Bogdan Khmelnitski

See also: Bogdan

Bogdan Khmelnitski (1596? - August 6th, 1657) was hetman Cossacks of Ukraine during the rising which it organized in 1648 against the Polish nobility.

Itself of noble origin, probably born in central Ukraine in Chyhyryn, his/her father was useful under the hetman Polish Stanisław Żółkiewski. Having studied at the Jesuits with Lviv and undoubtedly with Cracow, it took share with the Bataille of Cecora in 1620 against the army of the sultan during whom his father dies. Itself was done prisoner and he learned the Turkish and the Tatar during his captivity. In 1637 he becomes military secretary of the recorded Cossacks, then commander of a centurie cossack. He had already begun a life of noble ordinary when a violent one personal conflict opposed it with a staroste associates local which ended in the death of his/her ten year old son.

Bogdan Khmelnitski decided to be avenged and took refuge at the Cosaques Zaporogues of which it became hetman in 1648. With the assistance of the Tatar S of the Crimea and in incentive the Ukrainian peasants with the revolt who hoped thus to avoid serfdom that reserved noble Polish to them. The Ukraine had already known several revolts, but this time the stake was the constitution of an independent country. The success of Bogdan Khmelnitski was enormous: it raised all the Ukraine indeed, gathered an army more 80 000 men, beat the Polish armies on several occasions and made waver powerful Polish République of the time, already declining however.

Many bloody battles and loopholes opposed it to the Polish chiefs, inter alia the duke Jeremi Wisniowiecki, voïvode of Ukraine. Many a Pogrom S shook the Ukraine during these years. Revolted were beaten on several occasions in 1651, but resistance cossack was not definitively subdued. Bogdan Khmelnitski turned then to the tsar of Moscovie, convainquit the Cossacks not without evil to put itself under its protection. The Traité of Pereïaslav of 1654 ratified this proposal which gave to the tsar Eastern bank Dniepr that the Cossacks still controlled (Hetmanat cossack). The revolt cossack was transformed then into Russo-Polish war which finished only in 1667, with the signature of the Traité of Andrusovo.

Bogdan Khmelnitski will become after its death a true legend, symbol of Cosaque resistance and Ukrainian hero.

Literature

He will be the hero of several works of fiction whose trilogy of Henryk Sienkiewicz entitled By iron and fire is most famous.

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