How the Zaporozhzhian Cossacks Saved Europe at Khotyn
A Cabinet resolution of October 12, 2000, reads that Khotyn Fortress will henceforth be designated as a national historical-architectural preserve, as submitted by Chernivtsi Oblast State Administration.
Khotyn is a provincial town in the west of Ukraine, numbering some 12,000 residents and being a real gem of Bukovyna and Podillia. The nearby fortress is a monument to the defense architecture of the thirteenth through eighteenth centuries, situated very conveniently atop steep hills over the Dnipro and on an important trade crossroads.
Khotyn Fortress consists of a castle including keeps, a church, barracks, and the commandant’s exquisitely designed palace. It was very well protected by a system of earthworks.
Khotyn’s convenient location caused numerous armed conflicts in Bukovyna and Podillia. Going back to the twilight of Kyiv Rus’, Khotyn found itself part of the mighty Halych-Volyn Principality and it was then Eastern Slavs built a small fortress on the steep right bank of the Dnister.
After Batu Khan’s devastation, the principality was left a juicy tidbit for numerous neighbors — Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Walachia, and Moldavia — that had on more than one occasion coveted southwestern Rus’ territories. Khotyn was no exception. It was controlled by Moldavia in the second half of the fourteenth century when Stephen III fortified the walls, ordering them built 15 meters high. Then came the fortress’ baptism of fire in 1476, when attacked by Turkish troops and rebuffed the onslaught.
In the early sixteenth century, Moldavia became a vassal of the Turkish sultan and a Turkish garrison was stationed at Khotyn. A mosque was built along with rows of warehouses. In southern Podillia, business was largely dictated by the holding of fairs. Each such fair boasted a diversified array, ranging from livestock to leather and jewelry.
After Poland and the Great Lithuanian Kingdom merged into what became known as the Rzeczpospolita, this new powerful state formation would not put up with Khotyn as a Turkish- Tatar expansion bulwark in its southern outskirts. The ax fell in 1620 as yet another Polish-Turkish war broke out known to historians as the Khotyn War. It started with a devastating defeat of the Poles at Cecora (Moldavia) in October of that same year when a Polish army of 10,000 led by Crown Hetman Stanislaw Zolkewski was routed by a Turkish army of 40,000. Bohdan Khmelnytsky, future famous Ukrainian leader, then 24 and one of the registered Zaporozhzhian Cossacks, was captured by the Turks. Sultan Osman II was presented with Zolkewski’s head on a pale and made up his mind to put an end to the Polish Kingdom. Khotyn was captured by the Turks again at the end of 1620. In the spring of 1621, after a thaw (at the period, hostilities were mostly conducted during the warmer 7-8 months of the year), a Turkish army (various sources point to 200-400 thousand officers and men) began combat operations in northern Moldavia.
As always, Poland did not take a united stand, as part of the gentry ignored the Catholic priests’ calls for unity. The situation elsewhere in Europe was also complicated; the 1618-48 Thirty Years’ War was being waged and the Habsburg monarchy was busy suppressing a rebellion in Bohemia.
Finally, Lithuanian Hetman Chodkiewicz managed to put together an army of about 40,000 and set off for Khotyn. On the way a considerable part of the szlachta deserted with their retinues, so that only 35,000 reached Khotyn. The Polish king could now rely only on the Zaporozhzhian Cossacks. Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, then an acknowledged Cossack military leader, renowned for defeats of Turks at Kaffa [current Feodosiya in the Crimea] and Trabzon, an active participant in Polish Prince Wladyslaw’s campaign against Moscow in 1617-18, he was not Hetman in 1621 but his influence on the Cossacks remained. During the talks between the king and the Sejm in Warsaw, to receive reliable guarantees for the Cossacks (an increase in the Cossack Register, broader rights, protection of Orthodoxy [in Ukraine], and back pay), Sahaidachny decided to lend the agonizing empire a hand.
Most of the Zaporozhzhian Cossacks, led by Hetman Yakiv (Yatsko) Borodavko, approached Khotyn from the east, while Petro Sahaidachny and a small detachment set off from the north. As fate would have it, Sahaidachny and his men were ambushed. He was wounded and died half a year later on April 10, 1622, in Kyiv.
Prior to this, however, events took place that would leave a notable trace in history. The Cossacks rebelled on September 12, 1621, arresting Yakiv Borodavko and executing him as resolved by a general meeting. The Turks tried to talk the Cossacks into conducting separate negotiations but could not. A 40,000-strong Zaporozhzhian army sided with the Poles on September 2 and skirmishes lasted continuously until September 29. The Ukrainian Cossacks displayed mass heroism, as Turkish attacks were mainly aimed at Cossack positions. They showed admirable discipline and excellent combat training. They proved superior to the enemy in terms of mobility, quick response, coordination, and maneuverability. They rebuffed every attack (their artillery was superb) and then launched a counteroffensive, bursting into the Turkish camp, seizing the impedimenta and taking off with several pieces of enemy artillery; they had to retreat, because the Turks were numerically superior.
Yet they retreated in good combat order, joining the left flank of the Polish-Cossack army. By the time the Turks had suffered tremendous losses: some 20,000 men.
The Turks tried a last major offensive September 28, and as early as October 3, 1621, Osman II realized he had lost the war, along with 30,000 of his troops killed in action, by disease, lack of rations, and due to mass desertion. On October 9, a demoralized Turkey had to sign a peace agreement in favor of the Polish Commonwealth. The document was also evidence that the Ottoman Empire’s far-reaching plans were totally frustrated. The frontier was set along the river Dnister, although Poland let Moldavia have Khotyn.
The role played by the Cossacks and personally by Petro Sahaidachny in this victory is difficult to overstate. Even Polish historians acknowledged the Ukrainians’ role in the Khotyn War. Ivan Franko wrote that “Turkey, after its first painful defeat at Khotyn, began its descent from the peak of glory and strength.”
Polish King Sigismund III never kept his promises to Petro Sahaidachny. By way of reward for their invaluable assistance, the Cossacks were forbidden to raid the Crimean Khanate and Turkish Black Sea coast. The number of Registered Cossacks was increased to 6,000 (1625), but the Cossacks did not feel any better about their “older brothers” who refused to repay their staggering military expenses. How well would Hetman Sahaidachny, with his diplomatic talent, have served Ukraine at the time!
Khotyn was the venue of yet another painful Turkish defeat as the Ottoman Empire waged another war against Poland in 1672. By the time the kingdom had been weakened by numerous wars in the mid-seventeenth century (the Ukrainian revolution led by Khmelnytsky was followed by campaigns against Russia, Sweden, Brandenburg {Prussia}, and Transylvania) as well as by an absence of allies and discord among the domestic gentry.
Once again, like fifty years before, the szlachta refused to go to war, and King Michael Wi(niowecki, quite unpopular and without talent, had more enemies than friends. A 100,000- strong Turkish army invaded Podillia and in August 1672, the fortress of Kamyanets (Kamyanets-Podilsky) fell after a long siege. Incidentally, these events are described, albeit a bit overstated, by the brilliant Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz in his novel Pan Michael. Soon after, the Turks besieged Lviv and in October 1672 Polish commissioners signed the Peace Treaty of Buchach, whereby almost all of Podillia went to the Ottoman Empire. However, the Polish Parliament refused to ratify the treaty and the war continued. Jan Sobieski (he would become king in 1674) defeated the Turks at Khotyn in 1673, but the complicated domestic situation and the absence of allies allowed Turkey to reduce this victory to almost nil. In 1683, Jan III Sobieski would score a brilliant victory over the Turks at Vienna, but Podillia and Khotyn would return to Poland only in 1699, after a war of seventeen years.
In 1711, Turkey again took advantage of an internal Polish feud (the struggle between Stanislaw Leszczynski and Augustus II the Strong) and seized Khotyn. Four more times (in 1739, 1769, 1788, and 1877) Khotyn was besieged by Russian and Austrian troops. Finally, in 1812, it became an inconspicuous border town of the Russian Empire. Its subsequent years were markedly less eventful, yet the fortress and locality remained very popular with historians. Still, the events centered on Khotyn in the seventeenth century rank among the most interesting developments in European history.
