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light cavalry out of which 10,000 might serve directly with France. The new Ukrainian state was to be called “Napoleonida”. This new and somewhat unusual name was to replace the term “Tavrida” which the Russians at that time used for Steppe Ukraine. Finally, before launching his great invasion of Rus sia, Napoleon personally ordered one of his official publicists, Charles Louis Lesur (1771-1849), to gather information and write a history of the Cossacks which would be useful to the Emperor and his army during their conquest of Russia. Lesur fulfilled this request and produced a two volume study which was deeply sympathetic to Ukrainian independence and to Cossack independence in general. The book was not quite ready when Napoleon and his Grand Army crossed the border into the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, the text was completed and typeset and so the proofs were rushed to Napoleon by courier. He was reading them on the eve of the great battle of Borodino which decided the fate of Moscow. The defeat of Napoleon in Russia and his fall from power in France did not put end to European specula tion about the situation of the Ukrainian and other Cos sacks. In 1814, Lesur’s book was finally published and all the world became aware of French thoughts about Ukrainian history. However, Ukrainian reaction to the French invasion was not exactly what Napoleon and his inner circle had hoped that it would be. There was no general uprising against Russian rule either in right bank Ukraine where Polish and Polonized landowners were dominant, nor in left bank Ukraine where Ukrainian and Russified Ukrain ian landowners held sway. But a few isolated individuals did speak out in favor of Napoleon. These included Vasyl Lukashevych (1783- 1866), the scion of a great Ukrainian family from Poltava Province, who at a banquet raised a toast in honor of ’’the Liberator” Napoleon. Lukashevych was no idle adventurer but rather was a well known Ukrainian auto nomist. He was a member of the Poltava Masonic Lodge and a friend of the pioneering Ukrainian writer, Ivan Kotliarevsky. When Lukashevych was reported to the authorities in St. Petersburg, they immediately demanded an explanation. The local authorities in Ukraine, however, protected Lukashevych by explaining that what they called his “stupid toast” had been caused by a bout of temporary insanity. Vasyl Lukashevych seems to have been the excep tion rather than the rule. In general, it seems that the Ukrainian nobility was unfriendly to Napoleon and the reordering of society that he seemed to stand for. The Ukrainian nobility, like most of its counterparts else where in Europe, did not wish to see the privileges of the landowning class reduced or abolished and so after some hesitation it was willing to defend the Tsarist Count Hauterive (1754-1839), author of a project for the estab lishment of a Ukrainian Cossack state dependent upon France. From Borshchak. regime which ruled its country. On the level of the peasantry, moreover, as histo rian N. Polonska-Vasylenko has noted, the Russian government had no trouble raising Cossack regiments from Ukraine for service in the Russian army. The pea sants were promised freedom from serfdom in return for their services. Accordingly, Cossack regiments were raised successfully first on the right and the on the left bank. Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky was put in charge of raising the Cossack regiments on the left bank and tried to give them a general Russian character. Ukrainian sentiment was far from dead, however, and Lobanov- Rostovsky was opposed by D.P. Troshchynsky, a high official of Poltava Province, and by Vasyl Kapnist, a noted Ukrainian autonomist, who defended the Ukrain ian character of the regiments. These Cossack regiments saw extensive service and endured substantial losses between 1812 and 1815. Out of 18,000 men, only 12,484 returned home in 1815. Moreover, in 1816, in violation of promises previously made to them, all Cossack privileges were taken away from the men and they were compelled to return to their previous peasant or serf status. A few years later the new Governor-general of Little Russia (that is, left bank Ukraine), Prince Repnin, demanded that the Cossack estate be reestablished and drew up a plan to this effect but he was overruled by the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs, Viktor Kochubei, who, although of old Ukrainian lineage, was a personal friend of Tsar Alexander I and was no Ukrainian autonomist. 16 "НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛЮТИЙ 1997 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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