Subject: лицар cavalryman

Culture: Zaporozhian and other Cossacks

Setting: border raiding, Chmielnicki & Razin revolts, Ukraine 17thc

Event Photos

* Reid 1997 p30

"Polish rule robbed Ukraine of its nobility. but it also saw the emergence of a new power in the region -- the Cossacks. Outlaws and frontiersmen, fighters and pioneers, the Cossacks are to the Ukrainian national consciousness what cowboys are to the American. Unlike the remote and sanctified Rus princes, the Cossacks make heroes Ukrainians can relate to. They ranged the steppe in covered wagons, drawing them up in squares in case of Tatar attack. They raided Turkish ports in sixty-foot-long double-ruddered galleys, built of willow-wood and buoyed up with bundles of hollow reeds. They wore splendid moustaches, red boots and baggy trousers 'as wide as the Black Sea'. They danced, sang and drank horilka in heroic quantities. No sooner are they out of one state of inebriation,' wrote de Beauplan, 'than they set about drinking again as before."

* Groushko 1992 p46

"Chivalry ... was never part of any free Cossack code. Women were a pastime like drinking and killing -- and seemed to accept that. Their numbers grew as the Cossack way of life became relatively settled, and marriage was common, though usually unblessed by clergy. But the womenfolk were as free as the men to change partners, and participated as freely in Cossack orgies of drink and sex, so eye-witnesses say. They also fought alongside their men when necessary."

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Field Notes