Ivan Masepa

Ivan Masepa

Ivan Stepanovich Mazepa ( Latin Ioannes Mazeppa , Ukrainian Іван Степанович Мазепа , scientific. Transliteration Ivan Mazepa Stepanovyč * 20th March 1639 in Masepynzi ; † 21st September 1709 in Bender , Moldavia ) was Hetman of the Ukrainian Zaporozhye Cossacks since 1687. In Literature and music is the older spelling of the name Mazeppa in use.

Life

Ascent

The Page Mazeppa , painting by Théodore Géricault , around 1820

The son of Stefan-Adam Masepa and Marija Mahdalyna Masepa , who belonged to the nobility of right-wing Ukraine , Iwan Masepa was born in 1639 on a manor in Masepynzi near Bila Tserkva . He studied in Kiev at the Academy there and then in the Warsaw Jesuit College.

He came to the court of King John Casimir of Poland as a page . After several years in the service of the Polish king and trips to Western Europe, he was surprised in familiar contact with the wife of a magnate . The latter tied him naked to the back of his own horse in 1663 and was badly beaten by the horse, which was given freedom. He was brought to the Ukraine, where he joined the ranks of the Cossacks and in 1669 entered the service of the right-wing hetman Petro Doroshenko . Soon afterwards he switched to the service of the left bank hetman Ivan Samojlowytsch and became his secretary and adjutant. When he was deposed in July 1687 after the unsuccessful Crimean campaign , he was appointed hetman by the unanimous election of the people.

Hetman

In this position he strengthened his power externally and internally and protected the borders against the incursions of the Turks and Tatars . He promoted the Orthodox Church and strengthened the position of the Cossack aristocracy, which came to more property. He didn't forget himself either - after all, he owned around 20,000 estates, which made him one of the richest men in Europe. He was friends with the young Tsar Peter I , and when he moved against the Turks, Masepa rendered him important services and moved with him against the Ottoman fortress of Azov .

Ally of the Tsar in the Northern War

Masepa also stood on the Russian side during the Northern War and, in agreement with Peter, occupied right-bank Ukraine in 1703. The uprising of Semen Palij against Poland-Lithuania should serve as a pretext . He managed to reunite the two parts of the Khmelnytskyi Hetmanate. He was repeatedly accused of rebellion against Russia , but Peter had unlimited confidence in Masepa.

After a few severe defeats at the beginning of the Northern War, Peter I made the decision to modernize his army - both its command and its equipment. However, the new state policy of the Russian tsar threatened the traditional autonomy of Ukraine, which was sealed in the Treaty of Pereyaslav . During the war, the tsar made high demands on the Ukrainians. Instead of defending their own country from traditional enemies - the Ottomans, Tatars and Poles - the Ukrainians were forced to fight the Swedish armed forces away from home. In these campaigns the Cossacks were no match for the regular European armies. Their regiments suffered losses of up to 70 percent of the troop strength. In order to strengthen the operational capability of his armed forces, Peter I handed over command of the Cossack regiments to Russian and German generals. This took away the last morale of the Cossacks. The foreign officers openly despised the Cossack units, which they often used as cannon fodder. It is true that Masepa still moved in 1704 and 1705 in the Northern War against the Swedes and Leszczyński's supporters; after the Peace of Altranstädt on September 24, 1706, however, he looked for a way to free the Ukraine from Russian embrace.

Page change

In autumn 1707 the Bulavin uprising of the Cossacks and peasants broke out in the Don region , which was directed against the tsarist rule and which was rigorously suppressed by Peter I. This general dissatisfaction of the Cossacks with the tsarist policy prompted Masepa to look for a new ally. In addition, he promised the King of Sweden Charles XII. that he would support him with an army of 100,000 men if the Swedes advanced into the Ukraine. Charles XII. then marched against the advice of his generals in Ukraine and promised to protect Ukraine for military aid and provision of food and to postpone signing a contract with the Russian tsar until the rights of Ukraine were restored and completely independent of Ukraine Moscow is. The terms of this annexation to the Swedes were sealed in a contract at the beginning of spring 1709.

A few days after Masepa's change of sides, the Hetman's capital, Baturyn, was completely destroyed by units of the Russian Army under the command of Alexander Menshikov , killing 6,000 residents, including old people and children. The news of the killing of the Cossacks in Baturyn and the arrests and executions on the slightest suspicion of sympathy for Masepa caused many potential supporters of the hetman to change their plans. At this point, Peter I ordered the Cossack elders who had not joined Masepa to elect a new hetman. On November 11, 1708 Ivan Skoropadskyj was elected. The atrocities in Baturyn and the cruelty of the Russian armed forces sparked fear among the Ukrainian people. The Protestant Swedes had not enjoyed much confidence anyway. That is why the majority of the population did not support Hetman Masepa. Only one significant population group sided with Hetman Masepa - the Zaporozhian Cossacks . When he led his army to the Swedes, he brought barely 7000 men together (October 1708).

Peter had Masepa's portrait hung on the gallows; he was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church . Meanwhile Karl was approaching Poltava . In the Battle of Poltava on June 28, 1709 Masepa followed on the side of the Swedes only 3000 Cossacks. The rest of the Cossacks fought on the Russian side in the battle under Ivan Skoropadskyi.

Masepa and Karl XII. after the battle of Poltava ( Gustaf Cederström )

Escape and death

After the battle was lost, the army marched south along the Worskla and arrived on July 10 in Perevolochna at the confluence of the Worskla and Dnepr rivers . Here it was overtaken by Russian troops and capitulated to them, whereupon most of the remaining Cossacks fled on horseback to escape punishment as traitors. The king fled with Ivan Masepa and his followers Pylyp Orlyk and Kost Hordijenko across a ford in the Dnieper and reached the Bug on July 17th , where the Pasha von Ochakov gave permission to enter the Ottoman Empire. The escape ended in Tighina, Moldova on Ottoman territory, where Masepa died on September 22, 1709.

Aftermath

Monument to Ivan Masepa in Chernihiv

Lord Byron made Iwan Masepa the hero of one of his poems ( Mazeppa , 1819), Faddei Bulgarin the hero of a novel, Rudolf Gottschall that of a drama Mazeppa . With Juliusz Słowacki , too , he has become the hero of a drama ( Mazepa , 1839). Rainer Maria Rilke names him in the poem Der Sturm in the collection The Book of Pictures . Bertolt Brecht's ballad of Mazeppa in the house postil feigns that Mazepa died while riding the horse in the steppe.

Furthermore, the figure of Masepa was used in Alexander Pushkin's poem Poltava , in Pyotr Tchaikovsky's opera Mazeppa and in the symphonic poem No. 6 Mazeppa by Franz Liszt (1839/1850). In 1919, the director Martin Berger made the film Mazeppa, the Ukrainian folk hero with Werner Krauss in the title role.

Horace Vernet glorified Masepa through two paintings. Masepa is depicted on the ten hryvnia note today . In 2009, the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko donated the Ivan Masepa Cross as the Order of Ukraine .

literature

• Frans G. Bengtsson : Karl XIIs levnad. Norstedt, Malmö 1980, ISBN 91-1-801612-X .
• Élie Borschak, René Martel : Vie de Mazeppa (= Nouvelle Collection Historique. ). Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1931.
• Iaroslav Lebedynsky: Les Cosaques. Une société guerrière entre libertés et pouvoirs. Ukraine, 1490-1790. Éditions Errance, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-87772-272-4 .
• Iaroslav Lebedynsky: Histoire des Cosaques. Terre Noire, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-911179-00-5 .
• Theodore Mackiw : Ivan Mazepa, Hetman of Ukraine and Imperial Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, 1639–1709. A historical sketch. In: Yearbook of Ukraine Studies. Vol. 20, 1983, ISSN  0178-0565 , pp. 127-151 (special reprint: (= Ukrainian Free University. Varia. Vol. 27, ZDB -ID 564992-4 ). Ukrainian Free University, Munich 1984).
• Theodore Mackiw: Mazepa's title of prince in the light of his letter to Emperor Josef I. In: Archive for cultural history . Vol. 44, 1962, pp. 350-356, doi : 10.7788 / akg-1962-jg19 .
• Theodore Mackiw: Mazepa in the light of contemporary German sources. Verlag Ukraine, Munich 1963 (At the same time: Frankfurt am Main, University, dissertation of July 21, 1950: The Ukrainian Cossack in the light of German literature in the first half of the 18th century. ).
• Orest Subtelny: The Mazepists. Ukrainian Separatism in the Early Eighteenth Century (= East European Monographs. 87). East European Monographs, Boulder CO 1981, ISBN 0-914710-81-8 .

Web links

Commons : Iwan Masepa  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Iwan Masepa in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Robert K. Massie : Peter the Great. His life and his time. Special edition. Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main, 1986, ISBN 3-7610-8412-9 , pp. 458 f.