Soldiers for Sale. Recruitment of Foreign Mercenaries into Cossack Hetmanate in the 1650-70s

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to study the prerequisites and the process of the involvement of foreign mercenaries in the armed forces of the Cossack Hetmanate, the strategy and practical experience of their recruitment, and their role and significance in the processes of the regular army formation.

The scientific novelty. For the first time, source reports on the recruitment and service of foreign soldiers in the Cossack Hetmanate army in the middle – the third quarter of the 17^th century are cataloged. The regions of their origin, means and forms of enlistment, forms of payment, role in military conflicts, and organizational formation of the regular troops of the Cossack Hetmanate are determined.

Conclusions. The prerequisite for the emergence of mercenaries in the armed forces of the Cossack Hetmanate was the need to create a regular army that would compensate for the shortcomings of the Cossack militia. The main form of manning of regular armies in early modern Europe was individual and group recruitment of professional foreign soldiers, who were maintained at the expense of the state budget. The first mercenary units appeared in the hetman’s army in 1648-1649. They recruited Tatar cavalry units for money, thanks to which B. Khmelnytskyi had managed to achieve significant operational and tactical successes in the confrontation with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In parallel, attempts were made to recruit or acquire the so-called ‘German’ units from the Crown Army, armed and trained according to the canons of West European tactical standards, over to their side. The development of a regular army based on recruited contingents was continued during the hetmanship of I. Vyhovskyi, who increased the number of those troops and recorded their existence as an integral part of the hetman’s army in the Treaty of Hadiach of 1658.

Maintaining and expanding a regular army required significant financial expenditures and stable access to mercenary markets. In the context of the rivalry of East European states for military leadership, it was difficult for the Cossack Hetmanate to compete with them for access to external human resources. That led to the gradual abandonment of the ‘German’ model of organization and reorientation to cheaper and more accessible units of Balkan and Danubian mercenaries. With the disintegration of the Cossack Hetmanate into two sovereign hetmanates, the rivalry between the left- and right-bank hetmans further aggravated and complicated the struggle for control over the flow of military migrants. At the end of the 17^th century that led to the curtailment of the practice of recruiting foreigners and a reorientation to internal resources for the reinforcement of mercenary troops – landless Cossacks, Cossack ‘ochotnyky’ (volunteers), and Zaporozhian Cossacks.