Kolodziejczyk Dariusz. The Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania (ENG)
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194 part one—chapter three
Aer Selim Giray returned to the throne, in the spring of 1693 he
sent a new envoy named Jokas in order to conrm that the Crimean
oer of mediation was still valid.
544
On 5 July 1693, both Crimean
envoys solemnly declared that the khan intended to persuade the
Porte to restore Podolia and Ukraine to Poland and oered his mili-
tary assistance against the Commonwealth’s enemies.
545
In the fall of
1693, the Crimean envoys were sent back to the khan along with a Pol-
ish envoy, Stanisław Rzewuski. Having reached Selim Giray, who was
wintering in Edirne along with the Ottoman grand vizier, the Polish
envoy insisted that apart from restoring the lands captured in 1672,
the Porte should also cede northern Moldavia to Poland. No agree-
ment was reached and the war was to last ve more years.
546
e Russian conquest of Azov (1696) and the Habsburg victory of
Zenta (1697) nally convinced the Porte to seek a peace. e Treaty
of Karlowitz (1699), negotiated separately between the Ottoman pleni-
potentiaries and the representatives of the four Christian powers, pro-
vided that Poland-Lithuania as well as Russia
547
were no longer obliged
to send gis to the khan, while the Crimean and Budjak Tatars were
strongly prohibited to raid the territories of their Christian neighbors.
e crucial article of the Polish-Ottoman treaty provided for the res-
toration of Podolia and right-bank Ukraine. In return, the Poles had
to evacuate their acquisitions in northern Moldavia.
548
winning French diplomatic support; cf. Artamonov, “Rosja, Rzeczpospolita i Krym,”
pp. 38–39.
544
Jokas had traveled to Poland as an interpreter and envoy already in the years 1684–
1685; see Chowaniec, “Sobieski wobec Tatarszczyzny 1683–85,” pp. 55–58; Wagner,
“Tatarskie elity władzy,” p. 106; in the Arabic script he is referred to as Yoqaş; see
n. 545 below.
545
e document, issued in Warsaw in the residence of the Crown chancellor, is
composed in Polish and invokes the declaration of Dervish Ghazi Mirza made in the
name of Safa Giray, and the more recent declaration, made by Jokas in Polish during
his audience with the king. It is corroborated in Arabic script (written in one hand,
probably by either Dervish or Jokas, or an embassy scribe): şevketlü Safa Gėrey Han
hazretleri tarafından ve cümle Qırım begleri tarafından elçilik ile gelen bende-i Derviş
Mirza, and: şevketlü el-Haci Selim Gėrey Han ‘ali-şan tarafından elçilik ile gelen bende-i
Yoqaş; see AGAD, AKW, Dz. tat., k. 64, t. 5, no. 536.
546
See Piwarski, “Sprawa pośrednictwa tatarskiego,” pp. 371–372.
547
Russia initially hoped for better treaty conditions and concluded at Karlowitz
merely a two-year truce, which was converted into a lasting peace in 1700. Hence, her
formal obligation to pay tribute ceased a year later. In fact, both Warsaw and Moscow
had stopped sending gis to the khans already earlier, when they had entered the war
with the Porte in 1683 and 1686 respectively.
548
e Polish and Ottoman instruments of the “Polish section” of the Treaty
of Karlowitz are published in Kołodziejczyk, Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations,
pp. 581–598; see especially the articles 4–6 regarding the Tatar issues.
in the shade of istanbul and moscow (1671–1783) 195
e Commonwealth and the Crimea during the Great Northern War
Selim Giray abdicated aer the Karlowitz Treaty, asking the Porte
to appoint his oldest son, Devlet Giray, in his stead. e new khan’s
reign began with a raid against Poland, headed by his younger brother,
Nureddin Ghazi Giray. e Porte promptly reacted, ordering the khan
to restore the captured booty and announcing that it would no longer
tolerate Tatar raiding of their northern neighbors. When in 1702 the
Tatars raided Russia, Devlet II Giray paid with his throne and the aged
Selim Giray was reinstalled for the fourth and last time.
549
Aer the new Polish king and the elector of Saxony, Augustus II,
allied with Tsar Peter I of Russia and entered a war against Sweden,
the Swedish troops invaded Poland and Saxony forcing Augustus to
abdicate in 1706 (although he soon cancelled his decision). Already
since 1704, the Polish throne had been claimed by a Swedish creature,
Stanisław Leszczyński, and the Polish nobility was divided into two
factions: a majority supporting Augustus and a minority supporting
Stanisław. In 1709, Charles XII of Sweden led his army against Russia,
assisted by Leszczyński and Ivan Mazepa, the Ukrainian hetman who
hoped to restore the Cossack autonomy with the Swedish support. e
Crimean khan, Devlet II Giray, who had been restored to the throne
in 1708, wanted to join the campaign, but the cautious policy of the
Porte prevented him from doing so.
550
Only aer Charles XII and his
allies, defeated at Poltava, found shelter in the Ottoman fortress of
Bender, the Tatars and Ottomans were dragged into a war with Rus-
sia. In 1711 Mazepa’s successor, Hetman Pylyp Orlyk, entered a for-
mal alliance with Devlet II Giray and accepted the Crimean patronage
over the Ukraine, invoking the seventeenth-century tradition of the
Cossack-Tatar alliance.
551
Later in the same year, Peter the Great
549
Podhorodecki, Chanat krymski i jego stosunki z Polską, p. 234; Le khanat de
Crimée, p. 346.
550
A new political factor, which pushed the Tatars towards a war with Russia, was
the French Jesuit mission, active in Baghchasaray since 1706 and closely cooperating
with the French embassy in Istanbul; see Józef Gierowski, “Krym w polityce Wer-
salu w latach 1704–1709,” in: Węgry-Polska w Europie Środkowej. Historia-Literatura.
Księga pamiątkowa ku czci Profesora Wacława Felczaka. Edited by A. Cetnarowicz, Cs.
Kiss and I. Kovács (Cracow, 1997): 86–92; cf. Gilles Veinstein, “Missionaires jésuites
et agents français en Crimée au début du XVIII
e
siècle,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et
Soviétique 10 (1969): 414–458, esp. p. 424.
551
Orest Subtelny, “e Ukrainian-Crimean Treaty of 1711,” Harvard Ukrainian
Studies 3/4 (1979–1980) = Eucharisterion: Essays presented to Omeljan Pritsak on his
Sixtieth Birthday by his Colleagues and Students, pt. 2: 808–817.
196 part one—chapter three
invaded Ottoman Moldavia but was trapped by Ottoman-Crimean
troops in his camp on the Prut river. e Ottomans missed the oppor-
tunity to entirely humiliate the opponent and dictated quite docile
conditions of a new peace, satised with the promise that the tsar
would restore Azov to the Porte and evacuate his troops from Poland
and the right-bank Ukraine.
e position of Khan Devlet II Giray was closely related to the cur-
rent state of aairs between Istanbul and St. Petersburg. In 1711, aer
the news of the missed opportunity caused a scandal in Istanbul, the
khan instigated the fall of Baltacı Mehmed Pasha, the Ottoman grand
vizier responsible for the Prut Treaty. But in 1713, when the Porte
resolved to conrm the peace with Russia, Devlet II Giray, known
for his anti-Russian attitude, was promptly replaced on the Crimean
throne by his younger brother, Kaplan Giray.
552
e Ottoman-Russian reconciliation did not authomatically result
in a normalization between Istanbul and Warsaw, because the Otto-
mans continued to support Leszczyński and regarded Augustus II as
a Russian puppet. Besides, Istanbul and Baghchasaray revived the idea
of a joint protectorate over Ukraine, reminiscent of the times of Petro
Dorošenko. In December 1711 and March 1712, Sultan Ahmed III
issued two successive privileges for Pylyp Orlyk who was to remain
an Ottoman vassal. It took many months until nally in 1714 the
great embassy of Stanisław Chomentowski [alias Chomętowski] per-
suaded the Porte to respect and Karlowitz Treaty and reminded that
it was Augustus II, and not Stanisław Leszczyński, who had ratied it
in 1699, hence the former should be regarded as the legitime Polish
monarch.
553
An analogous task of normalizing the Polish relations with the
Crimea was entrusted to Wojciech Szornel, a special envoy to Kaplan
Giray sent by the Polish grand hetman, Adam Mikołaj Sieniawski.
Szornel was received by the khan in July 1713 in a military camp in
Budjak near Qavshan (Rom. Căuşeni; Ukr. Kaušany). e Polish envoy
552
Smirnov, Krymskoe xanstvo pod verxovenstvom Otomanskoj porty v XVIII v. do
prisoedinenija ego k Rossii (Moscow, 2005), pp. 17–22; Le khanat de Crimée, p. 347.
553
On the place of Poland-Lithuania in the Ottoman-Russian negotiations of 1711–
1713 and the Polish-Ottoman pacication of 1714, see Kołodziejczyk, Ottoman-Polish
Diplomatic Relations, pp. 159–162 and 641–643. On the Ottoman privileges for Pylyp
Orlyk from the years 1711–1712, see Omeljan Pritsak [Pricak], “Odyn čy dva doho-
vory Pylypa Orlyka z Tureččynoju na počatku druhoho desjatylittja visimnadcjatoho
stolittja?,” Ukrajins’kyj Arxeohračnyj Ščoričnyk (new series) 1 (1992): 307–320.
in the shade of istanbul and moscow (1671–1783) 197
assured Kaplan Giray that the king and the Commonwealth wished to
observe the Treaty of Karlowitz. He stressed Augustus II’s legitimate
position of the monarch elected by the nobility and not appointed by
a foreign ruler. When the khan mentioned the king’s previous abdica-
tion, Szornel retorted that it was not conrmed by the Diet. Both sides
agreed that Augustus II should dispatch a formal embassy to Kaplan
Giray. Before his return to Poland, Szornel diplomatically refused to
see Stanisław Leszczyński and his Polish supporters, who dwelled in
nearby Bender under the Ottoman protection. e envoy persuasively
argued that he did not wish to make a false impression that his patron
(i.e., Sieniawski) maintained secret contacts with the pretender.
554
Dip-
lomatic correspondence continued until 1714, when the khan followed
the Porte’s example by acknowledging Augustus II on the throne and
relinquishing any claims to the Ukraine.
555
In the following years, the Tatars assisted the Ottomans in their dis-
tant wars against Venice and Austria, while Poland-Lithuania de facto
acknowledged the patronage of Peter the Great, whom Augustus II
owed his restoration on the throne. Both Baghchasaray and Warsaw
stopped playing independent roles in international politics. A Crimean
envoy, Kantemir Mirza, sent in 1718 to notify the accession of a new
khan, Sa‘adet IV Giray, was shocked by the omnipresence of Russian
troops in Poland-Lithuania and oered the Tatar neighborly assistance
to “cure the disease.”
556
Yet, his own patron soon encountered domes-
tic troubles and was forced to abdicate by 1724.
554
See the relation of Wojciech Szornel, the esquire carver of Mazyr (stolnik mozyr-
ski), sent in embassy to Kaplan Giray from the side of Adam Mikołaj Sieniawski, the
Crown grand hetman and the castellan of Cracow; dated in Lwów 22 August 1713;
AGAD, AKW, Dz. tat., k. 64, t. 13, no. 544.
555
AGAD, AKW, Dz. tat., k. 64, t. 15–22, nos. 548–556; Bibl. Czart., ms. 613, pp. 245–
256; on the eorts of Augustus II to loosen the Russian patronage with the help of
Paris, Istanbul and Baghchasaray, and on the mission of the khan’s envoy, Sefer-shah
Bey, that resulted in the formal pacication between Augustus II and Kaplan Giray,
see Józef Gierowski, Traktat przyjaźni Polski z Francją w 1714 r. Studium z dziejów
dyplomacji (Warsaw, 1965), esp. pp. 138–160, Andrzej Link-Lenczowski, “Wokół
kryzysu wschodniego z lat 1711–1713. Tureccy i tatarscy dyplomaci w Rzeczypospo-
litej,” in: Między Zachodem a Wschodem. Studia ku czci profesora Jacka Staszewskiego,
vol. 2. Edited by J. Dumanowski and others (Toruń, 2003): 355–367, esp. pp. 365–366;
cf. also n. 80 in Part II.
556
Konopczyński, Polska a Turcja 1683–1792, p. 87; Podhorodecki, Chanat krymski
i jego stosunki z Polską, p. 245.
198 part one—chapter three
e War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738), the Russo-Ottoman
War (1736–1739), and the last Polish-Crimean treaty of 1742
When it seemed that the career of Stanisław Leszczyński was denitely
over, in 1725 he experienced a smile of fortune as his daughter, Maria,
married King Louis XV of France. In the following years, the French
diplomacy worked to secure the support of European courts, including
those in Istanbul and Baghchasaray, for the candidacy of Stanisław to
the Polish throne aer the death of Augustus II.
557
When the Wettin
died in 1733, Stanisław was smoothly elected by the majority of Polish
nobles. Unlike in 1704, when he acted as a Swedish puppet, his second
election was entirely legal. Yet, St. Petersburg and Vienna would not
tolerate a pro-French ruler in Poland and the Russian troops entered
Warsaw installing Augustus II’s son, Augustus III Wettin, on the
throne. Stanisław’s last stronghold, Danzig, was taken in 1734 by a
Russian eld marshal, Burkhard Christoph von Münnich. In Western
Europe the War of the Polish Succession (as it came to be known)
between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons would continue until 1738,
but in Eastern Europe it was resolved in favor of Russia and Austria
already in 1734.
e Porte could not passively watch the rise of the Russian might
that endangered its own position. Nevertheless, the Ottomans were
hesitant to enter a new war as long as their troops were campaigning
in Persia. Also Cardinal Fleury, who directed the French foreign policy
in that period, was reluctant to fully engage in Eastern Europe as that
would require sending French troops and entering a formal French-
Ottoman alliance. Nevertheless, the atmosphere along the Ottoman
and Crimean northern borders was tense. In 1734 the Crimean khan,
Kaplan Giray, gathered his troops in Budjak and approached the Pol-
ish border, but despite the requests of Stanisław’s emissaries he refused
to enter Poland without an order from Istanbul. Only in 1735, aer the
fall of Danzig, the Tatars raided Kabarda and Daghestan in the eort
to stop Russian southern expansion.
558
is move provoked a Russian
reply that evolved into the Russo-Ottoman war.
557
On the activity of French diplomats at the courts of Mengli II Giray (1724–1730)
and Kaplan Giray (third reign 1730–1736), see Gilles Veinstein, “Les Tatars de Crimée
et la seconde élection de Stanislas Leszczynski,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique
11 (1970): 24–92.
558
Konopczyński, Polska a Turcja 1683–1792, p. 104; Le khanat de Crimée, p. 349.
in the shade of istanbul and moscow (1671–1783) 199
In March 1736, the Russians besieged Azov and in June invaded
the Crimea aer having forced the defenses of Perekop. On 28 June
(17 June according to the Old Style), the army commanded by Mün-
nich successfully stormed Baghchasaray, setting on re the khan’s pal-
ace, including the Crimean archives. e library of the French Jesuits,
who le the city before the Russian assault having sheltered their books
in the cellar, was drowned in wine by drunken soldiers who opened
all the barrels, unable to drink their content.
559
en, somewhat unex-
pectedly, Münnich commanded his troops to evacuate the Crimea in
order to shorten the lines of supply. Aer Azov and Qılburun (Kin-
burn) capitulated in July, a full-scale campaign was resumed only the
following year. In July 1737, Münnich conquered Očakiv while Field
Marshal Lacy invaded the Crimea, defeated Khan Feth II Giray (who
had replaced Kaplan Giray in the summer of 1736 aer the fall of
Baghchasaray) near Qarasu Bazar and burned the town itself. Earlier
that year, Austria entered the war, formally to support Russia but in
fact jealous of easy Russian conquests. Aer a failed peace congress in
Nemyriv (August–October 1737), the hostilities resumed in 1738. Yet,
this time the Russians were far less successful: Lacy entered the Crimea
only to withdraw shortly aerwards for the lack of water and fodder,
while Münnich was pushed back from the Dniester by the Ottoman
commander (serasker) of Bender, Veli Pasha. e latter was assisted
by a Crimean prince, Safa Giray, who commanded the Tatar troops in
Budjak. Due to infectious diseases that decimated Russian garrisons in
559
Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii s drevnejšix vremen, vol. 20, in: idem, Sočinenija v
vosemnadcati knigax, book 10 (Moscow, 1993), p. 398; cf. the English translation by
R. Hantula: Soloviev, History of Russia, vol. 35: e Rule of Empress Anna (Gulf
Breeze, 1982), p. 12. e loss of the Jesuit library was especially regretted by Cap-
tain Manstein, who prepared a description of Baghchasaray on Münnich’s order;
see Moscow, Arxiv vnešnej politiki Rossijskoj imperii, f. 123, op. 1, no. 1 “Opisanie
domu Xana Krymskago i stoličnago evo goroda Baxčisaraj kapitanom Manštejnom
po vzjatju fel’dmaršalom Grafom Minixom onago poluostrova,” fol. 3b. Manstein’s
relation is published in Otečestvennyja zapiski, izdavaemyja Pavlom Svin’inym, pt. 19
(St. Petersburg, 1824): 75–84, esp. p. 84, but it is censored and the fragment regard-
ing the drunken soldiers is missing altogether; the fragment iz kotoryx bol’šaja čast’
sgorela, ili v vinnom pogrebe povredilas’; poneže onye Ezuity, pri otdalenii svoem, knigi
dlja soxranenija postavili v takovyj pogreb, reads in the original manuscript version: iz
kotoryx bol’šaja čast’ sgorela, ili v vine potopla i povredilasja; poneže onye Jezuity, pri
otdalenii svoem, knigi dlja soxranenija postavili v pogreb, v kotoroj naši kozaki vošed i
napivšis’, p’jany ostalnoe vino vypustili, i tem pomeniutye knigi potrapili.
200 part one—chapter three
the recently conquered fortresses of Očakiv and Qılburun, even these
fortresses had to be evacuated.
560
Only in 1739, the Russians obtained a decisive victory: Münnich
chose a route through the territory of neutral Poland, invaded north-
ern Moldavia, defeated Veli Pasha at Stavučany, and conquered Hotin
on 30 August.
561
e Russian appetite had yet to be restrained aer
Austria, having suered a major defeat, unexpectedly conceded to a
peace and even agreed to restore Belgrade to the Porte. Fearing iso-
lation and a pending war with Sweden, St. Petersburg was forced to
join the negotiations. e Treaty of Belgrade, signed in September
1739, only granted Azov to Russia on the condition that the fortress
remained demolished. Both sides also agreed that Kabarda, which had
constituted the bone of contention at the outset of the war, should
remain independent and neutral.
e Russo-Ottoman solemn pacication, following the Treaty of
Belgrade, consisted of the parallel embassies of Aleksandr Rumjancev
to Constantinople and Mehmed Emin Pasha to St. Petersburg (1740–
1741), and the border demarcation eected by 23 October 1742.
562
e
newly demarcated border was almost identical with the post-Karlowitz
one, already delimited in 1705. Signicantly, though it ran between the
Cossack and Tatar lands and the territory to its south belonged—at
least in theory—to the Crimean Khanate, the Muslim side was repre-
sented by Ottoman, and not Crimean commissioners.
563
e khan was
560
Joseph von Hammer, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, vol. 7 (Pest, 1831),
pp. 513–515; Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii s drevnejšix vremen, vol. 20, pp. 428–432; cf. the
English translation by R. Hantula, vol. 35, pp. 46–50.
561
See Johann Wilhelm Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches in Europa,
vol. 5 (Gotha, 1857), p. 797; Nicolae Iorga [Jorga], Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches,
vol. 4 (Gotha, 1911), pp. 440–441; Solov’ev, Istorija Rossii s drevnejšix vremen, vol. 20,
pp. 442–443; cf. the English translation by R. Hantula, vol. 35, pp. 62–63.
562
See Rumjana Mixneva, Rossija i Osmanskaja imperija v meždunarodnyx
otnošenijax v seredine XVIII veka (1739–1756) (Moscow, 1985), pp. 38–70 and
91–92.
563
Cf. the Russian instrument demarcating the border section running from the
Dnieper towards the Mius river in the place where it empties into the Sea of Azov,
dated 12 October 1742 (Old Style) and published as “Instrument razgraničenija zemel’
meždu Rossieju i Portoju v 1742 godu,” in: Zapiski Odesskago Obščestva istorii i
drevnostej, vol. 2 (Odessa, 1848–1850): 834–835; it is corroborated by the Russian gen-
eral, Vasilij Repnin, and the Ottoman qapıcı başı, Hadji Ibrahim. e same commis-
sioners demarcated the border running between the Don and Kuban rivers through
the lands inhabited by the Cossacks and Nogays, being respectively the Russian and
Crimean subjects; the border running between the Dnieper and the Boh was demar-
in the shade of istanbul and moscow (1671–1783) 201
simply ordered by the Porte to observe the new peace and restrain his
subjects from any transgressions.
564
Although Poland-Lithuania did not participate in the recent war and
its relations with the Porte were regulated by the Treaty of Karlowitz,
Münnich’s unrestrained use of the Polish territory during his Hotin
campaign had infuriated the Muslim side and provoked a few Tatar
raids into Poland. erefore, Augustus III decided to send missions
to both Istanbul and Baghchasaray in order to appease the situation.
e Polish envoy to Baghchasaray, Józef Łopuski, had been appointed
already in 1739 with the task to protest against the Tatar raids and the
khan’s meddling in Polish domestic aairs. As the war was over before
he departed, in 1740 he obtained a new instruction, ordering him to
reassure the khan of Warsaw’s peaceful intentions and to stay away from
any political intrigues. His departure was once more delayed because
cated already by November 1740; cf. Mixneva, Rossija i Osmanskaja imperija, pp. 59
and 91–92. Paradoxically, the shared Ottoman-Crimean sovereignty over the north-
ern Black Sea steppe could be also used by the khans to their benet. e more the
khan resembled a regular Ottoman functionary and not a separate ruler, the easier the
Porte accepted his patronage over the lands previously disputed between Istanbul and
Baghchasaray. Hence, in the 18th century the khan could formally include Budjak and
Kuban in his intitulatio and command Crimean-Ottoman campaigns from his Bud-
jak military headquarters in Qavshan (Rom. Căuşeni; Ukr. Kaušany), in coordination
with the Ottoman governors of Hotin, Bender, and Očakiv. Charles de Peyssonnel, the
French consul in the Crimea since 1753, maintained in his report sent to Paris in 1755
that since the Treaty of Belgrade the Crimean Khanate had bordered on Poland as
far as Jahorlyk on the Dniester and then the khan’s lands extended further southwest
towards the Danube, bordering on Moldavia, Wallachia, and Ottoman Bulgaria; see
idem, “Mémoire sur l’état civil, politique et militaire de la Petite-Tartarie, envoyé en
1755 aux Ministres du Roi,” edited along with his other writings under the common
title: Traité sur le commerce de la Mer Noire (Paris, 1787), vol. 2: 222–338, esp. pp. 224–
225. e Polish section of the border, running from the conuence of the rivers Syn-
juxa and Boh towards Jahorlyk on the Dniester, was demarcated in 1703, aer the
Treaty of Karlowitz, and only reconrmed aer the Treaty of Belgrade. Like in the
case of the border with Russia, the Muslim side was represented in the negotiations
by Ottoman, and not Crimean commissioners, hence the border established in 1703
is commonly regarded in historiography as the Polish-Ottoman and not the Polish-
Crimean one; cf. Kołodziejczyk, Ottoman-Polish Diplomatic Relations, pp. 626–640;
Konopczyński, Polska a Turcja 1683–1792, pp. 146–149. Yet, as we see, the matter
was more complicated.
564
e patronizing attitude of both Istanbul and St. Petersburg towards the Crimean
khan is reected in the reports of the Russian resident in Constantinople, Aleksej
Vešnjakov; in reply to a Russian complaint concerning some border problems, the
Ottoman grand vizier promised to look into the matter and order the khan to minutely
fulll his decision (eželi takovoe est’, to on vezir’ konečno xanu prikažet, i ukaz dast
točno potomu vse ispolnjat’); see Moscow, Arxiv vnešnej politiki Rossijskoj imperii,
f. 89, op. 1, 1742 (year number), no. 6, pt. 2, fol. 488b.
202 part one—chapter three
the Polish court had been distracted by the outbreak of the Prussian-
Austrian war. In January 1742, Łopuski obtained a new, much more
detailed instruction, supplemented by yet another instruction issued
in May. e envoy was to explain that the Russian march through
Poland in 1739 had occurred against the will of the Polish authorities.
As Münnich had le the Ottoman guns, captured at Stavučany and in
Hotin, on the Polish shore of the Dniester, Łopuski was to persuade
the khan to patiently wait until the Russians resolve to send the guns
back to Hotin. Warsaw apparently feared an Ottoman-Tatar raid that
would reclaim the captured guns without asking for either Polish or
Russian permission. Finally, Łopuski’s instruction contained a protest
against the recent border raids and a demand that the Tatars set free
all the Christian captives, especially the Polish ones.
565
Since the death of Mengli II Giray, whose clever tacticts of cutting
the enemy’s lines of supply had saved the Crimea from a third Rus-
sian invasion in 1738, the Crimean throne was occupied by Selamet II
Giray (r. 1740–1743), the late khan’s younger brother and former
qalga. e new ambitious ruler undertook a painstaking reconstruction
of the Palace of Baghchasaray, aiming to restore the former splendor
of the Girays’ capital.
566
Probably in this context we should regard the
unusual move that he took to reciprocate Łopuski’s embassy. Instead
of merely promising to respect the Karlowitz Treaty, concluded fourty-
three years earlier between the Polish king and the khan’s Ottoman
suzerain, in a “friendly letter” (muhabbetname) addressed to Warsaw,
Selamet II Giray issued his proper instrument of peace, referred to as
yarlıq and consisting of seven articles. e document, dated 6 Decem-
ber 1742, recalled Łopuski’s arrival in early November and the khan’s
wish to reciprocate the royal salutations according to the old, friendly
usage. e instrument stressed the khan’s authority not only over the
Crimea, but also over Budjak and Kuban along with their Nogay and
Circassian dwellers. To be sure, the Treaty of Karlowitz could not be
ignored and was duly invoked in the rst article. e second article
assured security to Polish merchants in the khan’s domains, especially
in Budjak, situated on the route between Istanbul and Lwów. e
third article guaranteed freedom of travel and the right to reside in the
565
Konopczyński, Polska a Turcja 1683–1792, pp. 142, 146 and 149–152.
566
Cf. Hajvoronskyj [Aleksej Gajvoronskij], Sozvezdie Geraev. Kratkie biograi
krymskix xanov (Simferopol, 2003), pp. 76–77; Fisher, e Crimean Tatars, p. 51.
in the shade of istanbul and moscow (1671–1783) 203
Crimea to Christian missionaries.
567
e fourth article regarded a pri-
vate claim that in fact should have been addressed to the sultan rather
than the khan: during the recent war Veli Pasha, the Ottoman com-
mander-in-chief on the Bender front, conscated the eects of a Polish
merchant, who had died in the Anatolian town of Amasya; the eects
were loaded on a ship anchored in Akkerman and destined for Poland.
On the request of the Polish envoy, the khan promised to intervene
at the Porte so that the conscated eects be released and sent to the
merchant’s heirs. e h article provided that the border area along
the lower Boh should be patrolled and colonized with settlers in order
to prevent vagabond Cossacks and Nogays from taking shelter there
and plundering the peaceful subjects of the two rulers. e sixth article
established the rules of friendly communication between the two sides.
Finally, the seventh article referred to the past war: the khan admitted
that a number of Ottoman and Crimean troops had entered Poland
in revenge for its consent to let Münnich march through its territory,
but he explained these moves by the necessities of war. In regard to the
Ottoman guns and munitions, captured in Hotin and le in Poland
by the Russian army, the khan invoked his earlier proposal to redeem
them at their real value. At the same moment, he categorically rejected
the idea that these guns and munitions could be donated by the
Russians to the Polish king, either as a gi or war indemnity. e
khan added that this matter should be regulated between Istanbul and
St. Petersburg and declared his readiness to honor their solution.
568
Last peaceful years 1742–1767
In the following years St. Petersburg and Istanbul aimed to maintain
peace, involved in other war theatres, respectively the European and
Persian ones. Governments in Warsaw and Baghchasaray, dispossessed
of proper political initiative in the course of the past events, remained
567
Already in the 17th century, Catholic missionaries provided religious services
for their coreligionists who lived in the Crimea (including many Polish captives). ey
also endeavored to convert local Armenians and Greeks, whereas the conversion of
Muslims was strictly forbidden by the Islamic law. From Łopuski’s report, we learn
that the khan authorized both the Latin and Greek Fathers to dwell in his domains,
although the latter term probably referred to Greek-Catholic rather than Orthodox
missionaries; see Document 71, n. 20.
568
See Document 71.