Guillaume de Beauplan and “the land of the Cossacks”

When a child is born, its destiny is known only by the higher power and, perhaps, the mysterious goddess Fortune. Who could foresee that a boy, who was born in Normandy in 1600 into a noble family of professional military people, would bind his entire life with the distant “land of the Cossacks” on the banks of the Dnipro River. His name was Guillaume Le Vasseur, but he also received the name de Beauplan, the name of one of his hereditary estates. He went down in history thanks to his famous work, A Description of Ukraine and the Borysphen River, Named in Common Parlance the Nipr or Dnipro, from Kyiv to the Sea into Which This River Flows. Today, the life and work of de Beauplan are interesting not just as a unique document of an epoch, but as clear- cut evidence of close and intense Ukrainian-European ties — political, and military, and cultural.

Unfortunately, we know little about de Beauplan’s early years; only a few scattered facts. What is known is that in 1630 Guillaume, a young artillery captain, came to Ukraine and began serving in the Polish army, which then controlled the largest towns and fortresses of our country. The French military man already had a basic engineer’s education that was highly appreciated by the Polish colonial administration. Over a period of 17 years, from 1630 to 1647, de Beauplan built military fortifications and fortresses in Kodak on the Dnipro (his best known work), and in Brody, Novhorod-Siversky, and Bar in Vinnytsia region. He also built a wonderful castle in Pidhirtsi (Lviv region) together with the Italian architect Andrea dell’Aqua.

During his stay in Ukraine, the hero of my story also completed a large number of cartographic and topographic works, including the Ukrainian Geographical Map, the General Map of Ukraine, and 12 maps of individual regions of our country. Finally, he created and published in 1639 the world’s first topographic map of Ukraine: A Special and Detailed Plan of Ukraine together with Voivodeships, Districts, and Provinces Belonging to It (scale 1: 463000).

However, de Beauplan is dear to us, the people of the 21st century, not because of his prolific engineering-fortification work or world-class maps of Ukraine. We praise him, first of all, as a talented, honest, and unbiased memoirist, the author of the immortal Description of Ukraine, which is an invaluable and unique historical source about Ukrainians in the second half of the 17 th century, their way of life, customs, social order, and natural surroundings. Interestingly enough, A Description of Ukraine was first planned as an explanatory text to his numerous maps. However, in time, it became a lengthy, detailed work that brilliantly reflected the author’s personal impressions and recollections.

After returning to France in 1647, de Beauplan decided to publish his incomplete work. This may be explained by the growing interest in Ukraine after the numerous victories of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s famous Cossack- peasant army, which had a significant impact on the general international situation in Europe. A Description of Ukraine was first published in 1651 in Rouen, where a second, expanded edition appeared nine years later. What else, besides its indisputable historical value, is attractive about this work? Without a doubt, it is the author’s genuineness, complemented by his literary talent, and honorable ethical position. While serving as a hired soldier in the Polish Crown Army, de Beauplan was witness to many incidents that, to put it mildly, were unpleasant for the government in Warsaw, and to his credit he did not gloss over them. He also recounted details of the cruel oppression of the Ukrainian peasantry by the Polish and Polonized — formerly Ukrainian — nobility, the Cossacks’ struggle for social, national, and spiritual-religious freedom, and their courage and determination in the defense of their freedoms and inviolable human rights. The French writer, engineer, and traveler preserved his human dignity and strove for justice and truth. Below I cite a few illustrative fragments.

***

Presenting a detailed description of Kyiv in the first half of the 17th century, its temples, buildings, trade centers, and geographical layout (also very interesting pages from de Beauplan’s work,) the author continues:

“From here spring the origins of that noble people, who today are called the Zaporozhian Cossacks and scattered since ancient times in various places on the banks of the Dnipro River and adjoining nearby lands. Their population now reaches 120,000 people who are accustomed to war and able to muster for a campaign within one week. These are people who frequently, almost every year, launch raids on the Euxeinos Pontos [the Black Sea] and inflict huge losses on the Turks. Several times they have ravaged the Crimea, which belongs to Tataria, devastated Anatolia, captured Trapezund, and even reached the Black Sea estuary to within three miles of Constantinople, where, submitting everything to fire and sword, they later returned with rich booty and a certain number of captives, mainly children. They retain them for various services; they seldom capture adults, only if they consider them to be very rich, in order to get a ransom. No more than 6,000-7,000 people, who cross the sea in an extraordinary way with the aid of their homemade boats, assemble for such campaigns.”

De Beauplan’s objectivity and his wish to rise above the class, social, and religious prejudices of the times are not uniformly vivid. However, was it not a sense of justice that made him write the following words? “The peasants here live in exceptionally dire straits because they have to serve the lords three days a week with their own horses and the labor of their own hands...They have to give their master any desire that he takes into his head. It is no surprise that those poor people fail to save anything for themselves. But that is not all: the lords exercise unlimited power not only over their property but their lives as well. So great is the freedom of the Polish nobility, which lives as though in paradise, but the peasants live as though in Purgatory!” (Beauplan should have said “in hell.” This is the fragment that serves as convincing proof of the author’s truthfulness, despite his status as an officer in royal service. — author)

De Beauplan returns again to the story of the Cossacks’ customs, beliefs, and way of life:

“They are quick and intelligent. They are extremely witty and generous, they do not seek wealth. Instead, above all they value their freedom without which they do not want to live. For this freedom’s sake they raise rebellions and revolts against the grand lords, which is why hardly more than seven or eight years pass without their rebellions against the masters. However, these people are treacherous and insidious, and may be trusted only under favorable conditions.” What can you do? Not everything that de Beauplan writes is complimentary to Ukrainians. In general, however, the French author respects the Cossacks: “They are of an extremely strong constitution, they easily overcome cold and heat, hunger and thirst, they do not become tired during a war, they are courageous and so daring that they do not value their lives. They demonstrate the most skill and mastery when they are fighting in a camp, i.e., protected by circled wagons (because they very skillfully shoot with their rifles, which are their main weapon) and also when they are defending their positions. They also fight well at sea, but they are not so skillful when they are on horseback. I chanced to see how 200 Polish horsemen forced 2,000 of their best warriors to flee. But it is also true that protected by circled wagons, a hundred Cossacks will not be afraid of a thousand Poles or even a thousand Tatars. If they were so masterful on horses as in infantry array, then I think they could be considered invincible,” de Beauplan concludes.

Thus, even today his Description of Ukraine is an important historical source of information about the life of Ukrainians in the mid-17th century, not just about the Cossack estate, although several times the author calls Ukraine “the land of the Cossacks.” This determines the esthetic value of this work of intellectual familiarization that was eagerly read by Gogol, and which provided a creative impulse to the creation of Taras Bulba. De Beauplan’s book also acquainted many Europeans — not just the French — with Ukraine, which remained a terra incognita for many of them. The work of the French writer, who was keenly perceptive and honest, is worth being read, reread, and studied.