"Before the deluge" : the crown senators and their attitude towards the Cossack population and the Ukraine in the years 1654-1655

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The article constitutes an attempt to analyze the policy of the Polish political elites towards the Cossack population and the Ukraine in-between the Zwaniec and Perejeslaw Treaty Agreements (December 1653/ January 1654) and the Swedish invasion of Poland (July 1655). When signing the Zwaniec Agreement, the Polish side counted on breaking up the Cossack-Tartar alliance; it was only a few weeks later that the Polish side began to consider the idea of winning over the Crimean Tartars in their struggle against the Cossacks, whereas even later - against Moscow. After the Cossacks had surrendered to the Tsar in January 1654, it was obtaining Tartar help, without severing cooperation ties with Transylvania that became the main goal of Polish policy. Due to the conflict between the king and the nobility and the subsequent dissolution of the Diet in 1654, the realization of this political goal had been delayed; in addition, in the summer of 1654, in the midst of the deteriorating economic and political situation, the supporters of a military solution, were unable to vote in a sufficient increase of armaments. In spite of transitional successes (the battle of Ochmatow), the policy whose objective was to suppress the insurrection by force in alliance with the Crimean Khanate, had fallen through. Although in the face of the Swedish invasion in the spring of 1655, the supporters of a military solution insisted on launching the main forces against the Cossacks, yet it was the faction which opted out for negotiations which had been growing in strength since the summer of 1654 that ultimately prevailed upon the king. The Diet of 1655 had supported the latter conception, consenting to grant considerable concessions to the Cossacks, the peasants, as well as the Orthodox church. In spite of the fact that Bohdan Chmielnicki had rejected a treaty agreement, yet the breakthrough in perceiving the Cossack problem had ultimately led to the signing of the Treaty of Hadziacz in 1658.