The Cossacks

The word cossack means robber. Their name was given to them by the Turks.

They are a race, in manners, in appearance, and in language, like the Russians, yet they are said not to be akin to them.

There are two tribes of Cossacks,--those of Little Russia, and the Don Cossacks. They are said to be the most unscrupulous robbers in the world. They are famous horsemen, and the Czar of Russia largely executes his imperial commands by means of the Cossack cavalry.

They have lately been styled the "Spies of the Czar," and they keep the Nihilists in greater check than any other power in Russia. There are 1,900,000 Cossacks in Russia at the present time.

That part of Russia bordering on Poland is called the "Ukraine," and it was to the Ukraine that the wild horse in Byron's poem is said to have carried Mazeppa (a Don Cossack). Mazeppa was born in 1645; he was descended from a noble Polish family: but, for an insult offered the wife of a Polish nobleman, he was condemned to be bound upon a wild horse, with his head to the horse's tail, to be borne away, and left to his fate.

The horse carried him towards the Ukraine; but, instead of his being killed, he was rescued by the Cossacks, and soon became their Hetman, or chief.

Eventually he won the confidence of Peter the Great, and was appointed by him"Prince of the Ukraine."

But, when the freedom of the Cossacks was curtailed, Mazeppa conceived the idea of throwing off allegiance to the Czar, and for this purpose joined his forces with those of Charles XII. of Sweden. He was taken prisoner in the battle of Pultowa, and condemned for treason; but he escaped, and fled to Bender, Turkey, where he died in 1709.

The story of Mazeppa has been made the subject of a poem by Lord Byron, of a novel by Bulgarin, and of two celebrated pictures painted by Horace Vernet.