Mazepa took the chance. He secretly set what troops he had in motion and led them to the camp of Charles before any of them were aware that a revolt was going on. Peter took immediate action and sent a Russian force to burn Baturyn, the capital of Mazepa, massacred the garrison and destroyed a large part of his supplies. This made it very difficult for the hetman to rally to his standards large numbers of the Kozaks and to spread the revolt far and wide through the Ukrainian lands. During the winter both Peter and Mazepa engaged in large scale propaganda. The former denounced Mazepa as a Pole and a Catholic and ordered the Kozak officers to meet at Hlukhiv and elect another hetman. This time he designated Ivan Skoropadsky. He also won back several of the officers who had gone with Mazepa to the Swedish camp. For his part, Mazepa sent word through the whole of Ukraine that he was now determined to free Ukraine once and for all from Muscovite domination and he urged all Ukrainian patriots to rally to his cause. The Tsar further ordered the authorities of the Orthodox Church to utter anathemas against Mazepa and the Church willingly complied, although Mazepa had been their most munificent donor during his entire period as hetman. Mazepa’s estates were confiscated and distributed to the officers who had remained loyal and the townspeople humbly assured Peter of their fidelity. In a word it was very difficult to stir up effective revolt, so carefully had Mazepa covered his steps and negotiations in advance of his declaration of rebellion. His main success lay in winning over the Kozaks of the Zaporozhian Sich. These doughty fighters for the old rights of the Host had long been opposed to Mazepa and to his policy of favoring the Tsar. They had been opposed also to the introduction of serfdom or practical serfdom in the country. Nevertheless, when they saw that the hetman had taken the final step, the Sich began to swing toward the side of Mazepa and Charles, and soldiers soon began to arrive in the Swedish camp. Yet their aid was not as important as it would have been a century earlier, for the Sich too had lost much of its original glory and prowess. There were no longer the abundant supplies of arms and artillery that had been there in the days when the Kozaks gathered and prepared their expedition against whoever seemed the most profitable foe. Charles moved southward toward the Sich but he was held up at Poltava, which refused to surrender to him. In the meanwhile the Russian armies in Ukraine had attacked and captured the Sich by treachery and then, in defiance of the terms of surrender, massacred and tortured a large part of the garrison. The rest escaped into Tatar territory and set up a Sich near the mouth of the Dnyeper.