♦They invade the Ukraine.♦ Meantime the Turks, accompanied by the Tartars, had appeared in great force before the camp at Kotzim. The Polish commander, terrified at their numbers, soon surrendered, and the whole garrison was put to the sword. But instead of advancing into the heart of Poland, Köprili turned to the right into the Ukraine, where the Muscovites, who also laid claim to that territory, now lined the Borysthenes with 100,000 men. Hearing that he was occupied in besieging small places in the Ukraine, John promised to render a good account of him before the close of the campaign. He kept his word. ♦Campaign of 1674.♦ While the Turks drove the Muscovites beyond the river, he suddenly appeared in Podolia and besieged Bar. The Sultan, who was distracted by news of intrigues at his capital and the advance of the Sophy upon Babylon, suddenly broke up his camp, and made for Silistria. The Tartars disappeared at the sound of “the Polish hurricane,” as they called Sobieski; and John was left to deal with the hapless country which had but just suffered from the Ottoman invasion. ♦John winters in the Ukraine.♦ He could see no mode of protecting its peasants from the yoke of the nobility but to place his army in winter quarters in the neighbourhood, and to teach the cavalry by his own example what clemency and what self-sacrifice they ought to show towards a subject people. Resistance was only to be expected; for his haughty hussars had never before passed a winter away from their estates. But when they saw their king take up his abode in the miserable town of Braclaw, where the scarcity of forage increased the hardships of the season, the Polish cavalry submitted without a murmur. ♦The Lithuanians desert him.♦ Not so, however, did the Lithuanians. The king had assigned to Paz the town of Bar, the most comfortable post on the frontiers. Yet that general did not approve of the innovation, and taking the law into his own hands marched home with his army. This defection was a great blow to the king. He had begun to invest Kaminiec, and had opened negotiations for an alliance with Muscovy. He now saw himself obliged to narrow his plans, and to confine himself to the defensive. The desertion of Paz aroused the strongest indignation in Poland, and he was forced to ask the king’s pardon; but he could not now repair the mischief. His disbanded troops were amusing themselves with pillaging their own country,[61] and there was no chance at present of rallying them round their standards.