THE SWEDISH CONNECTION 337
number of Turkish towns. In 1590, on the initiative of the Sejm, they were
obliged to accept noble captains from the regular Polish army and were forbid-
den to recruit fugitive serfs or swawolniki (hooligans). As a result, they quickly
converted their Polish officers to their own ways, and added a touch of born
leadership and professional training to their frequent rebellions. In 1591—3,
Ataman Kosinski, a Polish nobleman from Podlasie, led a force of some 5,000
men against the Ostrogski and Wisniowiecki estates in Podolia, and triggered
off widespread peasant disturbances throughout the Ukraine. In 1595-6,
Seweryn Nalewajko undertook a similar venture until he was caught and
viciously executed in Warsaw. From these events, it was known that the colo-
nizing activities of the great magnatial families were causing resentment on the
steppes, and that the peasants of the Ukraine, recruited in the first instance by
promises of 'sloboda' (freedom) and land, were not taking easily to the fashion
for enserfment. But no cure was at hand. The size of the Cossack Register could
never be agreed. The authorities wanted to indenture as many Cossacks as pos-
sible, to keep them out of trouble and available for service, whilst the Cossacks
insisted that the Register be kept to a minimum. The forays continued. In 1614,
under Ataman Sahajdaczny, Trebizond and Sinope in Asia Minor were looted,
and Istambul itself made to tremble. In 1629, the much-sung Stefan Chmielecki
rounded up 80,000 Tartars at Monasteryszcze and captured the brother of the
Khan. In 1635, the royal fortress at Kudak was razed. In 1637-8, when the Sejm
had threatened 'to put idle Cossacks to the plough', the peasant Pawluk and the
Ataman Hunia sett off in imitation of Kosinski and Nalewajko. They ended
their careers in a similar gory fashion. Severe repression gained respite, but
offered no final solution. Proposals to integrate the Cossacks into the political
life of the Republic by offering them the status of nobles met with constant
opposition in the Sejm. As one noble spokesman put it, 'the Cossacks are the
finger-nails of our body politic. They tend to grow too long, and need frequent
cutting.'^8
The unrest of the Cossacks was symptomatic of much deeper disease in the
whole of the south-eastern lands. In the period of their attachment to the Grand
Duchy, the palatinates of Ukraine lay beyond the easy reach of central govern-
ment; after 1569, in the Korona, they were still left in large measure to the pri-
vate administration of a few powerful families - the Koniecpolski,
Wisniowiecki, Potocki, Kalinowski, Ostrogski. The population was still chron-
ically insecure. The isolation of tiny oases of settlement along the scattered trails
of the prairie, in lonely townships and monasteries, the constant raids of
Cossacks and Tartars, the feuds of the lords, the great social and economic con-
trasts dividing rancher-lords from runaway serfs and free peasant colonists, the
rich ethnic mix of Ruthenians, Poles, and 'Romans', and not least, the growing
religious differences of Orthodox, Uniate, Catholic, and Jew, all combined to
foster a life of violence and turmoil. This was the last frontier of Europe, and no
less rough or ready than its later counterpart in North America. Unlike the
American West, however, the Polish East was open to outside intervention. The