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)

rebels, acting in defiance of the law. It was these rebels who drew up their lines behind the river Dnieper, in their sich (sich = a fortress built out of wooden timbers), where they were referred to in the sources as “lower” (Nizovii) or sich cossacks.

Despite all the prohibitive measures taken by the local authorities the links between the “registered” and “unregistered” persisted, the “lower cos- sacks” always rushing to the help of those who were registered when the nobility came into conflict with them. The emergence of the cossacks proved such an issue in the frontier region, that in 1625 Sigismund III (Vasa), king of Poland, was forced to increase the official cossack register to six thousand. His successor, Wladislaw IV (Vasa) was likewise forced to pay for six cossack regiments from royal treasury funds, but had to look on helplessly when ten thousand of his subjects claiming to be cossacks moved to Russia, transferring their allegiance from the king to the tsar. This process came to end on 8th 18th January 1654 at the rada (=the cossack council) in Pereslavl, when cossacks of all statuses declared themselves the subjects of the tsar, a ruler who shared their own faith.

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