The advance of the Swedes was now marked by a succession of triumphs; and Peter, finding that Charles was resolved to pursue him, and that the invader had but five hundred miles to traverse to the capital, an interval unprotected by any places of consequence, with the exception of Smolensk, conceived a masterly plan for drawing him into a part of the country where he could obtain neither magazines nor subsistence for his army, nor, in case of necessity, secure a safe retreat. With this design he withdrew to the right bank of the Dnieper,[40] where he established himself behind sheltered lines, from which he might attack the enemy at an advantage, preserving to himself a free communication with Smolensk, and abundant means of retreat over a country that yielded plentiful resources for his troops.
In order to render this measure the more certain, he despatched General Goltz at the head of fifteen thousand men to join a body of twelve thousand Cossacks, with strict orders to lay waste the whole province for a circle of thirty miles, and then to rejoin the czar at the position he had taken up on the bank of the Dnieper. This bold movement was executed as swiftly as it was planned; and the Swedes, reduced to immediate extremity for want of forage, were compelled to canton their army until the following May. Accustomed, however, to the reverses of war, they were not daunted by danger or fatigue, but it was no longer doubtful that both parties were on the eve of decisive events. They regarded the future, however, with very different hopes. Charles, heated with victories, and panting for further acquisitions, surveyed the vast empire, upon the borders of which he now hung like a cloud, as if it were already within his grasp; while Peter, more wary and self-possessed, conscious of the magnitude of the stake for which he fought, and aware of the great difficulties of his situation, occupied himself in making provision against the worst.[c]
REVOLT OF THE COSSACKS OF THE DON; MAZEPPA
Meantime there were foes at home that had demanded the attention of he czar.[a] The strelitz were not the only military body belonging to old Russia whose existence had become incompatible with the requirements of a modern state. The undisciplined Cossack armies, which had hitherto formed a rampart for Russia against barbarian hordes, were also to undergo transformation. The empire had many causes of complaint against the Cossacks, particularly those of the Ukraine and the Don who had formerly sustained the usurper, Dmitri, and from whose ranks had issued the terrible Stenka Radzin.
In 1706 the Cossacks of the Don had revolted against the government of the czar because they were forbidden to give asylum in their camp to refugee peasants or taxpayers. The ataman Boulavine and his aids, Nekrassov, Frolov, and Dranyi, called them to arms. They murdered Prince George Dolgoruki, defeated the Russians on the Liskovata, took Tcherkask, and menaced Azov, all the while proclaiming their fidelity to the czar and accusing the voyevods of having acted without orders. They were in turn defeated by Vasili Dolgoruki, Bulavin was murdered by his own soldiers and Nekrassov with only two thousand men took refuge in the Kuban. After clearing out the rebel camps Dolgoruki wrote: “The chief traitors and mutineers have been hung, together with one out of ten of the others; and all the bodies have been placed on rafts and allowed to drift with the current that the Dontsi may be stricken with terror and moved to repent.”
Since the disgrace of Samoilovitch, Mazeppa had been the hetman of the Little Russian Cossacks in Ukraine. Formerly a page of John Casimir, king of Poland, he had in his youth experienced the adventure made famous by the poem of Lord Byron and the pictures of Horace Vernet. Loosened from the back of the untamed horse that fled with him to the deserts of Ukraine, he at once took rank in the Cossack army, and rose by means of treachery, practised against all the chiefs in turn, to fill the highest posts in the military service. His good fortune created for him numerous enemies; but the czar, who admired him for his intelligence and had faith in his fidelity, invariably delivered over to him his detractors. He put to death the monk Solomon for revealing his intrigues with Sophia and the king of Poland, and later denunciators shared the same fate.
Ukraine, meanwhile, was being undermined by various factions. In the Cossack army there was always a Russian party, a party that wished to restore the Polish domination, and a party which designed to deliver over the country to the Turks. In 1693 Petrik, a Turkish chief, invaded Ukraine but failed in his attempts at subjugation. Moreover, profound dissent existed between the army and the sedentary populations of Ukraine. The hetman was constantly scheming to make himself independent, the officers of the army objected to rendering an account of their actions to others, and the soldiers wished to live at the country’s expense without working or paying taxes. The farmers, who had founded the agricultural prosperity of the country, the citizens in towns who were not secure in the pursuit of their avocations, the whole peaceful and laborious population, in fact, longed to be free from this turbulent military oligarchy and called upon the czar at Moscow to liberate them.
Mazeppa represented the military element in Ukraine and knew that he was odious to the quiet classes. The czar showered proofs of confidence upon him, but Mazeppa had reason to fear the consolidation of the Russian state. The burdens that the empire imposed upon the vassal state were day by day becoming heavier, and the war against Charles XII served to increase them still more. There was everything to fear from the imperious humour and autocratic pretensions of the czar, and the imminent invasion of the Swedes was certain to precipitate a crisis; either Little Russia would become independent with the aid of strangers, or their defeat on her soil would deal the death-blow to her prosperity and hopes for the future. Knowing that the hour was approaching when he should be obliged to obey the white czar Mazeppa allowed himself to be drawn into communication with Stanislaus Leszczynski, the king of Poland elected by the Swedish party. The witty princess Dolskaia gave him an alphabet in cipher. Hitherto Mazeppa had given over to the czar all letters containing propositions of betrayal, just as the czar had surrendered to him his accusers. On receiving the letters of the princess he remarked with a smile: “Wicked woman, she wishes to draw me away from the czar.”
When, however, the hand of the sister of Menshikov was refused to one of his cousins, when the Swedish war and the passage of Muscovite troops limited his authority and increased taxation in his territory, when the czar sent urgent injunctions for the equipment of troops after the European fashion, and he could feel the spirit of rebellion against Moscow constantly growing around him, he wrote to Leszczynski that though the Polish army was weak in numbers it had his entire good will. His confidant Orlik was in the secret of all these manœuvres, and several of his subordinates who had divined them undertook to denounce him to the czar. The denunciation was very precise and revealed all the secret negotiations with the emissaries of the king and of the princess Dolskaia; but it failed before the blind confidence of the czar. Palei, one of the denunciators, was exiled to Siberia; Iskra and Kotchonbei, the remaining two, were forced by torture to avow themselves calumniators, and were then delivered over to the hetman and beheaded. Mazeppa realised that good fortune such as his could not long endure, and the malcontents urged upon him the consideration of the common safety. At this juncture Charles XII arrived in the neighbourhood of Little Russia. “It is the devil who brings him here!” cried Mazeppa, and placed between his two powerful enemies he exerted all his craft to preserve the independence of his little state without giving himself into the hands of either Charles XII or Peter the Great. When the latter invited him to join the army he feigned illness; but Menshikov approaching simultaneously with Charles XII, it was necessary to make a choice. Mazeppa left his bed, rallied his most devoted Cossacks about him, and crossed the Desna for the purpose of effecting a junction with the Polish army. At this the czar issued a proclamation denouncing the treason of Mazeppa, his alliance with the heretics, his plots to bring Ukraine once more under vassalage to Poland and to restore the temples of God and the holy monasteries to the uniates. Mazeppa’s capital, Baturin, was taken by Menshikov and rased to the ground, his accomplices perished on the wheel or the scaffold.[g]