MATURATION
The winter of 1713 was full of problems for a small detachment of the Zaporozhian Cossacks who, with Ivan Mazepa at the head, entered into an alliance with Swedish King Charles XII, were defeated by the Russian troops near Poltava, and found temporary shelter in Moldavian lands under the Turkish sultan’s protection. After the death of Mazepa, his closest comrade-in-arms, chancellor-general of the Zaporozhian Host, Pylyp Orlyk, picked up the flag of fighting for Ukraine’s political sovereignty. He was elected hetman of Right-Bank Ukraine in 1710 at the general assembly of Cossack senior officers near Bendery. Having received assurances from Turkish Sultan Ahmet III and Crimean Khan Devlet-Girei to take a joint action against Tsar Peter I, Pylyp Orlyk was drawing up grandiose plans to liberate Ukraine, but Russian messengers bribed the Turkish nobles and changed the situation in their favor.
A treaty was signed, under which Charles XII and Pylyp Orlyk were to leave the territory of Moldova. But the proud and unyielding Swedish king refused to observe these provisions. So he was captured by force. Then came the turn of the Ukrainian hetman. The Tatar cavalry surrounded the house, where he lived with his family, and ordered him to lay down arms. When the door opened and the armed Crimeans came into the room, the 11-year-old Hryhorii drew a small saber and rushed forward, defending his mother and sisters. The Tatars were stunned for a while with this audacity of a teenager and even stepped back, but then they overpowered him and began to strap him to the horse for a punishment. But the khan’s son Qaplan-Girei, with whom he had made friends earlier, when the Orlyks visited the khan’s place, stood up for Hryhorii. The furious Tatars let the boy go, giving him a few thumps. Thus his adult life began.
Mastering, from his childhood, the difficult science of survival and struggle for his own dignity and national interests, Hryhorii carefully heeded the instructions and advice from his wise father. “Wherever you fail to achieve something by force, you should apply knowledge or even craftiness,” he would say, “if you can’t win a victory by a sudden attack, you should make a detour, patiently waiting for a good chance, you should make the events work for you instead of speeding them up. To survive and achieve something in this cruel world, you should learn to know about people, to know how to distinguish their kindheartedness and wickedness, disinterestedness and greed, nobility and meanness, modesty and arrogance, ingenuousness and enviousness, and to successfully play on these character features. Sometimes, to achieve an exalted goal, you can reincarnate yourself but you should never disgrace your good name with ignoble actions.”
On arriving in Sweden, Pylyp Orlyk signed his son up first for the Life Guards and, a year later, for Lund University. This was quite a prestigious educational institution that admitted children from the kingdom’s noble families. Hryhorii made friends with many of them, especially with the son of Sweden’s Chancellor Millern Gustav. Once, at a royal reception, the chancellor introduced the 16-year-old Hryhorii to Charles XII. The hetman’s son was not embarrassed and began a high-society conversation with the king in impeccable Latin, thus arousing unfeigned interest and sincere surprise of the monarch. Seizing the opportunity, he hinted to the king in extremely subtle terms that his knowledge could be still better and he could be of much more use on His Majesty’s service if he received at least a part of the funds once lent to the Swedish army from the Zaporozhian Host’s treasury. Charles XII did not leave this diplomatic step unattended and soon granted the Orlyk family a special stipend and Hryhorii was employed as civil servant with a handsome pay.
The Swedish period of the Orlyks’ life was rather short. The hetman could not sit still with his arms folded. He constantly tried to find allies in order to join forces against the Moscow tsar with the aim of winning Ukraine’s sovereignty. He finally turned to the Turkish sultan for help and settled in Salonika. Meanwhile, the Saxon Chancellor Fleming helped the hetman’s son become a lieutenant, nicknamed de Lazisque, at the Saxon Horse Guards Regiment. But in a few years Moscow spies, who had been really dogging Mazepa’s followers all over Europe, tracked Hryhorii down. Before this, the Poltava Colonel Hryhorii Hertsyk, the hetman’s osavul-general, was caught in Warsaw. Mazepa’s nephew Andrii Voinarovsky, who had been negotiating with the English court, trying to draw their attention to the Ukrainian question, was arrested in Hamburg. They were both taken to Russia and subjected to punishment. The tsarist ambassador Prince Dolgoruky reproached Count Fleming that the son of a high-profile Russian traitor served in the army of Russia’s ally Saxony. Fleming secretly met Hryhorii and explained to him the situation. All he could do was furnish him with new documents and ensure a trouble-free exit to another country.
Thus Hryhorii Orlyk found himself in Austria and then in Poland, where he enlisted in the army as osavul of the Polish crown hetman. In Warsaw, he made a realistic analysis of the current situation in Ukraine. Messengers kept coming from the Hetmanate to the Swedish ambassador to prompt Sweden to go to a new war. But a war against Russia was out the question. The Mazepa followers’ forces were scattered. “If we could coordinate the actions of the Zaporozhian Host and an uprising in Ukraine backed by the Turkish sultan, then something might be achieved,” Hryhorii reflected. But there had to be weighty arguments to bring the Turks round to an alliance with the Ukrainians and a war against the strong Muscovite empire. In Europe, it was perhaps only France that could influence the sultan. It was an old dream of Doroshenko and Mazepa to rely on the powerful French kingdom. Now Hryhorii Orlyk was also toying with this idea.
A MISSION TO PARIS
Meanwhile, the Polish crown hetman, whom Hryhorii served as aide-de-camp, had died. He was succeeded by Poniatowski, a follower to the former Polish King Stanislaw Leszczynski. He knew Orlyk very well and highly valued his bold nature, effusive energy, keen intellect, and ability to find a way out of the most hopeless situations. So he immediately brought him closer to himself and entrusted him with various delicate missions. When it came to dispatching a messenger on a special secret mission to France, there was no better candidature. It was about bringing Leszczynsky back to the Polish throne after the death of the ailing King Augustus II, Elector of Saxony. The former monarch resided in Fontainebleau, France, at the time. Louis XV was married to his daughter, so the idea of reinstating the French king’s father-in-law on the Polish throne came up just at the right time.
To coordinate all the details of this intricate affair, some letters were prepared to the Cardinal of France, Duke Fleury; Foreign Minister de Chauvelin; and the armed forces commander, Marshal Villars. Hryhorii Orlyk was instructed to deliver the letters to France and secretly smuggle Stanislaw Leszczynsky from there. Written on a thin silken cloth, the letters were sewn under the lining of the uniform of Gustav Bartel, Guards Captain of the Swedish King. Orlyk set out to Paris under this nom de guerre.
He paid his first visit to Stalislaw Leszczynsky. Confiding him in the plans of the Polish nobility, he at the same time enlisted the future Polish king’s support in the Ukrainian question. A few days later he met the foreign minister. They discussed for three hours the events in Poland, Sweden, and France. Hryhorii pleasantly surprised Marquis de Chauvelin with his knowledge in the sphere of interstate relations and was telling him with interest about Ukraine, the Cossacks, and the causes of the defeat in the Russian-Swedish war. He revealed in detail the plans of the Austrian Kaiser to prevent, with assistance from Petersburg, the French protege Leszczynsky from ascending the Polish throne.
“The only possibility to thwart these plans is to organize a large-scale action against Russia,” he said emotionally.
Orlyk asked Chauvelin to send him, with letters and powers, to Turkey, where he, assisted by the French ambassador, could persuade the sultan to turn to his father Pylyp Orlyk and forge an alliance with him. Chauvelin replied that he had to consult with Cardinal Fleury. It was important for Orlyk that the minister at least did not reject the possibility of forming a coalition of Sweden, the Polish Kingdom and the Sublime Porte, with assistance from France, against Russia aimed at separating Ukraine from the latter. Saying goodbye, Chauvelin advised Hryhorii to see Voltaire.
“Monsieur Voltaire is now working on the book History of Charles XII, King of Sweden, and it will be interesting and useful for him to communicate with you,” he noted.
Of decisive importance for Hryhorii Orlyk was an audience with Cardinal Fleury who in fact ruled France due to Louis XV’s inability to deal with matters of state.
The hetman’s son knew all this and tried hard to make a good impression on the cardinal. But the sly cardinal had already received all kinds of information on the Ukrainian envoy from Poland and only sought to confirm his impressions during the conversation. “It would be a sin not to involve a person like this into secret intelligence operations,” he thought. “And his being worried so much about the destiny of Ukraine can be also skillfully used in the interests of France. We must only direct him to where the knot of our common problems is tied up.” On his part, Orlyk was ready to accomplish any missions that could be, in the final analysis, in favor of Ukraine.
In the spring of 1730 Hryhorii, disguised as Captain Hag, Louis XV’s Swiss Guards officer, boarded in Marseilles a ship bound for Istanbul. During a stopover in Salonika, he at last met his father after many years of separation. After lengthy recollections and exchange of opinions, he again experienced strong national feelings and a desire to visit Ukraine.
He soon arrived in Istanbul and met the French ambassador Villeneuve who had already received royal instructions to assist Orlyk’s mission and immediately began to introduce him to influential personalities. Once, when he was speaking with the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the latter evinced interest in Switzerland, Captain Hag’s “homeland.” Hryhorii had to read a book on that country all through the night. The next day he was telling the patriarch about it so interestingly and convincingly that none of the listeners had a shadow of a doubt about his Swiss origin. There were also other useful contacts, but internecine fighting and popular unrest in the empire, aimed against the sultan and his vizier, forced Orlyk to cut short his mission and head for France.
THE ADVENTURES OF ORLYK THE DIPLOMAT
On the eve of a new audience with Foreign Minister Chauvelin, Hryhory drew up a memorandum on the basis of his research and conversations with his father, in which he described Turkey’s likely further actions, including its policies towards Europe and Ukrainian lands. He also stated his personal viewpoint on encouraging Turkey to form an alliance with Ukrainian Cossacks to counter the Russian expansion. It was even decided to discuss this memorandum at a Royal Council session. On the whole, the Orlyks’ ideas were accepted. But Cardinal Fleury favored a wait-and-see approach. At the time, there were no tense relations between France and Russia, but this could have happened after the restoration of Stanislaw Leszczynski on the Polish throne — and this would be just the right time for a more detailed discussion of these proposals. But still something could be implemented immediately. As a result, a letter was sent on behalf of Louis XV to Villeneuve with a recommendation to further assist the cause of Hryhorii Orlyk. The hetman’s son also received a royal message to the Crimean khan, urging him to come out against Moscow.
Under the guise of a Persian merchant, who had allegedly arrived in France to sell spices to the royal court, Hryhorii was returning to the Middle East under a new legend. He put up at hotel in Smyrna and began to wait for further instructions from France’s ambassador in Istanbul. Soon a messenger arrived from Villeneuve with recommendations to ride on a caravan across the desert and then, by sea, to Istanbul. The ambassador also reported that the Russian envoy in Turkey, Nepluyev, knew that Hryhory Orlyk had come earlier disguised as Captain Hag, and asked him to be careful and take measures to improve secrecy.
The journey was dragging on and, to crown it all, the caravan was attacked by brigands. Hryhorii and his companion had a hair’s-breadth escape. He was disappointed upon arriving in Istanbul. A coup overthrew the vizier Osman-pasha who had begun preparations for a war with Russia. Uncertainty ruled supreme in the sultan’s palace, so Villeneuve advised Orlyk not to waste time and go to the Crimean khan in Bakhchisarai.
On a summer night a felucca cast off a Turkish quay, with the French doctor La Motte, two janissaries, the captain and two sailors on board. Hryhory, disguised as a doctor, was looking forward to seeing the new Crimean khan Qaplan-Girei, his old friend who once rescued him from a quandary. He was glad to meet Orlyk, and they both recalled the dramatic episode that had happened many years before. Qaplan-Girei took a positive attitude to all the proposals and even promised to persuade the new Turkish vizier to cooperate with the French king. In the end, the khan presented Orlyk with a white Arabian riding horse and handed in letters to the king, the hetman and Stanislaw Leszczynski. He also added orally that, if necessary, he could strike on his own against the Russian army in Ukraine. Qaplan-Girei also cautioned Hryhorii not to go to Istanbul via Moldova because there might be troubles there. He had the information that the bribed Moldovan nobles were ready to capture and extradite him to Moscow.
But it was not accidental that Orlyk chose to travel on land rather than by sea. He was eager to visit the Sich, see the Zaporozhian Cossacks, come to know about their life and morale. Naturally, he did not disclose himself and spoke though a Tatar interpreter. With his heart bleeding, Hryhorii examined the kurins and kept asking about the Cossacks’ life. He wanted so much to tell them that his father longed for his homeland, being kept under arrest or 24-hour strict supervision, in Salonika and that he wished the Ukrainian land well. But he composed himself and did not give in to emotions.
DELICATE MISSIONS
What happened on Feb.1, 1733, was a new turning point in the life of Hryhorii Orlyk. The King of Poland, Augustus II of Saxony died and the diplomatic arena began to implement a carefully devised scheme to put Stanislaw Leszczynsky onto the throne by way of intrigues, bribing and secret diplomacy. A special mission was assigned to Hryhory. He was to immediately rush to Warsaw with secret royal instructions and a million florins for bribing Polish senators.
Convinced that the florins will do their bit, Hryhory then left the Polish capital for Istanbul. Together with the French ambassador, he described to the grand vizier the true picture of what happened after Louis XV’s father-in-law was elected as king of Poland. This would automatically provoke a Russian military expedition to Poland and ascension to the throne of one who can suit Petersburg. To avert this, the Turkish troops and the Crimean khan were to strike on the Russian flanks, while the Swedish troops were to launch an offensive on the Russian capital from the north. After the election of Leszczynski, the vizier was to warn the Russian envoys that, if their country invaded Poland, the sultan would move his army to Ukraine and the Crimean khan would march to Astrakhan.
After successfully accomplishing the intelligence mission and reporting to the cardinal on the atmosphere in Warsaw and Turkey, Orlyk was assigned a new mission: to secretly smuggle Leszczynski himself to Poland across the unfriendly territory of Germany, an ally of Russia and Austria. Thinking over all the possible options, he chose the simplest one: no extravagant escorts and carriages — it is better to disguise themselves as ordinary wayfarers and thus not to draw unnecessary attention. He himself set off on a journey as servant Ernst Bramlak, King Stanislaw was dressed as a German merchant and bore documents of a certain Bower, and the third was a French noble named Andely. They thus reached Warsaw without any problems.
For this successful operation, Louis XV awarded Orlyk an order and an 10,000-ecu diamond and ordered heraldists to prepare a count’s patent in the name of Chevalier de Laziska, a court artist was instructed to paint the count’s portrait, and the queen gifted him her portrait adorned with precious stones. Incidentally, before receiving the count’s title, Hryhory had to make a secret journey to Ukraine, find in Baturyn the priest who had baptized him and take an extract from the church book of births. The journey was rather dangerous, but it filled Hryhory with fresh energy from the native land.
Meanwhile, things were developing to the detriment of Ukraine. Russia moved a large army to Poland, and the newly-elected king failed to properly resist it. France declared war on Austria. Everybody expected a concerted war effort on the part of the Turks and Tatars. Keeping a letter from Louis to Qaplan-Girei with as request to help to Hetman Pylyp Orlyk and the Cossacks to organize liberation struggle, Hryhory went south. However, when all the problems had been settled with the khan, the Russian envoys, who closely followed the developments in the Crimea, raised their activity. They immediately got the information that the old hetman, full of hopes for the liberation of Ukraine, was going to lead his army. In its turn, the tsarist government resorted to as much bribery, intrigues and intimidation as possible to sow confusion in the minds of Cossack senior officers and finally managed to bring them round.
Hryhorii refused to believe this news and decided to go himself to the Hetmanate and see the true state of affairs. Disguised as a Tatar merchant, he reached Right Bank Ukraine via Khotyn and Kamianets, visited the Poltava region, and met some senior Cossack officers. They unanimously claimed that they remembered and respected his father and that the entire Ukraine would follow him if he showed up. At the same time, Hryhorii received information from the entourage of General Keith, commander of the Scottish troops stationed in Ukraine, that Moscow had ordered him to be captured alive or dead. Short of finishing his intelligence mission, he was forced to leave the Ukrainian land.
When a Russian-Turkish war finally broke out, the Porte failed to take advantage of the favorable situation that came about in Europe, and Moscow bribed the Turks into signing a peace treaty. Hryhorii had to go back to Paris. But this was not the end of his intelligence operations. Louis decided to send Orlyk on a secret mission to Turkey as His Royal Majesty’s envoy. Learning this, Moscow categorically opposed this visit and did its utmost for the Turkish side to withhold its permission.
Having gained great experience on the path of secret diplomacy, Hryhorii continued to be a member of the king’s privy cabinet consisting of the foreign minister, ambassadors, counts, and princes. Each of them had a personal code for secret messages. Orlyk used the code ‘1265’ in his ciphered messages, with Ukraine being ‘12,’ Zaporozhains ‘14,’ and the registered Cossacks ‘299.’ Hryhorii had begun using codes in the very first years on the French king’s service. At the time, he saw more than once that letters could be intercepted and their content could be known to the enemy side. This is why he wrote to his father to send him some correspondence codes. Hryhorii remembered that his father had corresponded in this way with the Swedish King Charles XII. The old ways of message encoding were improved in the course of time and, when he was in Frech secret cabinet (The King’s Secret), these methods were more reliable, for they were based on a non-alphabetic code.
Hryhorii Orlyk’s knowledge and skills were of special need for the French court when Elisabeth Petrovna reigned in Russia. France tried to closely follow developments in the Russian foreign policy and gather information from differe4nt sources. One of the “objects of interest” was the young Ukrainian Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky, the brother of a czarina’s favorite. It was decided to try to get information through him on the events in Petersburg. Various options were studied. The French ambassador in Warsaw, de Broglie, suggested sending to the hetman his Berlin University fellow student, the Polish noble Stanislaw Mokranowski. But this looked too straightforward and could result in nothing but short-term contacts.
Orlyk took a more serious approach to this matter by analyzing the hetman’s way of life and features of character. Aware of Rozumovsky’s ill health, he suggested sending a French doctor, Nicolas Gabriel Le Clerc to him. They made sure that everything looked natural and worked out a combination. As a result, Le Clerc became Rozumovsky’s house doctor and stayed at the hetman’s Baturyn palace for five years. Then he moved to Petersburg as a personal doctor of Elisabeth Petrovna. One can only guess what kind of information he could gather to be able to influence high-ranking personalities. And Hryhorii Orlyk, too, tried to seize the opportunity to raise again the Ukrainian question before the king and prompt Rozumovsky to struggle for Ukrainian statehood. But all this fizzled.
THE LAST YEARS
After leaving the diplomatic and intelligence service, Orlyk decided to devote himself to his family. He proposed to Mademoiselle de Dinteville of an old and rich French family. The wedding party was attended by the king and his court retinue. Voltaire presented them with the original copy of his History of Charles XII specially upholstered with red skin bearing the count’s and countess’s coats of arms. Hryhorii also got down to writing a book on the history of Ukraine. He would spend a lot of time in the Paris suburb of Commercy, where their ancestral castle was, and very seldom did he visit his own house in Versailles when the king or ministers wished to see him for some reason.
But he was bored with a quiet and humdrum life. His active and ebullient nature thirsted for action. His wife must have understood this from the very beginning, for she acquired, as a gift to her husband, a cavalry dragoon regiment stationed in Lorraine. It mostly consisted of the Swedes who wore blue coats, for which the unit came to be known as The King’s Blue Swedes. There was also a Cossack company in the regiment.
Very soon, at the head of his regiment, Hryhorii took an active part in the Seven Years’ War which broke out in Europe due to the aggravation of Anglo-French relations over the struggle for colonies and the conflict if interests between Prussia, on the hand, and Austria, France and Russia, on the other. Count Orlyk was granted the rank of marechal de camp (field marshal) and ordered to command one of the three French corps inn Saxony. Owing to his boldness, gallantry and ability to make unconventional decisions, he quickly made an illustrious career, received high decorations and the rank of lieutenant-general. He would lead the attacks of his regiment, without sparing himself, and was wounded. And in November 1759, near the town of Minden, an English rifle bullet inflicted another, this time fatal, wound in his chest.
The Zaporozhian fellow countrymen buried Orlyk on the bank of the Rhine. Tellingly, Hryhorii once suggested that Versailles establish a Cossack Sich, consisting of Ukrainian йmigrйs, near the rapids on this river, a place so reminiscent of Chortomlyk. But his dreams were not destined to come true. Fate decreed that he give his life in a foreign land and not for his fatherland — but he died a dignified death. Louis XV wrote in a letter to his wife, “Madame, I have lost an impeccable noble and France has lost a bold and talented general whose glorious name will always remain the annals of the army. In a great woe that befell us, please find a solace in that Count Orlyk died as befits a man of his lineage and dignity.”
