 December) 1651, Čyhyryn [DBX, 233-4]. 44 Frank Sysyn, “Political worlds of Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi” Palaeoslavica 10 (2002): 200. 45 Aleksander Zamojski to an unknown person, 29 December 1651, Korostyšiv [DOVUN, 629-30]. 46 Grigorij Gostev’s report about Crimean affairs, 15 March 1652 [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny, vol. 3, 257]. 47 Grigorij Kurakin’s report about the Crimean, Cherkassian (Ukrainian Cossack) Kalmyk news, 18 December 1652, [Akty Moskovskago gosudarstva, izdannye Imperatorskoju akademieju nauk, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Typografija Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk, 1894), 304 (henceforth AMG)].

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Crimea with a good number of troops with the objective of launching a campaign against the

Kalmyks in autumn 1652, the Commonwealth feared that this Tatar army might be joined by the

Ukrainian Cossacks near the Dnipro and, instead of going against the Kalmyks, turn to go

against it.48

At the same time, in spring 1652 the Muscovite officials was apparently informed by the Nogays

that the Porte had asked the khan to mobilize with the Nogays and the Circassians and unite with

Ottoman forces at Azak in order to launch a campaign against the Don Cossacks in the coming

autumn to punish them for their raids. According to this narrative, Islam Giray again sent

messengers to Čyhyryn and asked for troops from Xmel’nyc’kyj. The hetman again refused to

join in a confrontation with the Don Cossacks because he was occupied with making the

Moldavian hospodar fulfill his promise to arrange the marriage between his daughter and the

hetman’s son. Xmel’nyc’kyj also excused himself by referring to the disputes with the

Commonwealth with regard to implementing the Treaty of Bila Cerkva. Due to the Kalmyk

danger, the khan did not insist on launching a joint campaign against the Don Cossacks. He

reportedly wrote to Istanbul in January 1653 that the Tatars and the Nogays would not march

against the Don Cossacks because the khan would stand against the Commonwealth in

accordance with his agreement with the hetman.49

However, since the khan’s request to the hetman after the Treaty of Bila Cerkva to send troops to

join his campaign against the Kalmyks came shortly after the Don Cossack raids of summer

1651, Xmel’nyc’kyj believed that Islam Giray in fact wanted to march against the Don Cossacks

as well.50 According to the Muscovite officials Aleksej Dernov and Matfej Gerasimov, the khan

wanted to renew his plan to organize an expedition against the Don Cossacks and the Kalmyks

because the Don Cossacks raided the Tatars and helped the Kalmyks in their campaign against

the Nogays in 1651. Vyhovs’kyj also warned the Muscovite authorities several times about the

48 Gazette de France, no. 148, Warsaw, 22 November 1652. 49 RGADA, f. 127, 1652, no. 2, ark. 10 quoted in Brexunenko, “Dons’ke kozactvo,” 135; Brexunenko, Stosunki ukrajins’koho, 268-9. 50 Viktor Brexunenko, Stosunki ukrajins’koho kozactva z Donom u XVI- seredyni XVII st. (Kyiv: Zaporožžja RA Tandem-U, 1998), 266; RGADA, f. 79, 1652, no. 1 ark. 482 quoted in Viktor Brexunenko, “Dons’ke kozactvo jak čynnyk zovnišn’oji polityky Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho,” in Doba Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, 1995); Viktor Brexunenko, Moskovs’ka Ekspansija i Perejaslavs’ka Rada 1654 roku (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta Džereloznastva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2005), 298.

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plans of the khan to launch a campaign against the Don Cossacks.51 In spring 1652 the Cossack

envoy Ivan Iskra told the Muscovite authorities that the hetman was in alliance with the khan,

albeit reluctantly. Nobody helped the Cossacks against the Commonwealth. Therefore the

Cossacks had to call on the khan for help. Iskra added that while the khan and the Tatars helped

the Cossacks, they also ravaged Ukraine, destroyed Cossack possessions and enslaved many

people.52 Therefore it is unlikely that Xmel’nyc’kyj supported an action against Muscovy or its

dependencies because he did not need another enemy and had the Muscovite option in mind if

the Crimean and Otttoman option failed. Just as with the Moldavian campaign of 1650, the

hetman used his plans relating to the Danubian region and his concerns about the

Commonwealth to avert the anti-Don Cossack plans of the khan. And so he convinced the

Khanate to support his new venture against Moldavia. As Xmel’nyc’kyj had no intention to join

the Tatars in a campaign against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks, Islam Giray had no choice

other than to shelve his plans. Thus, another venture against the Don Cossacks ended before it

began.

Xmel’nyc’kyj was also not interested in the plans of the king and his entourage to march against

the Tatars. While the Commonwealth sought to gain Cossack support in this venture in order to

seed discord between the Cossacks and the Tatars, the hetman refrained from joining it and even

informed Islam Giray about the plans of the Poles.53 Despite his refusal to support the khan’s

plans against Muscovy and the Don Cossacks, the hetman wanted to maintain his contacts with

Crimea. At the same time, the Commonwealth attempted to instigate the Tatars against the

Cossacks by sending an embassy to Crimea after the battle of Batih, suggesting that Islam Giray

partake in a joint expedition against the Cossacks. However, the khan did not respond to the

king’s proposal and instead sent the letter brought by the Commonwealth’s embassy letter to the

hetman.54 It was not in the interest of the khan to wage war against the Cossacks. Therefore after

the Battle of Berestečko the Commonwealth’s authorities could not drive a wedge between

Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Khanate.

51 Fed’ka Xilkov and Petruška Protas’ev to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 23 November 1651, Putyvl’ [VUR, vol. 3, 241]. 52 The Muscovite envoy Ivan Iskra’s report to Aleksej Mixajlovič about his sojourn in Ukraine, 22 March 1652 [Sobranie gosudarstvennyx gramot i dogovorov, pt. 3 (Moscow, 1822), 472-4 (henceforth SGGD)]. 53 Tys-Kroxmaljuk, Boji Xmel’nyc’koho, 161-2. 54 Grigorij Puškin’s report about the conversation with the Ukrainian Cossack envoy Samijlo Bogdanovyč-Zarudnyj, 17 December 1652 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 485-6].

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Meanwhile, the hetman sent his son Tymiš at the head of the Cossack army to Moldavia in

spring 1652 in order to force the hospodar to fulfill his promise of giving the hand of his

daughter to Tymiš. While the hospodar Vasile Lupu seemed to be relieved by the rumours that

the Cossacks failed to receive support from the Tatars,55 the nureddin Adil Giray joined the

hetman’s son in his expedition against Moldavia. At that time, the relationship between Crimea

and the Commonwealth was also worsening because Warsaw was delaying tribute/gift payments

and the Tatar envoys to Moldavia were captured by the order of Marcin Kalinowski and were

sent to the king.56 Crimean-Moldavian relations were also tense as the khan and his vizier Sefer

Gazi Agha wrote to the hospodar on 22 March 1652 that they received complaints about how

some Poles and Moldavians attacked and robbed people who travelled from Akkerman to

Crimea. The khan also dispatched an embassy to Moldavia in order to investigate whether the

Moldavian authorities sanctioned this attack or not. Since the Commonwealth would not obey

the agreements that they concluded, all Tatars and Nogays were ordered to feed their horses and

prepare for a war with the Commonwealth. The khan added that if the Commonwealth abrogated

the agreement and sent an army against the Cossacks, then the Tatars would hasten to the help of

the Cossacks.57 While the khan stated his reasons or excuses to support the Cossacks against the

Commonwealth and Moldavia, it is still uncertain why Islam Giray took the risk of provoking the

Porte to react as the suzerain and therefore protector of the hospodar. In relation to this question,

a rumour circulated that the hetman concluded an agreement with the Ottomans and received

their permission to enter Moldavia.58 Therefore it is possible to surmise that Islam Giray had

already known that the Ottomans would not react against his involvement in Moldavian affairs.

However, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles and archival sources are silent about such

agreement between the hetman and the Porte about Moldavia.

As Hrushevsky outlines, when the Diet ended on 11 March 1652 without ratifying the Treaty of

Bila Cerkva and negotiations between the Cossacks and the Commonwealth seemed to bring no

result, a Cossack council gathered in Čyhyryn in the first half of May 1652 upon Xmel’nyc’kyj’s

55 L. E. Semenova, “Dunajskie knjažestva v meždunarodnom kontekste v 50-e gg. XVII v. (po materialam RGADA),” in Russkaja i Ukrainskaja diplomatija v Evrazii: 50-e gody XVII veka, eds. L. E. Semenova, B. N. Florja and I. Schwarcz (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk Institut Slavjanovedenija, 2000), 117. 56 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 269-70. 57 Islam Giray to Vasile Lupu, 22 March 1652 [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny, vol. 3, 21-4; Jurij Mycyk, “Iz džerel do istoriji Kryms’koho xanstva XVII st.,” Pam”jatky: arxeohrafičnyj ščoričnyk 10 (2009): 8-10]. 58 Czapliński, Dwa sejmy w roku 1652, 134.

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call to prepare for a new confrontation with the Commonwealth and a campaign against

Moldavia. The hetman also sent envoys to Crimea to ask help from the khan and report to him

that the king ordered the Cossacks to set out on a sea campaign against Crimea.59 While the

Cossack-Tatar army under Tymiš Xmel’nyc’kyj set out to Moldavia to make the hospodar

Vasile Lupu honour his promise to arrange his daughter’s marriage to him, Crown Field Hetman

Marcin Kalinowski mobilized an army to intercept the Tatar-Cossack army. He encountered the

Cossack-Tatar army at Batih in June 1652 and suffered a severe defeat losing his life at the

battlefield with only a small number of his troops managing to save with their lives. Regarding

the battle of Batih, the Ottoman chronicler Naima relates that Melek Ahmed Pasha sent letters

from Silistra and Nikopol (Turk. Nigbolu) embellishing how the Tatars and their Cossack allies

slaughtered 30,000 enemy troops and took many of them as captives.60 Shortly after the battle of

Batih, the Cossack-Tatar army reportedly entered Kam”janec’.61 Thereafter, the Moldavian

hospodar consented to arrange the marriage of his daughter to the hetman’s son, and so the

marriage took place in late August or early September 1652. In relation to the role of the Tatars

at Batih, Storoženko claims that the brilliant victory at Batih showed how Tatar help was crucial

to the Cossacks.62 With regard to the benefits of this campaign for Crimea, the khan could not

achieve a long-term strategic gain but only extracted captives.

Naima presents a different and somewhat muddled account of how the Porte agreed in late 1652

to the marriage between the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu’s daughter and Xmel’nyc’kyj’s

son. According to him, an Ottoman müfti received a letter from the Cossack hetman in December

1652 (Muharrem 1652) promising to serve the Ottoman state with 300,000 Cossacks under

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s command. The hetman’s courier who delivered the letter to the müfti also

reported that the hetman’s son became the son-in-law of the hospodar and he was the

commander of 40,000 musket-bearing troops. Previously, one of the daughters of the hospodar

was a hostage at the Ottoman court. The hospodar sent many presents to the former grand vizier

59 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 444-74. 60 Naima Mustafa Efendi. Târih-i Naîmâ: Ravzatü'l-Hüseyn fî hulâsati ahbâri'l-hâfikayn, ed. Mehmet İpşirli (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2007), 1408. After his dismissal from the grand vizierate in August 1651, Melek Ahmed Pasha was assigned as the governor-general (beglerbegi) of Özi. See Robert Dankoff, The Intimate life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588-1662): as Portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels (Seyahat-name) (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 88-9. 61 Gazette de France, no. 97, Warsaw, 19 July 1652. 62 Ivan Storoženko, “Ukrajins’ko-Kryms’ko-tatars’kyj sojuz 1648 r.,” in Nacional’no-vyzvol’na vijna ukrajins’koho narodu seredyny XVII stolittja, ed. Valerij Smolij (Kyiv: Vydavnyctvo Heneza, 1998), 87.

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Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha and his successor Sofu Mehmed Pasha in order to convince the

Ottomans to return his daughter to Moldavia but to no avail. The hospodar once again asked for

the return of his daughter during the grand vizierate of Kara Murad Pasha. Accordingly, Bektaş

Agha, as Kara Murad Pasha’s councillor, allowed the Moldavian princess to go back to her

country in return for a handsome bribe. After receiving his daughter, the hospodar married her to

the hetman’s son and then Moldavia and the Cossacks became allies. Both the hospodar and the

hetman were allegedly pleased with Bektaş Agha’s cooperation and continued to send him letters

and gifts. Since Bektaş Agha played an important role in helping Xmel’nyc’kyj realize his

Danubian policies, his execution was certainly a blow to the hetman. This is why, according to

Naima, Xmel’nyc’kyj expressed his displeasure about the execution of Bektaş Agha.63

Naima’s account does not correspond to the real course of events. Naima writes that the

hospodar received his daughter during Kara Murad Pasha’s grand vizierate, and upon the arrival

of his daughter in Moldavia, the hospodar arranged her marriage. While Kara Murad Pasha’s

first term as the grand vizier lasted between May 1649 and August 1650, the marriage of the

Moldavian princess to the hetman’s son took place nearly two years later. At this point, there is a

gap in Naima’s account about what happened in the intervening years. The chronicler also does

not clearly explain the hospodar’s attitude towards dynastic union with the hetman. However, as

historical research shows, the hospodar was forced to agree to his daughter’s marriage to the

hetman’s son in summer 1650 by the presence of Cossack forces in Moldavia; later he was not

willing to honour this promise and delayed giving her in marriage for as long as he could.

Of course, the execution of Bektaş Agha was an outcome of the incessant factional struggles at

the Ottoman court. As the previous chapter pointed out, Xmel’nyc’kyj managed to develop his

relations with the Porte during the grand vizierate of Melek Ahmed Pasha. However, Melek

Ahmed Pasha was dismissed and replaced by Siyavuş Pasha because of a large merchant

rebellion in Istanbul in August 1651. Shortly after Melek Ahmed Pasha’s dismissal, the regency

struggle between the sultan’s grandmother Kösem Sultan and his mother Turhan Hatice Sultan

escalated. Kösem Sultan allegedly conspired with some janissary officers in order to overthrow

Sultan Mehmed and put on the throne his half-brother Süleyman whose mother was believed to

63 Naima, Târih, 1429-30, 1493; Naima also recounts that the chief astrologer of the palace (müneccimbaşı) arranged the return of the Moldavian princess to her father in return for a bribe.

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be more submissive. However, Turhan Hatice Sultan learned about the plot and managed with

her followers to eliminate her mother-in-law Kösem Sultan. Thereafter, the purge began against

the supporters of the slain Kösem Sultan including the janissary officers; also Bektaş Agha,

himself a former janissary commander, was executed by the supporters of Turhan Hatice

Sultan.64

According to Kaczmarczyk, Xmel’nyc’kyj managed to make the Porte recognize his claims over

Moldavia and Wallachia thanks to the mediation of his old acquaintance ‘Osman Agha who was

one of the few survivors of the purge that led to the execution of Bektaş Agha. ‘Osman Agha,

protecting his position at the Ottoman court, managed to persuade the grand vizier Derviş

Mehmed Pasha to accept the proposals of the hetman. In this context, Xmel’nyc’kyj could have

control of both Moldavia and Wallachia as long as the revenues coming from them to the Porte

did not lessen. Kaczmarczyk also adds that the Ottomans forgot their promise to recognize the

hetman’s claims over Moldavia and Wallachia and the only result of the Cossack mission to

Istanbul was the Porte’s reassurance that Islam Giray would be required to help in the conflict

with the Commonwealth’s authorities.65 While the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not

provide clear information about ‘Osman Agha’s possible role in maintaining Ottoman-Cossack

relations after Bektaş Agha was eliminated, it is plausible that neither could the Porte develop a

consistent policy towards Xmel’nyc’kyj’s ambitions in the Danubian region nor could the

hetman manage to establish a stable relationship with the Ottomans because of recurring court

struggles and changes in the grand vizierate and other Ottoman offices.

Concerning Ottoman-Cossack relations after the battle of Berestečko, the Porte hoped to

maintain the ties with the Cossacks even after Xmel’nyc’kyj restored his allegiance to the king

with the Treaty of Bila Cerkva. The Porte wrote to Jan Kazimierz in December 1651 that while

the Cossacks together with their hetman had been the king’s subjects, they no longer wanted to

bear with the Polish oppression. Thus, they dispatched envoys to the Porte and agreed to become

Ottoman subjects and promised to be friend of his friends and enemy of his enemies. As the

Cossacks would also refrain from attacking Ottoman and Crimean possessions by sea and land,

64 Johann W. Zinkeisen, Geschichte des osmanischen Reichs in Europa, vol. 4 (Gotha: F.A. Perthes, 1856), 842-3; Ekkehard Eickhoff, Venedig, Wien und die Osmanen (Munich: Verlag Georg D. W. Callwey, 1970), 106; Caroline Finkel, The History of the Ottoman Empire, Osman’s Dream (New York : Basic Books, 2006), 240-4. 65 Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 188-9.

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the Porte approved the agreement with them and accepted their submission to Ottoman authority,

giving the envoys letters and granting the Cossack privileges.66

Grand Vizier Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha wrote to Xmel’nyc’kyj towards the end of 1652 reminding

that the hetman had previously appealed to become an Ottoman vassal through the intermediacy

of the khan. Accordingly, the Porte accepted the servitude of the hetman and sent him an

imperial letter (name-i hümayun) promising to be friends of his friends and enemy of his

enemies. Calling the hetman as a valuable subject of the Porte, Ahmed Pasha wondered why

after his rise to the grand vizierate, the hetman did not send his letter or envoy to the Porte. In the

meantime, the grand vizier learned from the former governor of Kılburun Ramazan Beg that

Cossack envoys were seized and sold at the fortress of Özi when they were travelling to Istanbul

to pay homage to the Ottoman state. Then the Ottomans searched and found the Cossack envoys

in one or two days, paid ransom to the owner for their release and sent the envoys back to

Ukraine. The grand vizier also promised to punish those who insulted the Cossack messengers

and assured that as long as the hetman firmly observed his servitude to the Porte, the Ottoman

state would not agree to any harm or damage to the Cossacks. In case of a possible attack against

the Cossacks, the hetman was advised to report to the Porte so that the troops of Dobruca would

be sent to come along with the Bucak Tatars to his aid. The grand vizier concluded his letter by

asking the hetman never to fail to pay homage to the sultan by sending capable envoys with

letters of servitude to the Porte.67

Accordingly, Xmel’nyc’kyj exchanged embassies with the Porte in 1653 to ask its help for the

Cossacks and take Ukraine under his protection.68 According to the Gazette de France, the

hetman was obliged to send envoys to find an alternative venue of help as the khan failed to

fulfill his promise of help to the Cossacks.69 In his letter to Mehmed IV, Xmel’nyc’kyj reported

66 Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 128. 67 Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha to Xmel’nyc’kyj, 23 December 1652 (22 Muharrem 1063) [Rypka, “Další příspěvek,” 220-4]. 68 Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, “Les relations entre la Porte ottomane et les cosaques Zaporogues au milieu du XVIIe siècle. Une lettre inédite de Bohdan Hmelnickij au Padichah ottoman,” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 11/3 (July-September 1970): 457; Peter Bartl, “Der Kosakenstaat und das Osmanische Reich im 17. und in der Ersten Haelfte des 18 Jahrhunderts,” Südostforsschungen 33 (1974): 175;Valerij Stepankov, “Perejaslav 1654 roku: vytoky, sutnist’, naslidky,” in Ukrajina ta Rosija: problemy polityčnyc i sociokul’turnyx vidnosyn, ed. V.A. Smolij (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut istoriji Ukrajiny, 2003), 98; Stepankov, “Miž Moskvoju,” 230. 69 Gazette de France, no. 54, Warsaw, 2 April 1653.

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about the arrival of the Ottoman envoy Rıdvan Agha in Čyhyryn and asked the sultan to write

orders to the pasha of Silistra and the khan to come to help the Cossacks because the Crown

army was presently marching upon them.70 Naima recounts that four Cossack envoys asked the

Porte to send a drum and a banner to the hetman in order to confirm vassalage relations with the

Ottoman state, and grant the Cossacks some lands near the borders of Moldavia. The chronicler

adds that the Porte decided to reward the Cossack envoys with robes of honour (hil‘ats) and

agreed to entrust them with a drum (tabl) and a banner (‘alem) to be delivered to the hetman.

While the envoys were also given the sultan’s diploma granting the Cossacks to have their

authority in their own lands (eyalet beratı), the Ottomans rejected the hetman’s designs on

Moldavia. Naima comments that this settlement with the Cossacks was a great achievement for

the Porte because it brought about the dragon’s submission (ejderhanın inkiyadı).71

Although Xmel’nyc’kyj continued to exchange embassies with the Porte until late 1653, he could

not receive actual help from Istanbul. As Kostomarov points out, the office of the grand vizierate

changed hands due to the continuing fractional disputes at the Ottoman court, the grand viziers

were weak and incapable. The child sultan Mehmed was not in control of state affairs and his

reign was overshadowed by the conflict between his mother and his grand-mother.72 For this

reason, is unlikely that the Porte would take a bold step in northern affairs. Nonetheless, the

Ottomans wanted to maintain relations with the hetman because they feared the willingness of

the Cossacks to unite with Muscovy.73 By the same token, Xmel’nyc’kyj furthered his relations

with the Ottomans in order to force the Muscovite state to renounce its neutral position and take

Ukraine under its protection. Boris Floria claims that while Ottoman-Cossack relations paused

between the Treaty of Bila Cerkva in September 1651 and late 1652-early 1653, the Porte started

relations with Ukraine due to the resumption of the Don Cossack raids in the Black Sea. It

expected Xmel’nyc’kyj to stop their attacks or at least prevent the Ukrainian Cossacks from

joining the Don Cossacks. In his struggle, the hetman needed support from Crimea, Transylvania

70 Xmel’nyc’kyj to Mehmed IV, 3 December 1652, Čyhyryn [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 8548 in Andras Riedlmayer and Victor Ostapchuk, “Bohdan Xmel'nyc'kyj and the Porte: A Document from the Ottoman Archives,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 8 (December 1984): 469]. 71 Naima, Târih, 1441-2. 72 Nikolaj Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 11 of Sobranie sočinenij (St. Petersbug: Tipografija M. M. Stasjuleviča, 1904), 528. 73 Nikolaj Smirnov, “Bor’ba russkogo i ukrainskogo narodov protiv agressii sultanskoj turcii v XVII-XVIII vv.,” in Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossii 1654-1954 sbornik statej (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk, 1954), 362.

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and the Danubian principalities, all of which were under Ottoman sphere of influence. He also

hoped that the Ottomans would help him curb the excesses of the Tatars in Ukraine.74

According to Lev Zaborovskij, the Ottoman ruling elite was divided into two camps with regard

to supporting the Cossacks. One party believed that the Porte should be neutral and refrain from

giving help to any contending parties because of the unreliability of the Cossacks and the danger

of getting involved in a war against the Commonwealth. In addition, the Ottoman navy suffered

another defeat against the Venetians at the end of 1652. However, the other party wanted to

support the Cossacks at all cost expecting that they would help the Ottomans against any enemy

at land and sea. Therefore this party thought that the Cossack-Tatar alliance should be supported

in order to counterbalance a possible threat from the Commonwealth and dissuade the hetman

from joining a camp hostile to the Ottoman Empire.75 Given that the Commonwealth and Venice

were again trying to encourage the Ukrainian Cossacks to support an anti-Ottoman alliance and

launch expeditions in the Black Sea,76 it is reasonable for the Porte to have relations with the

hetman so that the Cossacks would not help an initiative against the Ottomans. However, at the

same time, the Ottomans had to abstain from being involved in a war with the Commonwealth

due to the turmoil in the Danubian region, the exhausting war with Venice, and Don Cossacks

attacks against Crimea and Ottoman possessions in summer 1653.77

According to the analysis of Zaborovskij and Floria, while Xmel’nyc’kyj thought that he needed

Ottoman support to maintain his alliance with Crimea, the Porte or at least a pro-Cossack faction

saw no harm in agreeing to the Cossack-Tatar alliance in order to prevent the hetman from either

yielding to the Venetian proposals or joining the Don Cossacks’ raids. However, the previously

mentioned letter of Grand Vizier Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha does not support Zaborovskij and

Floria’s view as he neither promises the hetman that the Porte will order Crimea to support the

Ukrainian Cossacks, nor makes any reference to his relations with the khan. It only proposes to

send the troops of Dobruca and the Bucak Tatars to the help of the Ukrainian Cossacks.

74 Floria, “Xmel’nyc’kyj i Turec’ka,” 98, 100. 75 Lev Zaborovskij, “Bor’ba russkoj i pol’skoj diplomatii i pozicija Osmanskoj imperii v 1653-1654 gg.,” in Osvoboditel’nye dviženija na Balkanax, ed. G. L. Arsh (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1978), 65-6. 76 Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, “Tureckaja Politika Bogdana Xmel’nyckogo,” Ukrajins’kyj arxeohrafičnyj ščoričnyk 10/11 (2006): 169-70; Ivan Kryp”jakevyč, “Turec’ka Polityka B. Xmel’nyc’koho (materialy),” Ukrajins’kyj arxeohrafičnyj ščoričnyk 10/11 (2006): 143-4. 77 Zaborovskij, “Bor’ba russkoj,” 66.

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While the Porte was burdened with domestic and foreign problems, Islam Giray did not refrain

from expressing his anger against the Ottoman authorities when interests diverged. For example,

Naima recounts that the Porte dispatched Ahmed Agha to Crimea with a saber and a robe of

honour as gifts to be delivered to the khan. After his return from Crimea in late 1652, Ahmed

Agha reported that Islam Giray was not impressed by these gifts. The khan reportedly said that

two Slavic nobles (Sakalibe Melikzadeleri) who had been captured by the Tatars during a war

and imprisoned in one of the castles on the Crimean coast escaped to Istanbul by a vessel and hid

in Galata district. When the Ottoman officials learned about these fugitives, they detained them

and in return for ransom released them. In the meantime, the khan was negotiating with non-

Muslims to exchange them for two hundred notable Muslim prisoners. He felt betrayed because

despite his friendship and service to the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans released the fugitives

instead of sending them back to Crimea. The khan reminded Ahmed Agha how he fought against

the Cossacks and prevented them from sailing with their vessels and causing damage to Ottoman

possessions. Ahmed Agha also spoke of the khan’s growing power, that the Cossacks and

Moldavia submitted to Islam Giray and that 200,000 Tatars were under the khan’s rule. In

addition, Islam Giray forced more than 50,000 Kalmyks move westward to the environs of the

Danube and these Kalmyks agreed to be obedient to the khan. Mercenaries (levendat) asking for

raids also were to join Islam Giray. Ahmed Agha also reported that while the Porte warned the

khan not to cause damage to Moldavia, he was thinking of attacking Moldavia.78 Clearly

Naima’s account of the khan's grand project does not reflect the truth. For example, it was highly

unlikely that the khan had the power to subdue and force the Kalmyks to migrate to the Danube.

However, Islam Giray was possibly encouraged by his military successes and was enriched by

booty spoils and became increasingly defiant before the representatives of the Porte.79

Another case that set the khan against the Porte was the appointment of an administrator

(mütevelli) of the pious foundations (vakfs) of the Ottoman town of İsmail. According to Naima,

while Islam Giray wanted one of his close servants to become the administrator, Bayram Agha as

the chief eunuch of the palace ignored the khan’s wish and gave the position to a person from the

78 Naima, Târih, 1430-1. 79 Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der Chane der Krim unter Osmanischer Herrschaft (Vienna, 1856), 135.

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halberdier corps (teberdar).80 Islam Giray was disappointed with this decision and sent a letter to

the judge (kadı) of İsmail. He requested the judge to dismiss the appointee of the chief eunuch

and give the office to his servant. Otherwise the khan threatened to march to İsmail and execute

both the administrator and the judge. Then the judge wrote a petition to Istanbul and entrusted it

along with the khan’s letter to the Cossack envoys who were on a mission to the Porte in early

1653. Upon their arrival in Istanbul, the envoys delivered the letters to the vizier. However, the

vizier remained silent and did not take action against the khan for intervening in administration

of an Ottoman town and threatening one of the leading bureaucrats of the town.81

As Victor Ostapchuk points out, Islam Giray was also at odds with Ramazan Beg who acted as

an intermediary between Bektaş Agha and Xmel’nyc’kyj. The khan joined the opponents of

Ramazan Beg and appealed to Istanbul in order to arrange his removal from the position of

governor (sancakbegi) of Özi. In his letter to the Porte, an Ottoman official named Ahmed

reported that the khan blamed Ramazan Beg for causing disorder and stealing horses and

captives and asked him to work for the removal of Ramazan Beg.82 Accordingly, Ramazan Beg

was replaced with his rival Veli Beg who was supposedly unwilling to maintain close relations

with the Cossacks. Since Bektaş Agha helped Ramazan Beg receive the governorship of Özi, the

dismissal of the latter was a blow to Bektaş Agha and Xmel’nyc’kyj. Thereafter, Ramazan Beg

wrote to the Porte to regain his former office and reported about Veli Beg’s hostile attitude

towards the Cossacks. He recounted how Veli Beg captured and detained the Cossack envoys

who were dispatched by the hetman to Istanbul in order to declare his allegiance to the sultan.83

Veli Beg also reportedly appropriated the hetman’s gifts to the sultan and turned the Cossack

80 According to the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi’s description in 1657, the town of Ismail consisted of 2000 households. There were Muslims, Moldavians, Wallachians, Greeks, Armenian and Jews in the town. According to the Ottoman bureaucratic traditions, the administrator of the pious foundations (vakfs) of the town of Ismail was appointed by the chief eunuch of the palace (kızlar agası). The villages within the administrative borders of Ismail were exclusively populated by the Tatars. It is likely that by giving the position of administrator to his servant, Islam Giray wanted to strengthen his control over the Tatars living in the region. See Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, vol. 5, eds. Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman and İbrahim Sezgin (Istanbul: Yapıkredi Yayınları, 2001), 59-60; Feridun Emecan, “İsmail,” in Türk Diyanet Vakfı Ansiklopedisi, vol. 23 (Istanbul, 2001), 82-3. 81 Naima, Târih, 1442. 82 Ahmed to an unknown person at the Porte, prior to late 1652, [Topkapı Saray Arşivi E 3495 in Victor Ostapchuk, “Political-Personal Intrigue on the Ottoman Frontier in Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Relations with the Porte: The Case of Ramazan Beg vs. Veli Beg,” Journal of Ukrainian Studies 33-34 (2008-2009): 373]. 83 Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha to Xmel’nyc’kyj, 23 December 1652 (22 Muharrem 1063) [Rypka, “Další příspěvek,” 220-4].

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envoys over to slave traders.84 In his letter to the Porte in February 1653, Islam Giray blamed

these envoys for spying and countered Ramazan Beg’s accusations in defence of Veli Bey.85

However, as opposed to the khan, the hetman wrote to Istanbul asking for the release of his

envoys and the return of the governorship of Özi to Ramazan Beg.86 It can be stated that

Xmel’nyc’kyj’s account about the experience of the Cossack envoys concurs with Ramazan

Beg’s earlier report and thus contradicts the khan’s letter. Accordingly, the abovementioned

letter of Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha promised the hetman to punish those who mistreated the

Cossack envoys and not to permit any harmful action against the Cossacks as long as they

remained firm in their allegiance to the Ottoman state. Therefore it seems that the Porte inclined

to give credit to the account of Xmel’nyc’kyj and Ramazan Beg over that of Islam Giray with

regard to the mistreatment of the Cossack embassy.

The hetman found himself caught up in the middle of the turmoil in the Danubian region in

spring 1653. Gheorghe Stefan, receiving the support of the Moldavian nobles and the backing of

Wallachia and Transylvania, overthrew the hospodar Vasile Lupu in April 1653. As Gheorghe

Stefan took the throne, Vasile Lupu escaped to Kam”janec’ and called his son-in-law Tymiš to

help him to restore his power in Moldavia. Then Tymiš marched with a Cossack army and some

Nogays to Moldavia and defeated Gheorghe Stefan’s army near Iași. Thereafter, Tymiš with his

father-in-law’s forces attacked Wallachia, however he was defeated by the Wallachian hospodar

Matei Basarab in May 1653 at Finta. In the meantime, Gheorghe Stefan marched into Moldavia

retook the throne. While Tymiš retreated to Ukraine to receive fresh troops, his father-in-law

Lupu took refuge with the hetman. Shortly after his return to Moldavia at the beginning of

September 1653, Tymiš was wounded in the battle at Suceava and died from his wounds,

whereupon the Cossacks agreed to capitulate.87 This defeat and demise of Tymiš marked the end

of Xmel’nyc’kyj’s Danubian venture.

Concerning Ottoman policy towards the struggle between Gheorghe Stefan and Vasile Lupu and

the Cossack involvement in the Danubian affairs, it can be stated that the Porte turned against

84 Ostapchuk, “Political-Personal Intrigue,” 369. 85 Islam Giray to an unnamed person at the Porte, received in Istanbul on 8 February 1653 in Ostapchuk, “Political-Personal Intrigue,” 373-5. 86 Xmel’nyc’kyj to Mehmed IV, 3 December 1652, Čyhyryn [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 8548 in Andras Riedlmayer and Victor Ostapchuk, “Bohdan Xmel'nyc'kyj and the Porte, 470]. 87 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 559-85, 591-2, 621-50.

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Lupu and the Cossacks after Gheorghe Stefan’s victory against pro-Lupu Moldavians and their

Cossack allies at the aforementioned battle of Finta. As Hrushevsky points out, while before this

battle Derviş Mehmed Pasha supported Lupu as Moldavia’s hospodar and asked Islam Giray to

help him, the pasha of Silistra as Lupu’s erstwhile enemy lobbied against him at the Ottoman

court. When Lupu managed to regain in the throne of Moldavia with the support of his son-in-

law Tymiš, the Porte warned the rulers of Wallachia and Transylvania to withdraw their armies

from Moldavia and have peaceful relations with Lupu. However, when the news about the

victory of Gheorghe Stefan and his Wallachian and Transylvanian allies against Lupu’s army at

Finta (deep in Wallachia near Târgoviște) reached Istanbul, the grand vizier congratulated Stefan

and recognized him as the hospodar of Moldavia. The Porte also ordered a messenger to

accompany the Cossack embassy during its return to Ukraine in July-August 1653 and ask the

hetman to stop intervening into the Danubian affairs. In his letter to the hetman, Derviş Mehmed

Pasha stated that the Porte was worried about the intervention of the hetman’s son into the

struggle between Stefan and Lupu and the Cossack attack against a country under Ottoman

protection. 88

According to the Gazette de France’s report from Warsaw on 10 June 1653, Islam Giray

received orders from Istanbul not to dispatch the Tatars to help the hetman’s son against the new

hospodar.89 As the pasha of Silistra wrote to the king how he pacified the Cossacks calling them

thieves, the Porte sent a friendly letter to the king in June 1653 asking him to give tribute/gifts to

the Tatars according to the recent treaty with them.90 The Ottomans were annoyed by Tymiš’s

return to Moldavia in early autumn 1653 and his campaign to take power from Gheorge Stefan

because they did not want the war between their Danubian vassals to continue.

In early September 1653, Xmel’nyc’kyj also wrote to Derviş Mehmed Pasha that as Jan

Kazimierz mobilized all of his forces against the Cossacks, the Transylvanian prince dispatched

auxiliary troops to help the Commonwealth and concluded eternal friendship with the king. The

hetman stated that the Cossacks as the loyal servants of the sultan needed help from the Porte in

88 Derviş Mehmed Pasha to Xmel’nyc’kyj, 1653 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 493-4]; Simon Reniger to Ferdinand III, 2 June, 16 June, 12 July, 3 August 1653, Istanbul [Zherela 12: 217-8, 229, 235-6, 237-8, 247]; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 586, 590-1. 89 Gazette de France, no. 84, Warsaw, 10 June 1653. 90 Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 131-3, 136-7.

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order to get out of this difficult situation. He added that he sent envoys to the Don Cossacks in

order to dissuade them from launching expeditions in the Black Sea and threatened that if they

did not heed him the Ukrainian Cossacks would start an offensive against them.91

Coinciding with the siege of Suceava, another issue of the Gazette de France relates from

Warsaw on 11 September 1653 that an Ottoman envoy brought to Gheorghe Stefan the Porte’s

investiture recognizing him as the hospodar of Moldavia.92 In yet another issue of the Gazette de

France, the Porte also supposedly ordered Islam Giray not to attack Moldavia and the

Commonwealth.93 On the basis of the Muscovite reports from Crimea, Aleksej Novosel’skij

states that upon the sultan’s order, the khan asked the hetman to stop meddling in Danubian

affairs.94 The change in Ottoman policy concerning the struggle between Stefan and Lupu

concurs with the khan’s interests because Islam Giray held a grudge against the deposed

hospodar due to his role in helping the captive magnates escape from Crimea in summer 1652.95

He was also overwhelmed by the disobedience of the Nogays after the battle of Batih. According

to the Gazette de France, the khan launched an expedition in early 1653 against the Nogays who

roamed outside Crimea in order to make them surrender the slain Polish hetman Marcin

Kalinowski’s son. The Nogays were reportedly determined to keep their prisoner because they

hoped to receive a handsome ransom.96 Crimea was also concerned about the Kalmyks because

they continued their attacks against the Tatars. The Kalmyk menace against Crimea made the

Commonwealth think about allying with the Kalmyks so that the Tatars would be engaged with

their archenemy and be forced to stop helping the Ukrainian Cossacks.97 In addition, the Tatars

91 Xmel’nyc’kyj to Derviş Mehmed Pasha, 7 September 1653 [Topkapı Saray Arşivi Lehce Belgeler, no. 448 in Nigar Anafarta, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ile Lehistan (Polonya) arasındaki münasebetlerle ilgili tarihi belgeler (İstanbul, 1979), 17]. 92 Gazette de France, no. 129, Warsaw, 11 September 1653. 93 Gazette de France, no. 157, Warsaw, 18 November 1653. 94 Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo vo vtoroj,” 17. 95 Simon Reniger to Ferdinand III, 25 September 1652, Istanbul [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 185-6]; L. E. Semenova, “Moldavija i Valaxija v otnošenijax Porty so stranami regiona v seredine XVII v.,” in Osmanskaja imperija i strany central’noj, vostočnoj i jugo-vostočnoj Evropy v XVII v., vol. 1, eds. G. G. Litavrin, L. E. Semenova, S. F. Oreškova, B. N. Florja (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk ISB, 1998), 238; Dariusz Milewski, Rywalizacja polsko-kozacka o Mołdawię w dobie powstania Bohdana Chmielnickiego (1648-1653) (Zabrze: Wydawnictwo inforteditions, 2011), 186, 191. 96 Gazette de France, no. 17, Warsaw, 9 January 1653. 97 Zygmunt Abrahamowicz. “The Unrealized Legation of Kasper Szymański to the Kalmuks and Persia in 1653,” Folia Orientalia 12 (1970): 14; instructions of the Commonwealth to Kasper Szymański to persuade the Kalmyks to go to war against Crimea, April 1653 [DOVUN, 661-3].

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supposedly lost many horses because of epidemics and lack of fodder in early 1653.98 For these

reasons Islam Giray was not able to be involved in Danubian affairs. When the hetman sent

missions to Crimea fervently asking for troops to rescue his son in Moldavia, the khan responded

“since the hetman’s son marched against Moldavia without seeking my consent, do not expect

from me to send not only the reinforcements but even a living soul.”99

As the Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin recounts, Islam Giray later changed his mind and

intended to dispatch several thousand Tatars to Moldavia under the chieftain of the Şirin tribe

because the ousted hospodar Lupu and the hetman allegedly promised to reward the Tatars with

his treasure in Suceava. However, upon their arrival at the Prut River, the Tatars learned that

Gheorghe Stefan had already taken Suceava from the Cossacks that Tymiš had died in the siege.

Then the commander of the Tatar army advised Vasile Lupu to cancel the expedition against

Suceava where a good number of enemy troops were concentrated. Instead he offered to send an

army to attack the headquarters of Gheorghe Stefan at the town of Roman. However, the the

khan again purportedly lost interest in Moldavian affairs and dispatched a courier to the

commander of the Tatar army with the message that he should immediately depart from

Moldavia and move his troops to Ukraine in order to unite with the army of the khan because an

encounter with the Crown army was about to happen in three days.100

On the basis of the Moldavian hospodar’s letter to the chancellor of the Commonwealth

preserved in the Polish archives in Warsaw, Ludwik Kubala recounts that Xmel’nyc’kyj

promised Islam Giray to give the treasure from Suceava and allow him to take captives in 180

towns as far as the Buh River. The ousted hospodar Lupu also offered to give the khan the

Suceava treasure in order to convince him to come to his aid. When Islam Giray was billeting at

the Buh en route to Moldavia, an Ottoman courier came to his camp with gifts and an order from

the sultan forbidding him from invading Moldavia. However, the khan allegedly did not listen to

this order and dispatched a part of his army to cross the Dnister. After learning about Tymiš’s

death and the capitulation of the Cossack army at Suceava, the Tatars departed from

98 Gazette de France, no. 32, Warsaw, 11 February 1653. 99 Gheorghe Stefan to Stefan Koryciński, 18 September 1653, Suceava [DOVUN, 712-3]. 100 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau: Die Moldauische Chronik des Miron Costin 1593-1661, ed. A. Armbruster (Graz, Wien and Köln: Verlag Styria, 1980), 232-3.

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Moldavia.101 While Kubala’s account suggests that Islam Giray sent some Tatars to Moldavia in

spite of the Ottoman order, Hrushevsky claims that the rumours about the prohibition of the

Porte was in fact fabricated by the khan in order to use alleged Ottoman opposition to Crimean

involvement in Danubian affairs as an excuse to procrastinate supporting Xmel’nyc’kyj in his

Danubian venture.102

The Ottoman official Hasan Kethüda’s letter to the Porte concurs with Costin’s account on how

the Tatars abandoned Lupu. During his sojourn in Moldavia to collect tribute from the new

hospodar Stefan, Hasan Kethüda reported to Istanbul that five or six Tatars arrived in Moldavia

expecting the customary payment of tribute to Crimea. The khan and the hetman purportedly did

not know that Tymiš had been killed and the Cossack troops at Suceava agreed to surrender to

the besieging army of Gheorge Stefan and his Wallachian, Transylvanian and Polish allies. In the

meantime, upon the request of the hetman, the khan sent 40,000 Tatars to accompany 10,000

Cossacks to Suceava. When the besieged Cossacks returned from Suceava to Ukraine, Islam

Giray sent a mission to the Tatars ordering them to return and not to attack Moldavia.103

Being disappointed for not getting a share of Lupu’s treasure, Islam Giray reportedly seized the

former hospodar and took him away from the Cossacks in order to learn the whereabouts of the

treasure.104 In Miron Costin’s words, since the deposed hospodar no longer had any expectations

for an alliance with the Cossacks, he went to Crimea to take refugee with the khan. He spent

several months at the fortress of Gözleve before Islam Giray sent him to Istanbul in accordance

with an Ottoman order.105 Georg Kraus recounts that the khan imprisoned Vasile Lupu in order

to demonstrate his goodwill to the Transylvanian prince Rákóczi II and dispatched an embassy to

him offering to maintain friendly relations and send military help in case of need. György

Rákóczi II was supposedly pleased with the message of the Tatar envoys and gave them a good

101 Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 2, 238-9. 102 Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1: The Cossack Age, 1654-1657, trans. Marta Olnyk, eds. Serhii Plokhy and Frank E. Sysyn, with the assistance of Myroslav Yurkevich (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2005), 71. 103 Hasan Kethüda to an unnamed person at the Porte, c. November 1653 [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 12142 in Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives du Musée du Palais de Topkapı, eds. A. Bennigsen, P. N. Boratav, D. Desaive and C. Lemercier-Quelquejay (Paris: Mouton, 1978), 189]. 104 Milewski, Wyprawa na Suczawę, 133. 105 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau, 239.

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reception and many gifts.106 Meanwhile, as the Gazette de France relates, Gheorghe Stefan

wrote to Crown Field Hetman Stanisław Potocki that Islam Giray dispatched an embassy to ask

for the release of Vasile Lupu’s wife and part of treasure in Suceava. Potocki answered the new

hospodar of Moldavia that the Moldavian princess was now in the hands of the Transylvanian

ruler and the treasure was distributed among his soldiers.107 However, Gheorghe Stefan

suspected that Vasile Lupu had no intention to renounce his claims to the Moldavian throne. He

wrote to the Commonwealth that Lupu was trying to gain the support of the Tatars to attack

Moldavia and made alliance with some mirzas without the knowledge or permission of the

khan.108 Gheorghe Stefan also reportedly prepared to escape to the mountains fearing a possible

Tatar attack.109

At this point, the Porte decided to intervene in order to put a stop to the rumours about Lupu and

asked the khan to send the ousted hospodar to Istanbul.110 In Simon Reniger’s remarks, two

ships sailed out in the Black Sea to Istanbul on the evening of 20 June 1654: while one ship

carried the gifts of the khan to the Porte, the other transported Lupu to Istanbul. Upon his arrival

in Istanbul, the Porte sent Lupu to the notorious Yedikule prison.111 Similarly, the seventeenth

century Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi relates that while the khan sent the deposed hospodar to

Istanbul to be imprisoned at the Yedikule, the Porte agreed to allow Matei Basarab to continue

his rule in Wallachia in return for a payment.112 While the Porte did not want to intervene into

the conflict in the Danubian region fearing that such intervention would evolve into a long anti-

Ottoman crusade, nonetheless it wanted the turmoil to come to an end as soon as possible so that

it could exercise authority over the region.113 However, as Vasile Lupu would not give up

106 Georg Kraus, Siebenbürgische Chronik des Schässburger Stadtschreibers, vol. 1 (Vienna: Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1862), 201. 107 Gazette de France, no. 2, Warsaw, 23 November 1653. 108 Gheorghe Stefan to Stanisław Potocki, 9, 24 April 1654, Iași [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 307, 309-10]; Gheorghe Stefan to Jan Kazimierz, 5 May 1654, Iași [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 311-2]. 109 Tomilo Perfir’ev’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 4 May 1654 [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 10 (St. Petersburg, 1878), 582 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]. 110 Gazette de France, no. 78, Warsaw, 21 May 1654; Kraus, Siebenbürgische Chronik, vol. 1, 218-9. 111 Simon Reniger to Ferdinand III, 25 June 1654, Istanbul [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 322]. 112 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnâme, vol. 1, eds. Robert Dankoff, Yücel Dağlı, Seyit Ali Kahraman (Istanbul: Yapıkredi Yayınları, 2006), 128. 113 Milewski, Rywalizacja polsko, 283.

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attempting to restore his rule in Moldavia, the turmoil in the Danubian region would not end.

Therefore the Porte asked the khan to send him to Istanbul.

While Islam Giray obeyed the Porte’s request, it is uncertain that to what extent Ottoman

pressure made him surrender the ousted hospodar. It is possible to surmise that the khan possibly

understood that there was no benefit in holding Lupu in Crimea and saw no harm in sending him

to Istanbul as per the Ottoman request. Since the ousted hospodar attempted to contact the

mirzas who in opposition to the khan did not want to break with Xmel’nyc’kyj after his

submission to Muscovite authority,114 Islam Giray possibly wanted to prevent him from getting

involved in Crimean affairs and saw the Porte’s request as an opportunity to get rid of him.

4.2. The Battle of Žvanec’ and its Outcomes

While the Moldavian venture was approaching failure, Xmel’nyc’kyj was also burdened with the

news that the Commonwealth was preparing to attack Ukraine. On the basis of the Muscovite

reports from Crimea, Hrushevsky recounts that when the Cossack embassy set out to Crimea in

summer 1653 to report to the khan that the king had already marched with a large army to

Ukraine, Islam Giray did not agree to take any action and sent the Cossack embassy back with a

letter to Xmel’nyc’kyj stating that he wanted to know if it was certain that the king set out for

Ukraine at the head of the Crown army. If the king headed the army, then the khan would mount

his horse to go to help the hetman.115 Hrushevsky again refers to the Muscovite reports from

Crimea to point out that when Islam Giray departed Crimea in the second half of September

1653, he supposedly tried to show that the objective of his campaign was to help the hetman

against the king. In fact, the khan would first march to Suceava to rescue Tymiš and then head to

the Commonwealth and Wallachia. However, there was a strong opposition among the Tatars

regarding these objectives. The Tatars were not much willing to go on a campaign against the

Commonwealth which had already been devastated and depopulated during the previous wars.

As they would not be able to find much to plunder in the Commonwealth, the Tatars wanted to

attack Muscovy instead. Eventually, the hetman managed to convince the khan “one way or

114 Gheorghe Stefan to Jan Kazimierz, 5 May 1654, Iași [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 311-2]. 115 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 614.

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another” first to rescue his son from Suceava and then march against the Crown army at

Kam”janec’.116

According to the Gazette de France, upon the news that the khan with all his forces had joined

the hetman, the king summoned a council of war where it was decided that the Crown army

should stay in its advantegous position (i.e., Žvanec’) instead of trying to reach the enemy. The

council of war decided that the presence of the Crown army there would prevent the Tatars from

dividing into scouts to launch attacks. If they intended to attack the Polish camp, it would be

easier for the Crown army to fight with them there rather than in the plains.117

Miron Costin provides a slightly different version of events. According to him, when auxiliary

Transylvanian troops joined the Crown army at Kam”janec’, Jan Kazimierz decided to march

from Kam”janec’ to intercept Islam Giray and Xmel’nyc’kyj in order to settle accounts with

them in a battle. After the scouts reported to the king that the khan assembled all Tatars including

the chieftain of the Şirin tribe, the king decided to wait for the Cossack-Tatar army near the

Polish-Moldavian border at the Dnister because he planned to receive provisions from Moldavia.

Accordingly, the king moved his camp from Kam”janec’ to Žvanec’. However, the khan and the

hetman purportedly realized that the Commonwealth planned to draw the Tatars and the

Cossacks to hostile terrain where only well-trained armies would be able to conduct military

operations, and therefore they decided not to launch an offensive against the Crown army based

on their catastrophic experience at Berestečko. Consequently, Islam Giray moved to the plains to

the north of Kam”janec’ while Xmel’nyc’kyj stayed at Husjatyn.118

The Gazette de France also recounts that Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania were no longer

interested in giving support to the Commonwealth because the Cossacks did not pose a threat

anymore after Suceava. The Danubian rulers possibly feared a reaction from the Porte if they

sent detachments to help the Commonwealth against the Muslim Tatars.119 While the rumours

circulated that the new Moldavian hospodar Gheorghe Stefan ordered his troops to go to help the

Crown army, the Moldavians asked Hasan Kethüda, who came to collect tribute for the Porte, to

116 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 57-9. 117 Gazette de France, no. 149, Warsaw, 30 October 1653. 118 Grausame Zeiten in der Moldau, 237-8. 119 Gazette de France, no. 149, Warsaw, 30 October 1653.

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write to the khan that the rumour was false and advise him not to attack Moldavia.120 Meanwhile,

the king’s troops captured a Tatar who was reportedly on a mission to the Danubian region. They

learned that this Tatar was an important mirza named Toktamış Agha, and he was travelling to

convey the khan’s message to the Danubian rulers.121 During his interrogation, Toktamış Agha

tried to assure that his embassy did not carry hostile intention against the Commonwealth. He

explained that the khan’s army set out from Bar to the king’s camp at Žvanec’ in order to learn

whether the Commonwealth desired war or peace with the Tatars and the Cossacks.122 In fact,

the Tatar envoy was entrusted with the letters of the khan and his vizier Sefer Gazi Agha to the

Transylvanian prince and the Wallachian hospodar warning them not to help the king since it

was contrary to Ottoman interests and inviting them to join the Tatars against the Crown army.123

Since the Tatar envoy was detained at the Polish camp, these letters of the khan and his vizier did

not reach to the prince of Transylvania and the hospodar of Wallachia. However, none of the

Danubian rulers supported the Commonwealth. Therefore Islam Giray managed to make sure

that the king could not receive substantial help from a third party.

In late October 1653, the Cossack-Tatar army laid siege to the king’s camp at Žvanec’. It can be

stated that the setting of the siege of Zboriv repeated itself two years later at Žvanec’.

As the king’s camp was suffering from starvation, epidemics and desertion, relief to it came from

the khan’s camp as an envoy was sent to deliver Sefer Gazi Agha’s letter to the chancellor asking

for the renewal of the Treaty of Zboriv.124 The Moldavian hospodar Gheorghe Stefan had

previously written to Crown Chancellor Stefan Koryciński that the khan was planning to send an

embassy to make peace and advised the Commonwealth to approach the Tatars instead of

120 Hasan Kethüda to an unnamed person at the Porte, c. November 1653 [Topkapı Saray Arşivi, E 12142 in Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives, 189]. 121 Gazette de France, no. 8, Warsaw, 11 December 1653; Andrzej Potocki to an unnamed Lithuanian noble, 25 November 1653, Žvanec’ [Arxiv Jugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, izdavaemyj komissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, pt. 3, vol. 4 (Kyiv, 1914), 772 (henceforth Arxiv JuZR)]. 122 Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 2, 282-4; Ciesielski, Od Batohu do Żwanca, 251; Milewski, Rywalizacja polsko-kozacka, 281. 123 Kubala, Szkice historyczne, vol. 2, 286-9; Islam Giray to The prince of Transylvania György Rákóczi II, December 1653 [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji, vol. 3, 118-9]. 124 Gazette de France, no. 13, Warsaw, 25 December 1653; an undated anonymous letter about the relations between Crown Chancellor and Vizier Sefer Gazi Agha, the negotiations and military clashes between the Tatars and the Poles [Arxiv JuZR, pt. 3, vol. 4, 777-80]; an anonymous letter from the camp of the Crown army at Žvanec’, 3 December 1653 [Michałowski, wojskiego lubelskiego a później kasztelana bieckiego Księga Pamiętnicza (1647–1655), ed. Antoni Z. Helcel (Kraków, 1864), 708].

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fighting against them.125 In any event, the chancellor responded to Sefer Gazi Agha at the end of

November blaming the hetman for violating the treaties several times and offered to restore

peace between Crimea and the Commonwealth and make an alliance against the Ukrainian

Cossacks.126 While the Tatars and the Commonwealth exchanged letters accusing each other of

violating the peace,127 a messenger from the khan’s camp named Ahmet Gazi Atalık (Achmet

Kasy Atalik) came with a letter to the chancellor. The messenger warned that if the

Commonwealth really wanted to make peace, then instead of trying to gain time and exchanging

useless complaints with the Tatars, they should send their hostages, appoint delegates and chose

the location of meeting where the representatives of both parties would conduct negotiations.

Accordingly, the king allowed the messenger to go back along with hostages who would be kept

in the khan’s camp during the negotiations. Islam Giray assigned Sefer Gazi Agha to lead the

Tatar delegation in talks with the king’s commissioners. During the negotiations, Sefer Gazi

Agha asked that the Treaty of Zboriv be restored and the Tatar army be allowed to plunder two

provinces as a compensation for their campaign expenses. The Commonwealth was required to

pay tribute/gifts to Crimea as their predecessors did, pardon the Cossacks for their past actions

and allow them to live in peace. At the same time, if in the future the Cossacks would commit a

wrong against the king and his nobles, Islam Giray promised to take sides with the

Commonwealth. The khan also received some payment and permission to loot Ukraine on his

return to Crimea. In addition, the Crimean leaders proposed that the king form a league against

Muscovy.128 Albrycht Radziwiłł recounts that the Commonwealth’s authorities agreed to make

peace with the Tatars because the Crown army was suffering from hunger and other difficulties.

No text of this treaty restoring the Treaty of Zboriv has survived; it was apparently never

documented and only a verbal agreement. In addition, the king agreed to deliver to the Tatars

tribute/gift payment arrears for three years.129

Many historians have considered that Islam Giray betrayed his Cossack allies once again by

unilaterally negotiating and concluding peace with the Commonwealth at Žvanec’. In relation to

Islam Giray’s motives for this act of “treachery,” his concerns about the Ukrainian-Muscovite

125 Gheorghe Stefan to Stefan Koryciński, 18 November 1653, Roman [DOVUN, 717-9]. 126 Stefan Koryciński to Sefer Gazi Agha, 30 November 1653, Žvanec’ [DOVUN, 719-23]. 127 Gazette de France, no. 13, Warsaw, 25 December 1653. 128 Gazette de France, no. 19, Warsaw, 8 January 1654. 129 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik, vol. 3, 398.

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rapprochement, the opposition of the Tatars to be involved in a prolonged campaign and the

Porte’s unwillingness to allow Crimea’s participation in the conflict between the Cossacks and

the Commonwealth have been underlined.130 It has also been claimed that the besieged camp of

the king was rescued from imminent surrender only by bribery and promises by the Crown

officials. In order to protect the balance of power among their northern neighbours, the Crimean

Tatars did not let the Cossacks gain a decisive victory against the king’s forces.131

The Soviet historians Igor’ Grekov, Vladimir Koroljuk and Il’ja Miller surmise that the Porte and

Crimea wanted to make Ukraine and the Commonwealth fight against each other in order to

implement their sinister long-term plan for a major offensive in Eastern Europe. In their view,

eventually, Ottoman and Crimean feudal leaders managed to capture temporarily a significant

part of Ukraine, bring severe damage to the Commonwealth and start campaign preparations

against Vienna.132 Thus, Grekov, Koroljuk and Miller consider the Crimean involvement in the

Cossack-Polish struggle of 1648-54 and Ottoman support for Petro Dorošenko’s struggle against

the Commonwealth in the 1670s as a part of a long-term and well-coordinated Turco-Tatar

scheme paving the way for the establishment of Ottoman rule in Kam”janec’ in the 1670s and for

the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. In a similar vein, another Soviet historian Ivan Bojko

claims that the alliance of Translylvania, Wallachia and the Commonwealth against the Cossacks

and setbacks in the Moldavian venture led the hetman to ask for military help from the Porte.

The Porte welcomed the hetman’s appeal in order to “enslave” Ukraine and carry out its

130 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 1, 615, 615 n. 360; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 58-9, 74-5, 79, 81-2, 85, 88, 100; Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 141-3, 183; Myxajlyna, Vyzvol’na borot’ba, 183; George Vernadsky, Tsardom of Moscow, 1547-1682 (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1969), 463; Petrovs’kyj, Narysy z istoriji, vol. 4, 188; Wasilewski, Jan Kazimierz, 32; Korduba, “Der Ukraine Niedergang,” 213; Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe,” 212; Semenova, “Moldavija i Valaxija,” 239; Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo vo vtoroj,” 17; Holobuckyj, Diplomatičeskaja istorija, 341-2. 131 Nikolaj Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 11 of Sobranie sočinenij (St. Petersbug: Tipografija M. M. Stasjuleviča, 1904), 546-8; Vyacheslav Lypynsky, “The Ukraine at the Turning Point,” in The Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. 3 (Fall-Winter 1953): 605; Oleksandr Ohloblyn, Ukrajins’ko-Moskovs’ka uhoda 1654 (Kyiv, L’viv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznastva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2005), 12; Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 121; Wójcik, Dzikie Pola, 206; Bojko, “Osvobodiel’naja vojna,” 140; Serhii Plokhy, The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 57; Ciesielski, Od Batohu do Żwanca, 265; Stepankov, “Perejaslav 1654 roku,” 102; Łukasz Ossoliński, Rzecz o hetmanie Wyhowskim (Warsaw: Prószyński i S-ka, 2009), 49; Korduba, “Der Ukraine Niedergang,” 219; Jurij Mycyk, Het’man Ivan Vyhovs’kyj (Kyiv: Vydavnyčyj dim KM Akademija, 2004), 28: In relation to the “treason” of the khan historians have mainly referred to the report of the Muscovite envoys Rodion Strešnev and Martem’jan Bredixin on their talks with Xmel’nyc’kyj and Vyhovs’kyj in Čyhyryn, 12 September-31 December 1653 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 112-6, 127-8]. 132 Grekov, Koroljuk and Miller, Vossoedinenie Ukrainy, 80-1.

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aggressive policy to weaken its northern neighbours through the intermediacy of its Crimean

vassal.133

Since the Ottomans were burdened with fractional court struggles and an exhausting war with

Venice, it is not possible to give credence to the analysis of Bojko, Grekov, Koroljuk and Miller

about long-term Turco-Tatar conspiracy in Eastern Europe. The Ottoman chronicles also suggest

that Crimean and Ottoman interests clashed in the northern affairs. In his account of the events of

1652-3, Katip Çelebi recounts that through his envoys to the Porte Xmel’nyc’kyj appealed the

Ottomans to grant him a hospodarship like Wallachia and Moldavia. However, the khan’s

representative in Istanbul (kapu kethüdası) objected to the hetman’s request. The Porte

purportedly agreed to the objection of the Tatar official and ordered Siyavuş Pasha to report to

the hetman that the Ottoman Empire was not interested in his request.134 Müneccimbaşı explains

the opposition of the khan’s representative by the fact that Crimea considered the Cossacks as its

subjects.135 It is possible to give credence to Müneccimbaşı’s account because parallel to the

increasing involvement of the Tatars in the Ukrainian Cossack struggle with the Commonwealth,

Islam Giray began to be increasingly persistent in asking the hetman to become his vassal and

even threatened not to help the Cossacks in case he declined his demand.136 On the basis of

Müneccimbaşı’s account, it can be surmised that Crimea brought its claims over the Cossacks to

the table, wanted to maintain its role as intermediary between the Ottoman Empire and Ukraine,

133 Bojko, “Osvobodiel’naja vojna,” 137. 134 Zeynep Aycibin, “Katip Çelebi, Fezleke: Tahlil ve Metin” (PhD dissertation, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul, 2007), 1093. 135 Müneccimbaşı, Sahaif ül-ahbar, vol. 3, trans. Nedim Efendi, ed. Derviş Ahmed Efendi (İstanbul: Matbaa- ı Âmire, 1868), 705; Sene-i mezburede ...Kazak taifesi taraf-ı devlet-i ‘aliyeden Eflak ve Boğdan Begi üzerlerine voyvoda nasb ve tayin buyurulmak ricasında oldular lakin anlar Tatara tabi‘iyet üzere olmaları ile hanın asitanede olan adamları bu hususa razı olmayub anların cevabı Silistre Beglerbegisi Siyavuş Paşanın reyine havale olundu... 136 Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 279; Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 138-9; Stepankov, “Perejaslav 1654 roku,” 100; Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe,” 212-3; In April 1653, Xmel’nyc’kyj sent an embassy to Moscow to report to Aleksej Mixajlovič that while the Porte and Islam Giray wrote letters and sent envoys to Ukraine inviting the Cossacks to pledge allegiance to them, the hetman did not have any intention to submit to Ottoman or Crimean suzerainty. By speaking of Ottoman and Crimean intentions about taking Ukraine under their suzerainty, the Cossack leader possibly wanted the Muscovite state to agree to help him. See Aleksej Mixajlovič to Semen Prozorovskij, 7 September 1650, Moscow [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 8 (St. Petersburg, 1873), 364 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]; Instructions to the Muscovite envoys Boris Repnin-Obolenskij and his associates for their mission to the Commonwealth, 24 April 1653 [VUR, vol. 3, 268]; the voevoda of Sevsk Andrej Buturlin’s report to Moscow, 11 July 1653 [VUR vol. 3, 329-30]; the Ukrainian Cossack envoys Kindrat Burljaj and Sylujan Mužylovskyj’s mission to Moscow, 22 April 1653 [Akty JuZR, vol. 3, 489-93]; the Zemskij Sobor’s decision on Ukraine’s submission to Muscovy, 1 October 1653 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 15; SGGD, pt. 3, 487-8].

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and made the Porte refuse Xmel’nyc’kyj’s request to obtain vassal status comparable to that of

the Danubian prince.

Kaczmarczyk claims that the khan set out from Crimea to help the Cossacks against the coalition

of Transylvania and Wallachia. At the beginning of his campaign, he had no intention to fight

against the king. The khan’s army was not prepared to wage a prolonged campaign and planned

to return to Crimea before the beginning of the winter. The hetman allegedly wanted to keep the

Tatars at his side at all costs because he thought that the presence of the Tatars would guarantee

his safety and gave him time to find out a way to extricate himself from the difficult situation in

the aftermath of the capitulation of the Cossack army at Suceava. The khan also feared that his

army could not find food and other provisions in the Kam”janec’ area and did not have proper

clothing in the coming winter.137 Some historians have also referred to the threat of a Kalmyk

invasion in autumn 1653 to explain the khan’s plan to return home.138

According to some historians, the Treaty of Žvanec’ showed Xmel’nyc’kyj that the khan would

not help the Cossacks gain their independence. Therefore the hetman no longer hesitated to

develop his relations with Muscovy and decided to submit Ukraine under Muscovite rule.139

Given the bitter experience of alliance with Crimea, the Porte and the Commonwealth, the

hetman considered Muscovy as a lesser evil and approached the Muscovite state.140 It has also

been stated that since Islam Giray made peace with the Commonwealth, the Cossack-Tatar

alliance ceased to exist and the Tatars became an enemy of the Cossacks.141 However, it is not

clear why the hetman consented to stop hostilities and withdraw from the siege at Žvanec when

the Cossacks had the capability by themselves to destroy the Crown army that was in such a

desperate situation. One possible explanation is that the hetman was worried that the Tatars

137 Kaczmarczyk, Bohdan Chmielnicki, 196-7. 138 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj social’no, 423; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 304; Ciesielski, Od Batohu do Żwanca, 269-70; Fedoruk, Mižnardona dyplomatija, 48. 139 Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 143; Wójcik, Dzikie Pola, 206; Kučernjuk, Džerela pro rosijs’ko, 166-7; Kryp”jakevyč, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 149; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj social’no, 427; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 309-10; Vasilij Stepankov, “Kam”janec’ka uhoda j Perejaslavs’ka rada: sproba doslidžennja polityčnyx naslidkiv Žvanec’koji kampaniji,” in Ukrajins’ko-rosijs’kyj dhovir 1654 r.: novi pidxody do istoriji mižderžavnyx stosunkiv, ed. V. A. Smolij (Kyiv: Institut istoriji Ukrajiny, 1995), 9-13. 140 Tatjana Jakovleva, Het’manščyna v druhij polovyni 50-x rokiv XVII stolittja (Kyiv: Osnovy, 1998), 55. 141 Theodore Mackiw, Xmel’nyččyna v tohočasnyx zaxidn’ojevropejs’kyx džerelax (Ostroh and New York: Ukrajins’ke istoryčne tovarystvo nacional’nyj universytet Ostroz’ka akademiia, 2007), 156.

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would abrogate the alliance with the Cossacks and launch a sudden attack against them if he

declined to comply with the insistence of the khan to conclude peace with the Commonwealth.142

Concerning the Treaty of Žvanec’, Smolij and Stepankov claim that the verbal agreement at

Žvanec’ had no provision to restore the Treaty of Zboriv but only guaranteed some rights and

liberties for the Cossacks such as increasing the number of the registered Cossacks and paying

for their service. Also, Islam Giray apparently consented to the presence of the Kingdom’s forces

army in Ukraine and the return of the Polish nobles to their estates there. Moreover, the Treaty of

Žvanec’ did not stipulate autonomy for the Cossacks in Ukraine. Although the Cossack side was

allowed to participate only in the final stage of the negotiations, it was given a subordinate role.

The khan asked the hetman to send his delegates to Kam”janec’, but at the same time he

promised the king that he would pacify the Ukrainian Cossacks. Xmel’nyc’kyj supposedly

instructed the Cossack delagates not to join the talks if they were given a secondary role and it

was proposed that they participate in an anti-Muscovite alliance.143 Since the agreement was

apparently not documented, the arguments about whether or not the agreement at Žvanec’ aimed

to restore the provisions of the Treaty of Zboriv has not gone beyond speculation.

The Ottoman chronicles present a detailed account on the course of the campaign of 1653 and

the events that led to the Treaty of Žvanec’. Katip Çelebi (and Naima following him) relates that

Islam Giray sent an embassy to Xmel’nyc’kyj to ask about the situation in the Commonwealth,

the hetman dispatched some captive informants to Crimea who testified that the king had

assembled a large army and hired 20,000 German musket-bearing mercenaries. The hetman also

sent a caller for help (feryadcı) to Crimea to report that Jan Kazimierz mobilized 150,000 troops

to Starokostjantyniv (Kart Kostantin) with the purpose of ravaging Cossack domains.

Accordingly, Islam Giray called the mirzas to prepare for a campaign within ten days and sent an

advance army of 1,000 Tatars to Ukraine. On 20 September 1653 (27 Şevval 1063), the khan

completed his preparations and set out from Bagçasaray. Five days after his departure from

Bagçasaray, he arrived at Orkapı. On 26 September (4 Zilka‘de) Islam Giray departed Orkapı for

Ukraine. After crossing the Dnipro, the khan’s army came to the environs of the Dnister River.

142 Bohdan Sušyns’kyj, Kozac’ka Ukrajina: Xmel’nyččyna (Odesa: VMV, 2004) 293. 143 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj social’no, 429; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 310-1.

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Then the khan marched with more than 100,000 troops and stopped near the fortress of Bar.

Receiving the news about the arrival of the Tatars, the king ordered his army to cancel the march

against the Cossacks. The Tatars also learned from captive informants that the king planned to

obtain provisions and fodder in Ukraine and march against the Cossacks in winter, however upon

the news about the arrival of the Tatars, he escaped to a fort (palanka) called Žvanec’

(İzvance144) on the right bank of the Dnister River. The Ottoman chroniclers describe that this

fort was at an inaccessible place because its environs were surrounded by the rivers and a

mountain. The Crown army built a deep ditch (iki kat hendek) around the fort and placed

cannons in order to prevent the enemy from having access to the fort in the event that the rivers

froze. In the meantime, the Tatars learned that the king’s forces were in a desperate situation

because of not having enough provisions in the middle of the winter. The Tatars decided to

destroy all supplies of provisions and ravage the nearby castles, towns and villages so that the

Crown army was further exhausted. They also implemented a tight blockade on the camp of the

Crown army and harassed anyone who went outside the camp in order to search foodstuff and

fodder. Many horses and troops in the king’s camp perished because of starvation. Many others

also started deserting the camp. Therefore the enemy wrote a letter to Sefer Gazi Agha asking for

ending hostilities and starting peace negotiations. They promised to give goods as gifts in

addition to the annual treasure to the Tatars. Sefer Gazi Agha conveyed this request and promise

to the khan. Then Islam Giray summoned the mirzas to ask their opinion about making peace

with the Commonwealth. However, the mirzas were divided into two camps and hence could not

reach a decision. While one party agreed to conclude peace with the Commonwealth, another

party argued in favour of making use of the opportunity in order to achieve an absolute victory

because the Crown army became weary from hunger and fell into a desperate situation during the

harsh siege of seventy days. The hawkish party offered to continue the siege for a couple of days

or ravage the fortresses and countryside of the Commonwealth, and even march as far as Warsaw

and spend the winter there. The Ottoman chronicles relate that since Islam Giray was a generous

144 In his edition of Târih-i Naîmâ, Mehmed İpşirli has read the name of the fort (palanka) called Žvanec’ from Ottoman script with Latin letters as “Öziçe” (اوزیچھ). In her dissertation on Fezleke, Zeynep Aycibin has given the name as “Uzunca” (ازوانجھ). However, as is the place name Žvanec’ in Ukraine, as Dariusz Kołodziejczyk suggests, the Ottoman Turkish rendering of the name in Latin script should be “İzvançe.” See Naima, Târih, 1500; Aycibin, “Katip Çelebi, Fezleke,” 1094; Müneccimbaşı, Sahaif ül-ahbar, vol. 3, 705; Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, The Ottoman Survey Register of Podolia (ca. 1681): Defter-i Mufassal-i Eyalet-i Kamaniçe, pt. 1 (Camrbidge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and Kyiv: Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 2004), 672.

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and merciful person, he decided to conclude peace by arguing that it would not be appropriate to

destroy those who asked for mercy. According to the chroniclers, the mirzas consented to the

khan’s decision and sent an envoy to the king’s camp to receive two hostages from the sons of

the leading lords because the Commonwealth was under the control of the nobility. The king and

his lords agreed to the demands of the Tatars and asked the khan to send his hostage to the

fortress of Kam”janec’ in order to start negotiations. Accordingly, Sefer Gazi Agha, the chieftain

of the Şirin tribe and five or six mirzas escorted Molla Gani Agha to Kam”janec’ to give him as

a hostage to the king. The chancellor and a number of lords came out with their regiments in

front of the walls of the fortress and started talks with the Tatars. The khan’s representatives

asked that the Commonwealth should pay customary treasure every year without delays and

promise not to damage Ottoman possessions and not to intend any hostile action against the

Cossack country. They also demanded that two lords send their sons to the Tatars as their

hostages, and the Commonwealth should treat the friends of the Tatars as friends and their

enemies as enemies and send troops to participate in future campaigns of the Tatars. Since the

Tatars and the Nogays incurred expenses during the campaign, they would not agree to retreat

from the Commonwealth without booty. For this reason, they should be allowed to seize booty

from castles, forts and villages of their choice during their withdrawal. If not, more than 200,000

Tatars and Nogays and 80,000 Cossacks would ravage the Commonwealth and move as far as

Warsaw. After listening to these demands, the king’s delegates asked the Tatars to return to their

camp so that they could discuss these conditions with the king and give a final answer in the

morning. When the chancellor and other negotiators returned to the fortress of Kam”janec’, some

mirzas again began to talk about ending the negotiations and resuming the war. They sent Kaytas

Agha and Kanmehmed Mirza to the fortress to take Molla Gani Agha back and stated their

opposition to peace negotiations. The Commonwealth’s authorities were extremely worried by

this action of the warmongering mirzas. Therefore the lords visited the khan’s camp and

entreated him not to abandon the ongoing negotiations. Then the king’s delegates accepted all

conditions but requested the Tatars that the Cossacks should be allowed to take booty only from

villages and the countryside and exempt castles and forts. The Tatar delegates agreed to this

demand and made peace with the Commonwealth on 16 December 1654 (25 Muharrem 1064).

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The chroniclers conclude their account of the campaign of autumn 1653 by recounting that the

Tatars plundered many villages, forts and castles during their return home.145

As opposed to the opinion that the reluctance of the Tatars to wage a prolonged campaign played

some role in making the khan agree to seek peace, the account of Katip Çelebi and Naima on the

campaign of autumn 1653 suggest that there one party of the mirzas was willing to continue the

war against the Commonwealth and was certainly opposed to the khan’s decision to send a

hostage to the Commonwealth at Kam”janec’ as a guarantee for the ceasefire during peace

negotiations. That group of mirzas supposedly regarded the plight of the Crown army as an

opportunity to capture as much booty and slaves as possible. The peace conditions that the

khan’s representatives put forward resemble the provisions in Islam Giray’s instrument of the

Treaty of Zboriv. The khan and his entourage once again asked the Commonwealth to pay

tribute/gifts, refrain from harming Ottoman possessions and the Ukrainian Cossacks, be in

friendship with Crimea, send troops for the khan’s campaign in the future and give the Tatars the

right to take booty during their withdrawal. Concerning why Islam Giray agreed to make peace

at Žvanec’, the chronicles only referred to his mercifulness.

4.3. The Crimean Reaction to the Ukrainian-Muscovite Raprochement at

Perejaslav in 1654

The recurring appeals of Xmel’nyc’kyj to the Muscovite state since the early days of his struggle

against the Commonwealth were beginning to produce results in summer 1653. After Tsar

Aleksej Mixajlovič wrote to the hetman that he agreed to take Ukraine under his protection in

July 1653, the Zemskij Sobor was convened and approved the tsar’s decision.146 Thereupon, the

Muscovite state also sent an embassy under Vasilij Buturlin to discuss with the hetman the

formalization of Ukraine’s entry into Muscovite suzerainty. Xmel’nyc’kyj and his officials

145 Aycibin, “Katip Çelebi, Fezleke,” 1093-6; Naima, Târih, 1499-1501; Müneccimbaşı, Sahaif ül-ahbar, vol. 3, 705. 146 Aleksej Mixajlovič to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, 22 June 1653, Moscow [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 1-4]; the Zemskij Sobor’s decision on Ukraine’s submission to Muscovy, 1 October 1653 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 15; SGGD, pt. 3, 487-8; A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, vol. 1, Early Times to the Late Seventeenth Century, eds. George Vernadsky, Ralph T. Fisher Jr., Alan D. Ferguson, Andrew Lossky and Sergei Pushkarev (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1972), 298-9].

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negotiated with the Muscovite embassy in Perejaslav in January 1654 and consented to go under

the tsar’s authority. Accordingly, the hetman summoned the Cossacks for a general assembly.

The Cossacks listened to the speech of the hetman about why Ukraine should submit to the tsar’s

authority and supported his decision to become a Muscovite protectorate. Then Xmel’nyc’kyj

and the Cossacks took an oath of allegiance to the tsar.147

Before analyzing how the hetman’s submission to the tsar influenced Crimea’s attitude towards

Muscovy and Ukraine,148 it is necessary to treat Crimean-Muscovite relations between the ill-

fated Muscovite campaign of the Tatars in August 1650 and the 1654 Cossack council of

Perejaslav. One of the controversial issues between Bagçasaray and Moscow was the rivalry over

the North Caucasus. The Muscovite state constructed a fortified town at the confluence of the

Sunža and Terek rivers by the middle of June 1651 in order to gain advantage in the struggle

with the Safavid Iran for trade routes in the North Caucasus and prevent the Kumyks149 from

engaging in slave trade between the Caucasus and the Azak region.150 The Terek Cossacks were

also based in this fortified town with the aim of preventing the tsar’s subjects from being driven

into captivity. Although the Muscovites built a fortress at the same place nearly six decades

147 Report of Vasilij Buturlin’s embassy concerning the Perejaslav Rada and Ukraine’s submission to Muscovy, 8 January 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 218-9; SGGD, pt. 3, 494-5; A Source Book for Russian History, 299-300]. 148 Halil İnalcık, a Turkish historian of Crimean Tatar origin, considered the submission of the hetman to the tsar’s authority as a new phase of Ukrainian-Muscovite relations and, after the annexation of Kazan and Astrakhan by Muscovy, as the second decisive historical moment for Crimea as far as the strengthening of Muscovy’s position on the path to becoming a dominant power in the region was concerned. In contrast, Victor Ostapchuk explains that the 1654 Cossack council of Perejaslav was only the beginning of Muscovite involvement in the conflict between the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth, the beginning of a long and hard struggle for hegemony in Ukraine and in the northern Black Sea region. See Halil İnalcık, “Struggle for East European Empire: 1400-1700: The Crimean Khanate, Ottomans and the Rise of the Russian Empire,” The Turkish Year Book 21 (1982-1991), 7; Halil İnalcık, “Power Relationships between Russia, the Crimea and the Ottoman Empire as Reflected in Titulature,” in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire (Bloomiıngton: Indiana University Turkish Studies and Turkish Ministry of Culture Joint Series, 1993), 380; Victor Ostapchuk, “Cossack Ukraine In and Out of Ottoman Orbit, 1648-1681,” in The European Tributary States of the Ottoman Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, eds. Gábor Kármán and Lovro Kunčević (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2013), 136-7. 149 The Kumyks are a Turkic speaking people of the northeastern part of the Caucasus. From the fifteenth century to 1867, the Kumyks lived as the dominant group of a local principality named the Shamkhalat. See Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500-1800 (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), 15; James Minahan, One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups (Westport CT, London: Greenwood Press, 2000), 389-91; Carl Waldman and Catherine Mason, Encyclopedia of European Peoples (New York: Facts on File, 2006), 477-8. 150 Danijal S. Kidirnijazov and Zuxra K. Musaurova, Očerki istorii nogajcev XV-XVIII vv. (Maxačkala: Izdat. dom Narody Dagestana, 2003), 202-3; Sagit Faizov, “Iz perepiski krymskix xanov s russkim carem i pol’skim korolem 1654-1658 gg.,” in Russkaja i Ukrainskaja diplomatija v meždunarodnyx otnošenijax Evrope serediny XVII v., eds. M. S. Mejer, L. E. Semenova, B. N. Florja, O. V. Xavanova, and I. Švarč (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akedemija Nauk, 2007), 475 n. 52; Faizov, Pis’ma xanov, 60.

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earlier, they demolished it in accordance with their treaty with the Porte in 1605. Some local

rulers also approached the khan to encourage him to counter increasing Muscovite presence in

the region. Accordingly, two Kumyk princes (šamxals) of Dagestan dispatched envoys to Crimea

in 1652 requesting military help against the Muscovite garrison of Terek.151 Islam Giray also

wrote to Aleksej Mixajlovič that the Kumyk prince and nobles sent a messenger to Crimea to

complain about Muscovy because their travel to Crimea and the Circassian country was hindered

by the new Muscovite fortress. The khan expressed his opposition to the construction of the

fortress in the region.152 Seeing the North Caucasus as his vassal region and source of tribute and

slaves, Islam Giray feared that increasing Muscovite presence would undermine his interests in

the region.

In addition, the Muscovite state also attempted to reconcile with the Great Nogays and reassert

its authority over them. As we have discussed in the first chapter, with the increasing pressure of

the Kalmyks in the 1630s, the Great Nogays moved from their pastures in the Astrakhan area to

lands west of the Don River and in the North Caucasus. As Michael Khodarkovsky states, the

Great Nogays were even united with the Little Nogays and sought protection from the Crimean

Khanate. However, the reconciliation of the Great Nogays with their Little Nogay brethrens and

Khanate was temporary.153 In the meantime, some nobles of the Great Nogays negotiated with

Moscow to restore their allegiance to Muscovy. In October 1651 they promised to pay allegiance

to Aleksej Mixajlovič, stop exchanging embassies with the Crimean khan and other Muslim

rulers, and provide help to the Muscovites if the Crimean khan and other Muslim rulers launched

an expedition against the domains of the tsar.154 Meanwhile, as the Muscovite voevoda of

Putyvl’ Sen’ka Prozorovskoj reported, Islam Giray secretly maintained contact with the Kazan

and Astrakhan Tatars even after the debacle of Berestečko with the aim of eventually

establishing his power in the Muslim lands of Muscovy.155 Therefore, while the khan did not

lose his hope to restore the former Golden Horde realms from Muscovy, some of the Great

Nogays were reaffirming their allegiance to Muscovy.

151 Kidirnijazov and Musaurova, Očerki istorii nogajcev, 205. 152 Islam Giray to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 2 December 1652-21 November 1653 (1063), Bagçasaray [MdiKx, no. 156]. 153 Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, 130. 154 The oath of allegiance of the Nogay nobles to Aleksej Mixajlovič, October 1651 [SGGD, pt. 3, 467-70]. 155 Semen Prozorovskij to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 4 September 1651, Putyvl’ [VUR, vol. 3, 128].

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At the same time, the Crimean Khanate maintained its relationship with Muscovy in order to

continue both receiving tribute/gifts payments and exchanging envoys. Dimitrij Dolgorukov and

Semen Zvjagin set out to Valujka in autumn 1651 in order to deliver the treasure payment and

escort the new Muscovite envoys Prokof’ja Koptev and Jakov Ušakov. Osman Atalık with his

retinue also came from Crimea to take the treasure payment and return the former Muscovite

hostages Ivan Eljakov and Timofej Kuz’min. In summer 1652, Ivan Romodanovskij and Semen

Zvjagin brought Demid Xomjakov and Ermola Kločkov to the place of exchange in order to take

Koptev and Ušakov back, while the Tatar envoy Osman came to receive the treasure payment

from the Muscovite envoys. In autumn 1653, Petr Dolgorukov and Ivan Mixajlov arrived at

Valujka to deliver the treasure payment and Sidor Lodyžesnkij and Aleksej Ogarkov as the new

hostages to Muhammedşah Mirza in return for the former hostages Xomjakov and Kločkov.156

After their return in November 1653, Xomjakov and Kločkov also reported to Moscow about the

relations between Crimea and the Commonwealth and brought the copies of the king’s letters to

the khan asking him to send the Tatars to launch joint campaigns against Muscovy.157

As Xmel’nyc’kyj was concerned about the possible conclusion of an alliance between Crimea

and the Commonwealth, he tried to hide his negotiations with Muscovy from the khan and the

Porte. As Hrushevsky analyzes, when Crimea and the Ottomans learned about the submission of

the hetman to the tsar’s authority, Xmel’nyc’kyj tried to depict his cooperation with Muscovy as

an involuntary act. He also worked to convince the Muscovites that Ukraine should maintain

good relations with Islam Giray and the Porte and that these relations would not alter Ukraine’s

new relationship with Muscovy. The hetman even asked the Muscovite state to restrain the Don

Cossacks from provoking the Tatars. On the basis of the reports of the Muscovite envoys from

Crimea, Hrushevsky recounts that two Cossack envoys were dispatched from Čyhyryn around

mid-February 1654 to Crimea in order to report to Islam Giray that the Ukrainian Cossacks

submitted to the tsar’s authority. After the khan listened to the envoys, he purportedly lost his

temper and intended to kill the envoys. However, the envoys managed to convince the khan that

his killing them would not make the Cossacks renounce their allegiance to Muscovy. The envoys

156 Reestr delam Krymskago dvora s 1474 po 1779 goda, ed. N. N. Bantyš-Kamenskij (Simferopol’: Tipografija Tavričesk. Gubernsk. Pravlenija, 1893), 23-4, 132-3, 135-6. 157 Reestr delam Krymskago, 136; Report of Demid Xomjakov and Ermola Kločkov about Crimean affairs, 2 (12) November 1653 [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji, vol. 3, 271-2].

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also threatened that if Islam Giray intended to launch a campaign against Muscovy, the Cossacks

would counter him outside Crimea. Accordingly, the khan apparently cooled off and gave up the

idea of executing the envoys and allowed them to return to Ukraine in March 1654, expecting

that the Cossack leaders would soon send another mission to Crimea. On the basis of the

hetman’s letters to the khan and his vizier, Hrushevsky claims that the envoys returned to

Ukraine with a calm message from the khan assuring the inviolability of the Cossack-Tatar

alliance, but also inquiring about the relations between the hetman and the tsar.158

Meanwhile, the royal envoy Mariusz Jaskólski set out to Bagçasaray in February 1654 with an

instruction to discredit Xmel’nyc’kyj by drawing attention to his relations with Muscovy, the

great enemy of the Tatars.159 The envoy also reportedly brought a good sum of money and gifts

to the khan, his entourage and some leading mirzas in order to convince them to cooperate with

the Commonwealth.160 Jaskólski travelled through Moldavia and eventually arrived in

Bagçasaray in April. Only three days after his arrival, he received an audience with Sefer Gazi

Agha. Jaskolski’s report to the Commonwealth relates how he complained to the vizier about the

hetman’s decision to accept Muscovite suzerainty and conveyed the king’s letter to the khan that

asked for Tatar support against Muscovy and the Ukrainian Cossacks. The vizier responded to

the envoy that if the Commonwealth wanted to make an alliance with Crimea against Muscovy

and Ukraine, the king should first pay tribute/gift to the khan, otherwise the Tatars might join the

Cossacks and Muscovy against the Commonwealth. Sefer Gazi Agha also claimed that the

hetman went under Muscovite suzerainty because the king did not exert enough efforts to repair

relations with the Cossacks after Žvanec’. He added that the khan had already sent an embassy to

Ukraine to warn the hetman to restore his allegiance to the king and prepare to dispatch troops to

support Crimea and the Commonwealth in an anticipated campaign against Muscovy. Then

Jaskólski stated that the king asked the khan to dispatch 12,000 troops to support the

Commonwealth against the Cossacks. Sefer Gazi Agha promised to mobilize 20,000 or 30,000

thousand Bucak Tatars and Nogays if the Cossacks rejected the request of the Crimean leaders to

158 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 118-20, 187, 211, 287-8, 290-1. 159 Instructions to Mariusz Jaskólski, 20 February 1654 [Pamjatniki izdannyje vremennoj kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, vol. 3, pt. 3 (Kyiv, 1852), 59-64 (henceforth PIVK); DOVUN, 739-43. 160 Tomilo Perfir’ev’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 8 May 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 589.]; Mariusz Jaskólski’s report to Chancellor Stefan Koryciński, 2 May 1654, Crimea [Ambroży Grabowski, Ojczyste spominki w pismach do dziejów dawnéj, vol. 1 (Kraków: Józef Cypcer, 1845), 137]; Mariusz Jaskólski’s letter to the palatine of Rus’ Stanisław Lanckoroński, 2 May 1654 [PIVK, vol. 3, pt. 3, 79].

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renounce the rapprochement with Muscovy. The vizier also pointed out that the alliance between

Crimea and the Commonwealth should be formalized by exchanging oaths of friendship between

the two rulers and the king should agree to the future annexation of Kazan and Astrakhan by the

Crimean Khanate. Jaskólski responded that Warsaw would not object to such demands as long as

the Commonwealth would be allowed to establish its authority over Ukraine. Sefer Gazi Agha

opposed the war plan of the Commonwealth that proposed to divide the armies into two parts and

launch simultaneous attacks against Muscovy and Ukraine. Instead, the vizier suggested

marching against the Ukrainian Cossacks first and then Muscovy. If the hetman did not renounce

his ties with the Muscovite state, then supposedly 100,000 Tatars would be dispatched to Korsun

in order to unite with the forces of the Commonwealth. The royal envoy also advised Crimea to

ask the hetman for military help in order to test the Cossack position. If the Cossacks marched to

help the Tatars, the king promised to protect their families and preserve their rights and liberties.

However, if the hetman refused to unite with the khan and the king in alliance against Muscovy,

then the khan should abandon the Cossacks and stop helping them against the Commonwealth.

Jaskólski also explained that the Crown army marched to Ukraine because the hetman prevented

the return of the magnates to their estates and supported the unruly peasants. The king’s army

had no hostile intention against the Tatars. After his final audience with Sefer Gazi Agha,

Jaskólski reported to the Commonwealth that he had no problem in convincing the khan about

the Cossack danger, and the Tatars would gladly come to help the king against Muscovy, the

Cossacks and the peasants who did not want to return to their former state of servitude.161

As opposed to Jaskólski’s positive assessment of his mission to Crimea, the Tatars were not

willing to shift their alliance from the Ukrainian Cossacks to the Commonwealth. On the basis of

Wespazjan Kochowski’s chronicle, Kostomarov recounts that after an audience with the royal

envoy, Islam Giray summoned the Giray princes, mirzas and all other notables to hold a council

in April 1654. During the council, pro-Cossack mirzas expressed their wish to maintain the

alliance with the hetman arguing that alliance with the Cossacks proved to be very profitable as

161 Mariusz Jaskólski’s report to Chancellor Stefan Koryciński, 2 May 1654, Crimea [Ambroży Grabowski, Ojczyste spominki w pismach do dziejów dawnéj, vol. 1 (Kraków: Józef Cypcer, 1845), 131-7]; Mariusz Jaskólski’s letter to the palatine of Rus’ Stanisław Lanckoroński, 2 May 1654 [PIVK, vol. 3: 67-84]; Ludwik Kubala, Wojna Moskiewska r. 1654-1655 (Warsaw: Gebethner and Wolff, 1910), 135-40.

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the Tatars brought many slaves to Crimea. However, it was uncertain that a potential alliance

with the Commonwealth would bring such benefit to the Tatars.162

The Nogays were also in a predicament between maintaining the alliance with Ukraine and

obeying the khan’s order to renounce all ties with the Cossacks. For example, during his

conversation with the Muscovite courier Vasilij Buturlin on 12 January 1654, Xmel’nyc’kyj said

that the Nogays were roaming near Čhyryn and a Nogay noble named Mambet Mirza promised

not to abandon the hetman even if the Crimean khan did not march in alliance with the Cossacks

against the Commonwealth. The hetman also promised to convince the Nogay mirzas to agree to

be under the tsar’s rule.163 When the Cossacks reported to a prominent Tatar noble, Kelembet

Mirza, about their submission to Muscovite suzerainty, the mirza allegedly expressed his desire

to maintain the alliance with the Cossacks and help them against the Commonwealth in any

case.164 The Muscovite couriers Vasilij Buturlin and Aleksej Trubeckoj also advised the hetman

in March 1654 to send envoys to the Great and Little Nogay mirzas to learn whether they would

be in alliance with the Cossacks while the khan’s position was still uncertain.165 The Muscovite

servitors Fedor Judin and Ivan Mokeev also reported from Astrakhan in May 1654 that the

Orakmamay and Ormehmed Nogays who roamed near Crimea crossed to the right bank of the

Dnipro and started wandering close to the hetman. Although the khan ordered them to return to

their pastures near Crimea, the Orakmamay and Ormehmed mirzas refused to do so. In addition,

the khan did not respond to the kings’ call to launch an offensive against Muscovy because the

Tatars lost many horses.166 When another Muscovite courier Tomilo Perfir’ev asked

Xmel’nyc’kyj in May 1654 about his relations with the Nogays, the hetman answered that while

the Nogay mirzas were in friendship with him, they were not reliable allies.167 According to

Perfir’ev’s report from Ukraine, the Nogays migrated from Čyhyryn and crossed to the left bank

162 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 11, 576. 163 Vasilij Buturlin’s report about his conversations with Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and Ivan Vyhovs’kyj, 12 January 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 249]. 164 Vasilij Buturlin’s report about his conversations with Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and Ivan Vyhovs’kyj, 31 January 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 271]. 165 Vasilij Buturlin and Aleksej Trubeckoj’s report on their embassy to Ukraine, 13 March 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 444-5]. 166 Fedor Judin and Ivan Mokeev’s report about their travel to the Kabardia, after 25 May 1654 [Kabardino-russkie otnošenija v 16-18 vv., vol. 1, eds. A. I. Musukaev and P. A. Kuz’minov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1957), 322 (henceforth KRO). 167 Tomilo Perfir’ev’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 6 May 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 585-6].

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of the Dnipro in May 1654 because the khan ordered them to attack Muscovy. Kelembet Mirza

with his friends also crossed to the left bank of the Dnipro marching to the Moločna River.168

However, in his letter to to the tsar, the Muscovite official Grigorij Starkov wrote about the same

Kelembet Mirza, that the Nogay mirza with his friends and many Tatars was preparing to go to

war in alliance with Xmel’nyc’kj against the Commonwealth. He adds that while Islam Giray did

not want to get involved in a war against Jan Kazimierz, the Crimean mirzas and many Tatars

were willing to ally with the Ukrainian Cossacks to fight the Commonwealth.169 While it is

difficult to confirm or refute these contending Muscovite reports about the position of the Tatars

and the Nogays, it is possible to consider the presence of a pro-Cossack party among the mirzas

and the uncertain position of the Nogays as two factors that might have prevented the khan from

taking a decisive action against Ukraine and the Muscovite state.

Islam Giray was worried about joint Ukrainian-Don Cossack attacks against Crimea and the

Tatars in the northern Black Sea region.170 Upon the request of the hetman and the Ukrainian

Cossacks, the Muscovite state agreed to order the Don Cossacks to prepare to help the Ukrainian

Cossacks, and in addition, dispatch its armies from Astrakhan and Kazan if the Crimean Tatars

intended to attack. However, it was also decided that as long as the Tatars remained in friendship

with Muscovy and Ukraine, the Don Cossacks would be restrained from attacking the Tatars.171

As Viktor Brexunenko states, thanks to pressure from Moscow and Čyhyryn, after 1654 the Don

Cossacks agreed to coordinate their actions with the Ukrainian Cossacks vis-à-vis Crimea.172 In

accordance with Muscovite orders, the Don Cossacks promised to serve for the tsar together with

the Ukrainian Cossacks and dispatch news to Moscow if Islam Giray and the Tatars helped the

168 Tomilo Perfir’ev’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 7, 9, 11 May 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 587, 591, 599]. 169 Grigorij Starkov’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 4-12 June 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 663]. 170 Aleksandr Mal’cev, “Boevoe sodružestvo russkogo, ukrainkskogo i belorusskogo narodov v bor’be za osvoboždenie Ukrainy i Belorussii (1654-1655 gg.),” in Vossoedinenie Ukrainy s Rossiej 1654-1954: sbornik statej, eds. A. I. Baranovič, L. S. Gaponenko, I. B. Grekov, K. G. Guslistyj (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954), 278; Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo vo vtoroj,” 20. 171 Vasilij Buturlin and Aleksej Trubeckoj’s report on their embassy to Ukraine, 13 March 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 443-4]; the draft petition of the Ukrainian Cossacks to Aleksej Mixajlovič submitted by Samijlo Bogdanovyč-Zarudnyj and Pavlo Teterja during their mission to Moscow [Akty IuZR, vol. 10, 452]; the terms of Muscovy’s acceptance of Ukraine under its protection, 12 (21) March 1654 [SGGD, pt. 3, 510; Akty IuZR, vol. 10, 483-4], Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 21 March 1654, Čyhyryn [Akty IuZR, vol. 10, 550]; Ivan Vyhovs’kyj to Vasilij Buturlin, 21 March 1654, Čyhyryn [Akty IuZR, vol. 10, 562]; Aleksej Mixajlovič’s orders to the Don Cossacks, 15 March, 11 April 1654, Moscow [Donskie dela, vol. 4, 787-8, 791-2]. 172 Viktor Brexunenko, “Vytoky kryms’koji polityky Bohdana Xmel’nyc’koho,” Ukrajins’kyj istoryčnyj žurnal 4 (1995): 90.

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Commonwealth and attacked Ukraine and Muscovite territories. The Don Cossacks also sent

envoys to Xmel’nyc’kyj advising him to dispatch messengers to them if the khan and the Tatars

marched against Ukraine.173 In a similar vein, the Moldavian hospodar Gheorghe Stefan advised

Jan Kazimierz that the Commonwealth should not expect help from the Tatars because the khan

would have to defend his domains in case the Muscovites authorized the Don Cossacks to attack

Crimea.174 The Muscovite state also decided to seek reconciliation with the Kalmyks in order to

set them against Crimea and the Tatars. As the Russian historian Galina Čapnik points out, when

the Zemskij Sobor approved the tsar’s decision to accept Ukraine under his protection, Aleksej

Mixajlovič sent an order to the Muscovite voevoda and officials of Astrakhan to establish

peaceful relations with Kalmyks and convince them to ally with Muscovy. Thereafter, the

Muscovite interpreter Afasanij Borisov paid a visit to the encampment of the Kalmyk chief

Lauzan and Mončak in February 1654 but he was not able to achieve any results.175 Muscovy’s

defensive measures also proved influential in deterring the Tatars from attacking. A large

Muscovite army took up position on the southern borders in order to protect Ukraine and

Muscovy against a possible attack of the Tatars.176 Vasilij Šeremetev was charged with the

mission of commanding the Muscovite forces and organizing the defence on the frontier.177

Therefore while the khan allegedly spent a good portion of the money that he received from the

Commonwealth to prepare for war, he did not mobilize an army to help the Crown army and

instead made the excuse that the Tatars could not leave Crimea due to the presence of a large

number of Muscovite troops on their frontier.178 It can be said that despite the diplomatic efforts

of the Commonwealth, the Crimean Tatars were afraid of a possible setback against a well-

prepared and strong Muscovite army.

173 The Don Atamans and Cossacks to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Ukrainian Cossacks, after 12 July 1654 [Akty otnosjaščiesja k istorii južnoj i zapadnoj Rosii sobrannye i izdannye arxeografičeskoju komissieju, vol. 14 (St. Petersburg, 1889), 58-9 (henceforth Akty JuZR)]. 174 Gheorghe Stefan to Jan Kazimierz, 25 June 1654, Iași [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 322-3]. 175 Galina Čapnik, Kalmyki i donskie kazaki: istorija vzaimootnošenij v XVII v. (Elista: Kalmyckij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet, 2005), 22. 176 Carol B. Stevens, Russia’s Wars of Emergence, 1460-1730 (Harlow, England and New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), 156; Mal’cev, “Boevoe sodružestvo,” 270, 272; Aleksandr Mal’cev, Rossija i Belorussija v seredine XVII veka (Moscow: Izadel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1974), 34. 177 Grigorij Starkov’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 4-12 June 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 668-9]. 178 The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch written by his attendant Archdeacon, Paul of Aleppo, vol. 1, trans. F. C. Belfour (London: Oriental translation fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1836), 178.

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In addition, as Jaroslav Fedoruk states, Islam Giray and his vizier Sefer Gazi Agha believed that

after six years of alliance Xmel’nyc’kyj would not dare to break up with the Crimean Khanate.

Therefore the Khanate’s leadership maintained its hope to convince the Cossack leadership to

abandon Muscovy. The Crimeans also did not fully trust in the Commonwealth’s assurances to

make an alliance and would not take action until they received assurances of alliance from the

Commonwealth.179 Although the khan was worried about the Muscovite-Ukrainian alliance, he

also feared that the Commonwealth’s authorities would use the Crimean Khanate as a

counterbalance to Muscovy and force the latter to renounce its ambitions over Ukraine. As

discussed in the previous chapter, after the Muscovite envoys made ambitious demands against

the Commonwealth during their sojourn in Warsaw in early 1650, Jan Kazimierz and his

entourage became favourably inclined to the proposals of the Crimean leaders to make an

alliance against Muscovy. However, after learning of the negotiations between Crimea and the

Commonwealth, Moscow sought reconciliation with Warsaw and withdrew its claim for

Smolensk. Agreeing to renew peace with Muscovy, at that time the Commonwealth lost interest

in getting involved in the Crimean proposals to form an anti-Muscovite alliance. Therefore

recalling this experience, before taking a major step against Muscovy and the Cossacks, Islam

Giray and his associates possibly wanted to be sure that the Commonwealth would remain firm

in accepting his alliance proposal.

According to Hrushevsky, before the return to Čyhyryn of the first Cossack embassy sent to

Crimea in February 1654, on around 20 April 1654 Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched another one headed

by Semen Savyč. The hetman’s decision to send a leading Cossack official such as Savyč shows

that the Cossack leadership really wanted to maintain relations with the Tatars.180 On the basis of

his conversation with Xmel’nyc’kyj and his aide-de-camp Vyhovs’kyj, the Muscovite envoy

Tomilo Perfir’ev recounted that Savyč set out to Crimea to deliver Xmel’nyc’kyj’s letter to Islam

Giray asking whether the khan would help the Cossacks in a war against the Commonwealth in

the future. The khan gave an audience to the Cossack envoy and asked him why the hetman and

the Ukrainian Cossacks shifted their allegiance from the king to the tsar without the knowledge

179 Jaroslav Fedoruk, Mižnardona dyplomatija i polityka Ukrajiny 1654-1657, pt. 1: 1654 rik (L’viv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta džereloznavstva imeni M. Hruševs’koho, L’vivs’ke viddilennja, 1996), 26, 55-6. 180 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 291.

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of the khan. Savyč supposedly answered that since both the tsar and the Ukrainian Cossacks

shared the Orthodox Christian faith, the hetman submitted under the tsar’s authority. In addition,

the Commonwealth ruined and burned the churches, towns and houses of the Orthodox people

and killed and took into captivity the Cossacks, their wives and children. Eventually, Islam Giray

and the Crimean Tatars told the Cossack envoy that if the Ukrainian Cossacks did not renounce

their allegiance to Muscovy, then an army would be sent to help the Commonwealth against

them.181

The Muscovite envoy in Crimea, Sidor Lodyženskij, learned from a Kyivan priest named

Antonij who at the time was also in Crimea that during his audience with the khan, Savyč

warned the khan not to set out or send an army against Muscovy. The hetman and Cossacks

would not permit the Tatars to attack Muscovy. The khan was enraged by the words of the envoy

and reproached the Cossacks for submitting to Muscovite suzerainty. Savyč was expelled from

the presence of the khan due to his resolute words in defence of the submission of the Ukrainian

Cossacks under Muscovite rule. Moreover, later the khan took him into a private room and railed

again at the ingratitude of the Ukrainian Cossacks for all the help formerly rendered by the

Tatars against the Commonwealth. The envoy allegedly answered that actually the Tatars had not

come to help the hetman in the past, but instead had only been interested in seizing captives.

Then Islam Giray told the Cossack envoy that before he received the news of the submission of

the Cossacks under Muscovite protection, he had already promised the king to give military

support to the Commonwealth against Muscovy. However, for reasons that he did not disclose,

Islam Giray informed Savyč that he decided not to lead his army to help the Commonwealth and

instead dispatched Kaplan Mirza to the Tatars of Akkerman and Özi and the Nogays to order

them to march against the Muscovite frontiers. Savyč purportedly responded that the Ukrainian

Cossacks would cope with these Tatars. When the khan complained that the Cossacks killed

several thousand Nogays and captured a chieftain of the Şirin tribe, the envoy claimed that the

Nogays and that the certain chieftain of the Şirin were punished for ravaging Ukraine. On 10

May 1654 the khan received Savyč for the last time and rewarded him with a cloth and sent him

off back to Ukraine. At this last meeting Islam Giray also expressed resentment before Savyč

that the tsar sent his voevodas to Cossack towns and the Cossacks agreed to allow them to install

181 Tomilo Perfir’ev’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 8 May 1654 [Akty JuZR, 10: 588-9].

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themselves there without the knowledge of the khan. The Cossack envoy responded that there

were no voevodas in Cossack towns except for Kyiv.182 According to Smolij and Stepankov,

Savyč’s composure and courage made the khan refrain from breaking relations with the

Cossacks.183

In his letters to the khan and his vizier Sefer Gazi Agha, the hetman defended his alliance with

Muscovy by stating that while the Commonwealth brought people from various countries to

destroy the Cossacks, it was quite reasonable for the Cossacks to conclude an agreement with the

Muscovite state. The Cossacks never violated their friendship with Crimea and actually they had

entered into relations with Muscovy upon the advice of the khan. Xmel’nyc’kyj also claimed that

the Cossacks were dissatisfied with the Treaty of Žvanec’ because it did not provide them with

anything such as restoration of the Cossack rights and liberties in accordance with the Peace of

Zboriv. He also complained that during their return, some Tatars caused great damage to the

Ukrainian people. While the Commonwealth procrastinated in ratifying the Treaty of Žvanec’,

Crown Field Hetman Stanisław Potocki and a Polish army with the support of Hungarian and

Moldavian auxiliaries attacked Ukraine. As the Commonwealth was preparing a larger army,

Xmel’nyc’kyj asked the Crimean leaders to come to the help of the Cossacks.184 In regard to his

claim that the idea of drawing Muscovy into an alliance against the Commonwealth originated in

the circle of the khan, Xmel’nyc’kyj had a point because in autumn 1653 Crimea allegedly

proposed to the Muscovite envoys Demid Xomjakov and Ermola Kločkov that the Muscovite

forces should support the Tatars in their campaign against the Commonwealth.185

Following the sojourn of this last Cossack embassy to Crimea in spring 1654, the khan wrote to

Stanisław Potocki about his intention to dispatch an envoy to the hetman requesting him to

182 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 288-9, 292; Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo vo vtoroj,” 21. 183 Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 148; Valerij Smolij and Valerij Stepankov, “Stanovlennja dyplomatyčnoji služby Ukrajins’koji deržavy ta pryncypy jiji funkcionuvannja u roky nacional’noji revoljuciji,” in Istorija Ukrajins’koho kozactva, vol. 1, eds. V. A. Smolij, O. A. Bačyns’ka, O. I. Huržij and V. M. Matjax (Kyiv: Kyjevo-Mohyljans’ka akademija, 2006), 352. 184 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Islam Giray, 16 (26) April 1654, Čyhyryn [Pamjatniki izdannyje kievskoju kommissieju dlja razbora drevnix aktov, vol. 3 (Kyiv, 1898), 193-6 (henceforth PIKK); DBX, 338-41]; Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Sefer Gazi Agha, 15 (25) April 1654, Čyhyryn [DBX, 336-8]. 185 Lev Zaborovskij, “Krymskij vopros vo vnešnej politike Rossii i Reči pospolitoj v 40-x-seredine 50-x godov 17 v.,” in Rossija, Pol’ša i pričernomor’e v XV-XVIII vv. ed. B. A. Rybakov (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1979), 266; Lev Zaborovskij, Rossija, Reč’ Pospolitaja i Švecija v seredine 17 v. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1981), 24-5.

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abandon the tsar and restore his allegiance to the king. If the hetman did not comply with these

requests, the Tatars would launch an expedition against the Cossacks.186 When this Tatar envoy

arrived in Ukraine, he received an audience with Xmel’nyc’kyj and Vyhovs’kyj and delivered a

letter from the khan to the hetman. In his letter, the khan reproached the hetman for not having

taken counsel with Crimea before starting negotiations with another ruler and for establishing

friendly relations with the tsar who was an enemy of the Tatars and moreover for turning over to

him unspecified towns of the Commonwealth. Islam Giray also asked the hetman renounce his

submission to the tsar and restore his allegiance to the king. He threatened that if not, Crimea and

the Commonwealth would attack the Ukrainian Cossacks and then Muscovy. The khan also

requested the Cossack leader to send the Muscovite boyars (i.e., voevodas) who were currently

in Ukraine to Crimea.187

During his audience with the hetman and Vyhovs’kyj, the Tatar envoy reiterated that although

the Tatars supported the Cossacks in the previous wars against the Commonwealth, the hetman

concluded an alliance with Muscovy without the knowledge of the khan. In response to the

argument that it was the Crimean leaders that first proposed to include Muscovy into the alliance

against the Commonwealth, the Tatar envoy claimed that while the tsar was invited by the khan

and the hetman to participate in their alliance against the Commonwealth before the campaign of

Žvanec’, the Muscovite state remained unresponsive. However, after Islam Giray concluded

peace with the king and received the promise that the Commonwealth would not attack the

Cossacks again, Muscovy made an agreement with the hetman. The Tatar envoy also recounted

that Crimea wanted the Ukrainian Cossacks to remain under the rule of the king. If they would

not renounce their allegiance to the tsar and instead go to war with the Muscovite armies against

the Commonwealth, the Tatars would fight the Cossacks. The Cossack leadership answered that

the khan and his entourage ignored how the Commonwealth violated the Treaty of Žvanec’. The

king and his magnates sent their troops to Ukraine, ravaged many towns and killed many people

in Ukraine. They also carried out negotiations with “the Germans, Hungarians” (i.e., Habsburgs

and/or German principalities, Transylvanians) and the Danubian principalities to amass military

support against the Cossacks. For this reason, the Cossacks decided to seek help from the

186 Tomilo Perfir’ev’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 8 May 1654 [Akty JuZR, 10: 590]. 187 Islam Giray to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj, after 18 January 1654 [Džerela z istoriji nacional’no-vyzvol’noji vijny, vol. 3, 131].

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Muscovite state. Xmel’nyc’kyj and Vyhovs’kyj also promised that if the Tatars maintained their

friendship with the Cossacks, then the Ukrainian and Don Cossacks would not cause any damage

to Crimea and the Tatars would be allowed to roam (i.e., nomadize) in Ukraine. In response to

the envoy’s claim that the Tatars fearlessly defended their lands against the pervious attacks of

the Ukrainian and Don Cossacks, the hetman and his associate reminded how Myxajlo

Dorošenko with 3,500 Cossacks ravaged Crimea and the Tatars could not do anything to him.188

Thereafter, the envoy received an audience with Vyhovs’kyj alone. When the envoy repeated the

displeasure of the khan at the submission of the Cossacks to Muscovite rule, Vyhovs’kyj accused

the Crimean leaders of receiving bribes from the Commonwealth and breaking their oath of

alliance with the Cossacks. While the envoy pointed out that the khan intended to march against

Muscovy and demanded from the Ukrainian Cossacks to stay in their lands and protect

themselves against the Commonwealth, Vyhovs’kyj proposed to the envoy that the Cossack-

Tatar friendship should be maintained and demanded the release of a certain Muscovite envoy

who was detained in Crimea. Vyhovs’kyj ended his words by saying that the Ukrainian Cossacks

would neither repudiate their relations with Muscovy nor deliver the Muscovite voevodas to the

Tatars. Then the Tatar envoy was detained until the Cossacks could complete the fortifications

and defensive preparations in Ukraine against a possible attack of the Tatars.189

Despite the Khanate’s inaction, the reports stated that Islam Giray was preparing for an offensive

against Muscovy. On the basis of Muscovite reports about the Nogays and the Tatars, Fedoruk

states that Crimea established contacts with the Astrakhan and Kazan Tatars, the Nogays, the

Circassians and the Kabardians and attempted to provoke them against Muscovy.190 Aleksej

Mixajlovič allegedly sent orders to his Tatar subjects in order to make their allegiance to

188 Hetman Mixajlo Dorošenko (d. 1628) was involved in Crimean affairs by giving military support to Mehmed Giray III (r. 1623-8) and his brother Şahin Giray in their struggle for the Crimean throne against Canıbek Giray and pro-Ottoman Tatars. A Ukrainian Cossack force under Dorošenko marched into Crimea in 1628 as far as Bagçasaray where Mehmed Giray and Şahin Giray were besieged by Cantemir Mirza of the Bucak Tatars. Dorošenko managed to rescue his allies but died in the battle. The Cossacks defeated Cantemir Mirza forcing him to flee to the Ottoman fortress of Kefe. However, as the Ottomans sent a strong fleet to gain control over Crimea, many of Şahin Giray’s followers were demoralized and changed sides in favour of Cantemir Mirza. Then the Cossacks departed for home. See Mykhailo Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 8: The Cossack Age, 1626-1650, trans. Marta Olynyk, ed. Frank Sysyn with the assistance of Myroslav Yurkevich (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2002), 32-5. 189 Tomilo Perfir’ev’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 10 May 1654 [Akty JuZR, 10: 593-7]; Sanin, Otnošenija Rossii i Ukrainy s Krymskim Xanstvom v seredine XVII veka (Moscow: Nauka, 1987), 54-6. 190 Fedoruk, Mižnardona dyplomatija, 42-6, 60, 217.

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Muscovy in the imminent war with Crimea secure.191 In his conversation with the Muscovite

envoy Grigorij Starkov, Ivan Vyhovs’kyj claimed that the khan wanted to provide 30,000 troops

in support of the Commonwealth.192 Xmel’nyc’kyj also reported to Aleksej Mixajlovič in June

1654 that the Nogays crossed to the Cossack side of the Dnipro in order to help the

Commonwealth together with the Tatars of Özi, Akkerman and Orkapı.193 On the basis of the

records of the Muscovite service chancery (Razrjadnij prikaz) of Sevsk, Aleksandr Mal’cev

recounts that 40,000 Tatars appeared around the Vovča and Oveči rivers and the Soljonoe (Salt)

Lake.194 The Dutch envoy to the Commonwealth, Paulus Pels reported that the khan intended to

attack Muscovy and asked the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth not to fight against

each other.195 Despite these rumours and reports, the khan preserved his cautious stance until the

last moment and did not undertake any large-scale military preparations against Muscovy and

Ukraine. It is possible to claim that Crimea hoped to win over the Cossacks before starting

campaign preparations.196

Meanwhile, Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth once again sent embassies to Istanbul in

order to make the Porte exert its influence over Crimea in favour of their respective conflicting

interests. The royal envoy Mikołaj Bieganowski set out for Istanbul in January 1654 with the

instruction to ask the Porte to end its relations with an insignificant person such as Xmel’nyc’kyj

and stop calling him the prince of Rus’ as the Ottoman letters referred to the hetman.

Bieganoswki’s instruction stated that he was to remind the Ottomans of the Cossack invasion of

Moldavia and point out how Ukraine’s submission to Muscovy could incite the Porte’s Orthodox

subjects to renounce their allegiance to the Porte and participate in a broad Orthodox alliance. In

addition, Bieganowski was to ask the Ottomans to order the khan to renounce his relations with

the hetman and instead help the Commonwealth against the Cossacks.197

191 Gazette de France, no. 44, Warsaw, 6 March 1654. 192 Grigorij Starkov’s report on his embassy to Ukraine, 4-12 June 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 667]. 193 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 11 June 1654, Mežyrič [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 670]. 194 Mal’cev, “Boevoe sodružestvo,” 274; Mal’cev, Rossija i Belorussija, 35. 195 Hans de Weerd, “Netherlands Ambassador to the Polish Court on Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1654,” Ukrainian Quarterly 13/1 (1957): 58. 196 Fedoruk, Mižnardona dyplomatija, 54. 197 Instructions to Mikołaj Bieganowski, 2, 11 January 1654, L’viv [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 277-8; Grabowski, Ojczyste spominki, vol. 1, 91-6;]; Ivan Vyhovs’kyj to Aleksej Mixajlovič, c. 25 February 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 327]; Fedor Poltev’s report on his sojourn in Čyhyryn and Kyiv, 25 February 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 344].

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The Muscovite boyars Zjuzin and Naumov also learned from a Greek named Iannis who came

from Istanbul as an envoy of Patriarch of Constantinople and arrived in Putyvl’ on 17 May 1654

that the king sent Bieganowski to Istanbul to complain about the Cossacks who submitted to

Muscovite authority after fighting against and ruining the Commonwealth for many years. In

Zjuzin and Naumov’s version of his mission to the Porte, Bieganowski claimed that the Cossacks

aimed to destroy the Commonwealth first and then march against the Ottoman Empire; the envoy

also asked the Porte to order the Crimean khan not to help the Cossacks. Since the vizier did not

want to get involved in a war against Muscovy because of the ongoing Venetian war over Crete,

he advised the sultan not to agree to help the king. Only the governor of Silistra, Siyavuş Pasha,

was purportedly willing to support the Commonwealth because during his travel from the

Commonwealth to Istanbul, Bieganowski promised to give the pasha a good sum of money. And

so this pasha came to Istanbul to lobby for the Commonwealth and receive permission to march

with an army to the vicinity of the Crimean Khanate. He amassed 25,000 troops at the town of

Bender immediately to the west of the territory of the Crimean Khanate in order to protect

Ottoman towns from the Ukrainian Cossacks. The Ottomans were suspicious of the news about

the submission of the Ukrainian Cossacks to the tsar’s authority. Moreover, they were even

worried about the rumours that Xmel’nyc’kyj wanted to send 300 boats against Ottoman

domains. At the same time, the Ottomans were encouraged by the rumours that the hetman was

sending an envoy to Istanbul in order to declare the submission of the Ukrainian Cossacks to

Ottoman authority.198

The Commonwealth also sent embassies to the Transylvanian prince and the Moldavian

hospodar to intercede at the Ottoman court in order to separate Crimea from the Cossacks. Both

of them were purportedly expected to warn the Porte about the ominous results of the Cossack-

Tatar alliance and appeal for the replacement of Islam Giray with another Giray prince who had

no connections with the Cossacks. If the Ottomans had no power to change the khan, they should

at least compel him to renounce his relations with the Cossacks.199

198 Report of Nikita Zjuzin and Nikita Naumov to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 31 May 1654, Putvl’ [Akty JuZR, vol. 8, 378-9]; Naima denigrates Bieganowski’s mission by recounting in a chapter entitled “the envoy of the Liakhs (elçi-i Leh)” that in March-April 1654 (Cemaziyelevvel 1064) an envoy from the Saklab (i.e., here clearly the Commonwealth) came to the Porte with some insignificant gifts. The chronicler does not give further information about the envoy’s sojourn in Istanbul. See Naima, Târih, 1512-3. 199 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 183; Fedoruk, Mižnardona dyplomatija, 18-9.

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Although Bieganowski thought that he succeeded in convincing the Porte to order Islam Giray to

help the Commonwealth against Muscovy and Ukraine, the Ottomans preferred to follow a wait-

and-see approach and refrained from giving open support to the king against the tsar and the

Cossacks. The Moldavian hospodar Gheorghe Stefan also wrote to Crown Field Hetman

Stanisław Potocki in February 1654 about his appeals to the Ottomans in favour of the

Commonwealth. He tried to provoke the grand vizier against the hetman because the latter had

formerly asked the sultan to take Ukraine under his protection but now united with his Orthodox

coreligionist Muscovy and harboured hostile intentions against the Porte. The hospodar also

advised the Commonwealth to send an envoy to Crimea.200 Nearly three months later, Gheorghe

Stefan again wrote to Stanisław Potocki that although the Ottomans treated the royal envoy

favourably and assured him of their friendly attitude towards the Commonwealth, they delegated

northern affairs to the khan due to the ongoing war with Venice. In his letter to the king in May

1654, the prince of Transylvania György Rákóczi spoke of the reluctance of the Porte to adopt an

anti-Cossack policy. He recounted that although the vizier gave an audience to the Crown envoy,

he saw him off very quickly because he was waiting for the arrival of the Cossack embassy and

he did not want the Cossacks coming across the royal envoy in Istanbul. As the Muscovite

envoys reported from Crimea, the Porte also dispatched an envoy to Crimea to order the khan to

launch campaigns only against the Don Cossacks. Islam Giray allegedly agreed to the Ottoman

order as long as the Porte did not send a different Giray prince to assume the Crimean throne.201

During the recent years the Ottomans were mainly concerned with the naval expeditions of the

Don Cossacks. According to a Muscovite report about the Don Cossacks, in summer 1652 1,000

Don Cossacks supposedly sailed out in fifteen boats, ravaged many villages near Istanbul on the

European side and defeated an Ottoman flotilla on their return.202 The sultan rewarded the khan

with a robe of honour (kaftan) and a saber in autumn 1652 ordering him to prepare the Crimean

Tatars to go to war against Muscovy because the Don Cossacks had recently come near Istanbul

200 Gheorghe Stefan to Stanisław Potocki, 25 February 1654, Iași [DOVUN, 743-7]. 201 Gheorghe Stefan to Stanisław Potocki, 8 May 1654, Iași [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 312-3]; György Rákóczi to Jan Kazimierz, 11 May 1654 [Žerela do istoriji Ukrajiny-Rusy, vol. 12, 313] quoted in Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 295. 202 The Muscovite boyar Mina Pribytkov’s report to Moscow, 30 October 1652 [Donskie Dela, vol. 4, 541-2].

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and harassed many people.203 Upon receiving the khan’s letter, the hetman also allegedly ordered

the Ukrainian Cossacks to prepare for a war against the Don Cossacks.204 The Don Cossack

ataman Semen Zavarzin reported to Moscow that in summer 1653, 1,300 Don Cossacks in

nineteen boats launched another expedition and raided Ottoman and Crimean possessions. In this

campaign, the Don Cossacks allegedly captured 500 or 600 people from Trabzon and its

environs.205 Though we do not have any corroboration of the veracity of these reports, they

suggest that in 1652 and 1653 the raiding activity of the Don Cossacks on the Black Sea was

very high.

At that time, Muscovy also feared Ottoman interference in the region and tried to dissuade the

Porte from taking sides with the Commonwealth. Vasile Lupu reported to the Ottomans that a

close relative of the tsar with two other Muscovite officials set out to Azak with more gifts than

usual. As the Muscovite state could not reach an understanding with the Commonwealth to solve

the disagreement, it readied its troops for war.206 The main mission of the embassy sent by

Muscovy to the Porte was to secure Ottoman neutrality in case the dispute with the

Commonwealth over Ukraine would escalate into war.

The Porte reciprocated Bieganowski’s embassy by sending a mission to the king in spring 1654

with a letter of the sultan. As the sultan recounted in his letter, Bieganowski conveyed that the

king wanted to restore friendship and that the peace treaties that had been concluded between his

predecessors and the former sultans and he had no consent to action contrary to friendship and

the peace treaties between the Porte and the Commonwealth. The king reportedly regretted in

being late to send embassies and letters to the Ottoman court because of disorder in his country.

Bieganowski also reported to the Porte about the conclusion of peace between Islam Giray and

the Commonwealth at Kam”janec’ and conveyed the message of the king asking help in

restraining the khan and the Tatars from harming the Commonwealth. In his letter, the sultan

promised to adhere to friendship and the peace treaty between the two countries and oblige the

203 The voevoda of Putyvl’ Fedor Xilkov’s report to Moscow, October 1652 [Akty Moskovskago gosudarstva, izdannye Imperatorskoju akademieju nauk, vol. 2 (St. Petersburg: Typografija Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk, 1894), 300 (henceforth AMG)]. 204 The voevoda of Jablonov Grigorij Kurakin’s report to Moscow, 15 December 1654 [AMG, vol. 2, 303]. 205 The Don Cossack ataman Semen Zavarzin’s report to Moscow, 12 December 1653 [Donskie Dela, vol. 4, 698]. 206 Vasile Lupu to an unnamed person at the Porte, 1653 (1064) [Topkapı Saray Arşivi E 5368 in Anafarta, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ile Lehistan, 17].

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khan to do so, as long as the king does the same. He also agreed to restrain the khan and order

him to take great care to the Commonwealth’s defence against its enemies as long as the

Commonwealth delivers annual tribute/gift payments to the khan and maintained friendly

relations with him.207 The sultan’s letter suggests that the Porte agreed to restrain Crimea and

implicitly promised to order the khan to help against Muscovy and the Cossacks.

The letters of Zülfikar Agha, who served as a translator at the Porte, to the tsar and his officials

and associates also suggest that the Porte was not interested in getting involved in a conflict with

Muscovy either before or after Xmel’nyc’kyj became a Muscovite vassal. In his letter to a

Muscovite boyar in late 1650, Zülfikar Agha wrote that the Ottoman state wanted to maintain

good and friendly relations with the tsar and ordered both the khan and the Ottoman governors of

Kefe and Azak to prevent any attack against Muscovite domains. Those who came from Azak

also reported that the people of Azak and the Don Cossacks reconciled with each other and

started exchanging visits between Azak and the Don region and no longer harmed one another.

After his return from his mission to Muscovy, a certain Mustafa Chavush reported to the grand

vizier that he stayed with the Don Cossack atamans at Čerkassk (Tur. Çerkeskerman) for fifteen

days. As it was reported to Ottoman officials at Azak about the arrival of the Ottoman envoy, the

Don Cossacks safely delivered Mustafa Chavush to the aghas of Azak. In response to the

complaints of the Muscovites that their envoys were detained in Istanbul for long time and were

not given allowances and provisions, Zülfikar Agha assured that the Porte always gave a

favourable treatment to the Muscovite envoys, rewarded them with robes of honour (hil‘ats) and

provided them with allowances and all their needs such as wine and firewood.208

More than two years later, Zülfikar Agha wrote this time to Aleksej Mixajlovič that the Porte

dispatched letters and envoys to the khan urging him to have friendly relations with Muscovy.

He also resented that while the Don Cossacks had not put out to the Black Sea for many years,

now for two years they launched naval campaigns and caused damage.209 Zülfikar Agha

207 Sultan Mehmed IV to Jan Kazimierz, 19-28 April 1654 (1st decade of Cemaziyelahir 1064) [Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Dział Turecki, k. 75, t. 408, no. 707 (henceforth AGAD, Dz. Tur.)]. 208 Zülfikar Agha to Il’ja Miloslavskij, 4 October 1650 (1060) [Rossijskyj Gosuderstvennyj Arxiv Drevnix Aktov, f. 89, op. 2, d. 27 in M. S. Mejer and S. F. Faizov, Pis’ma perevodčika osmanskix padišaxov Zul’fikara-agi carjam Mixailu Fedoroviču i Alekseju Mixajloviču 1640-1656 (Moscow: Moskovskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 2008), 89-95 (henceforth RGADA)]. 209 Zülfikar Agha to Aleksej Mixajlovič, 2 February 1653 (4 Rebi‘ülevvel 1063) [RGADA, f. 89, op. 2, d. 28 in Mejer and Faizov, Pis’ma perevodčika, 96-100].

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broached the resentment about the Don Cossacks to Il’ja D. Misloslavskij claiming that the Don

Cossacks with thirty vessels sailed out and ravaged the town of Eregli on the Black Sea coast

although both the Ottomans and the khan had refrained from being involved in any provocation

against the Don Cossacks.210 If these words of the envoy are given credit, it can be surmised that

while the Porte wanted to maintain friendly relations with Muscovy, the renewed raids of the

Don Cossacks raised concerns about Moscow’s willingness to have peaceful relations.

In order to prevent the Commonwealth from gaining Ottoman favour, in February-March 1654

Xmel’nyc’kyj sent an embassy to Istanbul, nearly two months after the Cossack council at

Perejaslav. He asked the Porte to intercede on behalf of the Cossacks and order Islam Giray to

resume embassy exchange with Ukraine.211 The Cossack embassy reportedly managed to secure

the Ottoman state’s consent to maintain relations between the hetman and Crimea.212 Meanwhile,

another Cossack mission that was carrying out negotiations in Moscow received a letter from

Xmel’nyc’kyj reporting that the Porte sent its envoys to Braclav and promised to ensure political

and religious rights and liberties and exempt them from tribute/gift payment, only requesting

them to send troops for Ottoman campaigns in future. He added that although the Porte offered

these advantageous terms, the Cossacks rejected submitting to Ottoman authority and that he

preferred to remain under the suzerainty of the Cossacks’ coreligionist tsar.213 If the hetman’s

words are given credit, it can be said that the Ottomans did not take a hostile position towards the

hetman even after his submission to Muscovy. They did not initiate any military action against

Muscovy or Ukraine and were contented with watching the Muscovite campaign against

Smolensk in spring 1654 receiving news from the Danubian rulers about the course of the war

between Muscovy and the Commonwealth.214

210 Zülfikar Agha to Il’ja Miloslavskij, 27 September 1653 (1064) [RGADA, f. 89, op. 2, d. 31 in Mejer and Faizov, Pis’ma perevodčika, 106-9.] 211 Čuxlib, Kozaky i Monarxy, 78; Čuxlib, Het’many i Monarxy, 74-5; Čuxlib, “Koncepcija polivasalitetnoji,” 169; Čuxlib, “‘Cisar turec’kyj,” 99; Taras Čuxlib, “Problema ratyfikaciji Perejaslavs’ko-moskovs’kyx domovlenostej 1654 roku,” in Perejaslavs’ka Rada 1654 roku (istoriohrafija ta doslidžennja) (Kyiv: Nacional’na akademija nauk Ukrajiny, Instytut ukrajins’koji arxeohrafiji ta Džereloznastva im. M. S. Hruševs’koho, 2005),772; Taras Čuxlib, Kozaky ta janyčary: Ukrajina u xrystyjans’ko-musul’mans’kyx vijnax 1500-1700 rr. (Kyiv: Kyevo-Mohyljans’ka akademija, 2010), 105-6; Smolij and Stepankov, “Meta j osnovni,” 368. 212 Zaborovskij, Rossija, Reč’ Pospolitaja, 40-1. 213 Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj to Samijlo Bogdanovyč-Zarudnyj and Pavlo Teterja, 21 March 1654, Čyhyryn [Akty JuZR, vol. 10, 554]. 214 Demény, “Osvododitelnaja vojna,” 511.

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Concerning the outcome of Bieganowski’s mission to Istanbul, many historians claim that the

Porte refrained from taking a clear position vis-à-vis the conflict between Warsaw and the

Ukrainian-Muscovite alliance and left Crimea free to determine its own position. Accordingly,

the king and his entourage diverted their diplomatic efforts from Istanbul to Bagçasaray.215

Regarding Bieganowski’s mission, Kubala recounts that Xmel’nyc’kyj’s letters to the Danubian

rulers which advised them to submit to Muscovite authority propelled the Porte to behave more

favourably towards Bieganowski. Thereafter, the Ottoman state agreed to order the khan to

refrain from invading the Commonwealth and give help to the king. In a similar vein, Grand

Vizier Derviş Mehmed Pasha told the Crown envoy that the Tatars would not again enter the

Commonwealth and also, if necessary, the khan with his armies would join the king against

Muscovy.216

Kryp”jakevyč explains that although the Ottomans were concerned about the Muscovite-

Ukrainian cooperation, they were frightened by military capabilities of the Ukrainian and

Muscovite armies. Therefore the Porte decided to maintain good relations with the hetman.217 In

a similar vein, Zaborovskij recounts that the Porte intended to prepare a fleet on the Danube in

January 1654 against a possible attack of the Ukrainian and Don Cossacks and gave its tacit

consent to the Danubian vassals to help the Commonwealth against Ukraine and Muscovy. The

Porte even promised Bieganowski to order the khan to give support to the Commonwealth.

However, when the Don Cossacks started attacking Ottoman possessions, the Porte allegedly

dispatched an order to Crimea in May 1654 forbidding Islam Giray to launch campaigns.

Probably the Porte did not want to take the risk of dividing its navy to wage simultaneous wars in

the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.218 Thus, although the Porte was displeased with the

Ukrainian-Muscovite alliance, it did not show a reaction against the Ukrainian Cossacks until

late 1654.219

215 Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 11, 579; Bucinskij, O Bogdane, 187-8. Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 197; Wójcik, Jan Kazimierz Waza, 97. 216 Kubala, Wojna Moskiewska , 133-5. 217 Kryp”jakevyč, “Tureckaja Politika,” 173; Kryp”jakevyč, “Turec’ka Polityka,” 152. 218 Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe,” 216-7; Zaborovskij, Rossija, Reč’ Pospolitaja, 70. 219 On the basis of a Muscovite report from Crimea, Hrushevsky recounts that when the Cossack envoys who came to Istanbul at the end of 1654, the Porte threatened them to send a large army against the Ukrainian Cossacks if they refused to abandon Muscovy and reconcile with Crimea. However, the Ottoman perception changed in early 1655 as Grand Vizier İpşir Mehmed Pasha (Derviş Mehmed Pasha’s successor) and the governor of Silistra Siyavuş Pasha dispatched letters and envoys to Ukraine. See Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 472-3.

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In contrast, Fedoruk states that the Porte determined its position long before the arrival of the

envoys of the hetman and the Crown in Istanbul. According to him, the khan’s envoy received

good treatment at the Ottoman court when he came to Istanbul to report about the Treaty of

Žvanec’. The Porte sent the envoy back to Crimea and ordered the khan to prepare his army for a

campaign in spring. The governor of Silistra, Siyavuş Pasha also received the same order. Anti-

Muscovite preparations of the pasha were a reflection of the Porte’s policies in Eastern Europe.

In early 1654, the Ottomans embarked on building new ships to protect the Danubian shores

against the Cossacks. Siyavuş Pasha also amassed his troops at the Crimean Khanate’s border to

protect Ottoman possessions. For these reasons, Fedoruk thinks that the khan carried out his

policies in cooperation with the Porte. According to him, the Ottomans supported anti-Muscovite

plans of the khan in order to eliminate the Don Cossacks, conquer Astrakhan, Kazan and Terek,

and strengthen the Turco-Tatar position in the North Caucasus.220

Concerning Fedoruk’s analysis on the Ottoman-Crimean cooperation and greater designs against

Muscovy and the Don Cossacks, it can be said that the Porte was burdened by campaign

preparations against the Venetians and therefore it had no intention to shift its attention from the

Mediterranean to the northern Black Sea region. As Grand Vizier Derviş Mehmed Pasha was the

former navy commander and attached greater importance to the Venetian war over Crete, in May

1654 a new Ottoman fleet was sent to the Dardanelles to break the Venetian blockade.221 As the

Venetian war continued without any prospect of success and the Don Cossacks resumed raids in

the Black Sea, the Porte would not possibly want to exacerbate its situation by taking the risk of

confronting Muscovy. In addition, as already discussed in this chapter, Islam Giray did not

refrain from challenging the Porte and fell into dispute with Ottoman officers in the northern

Black Sea in order to protect his interests. Therefore it cannot be stated that the khan acted in

cooperation with the Porte to undertake plans against Muscovy.

In February 1654 the Muscovite state also dispatched Timofej Xotunskij and Ivan Fomin to

Crimea to explain the reasons that led Moscow to end peace with the Commonwealth and ask for

the support of the Tatars according to their present oath of alliance (Muscovite/Russian šert’)

220 Fedoruk, Mižnardona dyplomatija, 106, 112, 219. 221 Setton, Venice, Austria, 172-8.

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with Moscow.222 According to Zaborovskij, the objective of the embassy was to secure the

neutrality of the Tatars and preserve peace on the southern frontiers of Muscovy. The Muscovite

couriers were not instructed to seek rapprochement between Moscow and Crimea or a

longstanding anti-Commonwealth alliance. The scope of cooperation with Crimea would be

limited to accepting military support from the Tatars during the war against the

Commonwealth.223 According to Gennadij Sanin, the Muscovite embassy’s task was not only to

learn about Crimea’s attitude towards the hetman’ submission to the tsar but also to invite

Crimea to join the struggle against the king.224 It was the hetman who advised the Muscovites to

invite Crimea to join an alliance against the Commonwealth. The Muscovite authorities were

also supposedly well inclined towards the hetman’s idea because the Cossack-Tatar alliance of

1648-54 made them believe that an alliance with Crimea was possible.225

Eventually, several days after their arrival in Crimea at the outset of April, the Muscovite envoys

received an audience with Sefer Gazi Agha and Islam Giray to deliver the letter of the tsar to the

khan.226 Radziwiłł’s diary recounts that the Muscovite state also sent a large sum to Crimea lest

the Tatars took sides with the Commonwealth.227 According to Radziwiłł, as Sefer Gazi Agha

told the Muscovite envoys that the Tatars would not march against the Commonwealth because

the khan had already made peace with the king, a member of the khan’s entourage told Xotunskij

how the khan was disturbed by the hetman’s decision to submit to Muscovite rule.228 The vizier

also supposedly reproached the Muscovite ambassadors that while the grand prince of Muscovy

inscribes the Great and Little Rus’ in his titulature, the khan has been in the Little Rus’ for seven

or eight years but he has not written the Little Rus’ into his titulature.229

222 Reestr delam Krymskago, 136. 223 Zaborovskij, “Krymskij vopros,” 266-7; Zaborovskij, “Porta, Krymskoe,” 214; Zaborovskij, Rossija, Reč’ Pospolitaja, 41-2; Lev Zaborovskij, “Načalo russko-pol’skoj vojny i diplomatičeskie kontakty Rossii s Avstriej, Brandenburgom i drugimi evropejskimi deržavami: k. 1653- janv. 1655 gg.,” in Issledovanija po slavjano-germanskim otnošenijam, ed. V. D. Koroljuk (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauka, 1971), 310 224 Sanin, Otnošenija Rossii, 49, 52; Gennadij Sanin, “Vnešnjaja politika Rossii vo vtoroj polovine XVII veka,” in Istorija vnešnej politiki Rossii, konec XV v.-1917 g., eds. A. N. Saxarov, A. V. Ignat’ev, O. V. Orlik and G. A. Sanin (Moscow: Meždunardnye Otnošenija, 1999),” 295. 225 Sanin, “Vnešnjaja politika,” 295. Sanin Otnošenija Rossii, 47-8. 226 Kubala, Wojna moskiewska, 140-1; Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo vo vtoroj,” 20. 227 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik, vol. 3, 408. 228 RGADA, f. 123, op. 1, 1654, stb. 3, l. 16-7 quoted in Sanin, “Vnešnjaja politika,” 297; Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo vo vtoroj,” 20-1. 229 Kubala, Wojna Moskiewska, 141.

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Islam Giray refrained from giving a clear response to the Muscovite and king’s embassies and

waited for the result of the negotiations with Xmel’nyc’kyj.230 He sent Alkas to Čyhyryn with a

mission of convincing the Cossack leaders to repudiate their submission to Muscovy. When the

Tatar envoy returned empty-handed from his mission on 16 July 1654, the Crimean leaders

supposedly told the Muscovite envoys Xotunskij and Fomin that the Tatars would not fight

against the Commonwealth but they did not make any mention of military action against

Muscovy and Ukraine.231 Shortly after the return of the Tatar envoy to Crimea, Xotunskij and

Fomin were sent back to Moscow. In the meantime, as Novosel’skij recounts on the basis of the

Muscovite reports from Crimea, two people came to Crimea with a letter from Xmel’nyc’kyj. In

his letter, the hetman reportedly reproached the Crimean leaders for harassing the Cossack envoy

Savyč and detaining Xotunskij and Fomin in Crimea. According to Novosel’skij, the reprimands

and threats of the hetman so terrified Islam Giray that the Tatars continued to remain idle vis-à-

vis Muscovy and Ukraine despite the call for help from the Commonwealth.232

Contrary to Novosel’skij’s argument about how the khan was pacified by the hetman’s

diplomacy, in fact Islam Giray sent Süleyman Agha to convey his letter to Jan Kazimierz

promising to obey the sworn peace at Kam”janec’ (i.e., the Treaty of Žvanec’) and not to

reconcile himself with the hetman’s submission to Muscovy. The khan recounted that he had

sent an envoy to the Cossacks in order to receive a definite answer from them. If the Cossacks

did not renounce allegiance to Muscovy and instead became enemies of the Commonwealth,

they would also be considered by the Crimean leaders as their enemies. The khan reported that

the Nogays and many Crimean troops were placed near Cossack domains and 40,000 or 50,000

Tatars were readily waiting at Akkerman to help the king’s forces. If the Cossacks refused to

break with the Muscovite state, the king should mobilize his forces and send news to Crimea so

that the khan’s army would set out in four or five days and join the king. If more troops were

needed, the khan and his more than 100,000 troops were ready to march. Islam Giray continued

in his letter that when the royal envoy was at Bagçasaray, the Muscovite envoy came to Crimea

and arrogantly asked the khan for help in order to annihilate the Commonwealth. However, the

khan reportedly declined the Muscovite proposal for the sake of friendship with the king. He

230 Sanin Otnošenija Rossii, 52-4. 231 Sanin Otnošenija Rossii, 56. 232 Novosel’skij, “Bor’ba Moskovskogo vo vtoroj,” 22-3.

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preferred friendship with the king instead of continuing to receive goods and treasure from the

Muscovite state. Since Muscovy set its eyes on the Commonwealth’s territory, the king should in

response put forward claims on Muscovite domains. In addition, the khan warned that upon

receiving the news about the conclusion of an alliance between the Commonwealth and Crimea,

the Cossacks might propose to restore their allegiance to the king and the Muscovite state would

seek reconciliation with the Commonwealth. Advising the king not to exchange embassies and

reconcile with Muscovy, Islam Giray asked the king and his lords to take an oath of allegiance

on the Bible in the presence of Süleyman Agha that the Commonwealth’s authorities would not

abandon Crimea and give up marching against Muscovy. At the end of his letter, the khan also

asked the king to dispatch treasure payment with Mehmed Mirza who had been serving as

hostage to the Commonwealth.233 The khan’s letter confirms Fedoruk’s argument that the

Khanate was not sure that the king would be a reliable partner in alliance against Muscovy and

the Ukrainian Cossacks.

After the embassy of Xotunskij and Fomin, the Muscovite state dispatched a new mission to

Bagçasaray in June 1654. Islam Giray once again reportedly rejected the proposal of the envoys

to attack the Commonwealth but also promised not to attack the Muscovite frontiers if the Don

Cossacks were restrained from launching campaigns against Crimea and Ottoman possessions.234

Therefore Xmel’nyc’kyj and Muscovy apparently managed to secure at least Crimea’ neutrality

towards the end of the khan’s reign. In the meantime, Jan Kazimierz appealed to Islam Giray to

dispatch the Tatars to Kam”janec’ to help the Kingdom’s forces, but then news of the death of

the khan that occurred in June 1654235 came and therefore nothing could be done until the

233 Islam Giray to Jan Kazimierz, 30 March – 8 April 1654 (2nd decade of Cemaziyelevvel 1064) [Biblioteka Czartoryskich 609, f. 1, p. 35; one can find the Polish text of the khan’s letter in Kubala, Wojna Moskiewska, 145-6; the same Polish text with a Russian translation is also available in DOVUN, 757-9; Abdullah Zihni Soysal gives a Polish translation of the Ottoman/Crimean Tatar text of the khan’s letter in Jarłyki Krymskie z Czasόw Jana Kazimierza (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Wschodniego w Warszawie, 1939), 46-8]. 234 Zaborovskij, “Krymskij vopros,” 269. 235 There has been much speculation on the cause of Islam Giray’s death. On the basis of the accounts of Seyyid Muhammed Rıza and Naima, Vasilij Smirnov recounts that Islam Giray fell ill during the celebrations for the circumcision of his young sons. As the court physicians reportedly failed to treat sores on his back, his situation worsened and the celebrations ended with his sudden death at the end of June 1654. Hrushevsky uses the Muscovite envoy Sidor Lodyžesnkij’s report from Crimea to state that Islam Giray died of a tumour on 30 June 1654 at the age of fifty. Referring to the seventeenth century Polish chronicler Wespazjan Kochowski, Kostomarov relates that that the khan was poisoned by his Ukrainian concubine seeking revenge for betraying her homeland. It was also suspected that Xmel’nyc’kyj was responsible for the death of the khan—in a notification in the Gazette de France, the hetman allegedly managed to arrange for the poisoning of Islam Giray. However, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not mention anything about the poisoning of the khan. See Seyyid Muhammed Rıza, Es-Seb üs-seyyar

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enthronement of the new khan.236 After Islam Giray’s death, the chieftain and mirzas of the Şirin

tribe sent Kelmamet Mirza to the hetman expressing their desire to continue friendship with the

Cossacks and support them against the Commonwealth.237 Consequently, the sudden death of the

khan spoiled the expectation of the king and his entourage to receive Tatar support.238

On the basis of the Musovite envoy Sidor Lodyženskij’s report, Hrushevsky explains that after

consulting with their entourage the kalgay Gazi Giray and the nureddin Adil Giray dispatched a

messenger to Istanbul by land asking the Porte to send the former khan Mehmed Giray as Islam

Giray’s successor. The mirzas of the Şirin and Mangıt tribes resented that their opinion in

choosing the new khan was not taken into account. Fearing that the Ottomans might dispatch a

Giray prince from the Çoban Giray branch instead of Mehmed Giray, they suggested that the

kalgay Gazi Giray could have ascended to the throne.239 After holding a council with other

Crimean nobles, the Şirin and Mangıt mirzas allegedly reported to the late khan’s servant in

Gözleve (today Evpatorija) that if the Porte sent a Giray prince from the Çoban Giray branch,

they would not obey such a decision, but if he dispatched Mehmed Giray as the new khan, they

would not object.240

fil-ahbar-ı mülük üt-tatar, ili sem’ planet soderžavščij istoriju krymskix xanov ot Mengli Girej Xana piervogo do Mengli Girej Xana vtorogo t. e. s 871/1466 po 1150/1737, ed. Mirza Kasımbek (Kazan, 1882), 167-8; Naima, Târih, 1530; Vasilij Smirnov, Krymskoe xanstvo pod verxovenstvom Otomanskoj Porty do načala XVIII veka (St. Petersburg: 1887), reprint and ed. Svetlana F. Oreškova (Moscow: Rubeži XXI, 2005), 402; Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 322; Kostomarov, Bogdan Xmel’nyckij, book 4, vol. 11, 579; Gazette de France, no. 117, Warsaw, 13 August 1654. 236 Gazette de France, no. 113, Warsaw, 30 August 1654. 237 Report of the Muscovite noble Ivan Rževskoj and official Grigorij Bogdanov about their sojourn in Ukraine, after 24 August 1654 [Akty JuZR, vol. 14, 31]. 238 Mal’cev, “Voevoe sodružestvo russkogo,” 278; Mal’cev, Rossija i Belorussija, 58. 239 According to Crimean rulership traditions, the kalgay was considered to be the heir-apparent while the nureddin came after the kalgay in line of succession to the throne. However, this tradition was often not observed since the Porte intervened into the selection of the khan. For the origins, different spellings and etimology of the position of the kalgay see Josef Matuz, “Qalġa,” Turcica 2 (1970): 101-19. 240 Hrushevsky, History of Ukraine-Rus’, vol. 9, book 2, pt. 1, 322 n. 163; the Çoban Girays emerged as the branch of the Giray dynasty at the end of the sixteenth century. According to the story, the kalgay Fetih Giray (d. 1597) had the daughter of a certain Polish noble as his captive. In return for ransom, Fetih Giray agreed to set the girl free. However, on her return to her country, the girl gave birth to a boy. Fetih Giray did not accept the paternity of the child and attempted to have it killed. A Tatar named Hacı Ahmed, who was accompanying the girl, took the child to Moldavia in order to protect his life. Later, Fetih Giray fell into a struggle over the throne with his brother Gazi Giray. After Fetih Giray was murdered, Hacı Ahmed brought the child known as Çoban Mustafa (literally, Mustafa the Shepherd) to Crimea. Çoban Mustafa was given the name Devlet Giray and assigned by Mehmed Giray III (r. 1623-8) as his nureddin. Devlet Giray’s descendants were named Çoban Girays to derogate their lineage. Later, Devlet Giray’s son Adil Giray ascended to the throne with Ottoman support and reigned between 1666 and 1671. See Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der Chane, 100-3, 150-1; Smirnov, Krymskoe xanstvo, 365-9, 413-7.

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Naima recounts that Mehmed Giray was taken from his residence in exile at Rhodes and brought

to Istanbul on 25 August 1654 (11 Şevval 1064) in order to be notified about his accession to the

throne. When the new khan was about to sail out to Crimea, the news came from the Black Sea

that a dispute occurred among the mirzas and the kalgay and his followers started a rebellion.

The Muscovites also reportedly defeated the Commonwealth and occupied many of its

dominions. Therefore the supporters of the new khan wanted Mehmed Giray to be dispatched to

Crimea as soon as possible. Due to the rumours that Cossack boats went out to sea with the plan

of capturing the new khan, Mehmed Giray abandoned the idea of travelling to Crimea by sea and

decided to go by land.241 Under these circumstances, the Commonwealth had to wait for the

arrival of the new khan in Crimea to conclude the anticipated alliance agreement.

In the meantime, the extraordinary gathering of the Diet in June-July 1654 underlined that the

deadline for delivering tribute/gift payments to the Tatars was very close and needed to be acted

on since their friendship was necessary in the struggle against Muscovy.242 Eventually, as the

Commonwealth completed drafting the articles of the treaty with Crimea, on the last day of the

extraordinary Diet the king and the senators swore an oath of alliance with the Tatars. The

document confirmed perpetual friendship between the king and the khan, tribute/gift payment to

the Tatars, and called for an offensive alliance against Muscovy and the Ukrainian Cossacks. The

agreement would go into effect after the khan together with his nobles take an oath of alliance in

the presence of the royal envoy. Accordingly, the Tatar envoy Süleyman Agha exchanged an

oath of alliance with the king one month after Islam Giray’s death.243 According to the Gazette

de France, Süleyman Agha concluded the agreement on the condition that Crimea would send

40,000 cavalrymen in return for receiving 400,000 thalers.244

However, as Radziwiłł recounted, during the gathering of the Diet on 1 July 1654, the deputies

of the palatinate of Volyn’ objected to the Commonwealth’s attempt to conclude an alliance

241 Naima, Târih, 1538. 242 Stefania Ochmann-Staniszewska and Zdzisław Staniszewski, Sejm Rzeczypospolitej za panowania Jana Kazimierza Wazy: prawo-doktryna- praktyka, vol. 1 (Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2000), 200. 243 Wasilewski, Ostatni Waza, 146; Wasilewski, Jan Kazimierz, 34; Zbigniew Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska w okresie wojen drugiej połowy XVII wieku 1648-1699,” in Historia Dyplomacji Polskiej, vol. 2: 1572-1795, ed. Zbigniew Wójcik (Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1982), Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 198. 244 Gazette de France, no. 98, Warsaw, 9 July 1654; “La défaite d'une partie de l'armée des Moscovites, par les Polonois,” in Gazette de France, no. 108, 1654.

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without the consent of the estates and their silence in the face of recent Tatars incursions in their

region. The chancellor tried to mollify their reaction by arguing that nothing new was being

proposed in relation to the Tatars, but rather the former pacts with Crimea were being restored.

In relation to the previous attacks of the Tatars, he explained that while the khan could not keep

his subjects under strict control and the king ordered his troops in pursuit of the Tatars in order to

prevent them from ravaging the territory of the Commonwealth, the Tatars disappeared with their

captives. The king also issued warnings about the Tatars but it was not known whether these

warnings were announced to the local people. On 3 July a letter of the khan was read out in the

presence of the king recounting how the Muscovites proposed to the khan to join an alliance

against the Commonwealth. Then the chancellor stated that as Crimea wanted a friendly

relationship with the Commonwealth aimed against Muscovy, Mariusz Jaskólski was sent to

Crimea to exchange an oath of alliance with Mehmed Giray.245

After Mariusz Jaskólski was dispatched in the company of Süleyman Agha to Crimea in order to

witness the oath of Islam Giray, the Tatar courier Mehmed Mirza came to Warsaw to report the

death of Islam Giray. Therefore the Commonwealth sent new instructions to Jaskólski ordering

him to continue his mission to Crimea to seek the approval of the new khan for the sworn

pact.246 Eventually, Jaskólski managed to witness the oath of Mehmed Giray in November 1654

and received his ‘ahdname (imperial letter of oath). Therefore, despite the attempts of the

hetman’s new envoy to Crimea, Myxajlo Bogačenko and the pro-Cossack fraction of the mirzas,

Mehmed Giray put an end to the inaction of Crimea by ratifying the alliance with the

Commonwealth.247 However, as Gennadij Sanin analyzes, while the alliance between the khan

and the king aimed to restore the authority of the Commonwealth in Ukraine and allow Crimea

to annex Astrakhan and Kazan, the military and political capabilities of the Tatars were not

enough to realize such ambitious goals. Due to military measures of the Muscovite state on its

southern frontier regions, the Tatars abandoned their plans to launch campaigns against Muscovy

and limited their military activities to Ukraine.248 Therefore the Crimean leaders decided to

245 Radziwiłł, Pamiętnik, vol. 3, 424. 246 Kubala, Wojna Moskiewska, 156. 247 Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj social’no, 487-91; Smolij and Stepankov, Bohdan Xmeln’nyc’kyj, 335-9; Smolij and Stepankov, “Stanovlennja ukrajins’koji,” 148; Smolij and Stepankov, “U borot’bi za stvorennja,” 177; Wójcik, “Dyplomacja Polska,” 199; Lemercier-Quelquejay, “Les relations entre,” 458. 248 Sanin, “Porta, Krym i strany,” 30-1.

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implement Sefer Gazi Agha’s plan that had been offered to Mariusz Jaskólski during his mission

to Crimea in February 1654: instead of waging a simultaneous war against Muscovy and

Ukraine, the Tatars and the Crown army should first engage the Ukrainian Cossacks and then the

Muscovites.

4.4. Conclusion

Concerning the khan’s role in the defeat of Berestečko in June 1651, two opinions have

prevailed. According to one opinion, Islam Giray’s withdrawal from the battlefield affected the

outcome of the battle. It has also been claimed that the khan received bribe from the king and

made an agreement with him to leave Xmel’nyc’kyj in the lurch of the battle and expose him to a

defeat. Opposed to such a negative assessment of the khan’s role at Berestečko, another opinion

has claimed that the superiority of the firepower of the royal artillery and infantry contributed to

the king’s victory. The terrain of the battlefield made it difficult for the Tatar cavalry to move

freely and exposed the Tatars to fall into the range of the enemy artillery. In his abovementioned

letters to Mikołaj Potocki and the Porte, Islam Giray speaks of two reasons for his fleeing from

the battlefield: the panic among his troops and the lack of discipline among the Nogays. The

major outcome of the battle of Berestečko for the Crimean Khanate was that it lost his mediatory

role between Ukraine and the Commonwealth because Xmel’nyc’kyj agreed to renounce his

relations with the Tatars in accordance with a provision of the Treaty of Bila Cerkva.

Nonetheless, the hetman sent an embassy to Crimea and requested help from the khan to force

the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu to realize his daughter’s marriage to the hetman’s son

Tymiš. Upon the hetman’s request, Islam Giray dispatched his kalgay with several thousand

Tatars to support the Cossacks in their Moldavian venture, and in early June 1652 after defeating

at Batih a Polish army that aimed to prevent the Cossack-Tatar forces from marching to

Moldavia, the hetman made the hospodar honour his promise and therefore gained a foothold in

the Danubian region. The Tatars did not accomplish much in this venture except seizing booty

and captives. Soon after, Vasile Lupu discovered the use of his son-in-law Tymiš and the

Cossacks as allies in his struggle against the rebellious Moldavian nobles and their Wallachian

and Transylvanian allies. Although Islam Giray was unwilling to be involved in Danubian

affairs, later with a promise of providing a treasure Xmel’nyc’kyj and Lupu managed to

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convince the khan to send troops to help Lupu’s supporters and Tymiš. It can be stated that Islam

Giray’s motive in joining the hetman’s Danubian venture was limited to taking payment from

allies and booty.

In relation to the campaign of autumn 1653, it has been argued that although the Cossack-Tatar

armies surrounded the Crown army at Žvanec’, instead of taking advantage of the desperate

situation of the enemy the khan started negotiations without the consent of his Cossack allies and

made peace with the king. While many historians have considered the unilateral act of the khan

as a manifestation of his “treachery,” it can be surmised that the khan was basically interested in

restoring his privileged position similar to the one that he attained with the Treaty of Zboriv in

1649. As the Ottoman chroniclers’ account of Žvanec’ suggests, during negotiations with the

king’s delegates, the khan’s representatives put forward conditions that resembled the provisions

in Islam Giray’s instrument of the Treaty of Zboriv. As opposed to the view that the reluctance

of the Tatars to wage a prolonged war forced the khan to make peace with the king, the Ottoman

chronicles suggest that at least one party of the mirzas opposed starting negotiations with the

king and instead wanted to fight against the Commonwealth and even march as far as Warsaw.

They also recount that while the war mongering mirzas attempted to spoil the negotiations and

resume the war, the khan as a generous and merciful person did not consent to their wishes.

Islam Giray objected to the hetman’s submission to the tsar but preferred to use diplomacy in

order to make the hetman renounce his ties with Muscovy. Xmel’nyc’kyj and Muscovy sent

embassies to Crimea and tried to convince the khan that it was the Khanate that had previously

proposed to receive support from Muscovy against the Commonwealth and therefore the

Ukrainian-Muscovite rapprochment did not conflict with its interests. As his letter to the tsar in

1654 suggests, Islam Giray countered that the Muscovite state did not respond to his invitation to

give help to the Tatars and the Cossacks. However, after Crimea concluded peace with the

Commonwealth at Žvanec’ and thus put an end to the state of war with the king, the tsar took

Ukraine under his protection and the Muscovite state proposed that the khan join the Ukrainian-

Muscovite cooperation against the Commonwealth. According to the khan, it would be

inappropriate to violate the newly made peace and start another war, against the king. That is

why he was enraged by the Ukrainian-Muscovite alliance against the Commonwealth.

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In relation to Crimea’s reluctance to respond to the king’s proposal to make an alliance against

Ukraine and Muscovy, historians have explained that the khan and his entourage did not dare to

break relations with the Cossacks because of the menace of the joint Ukrainian-Don Cossack

attacks, the resolute attitude of the Cossack envoys against the khan in defence of the Ukrainian-

Muscovite alliance, and the defence measures and military preparedness of the Muscovite state.

It has also been argued that pro-Cossack mirzas prevented Islam Giray from taking action against

Ukraine. As Fedoruk suggests, the khan and his entourage did not fully trust in the

Commonwealth’s authorities and thought that the latter might use negotiations with Crimea to

pressure the Muscovite state to abandon the Ukrainian Cossacks. Islam Giray’s words in his

letter to Jan Kazimierz in spring 1654 confirm that while the khan was willing to conclude an

alliance with the Commonwealth, he was also skeptical about the motives of the king and his

associates. Remembering how in 1651 Warsaw used the khan’s anti-Muscovite war plans to

force Moscow to renounce its demands, the khan did not hasten to embrace the king’s proposals.

In the aftermath of Berestečko, Xmel’nyc’kyj continued to exchange embassies with the Porte

but he did not take a decisive step to become an Ottoman vassal. The Ottoman chronicles and the

Porte’s letters to the hetman suggest that the Porte was pleased with the hetman’s appeals to

enter Ottoman service. However, Istanbul failed to adopt a consistent policy in the northern

Black Sea region due to the continuing court struggles and burdensome Venetian war over Crete.

Unable or unwilling to make a firm commitment, the Ottomans never dispatched troops to help

the hetman. In addition, as Naima and Müneccimbaşı recount, the Crimean Khanate also spoiled

the Porte’s intention to agree to the hetman’s request to become an Ottoman vassal. The

Ottomans were annoyed by the hetman’s submission to the tsar but could not show an open

reaction against the Ukrainian Cossacks. In the letter to the king written in April 1654, the

Ottoman state only implicitly promised to order the khan to take sides with the Commonwealth

against its enemies. However, Ottoman pressure did not have much weight in shaping the khan’s

decisions.

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Conclusion

This dissertation has investigated the reign of Crimean Khan Islam Giray III, and in particular,

the involvement of the Crimean Khanate in the rebellion and war of Hetman Bohdan

Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It

deals with the period from the outbreak in 1648 until the death of the khan and the hetman’s

acceptance of Muscovite suzerainty, both in 1654. Most historical studies have seen Islam Giray

as an undependable ally of the hetman who aimed to use the struggle between the Ukrainian

Cossacks and the Commonwealth to weaken both sides. This dissertation analyzed

interpretations in the secondary literature and sought to bring into play underused Crimean and

Ottoman chronicles, published primary sources from Polish and Russian archives and original

letters of Crimean and Ottoman rulers and other officials, mostly from Polish archives and

manuscript libraries. It has also treated the reports of the foreign journals Gazette de France and

Moderate Intelligencer. Aiming to do a comparative and critical analysis with various primary

and secondary sources, the present dissertation presented an assessment of Crimean involvement

in Xmel’nyc’kyj’s uprising from its outset to the submission of Ukraine to the tsar’s authority in

1654.

The hostile relations between the Crimean Khanate and the Commonwealth during the early

years of Islam Giray’s reign paved the way, upon Xmel’nyc’kyj’s request in early 1648, to his

decision to come to the aid of the Ukrainian Cossacks. Being emboldened by victory over the

Tatars at Oxmativ on 30 January 1644 King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, Władysław

IV, put forward plans to start a major war with the Ottoman Porte and Crimean Khanate. He

intended to provoke Crimea by refusing to pay the annual tribute/gifts and mistreating its envoys

sent to convey the khan’s desire for maintaining peace. Meanwhile, the frontier magnates

Aleksander Koniecpolski and Jeremi Wiśniowiecki launched separate expeditions against the

Tatars. The king and his entourage also carried out negotiations to form a broad alliance with

Venice and Muscovy against his Muslim neighbours. While a state of war between Crimea and

Muscovy in 1645 and 1646 caused by Moscow’s refusal to pay the traditional gifts/tribute to the

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Khanate meant that the Muscovite state was forced to yield to the idea of cooperation with the

Commonwealth against the Khanate, in spring 1647 Islam Giray managed to reconcile with Tsar

Aleksej Mixajlovič. Accordingly, the Muscovite state lost interest in the king’s offer to join an

alliance against Crimea, though it agreed to a defense pact. Also Władysław could not provoke

the Islam Giray to attack the Commonwealth because the khan was weary after the civil war that

plagued the Khanate since 1645 and had only recently started to wind down, and moreover, he

was strictly forbidden by the Porte to allow himself and the Tatars to be provoked by the

Commonwealth. However, given the strained relations with Warsaw, Islam Giray could defend a

decision to send the Tatars to aid Xmel’nyc’kyj in case of an objection by Porte, by pointing to

the failure of the king to send the tribute/gifts payments, respond favorably to the call of the khan

to renew peaceful relations with the Commonwealth, and treat Crimean envoys well. Moreover,

by 1647 the khan managed to conclude a fragile peace with his rebellious nobles and was willing

to give in to their desire to go on a campaign and thereby channel their destructive energies

outside the Khanate. Envoys were even dispatched to Istanbul to seek the Porte’s permission to

launch an expedition against one of the northern neighbours. Since Władysław, wanting a war

with the Turks and Tatars, was avoiding renewing peaceful relations with the khanate, Islam

Giray would have a ready excuse for sending the Tatars against the Commonwealth when

Xmel’nyc’kyj turned to him for help.

In February-March 1648 the khanate agreed to respond to the request of help by the hetman and

sent troops to support the Cossacks against the Commonwealth. There has been much discussion

about the role and size of the Tatar armies in the Cossack campaigns. On the basis of the Russian

census of Crimea in 1783 that gave the population of Crimea as 170,000, Olgierd Górka

estimates that in the mid-seventeenth century the population of Crimea could not be more than

300,000. According to him, there were 5,000 to 7,000 Tatars in the vanguard army under Togay

Beg in the campaign of 1648, while in the campaign of summer 1649 the khan’s army had

10,000 to 20,000 troops. While Myron Korduba and later Romuald Romański also claim that the

Khanate’s ability to raise a huge number of troops was exaggerated by contemporary sources,

Stefan Kuczyński and later Mykola Koval’s’kyj and Jurij Mycyk maintain that around the mid-

seventeenth century the khan was able to mobilize 100,000 troops. Given the lack of a reliable

record on Tatar troop numbers, the present dissertation claims that if Islam Giray could send an

advance unit of 5,000 to 7,000 soldiers as Górka surmised, assuming that the main army was ten

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times larger than the advance unit, it is possible that the khan could raise an army of 50,000 to

70,000 troops. Supporting the infantry-based Cossack forces, Tatar cavalry played an important

role in neutralizing cavalry of the Kingdom’s armies and thus contributed to the Cossack

victories.

It has been claimed that under the influence of Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem and the Kyivan

secular and ecclesiastical elites, in late 1648 during his sojourn in Kyiv Xmel’nyc’kyj abandoned

the relatively moderate goals of his uprising and aspired to eliminate the Commonwealth’s

authority over Ukraine and found an autonomous polity or even an independent state. However,

his aspirations were purportedly foiled by the “treachery” of the khan at Zboriv, who forced the

hetman to make peace and force the Cossacks to live under the Commonwealth’s authority.

While the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles do not speak of any change in the hetman’s goals

during the course of his struggle from early 1648 to summer 1649, Islam Giray’s two letters to

the king in June and December 1648 suggest that the Khanate primarily wanted to make the

Commonwealth send the unpaid tribute/gifts payments. Only in his letter in June 1648, the khan

shortly asked the king in passing not to harm the Cossacks while giving a long account of his

resentment at the hostile actions of the Commonwealth’s authorities in the past. However, in his

instrument of the Treaty of Zboriv in August 1649, Islam Giray asked Jan Kazimierz to refrain

from causing damage to the Ukrainian Cossacks as his first condition of peace and then listed his

own demands. Although the khan’s letters and his instrument of peace do not make mention of

the hetman’s changing objectives, it can be surmised that Islam Giray gave priority to the

demands about the Cossacks in order to appease his ally and prevent him from seeking more

ambitious goals.

After the Treaty of Zboriv, the goals of the Crimean leaders was twofold: First, the khan tried to

make the Cossack leadership and the Commonwealth observe the Treaty of Zboriv as an

acceptable settlement for solving their problems. He arbitrated between these two parties when

they fell into dispute about implementation of the provisions of the peace, though in vain.

Second, Islam Giray planned to form a common front with the Commonwealth and the

Ukrainian Cossacks in order to eliminate the Don Cossacks who attacked Crimea when the

Tatars departed for Ukraine to help Xmel’nyc’kyj in 1648 and 1649. Islam Giray and his

entourage expected the hetman to dispatch his forces to support their campaign plans against the

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Don Cossacks in return for their help to the Ukrainian Cossacks in the campaigns of 1648-9. The

khan also dreamed of capturing Kazan and Astrakhan from Muscovy by launching a campaign in

alliance with Čyhyryn and Warsaw. At this point, the Khanate saw worsening relations between

the Commonwealth and Muscovy in early 1650 as an opportunity to attract the Commonwealth’s

authorities to its anti-Muscovite alliance schemes. By the same token, the Commonwealth

benefitted from Crimea’s appetite to cooperate with it against Muscovy in order to force the

Muscovite state to renounce its demands for the return of Smolensk. In face of the Khanate’s

attempt to make the Commonwealth agree to make an anti-Muscovite alliance, Moscow had to

seek reconciliation with Warsaw in return for a promise to no longer allow its nobility to insult

the tsar. Meanwhile, Xmel’nyc’kyj did not yield to the khan’s persistent appeals to mount a joint

expedition against either Muscovy or the Don Cossacks by claiming that he did not yet manage

to reach an accord with the Commonwealth and that the Ukrainian Cossacks were still threatened

by it. Interestingly, in front of Moscow both Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth tried to cast

the other as a supporter of the khan’s anti-Muscovite plans. And so, Crimea’s attempt to build an

anti-Muscovite alliance with the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth after the Treaty of

Zboriv came to naught. It can be surmised that Crimea’s failure to convince Warsaw to join an

anti-Muscovite alliance during the ceasefire period between August 1649 and June 1651 led the

khan to “return the favour” and be reluctant to agree to the Polish envoy Mariusz Jaskólski’s

offer in 1654 to make an alliance against Muscovy and the Ukrainian Cossacks. In any event, a

letter of the khan to the king in 1654 suggests that Islam Giray was concerned that the

Commonwealth’s authorities would possibly use their negotiations with Crimea to intimidate the

Muscovite state into giving up Ukraine and make Xmel’nyc’kyj agree to submit again under the

Commonwealth. In this letter, the khan warned that possible Muscovite and Ukrainian moves

towards reconciliation with the Commonwealth should not be taken seriously. While historians

have pointed to the military might of the Muscovite army, threat of joint Don and Ukrainian

Cossack attacks, and the supposed firm commitment of Xmel’nyc’kyj to the Ukrainian-

Muscovite rapprochement to explain the khan’s reluctance to send military help to the

Commonwealth, except for Jaroslav Fedoruk, they have ignored the Crimean Khanate’s distrust

of Warsaw’s intentions.

This study points out that Crimea concealed its anti-Muscovite schemes lest the Muscovite state

retaliate by suspending its tribute/gifts payments to Crimea. On one hand, Islam Giray and his

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entourage attempted to provoke the ruler of Poland-Lithuania against Moscow by playing up the

latter’s bold demands upon the Commonwealth. By promising to let the king have all of

Muscovy except for Kazan and Astrakhan, they sought to convince him to dispatch an army in

August 1650 to join the campaign of the kalgay Kırım Giray against the tsar’s realm. On the

other hand, when both the Commonwealth and Xmel’nyc’kyj did not yield to Crimea’s calls to

participate in a campaign against Muscovy, reluctant to confront Muscovite forces alone and also

because of lack of provisions on the campaign route the kalgay Kırım Giray aborted the

campaign. Here Xmel’nyc’kyj played a role by convincing the Crimean leadership to change the

objective of the campaign and direct the kalgay’s army to invade Moldavia jointly with the

Ukrainian Cossacks. In the meantime, Islam Giray wrote to Aleksej Mixajlovič portraying

Moldavia as the objective of the kalgay’s expedition from the very beginning in order to avenge

Moldavian hospodar’s allowing an attack on Tatars returning from Commonwealth in 1649.

According to the khan’s remarks, the Tatars pretended to march against Muscovy only to

surprise the Moldavians. The difference between the accounts in the khan’s letters to the king

and the tsar suggests that Islam Giray did not want to risk spoiling his relations with Muscovy

once his campaign against it was foiled. While he would rather have gone against Muscovy and

ended up being dragged into the Moldavian expedition by the hetman, he was content to provide

the Tatars with an opportunity to seize captives and booty in Moldavia.

As the Crimean Khanate failed to make Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth agree to observe

the Treaty of Zboriv, in summer 1651 it became involved in a new round of conflict between

Ukraine and the Commonwealth. As to the Cossack-Tatar defeat by the Polish army at

Berestečko at the end of June 1651, it has been argued that Islam Giray’s desertion of the

battlefield was the main reason for this defeat. Some historians have even claimed that Islam

Giray conspired with Jan Kazimierz before the battle to withdraw with his forces and leave

Xmel’nyc’kyj in a difficult situation. In contrast, another group of historians emphasized that the

Tatars were forced to fight in a disadvantageous battlefield as their flanks were beset by marshes

and woods. Superior Polish artillery and infantry (including German mercenaries) left the Tatars

no choice but to withdraw from the battlefield. This study points out that in his letters to the

Porte and Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki, Islam Giray refers to a certain panic in his rear

troops as the reason for his withdrawal from Berestečko. In another letter to the Porte, the khan

claims that he was obliged to stop fighting in order to punish Nogays who seized the horses of

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the Bucak Tatars and fled the battlefield. Therefore, on the basis of the khan’s letters, it can be

said that Islam Giray’s failure to stand by his allies at Berestečko was because of either an

unexplained panic among the Tatars or undisciplined action of his Nogay troops.

As in accordance to the terms of the Treaty of Bila Cerkva with the Commonwealth,

Xmel’nyc’kyj agreed to renounce his relations with the Tatars, it seemed that Islam Giray lost his

position as an arbitrator between Čyhyryn and Warsaw. However, Xmel’nyc’kyj maintained his

relations with Crimea. Moreover, upon the hetman’s request the khan dispatched his kalgay with

an army to help the Cossacks force the Moldavian hospodar to honour his earlier promise to wed

his daughter to the hetman’s son, Tymiš. In summer 1652 the Polish army that was supposed to

intercept and prevent the Cossack-Tatar allies from making an incursion into Moldavia was

defeated at Batih. While the Tatars gained an opportunity to seize slaves and booty,

Xmel’nyc’kyj managed to make his son’s marriage to the hospodar’s daughter a reality and gain

a foothold in the Danubian region. Later the hospodar managed to turn the forced marriage into

an opportunity by enlisting his son-in-law Tymiš in his power struggle with other Danubian

principality rulers. In return for promising the khan a treasure in Suceava, Xmel’nyc’kyj and

Lupu managed to convince the khan to send help to Tymiš’s besieged forces there. However,

when Islam Giray learned about the defeat of the Cossacks and death of Tymiš he ordered the

given Tatar force to cancel the Moldavian expedition and join his army that was marching

through Ukraine, apparently to support Xmel’nyc’kyj against the king’s forces. It can be

surmised that Islam Giray’s purpose in agreeing to send troops to join the Cossack campaigns in

the Danubian venture was to receive payment from allies and give the Tatars an opportunity to

plunder a nearby territory.

When in autumn 1653 the prospect of war between the Commonwealth and the Ukrainian

Cossacks was looming again, Xmel’nyc’kyj again managed to convince Islam Giray to come to

his help. The Cossack-Tatar allies encircled the king’s army at Žvanec’ as they did four years

earlier at Zboriv. According to historians, once again instead of taking advantage of the

miserable situation of the besieged king’s army, the khan started talks and concluded peace with

the Commonwealth’s authorities independent of the Cossacks, thereby allegedly betraying his

Cossack allies yet again. While it has been argued that the reluctance of the Tatars to be involved

in a protracted campaign and the ongoing Ukrainian-Muscovite rapprochement played a role in

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making the khan abandon his Cossack allies, the Ottoman chroniclers Katip Çelebi and Naima

recount that some mirzas were unwilling to reconcile with the Commonwealth and wanted to

take advantage of the hopeless situation of the king’s army. According to these chroniclers, some

mirzas even attempted to break up the negotiations and restart hostilities. However, since the

khan was purportedly a man of mercy, he did not consent to destruction of the Commonwealth.

While the chronicles do not provide information about possible motives of Islam Giray other

than a rhetorical portrayal of his benevolent personality, it can be stated that the khan was

mainly interested in restoring his role as mediator between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the

Commonwealth. However, the submission of the hetman to the tsar’s authority spoiled the

khan’s wish to play a pivotal role between Ukraine and the Commonwealth. Concerning the

terms of peace that the khan put forward at Žvanec’, the Ottoman chroniclers suggest that the he

intended to restore the Treaty of Zboriv, asking Warsaw to deliver the payment of annual

tribute/gifts without delay, abstain from any aggression against Ottoman lands, do no harm the

Ukrainian Cossacks, be in eternal friendship with the Khanate, send troops to support the Tatars

in future campaigns and grant the Tatar-Cossack forces the right to plunder in the king’s country

as they returned home.

Although the Crimean Khanate did not hasten to make an alliance with the Commonwealth, it

was worried about the Ukrainian-Muscovite rapprochement. In the meantime, Muscovy and

Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatched embassies to Crimea to soften the reaction of the khan by reminding

Islam Giray how he had previously proposed to the Cossack leaders and the Muscovite envoy to

include Muscovy in an alliance against the Commonwealth. Therefore the Ukrainian-Muscovite

rapprochement should not bother Crimea. However, in his letter to Aleksej Mixajlovič, Islam

Giray objected to this argument by claiming that the Muscovite state did not respond to his

earlier invitation to join the Tatars and the Cossacks against the Commonwealth in the campaign

during winter 1653-1654. Instead the Muscovite state decided to take Ukraine under its

protection and asked the Crimean leadership to cooperate with Ukraine and Muscovy against the

Commonwealth after he had already concluded peace with Jan Kazimierz at Žvanec’ and ceased

hostilities with the Commonwealth. From his perspective, it would be improper to violate a

newly concluded peace and resume war against the Commonwealth. Therefore the khan’s words

in his letter to the tsar suggest that he considered the Ukrainian-Muscovite rapprochement as an

act aimed at spoiling his goal to make the Commonwealth’s authorities and the Ukrainian

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Cossacks follow the terms of the Treaty of Žvanec’ and thereby restore his mediator position

between the king and the hetman.

Much has also been speculated about Ukrainian-Ottoman relations and its effect on the Crimean

Khanate. While before Xmel’nyc’kyj’s rebellion, Islam Giray and the Tatars seemed to obey the

Porte’s warning about mounting expeditions against the Commonwealth, they tended to ignore

orders from Istanbul when Xmel’nyc’kyj proposed that the Tatars join him in the struggle against

the Commonwealth. As Novosel’skij recounts on the basis of the Muscovite archival sources,

Islam Giray held a council with his dignitaries and nobles to consider Xmel’nyc’kyj’s offer

versus the Porte’s request for troops to support the Ottoman forces in the Venetian war over

Crete. In accordance with the demands of his nobility at this council, the khan purportedly

decided to help the Ukrainian Cossacks and decline the Porte’s request by pointing to famine and

poverty in Crimea. On the basis of Novosel’skij’s analysis, it can be stated that when the Tatars

found an ally such as the Ukrainian Cossacks, they saw no harm in ignoring the Ottoman ban on

expeditions against the Commonwealth. Therefore, as the khan thought that the Tatars would not

experience another setback as they did at Oxmativ four years earlier, he sent a vanguard army to

help the hetman. While there has been much controversy about when Ottoman-Cossack relations

began and what the nature of the relations between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Porte was, many

historians think that the Cossack leadership maintained relations with the Ottoman Empire in

order to use its influence over Crimea and secure its support for the Cossack-Tatar alliance. In

his account of the events of 1648, the Ottoman chronicler Mustafa Naima interestingly recounts

how Islam Giray offered to the Porte that he, the khan, would make the hetman an appointee of

the sultan as the king of Rus’ (Rus kralı). By the same token, Warsaw dispatched embassies to

the Porte urging Istanbul to make the khan renounce his relations with the Cossacks. It has been

argued that at the early stage of Xmel’nyc’kyj rebellion in summer 1648, the Porte attempted to

prevent the Khanate from supporting the Cossacks and ordered Islam Giray to return the Tatars

to Crimea. For this reason, although winning two important victories in spring 1648 and having a

chance to march deep into the Commonwealth even as early this point in his rebellion, after his

forces reached Bila Cerkva Xmel’nyc’kyj decided not to go further west at that time (in that

same year there was another possibility to go even deeper when in the fall Xmel’nyc’kyj and the

Tatars besieged L’viv and Zamość; at that time the hetman decided to go no futher and tried to

reconcile with the Commonwealth). According to some historians, since it was the Porte’s order

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that made the khan depart from Ukraine and return home, in the absence of his Crimean allies the

hetman had to abort his campaign and attempt to make peace with the Commonwealth. While

khan’s letter to the king of 12 June 1648 suggests that Islam Giray made the Ukrainian Cossacks

stop from wreaking further harm upon the Commonwealth, it does not mention the Porte’s role

in his decision to return to Crimea. However, the Ottoman and Crimean chronicles, Deputy

Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha’s letter to Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki (c. June 1648) and

Grand Vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha’s letter to Chancellor Ossoliński (c. June-July 1648)

suggest that the Porte attempted or at least promised to make the Khanate renounce its ties with

the Ukrainian Cossacks.

When a janissary coup in August 1648 resulted in the execution of Sultan Ibrahim and his grand

vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha, the new Ottoman leadership under Sultan Mehmed IV and his

first grand vizier Sofu Mehmed Pasha preferred not to interfere much in Islam Giray’s policies

regarding the struggle between Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth. As Grand Vizier Sofu

Mehmed Pasha’s letter to Chancellor Ossoliński (c. August-September 1648) suggests, the new

leadership at the Porte was not very concerned with Warsaw’s grievances and even recognized

that the khan attacked the Commonwealth for justifiable reasons such as the king’s failure to pay

the annual tribute/gifts to the khan and his hostile actions against the Tatars. At this point, it can

be said that the new grand vizier preferred not to try to restrain the khan because he was

overwhelmed by the exhausting war against Venice and the continuing opposition of the

supporters of the slain sultan and other fractional disputes at the Ottoman court.

Ottoman-Cossack relations gained a new dimension as the exchange of envoys between Istanbul

and Čyhyryn in 1650 led the sultan to send a letter to Xmel’nyc’kyj in February-March 1651

declaring his willingness to accept Ukraine under his protection. This letter suggests that Crimea

played an intermediary role between the Porte and Ukraine as it states that a Tatar envoy

formerly helped the Cossack envoys in their journey to Istanbul. On the basis of this document it

is also possible to interpret that the Porte expected the khan to facilitate the submission of the

Cossacks under Ottoman rule. Thereupon, an Ottoman envoy travelled to Crimea conveying the

sultan’s order to the khan about giving help to the Ukrainian Cossacks. Grand Vizier Melek

Ahmed Pasha also wrote to Xmel’nyc’kyj in February-March 1651 that the khan was ordered to

help him in case the Commonwealth intended to attack Ukraine. While Islam Giray supposedly

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agreed on his own to dispatch an advance army and mount his horse at the head of the main army

to give military support to the Cossacks, most historians have attributed the participation of the

Tatars in the campaign of summer 1651 to Ottoman pressure on the khan. However, they fail to

see that Islam Giray had no choice other than agreeing to help Xmel’nyc’kyj in the imminent war

with the Commonwealth in order to maintain his mediatory role between the contending parties.

Therefore it cannot be stated that the khan agreed to help the hetman only because of the Porte’s

pressure. In addition, Grand Vizier Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha’s letter to Xmel’nyc’kyj written at

the end of 1652 promised to send the troops of Dobruca and the Bucak Tatars in case the hetman

asked for help from the Porte, but made no mention of Islam Giray or the Crimean Tatars. In

contrast to the letters from the Porte that were written in February-March 1651, Tarhuncu

Ahmed Pasha’s letter does not speak of attempting to exert influence over Crimea in the struggle

between Ukraine and the Commonwealth. Besides, in their account on the events of December

1652-November 1653, Ottoman chroniclers Katip Çelebi and Müneccimbaşı relate that when the

Ukrainian Cossacks appealed to the Porte to grant them a hospodarship like Wallachia and

Moldavia, the khan’s representative in Istanbul prevented the Ottomans from agreeing to the

Cossack proposal because the Khanate saw the Ukrainian Cossacks as its subjects. Therefore

both Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha’s letter and these chroniclers suggest that starting from late 1652

the Crimean Khanate no longer played a mediatory role between Istanbul and Ukraine and even

went against the Porte’s taking Xmel’nyc’kyj under its protection. While the Porte was

displeased with the January 1654 Perejaslav council where Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Ukrainian

Cossacks agreed to submit to Muscovite authority, as the sultan’s letter to the king of April 1654

shows, it promised to restrain the Khanate and the Bucak Tatars from being involved in a hostile

act against the Commonwealth and ordered the khan to help Warsaw against its enemies. Since

the Ottoman Porte was distracted by the ominous war against Venice over Crete, the resurgent

Safavid threat in its eastern borders and the incessant domestic chaos due to struggles among

rival factions at the Ottoman court and the competition between the janissaries and the household

cavalry regiments (kapukulı sipahileri), it did not follow an active and consistent policy in

northern affairs during these years. And so, Islam Giray managed to follow his own policies

towards his northern neighbours.

Islam Giray’s support of the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Commonwealth was in large part

due to the fact that Khanate’s policies towards its northern neighbours were largely motivated by

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internal issues. The alliance with Xmel’nyc’kyj helped the khan consolidate his recent

reconciliation with his unruly nobles by giving them a grand opportunity to taking slaves and

booty. The khan was also interested in punishing the Commonwealth for the refusal of its

authorities to pay the customary tribute/gifts. However, these concerns about domestic problems

and tribute/gifts are not sufficient to explain the khan’s involvement in the struggle between the

Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth. In light of the Khanate’s long-term interests and

even strategy in eastern European affairs, Islam Giray would not allow the Ukrainian Cossacks

to deal a decisive blow against the Commonwealth. If Warsaw was weakened, Moscow could

gain the upper hand and thus lead to a dramatic shift in the regional balance of powers. For this

reason, Islam Giray wanted Xmel’nyc’kyj to be content with moderate gains and agree to

reconcile with the Commonwealth at Zboriv in 1649 and Žvanec in 1653. Thanks to the

influence of his vizier and tutor Sefer Gazi Agha, he too became interested in reviving the

Crimean Khanate’s claims over Kazan and Astrakhan vis-à-vis Muscovy. Since the khan

probably realized that the khanate’s capabilities alone were not great enough to pursue such an

ambitious goal, he sought the support of the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Commonwealth. Very

possibly the successes in the campaigns of 1648-9 made Islam Giray seriously adopt the idea of

conquering Kazan and Astrakhan from Muscovy and transforming the Crimean Khanate into a

true empire along the lines of its great predecessor, the Golden Horde. Regrettably for Islam

Giray, Xmel’nyc’kyj and Warsaw were primarily concerned about their mutual struggle and thus

refrained from committing to his schemes against Muscovy. In conclusion, the Khanate tried to

convince Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth to agree to reconcile with each other and

pursued his grandiose plan but failed.

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Chronology

Autumn 1620 - Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj falls captive to the Ottomans at the battle of Ţuţora.

1622 - Xmel’nyc’kyj returns to Ukraine after two years of captivity in Istanbul.

1629 - Islam Giray falls captive to the Commonwealth near the Dnister River.

1634 - Islam Giray returns to Crimea.

1637 - Khan Inayet Giray is executed by the order of the sultan. Bahadır Giray ascends to the throne and appoints his brother Islam Giray as his kalgay.

1641 - Khan Bahadır Giray dies. Islam Giray losses the succession struggle. The Ottoman Porte places Mehmed Giray on the throne.

30 January 1644 - The Polish army under Stanisław Koniecpolski together with Cossack detachments defeats the Tatars headed by Togay Bey at Oxmativ.

29 February 1644 - The Commonwealth’s Senate upon the call of the king decides to cease to pay tribute/gifts to the Crimean Khanate.

June 1644 - The Porte deposes Khan Mehmed Giray and enthrones his brother and erstwhile rival Islam Giray IV.

September 1644 - The Commonwealth’s authorities offers the Muscovite envoys to conclude an alliance against the Ottomans and the Tatars.

Autumn 1644 - Islam Giray sends Mustafa Beg to the Commonwealth to renew peace.

December 1644 - Islam Giray renews peace with Tsar Mixail Fedorovič.

December 1644 - Islam Giray embarks on his Circassian campaign.

Spring 1645 - Islam Giray returns from the Caucasus. A violent dispute erupts between the Tatar mirzas and the palace guards of the khan.

July 1645 - Mixail Fedorovič dies. His son Aleksej Mixajlovič ascends to the throne.

August 1645 - The khan fights a battle against the rebellious mirzas in Crimea. The defeated mirzas flee to the steppes in the north of Orkapı.

August 1645 - The Ottoman army takes the fortress of Canea on Crete.

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Autumn 1645 - Islam Giray manages to conclude a temporary peace with the nobility.

December 1645 - Islam Giray appoints the nureddin Gazi Giray to command the Tatars in the campaign against Muscovy.

Beginning of 1646 - Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovič decides to retaliate the Tatars for their campaign against Muscovy. He orders the voevoda of Kursk Semen Požarskij to go to Astrakhan and assemble an army from Astrakhan troops, pro-Muscovite Tatars, Great Nogays and Kabardians.

January 1646 - The Muscovite envoy Vasilij Strešnev arrives in Warsaw. The envoy conveys the tsar’s message to conclude an alliance with the king against the Tatars.

February 1646 - Islam Agha comes to Poland as the khan’s envoy.

24 April 1646 - Islam Agha has an audience with King Władysław IV. He delivers the message of the khan urging that peace be restored.

May 1646 - Sultan Ibrahim assigns the governor (beglerbegi) of Özi Siyavuş Pasha with the task of taking measures to protect the Ottoman possessions on the Black Sea against Cossack raids.

June 1646 - Islam Giray dispatches the nureddin Gazi Giray with an army to Azak.

June and August 1646 - The Don Cossacks launch an unsuccessful attack against Azak. Gazi Giray fights battles against the Muscovite troops under the command of Semen Požarskij and their Kabardian and Don Cossack allies.

December 1646 and January 1647 - The Muscovite envoys come to Warsaw with the tsar’s letter asking to conclude an alliance against the Tatars.

January 1647 - The Ottoman envoy Mehmed Chavush has an audience with Władysław and conveys the message of the sultan to maintain peace.

March 1647 - ‘Ali Beg comes to Warsaw and he is granted an audience with the king. Władysław decides to detain ‘Ali Beg.

April 1647 - The Don Cossacks attack the Tatars around Temruk and Arbat.

May 1647 - The rebellious nobles fight another battle against the khan’s army at Orkapı. They are again forced to escape to the steppes.

June 1647 - Władysław dispatches Adam Kysil’ to Moscow in order to convince the Muscovite state to conclude an anti-Tatar alliance.

July 1647 - The Ottoman governor of Azak Mustafa Beg marches with an army of Ottoman troops, Nogays, Tatars and Circassians against the Don Cossacks and unsuccessfully besieges their headquarters at Čerkassk.

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August 1647 - The Porte sends an envoy to Crimea to investigate the reasons of the conflict between the khan and the nobility.

August 1647 - Adam Kysil’ arrives in Moscow.

Autumn 1647 - The magnates Aleksander Koniecpolski and Jeremi Wiśniowiecki go on two separate campaigns against the Tatars in the steppe.

September 1647 - Islam Giray enacts a letter of oath to Aleksej Mixajlovič and swears an oath of allegiance to the peace treaty in the presence of the Muscovite envoys in Crimea.

September 1647 - Muscovy and the Commonwealth renew the Peace of 1634.

November 1647 - Islam Giray writes to Władysław and Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki expressing his grievances for the campaigns of the magnates.

28 November 1647 - Islam Giray reconciles with the rebellious mirzas.

End of 1647 - An Ottoman embassy sets out to Warsaw to maintain peace.

December 1647 - Xmel’nyc’kyj quarrels with the Polish magnates in Ukraine and moves south to unite with several hundred Cossacks.

January 1648 – The Cossacks elect Xmel’nyc’kyj as their hetman.

February 1648 - Xmel’nyc’kyj sends two successive missions first under Jac’ko Klyša and second under Kindrat Burljaj to Crimea asking help from Islam Giray.

March 1648 - Islam Giray dispatches a vanguard army under Togay Beg to help the Cossacks.

Late April 1648 - Islam Giray sends an embassy to Istanbul informing the Porte about the request of help from the Cossacks.

16, 26 May 1648 - The Cossack-Tatar army defeats the magnate forces at Žovti Vody and Korsun’ respectively. Crown Grand Hetman Mikołaj Potocki and Crown Field Hetman Marcin Kalinowski fall captive to the Tatars.

20 May 1648 - Władysław IV dies. Primate Maciej Łubieński becomes the interrex leading the Commonwealth until the election of the new king.

12 June 1648 - Islam Giray writes to the king asking for the unpaid tribute/gifts and the recovery of traditional Cossack rights and liberties.

August 1648 - Grand Vizier Ahmed Pasha is dismissed and slain. Sultan Ibrahim I is dethroned and executed. His infant son Mehmed IV ascends to the throne.

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28 August 1648 - The kalgay Kırım Giray sets out to Ukraine upon the order of the khan.

September 1648 - The Cossack-Tatar army defeats the magnate army at Pyliavtsi.

November 1648 - The Commonwealth’s Diet elects Jan Kazimierz II as the new king.

November 1648 - The Cossacks under Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Tatars headed by Togay Beg lay siege first to L’viv and then to Zamość.

December 1648 - Islam Giray writes to Jan Kazimierz to congratulate his accession to the throne and request the payment of tribute/gifts in arrears.

December 1648 and January 1649 - Xmel’nyc’kyj meets with Patriarch Paisios of Jerusalem and Ukrainian secular and religious intelligentsia in Kyiv.

May 1649 - The Venetians defeat the Ottoman navy at Old Phocaea. Kara Murad Pasha replaces Sofu Mehmed Pasha as the grand vizier by the help of the sultan’s grandmother Kösem Sultan.

29 May 1649 - Islam Giray decides to mount an expedition against the Commonwealth.

July 1649 - The Cossack-Tatar army surrounds the Polish camp under Jeremi Wiśniowiecki at Zbaraž.

1 July 1649 - The Porte renews the Treaty of Zsitvatorok with the Habsburg Empire.

August 1649 - The Cossack-Tatar army besieges the king’s army at Zboriv. Islam Giray agrees to Jan Kazimierz’s proposal to ceasefire and negotiate. The king’s and Tatar representatives conclude the Treaty of Zboriv.

16 August 1649 - Islam Giray issues his instrument of the Treaty of Zboriv.

20 August 1649 - Islam Giray starts his withdrawal from Zboriv and marches to Zbaraž.

3 September 1649 - Aleksej Mixajlovič writes to Xmel’nyc’kyj to thank him for persuading the Crimean Khanate not to attack Muscovy.

26 November 1649 - Xmel’nyc’kyj appeals to the tsar to restrain the Don Cossacks from attacking the Tatars.

January 1650 - The Diet ratifies the Treaty of Zboriv.

January 1650 - The Commonwealth’s authorities send Wojciech Bieczyński to Crimea to inform about the delivery of tribute/gift payment to Kam”janec’.

January 1650 - Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatches an embassy to Istanbul.

March 1650 - Islam Giray sends an embassy to the Commonwealth.

290

Spring 1650 - The khan releases Mikołaj Potocki and Marcin Kalinowski from captivity in Crimea and allows them to return to the Commonwealth.

May 1650 - Islam Giray goes to Orkapı to supervise the reparation of defensive works.

May 1650 - A new Ottoman fleet sets out from Istanbul to provide support to the Ottoman army at Crete but fails to break the Venetian blockade at the Dardanelles.

28 June 1650 - Jan Kazimierz writes to Islam Giray about the return of Bieczyński.

July 1650 - Islam Giray sends the kalgay Kırım Giray for a campaign against Muscovy.

July 1650 - The Ottoman envoy Osman Agha arrives in Čyhyryn.

August 1650 - The khan sends missions to Xmel’nyc’kyj and the Commonwealth to inform about the campaign of the kalgay Kırım Giray and ask them to join the campaign.

August 1650 - The kalgay Kırım Giray aborts the campaign against Muscovy and with their Cossack allies attacks Moldavia. Under the pressure of the Cossack-Tatar army, the Moldavian hospodar Vasile Lupu agrees to the marriage of his daughter to Xmel’nyc’kyj’s son Tymiš.

5 August 1650 - Kara Murad Pasha resigns from the grand vizierate and leaves his position to Melek Ahmed Pasha.

9 August 1650 - Chancellor Jerzy Ossoliński dies.

September 1650 - Cossack envoys Antin Ždanovyč and Pavlo Janenko arrive in Istanbul.

Autumn 1650 - Islam Giray sends Toktamış Agha to convince the Commonwealth’s authorities to adhere to the conditions of the Treaty of Zboriv.

October 1650 - The Commonwealth orders Bieczyński to travel to Crimea in order to express its grievances against the Cossacks.

December 1650 - Islam Giray dispatches Mustafa Agha to the Commonwealth in order to investigate the accusations of the Cossacks and the king’s representatives against each other with regard to the implementation of the Treaty of Zboriv.

December 1650 - Xmel’nyc’kyj dispatches another embassy to Istanbul.

February 1651 - The clashes between the Cossacks and the Polish forces escalate.

Spring 1651 - Osman Agha arrives in Ukraine to deliver the edict of the Ottoman state to the hetman informing his decision to take the Cossacks under his protection.

291

June 1651 - The king’s army defeats the Cossacks and the Tatars at Berestečko. Islam Giray withdraws from the battlefield and returns to Crimea.

15 July 1651 - The Ottoman fleet suffers a defeat against the Venetians near Rhodes.

July 1651 - An Ottoman envoy arrives in Čyhyryn.

1 August 1651 - The khan sends Karaş Mirza with several thousand Tatars to help the Cossacks.

August 1651 - A merchant rebellion leads to the removal of Melek Ahmed Pasha from the grand vizierate. Siyavuş Pasha becomes the new grand vizier.

September 1651 - The sultan’s mother Turhan Hatice Sultan manages to eliminate her mother-in-law Kösem Sultan. During the purge against the followers of the slain Kösem Sultan, the leading figure of pro-Cossack party Bektaş Agha is killed.

27 September 1651 - The chief eunuch of the palace stages the dismissal of Siyavuş Pasha from the grand vizierate. Gürcü Mehmed Pasha becomes the new grand vizier.

28 September 1651 - Xmel’nyc’kyj makes the Treaty of Bila Cerkva with the Commonwealth.

27 November O.S. (7 December) 1651 - Xmel’nyc’kyj writes to the Porte to inform about the Treaty of Bila Cerkva.

11 March 1652 - The Diet ends without ratifying the Treaty of Bila Cerkva.

Spring 1652 - A Cossack-Tatar army sets out to make Vasile Lupu fulfill his promise to arrange his daughter’s marriage to Bohdan Xmel’nyc’kyj’s son Tymiš.

1-2 June 1652 - On its way to Moldavia, the Cossack-Tatar army encounters and defeats the Polish army under Marcin Kalinowski at Batih.

20 June 1652 - Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha replaces Gürcü Mehmed Pasha as the new grand vizier.

August 1652 - Tymiš marries the daughter of Vasile Lupu.

March 1653 - Tarhuncu Ahmed Pasha leaves the grand vizierate to Derviş Mehmed Pasha.

Spring 1653 - Vasile Lupu calls his son-in-law Tymiš to help against the rebellious Moldavian nobles and their Wallachian and Transylvanian allies.

September 1653 - Tymiš dies during the defense of Suceava.

15 September 1653 - Islam Giray sets out to Ukraine.

1 October 1653 - The Zemskij Sobor agrees to the tsar’s decision to take Ukraine under protection.

292

December 1653 - The Cossack-Tatar army under Islam Giray and Xmel’nyc’kyj besieges the king’s army at Žvanec’. Islam Giray and Jan Kazimierz agree to stop hostilities and embark on peace negotiations. The representatives of the king and the khan concludes an unwritten peace on the basis of the former Treaty of Zboriv.

18 January 1654 - The Cossacks gather for a council at Perejaslav and agree to Xmel’nyc’kyj’s decision to accept Aleksej Mixajlovič as their suzerain.

January 1654 - Jan Kazimierz sends Mikołaj Bieganowski to Istanbul.

February 1654 - Jan Kazimierz dispatches Mariusz Jaskólski to Crimea.

February 1654 - The Muscovite envoys Timofej Xotunskij and Ivan Fomin travel to Crimea.

April 1654 - The king’s envoy Jaskólski arrives in Bagçasaray and receives an audience with Islam Giray and Sefer Gazi Agha.

Late April 1654 - The Cossack envoy Semen Savič comes to Bagçasaray.

Early May 1654 - Islam Giray sees off Jaskólski and sends Süleyman Agha to Warsaw.

May 1654 - Xmel’nyc’kyj orders another embassy to Crimea.

June 1654 - The Muscovite state sends a new mission to Crimea offering the khan to join the campaign against the Commonwealth.

June 1654 - Islam Giray dies. The Crimean notables agree to recognize Mehmed Giray as the new khan and dispatch an embassy to Istanbul to ask the Porte to send Mehmed Giray to start his second reign as the khan.

25 August 1654 - The Porte brings Mehmed Giray from Rhodes to Istanbul and notifies him about his accession to the Crimean throne.

October 1654 - Mehmed Giray arrives in Crimea.

Late 1654 - Mehmed Giray issues a letter of oath to Jan Kazimierz.

293

Glossary

aga a military/civil officer in the Ottoman Empire (Eng. form agha)

almaşuv (Rus. rozmen) place of exchange where the Tatars received the payment of tribute/gifts from the Muscovites

‘ahdname a letter of oath issued by the Crimean khan and the Ottoman sultans to foreign rulers that is the equivalent of a treaty

‘alem a banner

‘arz-ı ‘ubudiyyet (lit. presenting [oneself] into slavery) offer of servitude and subservience

atalık tutor of a Giray prince

beg a Tatar noble; a governor in the Ottoman Empire

beglik a governorship

beglerbeglik a governor-generalship in the Ottoman Empire

beglerbegi a governor-general in the Ottoman Empire

berat a diploma/patent issued by the Ottoman sultan to grant privileges, offices and salaries

bit’ čelom (lit. hit the forehead to the ground) to pay obeisance to the Muscovite tsars

boyar a member of the highest Muscovite service aristocray

Crown Chancellor chief minister in the Crown of Poland having the authority to conduct foreign affairs

Crown grand hetman commander-in-chief of the Crown army of Poland

Crown field hetman deputy commander-in-chief of the Crown army of Poland

çapkun a Tatar courier

darüssade agası chief eunuch of the palace and an office in Ottoman bureaucracy

Diet (Pol. Sejm) parliament of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

294

dietine (Pol. sejmik) assembly of the nobility at local level in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

eşik ağası a chamberlain to the kalgay

eyalet synonymous with beglerbeglik

gavur infidel (derogatory term in Turkish)

Giray cognomen of the male members of the dynasty that ruled the Crimean Khanate

haraj (Tur. haraç, Pol. haracz) tax, tribute payment made to the Crimean Khanate by Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

hetman commander in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks

hil‘at a robe of honour

hospodar a ruler of Moldavia or Wallachia

janissary an Ottoman standing infantry soldier receiving salary from the state, recruited from non-Muslim child

kaftan a robe of honour

kadı a judge in Islamic court

kai’im makam deputy grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire

kalgay first heir-apparent to the Crimean throne

kapu kulı palace guards receiving salary from the Ottoman/Crimean state

kapucular kethüdası a steward of palace doorkeepers, an office in Ottoman bureaucracy

kapucu başı a palace doorkeeper, an office in Ottoman bureaucracy

kapukulı süvarisi standing palace cavalry receiving salary from the Ottoman or Crimean state

kapu kethüdası a steward, representative of the khanate at the Porte

khan title of the rulers of the Crimean Khanate

Kumyk a Turkic-speaking Muslim people of the northeast Caucasus

martolosbaşı chief of militia troops in the Ottoman Empire

295

mirahur master of the horse stable of a Giray prince

mirliva synonymous with sancakbegi

mirza (or murza) prince, a hereditary Tatar noble

muhabbetname a letter of friendship issued by the Crimean khans to the Muscovite tsars and the monarchs of Poland-Lithuania

muslih a reconciler

müfti a high-rank Muslim religious offical

mütevelli an administrator, trustee of charity properties in the Ottoman Empire

name-i hümayun a letter issued by the Ottoman sultan, also occasionally refers to a letter of the Crimean khan

nureddin second heir-apparent to the Crimean throne

ocak a military unit in the Ottoman Empire

palanka a fort

palatinate (Pol. województwo) an administrative unit in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

polkovnik a colonel, head of regiment in Cossack and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s armies

posol’skie knigi Muscovite envoy books and registers kept by the Muscovite chancery

Posolskiij prikaz Muscovite foreign chancery or ambassadorial office

primate bishop, interrex, highest official substituting for the monarch during an interregnum in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Razrjadnij prikaz Muscovite service chancery

sancak administrative subdivision of an Ottoman general-governorship

sancakbegi a governor of sancak

Senate (Pol. Senat) upper house of the Diet consisting of the highest dignitaries of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

ser-‘asker commander of the army for a campaign

296

serdar synonymous with ser-‘asker

şart (Russ. šert’) an oath taken by the Crimean khans to promise to obey peace with the Muscovite tsars

şartname instrument of peace or letter of oath issued by the Crimean khans to the Muscovite tsars

şeyhülislam highest religious official in the Ottoman Empire

şayka Ottoman name for the Cossack boat

šamxal a Kumyk prince

staničnik a Muscovite cavalry scout

starosta a royal official, a holder of Crown estate that was granted to him for life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

tebrikname a letter of congragulation issued by the sultan to the khan for his accession to the throne or an achievement

tabor closed camp, encampment

tabl a drum

tıyış annual gifts given to the Crimean Khanate by Muscovy, the word tıyış is possibly a derivative of the verb “tıg-” (to touch).

‘ubudiyyet homage, servitude to the Ottoman sultans or the Crimean khans

ulug hazine great treasure, a kind of tribute/gifts payment made to the Crimean Khanate by Muscovy

teberdar a member of halberdier corps in the Ottoman Empire

voevoda a military governor in Muscovy

vergü tax, a kind of tribute/gifts payment made to the Crimean Khanate by Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

yamak an auxiliary troop in the Ottoman Empire

Zemsky Sobor assembly of the estates in Muscovy

297

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