The Battle of Konotop is a new national myth. Battle of Konotop: myths of the new century

“The flower of the Moscow cavalry, who served the happy campaigns of 1654 and 1655, died in one day, and never after that the Tsar of Moscow could lead such a brilliant army into the field. In mourning clothes, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich went out to the people and horror seized Moscow ... "

The lines quoted above from the historical work of the famous Russian scientist Sergei Solovyov could have been sent to a meeting of the club “What? Where? When?", Being absolutely sure that the erudite are unlikely to be able to answer the question: "Who was that terrible force that in the late 1650s destroyed the color of the Russian army in one day?" And even a hint like: “Did the Ukrainian army do this by chance?” - would hardly reduce your chances of winning in a game against club members.

Confidence in this was at least inspired by the fact that this battle, which took place only five years after the “memorable act of reunification of the Ukrainian people with the fraternal Russian people”, was not mentioned in textbooks, and they tried not to talk about it in scientific literature. It is noteworthy that even in the Russian folk song “Under the city near Konotop”, which mourns the death of the Russian prince-bogatyr Semyon Pozharsky, to whom they “sang the eternal song” precisely after this battle, not a single word is mentioned about the “merits” of the Orthodox Zaporizhian Army in inglorious death of the royal warriors. All the blame is transferred to the Tatars, Kalmyks, Bashkirs, who "if black crows" pressed on the Orthodox.

And besides, it was the troops of the Ukrainian hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, with the help of his ally, the Crimean Khan Mehmed IV Girey, who in the summer of 1659 won a convincing victory near Konotop over the tsarist troops led by governors princes N. Trubetskoy, S. Pozharsky, S. Lvov. But did Ukraine need this victory? Was the not at all militant Ukrainian hetman striving for it? After all, as you know, even a bad peace is better than a good war...

ORIGINAL SIN OF UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN RELATIONS: "TREASON" OF HETMAN IVAN VYHOVSKY?

Obviously, even people who are far from professional studies in history were fed up with the topic of “treason” by Hetman Ivan Mazepa. It is less known that Mazepa's opponent, Peter I, justifying the expediency of eliminating the hetman's office in Ukraine, called all Ukrainian rulers known to him traitors, making an exception only for Bogdan Khmelnitsky and Ivan Skoropadsky. It is clear that Bogdan's successor, Ivan Ostapovich Vygovsky, should open this "honorary" list. After all, it was he, of course, along with Mazepa, who was branded by Russian historiography as a "traitor", "lyakh", "Jesuit", "hidden Catholic" and the like.

It often follows from historical works that even during the lifetime of his predecessor, Vyhovsky hatched secret intentions to tear Ukraine away from the union with Moscow, restore the Polish-gentry order and the power of the Polish king on Ukrainian soil, and even ruin the Orthodox Church. The absurdity of the last accusation is obvious if only because it was the Vyhovsky family, occupying high positions in the Commonwealth, that never broke with Orthodoxy, but, on the contrary, took care of its interests in every possible way, initiated the founding of Orthodox brotherhoods, and was engaged in church affairs. It is just as hard to believe in the intentions of the hetman, who felt in his hands the fullness of power, to renounce it in favor of the king of the Commonwealth and the Polish magnates. The problem of his attitude towards Moscow looks somewhat more complicated.

Ukrainian jingoistically minded historians argue that from the very beginning Vyhovsky, unlike Khmelnitsky, was aware of the insecurity of a close alliance with the tsar and tried to get rid of him. In fact, the insight to the hetman came later. Having joined the struggle for the hetman's mace, Ivan Ostapovich seriously counted on the support of the tsarist government. After all, his relationship with the Polish authorities can hardly be called idyllic - the Poles considered the former general clerk in the Khmelnitsky government to be an even more consistent opponent of the Polish king than the hetman himself was.

From the diplomatic correspondence of the ambassador of the Hungarian prince, one can learn that between Vyhovsky and Moscow there were even some secret agreements on the support of the tsar for the candidacy of the latter in the future hetman elections. But already from Vyhovsky’s diplomatic correspondence with the tsarist government, it unequivocally follows that this assistance, as well as recognition of the right to elect a hetman in general, was associated by the Russian side with his concessions in the matter of limiting the sovereignty of the Ukrainian state in favor of the tsar.

The behavior of the tsarist ambassadors in Ukraine testified that Moscow needed such a hetman at the head of the Zaporizhian Army, who, according to the apt expression of Ivan Ostapovich himself, could, “taking by the crest, lead him.” Taking into account the too great political appetites of the Muscovites and feeling the serious support of the foreman behind him, the applicant refused any concessions, declaring his intention to continue the policy of his predecessor. It was from then, from the end of the summer - the beginning of the autumn of 1657, between Vygovsky and Moscow that "a black cat ran".

Not wanting to be a puppet in the hands of the boyars and the governor of the tsar, in October 1657 Ivan Ostapovich convenes the General Council in Korsun. Having described the plans of the Russian government, the hetman renounces his powers and places a mace in front of the participants of the council. Now it is difficult to establish how sincere Vygovsky was in his renunciation of power. Most likely it was a skillful political move. His correctness was confirmed by the subsequent development of events. The Cossacks not only returned the hetman's kleinods to him, but also expressed their full confidence in his political course and swore to support his actions against the claims of the tsarist governors.

In order to win over as many of the influential Cossack elite as possible, Vyhovsky at the Rada declares his readiness to revise the fundamental foundations for the functioning of the Hetmanate's political power system, voluntarily ceding a number of his powers to the Cossack elders and thereby establishing a full-fledged republican power model, significantly violated by authoritarian methods of government. Khmelnitsky.

Vyhovsky's unexpected political moves ensured the strengthening of his authority. Having received a message about the unanimous support of Ivan Ostapovich by the participants of the Korsun Rada, the tsarist government for the first time officially recognizes Vyhovsky's hetman's powers and declares that there are no intentions to revise the nature of Ukrainian-Russian relations.

But the political victory won in the autumn of 1657 in Korsun for Vygovsky in the end turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory. The hetman's flirting with the foreman against the background of the latter's rapid enrichment and the same constant impoverishment of the ordinary Cossacks, the attempts of the Cossack elite to secure the free peasantry in submission provoke the growth of anti-sergeant and anti-hetman sentiments in Ukraine. At the head of these speeches - no matter how sad it is to realize - is the Zaporizhzhya Sich. And here it should be noted that the role of the latter in the processes of Ukrainian state building in the domestic historical literature is often overly idealized, which does not fully correspond to historical reality. After all, it is the leaders of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks, in search of support in the fight against the Hetman's government, who turn to Moscow for help, simultaneously calling on its leadership to significantly limit the prerogatives of the Hetman's leadership, leaving behind the hetmans only those powers that they possessed, being subjects of the Polish king.

Internal instability in Ukraine and the emergence of an unexpected ally in the person of the Zaporizhzhya Sich allows the Russian ruling elite, ignoring the warnings of the ancient Greek philosopher, to try to enter the same river for the second time...

UKRAINIAN-CRIMEAN "REUNION" OF 1658. ITS BACKGROUND AND CONSEQUENCES

The moral support provided by Moscow to the anti-Hetman opposition significantly increased its strength. By the spring of 1658, armed anti-Hetman actions engulfed the Zaporozhian Sich, the Poltava regiment, most Mirgorodsky. Vygovsky's appeals to the tsar for help to quell the riots did not bring success. Taking into account the specifics of the political situation prevailing at that time in Central-Eastern Europe, Ivan Ostapovich could receive real military assistance in taming the rebellion only from the Crimean Khanate.

It is clear that a logical question arises here: was it worth drawing external forces into resolving an internal conflict? But we must not forget that the existing internal crisis was provoked to a large extent also by external interference. Therefore, everything is not as simple as it might seem at first glance.

Geographically, the then Ukrainian state was separated from the Crimean Khanate only by a strip of neutral Wild Fields. In the political dimension, the shortest route from the hetman's residence in Chigirin to the Khan's palace in Bakhchisarai ran through ... Warsaw. After all, the Ukrainian-Russian treaty of 1654 upset the Cossack brotherhood with Crimea, but at the same time made possible the emergence of a military-political union of Crimea and Poland, which lasted for the next twelve years. And now, in order to receive military assistance from the Crimean Khan, Vyhovsky needed to establish political relations with the Polish king.

After the Ukrainian-Polish consultations began in March 1658, in April the Crimean horde, allied to Vyhovsky, entered Ukraine. With her support, at the beginning of the summer of 1658, the hetman near Poltava managed to win a decisive victory over the Ukrainian armed opposition.

Reporting the results of the Battle of Poltava to Moscow, Vyhovsky in no way hints at the desire to break off relations with the tsar and tries in every possible way to convince him that there is no anti-Moscow sentiment in the newly concluded alliance with the Crimea. Nevertheless, in August 1658, the tsarist troops led by the Belgorod governor G. Romodanovsky were brought to the Left Bank, in the convoy of which the leaders of the anti-Hetman opposition who survived the Poltava rout find refuge. Romodanovsky, known for his arbitrariness, from among them, in contrast to Vyhovsky, proclaims Ivan Bespaly as hetman, who was most suitable for the role of hetman, whom the Russian voivode could, “taking by the crest, lead with him.” From that moment on, Vyhovsky had no choice but to speed up the conclusion of an agreement with the Polish king, since the authority of the Crimean Khan was too little to keep Moscow from intervening in Ukraine.

SHORT LIFE OF THE POLISH-LITHUANIA-UKRAINIAN (-RUSSIAN) UNION

The Gadyach agreement of 1658 proclaimed the appearance on the map of Europe of a new federal state - the Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian Commonwealth (that is, the republic). These political peoples were united as "free with free" and "equal with equals." Each of the parts of the state had its own administration, finances, army.

It is significant that in the text of the agreement, Ukraine retained the right to exempt its armed forces from the participation of the federation in the war with Moscow, if it comes to that. Moreover, hetman Vyhovsky, not giving up hope of avoiding an armed conflict with Moscow, offered the Russian side to join the Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian union. Moreover, given the desire of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to be at the same time the Tsar of Moscow, and the King of Poland, and the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Chernigov, Kyiv, Little Russia, Volyn, Podolsk "and others, and others", the proposal of the Ukrainian hetman looked quite realistic. In any case, ever since the autumn of 1656, the Russian leadership had been fully sincerely discussing with the Poles the possibility of the tsar's accession to the Polish throne and the proclamation of a personal union of the two states.

Hetman's proposals took on even more realistic outlines from the end of 1658, when troops loyal to Vygovsky, together with Crimean Tatars and Polish units, drove Romodanovsky's troops from the Left Bank. The participants in the secret meeting, which took place in February 1659 in the chambers of the king, also agreed that an agreement could be concluded with Vyhovsky on the basis of the provisions tested in Gadyach. However, according to the opinion of the tsar's advisers, it should have been bilateral, without the participation of Poles and Lithuanians.

At the same time, obviously, in order to be more convincing in negotiations with the Ukrainian leadership, the boyar A.M. Trubetskoy, sent to Ukraine, was given at the disposal of ... almost a hundred thousandth tsarist army.

It is difficult to predict what the “negotiations” with such a representative “embassy” could lead to, which in Ukraine was joined by the troops of Prince Romodanovsky, already familiar to us, and the detachments of I. Bespaly. Obviously, Vyhovsky himself was not confident in their positive results either. That is why he did not agree to Trubetskoy's proposal to meet at the negotiating table, sarcastically complaining that it was very dangerous to meet with the boyars - one could lose one's head during such meetings.

The tsar’s voivode himself did not really hope for them, who, as soon as he crossed the Ukrainian border, immediately began to “agitate” the Cossacks for the tsar by force of arms. Almost the most active in this agitation was Prince Pozharsky, already familiar to us from the mentioned Russian folk song, who, as S. Velichko testifies, “having captured the city of Serebryany, cut down some of the inhabitants there, and captured others with all their property.”

“FROM THAT DEFEAT COULD ESCAPE... IS THE ONE WHO HAD A WINGED HORSE”

This is how the Ukrainian chronicler Samiylo Velichko commented on the prospects for saving the royal warriors in the battle of Konotop. And the battle itself was preceded by the heroic defense of the Konotop fortress by five thousand Ukrainian Cossacks under the command of Nizhyn colonel Grigory Gulyanitsky, which was besieged and stormed, I repeat, by the hundred thousandth (!) Royal army. Only by referring to God's help, God's providence, can one explain how the Cossacks of Gulyanitsky managed to keep the city in their hands, repelling the constant attacks of such a superior enemy, from the end of April to the end of June 1659.

The unprecedented resilience of the defenders of Konotop allowed Vyhovsky literally to collect faithful Cossack regiments bit by bit, call on the Crimean horde for help, mobilize regiments of volunteers from Poland, Moldova, Wallachia, Transylvania.

A test of strength took place on June 24 near the village of Shapovalivka, where the Ukrainian hetman defeated the enemy's forward patrol. And on June 29, 1659, on the day of Saints Peter and Paul, Vygovsky, at the head of his international forces, approached the Sosnovskaya ferry near Konotop. Not allowing the enemy to come to his senses, the hetman attacked the 15,000-strong Russian detachment defending the crossing from the march. Vygovsky's dragoons pushed the enemy back across the river, and the cavalry rushed after him. The Crimean Tatar army was left in ambush.

Having inflicted considerable losses on the enemy, the Ukrainian troops entered into battle with the regiments of Prince Pozharsky, who came to the aid of the retreating. After that, Vygovsky gave the order to withdraw his forces to their previous positions, pretending to be running. Prince Pozharsky and other Russian governors at the head of the main forces rushed after them and fell into a pre-arranged ambush. Only the vast majority of the tsarist warriors crossed to the second bank of the river, when the Tatars hit them from an ambush. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Cossacks managed to destroy the crossing and dam the river below it. The water overflowed and made it impossible for the Russian cavalry to return to their original positions. The heavy royal cavalry got stuck in the swampy places of the river, “real konotops,” as one of the contemporaries of the events wrote about it. Noticing from the walls of Konotop the development of the battle at the crossing and near it, the regiments of Gulyanitsky, exhausted by the siege, also went on the offensive.

The result of the Battle of Konotop was one of the most sensitive and shameful defeats of the tsarist troops of the second half of the 17th century, already mentioned at the beginning. According to various sources, from 30 to 60 thousand royal warriors were killed on the Konotop field. The tsarist governors were captured: Prince Pozharsky, Prince Lvov, the Buturlin brothers, Prince Lyapunov and others. Most of them went into captivity in the Crimea. And the already mentioned hero of the Russian folk song, Prince Semyon Pozharsky, on the orders of the Khan, was executed at his headquarters. But the reason for this was not the knightly prowess shown by the governor on the battlefield, but, most likely, the dirty abuse that he “honored” Mehmed IV. As Velichko writes about this, Pozharsky, “inflamed with anger, scolded the khan according to the Moscow custom and spat between his eyes. For this, the khan became furious and ordered to immediately cut off the head of the prince in front of him.

Having received the news from Governor Trubetskoy about the Konotop defeat, Muscovites immediately remembered the campaign against Moscow by another Ukrainian hetman, Petro Sahaidachny. As the same Solovyov wrote on this occasion, “tsarist Moscow trembled for its own safety; by order of the tsar, people of all classes hurried to earthworks to strengthen Moscow. The tsar himself with the boyars came over and over again to look at these works. Residents of the surrounding area with their families and property filled Moscow, there was a rumor that the tsar was leaving for the Volga, to Yaroslavl ... "

And did not prevent his imminent overthrow.

The Battle of Konotop took place in a period that began almost immediately after the death of Khmelnytsky in 1657 and was characterized by a struggle for power among the Cossack elite in the Hetmanate. Part of the foremen of the Zaporizhian Army, having changed their oath to the Russian Tsar, went to the service of the Polish king, whose troops had managed to expel the Swedes from the country by that time. The betrayal of a part of the Cossack foreman allowed the Poles to resume a very unsuccessful war for them in the east and change the situation in their favor.

Before his death, Khmelnitsky wanted to pass the mace to his only son Yuri (the eldest son Timothy, on whom Bogdan had pinned his hopes, died in the Moldavian campaign of 1653). Such a decision not only met the usual dynastic traditions for the political culture of that time, but could also cool the ambitions of the foreman and stop civil strife. After the death of Khmelnytsky, in the turmoil that began, the will of the hetman was formally fulfilled: at the Chigirin Rada in 1657, the Cossack foreman assigned hetman duties to the clerk Ivan Vyhovsky, but only until Yuri reached the age of majority. A little later, with the secret support of the Polish gentry, Ivan Vyhovsky was appointed a Cossack hetman (Korsunskaya Rada October 21, 1657). Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich approved the election of the hetman.

From the very beginning of his hetmanship, Vyhovsky was unpopular among the left-bank Cossacks, finding support from the right-bank regiments. As the Greek Metropolitan Michael of Colossia, who was passing through Little Russia in December 1657, said: “Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky is loved by back-of-the-road Cherkassy. And those who are on this side of the Dnieper, and those de Cherkasy and all the rabble, do not like it, but fear the fact that he is a Pole, and that he should not have any advice from the Poles. .

Seal of the Great Hetman I. Vyhovsky

Calling on the help of the Crimean Tatars, Vygovsky brutally cracked down on the rebellious Poltava in June 1658. This event was the beginning of the civil war, which later received the name " Ruin". In August 1658, the hetman began hostilities against Russian troops: two sieges of Kyiv, attacks on Russian border fortresses, and encouragement of Tatar raids on Russian lands. As the author of the "Chronology of the Highly Glorious Clearly Noble Hetmans" wrote: “This Vygovsky, in his lust for power, changed the Russian state and gave many cities, towns, villages and villages of the Little Russian Horde for plunder”. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, not wanting war, began negotiations with Vygovsky on a peaceful resolution of the conflict, which did not bring results. In the autumn of 1658, the Belgorod regiment of Prince Grigory Romodanovsky entered Ukraine. During the campaign, the Cossacks opposed to Vygovsky plundered Lubny and Piryatin. Voivode Prince Romodanovsky and "Cherkasy colonels" tried to prevent it, but could not stop them. The Cossacks declared that the inhabitants of these cities “they ruined, burned the houses, and gave the zhon and children to the Tatars”, "... and killed many brothers" .

In November, Vyhovsky sued for peace and confirmed his allegiance to the Russian Tsar's oath. Romodanovsky went to winter quarters in Lokhvitsa. But already in December, having united with the Tatars and the Polish detachment of Potocki, Vyhovsky resumed hostilities, attacking the Russian troops in Lokhvitsa and the Cossacks of Bespaly in Romny. Vyhovsky's actions posed a threat to the southern borders of the Russian state, which, first of all, caused a large campaign of the Russian army against the Hetmanate. The immediate reason was the frequent messages of the Cossacks loyal to the Russian Tsar about the preparation by Vygovsky of a new campaign against Kyiv.

On March 26, 1659, Prince Alexei Trubetskoy moved against Vygovsky. At this time, news was received that Vygovsky “I sent Grishka Gulenitsky from Cherkasy and Tatars to Konotop, from where they come near Putivl and near Rylsk and near Sevesk, and they burn and ruin those cities in counties and villages and villages, and they beat people, and they are full of them” .

Having orders to first persuade Vyhovsky to peace, and not to fight, Trubetskoy spent about 40 days in negotiations with Vyhovsky's ambassadors. After the final failure of the negotiations, Trubetskoy decided to start hostilities. On April 20, Prince Trubetskoy approached Konotop and laid siege to it. On April 21, the regiments of Prince Fyodor Kurakin, Prince Romodanovsky and Hetman Bespaly approached Konotop. The regiments stood up in three separate camps: Trubetskoy's regiment stood near the village of Podlipnoye, Kurakin's regiment "on the other side of the city", Romodanovsky's regiment west of Konotop. On April 29, not wanting to waste time on a siege, the prince ordered the city to be stormed. The attack ended in vain, 252 people died, about 2 thousand were injured. Trubetskoy again switched to siege tactics, which, however, was complicated by the lack of large-caliber artillery. During the siege, Trubetskoy led several expeditions to the Cossack fortresses - Borzna, Baturin, Goltva and Nezhin. The most serious resistance was provided near Nizhyn and Borzna. Prince Romodanovsky was sent to the latter with the Belgorod regiment. Expecting strong resistance, Trubetskoy gave Romodanovsky several hundreds of nobles and Reiter regiments of Colonels Zmeev and Fanstrobel, but the number of troops turned out to be excessive. The fortress was taken at the cost of killing only 18 and wounding 193 people.

Despite the delay at Konotop, the campaign developed successfully for the Russian army. By the beginning of June 1659, the situation of the besieged became critical, the townspeople demanded to surrender the city. Desertions began, Gulyanitsky, who led the defense of the city, was afraid of a revolt of the townspeople. Gulyanitsky wrote to Hetman Vyhovsky: “Our strength is gone: such heavy and good strong before us every day and night, attacks and gains are repaired; they have already dug into the ditch, and the water has been taken away from us, and the place is scorched with fiery cannonballs by pink crafts, and we have no gunpowder and bullets with which to harrow; also, the Cossacks have nothing to live with, and the conmi have all fallen off. Have mercy, have mercy, kindness, hurry up soon, and let's help us ... We, being in such a serious trouble here, can harrow for a week, but we can’t be kept far away, we’ll be home ”. The situation changed when the Crimean army and the main forces of Vygovsky approached Konotop.

Side forces

Russian army

During the siege of Konotop, three Russian armies of princes Alexei Trubetskoy, Grigory Romodanovsky and Fyodor Kurakin, as well as the army of hetman Ivan Bespaly, were concentrated near the city.

At the time of the Battle of Konotop, due to losses and the dispatch of the order of V. Filosofov to the Romain garrison, there were 5,000 people in the regiment of Prince Kurakin. In June 1659, the regiment of Prince Trubetskoy was joined by: the soldier (reinforced engineering) regiment of Nikolai Bauman - 1500 people, the regiment of William Johnston - 1000 people, Moscow and city nobles and boyar children - 1500 people.

Thus, the total number of Russian troops at the time of the battle was about 28,600. Hetman Ivan Bespaly's detachment consisted of 6,660 Cossacks.

Coalition of Tatars and Vyhovsky

From the Polish detachment of Andrzej Potocki, who arrived to help Vyhovsky in December 1658, only the dragoon regiment of Colonel Jozsef Lonchinsky (about 600 people in 11 banners) went to Konotop.

The course of the battle

1st stage: the encirclement of the detachment of Prince Semyon Pozharsky by the troops of the Crimean Khan

Tatar archer

Pozharsky's detachment, numbering about 6 thousand people, was ambushed. The Russian detachment was opposed by a 40,000-strong army, which included Crimean Tatars under the command of Khan Mehmed IV Giray and mercenaries. Pozharsky tried to deploy the detachment in the direction of the main attack of the Khan's troops, but did not have time. Having fired thousands of arrows, the Tatars went on the attack. Of the reiters given to Pozharsky, only one regiment (Colonel Fanstrobel) “I managed to turn the front and fire a volley of carbines right at point-blank range on the attacking Tatar cavalry. However, this could not stop the Horde, and after a short battle, the regiment was exterminated.. According to Naima Chelebi, "Tatar deadly arrows splashed like rain" .

Having a significant superiority in manpower, the Tatars managed to surround the Pozharsky detachment and defeat it in close combat. According to Gordon, "Khan, being too agile for the Russians, surrounded and defeated them, so that few were saved". The Cossacks of Hetman Bespaly, who wrote to Alexei Mikhailovich, also perished: “... at that, Sovereign, battle at Prince Semyon Petrovich Lvov and Prince Semyon Romanovich Pozharsky, everyone was mortally beaten, by force, Sovereign, through the troops of Vygovsky and the Tatars, several dozen people made their way into the army to the camp”. Prince Semyon Pozharsky himself, fighting enemies to the last opportunity, “many ... slaughter and courage extend their greatness”, was taken prisoner.

The stubborn nature of the battle is evidenced by the descriptions of the wounds of those who managed to escape from the encirclement and reach the Trubetskoy camp: Boris Semyonov, son of Tolstoy, “has been cut with a saber on the right cheek and on the nose, and shot from a bow on the right arm below the elbow”, Mikhailo Stepanov, son of Golenishchev Kutuzov (an ancestor of the great Field Marshal M. I. Kutuzov) “has been cut with a saber on both cheeks, but on the left shoulder, and on the left hand”, Ivan Ondreev son Zybin “wounded on the head with a saber and on the right temple from the eye to the ear was shot with a bow” .

Hetman Vyhovsky did not participate in this battle. Cossack regiments and Polish banners approached the crossing a few hours after the battle, at the second stage of the battle, when Pozharsky's detachment was already surrounded.

2nd stage: defense by Prince Grigory Romodanovsky of the crossing over the river Kukolka (Sosnovka)

Having received information about the collision of the Pozharsky detachment with large enemy forces, Trubetskoy sent cavalry units from the voivodship regiment of Prince Grigory Romodanovsky to help: about 3,000 horsemen from nobles and boyar children, reiters and dragoons of the Belgorod regiment. Towards, to the crossing came the troops of Vygovsky. Having learned from those who escaped from the encirclement that Pozharsky's detachment had already been destroyed, Romodanovsky decided to organize defense on the Kukolka River. In reinforcements to Romodanovsky, the reserve Reiter regiment of Colonel Venedikt Zmeev (1200 people) and 500 nobles and boyar children from the voivodship regiment Andrey Buturlin were sent.

Having a three-fold numerical superiority at the Kukolka crossing, Vyhovsky could not succeed. Romodanovsky, dismounting his cavalry, fortified himself on the right bank of the river near the village of Shapovalovka. The battle continued until late in the evening, all the attacks of the Vygovites were repulsed. The author of the Rhyming Chronicle writes that Vyhovsky even "burrowed into the ground" - "settled in trenches with dragoons and guns", but “Vyhovsky’s Cossacks with cannons attacked little, because, due to the strong rebuff of Moscow, they did not want to be in danger”. Due to the low morale of the Cossacks, many of whom were forcibly recruited under the threat of giving their families into slavery to the Tatars, Vyhovsky had to rely on the Polish-Lithuanian banners.

By evening, the dragoons of the Crown Colonel Jozsef Lonchinsky and the mercenaries of Vyhovsky (Lithuanian captain Jan Kosakovsky) managed to take the crossing with a fight. Sources do not report success in the battle for the crossing of the Cossacks. Vygovsky himself admitted that it was "Dragoons knocked out of the crossing" Russian parts. However, the decisive factors in the defeat of Romodanovsky were the enemy's exit to the rear of the defenders and the bypass maneuver of the Crimean Khan from the side of the Torgovitsa across the Kukolka (Sosnovka) River. Defector from Bespaliy's regiments “having crossed from the zadnepryans to Vyhovsky ... for a pardon for himself, he showed a secret crossing in a swamp, a mile away, about which Moscow did not know”("Rhymed Chronicle"). “Tatars de at that time, having entered from both sides, the sovereign’s military people were hit and the regiments of the sovereign’s military people were mixed up”, recalled the Don Cossacks E. Popov and E. Panov who participated in the battle. Romodanovsky had to retreat to the convoy of the army of Prince Trubetskoy. The retreat of Prince Romodanovsky ended the first day of the battle.

The siege of the camp of Prince Trubetskoy and the retreat of the Russian army

A mile from Konotop, Vygovsky and the Khan tried to attack Trubetskoy's army. This attempt again ended in failure. According to the prisoners, the losses of Vygovsky and the khan amounted to about 6,000 people. In this battle, Vygovsky's mercenaries also suffered heavy losses. The brothers of the hetman, colonels Yuri and Ilya Vyhovsky, who commanded hired banners, recalled that “At that time, many Cossack troops and Tatars were beaten in the attacks, and Mayers and cornets and captains and other initial many people were killed”. The losses of the Russian side were minimal. Hetman Bespaly reported to the tsar: “To the camp, Sovereign, our enemies made cruel attacks, and, for the grace of God ... we fought back with those enemies and did not carry any interference, and many of those enemies were beaten on the retreat and on the campaign, and came, Sovereign, God gave to the Seim River great" .

Losses

Song of Doom
Prince Semyon Pozharsky

Over the river, crossing
Behind the village of Sosnovka,
Under Konotop under the city,
Under the white stone wall
In meadows, green meadows,
Here are the royal regiments,
All regiments of the sovereign,
Yes, and the companies were noble.
And from far, far away, from the pure field,
Whether from that wide expanse,
If only the black crows were herds of herds,
Gathered-gathered
Kalmyks with Bashkirs,
The Tatars were puffed up
On the shelves of the sovereign.
(excerpt)

According to Naim Chelebi, initially they wanted to release the Russian prisoners for a ransom (according to the usual practice of that time), but this was rejected "far-sighted and experienced Tatars": we "... must use all efforts to strengthen the enmity between the Russians and the Cossacks, and completely block their path to reconciliation; we must, without dreaming of wealth, decide to cut them all ... In front of the khan's chamber, they cut off the heads of all significant captives, after which each warrior separately put to the sword the captives he had inherited ” .

According to Russian archival data, “In total, in Konotop on a big battle and on a branch: the regiment of the boyar and governor, Prince Alexei Nikitich Trubetskoy, with comrades of the Moscow rank, city nobles and boyar children, and newly baptized, murz and Tatars, and Cossacks, and the Reiter system of the initial people and Reiter, dragoons, soldiers and archers were beaten and 4769 people were caught in captivity". The main losses fell on the detachment of Prince Pozharsky. The Reiter regiment of Anz Georg von Strobel (Fanstrobel) was almost completely killed, the losses of which amounted to 1070 people, including a colonel, lieutenant colonel, major, 8 captains, 1 captain, 12 lieutenants and ensigns. The Zaporozhian army, according to the report of Hetman I. Bespaly, lost about 2,000 Cossacks. The cavalry accounted for the main losses of the army, the infantry for the entire time of the fighting lost only 89 people killed and captured. The total losses of the army of Prince Trubetskoy during the retreat to Putivl amounted to about 100 people.

Two roundabouts died or were executed after the battle: S. R. Pozharsky and S. P. Lvov, the steward E. A. Buturlin, 3 solicitors: M. G. Sonin, I. V. Izmailov, Ya. G. Krekshin, 79 Moscow nobles and 164 residents. Total 249 "Moscow officials". Semyon Pozharsky, on the orders of the Khan, was executed at his headquarters. The centurion of the Nezhinsky regiment Zabela, who was present at the execution of Pozharsky, told Prince Trubetskoy: “Khan asked the roundabout prince Semyon Romanovich about the Tatar beating, and what kind of beating, it is not known, and the prince Semyon Romanovich spoke disgustingly to the okolnichi, and the traitor Ivashk Vygovsky spoke of treason under the khan. And for that, the de khan of the roundabout prince Semyon Romanovich ordered to stand before him ... ". It is also said as a reason that Prince Pozharsky spat in the face of the Crimean Khan.

Trubetskoy had to leave three siege mortars in the trenches under the city, of which one was heavy, four siege guns "what lay on the ground", 600 cores and 100 grenades.

Vyhovsky's losses amounted to about 4 thousand people, the Crimean Tatars lost 3-6 thousand people.

Historiography of the question of the number and losses of armies near Konotop

In a number of narrative sources (Vygovsky's report, Polish messages of the 17th century, the annals of Samovidets and Velichko), the size of the Russian army is estimated at 100 to 150 thousand people, and losses from 30 to 50 thousand people. These data are repeated by historians of the 19th century. So, according to the Russian historian Sergei Solovyov, Trubetskoy's army consisted of 100-150 thousand soldiers, and the losses near Konotop amounted to about 30 thousand. His saying is known that "the color of the Moscow cavalry, which made happy campaigns in 1654 and 1655, died on the same day." Recently, these figures have been repeated by a number of Ukrainian historians. Yu. A. Mytsyk reports that “under the walls of Konotop, a general battle took place between Russian and Ukrainian troops ... then 50 thousand of the color of the Moscow cavalry lay down on the battlefield as corpses.” The Kyiv historian A. G. Bulvinsky concludes that the battles near Konotop in terms of "total losses of the warring parties (40,000 people) ... surpass the famous battles near Korsun, Berestechko, Batoga, Drozhi-pol and Chudnov".

At the same time, the participants in the battle on the part of Vyhovsky call the colossal numbers of losses of the hetman - 12,000 only dead Cossacks.

Such an assessment of events, as well as the number of participants and losses on the Russian side, is not confirmed by most modern historians, including Western ones. According to the American historian Brian Davis, "Soloviev's statement is true only in the sense that at least 259 of those killed and captured belonged to officer ranks - a tenant and above."

The biased approach of Ukrainian researchers to sources is criticized by such historians as A. V. Malov, N. V. Smirnov, I. B. Babulin. N.V. Smirnov notes that, for example, A.G. Bulvinsky, “judging by the marks on the sheets for using the documents of the RGADA, many Russian documents about the Battle of Konotop were known. However, he chose to use only one of them in his work, which does not refer to the battle of June 28, 1659 at all.

In order to gather a huge army of 100-150 thousand people, Russia had to send almost all of its troops to Ukraine. According to the mobilization capacity of the Russian state in the middle of the 17th century, it is known that “according to the annual list (estimate) of 1651, the total number of military people was 133,210 people, an increase over the past twenty years by 40 thousand people, or 45%. These were: nobles and boyar children - 39,408 people (30%), archers - 44,486 (33.5%), Cossacks - 21,124 (15.5%), dragoons - 8107 (6%), Tatars - 9113 ( 6.5%), Ukrainians - 2371 (2%), gunners - 4245 (3%), foreigners - 2707 (2%) and the notch guard.

It should be noted that in the narrative sources that Ukrainian authors prefer to use, historians have revealed very serious inaccuracies. The reports of Vyhovsky and the Polish participants are partly propaganda sheets, they were distributed and quoted, acquiring new details and details. Hetman Vyhovsky, in his letter to Pototsky, announced that "Romodanovsky did not run away." The Polish chronicler Karachevsky reports that “There were several princes there on that campaign, not one left, everyone disappeared there, especially Prince Grigory Romodanovsky, ... Andrey Buturlin ... ". The Polish author of “Aviz from the Tabor” (Vygovsky) wrote: “The most important Moscow foreman, who was then with the army: the first was Prince (Andrei) Vasilievich Buturlin, comrade Trubetskoy; the other is Prince Semyon Romanovich Pozharsky, a courtier; third - Grigory Grigorievich Romodanovsky; fourth - Prince Semyon Petrovich Lvov; fifth - Artamon Sergeevich Matveev, archery colonel of the royal order; sixth - Reiter Colonel Venedikt Andreevich Zmeev; seventh - Colonel Streltsy Strubov. This foreman, like the troops, and the leg did not leak. ” Although it is known that Grigory Romodanovsky, and Andrei Buturlin, and Artamon Matveev, and the future Duma General Venedikt Zmeev continued to serve for many more years.

Meaning and consequences of the battle

Trubetskoy's army, having suffered serious losses, could no longer take part in military operations on the territory of the Hetmanate. Voivode Sheremetev remained cut off in Kyiv and was forced to resort to punitive raids on the surrounding towns and villages in order to avoid another attack. There were no more barriers to the devastation of the southern border of Russia - up to Voronezh and Usman. In August 1659, the Crimeans made trips to 18 volosts, most of which were located beyond the Belgorod barrier line. As a result, 4,674 estates were burned, 25,448 people were taken prisoner. Trubetskoy was ordered to redeploy to the area between Putivl and Sevsk to repel further attacks.

According to the testimony of the Swedish diplomat A. Muller, in early July 1659, panic reigned among the townspeople in Moscow, who feared an attack by the Crimean Tatars; rumors spread that Trubetskoy had lost more than 50 thousand people. This had an impact on the Russian-Swedish peace negotiations that were taking place at that time: on July 7, the Russian government agreed to return all Swedish prisoners of war to their homeland and urgently escorted the Swedish ambassadors. All sorts of criminals took advantage of the anxiety: from Kashirsky, Kolomna and other counties, people fled to the cities, frightening the inhabitants with the Tatar offensive and simultaneously robbing the roads and ruining the villages. On August 6, Alexei Mikhailovich sent his siege commanders to six monasteries that were located near Moscow. The tsar invited Patriarch Nikon to move from the unfortified Resurrection Monastery to the more reliable Kalyazinsky Monastery. In August, on the orders of Alexei Mikhailovich, intensive earthworks were carried out to strengthen Moscow. Solovyov claims that “the tsar himself with the boyars was often present at the work; neighboring residents with families, belongings filled Moscow, and there was a rumor that the sovereign was leaving for the Volga, for Yaroslavl ".

However, after the clash at Konotop, the political authority of Hetman Vyhovsky, the legitimacy of whose election to the hetman post after the death of Bogdan Khmelnitsky was initially questioned, fell even more. Disappointed with the hetman, Vyhovsky's associates decided to overthrow their leader. Actually, the battle near Konotop was an attempt by military measures to strengthen the political and personal power of Vyhovsky, which the Cossacks refused to recognize. The result was just the opposite. Immediately after Trubetskoy's retreat to Putivl, peasant and urban uprisings broke out in the Hetmanate, fueled by the actions of Crimean Tatars allied with Vygovsky, who plundered peasant and Cossack settlements, took women and children into slavery.

By the grace of God, from the great sovereign
Tsar and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich,
All Great and Small and White Russia
autocrat, and many states and lands
Eastern and Western and Northern stepfathers
and grandfather and heir and sovereign and
the owner, our royal majesty,
troops of the Zaporizhzhya newly recruited, to our
Royal Majesty decree, Hetman Ivan
Bezpalomu and the whole army of Zaporozhye and
black our great sovereign merciful
word.
This year, in the year 167, July 26th...
declaring to us the great sovereign faithful
service like you, being with our great
the sovereign's neighbor boyar and voivode
and Viceroy of Kazan, with Prince Alexei
Nikitich Trubetskoy with comrades and with soldiers
people, near Konotop against traitors
stood and repaired the thought, and how are you with our well
great sovereign by military people against
our great sovereign traitors
Ivashka Vygovsky and Cherkas and against
Crimean Khan and Tatars fought ... And we
great sovereign, our royal majesty,
you, our royal majesty subjects,
for your faithful services, we welcome, graciously
praise...
Written in our reigning city of Moscow,
summer 7167, August on the 5th day.
Sealed with the state big
seal, under a smooth bush.

Vyhovsky was also opposed by his recent colleague Ivan Bohun, who raised an uprising in the Right-Bank Ukraine. At this time, Vygovsky laid siege to Gadyach, which was defended by Colonel Pavel Okhrimenko (Efremov) with 2 thousand Cossacks and 9 hundred "city people". The siege dragged on. Vygovsky and "The Crimean Khan with all his strength stood for three weeks, and attacked with cruel attacks". During the siege of Gadyach "Prince Aleksey Nikitich Trubetskoy ... and Hetman Bezpaloy ... sent from themselves to Zaporozhye to Serk, so that he would repair the fishery over the Crimean uluses". Zaporizhzhya ataman Ivan Serko attacked the Nogai uluses, following the instructions of Prince Trubetskoy and Hetman Bespaly. This forced the Crimean Khan to leave Vyhovsky and leave with an army for the Crimea. After this campaign, Ivan Serko with the Zaporizhzhya army moved against Vyhovsky and defeated Colonel Timosh sent to meet him by Vyhovsky with the army.

Soon, Poltava, pacified by Vygovsky in the previous year, joined the cities of Romny, Gadyach, and Lokhvitsa that rebelled against Vyhovsky. Some clerics spoke out against Vygovsky: Maxim Filimonovich, an archpriest from Nizhyn, and Semyon Adamovich, an archpriest from Ichny. By September 1659, the former allies of Vygovsky in the Battle of Konotop took the oath to the "White Tsar": Colonel Ivan Yekimovich of Kyiv, Colonel Ivan Yekimovich of Pereyaslavl, Timofei Tsetsyura of Chernigov, Anikey Silich of Chernigov.

Cossacks of Vyhovsky's mercenaries, “who were Poles and Germans in Pereyaslavl, and in Nizhyn, and in Chernigov, and in other places ... they beat everyone to death from three thousand people”. Colonel Timofey Tsetsyura brought to the Kyiv governor Vasily Sheremetev "the banner of the traitor Ivashka Vygovsky, and the cornet of Major Jan Zumir". Chernigov Colonel Anikey Silich captured Colonels Yuri and Ilya Vygovsky, Major Zumer (Zumir) and others. On September 12, the captives and banners were sent to Moscow.

Colonel Timofey Tsetsyura, who fought on the side of Vyhovsky near Konotop, told Sheremetev that the colonels and Cossacks fought with Russian military men “In great captivity, fearing the traitor Ivashka Vyhovsky, that he ordered many colonels who did not want to listen, he ordered to be whipped, and others he shot and hung, and he sent many Cossacks with wives and children to the Crimea as Tatars” .

The Cossacks of the Kyiv, Pereyaslav and Chernihiv regiments, as well as the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks under the command of Ivan Serko, nominated a new hetman - Yuri Khmelnitsky. At the Cossack Rada in the town of Garmanovtsy near Kyiv, a new hetman was elected. “And the banner and the mace and the seal and all sorts of deeds The military took from Vygovsky and gave it to Yuri”. In Garmanovtsy, the ambassadors of Vyhovsky, Sulima and Vereshchak were hacked to death, who had signed the Gadyach Treaty a little earlier - an agreement between Vyhovsky and the Poles that provoked the military campaign of 1659.

On October 17, 1659, the Cossack Rada in Bila Tserkva finally approved Yury Khmelnytsky as the new hetman of the Cossacks. Vyhovsky was forced to abdicate and officially transfer the hetman's kleinods to Khmelnytsky. At the Rada, the entire Zaporizhzhya Army "became under its Great Sovereign by the autocratic hand in eternal allegiance as before." Vyhovsky fled to Poland, where he was later executed on charges of treason.

After being elected, Yuri Khmelnytsky signed a new treaty with the Tsardom of Russia in 1659, which significantly limited the power of the hetmans. The Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667, an episode of which was the Battle of Konotop, eventually ended with the Andrusovo truce, which led to the division of the Hetmanate along the Dnieper into the Right-Bank and Left-Bank. This was the result of a split and the legal consolidation of realities in the Hetmanate itself, where by 1663 the situation was fixed with the election of two hetmans - a pro-Polish one on the Right Bank and a pro-Russian one on the Left Bank.

The greatest benefit from the battle of Konotop came from the Crimean Khan, who in August 1659, devastating the lands of Yelets, Livensky, Novosilsky, Mtsensk, Kursk, Bolkhovsky, Voronezh and other counties, stole more than 25,000 people to the Crimea.

In 1667, on the orders of Hetman Ivan Bryukhovetsky, in memory of the Orthodox soldiers who died in the battle, a wooden Ascension Church was built, better known among the people under the name Sorokosvyatskaya. Now in its place stands the Holy Ascension Cathedral.

Battle of Konotop and modernity

Various interpretations of historians

A number of Ukrainian historians (Mikhail Hrushevsky and others) evaluate Vyhovsky's actions, which led to the Battle of Konotop, as a struggle for independence. Ukrainian historians actively began to study the activities of Hetman Vyhovsky in the late 90s of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The term “Ukrainian-Russian war” even appeared in Ukrainian historiography, to which, in particular, the dissertation of the Kyiv historian A. G. Bulvinsky “Ukrainian-Russian War of 1658-1659” was devoted. A feature of modern Ukrainian historiography of the period of the Hetmanate is that, as a rule, narrative sources are taken as the basis for scientific research. At the same time, chronicles, letters, memoirs and similar texts, often telling about the event in a third-hand retelling and sometimes contradicting each other, are declared the most authoritative source.

According to the historian A. V. Marchukov, “the modern state existence of Ukraine also determines the trend towards an appropriate depiction of the past, designed to lay a historical foundation for independence, demonstrate the deep national and state traditions of Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation and prove the legitimacy and legitimacy of its existence as a subject of international relations. » .

Among Russian historians (for more details, see section ), due to the critical approach to the research methods of a number of Ukrainian colleagues, other data on the composition of armies, etc., a different understanding of the battle, its significance and role in the historical context, prevails.

Activities and Policies

Notes

1. At the time of the battle, the project to create an autonomous Grand Duchy of Russia had already been rejected by the Polish Sejm. “Under the influence of the Polish public and the strong dictates of the Vatican, the Sejm in May 1659 adopted the Gadyach Treaty in a more than truncated form. The idea of ​​the Principality of Russia was generally destroyed, as well as the provision on maintaining the alliance with Moscow. The liquidation of the union was also canceled, as well as a number of other positive articles.. Tairova-Yakovleva T. G. Ivan Vygovsky // Unicorn. Materials on the military history of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. - M ., 2009, issue. 1. - S. 249. - ISBN 978-5-91791-002-4
2. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 15.
3. Bulvinsky A. G. Ukrainian historical journal. - K., 1998, No. 3. - S. 77.
4. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 13.
5. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. June 28, 1659. - M .: Zeikhgauz, 2009. - S. 13-16. - ISBN 978-5-9771-0099-1
6. Davies B.L.. - Routledge, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2007. - P. 128-131. - ISBN 978-0-415-23986-8
7. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 14.
8. Babulin I. B. Prince Semyon Pozharsky and the Battle of Konotop. - S. 69.
9. Novoselsky A. A. Struggle of the Moscow state with the Tatars in the second half of the 17th century // Studies in the history of the era of feudalism (Scientific heritage). - M .: Nauka, 1994. - S. 25. - 221 p. - ISBN 5-02-008645-2
10. Smirnov N.V. How the decline began near Konotop ... (myths and reality) // Works on Russian history. Collection of articles in memory of the 60th anniversary of IV Dubov. - M .: Parade, 2007. - S. 334-353.
11. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 36.
12. Bulvinsky A. G. Battle of Konotop 1659 // Ukrainian historical journal. - K., 1998, No. 4. - S. 35.
13. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 37-39.
14. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 23-24.
15. From a press conference by Tatyana Tairova-Yakovleva, director of the Center for the Study of the History of Ukraine at St. Petersburg State University. lenta.ru (10-07-2010). Archived from the original on August 28, 2011. Retrieved September 3, 2010.
16. “We, Bohdan Khmelnitsky, hetman, do not resist your Imperial Majesty Zaporizhzhya’s Army over this wisdom” Golubtsov I. A. Two unknown letters from the correspondence of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky in 1656 // Slavic Archive. - M., 1958.
17. In 1658, under Varva, their oath was confirmed by G. Gulyanitsky, T. Tsetsyura, I. Skorobogatko, as well as the Pereyaslavsky, Kanevsky and Cherkassky regiments with all the foremen. In Kyiv, on November 9, 1658, the oath was confirmed for the entire Zaporozhye Host: I. Vyhovsky, O. Gogol, A. Beshtanka, O. Privitsky. But soon they changed their oath again. For details see: Bulvinsky A. G. Babulin I. B. ISBN 978-5-91791-002-4
18. Chentsova V. G. The Eastern Church and Russia after the Pereyaslav Rada 1654-1658. The documents. - M .: Humanitarian, 2004. - S. 116. - ISBN 5-98499-003-2
19. ... Vyhovsky sent his envoys to the king, Pavel Teter and Tarnovsky, beat him with his forehead ... And those envoys, being in Warsaw, swore allegiance to the king and the entire Commonwealth ... The Crimean Khan joined the Horde with Vyhovsky under Bykov, and then Vyhovsky and the colonels swore to the khan that they all be with him and help him to repair against any enemy ... 1659, October (not earlier than the 14th) - From the questioning speeches of the captured Polish-German mercenary Ivan Vygovsky, Major Jan Zumer. (RGADA, original)/O. A. Kurbatov, A. V. Malov "Documents on the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine in the hetmanship of Ivan Vyhovsky", in press
20. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - p. 4.
21. Babulin I. B. Campaign of the Belgorod regiment to Ukraine in the autumn of 1658 // Unicorn. Materials on the military history of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. - M ., 2009, issue. 1. - ISBN 978-5-91791-002-4
22. Babulin I. B. Campaign of the Belgorod regiment to Ukraine in the autumn of 1658 // . - S. 262-264.
23. Chronology of the highly glorious clairvoyant hetmans // South Russian chronicles, discovered and published by N. Belozersky. - Kyiv, 1856. - T. 1. - S. 115.
24. Babulin I. B. Campaign of the Belgorod regiment to Ukraine in the autumn of 1658 // . - S. 275-278.
25. Bulvinsky A. G. Pokhid book. G. G. Romodanovsky to Ukraine in the autumn of 1658 // New policy. - 1998. No. 1. - S. 23.
26. Babulin I. B. Campaign of the Belgorod regiment to Ukraine in the autumn of 1658 // Unicorn. Materials on the military history of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. - M ., 2009, issue. 1. - S. 283-284. - ISBN 978-5-91791-002-4
27. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 9.
28. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 10.
29. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 12.
30. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 7-17.
31. Babulin I. B. Prince Semyon Pozharsky and the Battle of Konotop. - Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - St. Petersburg. : Russian Symphony, 2009. - S. 63-70. - ISBN 978-5-91041-047-7
32. Soldier formation.
33. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 11.
34. Babulin I. B. Prince Semyon Pozharsky and the Battle of Konotop. - S. 67.
35. Mitsik Yu. A. Appendices. No. 3. 1659, lime 23 - Tabir of Hetman Vigovsky near Putivl. - A leaflet (“advice”) about the victory under Konotop // Hetman Ivan Vigovsky. - K. : KM Academy, 2004. - S. 73-74. - ISBN 966-518-254-4
36. Kroll P.Źrodło do dziejow bitwy pod Konotopem w 1659 roku z Archiwum Radziwiłłow w Warszawie // Studia historyczno-wojskowe. - 2008. - Vol. II. 2007. - P. 280. - 320 p. - ISBN 9788389943293
37. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 18, 23.
38. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 22.
39. Kazim-Bek M. A. Comparative extracts from different writers relating to the history of the Seven Planets // Journal of the Ministry of Public Education. - St. Petersburg. : Printing houses of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1835, No. 6. - S. 356.
40. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 22-23.
41. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 24.
42. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 26.
43. The bypass maneuver of the Khan's army from the side of Torgovits is reconstructed by Babulin based on the location of the Crimean Tatar troops at the first stage of the battle, the sources preserved an indication of only one direction, indicated on the diagram from the side of Vygovsky's troops. The Khan's army could make a maneuver from this side.
44. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 25.
45. Solovyov S. M. History of Russia since ancient times. Chapter 1. Continuation of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich. Archived from the original on August 19, 2011. Retrieved September 23, 2010.
46. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 27.
47. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 28.
48. Babulin I. B. Prince Semyon Pozharsky and the Battle of Konotop. - S. 110.
49. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 33.
50. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 33-35.
51. Babulin I. B. Prince Semyon Pozharsky and the Battle of Konotop. - S. 111.
52. Babulin I. B. Prince Semyon Pozharsky and the Battle of Konotop. - S. 112.
53. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop - S. 35.
54. Babulin I. B. Prince Semyon Pozharsky and the Battle of Konotop. - S. 121.
55. Babulin I. B. Prince Semyon Pozharsky and the Battle of Konotop. - S. 123.
56. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 35.
57. Babulin I. B. Battle of Konotop. - S. 32.

XIII

In early November, Romodanovsky entered Little Russia with an army and dismissed a lengthy station wagon among the people, it calculated the crimes of Vygovsky, as in the previous letter given to the Poltava regiment, refuted the slander spread by him and his supporters, as if the tsar wants to destroy the Cossacks, the interests and people: it was pointed out that, according to the articles of Hetman Khmelnitsky, from the income collected in Little Russia, it was necessary to give a salary to the Cossacks, and Vyhovsky did not give it and appropriated the income, paid from them to a foreign army, which he kept in this way at the expense of the Little Russian people, for his own weights. The Little Russian people were invited to assist the Great Russian army and deliver food to it. According to the meaning of these articles, it was as if the whole people were being judged by the misunderstanding that arose between the Moscow government and the hetman.

For his part, Vygovsky also dismissed the station wagon among the people in the Poltava regiment, urged the Cossacks to remain submissive to him and stand against the enemy, that is, the Great Russian troops: God, with the entire Zaporizhzhya Army, declare your malice to the whole world.

The advent of Romodanovsky was a signal for Pushkaren's party. She came to life. By order of Romodanovsky, a dispersed golota, who sensed a robbery, began to gather for his army; the regiment of Deineks was again formed. Colonels Ivan Donets and Stepan Dovgal commanded the Little Russians; they were given Moscow military men. They took Goltva. The Cossacks and the townspeople swore allegiance to the tsar. Then Dovgal defeated the Mirgorodites near Sorochintsy. Then, on October 23, the Deineks broke into Mirgorod and robbed it so that the inhabitants, according to the chronicler, were left completely naked. The next day Romodanovsky entered Mirgorod. Stepan Dovgal became a colonel again. From there, the militia moved to Lubny. The Shvets was not able to defend himself, - he gathered the Cossacks and left in advance; wealthy people with their belongings fled in all directions.

Deineks, running ahead to Lubny, ravaged and burned them. In vain did Romodanovsky, wanting to save the city, send military men from Moscow to drive them out. The Deineks were terribly angry against the Lubents. They, - said the Deineks, - the Lubensky Cossacks ruined us more than anyone else, burned our houses, gave our wives and children to the Tatars; last year, three thousand Zaporozhye Cossacks were killed. They robbed the Mgarsky monastery, where they found money immured in the wall - according to the custom of that time: Prince Romodanovsky barely kept the crowd from the final ruin of the monastery. From Luben, the militia moved on, ruined Chornukhi, Goroshin, Piryatin; near Varva had an insignificant skirmish with Gulyanitsky. The tenant Khmetevsky and the Kolontaevsky centurion Kotlyarenko were sent to Pereyaslavl to persuade the Cossacks and the mob to lag behind Vygovsky. Then the prince settled down with the army near Lokhvitsa for winter quarters. Deineks roamed the left-bank Ukraine, robbed the wealthy, burned their houses...

The Lokhvitsky camp of Prince Romodanovsky was filled with both Great Russian military men and Cossacks. Prince Kurakin, Prince Semyon Pozharsky and Lvov arrived. The more the news of the treaty with Poland spread among the people, the more willingly the simpletons, turning away from the thought of fraternizing with the Poles, fled to the Great Russian army. Romodanovsky was visited by Judge General Bespaly, recently appointed to this position. The prince gathered a handful of Cossacks loyal to the tsar and proposed to elect a hetman; they chose Fingerless. The new hetman approved his stay in Romny. Together with him, Voronok was appointed general captain. Probably, new colonels were elected at the same time, instead of Vyhovsky's adherents who had fallen away from the tsar: instead of Shvets, Tereshchenko was elected; Poltava had Kirik Pushkarenko as a colonel. In Ukraine, two administrations and two hetmans were formed. But he did not want to lay down his dignity and the third - Iskra, a bunchuk comrade of the Poltava regiment. He wrote to Moscow, referring to the fact that he was pointed out the hetman's dignity back in Moscow, assured that the people stood for him. The government did not find anything better than to instruct Romodanovsky himself to approve, at his own discretion, one of the two. Iskra appeared in Gadyach, called himself a hetman, gathered an embassy around him and prepared to overthrow both Vyhovsky and Bespaly. At the call of Romodanovsky on December 1, he went to Lokhvitsa, and “so,” says the chronicler, “he was intoxicated with the thought of the upcoming hetmanship, that he was not afraid to go accompanied by an insignificant detachment, although throughout the left-bank Ukraine, detachments of Vyhovsky’s party fought with deineks. Seven miles from Lokhvitsa, Iskra was attacked by the Chigirinsky Cossacks under the command of Skorobogatenok. Iskra asked the prince for help in vain through messengers. Romodanovsky made excuses at night and sent a detachment when this detachment could see only corpses. “The spark has gone out, ready to flash!” Ukrainians said. Romodanovsky got rid of the need to choose one of the two. But at the end of January, as it seems, Romodanovsky was no longer in Lokhvitsa: Prince Fyodor Kurakin is the chief commander there.

Such skirmishes were limited to military operations. Vyhovsky did not move for a long time. He did not trust his Cossacks, saw widespread hesitation and hoped for help from the Crimea and Poland, but meanwhile he was a mercenary squad of Serbs, Volokhi, Germans and Poles: the last three thousand came to him under the command of Yuri Pototsky and Yablonovsky, and two dragoon regiments under the command of Lonchinsky. On the one hand, he waited to see how the articles he and Benevsky would adopt in Warsaw would be accepted, on the other hand, he curried favor with the khan, but at the same time showed a desire to remain loyal to the tsar and sent Belaya Tserkov Colonel Kravchenko to Moscow as an ambassador.

Kravchenko was received very kindly in Moscow, when suddenly at the end of December the news came that Skorobogatko had destroyed the Iskra, and the Pereyaslav colonel Timofei Tsytsura was attacking the Great Russian military men. This was considered treachery, since Vyhovsky had previously announced to the governors that he was sending an embassy to the tsar, and on this basis, considering the war suspended, the governors released Gulyanitsky from the siege in Varva. Kravchenko's situation in Moscow was difficult: they began to consider him a spy, but Kravchenko begged to be allowed to send messengers with letters to the hetman and the colonels. Together with two Little Russians, the centurion and ataman of the Belotserkovsky regiment, Major Grigory Vasilyevich Bulgakov was sent to Little Russia by envoy from the tsar with clerk Firs Baibakov. He was instructed to find out the true state of affairs in Little Russia, whether the Cossacks wanted Vygovsky to remain hetman or want to change him, like him, whether he sincerely wants to bring guilt or thinks to get along with Poles, Crimeans and other foreigners, how great his forces are, etc. Bulgakov had to hand him the letter only in the presence of the foremen, and in no case should he give it in private. Baibakov should have been released in advance with news.

The tsar, reprimanding Vygovsky for violating the truce, appointed a council in Pereyaslavl during the winter. For this purpose, Prince Alexei Nikitich Trubetskoy will be sent. Together with him, Romodanovsky and Sheremetev should be present at this council. This council will have to find and punish the perpetrators of unrest and establish order. It goes without saying that neither the hetman nor his accomplices could have been to the taste of this gladness: it would have been gathered under the influence and oppression of the boyars and would not have been favorable to those who showed a desire to stand up for their liberties more than to please Moscow, with In the same way, Vygovsky and the foremen had many enemies: they would then speak loudly and with success. It is clear that Bulgakov did not expect a very kind reception.

Already on the road to Konotop, he experienced trouble. He sent a centurion to Gulyanitsky to inform him that he himself would go to the hetman, and Baibakov would go back, and therefore, both for himself and for Baibakov, he asked for an escort. Gulyanitsky rudely received the centurion and announced that he would not give Baibakov an escort. "If they are both sent to the hetman, then let them both go, I have no order to let one go to the hetman, and the other back." He also did not want to give Bulgakov escorts to Kyiv, as Bulgakov wanted.

Bulgakov and Baibakov went on their own to Gulyanitsky. Confirming the same thing that he said to the centurion, the Nezhin colonel said: your sovereign sends to us, as if he wants peace, but at the same time he constantly sends troops and intimidates the self-willed ones. Turks and Jews are better than you; a Turk would have been better for us than a Muscovite.

The messengers began to make excuses. Gulyanitsky cursed them with obscene abuse and, by the way, threatened the Muscovite with the Swedes! “Nowhere did it happen,” said Bulgakov, “to scold ambassadors and envoys innocently.”

They left and on January 8 arrived in Pereyaslavl: in the courtyard where they landed, dragoons in German dress immediately appeared and stood guard at the doors and windows. They were told that they would not be allowed to see the hetman, but that they would wait for him here, that the first person in the city was Nemirich and asked them to dine with him.

Nemirich, a European man, received them politely and drank with them to the sovereign's health, which pleased the Moscow messengers very much. They were even more pleased when they saw captured countrymen who were governors at the table, and learned that Nemirich often caresses and treats them, and in general sends good food to other prisoners. They could not resist not to thank him and not to reassure him with royal favor, which Nemirich had never sought. But courtesy did not prevent Nemirich from demanding from them the letters that Kravchenko sent, and when they excused themselves that they should give them to those to whom they were written, Nemirich sent an asaul to them and ordered that these letters be taken from them by force.

On January 10, the hetman arrived, greeted by Nemirich with great honor, with cannon fire. On the 18th, royal messengers came to him; they passed in the midst of the armed ranks of musketeers dressed in German, and found Vygovsky in the room, along with the convoy, judges and captains, and there they handed him a letter from the tsar, saying the usual formalities.

When the letter was read aloud, Vygovsky said: “It is written in the royal letter to be glad to be in Pereyaslavl with the near boyar Prince Alexei Nikitich Trubetskoy, with Vasily Borisovich Sheremetev, and with Grigory Grigoryevich Romodanovsky and comrades. No, it's hard for me to move in with the boyars. I know what their intent is: they want to catch the hetman and cut off his head or cut out his tongue, as they did to the Kyiv elders. It is better to be not only in citizenship, but even in full possession of a Turk, than in citizenship of the Muscovites. Perhaps we will meet at Tsibulnik or Solonitsa. Why were my envoys scolded and wanted to be shot in Moscow? What are the messengers to blame. Here I will do the same to you... I will order you to be shot. Here it is also written in the charter - to punish those who are the cause of all evil: and even without joy you can know that Sheremetev and Romodanovsky are the cause of everything. Why does Vasily Borisovich from Kyiv not go away with military men, and why does Grigory Grigoryevich leave the Cherkassy cities abroad? Moreover, until recently, Prince Fyodor Fyodorovich Kurakin came and ruined many places, and came to Lokhvitsa to help, and with him there were self-willed people who should all have been executed. They call me an perjurer: no, I am not an perjurer; I didn’t do anything like that: I swore to the sovereign that I should be a subject, and not that I should be in our cities to the Moscow governors and that the Muscovites should rule over us. This will never happen. Now I'm going to war, but not against the sovereign's military people, but against the Self-willed, and whoever will stand for them, I will fight with those. These letters that Kravchenko wrote were written involuntarily; fearing death, he wrote as he was ordered to write; and you will do the same when I make you. I served the sovereign faithfully, even when I was a clerk - I persuaded the hetman Khmelnitsky and brought all of Little Russia under the high hand of his royal majesty; but now they call me a traitor and a perjurer, and they constantly give printed and written letters to self-willed people, and order them to start riots. Here is what the boyar Vasily Vasilyevich Sheremetev writes. Bring and read the sheet that he wrote to all the mob and to the entire Zaporozhye Host.

We read Sheremetev's letter. It said that Vyhovsky had forgotten the fear of God, that he was giving Little Russia to the Poles, that the Poles wanted to kill, ruin, enslave the Little Russians into captivity, still own Ukraine, and eradicate the Orthodox faith. The diploma ended with the words: and you, mindful of your oaths, should not pester the Poles and not let them live in Cherkassy cities and do the same to you against the Poles, just as you did to the Poles in advance, referring to us, and we, following your exile, help you and ready to stand for you.

Bulgakov said to all this that the sovereign indicated to be glad to pacify civil strife and bloodshed, and not in order to catch the hetman; that no one thought to shoot Kravchenko, and there was no insult to him in Moscow, that the boyar Sheremetev arrived in Kyiv by royal decree, at the petition of the Cossack envoys, and if they were annoyed, they should have asked the sovereign to change him, and not go to him war, and that if Kurakin arrived near Lokhvitsa, it was because the Cherkasy did not resist the truth, and that as if the self-willed people were given printed and written letters with hung seals, they do not know about it.

But all speeches and arguments were in vain. The foreman who was there spoke in the same spirit as the hetman, and the envoys realized that, as they put it, there would be no appeal from them.

Upon returning to their court, the messengers had a secret conversation with one of the sentry dragoons. Hetman had all these dragoons, he explained, not Germans, but Poles and Polished Cossacks. When the dragoon was given a gift, he told the envoys that Vyhovsky was going with the Poles and the Germans to expel Romodanovsky and take Kyiv from Sheremetev, that he now had three thousand Poles, and soon there would be thirty thousand; but as soon as a large royal army appears, all the dragoons, except for the Poles, will retreat from it; and he has such an idea that, taking with him the treasures of Khmelnitsky, in case of danger, flee to Poland, and Yuras Khmelnitsky knows about his intention.

The envoys were told that the hetman was going to war near Lokhvitsa and ordered them to be taken with him, and let them go from the camp. They had to submit, and on the 16th they were taken from Pereyaslavl on carts.

When they reached the village of Belousovka, thirty miles from Lokhvitsa, the bailiff announced to them that the hetman would let them go, and that they would receive his letter to the sovereign on the way to the camp where they would have to spend the night for the first time.

“We,” said Bulgakov, “gave the letter of the great sovereign to the hetman himself, it was so convenient for the hetman to give us the sheet himself; nowhere is it found that the plates were sent to the camp; true, we are sent to Chigirin, and not to the great sovereign.

The bailiff swore that they would go back to Moscow. “You,” he said, “cannot be with the hetman, because now the murzas are coming to him, talking to him about all sorts of things, and the Lyash ambassador Benyovsky is now with him; so you don't feel good there."

They received a letter and, under an armed detachment, returned again through Pereyaslavl. In Pereyaslavl, they had the opportunity to hear how certain spiritual people treat Moscow; the archpriest of Kyiv, having come to them, reprimanded them that the sovereign was sending ambassadors, as if for peace, and the boyar Sheremetev was acting in an hostile manner. Ambassadors like you,” he said, “should be cut down.

But on the other hand, in Nizhyn, both on their way to Vyhovsky and returning from Vyhovsky, the envoys saw Maxim Filimonov, who assured them of his devotion to the tsar, said that nothing could be expected from Vyhovsky, and asked to keep his son in Moscow, but meanwhile he in Ukraine, a rumor is already spreading that he has gone missing.

The letter sent to the king from the hetman was written with a sharp statement of termination. Vygovsky reproached the tsar for the fact that he, the hetman, many times tearfully asked for the pacification of the free-willed, but, not getting what he wanted, he was forced to pacify them himself, that when everything had calmed down, Romodanovsky entered Ukraine and stirred up the free-willed people again to ruin and torment people, that the hetman many times, wanting to avoid bloodshed, wrote to the tsar, but did not receive a gracious royal word, and meanwhile the Poles began to attack the Cossacks, invite the Turks and dissuade the Tatars from an alliance with the Cossacks. “Seeing such disgrace,” this letter read at the end, “we decided to return to our former sovereign, the Polish king, protecting the freedom of the Orthodox faith and the Eastern churches, but with the agreement that reconciliation would follow with Your Majesty. Do not please, your royal majesty, lay wrath on us for this, but, as a Christian king, prevent the shedding of Christian blood; and if, your royal majesty, you send your armies against us, then blood will be shed and the enemy of the Christian faith will perceive joy. Grigory Bulgakov will speak about this at greater length, and we wish your Tsar Majesty many years of reign.”

Vyhovsky decided to go to war, but not against the Great Russians, but against the Cossacks: the Zaporozhian Sich declared itself resolutely against the hetman's intentions. The Zaporozhians, according to a contemporary, hated Vyhovsky even more after he fraternized with the Tatars and, therefore, could not approve of the usual Zaporozhian raids on the Tatar fields and the Black Sea.

The Cossacks sent a strong detachment under the command of Silky to help the royal army. Silka came to Zinkov and began to incite eastern Ukraine against the hetman. Vyhovsky went against this detachment, trying to prevent both him and the detachments that were formed in nearby towns from joining the Lokhvitsky army. So that Romodanovsky would not hit him in the rear, the hetman sent Nemirich to disturb him.

On January 29, Nemirich approached Lokhvitsa. The Moscow army came out against him, but the chiefs of the Moscow cavalry were people - according to the chronicler - inexperienced and could not resist Nemirich. The Muscovites locked themselves in Lokhvitsa, and Nemirich harassed and held them until Vyhovsky dealt with their allies.

On February 4, Vygovsky laid siege to Mirgorod and sent an urge to the city to lag behind Moscow and stand together for the fatherland, promising not to take revenge on anyone. The archpriest of Mirgorod, named Philip, began to speak for Vygovsky and had such an effect with his speeches that he not only convinced the Mirgorod Cossacks, but Stepan Dovgal himself bowed. The self-will and robberies that the Great Russian military people allowed themselves in the city irritated the people of Mirgorod; they opened the gates and recognized the hetman's authority. His sworn enemy, whom he so stubbornly sought to take, along with other horsemen of the opposing party, appeared to Vygovsky, was received by him friendly and led his Cossacks along with them further. The Great Russian military people who were in Mirgorod were released to their own. Vygovsky began to address meekly wherever they listened to his convictions; towns and villages, one after another, surrendered to him and went over to his side. The Great Russian governors were afraid for Bespaly himself, so that he would not renounce his hetmanship and be transferred to Vyhovsky. Kurakin from Lokhvitsa hurried to send a detachment of soldiers on foot to Romen to protect this point of the new Cossack administration. In fact, having become under Zinkov, Vygovsky sent exhortations to Bespaloy - to lag behind Moscow and unite for a common cause. There was nothing solid and reliable in the popular belief: having easily surrendered to the persuasion of Vygovsky, the Little Russians later said to the Great Russian military people: “Let only a strong tsarist army come; we will help you against Vyhovsky,” Zinkov persisted against the hetman; the Cossacks settled there with their ataman Silka and for four weeks repulsed Vyhovsky. Vyhovsky stood under Zinkov.

Although Vygovsky's letter to the tsar, sent with Bulgakov, already showed the final termination, but in Moscow they wanted to make peace with the hetman, according to at least, for the time being. The main authorities were entrusted to the boyar, Prince Alexei Nikitich Trubetskoy. The assembly place was appointed in Sevsk, where the boyar arrived on January 30th.

On February 13, a secret order was delivered to Trubetskoy, where he was instructed to arrange with. Vyhovsky world peace, and after that he received eighteen copies of the royal letter, inciting the Little Russians against the traitor and perjurer Vygovsky, and by royal order on February 18 sent Bespalom shells and military people to help. In a secret order, dated February 13, Trubetskoy was ordered to meet with Vygovsky and appoint a council in Pereyaslavl, so that all the colonels and the rabble were on this council, and this council was supposed to resolve disputes. Before the meeting of the Rada, the boyar was authorized to make broad concessions to Vygovsky, if necessary. Boyarin was supposed to communicate with Vyhovsky, and, first of all, by mutual agreement with him, Trubetskoy should have separated his military people, and Vyhovsky should have released the Tatars from him. To warn Vygovsky of distrust on both sides, it was necessary to make faith. The boyar, having come together with Vyhovsky, will announce to him the oblivion of all the past in the name of the tsar, and the hetman will show him the articles adopted with the Poles. The boyar will agree to grant the hetman and the entire Cossack army the same rights and privileges that the Poles promised the Cossacks. It must be assumed that the content of the Gadyach treaty was not yet fully known in Moscow, because the order makes a reservation that it is possible to agree to such an agreement "with the tsar only when this agreement does not contain high and intricate articles, which not to honor the sovereign's name. The Moscow government, however, knew well what benefits Vygovsky extorted from the Poles, under the Gadyach agreement, personally for himself and for the foreman; it understood that the main reasons for inclining towards Poland lay in the personal appearance of the foremen, and therefore generously lavished its gifts. Hetman promised to give an increase in the mace; agreed to make him a Kyiv governor; it was decided to give his relatives, friends and colonels in general and all the elders the castellanism and eldership, they promised to remove Sheremetev and not to bring military people into Ukraine, and the hetman would have to remain in citizenship and break the alliance with the Tatars. All such promises, of course, could only be valid when the people recognized Vyhovsky as hetman at the council that Trubetskoy would convene in Pereyaslavl; but if it happened otherwise, then Trubetskoy had to hand over the mace to the person whom the Chigirinsky starostvo chose, just as the belonging of the hetman's order should have been given to the new hetman.

On February 20, the clerk Starkov arrived from Moscow in Sevsk, with proposals to Vygovsky, and was immediately sent to the Zinkovsky camp. Following him, Trubetskoy moved closer to the borders of Ukraine with an army and on March 1 arrived in Putivl. Since then, negotiations have been going on for three weeks, the details of which, unfortunately, are unknown to us. Trubetskoy wrote friendly letters to Vyhovsky and persuaded how to settle the world, but sent appeals to the people - to stand strong against the traitor Ivashki and not bow to his lovely letters.

On March 24, Starkov arrived from Vygovsky with the news that Vygovsky asked Trubetskoy to come with him for negotiations ten miles from Romno, but nothing was written in the letter to Trubetskoy about such a meeting.

Having released Starkov to Moscow, Trubetskoy served a prayer service on March 26 formidable and terrible Spas and moved with the whole army to Ukraine. He wrote to Lokhvitsa to Kurakin, and to Romain to Bespalom, so that they would come to him. On March 30, Bespaly appeared with his colonels and captains. Trubetskoy announced to the Cossacks that he had come not for war, but to pacify civil strife and bloodshed; he encouraged them with royal mercy, and ordered them to write to cities and towns that succumbed to Vygovsky's exhortations, so that the inhabitants would repent and still turn under the autocratic royal hand. “Make, hetman, a strong law, under the death penalty, to your colonels and captains and all Cossacks,” said Trubetskoy to Bespaly, “so that they do not do anything bad in the sovereign Cherkassy cities: do not beat people, do not take them in full, do not rob and they didn’t offend them in any way, and they wouldn’t do any violence and ruin to them, and the sovereign’s military men “were ordered the same from me under the death penalty.” Fingerless promised, and was released to Romen again.

April has come. There was no news from Vyhovsky. The tongues brought to the Great Russian camp announced that the hetman had retreated from Zinkov and left for Chigirin; meanwhile, Gulyanitsky, with Cossacks and Tatars, arrived in Konotop and from there sent out parties that attacked the Great Russian villages near Putivl, Rylsk and Sevsk, ravaged them, killed and took people prisoner.

Came from Moscow Kravchenko. Trubetskoy, calling him to him, explained to him Vygovsky's behavior, and said:

“Tell the hetman and all the Cossacks to leave behind their lies and remain under the hand of the great sovereign, as before, without any doubt; and if they do not come to their senses and do not begin to beat the brow of the sovereign about their faults, then I will go with military people, and what will be done to them, it will not be from me, but from themselves.

Kravchenko swore that he would persuade the hetman and the colonels.

“We,” he said, “we have been sent to you, sovereign, from all the mob with pleasure, and we will glorify the great mercy and salary of the great sovereign in all cities and towns.”

At the end of March, Vygovsky returned to Chigirin. Easter has come. According to the custom of that time, colonels and other officials came to the hetman with congratulations on the Easter holiday. Vygovsky, taking advantage of this opportunity, called them to the Rada.

Vygovsky did not trust the Moscow proposals: they were supposed to be a condition - to gather a council. Vyhovsky was afraid that many ill-wishers would gather at this Rada - they would choose another hetman, and the boyar, who would be the decider of the case, would break all the promises made to him. Moreover, the Moscow government obviously did not trust him, and, offering peace, acted against him and united with his enemies. He presented the colonels with the misfortune that threatened them all; he assured that the Muscovites were deceiving them, and, according to the general verdict, he sent a station wagon around Ukraine. The hetman informed the Ukrainian people in it about the reasons that prompted him to call the people to arms against the Moscow troops; he argued that the tsarist commissioners at the Vilna commission of 1656 decided to give Ukraine under Polish rule as soon as the tsar received the Polish crown; therefore, the hetman and the foremen reasoned that it was much better to unite with Poland as a free nation than to be given into captivity. “Another reason,” wrote Vygovsky, “prompting us to secede from the Russian state, is that we undoubtedly inquired that his royal majesty sent Prince Grigory Grigorievich Romodanovsky his high letter, commanding to exterminate the hetman with all the elders, to destroy the weight of our rights and liberties , leave only ten thousand Cossacks, and the rest of the Ukrainian people: make eternal peasants and slaves.

This wagon at first frightened the Ukrainians on the right side of the Dnieper; on the left, only Pereyaslavsky, Prilutsky, Nezhinsky and Chernigov regiments held on to Vygovsky.

Meanwhile, on April 10, Trubetskoy served a prayer service to the “terrible and terrible Savior” in the Konstantinovsky Cathedral and moved to Konotop; at the same time he wrote to Bespalom in Romen and in Lokhvitsa to Kurakin, so that from both sides they would converge to him for connection. On April 13, on the road, Bespaly stuck to him with his Cossacks; On the 16th, they reached Konotop, drove off the detachment that was watching the path; On the 21st, Prince Fyodor Kurakin appeared to him with Pozharsky and Lvov and with the entire army stationed in Lokhvitsa. The Little Russian chronicler writes that the Prilutsk colonel Doroshenko wanted to block the way for the Muscovites, but Romodanovsky's comrade, the brave prince Semyon Ivanovich Pozharsky, struck him near Sribny. “Doroshenko,” says the chronicler, “like a hare ran through the swamps, fleeing death, and Prince Pozharsky ordered to cut all the inhabitants of the town of Sribnoe.”

There were two colonels in the Konotop castle - Nizhyn and Chernigov, with their regiments, up to four thousand people in total. Before the attack, Trubetskoy wrote a letter to Gulyanitsky, informing him that he had been sent to calm civil strife and to stop the bloodshed; urged to remember the single Orthodox faith and royal mercy, to lag behind falsehoods, to beat with one's forehead in one's guilt and send good and noble people for negotiations.

Instead of an answer, shots from cannons and rifles were heard from the city.

“We sat down to death! - the Cossacks shouted: - we will not surrender the city!

Then Trubetskoy ordered to shoot at the city and into the city.

The united Great Russian army began to besiege Gulyanitsky. From April 21 to June 29 this siege lasted; a large Great Russian army under the command of Trubetskoy besieged four thousand Nizhyn and Chernigov residents - and did not take them. The castle was surrounded by a deep moat and a high rampart. For several days cannons rattled incessantly, grenades flew into the city, military men dug tunnels; On the 28th of April, before dawn, having finished the prayer service, the whole army climbed into the attack. Everything was in vain: the lock from grenades did not light up, the tunnels were interrupted; Moscow people managed to climb the walls, but, beaten off with damage, returned from the attack; and the besieged from the high ramparts responded to the besiegers with cannonballs and buckshot so accurately that they inflicted much more harm on them than they themselves suffered. The Muscovite archers and gunners spent nothing but "the sovereign's potion," as they called gunpowder. Trubetskoy conceived a different kind of war: he wanted to fill up the ditch that surrounded the castle, but the Cossacks interrupted work with frequent shots, made bold sorties, descended into the ditch and carried away the earth thrown there by the Great Russians onto their shaft: in this way the ditch remained as deep as before, and the shaft was made higher, and the Cossack nuclei hit the besiegers even more successfully. Several weeks have passed. Bored with the siege, Trubetskoy sent Romodanovsky and Skuratov to Borzna. On May 12, Moscow people attacked Borzna. The commander of the Borzen Cossacks, Vasily Zolotarenko, brother-in-law of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, was defeated; Borzna was taken and burned; many inhabitants were exterminated - the wives and children of the Cossacks were brought prisoners near Konotop and sent to Great Russia. On May 21, according to a secret letter from the invariable benefactor of the Moscow side, Archpriest Filimonov, Romodanovsky, Kurakin and the Cossacks, under the command of Bespaly, moved to Nezhin. The Nizhyns made a sortie; the Great Russians drove them into the city, but on the other side stood a large army, consisting of Serbs, Poles, Tatars; the Great Russians went to them, a battle took place, the Tatars retreated; the Cossack leader Skorobogatenko, the appointed hetman, was captured. However, the prince was afraid to pursue the Tatars, assuming that they were deliberately luring him into pursuit in order to lead him on a large army, and returned to Trubetskoy to conduct a siege.

Not knowing where Vyhovsky was and what was being done to him, on June 4 Trubetskoy decided once again to try to stop the bloodshed by peaceful means. He sent the Don Cossacks with a letter to look for him: as before, the boyar offered peace to the rebellious hetman and asked to send now noble people for a conversation. Until June 27 there was no rumor or spirit of Vyhovsky.

Vygovsky did not help Gulyanitsky, because he was waiting for the khan; there were only sixteen thousand Cossacks who adhered to his party. Mahmet Giray appeared no earlier than June 24, with thirty thousand Horde. His first meeting with the hetman was at Krupych-pole. The allies affirmed their friendship with a mutual solemn oath: the hetman and the foremen swore on behalf of the whole of Ukraine, the colonels swore for their regiments, the centurions for their hundreds; then the khan, sultans and murzas swore, according to their own law, not to retreat from the Cossacks and help against the Muscovites until the Moscow troops were driven out of Ukraine. Vygovsky, moreover, had several thousand mercenary troops - Serbs, Volokhi, but mostly Poles.

The united Cossack and Tatar army marched to Konotop. Near Shapovalovka, a Moscow detachment, sent to take the languages, met with them. There was a battle; the Great Russians were utterly defeated, and this first success encouraged the Cossacks.

Among the prisoners was Silka, the brave defender of Zinkov, whom Vyhovsky ordered to be chained to a cannon.

The captives expressed the position of the troops near Konotop and added that the generals did not wait for the arrival of the enemy. In fact, the governors had no information that the enemy was so close to them.

The allies were fifteen miles from Konotop; here it was necessary to cross the swampy river Sosnovka. Vygovsky examined the area: it seemed to him such that the battle given on it could end in the complete defeat of one of the hostile troops. The Cossacks could hope for victory because they had time to arrange their army in a favorable way; it was only necessary to lure the Muscovites.

Vyhovsky stationed his Cossack army on a wide meadow, in a closed place, and gave command of the army to Stefan Gulyanitsky, brother of the besieged in Konotop, and he himself, having selected a small detachment for himself, invited Sultan Nureddin with him and crossed over to the other side of the Sosnovka River, with the intention of attacking to the rear of the besiegers, then run, lure the Muscovites behind him and lead them to the remaining Cossack army; Khan with the Horde went to the right to the Torgovitsa tract, about ten versts away, with the goal of hitting the rear of the enemy another time, when Vygovsky manages to bring him out.

Battle of Konotop, beginning

On June 27, Tuesday, Vygovsky crossed the river and suddenly hit the rear of the besiegers of the Konotop castle. The unexpected appearance of the enemy confused the Great Russians: they ran in alarm, and the Cossacks captured many horses and cavalry, which in a hurry did not have time to jump on them in time. But in a few hours, the Moscow people recovered - the governors noticed that the Vygovsky army was at least ten times smaller than theirs. Pozharsky hit on the Cossacks - they turned back and fled for Sosnovka.

The night has come. Several Cossacks were taken prisoner, others voluntarily came to serve the king.

“Does Vygovsky really have as many troops for everything as there were here?” Pozharsky asked them.

“No,” answered the Cossacks, “don’t chase after him, prince: he deliberately lures you into an ambush. There are many Cossacks with him, and the Khan himself with the Horde, and with the Khan are glorious warriors: Sultans Nureddin and Kalga, Murzas Dzaman-Saidak and Shuri-Bey.

"Come on honey! - shouted Pozharsky: - come on Nureddina, come on Kalga, come on Dzyaman-Saidaka! We will cut down and spit out all their butted mothers!”

In vain did Trubetskoy stop Pozharsky. The brave prince did not listen. “He,” says the chronicler, “believed too much in his invincibility after his success near Sribnoy.” On June 28, early Pozharsky with thirty thousand crossed over Sosnovka. The other half of the army, under the command of Trubetskoy, remained near Konotop; Bespaly was with her with the Cossacks.

Having crossed the Sosnovka, the Moscow people set up batteries and arranged themselves in battle order. Vyhovsky did not interfere with them. But at a time when the Great Russians attributed this inaction of the Cossacks to cowardice, five thousand Ukrainians, under the command of Stepan Gulyanitsky, were digging a ditch in the direction of a wide bridge, along which the Muscovite army passed. As soon as they took their work close to the Moscow army and could be seen by them, Vygovsky made an attack, but after the first return shots he fled. Pozharsky, confident that the Cossacks were afraid of his prowess, rushed after them. Vygovsky retreated even further ... The entire Moscow army withdrew from its position, pursued the Cossacks with fervor and retired a considerable distance from the bridge.

Meanwhile, the Cossacks, who were quickly digging a ditch, found themselves in the rear of the Moscow army, rushed to the bridge, cut it down and blocked the shallow river with its remnants: the water began to spill over the viscous meadow. This unexpected phenomenon gave Gulyanitsky the idea not only to block the way back through Sosnovka for the people of Moscow, but to make it difficult for them to move across the meadow. On his orders, the Cossacks scattered across the swamp: some mowed grass and reeds, others chopped willow and vine and threw them into the water. In a few minutes the river was dammed up, and the water spilled in all directions.

Seeing the Cossacks behind them, the Great Russians stopped chasing Vygovsky and turned back; then, in their turn, the fleeing Cossacks chased after them, and suddenly the Muscovite people were deafened by a terrible cry and whistle: the Horde with the Khan and militant Murzas flew impetuously right on the left wing of the Muscovite army. The Moscow people wanted to keep the pressure, but Vygovsky with the Cossacks and the mercenary troops hit them from the right side. Muscovite people, constrained from the sides, leaned back ...

But they had no way back; water, spilling over the meadow, turned it into a swamp; the Moscow guns did not move; Muscovite horses sank to their belly; Moscow people started to run on foot, but it was also impossible to walk. “How could he have run away,” says the chronicler, “who had winged horses.”

Battle of Konotop, end

In vain Pozharsky rushed with all his might, in vain he wanted to get out to a dry place: thirty thousand Russians loyal to the Tsar died on that terrible day. The Tatars did not spare them, because it was impossible to hope for payback from the simple; and the Cossacks were bitter against this army, which, according to Vygovsky and the elders, allegedly came in order to destroy their rights and turn them into slaves.

Pozharsky was captured and brought to Vygovsky. The prince abruptly began to speak to him for betraying the tsar, and Vyhovsky sent him to the khan.

The Commander of the Faithful said to him through the interpreter:

“You are too reckless, prince, and frivolous; you dared not be afraid of our great forces, and now you are worthy, punished, because so many brave and innocent Moscow troops died through your frivolity!

“Prince Pozharsky,” says the chronicler, did not look that he was in captivity, but in response to the khan’s remark, he treated the khan’s mother with an epithet, uncommon in the printed word, and spat in the khan’s eyes. The enraged khan ordered to cut off his head in front of his own eyes. “The response to him,” says the Ukrainian chronicler, “is the extermination of the innocent inhabitants of Sribnoe.” Together with him, the khan, in a rage, ordered the other noble captives to be chopped up; among them was the son of the famous Procopius Lyapunov, Lev, two Buturlins and several colonels. Pozharsky showed himself to be a real great Russian folk fellow. The people's memory appreciated this and passed on his feat to posterity in a song.

Behind the river, crossing, behind the village of Sosnovka,
Under Konotop under the city, under the white stone wall,
In meadows, green meadows,
Here are the royal regiments,
All wolves are sovereigns,
Yes, and the companies were noble.
And from afar, from a pure field,
Whether from that wide expanse,
If only black crows were herds of herds, -
Kalmyks and Bashkirs gathered, gathered,
The Tatars were thrown into the regiments of the sovereign;
They ask the Tatars
From the regiments of the sovereign to his opponent.
And from the regiment of the sovereign's opponent
They did not choose either from the archers or from the soldiers of the good fellows.
Pozharsky Prince went out vtapory, -
Prince Semyon Romanovich,
He is a boyar big word, Pozharsky prince, -
He went out for a ride
Conquering the Tartar and the villainous rider:
And the Tartar held a sharp spear in his hands,
And the glorious Pozharsky prince
One sharp saber in the right hand.
Like two bright falcons flew in an open field,
And they gathered in an open field
Pozharsky boyar with a Tatar.
God help Prince Semyon Romanovich Pozharsky -
With his sharp saber he drew back the sharp Tatar spear,
And he cut off his head, like a Tatar rider,
And the evil filthy Tatars howled:
He killed their rider, which is not a glorious Tatar.
And the Crimean Tatars are evil, they are evil, but crafty,
They shot a good horse at Semyon Pozharsky,
His good horse falls.
The Prince of Pozharsky will shout to the regiments of the sovereign:
“And you are newly recruited soldiers, you are sovereign archers.
Bring me a good horse, take Pozharsky away;
Take away to the regiments of the sovereign.
Crimean Tatars are evil, they are evil and crafty,
And they rushed about in a heap, captured Prince Pozharsky,
They took him to their Crimean steppes
To his Crimean Khan - a village Shishimore.
He began to interrogate him:
“And goy thou, Pozharsky prince,
Prince Semyon Romanovich!
Serve me by faith, yes you are by faith-truth,
Absently unchanged;
Even as you served the king, yes to your white king,
And so you serve me, the Crimean Khan himself, -
I'll favor you with gold and silver
Yes, and lovely wives, and souls of red girls.
The Pozharsky prince answers the Crimean Khan himself:
“And goy be a Crimean khan - a village shishimora!
I would be glad to serve you, the Crimean Khan himself,
If my frisky legs were not shackled,
Yes, hands were not tied in silk chemburs,
If only I had a sharp saber!
Would serve you with faith on your wild head,
I'd cut off your wild head!"
The Crimean Khan will scream here - the village shishimora:
“And you, filthy Tatars!
Take Pozharsky to the high mountains, cut off his head,
Chop his white body in pieces into small pieces,
Scatter Pozharsky across the far open field.
If black crows screamed, zagaikali -
The Tatars captured Semyon Pozharsky.
The Tatars took him to a high mountain,
They told the Tatar prince Semyon Pozharsky,
Chopped off a wild head,
They cut out the white body in parts into small ones,
They scattered Pozharsky across the far open field;
They themselves went to the Crimean Khan himself.
They will be gone for a day, another, no one will visit.
And from the regiment there were two sovereign Cossacks,
These two Cossacks are great,
They went up the mountain
And they climbed that high mountain,
And those fellows saw: - after all, the body of Pozharsky:
His head lies on his own, arms, legs are scattered,
And his body is white in parts chopped
And scattered over a wide expanse,
These Cossacks, well done, collected his body
Yes, they put them in one place;
They took off their linden bast,
And yes, they put it there.
They tied the linden bast tightly,
They carried him, Pozharsky, to Konotop to the city.
In the city of Konotop, the bishop came in handy there.
He, the bishop, collected priests and deacons
And church clerks,
And those Cossacks, daring fellows,
He ordered to wash the body of Pozharsky.
And they laid his body white in an oak house,
And they covered it with that white-oak lid;
And here people marveled
That his body was fused into place.
Having performed a proper burial,
His white body was buried in the damp earth,
And sang the eternal song
To that Prince Pozharsky.

(Ancient verse. coll. Kirshe Danilov.)

On June 29, Gulyanitsky with his Nizhyn and Chernigov residents came out of a twelve-week imprisonment. Only 2,500 men remained in his detachment.

On July 2, Prince Trubetskoy began to retreat, crossed the river with great inconvenience; many drowned during the crossing.

The victors chased after him, but Trubetskoy dug in and repelled the pressure of the enemy; Vygovsky himself was in danger: a fragment of the cannonball wounded his horse and touched his caftan. Trubetskoy reached the river Semi, ten versts from Putivl; but he could no longer defend himself, and went to Putivl. Vygovsky refused to pursue the Moscow army on Moscow soil. In vain did the Poles, who served with Vyhovsky on a salary, out of revenge for Gonsevsky, just before, in peacetime, captured by Khovansky in Vilna, begged him; in vain the khan tried to convince the hetman: Vyhovsky pretended to have raised his arms only to expel the Muscovite army from Ukraine, causing disaster to the people and ruining the land, and did not at all intend to wage war with the tsar and the Great Russian people. “Probably,” the Polish historian notes, “he was afraid that the Cossacks would not fall away from him if he left Ukraine.”

Vyhovsky retreated to Gadyach and sent the large banner, drums and cannons taken from the Muscovites to John Casimir; Little Russian prisoners, according to the tsar's decree, were ordered to leave the governors with those military Great Russian people who would take them prisoner. Only those who were captured in Borzna by 30 people. with their families, they gave out sixty-six Moscow military men for exchange, at the suggestion of the centurion Peter Zabela, whose wife was among the captured Borznians. Vyhovsky for three weeks could not take Gadyach, who was defended by the brave Colonel Pavel Okhramenko. Khan with a horde retired to the Crimea, but several Tatar corrals scattered over Moscow land. The eager Cossacks set off at once with them. Since the population in the border lands of Moscow was Little Russian, the governors were afraid that it would not rebel at the call of their compatriots; Although the settlers found shelter on the free Ukrainian steppes of the Muscovite state, they did not like Muscovites. In these forms, Prince Trubetskoy sent messengers to Vygovsky with a letter in which he proposed to arrange a world peace and, for this purpose, having stopped the war, send people for negotiations. Trubetskoy announced that the Moscow army came to Konotop not at all for military operations, but for conversation and pacification of house bloodshed. The hetman replied that he was glad to reconcile and offered to send commissioners of three or four people from both sides to Baturyn.

“And what do you write that you didn’t bring a war to Konotop,” wrote Vyhovsky, “but for conversation and pacification of house civil strife, then what is your truth? Who saw that with such great forces and with such a great people, who dared to come into conversation? It is better for God, who knows the hearts of people, to bring guilt and find out that you have come to eradicate ours with great hosts. But since God does not help the untruthful, it is better not to have such intentions any more!” - Saying goodbye to the messengers, whom, although he invited to dine, he kept in custody, Vygovsky said: "Khan went with the horde to Moscow cities and will reach Moscow."

Vyhovsky retreated from Gadyach to Chigirin and planned to expel Sheremetev from Kyiv, but meanwhile continued to communicate with Trubetskoy. The latter, having received his letter from under Gadyach, sent to him and offered to send an embassy to the king. Vygovsky, apparently not refusing to reconcile, tried by all means to arm the people against the Muscovites. His ally Khan sent a letter to the Little Russians admonishing them to retreat from the Muscovites, promised his help, patronage and intercession before Vygovsky, whom he called his brother; Khan's vizier Shefergazi also wrote and advised to obey the Crimean ruler. Such writings, addressed to the Poltava regiment, were intercepted and delivered to Moscow by Bespaly, along with an appeal from the military foreman, written to Kirik Pushkarenok and all the Cossacks of his regiment. It must be, however, that such exhortations reached Kirik and had their effect. At least after that, Kirik was deprived of his colonel's rank and put into custody by the Cossacks, and Fyodor Zhuchenko was chosen instead as colonel. On the one hand, the successes of Vygovsky gave hope for the triumph of his party, on the other hand, the willfulness of the Moscow military people aroused irritation among the people against the Muscovites. But the decisive and cruel Sheremetev brought fear to the outskirts of Kyiv. By his order, his comrades, Prince Yuri Baryatinsky and Chaadaev, burned and destroyed to the ground the towns of Gogolev, Voronkov, Tripoli, Staiki, Makarov, Ermine-field and many other towns, villages and farms; all inhabitants without distinction were put to death; the Little Russians saw that the Muscovite was strong and fearsome, and began to lean towards obedience.

29.6.1659 (12.7). - The battle of Konotop between the defeated Moscow-Zaporozhye army and the Hetman-Polish-Tatar army of Vyhovsky.

Memorial sign in honor of the "defeat of Russian troops from the peoples of Western Europe" in the battle of Konotop during the Russian-Polish war of 1654-1667.

The battle of Konotop took place between the Little Russian Hetman's army of Vygovsky (in alliance with the Crimean Tatars and Poles, with a large detachment of foreign mercenaries) and the Moscow army of Prince A.N. Trubetskoy (in alliance with the Zaporozhye Cossacks). The Moscow side in this battle was defeated and retreated. In "independent" Ukraine, this event is glorified as a grandiose "victory over the Muscovite colonialists in the struggle of Ukraine for independence": this "event, constantly surrounded by an atmosphere of grateful memory of descendants", "the largest military defeat in Europe", "30 thousand Moscow corpses were covered with Konotop fields,” write “historians” Mykola Arkas and Dmytro Doroshenko. “Near Konotop, the tsarist army suffered one of the most terrible defeats in its history” (Ukro-Canadian “historian” Orest Subtelny). What was really there?

As a result of the war of liberation against the Poles, under the leadership of Little Russia, as a result of a petition for a decision in 1654, it returned to Russia. However, after the death of Khmelnytsky, Ivan Vyhovsky became the new hetman, who feared that Moscow would abolish privileges for the Cossack elite and sympathized with Poland with its gentry liberties. At the same time, it must be emphasized that Vyhovsky was never the hetman of all of Little Russia, a significant part of the Left Bank did not recognize him precisely because he wanted to return Ukraine under Polish rule.

At the beginning of the Khmelnytsky uprising, Vyhovsky served in the Polish troops fighting against the Cossacks, in 1648 he was taken prisoner by the Cossacks, but not only managed to survive, but ingratiated himself with Khmelnitsky himself and by the time of the death of the hetman was already the General Pisar. Cunning and crafty, even during the life of Khmelnitsky, he took the path of double-dealing, playing simultaneously on two sides: on Moscow and on Warsaw. Even the Ukrainian nationalist historian Hrushevsky writes about this double-dealing, slyly calling it "subtle diplomacy." The fact that Vyhovsky received money for confidential messages on the same issue from both Russians and Poles is confirmed by documents from both Moscow and Warsaw archives. It was also established that Vygovsky received letters of commendation for large estates inhabited by peasants, both from the Russian Tsar and from the Polish king. Having become a hetman and having sworn allegiance to the Russian Tsar, Vyhovsky begins to gradually surround himself with detachments of mercenaries from among the Germans and Poles. He needed these mercenary forces to keep the incredulous mass of Cossacks in subjection.

His preparations did not go unnoticed by the Cossack officers. Colonel Martyn Pushkar from Poltava and Barabash from Zaporizhia koshevoi repeatedly reported Vyhovsky's suspicious actions and intentions to Moscow, but Moscow took no action and still believed in Vyhovsky's loyalty. Nevertheless, Ukrainian historians accuse the leaders of the outbreak of the uprising against Vyhovsky - Poltava colonel Martyn Pushkar and Kosh ataman of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks Yakov Barabash - of having started the uprising allegedly due to Moscow's instigation.

Vygovsky, already having a firm promise of support from Poland and the Tatars, moved to Poltava in the early summer of 1658. With the help of hired German troops and Tatars, he managed to defeat Pushkar and the Cossacks who came to his aid and brutally crack down on his political opponents. As a reward for his help, Vygovsky gave the Tatars permission to rob and take the population of a number of cities and towns into captivity. The chronicler writes about this: “I gave Gadyach, Mirgorod, Obukhov, Veprik, Sorochintsy, Lutenki, Kovalevka, Burka, Bochka for plunder and captivity ...”. So the "patriot of Ukraine" paid off his foreign allies with the freedom of his own tribesmen, who were taken captive by the Tatars about 50 thousand people.

Feeling the strength in himself, Vyhovsky set about his most cherished dream - such was the signing of the Gadyach Treaty with the Poles (09/06/1658) on the entry of the Hetmanate into the Commonwealth under the name "Grand Duchy of Russia" as the third member of the bilateral union of Poland and Lithuania.

However, even after that, Vyhovsky did not dare to openly declare this agreement, because he knew that the Cossacks would be outraged. Even before the signing of the Gadyach Treaty, Vygovsky's brother Danilo tried to drive the Russian garrison of Sheremetev out of Kyiv, but suffered a crushing defeat. Vyhovsky himself hastened to help, but was taken prisoner by Sheremetev. The hetman swore allegiance to Russia for the second time, pledging not to fight again with the tsarist troops, to disband his army and send the Tatars to the Crimea. Sheremetev believed the oath and released Vygovsky in peace. Independent historians cannot find a single line about this episode, despite the fact that Sheremetyev's reports are in the public domain of the Central State Archive of Ancient Acts.

Soon after the failure near Kyiv, Vyhovsky launched an offensive against the troops of Prince Romodanovsky, who were stationed on the border, but was driven back. Retreating, Vygovsky ravaged cities and villages. And only after that in Moscow, finally, they realized the betrayal of Vyhovsky. He was declared a traitor, and in November 1658, near Varva, the Cossacks, who remained loyal to Russia, elected Ivan Bespaly as the appointed (temporary) hetman instead of Vyhovsky.

A Moscow army was sent to Little Russia under the command of the voivode Prince Trubetskoy (who later became the godfather). Moscow's allies were the Cossacks-Cossacks. Hetman Vyhovsky's army advanced to meet them, along with the Poles and Crimean Tatars.

The battle took place near the town of Konotop, near the village of Sosnovka. Vygovsky had 25 thousand troops, the Crimean Khan Mehmed IV Giray, who was allied with him, had 30 thousand, the Polish detachment of A. Potocki had 3800 troops. The forces of the Moscow army were half as small: the cavalry of the princes S. R. Pozharsky and S. P. Lvov numbered about 30 thousand soldiers, and the suburban Cossacks of the hetman Ivan Bespaly - 2 thousand. The outcome of the battle was determined by the Tatars, who struck from the ambush to the rear and defeated the seven thousandth detachment of noble cavalry under the command of Trubetskoy.

According to the reconstruction of events made by the Russian military historian V. Kargalov, Governor Trubetskoy ordered to retreat in encampments in the ring of carts, which, having closed, formed a kind of mobile fortress. Foot soldiers, under the cover of a convoy, repulsed the attacks of the cavalry with rifle and cannon fire. Detachments of the noble cavalry counterattacked from the openings between the carts. In perfect order, Trubetskoy's army crossed to the right side of the Seim and then withdrew to the fortress in Putivl.

According to the Cossack "Chronicle of the Seeker" of the 17th century, the losses of the Russians in the battle and during the retreat amounted to 20 to 30 thousand people, however, these figures can hardly be considered reliable - such was the number Total Troubetzkoy's troops. According to Russian archival data, “In total, in Konotop in a big battle and on the withdrawal: the regiment of the boyar and voivode Prince Alexei Nikitich Trubetskoy with comrades of the Moscow rank, city nobles and boyar children, and newly baptized Murzas and Tatars, and Cossacks, and the Reitar system of the initial people and reytar, dragoons, soldiers and archers were beaten and 4761 people were caught in full ”(Novoselsky A.A. The struggle of the Moscow state with the Tatars in the second half of the 17th century).

Immediately after the Battle of Konotop, the Tatars ceased to reckon with Vygovsky and continued to rob the cities of Little Russia. Thus, the battle of Konotop not only did not strengthen the authority of Vyhovsky, but strengthened opposition sentiments and caused new uprisings of the Cossacks against him. Immediately after the battle, the Zaporizhian ataman Ivan Sirko attacked the Nogai uluses, which forced the Crimean Khan with the main forces to leave for the Crimea and leave Vygovsky. Poltava, pacified by Vyhovsky the previous year, joined the rebellious cities of Romny, Gadyach, and Lokhvitsa. Vyhovsky was opposed by two influential clerics - Maxim Filimonovich, an archpriest from Nizhyn, and Semyon Adamovich, an archpriest from Ichny. By September 1659, that is, two months after the successful battle for Vygovsky, the oath to the Russian Tsar was taken by Colonel Ivan Yekimovich of Kyiv, Timothy Tsetsyura of Pereyaslavl, Anikey Silin of Chernigov with Cossack regiments and the population of these cities. After a short time, the surviving army of Trubetskoy (allegedly destroyed near Konotop two months earlier) solemnly entered Nizhyn, where the tradesmen and Cossacks of the regiment under the command of Vasily Zolotarenko swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar.

The leadership of these regiments and the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks under the command of Ivan Sirko nominated a new hetman - Yuri Khmelnitsky. At the Cossack Rada in the town of Garmanovtsy in the Kiev region, they confirmed their decision and hacked to death Sulima and Vereshchaka, the ambassadors of Vyhovsky, who signed the Gadyach agreement with the Poles, which caused the war, and Vyhovsky himself fled from this Rada. In October 1659, the Cossack Rada in Bila Tserkva finally approved Yury Khmelnytsky as the new hetman. Vyhovsky was immediately forced to abdicate and handed over the hetman's kleynods to the new hetman. Vygovsky, leaving his own family in Chigirin, had to flee to Poland, where after some time the Poles accused him of treason and executed him.

So, summing up all of the above, the temporary tactical victory of Vyhovsky, which was given to him exclusively with the help of the Tatars and mercenaries, could not destroy the Russian-Cossack army (although it significantly battered him) and turned into a strategic defeat for the hetman-traitor - after the announcement of the Gadyach Treaty from him those last Cossacks who were faithful to him turned away. And the symbolic outcome of the Second Pereyaslav Rada on October 17, 1659 once again showed under whose authority the people of Little Russia wished to be.

Today, independent pseudo-patriots carefully hush up the fact that the Little Russian people were categorically against Vyhovsky. When on August 24 (an interesting date), 1658, the Russian garrison of Vasily Sheremetev near Kyiv dispersed Vygovsky’s troops, who were trying to drive the Russians out of the city, the captured Cossacks admitted to Sheremetev that they “came near Kyiv through great captivity; the foremen deported them, beating them, and cut others down. Without mercenaries, Vyhovsky would not have ruled for a single day. The Polish ambassador Benevsky wrote about the hetman that he, "enlisting the help of the Tatar army ... conceived by some tyrannical methods to force the Cossacks to submit, otherwise he would not have been able to resist."

When Vygovsky threatened Martyn Pushkar, who had rebelled against him, with an unblessing of the Kyiv Metropolitan, Pushkar replied: “Your pastoral unblessing should fall on the heads of traitors who accept unfaithful tsars, and we recognize only the Orthodox Tsar as our sovereign.” Benevsky reported on the mood of the Zaporozhye Cossacks: “The Cossacks ... want to serve the tsar; the ambassadors whom Vyhovsky sent to the khan were intercepted and drowned, and their ambassadors with letters from Vygovsky to the khan were sent to Moscow, warning the tsar's Moscow that Vyhovsky was cheating on the tsar.

At that time, neither "Ukrainian" nationality, nor such state affiliation existed at all. asked the Tsar to take under his protection “the Orthodox Christian people from this Little Russia,” for the enemies want “so that the Russian name is not remembered in our land.” (Acts of Southern and Western Russia, vol. XIII). After the Russian changed his title to "All Great and Small and White Russia". In the Kiev Synopsis (1674), the abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, Innokenty Gizel, expressed the understanding of the Russian people as a triune one consisting of Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians, and the legitimacy of the Moscow authorities of the unified Russian state in all its three parts - Great, Little and White Russia - as the only legal one, since the Moscow princes, and then the Tsars, descend from who "was the prince of Kyiv from the Russian land, Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky." The Ukrainian historian Mikhail Maksimovich in his work of 1868 refuted the manipulation of Polish historiography: the alleged introduction of the name "Little Russia" by the Russian authorities after 1654. Ukrainian historians, Dmitry Bagalei, Vladimir Antonovich wrote that during the struggle of the Russian state and the Commonwealth, the concept of "Little Russia" or "Little Russia," Southern Russia "was an ethnonym for the "Little Russian / South Russian" people, and the word "Ukraine" was used only as a geographical toponym denoting the outlying lands of both states.

The Russian people of Little Russia (the original core of the Russian state with Kyiv - the mother of Russian cities), torn away by the Poles from Great Russia (expanded), waged a long struggle for reunification with the Russian kingdom, which had to wage wars with the Poles, and they were often overshadowed by the betrayals of the hetmans. The battle of Konotop was actually an ordinary episode of such treachery in one of the many Russian-Polish wars. Russia then won this war against the Poles together with the Little Russian Cossacks, securing for itself not only the Left-Bank Ukraine, but also recapturing many lands lost during the Time of Troubles.

However, this is not so for the modern state of "Ukraine", where traitors are proclaimed "heroes of Ukraine." In 2009, the then "orange" president of "Ukraine" V. Yushchenko signed a decree "On the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the victory of the army led by Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky in the Battle of Konotop." The decree, according to the press service of the president, "is aimed at supporting the public initiative on the occasion of the celebration in 2009 of the 350th anniversary of this battle and will contribute to the restoration of historical truth and national memory, the dissemination of complete and objective information about the events of the mid-17th century in Ukraine" . In memory of Vygovsky and other prominent military leaders and participants in the fighting in the Battle of Konotop, in order to popularize their political and military activities, the President instructed to organize a wide program of events and open a memorial complex of the "Russian-Ukrainian" Battle of Konotop. In honor of this victory, streets, avenues, squares in the settlements of Ukraine were named after Vyhovsky and other military leaders, honorary names were given to military units and educational institutions. A commemorative coin was minted and put into circulation in honor of the 350th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Konotop, a postage stamp and an envelope were issued, and a special cancellation of the postage stamp was carried out. After 2014, the Battle of Konotop is already interpreted as a great battle in which the Ukrainian and other peoples of Western Europe defended themselves from the aggression of the entire army of the Muscovite kingdom.

Petr Ivanov
The "stubbornness" in the lies of the "historians" of Ukraine is striking.
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Doesn't it surprise you that this obstinacy in lies gives very significant results, and now the majority of the population of the so-called "Ukraine" stupidly believes everything they are told on TV?
What amazes me more is that Russian television and the media devote a lot of time to the political and economic problems of "Ukraine", but grew up. The media does not have time to expose those falsifications of history and "language" on which the whole flimsy building of Ukrainian statehood and national identity stands.
But as soon as these fakes are debunked and exposed, "Ukraine" itself will immediately collapse and the most dangerous enemy for Russia will disappear. But they don't destroy it, why?

Thanks to the dear reader - Vladimir, Kharkiv 2017-07-24!
But the "stubbornness" in the lies of the "politicians" of France is also striking; Until now, Napoleon is OFFICIALLY considered the national hero of France with many monuments, and despite the fact that Europe lost at least 5,000,000 inhabitants, Russia and Spain were considered the incarnation of the Antichrist.

There are suggestions that the latest world developments in consciousness are widely used in the media in Ukraine.
It seems that this also takes place in Russia, but not at such a TOTAL level as in Ukraine.
And in the West it is MANDATORY to have such ...

1654 - All Ukraine raises a prayer of thanksgiving - the Kingdom of Russia came to the aid of the Cossacks in their struggle against the Commonwealth and the Polish pans, against those who brought the entire Ukrainian people to extreme poverty, who oppressed the Orthodox faith and planted the Polish language in Ukraine with all their might , those who tried to break and destroy the very essence and civilizational core of our people.

1657 - a man who, without exaggeration, saved Ukraine from Polish oppression and its people from losing their roots and losing their ancestors, language and culture, a man who prevented the death and assimilation of our ancestors, Hetman Bogdan-Zinovy ​​Mikhailovich Khmelnitsky, dies. Against the will of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ivan Vyhovsky, the head of the General Chancellery, known for his pro-Polish orientation, becomes hetman. Terror by the hands of foreign mercenaries becomes the basis of his power.

1658 - Ivan Vygovsky, having changed his oath and precepts of the Pereyaslav Rada, signs the Gadyach Treaty with the Poles, according to which the Hetmanate, called the Grand Duchy of Russia, enters the Commonwealth as an integral part, endowed with internal autonomy. The property taken by the Cossacks is returned to the Polish gentry and the Catholic Church. The Poles expelled during the Cossack revolt are allowed to return.

However, this time an uprising broke out against Vyhovsky himself. The people did not want the return of Polish national and religious oppression in Little Russia, even in a softened form. The Commonwealth, in turn, did not intend to observe the internal autonomy of the Grand Duchy of Russia: the Polish Sejm ratified the Gadyach Treaty only in a unilaterally truncated form. The opposition against Vyhovsky was led by Colonel Martyn Pushkar from Poltava and ataman Yakov Barabash. In order to impose his power on the Cossacks, Vyhovsky swore allegiance to both the Polish king and the Crimean Khan Mehmed IV Giray, in the hope of military assistance. After the suppression of the uprising, Vyhovsky began repressions against the foreman. In June 1658, by order of the hetman, the Pereyaslav colonel Ivan Sulima was killed, a few months later the new Pereyaslav colonel Kolyubats lost his head, the Korsun colonel Timofei Onikienko was shot, 12 centurions of different regiments were executed along with the colonels. Fleeing from the hetman, the Uman colonel Ivan Bespaly, the Pavolotsk colonel Mikhail Sulichich and the general captain Ivan Kovalevsky fled. Yakim Samko fled to the Don.

Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, not wanting war, began negotiations with Vygovsky on a peaceful resolution of the conflict, which did not bring results. On March 26, 1659, Prince Alexei Trubetskoy moved against Vygovsky. Having orders to first persuade Vyhovsky to peace, and not to fight, Trubetskoy spent about 40 days in negotiations with Vyhovsky's ambassadors. After the final failure of the negotiations, Trubetskoy decided to start hostilities. On April 20, Prince Trubetskoy approached Konotop and laid siege to it. On April 21, the regiments of Prince Fyodor Kurakin, Prince Romodanovsky and Hetman Bespaly approached Konotop. The regiments stood up in three separate camps: Trubetskoy's regiment stood near the village of Podlipnoe, Kurakin's regiment "on the other side of the city", Romodanovsky's regiment west of Konotop. The total force was about 28 thousand people, including almost 7 thousand Cossacks. On April 29, not wanting to waste time on a siege, the prince ordered the city to be stormed. The attack ended in vain, 252 people died, about 2 thousand were injured. Trubetskoy again switched to siege tactics, which, however, was complicated by the lack of large-caliber artillery. By the beginning of June 1659, the situation of the besieged became critical, the townspeople demanded to surrender the city. The situation changed when the Crimean army and the main forces of Vygovsky approached Konotop - 35 thousand Tatars of Mehmed Giray, about 16 thousand Cossacks and about 3 thousand mercenaries.

Actions of the detachment of Prince Pozharsky

On June 28, 1659, the Crimean Tatars attacked the small cavalry guard detachments guarding the camp of Trubetskoy's Russian army, which was besieging Konotop, after which they fled across the Kukolka (Sosnovka) river. Prince Trubetskoy with military men “went out of the carts, and from the carts the comrades of the boyar and voivode Prince Alexei Nikitich Trubetskoy and the stolnik Prince Fyodor Kurakin, the roundabouts with the sovereign’s military men of their regiments went against those traitors Cherkasy and Tatars to the village of Sosnovka to the crossing. The main forces of the Russian army remained near Konotop. An equestrian detachment was sent to Sosnovka under the command of princes Semyon Pozharsky and Semyon Lvov (about 4 thousand people), as well as the Cossacks-Cossacks-Cossacks of Hetman Ivan Bespaly, loyal to the Russian Tsar, with colonels Grigory Ivanov and Mikhail Kozlovsky "with the Zaporizhian Army with two thousand people." Pozharsky attacked the Tatars Nureddin Sultan Adil Giray (the second heir to the throne) and the mercenaries, defeated them and drove them in a southeast direction. Pozharsky and Lvov, pursuing the fleeing Tatars and German dragoons, were moving towards the village and the tract of Pustaya Torgovitsa, when the Khan's army of many thousands came out of the forest, finding itself in the rear of the Russian detachment. Pozharsky's detachment was ambushed. The Russian detachment was opposed by a 40,000-strong army, which included Crimean Tatars under the command of Khan Mehmed IV Giray and mercenaries. Pozharsky tried to deploy the detachment in the direction of the main attack of the Khan's troops, but did not have time. Having a significant superiority in manpower, the Tatars managed to surround the Pozharsky detachment and defeat it in close combat. Prince Semyon Pozharsky himself, fighting the enemies to the last opportunity, "many ... slaughtering and extending his courage," was captured. The stubborn nature of the battle is evidenced by the descriptions of the wounds of those who managed to escape from the encirclement and reach Trubetskoy's camp. Hetman Vyhovsky did not participate in this battle. Cossack regiments and Polish banners approached the crossing a few hours after the battle, at the second stage of the battle, when Pozharsky's detachment was already surrounded.

Actions of the detachment of Prince Romodanovsky

Having received information about the collision of the Pozharsky detachment with large enemy forces, Trubetskoy sent cavalry units from the voivodship regiment of Prince Grigory Romodanovsky to help: about 3,000 horsemen from nobles and boyar children, reiters and dragoons of the Belgorod regiment. Towards, to the crossing came the troops of Vygovsky. Having learned from those who escaped from the encirclement that Pozharsky's detachment had already been destroyed, Romodanovsky decided to organize defense on the Kukolka River. In reinforcements to Romodanovsky, the reserve Reiter regiment of Colonel Venedikt Zmeev (1200 people) and 500 nobles and boyar children from the voivodship regiment of Andrey Buturlin were sent. Having a three-fold numerical superiority at the Kukolka crossing, Vyhovsky could not succeed. Romodanovsky, dismounting his cavalry, fortified himself on the right bank of the river near the village of Shapovalovka. The battle continued until late in the evening, all the attacks of the Vygovites were repulsed. In view of the low morale of the Cossacks, many of whom were recruited by force under the threat of giving their families into slavery to the Tatars, Vyhovsky had to rely on the Polish-Lithuanian banners. By evening, the dragoons of the Crown Colonel Jozsef Lonchinsky and the mercenaries of Vyhovsky (Lithuanian captain Jan Kosakovsky) managed to take the crossing with a fight. Sources do not report success in the battle for the crossing of the Cossacks. Vygovsky himself admitted that it was "the dragoons" who knocked out the Russian units from the crossing. However, the decisive factors in the defeat of Romodanovsky were the enemy’s exit to the rear of the defenders and the detour maneuver of the Crimean Khan from the side of the Merchant across the Kukolka (Sosnovka) River, a ford across the river and the swamp was shown to them by a defector. Romodanovsky had to retreat to the convoy of the army of Prince Trubetskoy. The retreat of Prince Romodanovsky ended the first day of the battle.

On June 29, the troops of Vygovsky and the Crimean Khan advanced to the camp of Prince Trubetskoy near the village of Podlipnoye and "taught to shoot cannons along the convoy and into the convoy, and led the trenches to the convoy," trying to take the camp under siege. By this time, Prince Trubetskoy had already managed to complete the unification of the camps of his army. An artillery duel ensued. On the night of June 30, Vygovsky decided to storm. The attack ended in failure, and as a result of a counterattack by the Russian army, Vygovsky's troops were driven out of their trenches. During the night battle, Vyhovsky himself was wounded. A little more and Trubetskoy’s army “would have captured (our) camp, because they had already broken into it,” the hetman himself recalled. The troops of the hetman and the khan were driven back 5 miles and stood behind the village of Sosnovka, rolling back to the positions occupied before the assault on the Sosnovskaya (across the river Kukolka-Sosnovka) crossing. This was followed by a two-day lull.

Despite the success of the night counterattack of Trubetskoy's army, the strategic situation in the Konotop region changed. Further besieging Konotop, having a numerous enemy in the rear, became meaningless. On July 2, Trubetskoy lifted the siege from the city and the army, under the cover of a moving convoy (Wagenburg, walk-city), began to retreat to the Semi River. A mile from Konotop, Vygovsky and the Khan tried to attack Trubetskoy's army. This attempt again ended in failure. According to the prisoners, the losses of Vygovsky and the khan amounted to about 6,000 people. In this battle, Vyhovsky's mercenaries also suffered heavy losses. The losses of the Russian side were minimal. On July 4, it became known that the governor of Putivl, Prince Grigory Dolgorukov, came to the aid of the army of Prince Trubetskoy. But Trubetskoy ordered Dolgorukov to return to Putivl, saying that he had enough strength to defend against the enemy. On the same day, Russian troops stood on the river Semi and began crossing. From 4 to 10 July, the crossing continued. From July 4 to July 6, the troops of Khan and Vyhovsky tried to attack Trubetskoy's army and fired artillery. They managed to smash several wagons with artillery, but failed to cause great damage to the prince's army. On July 10, having completed the crossing, Prince Trubetskoy arrived in Putivl.

According to Russian archival data from the Discharge Order, “Total in Konotop at a big battle and on the withdrawal: the regiment of the boyar and governor of Prince Alexei Nikitich Trubetskoy with comrades of the Moscow rank, city nobles and boyar children, and newly baptized, Murzas and Tatars, and Cossacks, and Reitarsky 4769 people were beaten and captured in the line of initial people and reiters, dragoons, soldiers and archers. The main losses fell on the detachment of Prince Pozharsky. The Reiter regiment of Anz Georg von Strobel (Fanstrobel) was almost completely killed, the losses of which amounted to 1070 people, including a colonel, lieutenant colonel, major, 8 captains, 1 captain, 12 lieutenants and ensigns. The Zaporozhian army, according to the report of Hetman I. Bespaly, lost about 2,000 Cossacks. The cavalry accounted for the main losses of the army, the infantry for the entire time of the fighting lost only 89 people killed and captured. The total losses of the army of Prince Trubetskoy during the retreat to Putivl amounted to about 100 people. The losses of Vyhovsky amounted to about 4 thousand people, the Crimean Tatars lost 3-6 thousand people.

Is it possible to consider the outcome of the battle as the defeat of the Russian troops by Vyhovsky's army? Definitely not, even a defeat is difficult to call. Acting in conditions of almost twofold superiority of the enemy forces, Trubetskoy, after the defeat of the Pozharsky detachment, was able to seize the initiative in the battle, achieved a number of important successes and ensured a successful retreat - we emphasize, not a flight, but a RETREAT - in the face of superior enemy forces, managing to save not only those entrusted to him the lives of soldiers, but also almost the entire convoy. So from a military point of view, the actions of Prince Trubetskoy, if not irreproachable, then very close to it.

After the clash at Konotop, the political authority of Hetman Vyhovsky, the legitimacy of whose election to the hetman post after the death of Bohdan Khmelnitsky was initially questioned, fell even more. Disappointed with the hetman, Vyhovsky's associates decided to overthrow their leader. Actually, the battle near Konotop was an attempt by military measures to strengthen the political and personal power of Vyhovsky, which the Cossacks refused to recognize. The result was just the opposite. Immediately after Trubetskoy's retreat to Putivl, peasant and urban uprisings broke out in the Hetmanate, fueled by the actions of Crimean Tatars allied with Vygovsky, who plundered peasant and Cossack settlements and took women and children into slavery. Vygovsky was also opposed by his recent colleague Ivan Bohun, who raised an uprising in the Right-Bank Ukraine. Zaporizhzhya ataman Ivan Serko attacked the Nogai uluses, following the instructions of Prince Trubetskoy and Hetman Bespaly. This forced the Crimean Khan to leave Vygovsky and leave with an army for the Crimea. After this campaign, Ivan Serko with the Zaporizhzhya army moved against Vyhovsky and defeated Colonel Timosh sent to meet him by Vyhovsky with the army. Soon, the cities of Romny, Gadyach, and Lokhvitsa that had rebelled against Vyhovsky were joined by Poltava, pacified by Vyhovsky in the previous year. Some clerics opposed Vyhovsky: Maxim Filimonovich, an archpriest from Nizhyn, and Semyon Adamovich, an archpriest from Ichny. By September 1659, the former allies of Vygovsky in the Battle of Konotop took the oath of allegiance to the "White Tsar": Colonel Ivan Yekimovich of Kyiv, Colonel Ivan Yekimovich of Pereyaslavl, Timothy Tsetsyura of Chernigov, Anikey Silich of Chernigov. Colonel Timofey Tsetsyura, who fought on the side of Vygovsky near Konotop, told Sheremetev that the colonels and Cossacks fought with Russian military people “out of great captivity, fearing the traitor Ivashka Vyhovsky, that he ordered many colonels who did not want to listen, ordered to be whipped, and others shot and hung, and sent many Cossacks with their wives and children to the Crimea as Tatars.

On October 17, 1659, the Cossack Rada in Bila Tserkva finally approved Yury Khmelnytsky as the new hetman of the Cossacks. Vyhovsky was forced to abdicate and officially transfer the hetman's kleinods to Khmelnytsky. At the Rada, the entire Zaporizhzhya Army "became under its Great Sovereign by the autocratic hand in eternal allegiance as before." Vygovsky fled to Poland, where he was later executed on charges of treason - a natural end for a traitor.