Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [212]
In July, the fighting was resumed. And in the succeeding months, Andrei achieved the rank of esaul.
He did not forget, in the campaigns that followed, to look out for Stanislaus and Anna.
1649
It was a day he would always remember in later years: for, in a sense, it marked the end of the bright days of his youth.
At first it had seemed that things were going well. The uprising had been universal. By the end of 1648 half the population of the Ukraine were calling themselves Cossacks. Bogdan and his men had won more crushing victories over the Poles, captured another hundred guns with a baggage train containing a hundred million Polish zloty and the victorious Cossacks had entered Kiev to be greeted by the free townsmen and the Metropolitan himself as the saviours of the ancient lands of Rus.
A new Polish King had made a truce; treaties of friendship been signed with the Turkish Sultan and his east European vassals, and for a time it even looked as if the dream of a free Cossack state might come true.
Yet, despite these triumphs, Andrei could see that his friend was not happy.
After that terrible day at Russka, Stepan had never spoken of the girl again, but Andrei sensed that something important had changed within his friend. Stepan’s faith in himself, his simple-minded belief in his destiny, had been broken.
And though he continued to fight alongside his brother Cossacks, it was clear as the months went by that Stepan was losing faith in this cause as well. It was this disappointment on his part that caused the two friends, however sadly, to drift apart.
For the cause of a democratic Cossack state in the Ukraine was lost, even before it started.
There were two reasons. That very first season, when Poland was at its lowest ebb, Bogdan had been unable to take advantage of his victories. And as Andrei watched the peasants drift back to their farms, he could see why.
‘We aren’t strong enough to mount a long campaign without allies,’ he remarked.
True, there were the Tatars. But like most mercenaries, they were only there for profit. By the following spring, they refused to fight unless they could see the battle was going to be won, and in early summer, they started to make their own terms with the Poles.
The role of the Cossacks in history would always be the same: they could make or break another state, but there were never enough of them to form a viable state of their own.
They needed a protector – either Poland, the Crimean Khan, the Sultan of Turkey, or the Tsar of Russia. They could only fight for the best terms possible. But what were those terms to be?
In the summer of 1649 the Cossacks reached an agreement with the Polish Commonwealth. The terms, by Polish standards, were remarkable.
In effect, at that point, Bogdan and the Cossacks were promised a state within a state. No less than forty thousand of them were to be fully registered. Ancient Kiev and two other cities were to be the headquarters of Cossack regiments: Jesuits and Jews would be forbidden to live there.
‘It was worth the fight,’ Andrei had said joyfully to Stepan, but the other had only shaken his head sadly.
‘No. We have sacrificed everything – for nothing.’ And when Andrei had looked genuinely surprised Stepan had reminded him: ‘No free state. No equality. Privileges for rich Cossacks, nothing for the poor ones and the peasants.’
It was true of course. Andrei could not deny it. For men like Bogdan – for Andrei and his father too – the terms were excellent. But those poor peasants, inspired by Bogdan’s promises of freedom, who had risen with their makeshift weapons and suffered the magnates’ revenge – for them there was nothing at all.
When challenged about