«Such army Poland has not had yet»

Little-known documents from the battle of Berestechko of 1651 (publication of historical sources)

Abstract

Today the sources study of the Khmelnitsky era looks like a certain immense, vast sphere of historical knowledge, a giant labyrinth of various categories of records (archaeological, iconographic, etc.) and, above all, written documents of different types. Berestechko campaign takes a significant place in this silva rerum. We can confidently assert that, after more than two hundred years of intensive archaeographic research, finding new, unpublished sources for the history of this campaign is very difficult – now historians have access to thousands of documents (diaries, letters, registers of units and property, reports, notes, confessions, act records, etc.), scattered across many dozens of archaeographic collections and articles.
But after a long search in the collections of the Manuscript Department of Vasyl Stefanyk National Scientific Library of Lviv we found a corpus of documents, unpublished at all, or that were published only in the form of abstracts and notes, which, in addition, often contain factual errors and distortions.
The purpose of this article is to publish the full-text and scholarly commentary on the texts of the documents we found, along with their translation into Ukrainian.
The published documents contain many unknown details about the route and tempo of movement of some units of the Polish army, in particular, units of the Polish noble militia from different voivodeships which did not want to take part in hostilities at all and therefore moved very slowly. Based on rumours and intelligence data, the authors of the letters also tried to outline the movements of the Cossack and Tatar troops, their numbers, and the strategy of the parties involved in the conflict – in particular, the uncertainty of each side in its success in the campaign and even some hope of reconciliation between the opposing forces is read between the lines.
A great deal of attention is given to the activities of the Polish reconnaissance units, which are sometimes covered in great detail, with a retelling of the most valuable information obtained from the captives.
It highlights in particular the defeat of certain Cossack detachments by Poles «in the Dubno villages», who were returning after receiving the town of Olika, the pogrom by Cossacks and Tatars of the forty soldiers of the Greek cavalry sent on reconnaissance (doc. 2), and so on.
The letter of the unknown person from the camp near Berestechko, dated June 21, is of exceptional importance. It gives details of the reception of the Swedish ambassador in the Crimea, where the particulars of the recruitment of units from Europe to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth troops were discussed. This letter also asserts a generally small number of Tatar forces, of which only 7 thousand «the most elite cavalry» moved to Khmelnytskyi (doc. 2).
We also encounter interesting data concerning the logistics of the crown army with provisions, for example, the units of the noble militia suffered from hunger and therefore were even forced to make a separate camp from the better supplied noblemen’s troops.
Not everything was good between the last ones and units of European mercenaries, also suffering from hunger. The crown camp was plagued by the terrible cost of food, which had a direct effect on the mood and morale of the troops. The plundering of the areas, which the Polish troops passed through, was made – as reported, servants and mercenaries were reported to be «committing great robberies, and storming the nobles’ houses» (doc. 4).
Very interesting is also a description of the gifts given in the camp of the crown troops on Saturday, June 24 by different magnates and nobles to King Jan II Kazimierz, with the wishes of «future victories and triumphs» (doc. 4). A few days later such a victory was achieved, though without a triumph.