Paliy uprising (also Palej uprising) was a Cossack uprising, led by colonel Semen Paliy against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1702–1704, with a preliminary skirmish in 1700.
Background During the The Ruin of the 1660s and 1670s, the Cossack Hetmanate gradually split along the Dnipro into a Tsardom-allied Left-bank Hetmanate and a Commonwealth-loyal Right-bank Hetmanate. Many Right-bank Cossack Regiments disappeared over the course of the years, either due to conflict or administrative reform, as the Commonwealth was wary of autonomous regiments that could once more revolt against Warsaw, so that by the early 1680s, there were barely any left. Yet, because the Ottoman Empire was making alarming advances into Central and Eastern Europe, and possibly because the Cossacks played an important role in helping to defeat them in the 1683 Battle of Vienna, king John III Sobieski decided the regimental system on the Right Bank had to be restored. In 1684, he decreed that seven regiments were to be formed out of military necessity, with an acting hetman in Nemyriv. The next year, the Sejm of the Commonwealth approved the , and confirmed the rights and liberties of the Cossacks. The Colonel of the restored Bila Tserkva Regiment became Semen Paliy, who would play an influential role in the economic revival of the region, which was being resettled after years of war and devastation under the renewed protection of a Cossack regiment.
In 1699, the new Polish king Augustus II signed the Treaty of Karlowitz with the Ottoman Empire, ratified by the Sejm of the Commonwealth. The treaty was supposed to secure the Ottoman–Commonwealth borders, and bring them perpetual peace. The Sejm therefore concluded that the Cossack regiments on the Right Bank were no longer necessary. Instead, the szlachta – the Polish–Lithuanian (and Ruthenian) nobility who dominated the Sejm – wanted to exploit the vast post-war economic opportunities by acquiring landholdings and establishing noble estates in the now-peaceful voivodeships of Podolia, Bratslav and southern Kyiv, and to enserf the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) peasants there for their own benefit. The szlachta-dominated Sejm therefore passed a highly controversial resolution in June 1669, which stipulated the . The entire regimental system as well as the Right-bank hetmancy was to be abolished, Cossack soldiers lost their payment and had to leave the Right Bank. Hetman Samiilo Samus and the Right-bank Colonels were all ordered to dismiss their Cossacks, and to leave all private and royal possessions. Crown Hetman Stanisław Jan Jabłonowski was assigned to oversee the implementation of this order; he would also issue a universal barring the Cossacks from settling on the Right Bank.
Many Cossacks were angered by this situation, particularly after the restoration of the regimental system had been achieved just 14 years earlier. Colonel Paliy was one amongst many Cossacks who refused to leave their homes and regiments. In 1700, colonel Paliy of the Bila Tserkva Regiment and a few other Cossack colonels fought a skirmish at Fastiv with Polish troops sent to enforce the expulsion order. They chased away the government forces and set up Fastiv as a base of operations, where they planned a general uprising. While defying the Polish king, for various reasons, Paliy refused to enter into the Muscovite tsar's service either.
Rebellion 1702: open rebellion In 1702, Paliy started an open rebellion against the Polish Crown, the last of the major Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth. Together with a number of other Cossack polkovnyks, Paliy and his rebels captured Bila Tserkva, Fastiv, Nemyriv and a few other towns. Rebellious Cossacks massacred their traditional enemies — Polish szlachta, Catholic priests and Jews — in the area they controlled. In October 1702, Cossack forces led by Paliy and Right-bank hetman Samiilo Samus defeated the Polish army under Polish hetman Adam Mikołaj Sieniawski near the town of Berdychiv. Paliy restored the Cossack Regiments of Bila Tserkva, Bohuslav, Bratslav, and Korsun.
Peasant flight from Left to Right Meanwhile, many Ukrainian peasants from the Left Bank were fleeing to the Right Bank, either to directly join Paliy's uprising or simply to evade the socio-economically increasingly oppressive circumstances for peasants in the Left Bank. Mazepa sought to protect the peasants on the Left Bank from aristocratic and clerical encroachment (including attempts to levy heavier taxes and obligations on the peasants and further enserfing them) by upholding the established customs and issuing a universal on 28 November 1701, which forbade lords to impose on the peasants more than two days of labour for the landlord a week. Yet, even he could not fully prevent large-scale peasant flight: there were too many farmers who simply sought to escape the entire system and move to the Right Bank in hopes of a better future. As early as May 1702, Mazepa wrote in a universal to the Vydubychi Monastery near Kyiv that there was a ban on transporting people to the Right Bank, and that people were illegally crossing over to the Right Bank and reducing the population in the towns and villages of the Left Bank. In December 1702, tsar Peter ordered Mazepa to establish "strong and frequent sentries" along the Dnipro to prevent more peasants from running off to Paliy's side; the hetman issued universals in early 1703 to that effect. However, a letter Mazepa sent to the colonel of the Pereiaslav Regiment in April 1704 about the ban of crossing over to the Right Bank suggests that the measures to stop the peasant flight had not been very effective; the hetman admitted that "an innumerable multitude" of people had already abandoned the Left Bank to begin a new life on the other shore of the Dnipro in the preceding years.
1703 Podolia and Bratslav campaigns
On 4 February 1703 the rebels suffered a major defeat at , east of Letychiv. Right-bank Hetman Samiilo Samus gathered the main Cossack army at Nemyriv; his 2,000~3,000 Cossacks were reinforced by the troops of Bratslav Regiment Colonel Andrii Abazyn. Together, they reportedly had 11,000 soldiers, but the real figure was probably closer to 4,000~5,000 mołojcy (young Cossack soldiers). Moreover, the Moldavian cavalry, being chased by the Poles, had fled across the Dniester instead of joining the main army at Nemyriv. On 17 or 18 February 1703, the cavalry of Kyiv voivode Józef Potocki defeated the main Cossack army at Nemyriv; the rebel army and castle garrison (taking the cannons with them) retreated to Bratslav. The Polish cavalry forced the Cossacks to abandon Bratslav as well, leaving their cannons behind. As Samus had departed to Bohuslav, the now leaderless Cossack units shattered and fell back to Ladyzhyn, where Abazyn had fortified the rebel position with about 2,000 soldiers. On 18–19 February, a Cossack baggage train escorted by about 1,000 Cossacks managed to reach Ladyzhyn, while the defenders built up their defences at the river crossings and the old fortress. Though once strong and strategically placed at the confluence of the Sob and Silnytsia into the Southern Buh, the fortress of Ladyzhyn had been severely damaged by 1703. From the morning into the night of 20 February, Potocki's cavalry attacked Ladyzhyn, reportedly getting 30 soldiers killed and many more wounded. However, the Cossack defences were breached in the late evening, 600 Cossack soldiers were slaughtered, Abazyn was taken prisoner, the inhabitants massacred, and the buildings razed. Potocki returned Nemyriv on 21 February.
After Ladyzhyn, there were three rebel groups left: one under Colonel Paliy near Vinnytsia, another under Colonel Dubina near Rashkiv, and a third under Colonel Fedir Shpak near Kamianets-Podilskyi. Lubomirski's 1,000 Polish cavalry managed to defeat Dubina's joint 2,000 Cossack-Moldavian soldiers as they attemped to cross the Dniester at Rashkiv, capturing their baggage train and many soldiers, though some managed to escape. When Shpak learned of Dubina's defeat, his group also crossed into Moldavia, while Paliy's raiding party near Vinnytsia was defeated by Polish cavalry from the Nemyriv garrison. The rebellion was thus suppressed in the voivodeships of Podolia and Bratslav, leaving only the Cossack rebel strongholds of Fastiv, Bila Tserkva, Bohuslav and Korsun in the Kyiv voivodeship.
Polish retreat March–April 1703 In early March, the Polish forces prepared for a siege of Bila Tservka; however, Sieniawski issued a proclamation on 18 March to withdraw most Commonwealth forces to Berezhany. It is unclear why, but this move was either in connection with the negotiations of the tsar's diplomat Johann Patkul with Paliy to surrender Bila Tserkva voluntarily, or with the resumption of hostilities between Poland and Sweden. In mid-March, the Polish command declared the pacification campaign on the Right Bank over, while the two hetmans Lubomirski and Sieniawski departed via Lviv in Western Ukraine to Rzeszów, and Potocki moved his headquarters to Stanisławów (modern Ivano-Frankivsk). Except for a few garrisons, most Polish troops had thus moved out of Ukraine by late April 1703. Although the rebels had been soundly defeated in the Volhynian, Bratslav and Podolian voivodeships, the Cossack strongholds in the Kyivan region held firm, and continued to conduct raids into Podolian territory and agitate for revolt against the Commonwealth authorities. However, due to lack of numbers, the rebels were unable to conduct regular open warfare, and instead employed guerrilla tactics to weaken the Commonwealth's and especially the szlachta's hold over the Ukrainian lands.
Cossack resurgence mid-1703 Meanwhile, Paliy and the rebel leadership appear to have begun receiving military and financial support from the tsar via the Left-bank Hetmanate of Ivan Mazepa: the Right-bank Cossack rebels were paid salaries and were reinforced by 200 Zaporizhian Cossacks. The Kyivshchyna rebels kept raiding Polish noble estates and Uniate churches, while Shpak's Cossacks continued making incursions from Moldavia across the Dniester into Podolia, raiding near Bratslav and Nemyriv in June 1703, though failing to defeat Bar's garrison. Shpak's forces began accumulating near Nemyriv in July and August, being reinforced by about 1,000 Zaporizhian Cossacks, while exchanging regular messengers with Paliy in Bila Tserkva. In mid-August 1703, Paliy's Cossacks defeated the Polish heavy cavalry near Nemyriv, though Potocki intervened and scattered the rebels from the area. In autumn, the emboldened Cossacks managed to seize control of many towns and villages in northwestern Ukraine as far as the river Sluch, often fighting the cavalry companies garrisoned in the region.
1704 Meanwhile, however, a conflict began to brew between colonel Paliy, who wanted to conclude an alliance with Sweden, and hetman Samus, who was determined to place the Right Bank under the protection of Mazepa and the tsar. By May 1704, Paliy had once again switched his allegiance, this time to the Lubomirskis, while insulting and offending Mazepa and the tsar's representatives in a drunken incident. Samus warned Mazepa against trusting Paliy any longer, while pledging his own continued loyalty to Mazepa.