The Polish government paid no attention until the Kozaks began to plunder the land of the Roman Catholic lords, like the Potockis to the east of the Dnyeper, and until they began to advance to the west and plunder in Volynia and White Ruthenia. Then it sent against them the Hetman of the Republic, Zolkiewski, and finally defeated them at the battle of Lubny in 1596. It was a crushing blow to the Kozaks but it was only temporary, for it was not long before the King, in sore need of troops for foreign wars, called again upon the Kozaks for support and again the whole process of endeavoring to use them in war and suppress them in peace was resumed. In actual practice the Kozaks controlled practically all of Eastern Ukraine and much territory west of the Dnyeper. They represented the conscious active elements of the Ukrainian people and it was no accident that the Archimandrite of the Monastery of the Caves called in the followers of Nalyvayko to protect the Monastery when the King of Poland was trying to seize it for the Uniats. Had they formed a consistent policy, they could at any time have dominated a large part of Poland and forced their will upon the lords. Yet the very strength of the Kozak movement as a military organization was its main weakness. The Kozaks had developed as frontiersmen but it was a long while before they definitely tried to influence the government or to take over the administration of the territory which they controlled. The rough democracy of the Sich was little interested in problems of administration. Even the families of many of the leading Kozaks lived on farms not far from the estates which they were plundering. They had a purely military organization divided into regiments and companies, formed on a territorial basis and they called it the Zaporozhian Host. Thus this powerful force which might cooperate with the various townsmen and interfere in behalf of the peasants rarely went further and it did not attempt to take over many functions of the Polish local administration that it could have done. For its part the Polish government contented itself with sending commissioners to represent it at the meetings of the Host. At times it sent parts of its regular army to discipline the Host or to garrison forts in the areas where it dominated. Yet most of these troops were registered Kozaks and it was a fairly general rule that in case of any emergency, the registered Kozaks would abandon their Polish commanders and take sides with the unregistered.