In this brilliant action, which lasted three successive OF THE XTKRAINE. 49 days, and which destroyed the Cossack power in Poland, the Poles sustained but very trifling loss. Forty thousand Cossacks and Tatars were left dead on the field of battle; sixty pieces of cannon, all their baggage trains and banners, together with an immense collection of booty, fell into the hands of the conquerors, as trophies of their victory. The king committed a great oversight in not following up to the very last in pursuit of the flying enemy. The Cossacks were allowed to eflfect their retreat comparatively unmolested, and the victor was content with a mere restriction of their privileges. Khmielnitski, however, soon made his re-appearance in arms, raised once more the standard of revolt, and even with some partial success at first: but was again defeated, after having in vain soHcited the protection of Turkey and Sweden, who, at the same time that they refused him their support, advised him to place no reliance whatever on Kussia. He tdtimately changed his line of policy as regarded the establishment of the Cossacks as an independent state: and having received information that Prince Radziwill had just at this period annihilated his best troops in Lithuania, and that the Tatar khan had entered into a treaty with the king of Poland, whereby he undertook to pursue the Cossacks in every direction and to break up their settlements, on condition of his Polish majesty's aiding him to reconquer the Khanat in the kingdom of Astrakhan, subjugated a century before by the Czar Ivan IV., — conscious, moreover, £ that he was in no condition to struggle single-handed against Poland, Khmielnitski, on the 6th January, 1654, concluded at Pereaslav a convention with the Czar Alexy Michalovitch, by the terms of which a portion of the Ukrania, together with its Cossack population, submitted under certain conditions to the dominion of Russia. The conformity of creed in matters of religion existing between the t nations, the desire to furnish, elsewhere, employment for the turbulent activity and restless enterprise of the Cossack hordes, joined to an inclination to enjoy at his ease the sweets of power — by no means an object of easy attainment in Poland — would seem to have been the principal motives for his taking this rash and imprudent step, in direct opposition to the advice of Charles Gustavus, king of Sweden, and against the wish and opinion of many of the Cossacks themselves.
It may be as well here to remark, that when Khmielnitski advised the czar to attack Poland, the latter, willing at the same time both to play upon the superstitious feelings of the common people, and to have his still wavering decision confirmed by some favourable omen, had a couple of wild bulls brought before him; one of these bore the name of Poland the other Muscovy: the larger and more powerful of the two was the champion of Eussia. The bulls were then let loose upon each other: in the event of the Polish bull being crushed by his adversary, then Alexy was to be considered as fulfilling orders from on high. At first the superior activity of the Polish bull gave him some advantage over his more ponderous assailant, and he parried the attack of the Russian bull; but the latter, infuriated by resistance, redoubled his efforts, and by dint of his overwhelming strength overthrew the former, and was on the point of being proclaimed the conqueror, when suddenly the Polish bull, whom every one supposed to be nearly dead, started up again on his legs, rushed with resistless fury on his antagonist, buried his horns in his flank, and stretched him lifeless on the arena. This circumstance, related by several writers, made such an impression on the mind of Alexy, that it became necessary to set in motion the intrigues of the courtiers, and even of the metropolitan himself, in order to force him to invade Poland. As for the Cossacks, naturally a superstitious race, it was for them an infallible prognostic of the ultimate victory that must one day be achieved by Poland over Russia. As Khmielnitski had not the right of disposing of the Ukraine, a war with Russia ensued, and, after much bloodshed, and the loss by the Cossacks of several battles, a portion of Ukrania was restored to Poland.
Although, in accordance with the convention of Pereaslav, between the czar and Khmielnitski, the latter took possession of the Russian Ukraine, as a fief of Muscovy, yet on behalf of the Cossacks, whom, as his proteges, he erected into a species of separate nation, they were in reality much less independent than ft they had formerly been whilst under the dominion of Poland. The Russians personified despotism itself; the Cossacks, on the contrary, the essence of freedom: their customs, their character, their Magdeburg code of laws, under which their government was carried on, all gave umbrage to the Russians.