ТHЕ PETER-MAZEPA ALLIANCE came to а sudden end in the autumn of 1708, at the height of the Great Northern War (1700-1721) fought Ьу Muscovy and Sweden, assisted Ьу their respective allies, in the Baltics. At the start of the war, Sweden appeared to have the upper hand. Ater defeating Muscovy's аІІу Augustus the Strong of Poland and forcing him to step down, the young and ambitious king of Sweden, Charles ХІІ, began his march on Moscow. Peter was in retreat, using scorched-earth tactics to slow his enemy's advance.
Such destructive measures exacerbated the old grievances of the Cossack elites, pushing them away from Peter and toward Charles. The Cossack colonels had complained for years to Mazepa about Peter's use of Cossack egiments outside the Hetmanate, especially to dig canals in and around St. Petersburg, the future capital of the Russian Empire, which the tsar had founded in 1702. There the Cossacks died like flies from cold and disease. Moreover, Peter's introduction of new taxes and administrative reforms threatened to turn the Hetmanate into а regular province of the Muscovite state, not its privileged enclave. АІІ that, argued the colonels, violated the protectorate agreement concluded Ьу Bohdan Кhmelnytsky with Muscovy.
Mazepa corresponded with the Polish allies of Charles ХІІ and explored his foreign-policy options but refused to act. Only when the Swedish king decided to make а detour to Ukraine on his way to Moscow, and the tsar refused to help with any troops-Mazepa was supposed to defend the Hetmanate on his own and burn the towns and villages in Charles' s path-did the hetman yield to the demands of the colonels and switch sides. Muscovy was not performing its primary function-the defense of the Hetmanate under the numerous agreements with the Cossack hetmans. It was time to think of another option even in Left-Bank Ukraine. The Cossack officers began to study the conditions of the fifty-year-old Union of Hadiach. In November 1708, with а group of trusted courtiers and а small detachment of Cossacks, Mazepa left his capital of Baturyn and joined the advancing army of Charles ХІІ.
The battle for the loyalty of the Cossacks and the inhabitants of the Hetmanate had begun. It was carried on mainly through proclamations issued by Peter, to which Mazepa responded in kind. The so-called war of manifestos lasted from the fall of 1708 to the spring of 1709. The tsar accused Mazepa of treason, calling him а Judas and even ordering that а mock order of St. Judas be prepared for awarding to Mazepa once he was captured. Mazepa rejected the accusations. Like Vyhovsky before him, he regarded relations between the tsar and the hetman as contractual. As far as he was concerned, the tsar had violated the Cossack rights and freedoms guaranteed to Bohdan Кhmelnytsky and his successors. His loyalty, argued the hetman, was not to the sovereign but to the Cossack Host and the Ukrainian fatherland. Mazepa also pledged his loyalty to his nation. "Moscow, that is, the Great Russian nation, has always been hateful to our Little Russian nation; in its malicious intentions it has long resolved to drive our nation to perdition," wrote Mazepa in December 1708.
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Serhii Plokhy. The Gates of Europe
