PETRO KONASHEVYCH-SAHAIDACHNYI
Petro Sahaidachnyi was originally from Galicia, born in the family of an Orthodox priest. Soon the young nobleman was sent to study at one of the Orthodox schools of the ancient city of Sambor. He studied military affairs from an early age, was a highly educated, intelligent, deeply religious person. He had great authority in Zaporizhia Sich. The iron discipline, supported by Petro Sahaidachny in every possible way, did its job quite quickly. The army became qualitatively the best in Europe. The extraordinary courage of the Cossacks now began to be combined with the tactical and strategic factors of military art. The Ottoman Empire suffered from Sahaidachny's campaigns, especially attacks from the sea.
He reforms the Cossack army, organizes a regular army with strict discipline on the basis of individual detachments, develops a strategy and tactics of the anti-Turkish struggle.
Sea campaigns led by Sahaidachny, when Cossack seagulls suddenly appeared at the walls of Istanbul and "smoked the capital of the Turkish sultan with musket smoke", as a contemporary wrote, caused real terror in the enemy.
And what is most important - the Cossack landing party freed the Orthodox prisoners who were languishing in heavy Turkish-Tatar captivity.
In 1606, Varna was captured from the sea, and the Zaporizhzhya Army proclaimed Pyotr Sahaidachny Hetman of Ukraine. In 1616, a historic campaign took place on Kafa, a Turkish stronghold in the Crimea with the largest slave market in the empire. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth settled with the Cossacks for the first time in Sich's long history.
In 1618, Peter Sahaidachnyi approached Moscow, having previously captured a number of cities, and launched a final assault together with the Poles, but soon refused to destroy the capital of the Orthodox people. Having received political dividends, he hoped for Poland's fulfillment of promises about freedoms. However, she did not keep her word, and Sahaidachny refused to help Warsaw. In the battle of Tetsora on the territory of Moldavia against the Turks in 1620, the nobility was defeated, and in the following year 1621, 200,000 Turkish-Tatar troops approached Khotyn. Without the Zaporozhians, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth looked doomed. The king pleaded for help, and the Ukrainian hetman averted the threat, thus saving all of Europe from enslavement. Turkish power could capture the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for a long time, and then the neighboring countries. And in the first place, Ukraine could suffer. Both the Poles and the Cossacks were facing a difficult confrontation. Petro Sahaidachny proved himself in this war as an unparalleled military strategist and tactician.
Sahaidachny sought to restore the importance of Kyiv as an Orthodox and cultural center, he supported the activities of the Metropolitan of Lavra Yelysei Pletenetsky and he created around the printing house Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra a circle of scientists, printers, writers.
In 1620, thanks to his authority, he achieved that the Patriarch of Jerusalem Feofan ordained several priests as bishops, including Meletius Smotrytskyi, and restored the Kyiv Metropolitanate, which had been abolished by the union of 1596, by consecrating Jov Boretskyi as the Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia.
Five days before his death, which occurred on April 20, 1622, Sagaidachny made a will in the presence of Jov Boretsky and the new hetman Olefir Golub, in which he bequeathed his property, including 15,000 gold, to the Kyiv and Lviv fraternal schools.
He was buried in the Epiphany church of the fraternal Epiphany monastery.
prepared by: Anton Voloshyn