Cossacks beyond the Danube: the way to the New Sich

After the destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich in 1775, which became the germ of a new Ukrainian statehood and had its own administrative and judicial authorities, the Cossacks were faced with a choice: to remain under the rule of the Russian Empire or to go in search of a new home. Many of them went across the Danube to the Ottoman Empire, where a new Sich was eventually established in Katyrlez, the center of life and military organization for the Danube Cossacks. It is this stage of their history that we will discuss below, and it is only the first part of a larger story about the fate of the Cossacks after the fall of the Sich.

The destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich on June 3-5, 1775, led to the transfer of a significant part of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Ochakiv district, the Dniester, and the lower Danube, i.e., the territories that belonged to the Ottoman Empire at that time. The other part of the Cossacks remained in the southern Ukrainian lands as part of the Russian Empire. Now, within the two empires, they had to determine their place in the new living conditions.

Map of Cossack settlements beyond the Danube

The entire space between the Dniester and Danube rivers was occupied by a wild virgin steppe with full-flowing rivers - the Dniester, Prut, and Danube - whose marshy banks, mouths, and floodplains were covered with reeds. The Cossacks did not choose these lands by chance, as they were well acquainted with the area. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Cossacks campaigned against Turkish fortifications in the lower reaches of the Dniester and Danube, and met with Tatar units in Moldova and the Budzhak steppe. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the Hetman's government also paid attention to this region for a number of military and political reasons, establishing relations with the Cossacks. The settlement of the Cossacks in the Ochakiv land, Budzhak, and Dobruja was also facilitated by the policy of the Ottoman Empire itself. Quite often, the local Turkish administration looked the other way when fugitives from neighboring countries arrived in the territory under its control. It should be noted that the population fleeing from serfdom by crossing the Dniester border quickly found themselves in a situation that was not much different from the previous one. At the same time, the fugitives were not subordinates and had the opportunity to sell their labor at their own discretion.

In the first years after the destruction of the Sich, the Cossacks, who were mainly engaged in fishing, did not have their own organization. Subsequently, delegations were sent to the Sultan and the Patriarch of Constantinople with a request to accept them as citizens and provide land for the foundation of the Sich. Eventually, permission was granted, and in Kuchurhany in the lower Dniester, Hnat, the ataman, was elected, and he was simultaneously granted the title of bunchu pasha. In August 1778, the officers took an oath to serve the Sultan. For its part, the government of the Ottoman Porte promised to allocate land between Bendery and Akkerman for the arrangement of the Cossack Sich. It is worth noting that in Ottoman documents the Cossacks were clearly called "Potkalı/Butkalı Kazakları", while in the Russian Empire they were called "Turkish or infidel Cossacks".

Under these circumstances, the strategic goal of Russian policy on the border was to prevent further Cossack movement into the Ottoman Empire. At this time, the Turkish Cossacks were treated mostly with the tactic of "private invitations" without raising the issue of the Cossacks' return officially with the Sultan. The Russian government promised the Cossacks who agreed to return that they would not be treated as criminals but as those who had gone to work. However, there were no real consequences. On the contrary, former Cossacks crossed the border into the Russian Empire and agitated peasants, Cossacks, and soldiers to join them. As a rule, such agitators were Cossacks who went to the Moldavian principality to monasteries and then returned to Russia, ostensibly to collect alms, but in reality to "incite" them to escape across the Danube. For example, in 1777, former Cossacks Yakiv Chornohor, Ivan the Great, and Petro Chornozub left the banks of the Danube to "call on the Cossacks" to join the Turkish Cossacks led by a Cossack ataman nicknamed Shvets, but they were captured and punished.

Meanwhile, according to the decision of the Sultan's government, the Cossacks were to settle in Rumelia "in villages remote from the Black Sea coast, from three to five people per village" (Rumelia was an eyalet that included almost the entire Balkan Peninsula at that time). The implementation of this decision began in mid-1779. The Cossack ataman and his officers had to settle in Adrianople, and they were allocated funds for their maintenance. The Cossacks were exempt from paying the per capita tax, the haracha, but had to perform military service. Meanwhile, these measures were not fully implemented. The Russian government repeatedly raised the issue of resettlement of the Cossacks across the Danube with the Sultan until the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1791. This situation led to the Cossacks leaving not only for Russia, where the Black Sea Cossack Army was created, but also for other territories and countries, including the Austrian Empire. The Cossacks ended up in Austria through the Moldavian and Wallachian lands. They settled on the Military Border, a territory where, since the late fifteenth century, a militarized population, the Borderers, had to defend the borders with the Ottoman Empire. On April 25, 1785, the Austrian Emperor Joseph II accepted the Cossacks into service and ordered them to settle on both banks of the Tisza River, in the area of the Temyshvar Banat and in the Bachkivska Zupania. The total number of Cossacks who joined the Austrian service was about a thousand.

Migrations from the Ottoman domains caused serious changes in the attitude of the sultan's government toward the Danube Cossacks. In the context of preparations for a new war with Russia, such trends were extremely undesirable. In this regard, the Cossacks were once again allowed to create their own military and administrative organization, the Sich, which would have a certain degree of autonomy. Probably already in the mid-80s of the eighteenth century it was located in the village of Katyrlez at the mouth of the Danube, near its exit to the Black Sea. Nowadays it is in the village of Sfintu Gheorghe in Tulcea County, Romania. From now on, the Cossacks were to be subordinated to the Silistrian pasha, but because of its remoteness from the Cossack center, they were subject to the leadership of the Tulcea or Braila nazir (commandant).

Photo: Józef Brandt - A Cossack and a girl at a well

Most of the Cossacks who lived on the coasts of the Black Sea and the estuaries between the Dnipro, Southern Bug, Dniester, and Danube rivers were Zaporizhzhia Siroma. They lived in dugouts and semi-dugouts, shared so-called fishing factories (sea factory - "karman", river factory - "matuli"), nets and boats, and processed and sold the caught fish to merchants who came from Moldova and other neighboring lands to buy it. Some of the fishermen worked on the nets of the Turks, while others were hired for various temporary, seasonal jobs in the surrounding villages and hamlets.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1792, the Danube and Black Sea people took part in military operations on the side of different belligerents. The Russian government was concerned about the possible participation of the Danube people in the war on the side of the Ottoman Empire. The reason for the concern was that the sultan was mobilizing the Cossacks, and a letter about this was read in Adrianople to "former Zaporozhian Cossacks who are now mainly engaged in fishing in the Danube." Kosh ataman Yakym Gardovyi was elected to lead the organization.

During the armistice, the Black Sea and Danube people often visited each other, especially relatives or old comrades from the Zaporozhian Sich-"they go and keep company," as reported by the Black Sea regimental sergeant major Herasym Lysenko. After 1792, the territory of possible settlement of the Danube Cossacks within the Ottoman Empire decreased, as the Yassky Treaty established the border between the two countries along the Dniester River. Most of the former Cossacks, dissatisfied with their situation in Russian, Ottoman, Moldavian, and Austrian lands, began to gather around the Sich in Katyrlez. The increasing number of Cossack population near the border continued to worry the authorities of the Russian Empire. As a result, they used measures that had been tested in previous years - "amnesties," "private invitations," and "agitators." The Cossacks demanded, first and foremost, security guarantees, non-persecution, and land, in particular, "empty land near the city of Odesa." However, the majority did not support the transition to Russia. Thus, in the spring of 1794, because of the intention to transfer "the whole Kish" to Russia, the kosh ataman Trokhym Pomelo, who had been in office since 1791, almost lost his life. Cossacks with pro-Turkish sentiments opposed him, surrounded his house at night, and, not finding the ataman, who had managed to escape, took his property. After the incident, Yakym Gardovyi, who also did not care for Turkish sentiment, was elected koshovy for the second time.

In the process of settling and developing the lower Danube region, the Zaporozhian Cossacks encountered considerable resistance from the Nekrasovian Cossacks, with whom they had recently participated in the Russo-Turkish war on the side of Porta. The Nekrasovites were Don Cossacks, Old Believers who participated in the uprising of Kindrat Bulavin and, after his defeat, led by Ataman Hnat Nekrasov, went to the Kuban, and in the 40s and 70s of the eighteenth century, due to internal contradictions and the policy of the Russian government, they began to move to the Dniester and the lower Danube. In the 1780s, the Nekrasovians officially received permission from the Turkish sultan to settle in the Danube estuaries. Along with them settled the Russian, mostly Old Believer peasant population, which was called Lipovans or Pilipinos in Budzhak. The active development of the Sich by the Danubians and the associated redistribution of land as a means of subsistence were bound to lead to a conflict with the Nekrasovians. First and foremost, the disputes between the two groups of Cossacks were based on the lucrative land at the Danube mouth, floodplains, and fishing, but their different religious traditions also played an important role. The sultan's government and local authorities did not interfere in the conflict between the Cossacks, deciding that "oda gyaur oda gyaur ('those infidels and those infidels')... if you have the strength, fight your own battle." As long as the Turkish government did not respond to the conflict between the Danube and Nekrasovians, relations between them reached a bloody point. The relations between the Cossacks and the Nekrasovians were also affected by the crisis situation within the Ottoman domains, which was caused by the reformist activities of Sultan Selim III and Grand Vizier Alemdar Mustafa Pasha (Bayraktar) in governance, economy, and the army. Ayans appeared who did not support the sultan's reforms and weakened the authority of the central government. Among the opponents of the reforms were Yilikoglu Suleyman-aga in Silistra, Osman Pazvand-oglu in Vidin, and Ibrahim Peglevan, nicknamed Baba Pasha ("father") in Izmail. The Danubian Cossacks fought as part of Turkish government units against these rulers for more than eight years. In turn, the Nekrasiv Cossacks supported Ibrahim Peglevan. Already in 1797, the Russian agent in Galati, Pavel Rensky, informed the Consul General in Iasi, Ivan Severin, that the "Turkish Cossack troops' koshovy" had visited him and during this secret meeting told him that there were already about 20,000 Danube Cossacks and that as a result of the military actions against the rebels of Pazvand Oglu, one of the elders had been sent to gather more Cossacks down the Danube.

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Photo: Intent

In April-May 1804, the Russian border authorities were greatly concerned about the appearance of a significant number of Danube Cossacks in the Dniester borderland. According to reports from the Russian administration, the concentration of the Danube Cossacks in Budzhak was caused by the latter's desire to replenish their ranks with fugitives from Russia. The Kherson governor Oleksiy Okulov wrote that according to the information he received from the Russian dragoman in Halak, Pavlo Rensky, "every day the Cossacks, who have already gathered about 15,000 people, are molested," "new fugitives from the Russian borders and even girls, crossing over to them from the other side, marry unmarried men." Among those who were caught up in this immigration movement was the informant of the prominent Ukrainian ethnographer and historian Fedir Kondratovych, Ananii Kolomiets. He recalled that in 1802 he escaped from service in the Russian army, where he had been recruited, and then "a rumor went around that our people were across the Danube in Turkey, that it was good there, and I had an uncle there... I thought to myself: "God help me to go there!". From near Odesa, he and 15 comrades made their way to the bank of the Dniester, where "good people transported them to the Turkish side." After long wanderings, Semen Dubyna, a native of Chyhyryn and a subject of the landowner Savytskyi, was also recruited into the Danube Cossacks. In 1795, he went "to work in different places, enlisted in the Buh Cossacks, and after their destruction came to Odesa and was hired by the Greeks to work on a ship." In one of the ports, he met the Danube ataman Hnat Koval and "joined the same Cossacks at his suggestion."

In 1803-1804, having replenished their numbers with Cossacks from Ukraine, the Transdanubians received permission from the sultan's court to settle "among the Tatar hordes" in the Akkerman and Kiliya districts and along the banks of the lower Danube, "below Old Kiliya on the island in the dwellings of the Nekrasovians, from where the Brail pasha expelled the Nekrasovians and settled the Cossacks." According to Mykola Dibrova, a Danube resident, they all moved from Seimen to Vilkovo and Katyrlez to the land assigned to them by the Brailian vizier, where they lived for about three years. However, the Cossacks did not stay here for long, because on the eve of the next Russian-Turkish war, the Danubians were forced to move to Braila under the protection of the pasha.

The facts show the importance of the existence of Katyrlez for the Danube Cossacks as a traditional Cossack center. However, little is known about this Sich due to a lack of sources. According to the established tradition, the Sich was home to the Cossack leadership - the kosh ataman, foreman, kurennya atamans, and only unmarried Cossacks. The married ones had to live in villages and hamlets around the Sich. They were subordinate to Ottoman leaders in Silistria, Tulcea, or Braila.

The Sich necessarily had kleinodes, symbols of power. Among them at this time were the bayrak (flag badge), bunchuk, pernach, and seal. The research of the scholar Fedir Kondratovych has determined that the Sich flag was replaced by a "Turkish bunchuk".... each kuren had its own bayrak, a kind of badge made of red cloth with a white crescent and 6 stars. In the event of the death of any Cossack, this bayrak was displayed in front of the kuren as a military honor to the deceased." In addition, there are testimonies of the Cossacks themselves about the flag and other symbols: "There was indeed one flag and one bird...the flag...was yellow in color, and in the middle of it was a white crescent."

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Serhiy Vasylkivsky, a Danubian Cossack

In the late 90s of the eighteenth century, the seal of the Danube Cossacks appeared. Its appearance undoubtedly testifies to the certain status of the Cossacks. Thus, in January 1796, the aforementioned merchant Yevtikhiy Klenov asked Ataman Yakym Gardovyi for "five plankets with a military seal for Cossacks to travel abroad." The seal had no images, but only the text "Potkalı kazaklarının ser-kerdesi koşovıy. 1217" - "Ataman of the Potkal Cossacks, Koshovy. 1802/1803".

<span>The Sich traditionally had a square with a </span>church<span>, huts, and rooms for food, weapons, etc. Cossack military units were formed behind the kurens, but if necessary, they joined Ottoman units in groups.</span>

The continuation of the story of the Cossacks after the fall of the Sich will be published soon on Intent.

Олена Бачинська