— His Parentage unknown — Retires to a Monastery — Stanislaus Poniatowski — A Confederation of Nobles to expel the Russians from Poland — They attack Souvaroff— The King takes no part in the Insurrection — Wretched Means used by the Russian Ambassador to corrupt the Youth of Warsaw — Induces the King to withdraw his Troops from the Ukraine — Russian Priests excite a Rebellion against the Nobles in that province — The Empress Catherine encourages the Zaporoguian Cossacks to rise in arms — Zelezniaque leaves his Retreat, and is made their Attaman — He commits the most horrible Excesses through the Ukraine — Most of the Nobles destroyed, but a remnant take Refuge in Houmagne — Zelezniaque enters the town by Treachery, and butchers the Inhabitants — Polish Troops sent against him— Catherine disavows the Insurrection, and sends an Army to quell it — The Russian Colonel Goloriva pretends Friendship to the Rebel Chiefs — Zelezniaque, after being Defeated by the Poles, seeks Protection in the Russian camp — Is made Prisoner, and the Outbreak is suppressed— Supposed end of Zelezniaque — His Person, Talents, and Character.
Maximus Zelezniaque, whose very name inspires still a feeling of horror in the Ukraine, was a Zaporoguian Cossack by birth. Traditional records furnish but few particulars of his origin and early life. After the commission of crimes, or, to say the least, of glaring irregularities, which his conscience disapproved, he retired as a penitent to the secluded schismatic monastery of Medvedovka.
Catherine II., empress of Russia, had just placed upon the throne of Poland, one of her discarded lovers, Stanislaus Poniatowski, a Polish nobleman, whose weakness of mind, coupled with his debauchery and lascivious manners, drew down upon him the indignation of the Polish nobles. The mere puppet of Russia, he quietly crouched under the domination of Prince Repnin, the Russian ambassador at the court of "Warsaw; Repnin, whose prodigality, licentiousness, and unqualified effrontery, added to his craftiness, arrogance, and malevolence, proved a dreadful scourge to Poland.
The majority of the Polish nobles, exasperated at the pusillanimity of their king, at a period when the greatest firmness and the most energetic measures would scarcely have been able to rescue Poland from ruin, at length began to entertain serious thoughts of either rousing him from his debasement, or hurling him from the throne. Universal indignation prevailed. Poland at that time was already governed as a Russian province, and a confederation was forthwith formed at Bar (a little town in Podolia, a southern Polish province), by Adam Count Krasinski, bishop of Kamienietz, his brother Michael, Pulawski, with his sons and nephew, and a few other leading Polish patriots, in 1768, in the month of February. The object of this confederation was the expulsion of the Moscovite party from the kingdom, and the elevation of Poland from the humiliation to which she had been reduced. Ere long, without arms, ammunition, regular troops, or pecuniary resources, they commenced a series of attacks against the Russian armies commanded by Souvarof, one of the ablest of the Russian generals.