On 15 May 1654 Muscovite armies invaded Lithuanian Belarus' and entered eastern Ukraine. The primary objective in this opening campaign was clearly the recapture of Smolensk and the west Rus' territories annexed to the grand duchy of Lithuania. Three large army groups entered Lithuanian territory: a main army of 40,000 men under the command of the tsar himself, moving from Viaz'ma towards Smolensk; a second army of 15,000 under V P. Sheremetev, advancing from Velikie Luki against Polotsk and Vitebsk; and another army of 15,000 under A. N. Trubetskoi, moving from Briansk towards Minsk. A smaller force under L. Saltykov also advanced from Pskov, and Khmel'nyts'kyi sent some 20,000 Ukrainian cossacks under Colonel Zolotarenko to invade Belarus' from the south. Muscovite troop deployments in Ukraine were considerably smaller: 4,000 troops under A. V Buturlin were sent to reinforce Zolotarenko, and 2,500 troops went to garrison Kiev. Another 7,000 Muscovite troops held the Belgorod Line against Tatar attack.[66]
The invasion of Belarus' and Lithuania was strikingly successful. The Muscovites had overwhelming numerical superiority (Lithuanian Grand Hetman Janusz Radziwill, charged with the task of throwing them back, had no more than 6,000—7,000 effectives); their operation had been planned long in advance;
and the tsar's presence with the army provided better command-and-control than if supreme command had remained back at Moscow. In June the Muscovites took Belaia, Dorogobuzh and Roslavl'; by late August they had captured Mstislavl', Orsha, Mogilev and the capital at Vilnius; Smolensk fell to them in September, and Vitebsk in November.
In the summer of 1655 Sweden's King Karl X Gustav (r. 1654-60) began his own invasion of the Commonwealth in order to exploit the Muscovites' successes in Lithuania while pre-empting their advance towards his own intended sphere of influence in the region. As most Polish and Lithuanian troops were already engaged against the Muscovites the invading Swedes were able to make remarkable progress in just a few months - and their sudden gains threatened to usurp everything the Muscovites had won to that point. On 13 June Swedish troops landed in Riga and seized Dunaburg, then under siege by the Muscovites; on 17 August, a week after Muscovite troops had taken Vilnius, Lithuanian Grand Hetman Janusz Radziwillll signed the Treaty ofNiej- dany, recognising Karl Gustav as grand duke over all of Lithuania; and on 8 September the Swedes entered Warsaw, forcing Jan Kazimierz to flee into exile in Silesia.
Karl Gustav had no desire to see the Muscovites seize Riga or any other part of the Baltic coast, but he had been prepared to accept Muscovite control over the southern Lithuanian hinterland if this kept his peace with Muscovy while he finished off the Poles.17 But Moscow was not interested in such a compromise, for it had revised its original war aims: A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin, the rising star of Muscovite diplomacy, now considered it paramount that Muscovy secure its dominion over occupied Lithuania and win access to the Baltic, and he therefore urged the tsar to negotiate a peace withJan Kazimierz and an alliance with him against the Swedes. This was against the advice of Khmel'nyts'kyi, who was seeking to form a Swedish-Ukrainian alliance which would finish off the Commonwealth and guarantee the liberation of right-bank Ukraine. In fact Ordin-Nashchokin so felt the need for haste that Muscovy declared war upon Sweden in May 1656 while peace talks with the Poles at Vilnius were still in their preliminary stage. A treaty with the Commonwealth was finally signed in November, but it was only for an armistice, not a permanent peace and true alliance, for the Muscovite envoys at Vilnius had not been satisfied with Jan Kazimierz's offer to cede Smolensk and Seversk and had held out for even larger concessions: the cession of Lithuania, or the 'election' of Tsar Alexis as Poland's king upon the death of Jan Kazimierz.
17 L. V Zaborovskii, Rossiia, Rech' Pospolitaia, i Shvetsiia v seredine XVII v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), pp. 118,121.
Muscovy's war with Sweden mostly took the form of operations against small Swedish garrisons in Karelia, Izhorsk and Livonia. In the summer and autumn of 1656 Muscovite forces were able to capture Dunaburg, Koknes and Iur'ev (Dorpat), but they failed to take Riga even after three months' siege because they had no fleet to blockade its reinforcement by sea. The Swedes launched a counter-offensive the next year, defeating the Muscovites at Walk but failing to capture Gdov.
In December 1658 the breakdown of peace talks with the Commonwealth and Vyhovs'kyi's betrayal in Ukraine forced Tsar Alexis to sign a three-year armistice with the Swedes. Sweden was ready for truce; the Polish and Lithuanian hetmans had joined in confederatio against the Swedes and had brought back Jan Kazimierz, who had regained the military initiative; and Karl X Gustav's operations against Prussia and Denmark had provoked the Danes, Prussians, Austrians and Dutch to join the Commonwealth in coalition against him. His sudden death in February 1660 gave his successor, Karl XI, the opportunity to sue for peace while terms were still favourable. The Treaty of Oliva (May 1660) recognised Hohenzollern sovereignty over Prussia in exchange for recognition of Swedish control over Livonia and Jan Kazimierz's abandonment of his claim to the Swedish throne. The Treaty of Kardis (June 1661) established a permanent peace between Sweden and Muscovy and compelled Tsar Alexis to return to Swedish control the Baltic towns and territories he had captured since 1656.
The 1656-8 armistice between Muscovy and the Commonwealth had not bound Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi from continuing his operations against the Poles, or the Crimean Tatars from continuing their raids into Ukraine and southern Muscovy. Khmel'nyts'kyi's attempts to bring Moldavia and Wallachia into alliance with him and George II Rakoczi, along with Zaporozhian and Don cossack raids on Azov, had the effect of provoking a rapprochement between the Poles and the Turks and Tatars. The sultan and khan launched a punitive invasion of Moldavia and Wallachia and offered Jan Kazimierz detachments to strike against the Ukrainians and the Don cossacks.
Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi died in July 1657. His secretary Ivan Vyhovs'kyi was proclaimed the new hetman. From the start three problems confronted Vyhovs'kyi: it was now clear that any chance for resumed alliance with the khanate required reconciliation with the Poles as well; his own authority was being challenged by Pushkar, the colonel of the Poltava regiment, and by Barabash, the Zaporozhian ataman, who enjoyed the protection of the Muscovite general Romodanovskii; and there was growing dissatisfaction in Ukraine with the Muscovite protectorate. Moscow diplomats had been ready at the Vilnius talks (from which Ukrainian envoys had been excluded) to trade Ukraine for Polish recognition of Tsar Alexis's future right to the Polish throne; and in preparation for resumed hostilities with the Commonwealth Moscow was establishing more garrisons in Ukraine and requisitioning army provisions and transport at ruinous rates.[67]
When Muscovy's war with the Commonwealth resumed in Lithuania in September 1658 it was therefore without a secured Ukrainian rear. On 6 September Vyhovs'kyi signed a treaty with the Poles at Hadiach, by terms of which Jan Kazimierz agreed to reincorporate Ukraine in the Commonwealth as a grand duchy of Ruthenia, recognise Vyhovs'kyi as grand duke subject to the king alone, and dismantle the Uniate Church (although the Sejm ratified but never honoured this treaty, Hadiach henceforth served as an alternative model of Ukrainian autonomy for those cossacks unable to trust in Muscovite protectorate).
Military alliance with Vyhovs'kyi's cossacks allowed Jan Kazimierz to redouble his efforts against the Muscovites on the Lithuanian front. The war here took an increasingly brutal turn involving long sieges and ambushes provoking the Muscovites to cruel reprisals against the local population - thereby intensifying resistance to Muscovite occupation. Fighting Vyhovs'kyi and his Tatar and Polish allies in Ukraine also required much larger Muscovite forces than the Ukrainian theatre had previously seen. G. G. Romodanovskii's corps had some success against them at Lokhvitsa, but S. I. Pozharskii's corps was ambushed and crushed at Konotop in July 1659. Muscovite forces then began to withdraw from Ukraine to regroup at Sevsk. Fortunately for Moscow, its protectorate over Ukraine - at least over its left bank - was saved at this moment by a cossack revolt against Vyhovs'kyi. Muscovite armies exploited this revolt and re-entered Ukraine. In September 1659 Vyhovs'kyi was deposed and Muscovite troops awarded the hetmanate to Bohdan Khmel'nyts'kyi's son Iurii.
67
N. I. Kostomarov, 'Getmanstvo Vygovskogo', in his