♦Cossack revolt caused by the oppression of the serfs.♦ Of the grinding oppression under which the serf class laboured we have already spoken. Some efforts had been made by Casimir the Great (1347) to give them a legal footing in the state; and he had even succeeded so far as to provide that the murderer of a serf should pay a fine of ten marks.[21] But his regulations were soon broken, and the condition of the peasants in the outlying districts became more hopeless than before. ♦The Cossacks.♦ The situation of the Cossacks was peculiar. Inhabiting a wild though fertile country on the borders of Poland and Muscovy called the Ukraine (Slavonic for “borderland,” exactly the French “marche”), they had long retained their independence, and had only been incorporated in the kingdom by the wise measures of Stephen Bathori (1582). ♦Under Stephen Bathori.♦ Originally deserters from the armies of the republic, they had betaken themselves to the almost inaccessible isles of the Borysthenes, where they led a life of plunder in defiance of their neighbours. Their piratical skiffs were an object of terror even to the dwellers on the Golden Horn. Bathori did all that lay in his power to conciliate a people who, in spite of their savage habits, were noted for their fidelity. He gave them the city of Tretchimirow in Kiowia, and formed them into regiments, for the defence of Poland against the Tartars. They were granted the power of electing their own hetman, or Grand General, who, on doing homage to the king, received as the symbols of his office a flag, a horsetail, a staff, and a looking-glass. James Sobieski in his historical work[22] notices the value to a retreating Polish army of their waggon-camps, which they called “Tabors,”[23] and which they seem to have drawn up after the fashion of a Dutch “laager.” Unfortunately their independence was confined to the period of military service. The Ukraine, like other parts of the kingdom of Poland, was divided into estates of crown land, which, like fiefs,[24] were held by the nobles on condition of furnishing the state with troops. But this condition was seldom fulfilled even in Great Poland, and never in a distant province, such as the Ukraine, where all the nobles were absentees.