It is fair to presume that had Peter lived, he would ultimately have wiped out the Host. As Tsar he had no use for any factor in Russian life which reminded him too strongly of the past and which could find no parallel in Europe. The Kozak Host as the government of Russian Ukraine seemed to him superbly out of date. Its leaders still claimed to be entitled to the rights and liberties which they had enjoyed when they joined Moscow. They continued a military organization of the past and as Peter had abolished the old streltsy, the old Muscovite army, so he would the Kozaks. The ambitious monarch had already realized one thing which perhaps had not impressed itself so deeply upon the Kozak officers. They were to a certain degree outmoded as a military force. His long struggle with Charles XII had shown him that the irregular cavalry of the past, the Kozak strength, was not so fitted to cope with the trained armies of Western Europe as they had been with the mobile cavalry of the Turks and Tatars. With Russia interfering more and more in European quarrels, Peter needed the manpower of Ukraine. He did not need the Kozaks and his practical mind was only too ready to believe that the Host was no longer of service. It could, however, be employed to advantage in the far southeast, and so thousands of Kozaks were sent there on practically constant military service, where again their losses were tremendous. With the death of Peter, the era of rapid westernization spent its force. The Tsar’s successor and widow, Catherine I, with her favorite, Menshikov, did not have the energy of her late husband. She was not so permeated with the spirit of ruthless change and not so sure of her position that she could alienate large classes of the population. Difficulties were again appearing along the Turkish border and it seemed to the governing powers that the aid of the Kozaks might be useful, if hostilities broke out. Besides, the country was becoming dangerously underpopulated as a result of Peter’s inhuman methods, his excessive taxation, his deportations and his drawing off of thousands of Kozaks to practically certain death in the swamps of the north.