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the czar found it necessary to make him a prince of Ukraine ... but Mazeppa was resolved to render himself independent, and to erect Ukraine .. into a powerful kingdom. Brave, enterprising ... he entered into a secret league with the king of Sweden, to hasten the downfall of the czar, and to convert it to his own advantage."8 After the Battle of Poltava, Pylyp Orlyk followed Charles XII to Bender. Bender was a very cosmopolitan city where people from various backgrounds mingled, speaking numerous languages. The young Hryhorii Orlyk was seven years old when his father succeeded Mazeppa as Hetman and at Bender he grew up receiving a formal, as well as informal, education. He spoke nine languages fluently: Ukrainian, Polish, Swedish, German, French, Romanian, Turkish, Greek and Tatar. One could say that Hryhorii Orlyk's diplomatic career began at the age of ten when in 1712, his father sent him as a messenger to the Vizier Mehmet Baltage at his residence at Yase with a request not to sign a treaty with Moscow until Ukraine was free. The Vizier disregarded the request and kept Hryhorii hostage for a time. At Bender, Hryhorii met people who later in the century occupied strategic political positions. Three of these people merit special attention. The first was a Polish gentleman whose destiny took a new turn because of his daughter's marriage. Stanislaw Leszczynski, was pretender to the Polish throne and the father of Maria Leszczynski, who married the King of France, Louise XV, in 1725. The second was Kaplan Girei, who reigned as Khan of Crimea three times: 1708-1709, 1713-1716, and 1730-1736. Later in life, Hryhorii would meet with him as a French ambassador. The third person was the future Grand Vizier Hasi Ali Aga, with whom Hryhorii would have contacts in Constantinople in 1732. When Charles XII left Bender on 1714, Pylyp Orlyk and his men followed him to Sweden. The young Hryhorii distinguished himself in Charles XII's army at the battle of Shtralzundt in 1715. He was then thirteen. A year later, he left the army to study at Lund University in Sweden. By 1716 he had his first formal audience with the king who remained the patron of the Orlyk family until his death in 1720. After the king's death, Pylyp Orlyk started a long journey throughout the courts of Europe in the hope of obtaining political and financial support. In this quest, he traveled to Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Poland and the Ottoman Empire. His journey ended in Salonika where the Ottomans detained him for twelve years. Hryhorii Orlyk was eighteen in 1720, and rather than accompanying his father, went to Hanover to serve in the Saxon guard. However, two significant events occurred in 1725 which changed his life orientation. The first of these was the marriage between Louis XV of France and Maria Leszczynski, daughter of Stanislaw Leszczynski, pretender to the Polish throne. Because of the marriage, France's interest in Poland became an issue. The other major event was that the Austrian Emperor officially recognized Peter I as the "czar of all Russia", giving him the freedom to expand his territories southward to the Black Sea. When the Saxons allied themselves with Petersburg, Hryhorii Orlyk offered his services to Poland. His upbringing and the fact that his father was the Hetman- in-chief fighting for the cause of a free Ukraine dictated his actions. Polish interests, had become of interest to France. And in this connection, the elder Orlyk, relentlessly warning European governments of the expansionist menace Russia posed not only to Europe, but to Asia, as well, also became of interest to France. As Professor Subtelny states: "Confronted by the alliance of Austria and Russia, French strategists opted to create a 'cordon sanitaire' between the two empires which would consist of Sweden, Poland and the Ottoman Empire ... In the geo-political speculations, the area between Poland proper and the Ottoman Empire, that is, Ukraine, was of crucial importance...9 Expecting that Orlyk's men and the Cossack Zaporog could be used as a link between Poland and the Ottoman Empire, France began a triangle of correspondence between three French diplomats involved in evaluating the situation in regards to the Cossacks. Their man in Warsaw was Antoine Felix de Monti who prepared an extensive Pro Memoria dealing with the Ukrainian problem. In France, two men were in charge: Cardinal de Fleury, Premier of France, and Chovelaine, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In Constantinople, the French ambassador was Marquis Louis-Sauveur de Villeneuve (1675-1744). De Villeneuve was assigned to contact the elder Orlyk and to report on him. It was a Swedish diplomat who, in 1729, pointed out the existence of Hryhorii Orlyk to the French ambassador in Warsaw, Antoine Felix de Monti. The Swedish diplomat noted that the Orlyks might be useful in mobilizing the Zaporizhian Cossacks and the Crimean Tartars in a diversion against the Russians who were sure to oppose the election of Leszczynski. Included with the Swedish diplomat's recommendations was a short summary of Mazeppa's and Orlyk's reasons for struggling against the tsar. The result was an intense correspondence from De Monti in Poland (September 18, 1729) to the Marquis de Villeneuve in Constantinople and to Chovelaine in France (November 7, 1729). By November 17, 1729, Hryhorii Orlyk was in Paris, recruited into French service.10 With personal letters from Louis XV, Hryhorii Orlyk left Paris on two secret missions: one to the Porte in 1730, and the other to the Crimean Khan in 1732. He traveled by boat from Marseilles (March 12, 1730) to Salonika. There, by mid-May 1730, he met with the French ambassador to Constantinople, Marquis Louis-Sauveur de Villeneuve (1675-1744). De Villeneuve was a commercial attache to the Porte. He had been instructed to get in touch with the elder Orlyk for sometime and to report on him.11 Father and son met in Salonika and during this meeting, Hryhorii was instructed by his father how to behave and conduct his mission with the Grand Vizier. In October, Hryhorii Orlyk set out from Constantinople to France. On December 9, he met with Chovelaine and Fleury, and presented a memorandum in which he stressed the necessity of the emergence of Ukraine for the preservation of a European balance of
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