The Kozaks of the Sich, eternally ready for battle or for raids, became as it were a replica of the various orders of military knights that had played such a role in the area of the Baltic Sea and in the crusades. Here was a group of men ready to fight the battle for Christianity and the Orthodox faith against the apparently invincible Mohammedans. Yet it was also a democratic system. In the general gatherings of the Kozaks every man was free to speak his own mind, depending only on the permission of his fellows. There was no set rule of procedure. Human life was cheap and a man might easily pay with his own for an unpremeditated insult. He had only himself to blame and no one else cared a rap, if one Kozak or another perished in a brawl. Any man could rise to prominence if he was able in one way or another to sway the assembly. There was no post barred to him because of age or rank or previous existence. It was a man’s world in the full sense of the world. It was a free world in a way that was not true of life anywhere else in the conquered and subjugated Ukraine. Yet when we emphasize this side of life at the Sich, we can never forget that the Sich was located in an exposed position subject at any moment to the attack of powerful and unscrupulous enemies. It was absolutely essential that there should be unrelenting vigilance and strict discipline. If the Kozaks were to live at all in the area which they had picked out, they could not engage in meaningless squabbles, in martial disorder, and in perfect anarchy. They met the situation in a democratic way. The general assembly would meet and formally elect a hetman to whom they gave the horsetail standard and the mace of office. His word was law. He had all the powers of an army commander. He could punish even with death any who disobeyed his orders or showed cowardice in the face of danger. His power was absolute and limited by no constitutional restrictions. Yet at the ending of his term of office, he was liable to be questioned by the assembly and if he had not used his powers for the good of the Sich, he could be tried by the rough justice of his comrades and receive whatever punishment they desired to inflict. It was a rough system administered by rough, brave men, and while it was not fitted for a normal community of peaceful citizens, it was admirably suited to men living beyond the established frontier, every one of whom had faced death many times both from the enemy and from the storms of nature. It was a new system which had nothing in common with the elaborate system of aristocratic feudalism and the aristocratic republic of the squires of Poland or with the personal autocracy of the Muscovite tsar. The Kozak Host of the Zaporozhian Sich was a law unto itself.