Khmelnitsky, completely disillusioned, began to look for other allies. Sweden seemed the most promising, for it was then at the height of its power. It was invading Poland and was on such terms of friendship with Moscow that no open criticism could be made of the negotiations. His relations with Moldavia became entangled with the hopes of Lupul to capture Wallachia and these only led to the death of his son Timosh during the siege of Sochava, shortly before his submission to the Tsar. His plans for a great union of the Orthodox countries were definitely disrupted and it was not long before Sweden too proved a broken reed. In the spring of 1657, he was taken ill. To please him, his son Yury, a boy of fourteen who had shown no signs of having a strong character, was elected hetman over Ivan Vyhovsky, who had been secretary to Bohdan and was familiar with all of his plans and negotiations. Then the father died on July 27, 1657, was buried at his birthplace of Subotiv. It is difficult to evaluate correctly the work of Bohdan Khmelnitsky. There can be no question that he was an able and sincere patriot. He towered in ability, in military skill and in political vision high above all the hetmans who preceded and followed him. He became in a real sense the outstanding diplomatic figure of Eastern Europe during the years when he was at the height of his power. He definitely moved the Ukrainian, or more accurately, the Kozak question from one of purely internal Polish politics to the international arena where it deserved to be placed. In this connection he was the first of the hetmans who revived the Ukrainian claim to be a complete and sovereign state, able to negotiate as an equal with the various countries which were taking part in the game of Eastern European politics. Yet the defect and the tragedy of Khmelnitsky, and with him of the Ukrainian people, lay in the fact that he did not realize soon enough the essential problem which required an immediate solution. That was the relationship of the Kozak Host to all the other classes of the Ukrainian population. For Ukraine to rally all of its strength and resources, it was necessary to call upon all classes of the population. This was no easy task in the seventeenth century, when political thought concentrated upon the rights of the nobility, even more than upon the well being of the peasantry and the towns. The Polonization of the gentry had deprived the Ukrainians of exactly that class of their population which would have been most able to steer the course of the ship of state. The Kozaks and especially the Kozak officers felt themselves called upon to assume the role of a new nobility. At the same time they had so long conceived of themselves as a military group that they hesitated to make the transformation into a permanent administrative organization.