Petercsák Tivadar - Berecz Mátyás (szerk.): Magyarország védelme - Európa védelme - Studia Agriensia 24. (Eger, 2006)
MAGYARORSZÁG VÉDELME -EURÓPA VÉDELME BALASSI BÁLINT ÉS BOCSKAI ISTVÁN KORÁBAN - GEBEI SÁNDOR: A kozákság mint a lengyel végek határőrsége (1569-1648)
Sándor Gebei THE COSSACKS AS POLISH BORDER GUARDS (1569-1648) In this article the author traces the social developments that took place in the border region of the Rzeczpospolita (=Polish-Lithuanian Aristocratic Republic, Adelsrepublik) from its inception in 1569 to 1654. It was during this “short century” that the frontier region of the Polish-Lithuanian state was populated to any great extent. While in the period around 1569 the southernmost (frontier) communities were Kamieniec, Braclaw, and Czerkassy, by 1645 there were already “more than 150 villages, settlements” immediately to the south of them. This grassy steppe, lying between the Rzeczpospolita and the Khanate of the Crimea, devoid as it was of a clearly demarcated border, proved highly attractive to males wishing to free themselves of their feudal obligations in a stateless region devoid of society where armed conflict (self-protection, plundering) was legion. Such armed individuals rarely had families, and their vagrant lifestyle led the Tatars to call them cossacks. Royal (central) power acted ambivalently towards the cossacks right from the very outset. While the cossacks were handed the task of overseeing armed, defensive duties against the annual Tatar incursions, in peacetime those who were bound to taxation and feudal duties, and were prepared to be subject to the local royal civil service, the starosta, could be found among the rapidly growing warrior peasantry. In an effort to bring the armed population living in the kraj (= in the (U)kraine, in the marches, on the borderland) under control, the last of the Jagellón monarchs, Sigismund Augustus, attempted to apply some new methods. In 1572 he made the rebellious free cossacks into a registered (listed) 300-strong “royal cossack” unit. Although, the creation of a mercenary cossack unit swearing allegiance to the crown failed to solve the real problem, it nevertheless offered new prospects to those free cossacks, who were considering integrating into a more conventional society. In paying 600 mercenary cossacks sums of between 7-15 pieces of Polish gold each for the defence of the Podolian border in 1581, the king of Poland Stephen Batory declared those cossacks who had not joined the registered cossacks de jure 314
