A new cause of discord arose over the Zaporozhian Sich. The Kozaks of the Sich, still in a sense the real frontiersmen, argued that the choice of hetmans should be conducted there and they developed an open hostility toward the officers and the Kozaks of the permanent regimental and territorial organizations that existed in the more settled part of the country. It only added more unpleasantness, for the Kozaks of the Sich did not realize that it required a consistent policy if the Host was to maintain itself under the new conditions. At the same time the international pot continued to boil. Both Moscow and Poland, busily engaged in fighting one another, angled for the support of the Kozaks. Both sides in cases of necessity made liberal promises. The Poles were only too willing to give the Kozaks anything for which they asked when they were driving back the Muscovites; the Muscovites were willing to extend political and financial assistance whenever the Kozaks were needed to turn back the Poles. As soon as discord raised its head in the Kozak ranks, the favorable offers were withdrawn, the Polish magnates renewed their claims to Ukrainian land and the Muscovites began to abrogate the Kozak privileges granted at the Treaty of Pereyaslav. At times the Turks and the Crimean Tatars, their vassals, took a hand in the game but they likewise did not carry out any consistent policy and did not try to fulfil the promises which they had made a short time before to the Kozak leaders. Under such conditions everybody suffered, but the Ukrainian population, which might have profited by the duel between Poland and Moscow, fared the worst. The land was terribly devastated and there came the period graphically called by the Ukrainians of this and later periods the Ruin. The helpless population, Kozak and non-Kozak alike, wandered from the right bank of the Dnyeper to the left bank. They went on into the land of free communes which was outside the Hetman state and then discovered that Moscow would not confirm their privileges there, since it was regarded as purely Muscovite territory. Then with a slight change or rumors of change in the west, the trend of wandering reversed its course and the settlers streamed back to the right bank, only to be again disillusioned and resume their melancholy travels. Under such conditions it is idle to seek for a coherent history. It is impossible even to speak of Polish and Muscovite parties among the Kozaks, for regiments and companies swung from side to side with appalling rapidity, handicapped their more able hetmans and either killed them or discredited them so thoroughly that they received little hearing at either Warsaw or Moscow.