This overwhelming defeat was the signal for a general uprising of the oppressed Ukrainian peasantry. The fire of revolt spread rapidly through the province of Kiev and throughout eastern Ukraine. Everywhere manor houses were burned, the nobles and their families were killed and the country was caught up in a savage civil war which threatened Polish control of the entire region. It was not only a struggle of the Kozaks but of the entire Orthodox Ukrainian population which was now seeking redress for all the cruelty and oppression which it had suffered. To add to the confusion, King Wladyslaw died on the same day as the battle of Korsun and under the loose Polish constitution, months were required before a new King could be elected. Never before had such a storm been unleashed. It would have been a simple matter for Khmelnitsky to have marched across Poland and menaced or taken Warsaw, but he had no desire to be at the head of a peasant uprising. The same dualism that had existed between the Kozaks and the peasantry, and the pride of the Kozak officers who felt that they were on a par with the Poles prevented him from taking this solution. Instead, he sent a letter a few weeks later to the Polish King as if he were still alive and set forth the main Kozak demands. They were, as can be well imagined, the restoration of the Orthodox Church, the doubling of the number of registered Kozaks, and the restoration of the old Kozak rights which had been abolished in 1638. The Polish government seemed inclined to accept them and in addition steps were taken whereby the marriage of Helen to Czaplinski was annulled and she married Bohdan in accordance with the Orthodox rites. Just at this moment, when it seemed as if Khmelnitsky and the Kozaks would effect some solution of their problem with the Poles, Prince Jarema Wisniowiecki sprang into action. One of the great landowners on the left bank of the Dnyeper, he was a descendant of that Prince Dmytro who had been one of the founders of the Sich a century earlier. Now as a convert to the Roman Catholic Church, he set himself to wipe out the Kozak movement with fire and sword. By far the ablest and the most warlike of the Polish magnates, he assumed the lead of the Polish opposition to Khmelnitsky and marched through the Ukrainian regions, giving no quarter and devastating ruthlessly all the Ukrainian villages. The result might have been foreseen.