What happened at Zhovti Vody in 1648?
At Zhovti Vody, from 29 April to 16 May 1648, Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Cossacks and the Crimean Tatars of Tugay Bey caught a Polish force under Stefan Potocki, son of the Grand Crown Hetman, on its way to crush the rising at the Zaporozhian Sich. Besieged in its camp and abandoned by the registered Cossacks, who went over to Khmelnytsky, the force gave up its guns for a safe passage, was attacked on the retreat and destroyed at Kniazhi Bairaky on 16 May. It was the first victory of the uprising.8
In April 1648 the Grand Crown Hetman, Mikołaj Potocki, sent his son into the steppe with a few thousand men to crush the Cossack rising at the Zaporozhian Sich. Less than four weeks later the force was gone and his son was dying, and the rising was on its way to becoming a war that would last for years. The longer war is told in our guide to the wars of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.9
A rising at the Sich
The Commonwealth crushed the Cossack rebellions of 1637 and 1638. The Ordinance of 1638 that followed took away the autonomy of the Zaporozhian Host and placed the registered Cossacks, the Cossacks paid by the Commonwealth, under a commissioner appointed by the Crown.10
Bohdan Khmelnytsky was one of their officers. He had fought at Cecora in 1620, where he was taken prisoner by the Turks, and in 1637 he held the post of military chancellor of the Host. Educated at the Jesuit college, most probably in Lviv, he spoke Polish and Latin and later learned Turkish and Tatar, and in 1646 he was among the Cossack envoys who talked with King Władysław IV. In 1647 the Chyhyryn official Czapliński seized his farm, and at the end of that year Khmelnytsky fled to the Zaporozhian Sich, the Cossack stronghold on the lower Dnieper, where early in 1648 he was elected hetman. His men drove out the Commonwealth's garrison at the Sich.11
Khmelnytsky made an alliance with the Crimean Khanate, and the khan sent him Tatar cavalry under Tugay Bey. The Commonwealth's commanders did not know that the Tatars had joined the Cossacks.12
Potocki divides his forces
Mikołaj Potocki decided to crush the rising at the Sich before it could spread. On 21 April 1648 he sent part of his army out of Cherkasy in two columns, while he stayed behind with the main forces.13
Four regiments of registered Cossacks went down the Dnieper by boat. Valerii Stepankov counts them, with several hundred dragoons, at 4,000 to 5,000 men, and Ivan Storozhenko gives 4,000 Cossacks and 1,200 mercenaries.14
The land column was led by the hetman's 24-year-old son, Stefan Potocki. With him went Stefan Czarniecki and Jacek Szemberk, the commissioner of the registered Cossacks, as his advisers. Szemberk commanded the registered Cossacks directly, and Rogowicz writes that the units under him made up most of the column. Its size is given very differently. Stepankov puts it at about 6,000 men with their servants, Storozhenko at about 4,000. The Polish historian Marek Rogowicz, who reconstructed the column banner by banner, counts about 3,000 soldiers by establishment, half of them registered Cossacks, plus camp servants. Stepankov and Storozhenko give it 10 guns, Rogowicz 6.15
It was a cavalry force at heart: banners of the standing quarter army, private troops of the magnates and dragoons, with the registered Cossacks as its main infantry.16
Storozhenko calls the division of the army a fatal mistake, and the Polish state education platform also judges it an error. It let Khmelnytsky beat the Polish forces one part at a time.17
The Tatars strike first
Khmelnytsky left the Sich to meet the land column with Tugay Bey's Tatars ahead of his wagon camp, probably on the night before 27 April according to Stepankov, and no later than that morning according to Storozhenko. His strength is one of the most disputed figures of the battle: Stepankov gives about 5,000 Cossacks and 4,000 to 5,000 Tatars, Storozhenko more than 8,000 Cossacks and at least 20,000 Tatars.18
29 April. Stefan Potocki made camp on the upper Zhovti Vody, the Yellow Waters, today the Zhovta river, a tributary of the Inhulets. He halted by one of the river's two headwater branches, south of the present-day village of Pakharivka. Around midday the Tatar vanguard attacked the camp. Stepankov writes that it defeated six Polish banners, Storozhenko that the Poles closed their wagon ring and beat the attacks off within an hour. Khmelnytsky came up later in the day with his wagon camp.19
On the first day about 200 horsemen under the registered Cossack colonel Duszyński left the camp. Storozhenko writes that they were sent toward the Dnieper to reach the river column, Rogowicz that they were cut off. Rogowicz adds that Duszyński never got back to Stefan Potocki and returned to the hetmans' main army.20
30 April and 1 May. A Cossack assault on 30 April failed, and both Ukrainian historians put it down to a lack of artillery: Khmelnytsky had only three small guns. On the morning of 1 May the Poles struck at the trenches the Cossacks had dug near their camp.21
Siege on the Yellow Waters
Unable to take the camp by storm, Khmelnytsky settled down to a siege, which Storozhenko dates from 5 May. For two weeks the camp beat off the attacks, and it was well supplied with powder.22
Mikołaj Potocki set out from Cherkasy toward Chyhyryn on 7 May and halted there. He never reached his son: on 13 May his army began to fall back.23
The registered Cossacks change sides
The blow that decided the battle did not come from the Cossack camp. It came from men who had marched out of Cherkasy on the Polish side. The registered Cossacks going down the Dnieper revolted against their officers at Kamianyi Zaton and chose Filon Dzhalalii as their leader.24
The historians date what followed a day apart. Stepankov has the rebel regiments join Khmelnytsky on 12 May and the registered Cossacks inside the Polish camp go over the next day. Storozhenko has the rebels march past the camp on 13 May and the Cossacks and court dragoons in the camp, 1,600 men in all, go over on 14 May. A Polish servant who survived the battle put the Cossacks who deserted the camp at 1,200, and Rogowicz dates their desertion to 14 May.25
The registered Cossacks had served as infantry, and with them Stefan Potocki lost most of the foot soldiers who held his wagon rampart.26
Guns for a safe passage
14 May. Potocki negotiated. By the agreement he handed over his artillery and powder in return for a safe passage for his men to Krylov. Hostages were exchanged, and Stefan Czarniecki was among those who went over to the Cossack camp, where he was held.27
15 May. Talks with Tugay Bey came to nothing, and the fighting resumed. Stepankov writes that by evening the Cossacks had taken part of the trenches and the royal banner. Storozhenko writes that the defenders beat the assault off, helped by rain that soaked the attackers' powder. The Polish state education platform dates the failed attempt to break out to the same day.28
Both Storozhenko and the Polish state education platform also record an offer from the Tatar side to hand Khmelnytsky over to the Poles. Nothing came of it.29
The end at Kniazhi Bairaky
16 May. That night the Poles set out for Krylov, with the Tatars attacking them through the dark. In the morning the Cossack infantry came up and destroyed the Polish column in a gully at the exit from Kniazhi Bairaky.30
How many were taken is given very differently. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine says about 3,000 Poles were captured, along with two commanding officers. The Polish state education platform speaks of a few hundred prisoners.31
Stefan Potocki died of his wounds on 19 May. Storozhenko, following the Polish historian Wiesław Majewski, writes that he was taken by the Tatars and died of gangrene on the way to Crimea. Mirosław Nagielski, citing Majewski's entry in the Polish Biographical Dictionary, writes that he died in the Cossack camp.32
Jacek Szemberk fell into Tatar hands and was taken to Crimea. Stefan Czarniecki, who had gone over to the Cossack camp as a hostage, remained a prisoner of the Cossacks and the Tatars and was freed only later. He went on to become one of the Commonwealth's best known commanders, as told in our portrait of Stefan Czarniecki.33
After Zhovti Vody
The victory let Khmelnytsky turn against Mikołaj Potocki's main army. On 26 May it was routed at Korsun, and both Crown hetmans, Mikołaj Potocki and Marcin Kalinowski, were taken prisoner. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine puts the prisoners taken there at more than 8,700. In September the Cossacks won again at Pyliavtsi.34
After Korsun, Khmelnytsky did not press on at once. Stepankov writes that he hoped the king would reform the Commonwealth and grant the Ukrainians equal rights and the Cossack lands autonomy.35
Stepankov calls Zhovti Vody the first victory of the Ukrainian army in the national revolution of 1648 to 1676, and Storozhenko the first victorious battle of the war. For Rogowicz it was the first of two painful defeats that opened the uprising.36
The dates in this article are New Style. The Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine also gives the Old Style dates, ten days earlier, so the final rout of 16 May appears there as 6 May.37
The war that began on the Yellow Waters went on for years. In 1651 the Commonwealth defeated Khmelnytsky at Berestechko, but a year later the Cossacks won again at Batih.38
