The seventeenth century, which saw the settlement of the English in America, witnessed a shift in the balance of power in Eastern Europe and no one had contributed more to this than had Khmelnitsky and the successful revolt of the Kozak Host. The sudden awakening of the Ukrainians politically to a sense of their importance was an event of more than usual significance, and they undoubtedly hoped to play the role of a neutral state between Poland and Moscow. To both contestants they presented an entirely new situation. The Poland of the beginning of the century was mortally wounded by the Kozak revolt. At the beginning of the century, the King of Poland had dared to dream of establishing himself in the Kremlin, and while he failed, the results were not disastrous. The lack of success in the Polish Kozak policy was disastrous, for the great revolt had not only torn away from Poland a large part of its eastern lands but had encouraged the Swedish wars which wrecked the country still further. The damage was done at Pereyaslav, for an honest acceptance of the demands of Khmelnitsky up to that moment might easily have permitted the restoration of the Republic under a different form and have allowed it to continue strong and powerful. The magnates and the Polish Catholic authorities would not hear of any settlement. They were neither ready nor able to support the thoroughly militant ideas of Wisniowiecki which would have laid upon them a heavy and continuous burden, perhaps beyond the power of the state, but which would have provided a consistent policy, the success or failure of which might be calculated in advance. They would not accept a policy of compromise, even when Khmelnitsky offered it, lest it injure their dignity. Thus again Polish wavering promised nothing but ill to the state as it had when the Kozak question was still a purely internal problem. Moscow welcomed the control over the Host. The defeat of the Golden Horde in the sixteenth century had in a way freed the hands of the Tsars. The submission of Khmelnitsky advanced their boundaries to the Dnyeper. Yet there was a definite fly in the ointment. The Kozaks were liberty-loving people, they were accustomed to personal rights, and they formed a serious menace to the monolithic structure in which the Tsar and the Tsar alone possessed absolute rights. If Moscow was to triumph over its old enemy to the west, it was necessary to hold the Kozak Host and if it was to continue its policy, it was necessary to break its influence. Thus Moscow could not rest satisfied with the conditions produced at Pereyaslav. Almost at once it commenced to infringe upon the rights of the Kozaks and to seek to turn them into typical Russian serfs. It knew that its acceptance of the Host would speedily involve it in war with Poland and that there would be a clash in which the loyalty of the Kozaks would be the decisive factor.