Paliy uprising

1685 Restoration of Cossackdom

During the The Ruin of the 1660s and 1670s, the Cossack Hetmanate gradually split along the Dnipro into a Tsardom-allied Left-bank Hetmanate and a Commonwealth-loyal Right-bank Hetmanate. Many Right-bank Cossack Regiments disappeared over the course of the years, either due to conflict or administrative reform, as the Commonwealth was wary of autonomous regiments that could once more revolt against Warsaw, so that by the early 1680s, there were barely any left. Yet, because the Ottoman Empire was making alarming advances into Central and Eastern Europe, and possibly because the Cossacks played an important role in helping to defeat them in the 1683 Battle of Vienna, king John III Sobieski decided the regimental system on the Right Bank had to be restored. In 1684, he decreed that seven regiments were to be formed out of military necessity, with an acting hetman in Nemyriv. The next year, the Sejm of the Commonwealth approved the Restoration of Cossackdom in Right-bank Ukraine (1685) [uk], and confirmed the rights and liberties of the Cossacks. The Colonel of the restored Bila Tserkva Regiment became Semen Paliy, who would play an influential role in the economic revival of the region, which was being resettled after years of war and devastation under the renewed protection of a Cossack regiment.

Szlachta–settler tensions and Mazepa's Right-bank policies

The Restoration also brought new tensions, that began brewing in the late 1680s through the 1690s between the Ukrainian peasant settlers and Cossack soldiers on the one hand, and the returning szlachta – the Polish–Lithuanian (and Ruthenian) nobility – and Catholic and Uniate churches on the other, which sought to acquire ever more landholdings in the Right-bank regions that were being resettled and resecured. Furthermore, Left-bank Hetman Ivan Mazepa began to actively interfere with church politics on the Right Bank in the 1690s, according to Tatiana Tairova-Yakovleva (2020) "under the pretext of concern for the Orthodox". While some concerns may have been genuine, Mazepa's diplomatic manoeuvering was also part of his project to include the Right Bank into the Ukrainian Hetmanate.

Paliy's radical anarchist actions against the colonial projects of the szlachta got him in trouble with the Commonwealth authorities as early as the late 1680s, at one time even being imprisoned. Uniates took over the church in Fastiv while Paliy was in prison, and as soon as he got out, he arrested and decapitated the Uniates. A Commonwealth army was sent to punish Paliy, who fled to Mazepa. The latter resisted the troublesome Paliy's relocation to the Left Bank, which the tsar kept rejecting after many requests, but Mazepa allowed him to participate in a Zaporizhian Cossack raid on Ochakiv in March 1692. Paliy's commanded several campaigns against the Crimean Khanate in Mazepa's service, lessening tensions on the Right Bank somewhat, but the two Cossack leaders had a fallout in October 1696. Thereafter, Paliy entered the service of the new Polish king Augustus II the Strong until 1699.

1699 Liquidation of Cossackdom

In 1699, the new Polish king Augustus II signed the Treaty of Karlowitz with the Ottoman Empire, ratified by the Sejm of the Commonwealth. The treaty was supposed to secure the Ottoman–Commonwealth borders, and bring them perpetual peace. The Sejm therefore concluded that the Cossack regiments on the Right Bank were no longer necessary. Instead, the szlachta wanted to exploit the vast post-war economic opportunities by acquiring landholdings and establishing noble estates in the now-peaceful voivodeships of Podolia, Bratslav and southern Kyiv, and to enserf the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) peasants there for their own benefit. The szlachta-dominated Sejm therefore passed a highly controversial resolution in June 1669, which stipulated the Liquidation of Cossackdom in Right-bank Ukraine (1699) [uk]. The entire regimental system as well as the Right-bank hetmancy was to be abolished, Cossack soldiers lost their payment and had to leave the Right Bank. Hetman Samiilo Samus and the Right-bank Colonels were all ordered to dismiss their Cossacks, and to leave all private and royal possessions. Crown Hetman Stanisław Jan Jabłonowski was assigned to oversee the implementation of this order. He would also issue a universal barring the Cossacks from settling on the Right Bank.

1700–1701: initial Cossack resistance

Many Cossacks were angered by this situation, particularly after the restoration of the regimental system had been achieved just 14 years earlier. Colonel Paliy was one amongst many Cossacks who refused to leave their homes and regiments. In 1700, colonel Paliy of the Bila Tserkva Regiment and a few other Cossack colonels fought a skirmish at Fastiv with Polish troops sent to enforce the expulsion order. They chased away the government forces and set up Fastiv as a base of operations, where they planned a general uprising. While defying the Polish king, for various reasons, Paliy refused to enter into the Muscovite tsar's service either. The anarchist Paliy and the statist Mazepa also did not see eye to eye, making it difficult for them to work together on a common cause.

Church struggle

Meanwhile, some of the Orthodox clergy and laity in uproar when the main Orthodox cathedral in the city of Lviv was handed over to the Ruthenian Uniate Church in 1700. This happened after the bishop of Lviv, Yosyf Shumlyansky, had converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism in 1677, and he and his clergy decided in 1700 to join the Uniate Church under Lev Zalenskyj with their entire diocese. Left-bank Hetman Mazepa expressed great concerns about the status of the Cossacks and Orthodox church on the Right Bank to tsar Peter, and threatened the szlachta to intervene if they continued violating their rights.

Mazepa scored a diplomatic victory in September 1700 when he re-established the Orthodox diocese of Pereiaslav on the Right Bank, which he had been working on since March 1695. In February 1701, the Peiaslav diocese was granted large landholdings "along both sides of the Dnipro". In Mazepa's universal of 7 April 1701, the restored Trakhtemyriv Monastery – once the main headquarters of the Registered Cossacks and official residence of their hetman – was included in the diocese of Pereiaslav, another important symbolic victory.

After Lviv and Pereiaslav, there was a struggle for the diocese of Lutsk; while Mazepa urged Patriarch Adrian of Moscow to ordain Dionysius Zhabokrytsky as an Orthodox bishop, Adrian refused in order to avoid conflict. Dionysius thus joined the Uniates with the entire diocese of Lutsk and Ostroh in 1702, leaving Volhynia without an Orthodox church jurisdiction for centuries to come, a defeat for the Mazepist and Orthodox camp.

1702: open rebellion

In 1702, Paliy started an open rebellion against the Polish Crown, the last of the major Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth. Together with a number of other Cossack polkovnyks, Paliy and his rebels captured Bila Tserkva, Fastiv, Nemyriv and a few other towns. Rebellious Cossacks massacred their traditional enemies — Polish szlachta, Catholic priests and Jews — in the area they controlled. In October 1702, Cossack forces led by Paliy and Right-bank hetman Samiilo Samus defeated the Polish army under Polish hetman Adam Mikołaj Sieniawski near the town of Berdychiv. Paliy restored the Cossack Regiments of Bila Tserkva, Bohuslav, Bratslav, and Korsun. The area under control of Paliy and his fellow rebels would become known as the Paliïvshchyna; it would eventually encompass the territory from Polissia to the Wild Fields.

Peasant flight from Left to Right

Meanwhile, many Ukrainian peasants from the Left Bank were fleeing to the Right Bank, either to directly join Paliy's uprising or simply to evade the socio-economically increasingly oppressive circumstances for peasants in the Left Bank. Mazepa sought to protect the peasants on the Left Bank from aristocratic and clerical encroachment (including attempts to levy heavier taxes and obligations on the peasants and further enserfing them) by upholding the established customs and issuing a universal on 28 November 1701, which forbade lords to impose on the peasants more than two days of labour for the landlord a week. Yet, even he could not fully prevent large-scale peasant flight: there were too many farmers who simply sought to escape the entire system and move to the Right Bank in hopes of a better future.

As early as May 1702, Mazepa wrote in a universal to the Vydubychi Monastery near Kyiv that there was a ban on transporting people to the Right Bank, and that people were illegally crossing over to the Right Bank and reducing the population in the towns and villages of the Left Bank. In December 1702, tsar Peter ordered Mazepa to establish "strong and frequent sentries" along the Dnipro to prevent more peasants from running off to Paliy's side; the hetman issued universals in early 1703 to that effect. However, a letter Mazepa sent to the colonel of the Pereiaslav Regiment in April 1704 about the ban of crossing over to the Right Bank suggests that the measures to stop the peasant flight had not been very effective; the hetman admitted that "an innumerable multitude" of people had already abandoned the Left Bank to begin a new life on the other shore of the Dnipro in the preceding years.

1703 Podolia and Bratslav campaigns

On 4 February 1703 the rebels suffered a major defeat at Verbka (Werbka) [uk], east of Letychiv. Right-bank Hetman Samiilo Samus gathered the main Cossack army at Nemyriv; his 2,000~3,000 Cossacks were reinforced by the troops of Bratslav Regiment Colonel Andrii Abazyn. Together, they reportedly had 11,000 soldiers, but the real figure was probably closer to 4,000~5,000 mołojcy (young Cossack soldiers). Moreover, the Moldavian cavalry, being chased by the Poles, had fled across the Dniester instead of joining the main army at Nemyriv. On 17 or 18 February 1703, the cavalry of Kyiv voivode Józef Potocki defeated the main Cossack army at Nemyriv; the rebel army and castle garrison (taking the cannons with them) retreated to Bratslav. The Polish cavalry forced the Cossacks to abandon Bratslav as well, leaving their cannons behind. As Samus had departed to Bohuslav, the now leaderless Cossack units shattered and fell back to Ladyzhyn, where Abazyn had fortified the rebel position with about 2,000 soldiers. On 18–19 February, a Cossack baggage train escorted by about 1,000 Cossacks managed to reach Ladyzhyn, while the defenders built up their defences at the river crossings and the old fortress. Though once strong and strategically placed at the confluence of the Sob and Silnytsia into the Southern Buh, the fortress of Ladyzhyn had been severely damaged by 1703. From the morning into the night of 20 February, Potocki's cavalry attacked Ladyzhyn, reportedly getting 30 soldiers killed and many more wounded. However, the Cossack defences were breached in the late evening, 600 Cossack soldiers were slaughtered, Abazyn was taken prisoner, the inhabitants massacred, and the buildings razed. Potocki returned Nemyriv on 21 February.

After Ladyzhyn, there were three rebel groups left: one under Colonel Paliy near Vinnytsia, another under Colonel Dubina near Rashkiv, and a third under Colonel Fedir Shpak near Kamianets-Podilskyi. Lubomirski's 1,000 Polish cavalry managed to defeat Dubina's joint 2,000 Cossack-Moldavian soldiers as they attemped to cross the Dniester at Rashkiv, capturing their baggage train and many soldiers, though some managed to escape. When Shpak learned of Dubina's defeat, his group also crossed into Moldavia, while Paliy's raiding party near Vinnytsia was defeated by Polish cavalry from the Nemyriv garrison. The rebellion was thus suppressed in the voivodeships of Podolia and Bratslav, leaving only the Cossack rebel strongholds of Fastiv, Bila Tserkva, Bohuslav and Korsun in the Kyiv voivodeship.

Polish retreat March–April 1703

In early March, the Polish forces prepared for a siege of Bila Tservka; however, Sieniawski issued a proclamation on 18 March to withdraw most Commonwealth forces to Berezhany. It is unclear why, but this move was either in connection with the negotiations of the tsar's diplomat Johann Patkul with Paliy to surrender Bila Tserkva voluntarily, or with the resumption of hostilities between Poland and Sweden. In mid-March, the Polish command declared the pacification campaign on the Right Bank over, while the two hetmans Lubomirski and Sieniawski departed via Lviv in Western Ukraine to Rzeszów, and Potocki moved his headquarters to Stanisławów (modern Ivano-Frankivsk). Except for a few garrisons, most Polish troops had thus moved out of Ukraine by late April 1703. Although the rebels had been soundly defeated in the Volhynian, Bratslav and Podolian voivodeships, the Cossack strongholds in the Kyivan region held firm, and continued to conduct raids into Podolian territory and agitate for revolt against the Commonwealth authorities. However, due to lack of numbers, the rebels were unable to conduct regular open warfare, and instead employed guerrilla tactics to weaken the Commonwealth's and especially the szlachta's hold over the Ukrainian lands.

Cossack resurgence mid-1703

Meanwhile, Paliy and the rebel leadership appear to have begun receiving military and financial support from the tsar via the Left-bank Hetmanate of Ivan Mazepa: the Right-bank Cossack rebels were paid salaries and were reinforced by 200 Zaporizhian Cossacks. The Kyivshchyna rebels kept raiding Polish noble estates and Uniate churches, while Shpak's Cossacks continued making incursions from Moldavia across the Dniester into Podolia, raiding near Bratslav and Nemyriv in June 1703, though failing to defeat Bar's garrison. Shpak's forces began accumulating near Nemyriv in July and August, being reinforced by about 1,000 Zaporizhian Cossacks, while exchanging regular messengers with Paliy in Bila Tserkva. In mid-August 1703, Paliy's Cossacks defeated the Polish heavy cavalry near Nemyriv, though Potocki intervened and scattered the rebels from the area. In autumn, the emboldened Cossacks managed to seize control of many towns and villages in northwestern Ukraine as far as the river Sluch, often fighting the cavalry companies garrisoned in the region.

Early 1704: Paliy–Samus split

Meanwhile, however, a conflict began to brew between colonel Paliy, who wanted to conclude an alliance with Sweden, and hetman Samus, who was determined to place the Right Bank under the protection of Mazepa and the tsar. By May 1704, Paliy had once again switched his allegiance, this time to the Lubomirskis, while insulting and offending Mazepa and the tsar's representatives in a drunken incident. Samus warned Mazepa against trusting Paliy any longer, while pledging his own continued loyalty to Mazepa.

On 1 January 1704, Samus offered his mace and other kleinody to Mazepa in Nizhyn, but the latter refused: it could mean a violation of the Polish–Russian Peace Treaty (1686), and the tsar was determined to prevent war between the Commonwealth and Russia at this time. Thus, the tsar ordered Mazepa to tell Samus to keep the kleinody in "a secret place" for now. Meanwhile, the Civil war in Poland (1704–1706) brought king Augustus in conflict with the pro-Swedish anti-king Stanisław Leszczyński, making it impossible for the Poles to regain control over Right-bank Ukraine in the short term.

Mazepa's intervention in late 1704

Paliy's last stand was at Bila Tserkva. Once Mazepa arrived with his army in July 1704, Paliy surrendered, though he would later stoke unrest again in Podolia. Mazepa had him arrested in August 1714, effectively ending the uprising. Samus and the other Cossack rebel leaders pledged their loyalty to Mazepa. Without much of a fight in the absence of Polish forces, and with most Right-bank Cossacks joining his service, Mazepa de facto added the Right-bank Regiments to the Left-bank Cossack Hetmanate for several years, leading to a temporary reunification of Ukraine.

In addition to the four Right-bank Cossack Regiments restored by Paliy in 1702, Mazepa restored three more Cossack Regiments in 1704: the Chyhyryn Regiment (abolished by the Ottomans in 1678), the Mohyliv-Podilskyi Regiment (abolished in 1676), and the Uman Regiment (abolished in 1686).

After the suppression of the uprising, Right-bank Ukraine was transferred to the Cossack Hetmanate being de-facto its part until 1714, when following the unsuccessful attempt of Pylyp Orlyk's March on the Right-bank Ukraine to capture Right-Bank Ukraine from the Tsardom of Russia, it was transferred back to Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Mazepa's Western Ukraine campaign of 1705

Fearing the popularity of Paliy, Mazepa had him exiled to Siberia in 1705. In late 1705, on the tsar's orders, Mazepa launched a punitive expedition against the landholdings of the pro-Swedish Polish magnates who had supported anti-king Stanisław Leszczyński, capturing the fortress of Zamość in the process. Cossacks from both banks joined Mazepa, and fought side by side in the campaign to drive the szlachta out of Western Ukraine in late 1705.

In the meantime, however, Peter attempted to reform the governance of the Cossack Hetmanate and end its semi-independent status; by 1706, Mazepa and other Cossack leaders were forming opposition against these plans. By early 1707, Mazepa initiated negotiations with the pro-Swedish Polish allies of Leszczyński to consider his options. When Charles XII's army marched through Belarus in 1708, the tsarist forces used scorched earth tactics to burn down the whole countryside to delay the Swedes. As Charles altered his plans to march on Moscow and diverted to the south, Peter ordered Mazepa to do the same with Ukraine; however, after thorough consultation with the Cossack colonels, Mazepa decided to refuse the tsar's demand, and join Sweden.