![]() ![]() Meanwhile, the indefatigable Khmelnytsky, who needed to defeat the crown army at any cost (otherwise the uprising that he had put up would have ended up with deaths by impaling) dealt Potocki one more powerful psychological blow. Colonel Korycki frankly admitted in a letter to the Samdormir voivode Dominik Zaslawski: “…ours will not stand up to them and will all die, together with the son of His Grace Governor of Krakow (Mikolaj Potocki) who can sing the requiem right now…” The terrible news of the registered Cossacks’ mutiny had an oppressive effect on the punitive army’s command. According to the noble Bielchacki, the crown hetman “wished to go and help them lift the siege, expecting assistance from the generals who were not exactly in a hurry.” Another 2,000 soldiers joined them in a short while. Gonfalons were sluggishly gathering near Cherkasy, and only the fast approach of Polish Hetman Martin Kalinowski prompted the old Potocki to take active actions.įive thousand elite soldiers with the two hetmans at the head marched to Chyhyryn, crossed the river Tiasmyn, and encamped in the field. ![]() He was unable to rush to his beloved son’s rescue in good time because reinforcements from Prince Jeremiah Wisniowiecki and other Polish magnates had not yet arrived to join the punitive units. On the same day, May 2, Stefan’s father Mikolaj Potocki, the Crown Hetman of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, received this stunning piece of news. Stefan Potocki’s soldiers, under siege near Zhovti Vody, were in a really catastrophic situation. Six regiments of experienced registered Cossacks “did not shame themselves in the memory of their descendants and took the side of gallant Sich Cossacks,” a well-known historian Valerii Smolii says. The Cossack hetman managed to win over the registered Cossacks. ![]() Khmelnytsky made brilliant use of psychological warfare tactics in his native Cherkasy region – in the 1648 battles near Zhovti Vody and Korsun. The hetman employed methods of psychological warfare in many battles, especially in the formidable year of 1648, at the beginning of the Liberation War. Disinformation often helped Khmelnytsky spread panic and a sense of no confidence in their own strength among his enemies. It is the great Bohdan who set up a powerful intelligence service in the Cossack Army. Taras CHUKHLIB, director of the Research Institute of Cossacks at the Institute of the History of Ukraine, is convinced that the glorious Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the first to conduct this kind of wars in Central and Eastern Europe. Wars of this kind have been waged by and against various peoples and countries since times immemorial. Military experts believe that the so-called psychological and informational warfare is the most effective weapon in fighting any enemy. ![]()
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