MAZEPPA.
And now the Tsar of Russia, well satisfied with the success of his
arms, was for making peace with the King of Sweden. He had made himself
master of Ingria and Livonia, but was ready, if necessary, to restore
the latter province if he might be allowed to retain the Neva with its
two forts of Schlüsselburg and Slotburg.
But Charles XII. would not hear of peace. He would have the Neva forts,
he declared, if it should cost him his last soldier to regain them.
Then Peter sent ambassadors to the court of St. James in London, to
petition for the mediation of Queen Anne. But the ambassadors found
the British statesmen, as they declared, too diplomatic and tricky for
them, and could get no decided answer. Then the Duke of Marlborough
was approached, and handsome bids were made for his good offices, if
only he would consent to be peacemaker. The Tsar offered to the duke
the title of Prince of Siberia, or of Kief or Vladimir, a large sum of
money in gold, and "the finest ruby in Europe." Marlborough did not at
once refuse to act as mediator, but, though he seriously considered the
proposition, nothing came of Peter's offer, and the matter dropped.
Then the Tsar regretfully realized that there was to be no peace, but
that he must make himself ready for war.
The year 1705 began with a victory for Sweden at Gemanerthof, near
Mitau; but Peter, hastening up to the front with fresh troops, stormed
Mitau and made the honours equal. Neither was there much advantage to
either side in 1706, though the Russians were lucky in retiring from
the fortress of Grodno, hard pressed by the Swedes, without serious
misfortune. Charles himself had awaited the moment when the Russian
troops must retire in order to follow them and cut them to pieces,
which he probably would have succeeded in doing, but he was delayed
for a week by the breaking up of the ice on the River Niemen, and this
delay saved the Russians from destruction.
The following year was without military movement on either side, but
was spent chiefly in diplomacy--Peter striving for peace, Charles
insisting upon war; and when the year went out, it left the latter
young monarch occupied in making preparations for the invasion of
Russia, and the Tsar equally busy in putting his forces into order for
the defence of the fatherland.
Meanwhile Boris, after his terrible experiences in Narva, had been but
little engaged in the few military movements of the following year
or two, and had spent most of his time at home in Moscow, or rather
at Karapselka, with Nancy and the children. His little wolf-maiden
was now seven years old, and there was very little of the wolf about
her seemingly; for she was as pretty a child as could be found in all
Russia. Nevertheless she was strangely and passionately devoted to the
woods, and was never so happy as when allowed to accompany her father
and mother upon their drives into the forest. In the summer time she
would spend the entire day there, wandering about among the pines, or
lying couched in a heathery bed at their roots. She was never in the
least afraid of wild animals, and loved nothing better than to hear
repeated the oft-told tale of her own sojourn among the wolves as a
helpless baby. If the truth had been known, she longed in her heart to
see a big wolf, and she would undoubtedly have offered to play with it
then and there had one appeared, without an atom of fear.
Her little brother Boris, aged six, was a fitting companion to this
forest-loving maiden. The boy was the bear-hunter in miniature, strong
and hearty, and a stranger to all cravenness.
Nancy and her husband were proud of their children, and were right
glad, moreover, to have spent this quiet year with them at Karapselka;
for the little ones had not seen much of their father during those
troublous war-years. Next year there would be more fighting--any
one with his eye on the signs of the times could see that; indeed,
half Europe was convinced that 1708 would close with the Swedish
king dictating terms of peace from the Kremlin. Why this should have
been the opinion of Europe it is difficult to say, for the balance
of success up to this point had undoubtedly rested with the Russian
arms; but Charles was making great preparations, and was very much in
earnest, and his reputation as a successful soldier was very great,
and, since he would conduct the new campaign in person, those who knew
best made no secret of their conviction that he would carry all before
him. As for Charles XII., he himself was perfectly sure that there
could be but one end to the struggle. He gave out far and wide that
Russia was to be subdued, and that he intended to do it. She was to be
forced to disband her new regular armies, and Peter was to be made to
restore to the country the Streltsi whom he had abolished, and the old
order of things generally. The Neva was to remain, of course, a Swedish
river; and as for Dorpat and Narva, and the rest of the places which
his fools of generals had allowed Peter to become temporarily possessed
of--why, Charles would soon make him disgorge them.
Meanwhile Boris was summoned to the Tsar, who was busy at St.
Petersburg building that city under difficulties. Peter wished to
send him, he said, on a mission to the hetman of the Cossacks of the
Ukraine, to inquire what force the latter could put into the field for
the approaching campaign of defence. The hetman bore a name familiar
to my readers. He was no other than that Mazeppa whom Voltaire and
Byron have made so familiar to readers of poetry as the hero of one of
the most romantic episodes ever sung by bard or told as sober truth by
historian.
I regret to say that the real Mazeppa was very far from being the
romantic hero he is generally supposed to have been. His ride, strapped
to the back of a wild horse and pursued by numbers of wolves, is little
better than a myth, though founded upon a slight substratum of truth,
as will presently be shown.
Born of Cossack parentage, young Mazeppa appears to have served as
page to King John Casimir of Poland about the year 1660, twelve years
before the birth of Boris; but by reason of his quarrelsome disposition
he soon got himself into trouble at court, and retired to his father's
estate in Volhynia. Here again Mazeppa fell into disgrace, this time
with a neighbouring Polish gentleman. This is where Mazeppa's ride
comes in. The Polish neighbour, infuriated at the young Cossack,
caused his attendants to strip Mazeppa of his clothes, and to fasten
him with thongs to the back of his own horse. In this undignified and
uncomfortable position Mazeppa was conveyed to his home, which lay but
a mile away, the horse galloping straight to its own stable with its
naked master tightly secured to it. After so disgraceful an exposure,
Mazeppa disappeared, and he is next heard of as a man of light and
leading among the Cossacks of the Ukraine.
The Ukraine[3] was a sort of no-man's-land, lying between Pole,
Russian, Turk, and Tartar. To this happy retreat fled, in former years,
every kind of freebooter, robber, and bad character who had made his
own home, whether in Russia or Poland or elsewhere, too hot to hold
him. These were the first Cossacks of the Ukraine. As time went on and
the Cossacks became numerous, large portions of the fertile soil of
the country were reclaimed, and a great proportion of the inhabitants
gradually settled down as peaceful agriculturists, tilling their own
land. Those Cossacks nearest to Poland became independent vassals of
the kings of Poland, and were called "registered Cossacks," because
their names were entered in a book as "subjects" of the Polish monarch,
though they insisted throughout on their absolute independence, and
their hetman or chief considered himself the equal of the king, and
brooked no condescension or patronage from him. Towards the middle
of the seventeenth century, however, the Cossacks threw off the
Polish connection and espoused the cause of Russia; the tribe having
decided by their votes whether they should enrol themselves under
the protectorate of Russia, Poland, or Turkey. Thus the Ukraine
became Russian territory, and the Cossacks, though "preserving their
privileges," acknowledged the Tsar as their head.
This was the position of affairs when Mazeppa appeared among the
Cossacks of the Ukraine.
At this particular juncture there were two hetmans, one being at the
head of that larger half of the population which had embraced the
protectorate of Russia; the other, chief of a portion of the Cossacks
who still coquetted with Pole and Turk and Russian, faithful to none of
the three, but always on the look-out for betterment. Mazeppa became
secretary to this latter chief. In this capacity he was, a year or
two later, despatched to Constantinople with letters to the Sultan
containing proposals for the transfer of the allegiance of his wavering
master from Russian to Turk.
But Mazeppa never reached Constantinople. He was arrested, papers and
all, by agents of the Tsar, and carried off to Moscow. Here, by his
diplomatic gifts, Mazeppa not only succeeded in exculpating himself,
but contrived so deeply to impress the reigning Tsar, Alexey, Peter's
father, with a belief in his merits, that both Alexey and afterwards
Peter himself remained his truest friends and benefactors, in spite
of every attempt of his enemies--and there were many--to dethrone the
idol.
Mazeppa now realized that the Russian was the real "strong man," and
that he had espoused the wrong cause. His late employer was arrested
and exiled; but a place was found for Mazeppa with the rival hetman,
Russia's faithful vassal, Samoilovitch, in whose service he so greatly
strengthened his position that in 1687, when Galitsin returned from an
unsuccessful campaign in the Crimea, and in order to shield himself
threw the blame upon Samoilovitch and his Cossacks, who had been
employed to assist him, Mazeppa found means to overthrow his late chief
and to get himself elected in his place as hetman of the Cossacks of
the Ukraine.
One of Mazeppa's first acts was to hasten to Moscow in order to assure
the young Tsar Peter of his loyalty, and, if possible, to make a
personal friend of the monarch. In this he proved so successful that,
once having accepted and pinned his faith to the Cossack chief, Peter
never could be persuaded to doubt his honesty, in spite of every
effort to convince him of Mazeppa's perfidy. For many years there was
a constant stream of correspondence reaching the Tsar from various
sources, warning him of the treacherous disposition of his trusted
hetman. All these letters Peter invariably forwarded to Mazeppa,
with assurances to the effect that his faith in the latter was quite
unshaken. Frequently the Tsar added that the Cossack might consider
himself free to deal with his traducers as he pleased. Mazeppa was
never backward in taking the hint, and many of his enemies were thus
removed out of his way, some with great barbarity.
As for the rights and wrongs of these matters, it is impossible to
judge whether Mazeppa was or was not so bad as he was painted. His
name is execrated to this day in the national songs and ballads of the
Ukraine, where his memory appears to be cordially hated, while the
names of his enemies are crowned with all the tribute of honour and
love that song can offer. An intimate personal acquaintance of Mazeppa
has placed on record his conviction that the famous hetman was always
at heart a Pole and detested Russia, and that all his life he was on
the look-out for a good opportunity of casting off his allegiance, and
transferring it to Pole or Turk or Swede, as soon as any one of these
should have proved himself the stronger man. At the same time, in
justice to Mazeppa, it must be mentioned that he undoubtedly received
more than one invitation from the King of Poland to break with the
Tsar, and that he invariably forwarded such proposals to Moscow for
Peter's perusal. Probably Mazeppa was a time-server, and was faithful
to Russia only so long as Russia appeared to be the rock upon which
his house was built. As will presently appear, he eventually, in his
old age, made the one great mistake of his life, when his political
sagacity, which had befriended him and guided him aright for many a
long year, at last failed him and brought about the ruin which his
treachery undoubtedly deserved.
Mazeppa received Boris with every mark of honour and respect as the
Tsar's emissary. His court at Batourin was that of a king, far more
luxurious and refined than that of Peter himself; and Boris was
surprised to see the gorgeousness and magnificence of this man, whom
he had been accustomed to think of more as a wild Cossack chief than
as a monarch surrounded by every luxury and refinement of western
civilization.
Mazeppa spoke with tears in his eyes of his love and devotion for
Peter, and quite charmed the simple-minded Boris by his eloquent
declaration that he would rather be the bear-hunter himself (of whom
he said he had heard), and be ever about the person of that most
marvellous man, his master, than hetman of the Cossacks of the
Ukraine, honourable and dignified though the position might be.
To Boris's questions as to the forces at his disposal and their loyalty
to the cause of Russia, Mazeppa replied,--
"My dear man, I have fifty thousand lances; and I would rather each one
was buried in my own flesh than turned against the throne of my brother
Peter. Why has he sent you? Does he not know that we are brothers, and
more than brothers, and that all that I have is his?"
Boris was perfectly satisfied. He could not doubt this man, whose voice
shook with feeling as he spoke, and whose eyes were filled with tears
when he told of his devotion to the great Tsar, their beloved master.
Then Mazeppa entertained Boris with much talking, of which he was a
master, and with a review of those fifty thousand lances of which he
had made mention, or as many of them as he could collect at Batourin.
Boris was delighted with their wonderful feats of horsemanship. Whole
squadrons would dash forward at the charge, the wiry little ponies
holding up their heads till their ears touched the Cossacks' bending
figures; then, suddenly, every man would dip down sideways till his
hand swept the ground, and again with one accord the entire body would
recover their original position. Then a company would gallop past,
every man kneeling in his saddle; followed by a second, of which each
Cossack stood upright. Then a body of men would dash by, spring from
their saddles while at the gallop, and spring back again. Then the
entire corps would burst into wild, stirring song, and charge, singing,
at an imaginary foe. It was a fine sight, and gave Boris much sincere
pleasure; and he returned to give his report to the Tsar, convinced
that in Mazeppa and his lances Peter possessed a friendly contingent
which would prove of immense service during the coming Swedish attack.
How Mazeppa acted, and what is the exact value to be attached to
moist-eyed protestations of love and faith from a Cossack of the
Ukraine, will be seen in the following pages.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] _Russian_, "At the borderland."