The Unlearned Lesson Of Kryshtof Kosynsky
The Ukrainian-Polish history of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries is a stormy whirlwind of Cossack and peasant uprisings against magnates and the nobility, and oppression of Orthodox believers, which culminated in the mid-sixteenth century with the National Ukrainian Revolution led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky and saw unprecedented bloodshed during the vehemently rabid Koliyivshchyna. This “diplomacy of the saber and the ax” was rooted in the late sixteenth century, when Ukraine was swept over by a broad Cossack uprising led by Kryshtof Kosynsky (Krzysztof Kosinski).
The first decade after the 1569 Union Lublin (that transferred most of Ukraine from Lithuania to Poland — Ed.) was a period when, on the one hand, Cossacks formed a separate social stratum of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and, on the other, tensions grew between the Cossacks and the Polish nobility which often applied double standards to the former: a barely visible respect in the time of joint military campaigns against the Turks and Crimean Tatars would give way to contempt and oppression in peacetime. This deep-seated contradiction was sort of a time bomb which could go off at any moment.
And this moment came at the end of 1591. The year before, registered Cossack Hetman Kryshtof Kosynsky had received lands near the River Ros as a gift from the king for distinguished service. An Orthodox nobleman from Pidliashia and head of the registered Cossacks from 1586, Kosynsky was “a person of outstanding abilities and quite popular among the Zaporozhzhians” (Dmytro Yavornytsky). Thus he felt personally insulted when Bila Tserkva magistrate Prince Janusz Ostrozki (the son of the glorious Prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn had betrayed his ancestral faith and embraced Catholicism by the time) appropriated the gift lands — Rokytne and Olshanytsia (Vilshanytsia) estates — on the “grounds” of his vested powers.
This kind of situation was not untypical in those times: active Polish expansion into the Dnipro lands after the Lublin Union was accompanied with seizures of many lordly estates belonging to the old Ukrainian gentry. Unable to “swallow the bitter pill” and aware of the futility of a court action, Kosynsky opted for armed force to resolve the property dispute (incidentally, fifty years later, a very similar situation would also lead Chyhyryn sotnyk (battalion commander) Bohdan Khmelnytsky to take up arms). Yet, personal motives were essential but not decisive for the uprising: it is much more important that Kosynsky’s call evoked a response from hundreds of disgruntled Cossacks and peasants.
In the summer of 1591 Kosynsky’s units took Pykiv, Bilohorodka, and Chudniv, attacked Bila Tserkva, ruined the residence of Janusz Ostrozki (who had discreetly run away), and soon seized Pereyaslav and Trypillia, encountering almost no resistance. The Cossacks lit bonfires in the yards of the captured lordly manors: they burned land ownership deeds in a naive hope to thus rob the nobility of the property rights in the Dnipro territories.
The Polish troops garrisoned in Chyhyryn and instructed to put down the uprising retreated after negotiations with Kosynsky. The forces were unequal because the hetman’s detachments were gaining strength with each passing day: his army took in not only the Cossacks but also thousands of runaways from the Polish estates of Right Bank Ukraine, who viewed Kosynsky as almost a messiah, for he had exempted peasants from onerous duties and unquestionably allowed them to join his ranks.
After Kosynsky’s troops seized Kyiv in June 1592, they moved deep inside the Polish-held areas of Volyn and the Bratslav region. The uprising was at last “noticed” in Warsaw. Dozens of burnt-down lordly estates, the westward flight of many rich Polish families, and Kosynsky’s independent conduct forced the Commonwealth’s monarch Sigismund III Vasa, surprised rather than frightened by the actions of his “Crown subjects,” to suggest to the Sejm that troops be sent to quell the mutiny.
Yet, this suggestion found no support among the majority of noblemen: many in Warsaw viewed the events on the “eastern frontier” as nothing but a squabble between Kosynsky and Ostrozki. Thus the magnates and noblemen to whose estates the insurgents had inflicted the gravest losses (the Ostrozkis and Koreckis) had to mobilize militias of their own to engage Kosynsky who had pitched a camp in Ostropil (Podillia).
In many cities, the insurgents did not confine themselves to the traditional destruction and plunder of lordly estates — they also introduced Cossack law and justice, rescinding the laws of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It is probably these radical steps of Kosynsky that caused the king to change his attitude toward the uprising: in his address to the nobility of the Volhynia, Kyiv, and Bratslav wojewodstvos the king called upon local residents to “launch a joint movement against the low-ranking Cossacks because they wantonly destroy szlachta estates and force noblemen and burghers to swear allegiance to themselves.” At the same time, a similar in spirit resolution was passed by the Sejm, “The rebellious Cossacks are doing the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth more and more harm, as a result of which the 1593 Sejm resolves to consider the Cossacks public enemies. We order the hetman of our army to destroy these rebels.”
The militia of Kyiv, Bratslav, and Volhynia nobility, marshaled in Kostiantyniv, was led by Prince Janusz Ostrozki and Cherkasy magistrate Oleksandr Vyshnevetsky (Wiszniewiecki), descendants of the glorious Ukrainian princely clans, erstwhile defenders of the Ukrainian faith and rights and now implacable enemies of the Cossacks. By early February, the Polish army had been prepared for military actions against the so-called mutineers. Aware that the oncoming battle would seal the destiny of the whole uprising, Kosynsky, in search of a better battle position, moved his 5000-strong units (the Poles had a far larger army) from Kostiantyniv to Pyatka (now a village in Chudno district, Zhytomyr oblast).
As the siege was a classical military action at the time, repeatedly tested by the Cossacks during their conflicts with Crimean Tatars in the second half of the sixteenth century, Kosynsky’s troops pitched a traditional Cossack-style rectangular camp of wagons in a broad field near Pyatka.
On February 2, 1593, the Poles launched an attack and broke through the insurgents’ camp defenses, thus forcing the Cossack troops to retreat to Pyatka. After several days of the town being under siege, Kosynsky, who had lost most of his men during the retreat, surrendered. Polish chronicler Joachim Belski reminisced that on February 10 the Cossack hetman rode out on horseback through the gate of Pyatka and knelt before Janusz Ostrozki, imploring his mercy.
The conditions for pardon were surprisingly moderate. Kosynsky bowed three times to representatives of the Ostrozki clan and wrote with his own hand an “oath” in which he admitted that the Cossacks had “caused much bitterness and losses” but now want to “live eternally at the mercy of and in love with the princes, never to oppose but, instead, serve them as loyally as we can.” The rank- and-file registered Cossacks were also pardoned after swearing allegiance to the king. “The pivotal point in the deal was the Cossacks’ promise not to endanger the Ostrozkis and Vyshnevetskys personally. The Ukrainian princes essentially viewed the Cossack issue in terms of their ability to properly channel the lower orders and restore their lost influence over them. This is why Ostrozki thought he had already properly punished the wayward hetman and was content with ostensible obedience of his personal enemy Kosynsky,” Doctor of History Serhiy Lepiavko wrote in his book Cossack Wars in the Late Sixteenth Century Ukraine.
This happy ending of the first large-scale Cossack uprising was rooted in the failure of the Polish political and military elite to understand the social contradictions in their state, so vividly evident in the oppressed status of the Cossacks (yet a tragic destiny awaited Kosynsky himself: in May, 1593, he led the assault of a small detachment on Cherkasy in an attempt to take vengeance on Oleksandr Vyshnevetsky for his humiliation near Pyatka and was killed in ambush). The Polish Kingdom did not view the uprising of 1591-1593 as the first warning signal to rethink revising the principles of its relationship with the Cossacks.
The double standards continued. There was a span of 175 years between the bows and apologies at Pyatka and the horrible tortures at Kodna. More than one hundred and fifty years of bloody uprisings and wars was too high a price for the nobility’s failure to learn the lesson of Krystof Kosynsky.
R. Gejdenstein, official historiographer of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, wrote, “That was a very important case because Kosynsky initiated the Cossack unrest that later kindled the uprisings led by Loboda and Nalyvaiko.”
