ABSTRACT

The occasion for testing Muscovy’s new political arrangements and fledgling new formation troops was not long in appearing. In 1648 Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky raised the banner of rebellion against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The cause had deep roots in the religious, social and military disputes of Ukrainians with Royal Poland, the dominant partner in the Commonwealth of which Ukraine was a part. Initially, Khmelnytsky’s rebellion was successful against poorly led and politically divided Polish forces, but Cossack unity and Cossack victories were difficult to sustain. Khmelnytsky appealed for Muscovite help. After several years’ hesitation, Muscovy signed the Pereiaslav Agreement with Khmelnytsky in 1654, putting Ukraine under its protection. That event set off a prolonged war over the fate of Ukraine between Moscow and the Commonwealth; this confrontation soon involved the other military powers of eastern Europe. Muscovite victories against the Commonwealth and its invasion of Lithuania at the beginning of the Thirteen Years’ War helped prompt Sweden’s entry into the fray. A second northern war (1655–60) renewed fighting by Muscovy, the Commonwealth and Sweden over possession of the south-eastern Baltic littoral. Later, as fighting in Ukraine began to wane in the 1660s, a resurgent Ottoman Empire allied itself with disgruntled elements of Cossackdom, sending Turkish troops to fight in Ukraine and Poland.