Thus the two pillars of support of the Ukrainian revival, the cultural work of the Brotherhoods and the power of the Kozaks, were both liquidated in Poland, and Western Ukraine was put entirely at the mercy of the Polish government. The nobles had long since become Polonized and the eighteenth century is a sad period when there seemed even less hope of a revival than there had been in the sixteenth. All that seemed to be left of the old movement was the fanatic faith of the peasant serfs, who clung to their Orthodox religion and their native traditions. Yet what could they effect under the conditions of the time? They could merely grumble and at times break out into desperate revolts. Particularly in the eastern parts of the country and along the Hungarian and Moldavian borders there was a constant state of unrest headed by the Haydamaks. The name apparently comes from a Turkish word for brigand, but the Haydamaks were no ordinary bandits. They were a manifestation of that tendency that had earlier produced the original Kozaks, and had developed in the Ottoman Empire the various Chetniks and other groups which fought stubbornly and often without definite plan for the welfare of the enslaved populations. They could always rely upon the sympathy and protection of the peasants in their raids upon the manor houses and the Jewish merchants who worked for the nobles, for throughout the entire area the collapse of the Kozak movement had brought back the great estates that had existed before the time of Khmelnitsky and the landlords were even more tyrannical and overbearing than they had been before. Their demands for money to supply their western tastes were greater and life was almost impossible for their unfortunate underlings. It was small wonder then that the peasants welcomed the incursions of armed bands to burn and to plunder their oppressors. The result was a wild and turbulent period which made life dangerous but which could not offer, as had the Kozak Host, any prospect of improvement. The Haydamak bands rarely united except for some major operation. The leaders were even more torn by mutual feuds than had been the old Kozak organization, which had been on the way to achieving a stabilized organization. The Zaporozhian Sich, which had returned to Russian territory after a short stay in Turkey, was also only a shadow of its former self. Nevertheless now and again some particularly bold Haydamak leader would get in touch with the Sich and detachments of Kozaks would swarm across the unprotected border to aid them, and in case of defeat the Haydamaks would go back with the Zaporozhians. Yet this no longer had the same force as when the Kozaks would dare to defy even the Sultan of Turkey. The world was becoming settled and the social order had no real place for these doughty champions of liberty and independence.