rorum Fragmina," X.,
Basilliae, 1615.

To protect the agricultural population of the Steppe against the raids
of these thieving, cattle-lifting, kidnapping neighbours, the Tsars of
Muscovy and the Kings of Poland built forts, constructed palisades, dug
trenches, and kept up a regular military cordon. The troops composing
this cordon were called Cossacks; but these were not the "Free Cossacks"
best known to history and romance. These latter lived beyond the
frontier on the debatable land which lay between the two hostile races,
and there they formed self-governing military communities. Each one of
the rivers flowing southwards--the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the
Yaik or Ural--was held by a community of these Free Cossacks, and no
one, whether Christian or Tartar, was allowed to pass through their
territory without their permission.

Officially the Free Cossacks were Russians, for they professed to be
champions of Orthodox Christianity, and--with the exception of those
of the Dnieper--loyal subjects of the Tsar; but in reality they were
something different. Though they were Russian by origin, language, and
sympathy, the habit of kidnapping Tartar women introduced among them a
certain admixture of Tartar blood. Though self-constituted champions of
Christianity and haters of Islam, they troubled themselves very little
with religion, and did not submit to the ecclesiastical authorities.
As to their religious status, it cannot be easily defined. Whilst
professing allegiance and devotion to the Tsar, they did not think it
necessary to obey him, except in so far as his orders suited their own
convenience. And the Tsar, it must be confessed, acted towards them in a
similar fashion. When he found it convenient he called them his faithful
subjects; and when complaints were made to him about their raids in
Turkish territory, he declared that they were not his subjects, but
runaways and brigands, and that the Sultan might punish them as he saw
fit. At the same time, the so-called runaways and brigands regularly
received supplies and ammunition from Moscow, as is amply proved by
recently-published documents. Down to the middle of the seventeenth
century the Cossacks of the Dnieper stood in a similar relation to
the Polish kings; but at that time they threw off their allegiance to
Poland, and became subjects of the Tsars of Muscovy.

Of these semi-independent military communities, which formed a
continuous barrier along