* Michalonis Litvani, “De moribus Tartarorum Fragmina,” X.,
     Basilliae, 1615.

To protect the agricultural population of the Steppe against the raids of these thieving, cattle-lifting, kidnapping neighbours, the Tsars of Muscovy and the Kings of Poland built forts, constructed palisades, dug trenches, and kept up a regular military cordon.  The troops composing this cordon were called Cossacks; but these were not the “Free Cossacks” best known to history and romance.  These latter lived beyond the frontier on the debatable land which lay between the two hostile races, and there they formed self-governing military communities.  Each one of the rivers flowing southwards—­the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the Yaik or Ural—­was held by a community of these Free Cossacks, and no one, whether Christian or Tartar, was allowed to pass through their territory without their permission.

Officially the Free Cossacks were Russians, for they professed to be champions of Orthodox Christianity, and—­with the exception of those of the Dnieper—­loyal subjects of the Tsar; but in reality they were something different.  Though they were Russian by origin, language, and sympathy, the habit of kidnapping Tartar women introduced among them a certain admixture of Tartar blood.  Though self-constituted champions of Christianity and haters of Islam, they troubled themselves very little with religion, and did not submit to the ecclesiastical authorities.  As to their religious status, it cannot be easily defined.  Whilst professing allegiance and devotion to the Tsar, they did not think it necessary to obey him, except in so far as his orders suited their own convenience.  And the Tsar, it must be confessed, acted towards them in a similar fashion.  When he found it convenient he called them his faithful subjects; and when complaints were made to him about their raids in Turkish territory, he declared that they were not his subjects, but runaways and brigands, and that the Sultan might punish them as he saw fit.  At the same time, the so-called runaways and brigands regularly received supplies and ammunition from Moscow, as is amply proved by recently-published documents.  Down to the middle of the seventeenth century the Cossacks of the Dnieper stood in a similar relation to the Polish kings; but at that time they threw off their allegiance to Poland, and became subjects of the Tsars of Muscovy.

Of these semi-independent military communities, which formed a continuous barrier along the southern and southeastern frontier, the most celebrated were the Zaporovians* of the Dnieper, and the Cossacks of the Don.

     * The name “Zaporovians,” by which they are known in the
     West, is a corruption of the Russian word Zaporozhtsi, which
     means “Those who live beyond the rapids.”