Yet all this was temporary. Time was clearly playing on the side of the Catholics and the Uniats. Sooner or later it was certain that there would come a moment when the Orthodox opposition would become negligible, when the Orthodox lords would cease to have the power to defend their coreligionists in the Polish government or on their estates, when the brotherhoods could be broken up or suppressed or won over. Steps were already taken in Wilno to expel the Orthodox from the Churches despite the pleas of the vast majority of the population. There was only one factor that might interfere. It had already appeared as a dark shadow when the King endeavored to seize the Monastery of the Caves at Kiev. That was the appearance of an armed band of Nalyvaykans, as they were called, within the walls of the monastery, who were ready to fight for the Orthodox Church. It was a grim portent and a warning, had the King and his advisors been prepared to heed it, for these men were a branch of the Kozaks of the Dnyeper valley and the Kozaks were destined to bear in the future the burden of the struggle for Ukrainian freedom. CHAPTER FIVE _THE KOZAKS_ The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a brilliant and colorful age, an age of high thinking and of great adventure. Not since the age of the Vikings had men of courage and of determination dared so much upon the high seas. The Spanish conquistadores settled the whole of South America. They laid their hands upon the fabulous wealth of Mexico and Peru. Well armed and fearless, a handful of Europeans dared to face thousands of the Aztecs and the Incas and came off victorious in the name of the Christian religion. The English in still smaller and more manageable boats swarmed across the Atlantic Ocean and attacked the rich and treasure-laden galleons wherever they found them and then, early in the seventeenth century, they laid the foundations of their colonies in America. Europe meanwhile was torn by religious wars, as the new ideas of Protestantism sought to extend their sphere of influence.