Word Finder - cossack

definition

A member or descendant of an originally (semi-)nomadic population of Eastern Europe and the adjacent parts of Asia, formed in part of runaways from the neighbouring countries, that eventually settled in parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian tsarist Empire (where they constituted a legendary military caste), particularly in areas now comprising southern Russia and Ukraine.

definition

A member of a military unit (typically cavalry, originally recruited exclusively from the above)

definition

A Ukrainian.

Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit.

The government is well provided with schools, especially on the Cossack territory.

During the rebellion of the Cossack chief, Bogdan Chmielnicki (1640), the Poles took it by assault, killing 14,000 persons and burning 5000 houses.

The church of the Tithes, rebuilt in 1828-1842, was founded in the close of the 10th century by Prince Vladimir in honour of two martyrs whom he had put to death; and the monastery of St Michael (or of the Golden Heads - so called from the fifteen gilded cupolas of the original church) claims to have been built in 1108 by Svyatopolk II., and was restored in 1655 by the Cossack chieftain Bogdan Chmielnicki.

Among the more notable names are those of Nestor the chronicler, and Iliya of Murom, the Old Cossack of the Russian epics.

In 1670 Razin, while ostensibly on his way to report himself at the Cossack headquarters on the Don, openly rebelled against the government, captured Cherkask, Tsaritsyn and other places, and on the 24th of June burst into Astrakhan itself.

There are two, an officer and a Cossack.

This further act of repression led to two terrible Cossack risings, in 1635 and 1636, put down only with the utmost difficulty, whereupon the diet of 1638 deprived the Cossacks of all their ancient privileges, abolished the elective hetmanship, and substituted for it a commission of Polish noblemen with absolute power, so that the Cossacks might well declare that those who hated them were lords over them.

The prime mover of the great rebellion of 1648, which shook the Polish state to its very foundations, was the Cossack Bohdan Chmielnicki (q.v.), who had been initiated in all the plans of Wladislaus IV.

After a three weeks' carnival of blood and debauchery Razin quitted Astrakhan with two hundred barges full of troops to establish the Cossack republic along the whole length of the Volga, as a preliminary step towards advancing against Moscow.

Kropotkin had never wished for a military career, but, as he had not the means to enter the St Petersburg University, he elected to join a Siberian Cossack regiment in the recently annexed Amur district, where there were prospects of administrative work.

His first military service at home was against the Cossack rising of Nalewajko as lieutenant to Zolkiewski, and he subsequently assisted Zamoyski in his victorious Moldavian campaign.

In 1649, after the revolt of Little Russia and its liberation from the Polish rule, Nyezhin was the chief town of one of the most important Cossack regiments.

At the commencement of the reign of the tsar Nicholas II., in 1895, the Doukhobors became the victims of a series of persecutions, Cossack soldiers plundering, insulting, beating and maltreating both men and women in every way.

As one of the largest proprietors in the Ukraine he suffered severely from Cossack depredations and offered many concessions to them.

The approaches to Cossack, North Australia; Cape St Francis, Labrador; the coasts of Madagascar and Iceland, are remarkable for such disturbance of the compass.

He commanded the Caucasian Cossack Brigade in the attack of the Green Hills at the second battle of Plevna.

In October 1878 some cases appeared in the stanitza or Cossack military settlement of Vetlanka, 130 m.

Cherkasy was an important town of the Ukraine in the 15th century, and remained so, under Polish rule, until the revolt of the Cossack hetman Chmielnicki (1648).

The Russian mission of 1879 has been the most successful, and the so-called Cossack brigade which it formed has always been commanded by Russian officers.

Every Cossack is bound to procure his own uniform, equipment and horse (if mounted) - the government supplying only the arms. Those on active service are divided into three equal parts according to age, and the first third only is in real service, while the two others stay at home, but are bound to march out as soon as an order is given.

The officers are supplied in the usual way by the military schools, in which all Cossack voiskos have their own vacancies, or are non-commissioned Cossack officers, with officers' grades.

The total Cossack population in 1893 was 2,648,049 (1,331,470 women), and they owned nearly 146,500,000 acres of land, of which 105,000,000 acres were arable and 9,400,000 under forests.

The income which the Cossack voiskos receive from the lands which they rent to different persons, also from various sources (trade patents, rents of shops, fisheries, permits of gold-digging, &c.), as also from the subsidies they receive from the government (about £712,500 in 1893), is used to cover all the expenses of state and local administration.

Matthias repulsed his powerful rival, Basil the Wolf, the voivode of Moldavia and his Tatar and Cossack allies.

Bogdan, after learning to read and write, a rare accomplishment in those days, entered the Cossack ranks, was dangerously wounded and taken prisoner in his first battle against the Turks, and found leisure during his two years' captivity at Constantinople to acquire the rudiments of Turkish and French.

Failing to get redress nearer home, he determined to seek for justice at Warsaw, whither he had been summoned with other Cossack delegates to assist Wladislaus IV.

Chmielnicki, now doubly hateful to the Poles as being both a royalist and a Cossack, was again maltreated and chicaned, and only escaped from gaol by bribing his gaolers.

Thirsting for vengeance, he fled to the Cossack settlements on the Lower Dnieper and thence sent messages to the khan of the Crimea, urging a simultaneous invasion of Poland by the Tatars and the Cossacks (1647).

For the next eighteen months he was the absolute master of the Ukraine, which he divided into sixteen provinces, made his native place Chigirin the Cossack capital, and entered into direct relations with foreign powers.

Chmielnicki was now regarded not merely as a Cossack rebel, but as the arch-enemy of Catholicism in eastern Europe, and the pope granted a plenary absolution to all who took up arms against him.

But fortune, so long his friend, now deserted him, and at Beresteczko (July I, 1651) the Cossack ataman was defeated for the first time.

In 1653 Poland made a supreme effort, the diet voted 17,000,000 gulden in subsidies, and John Casimir led an army of 60,000 men into the Ukraine and defeated the arch-rebel at Zranta, whereupon Chmielnicki took the oath of allegiance to the tsar (compact of Pereyaslavl, February 19,1654), and all hope of an independent Cossack state was at an end.

In 1648 it suffered at the hands of the Cossack chieftain Bogdan Chmielnicki.

The real masters of the steppes and highlands of Turkestan are the Kirghiz, of whom there are two branches - the Kazak (Cossack) Kirghiz, who number about 3,787,000, and the Kara (Black) Kirghiz or Burut, who number nearly 202,000.

In 1653 the weakness and disorder of Poland, which had just emerged, bleeding at every pore, from the savage Cossack war, encouraged Alexius to attempt to recover from her secular rival the old Russian lands.

In 1889 a Cossack chief, Captain Atchinoff, who had occupied Sagallo, was forcibly removed by the French authorities (see Sagallo).

On returning to the Ukraine he settled down quietly on his paternal estate, and in all probability history would never have known his name if the intolerable persecution of a neighbouring Polish squire, who stole his hayricks and flogged his infant son to death, had not converted the thrifty and acquisitive Cossack husbandman into one of the most striking and sinister figures of modern times.

He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight.

Alley! said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to make him go on.

On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two Cossack regiments and two squadrons of hussars.

Just before him, almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his hair.

Only recently, talking with one of Platov's Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal.

After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and small top boots.

When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding not a regimental but a Cossack horse.

Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the man to him.

Napoleon, after making the Cossack a present, had him set free like a bird restored to its native fields.

He's coming! shouted a Cossack standing at the gate.

A Cossack patrol would have sufficed to observe the enemy.

He was driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young surgeon, and on recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied the driver's seat to pull up.