«Jeszcze nie wzięta» — Not Yet Taken
In the previous chapter we left Miastkivka in July 1654 — under siege, an army of eight thousand at its walls, the Cossack Vlasenko racing to Khmelnytsky. How the siege ended — the documents are silent. But the town survived. And over the next thirty years it would endure something still worse: Ottoman occupation, Tatar raids, the utter devastation of the region. And the lineage that founded it would die out, leaving no heirs.
This chapter is about the darkest half-century in the history of Miastkivka: from the hearth-tax register of 1664 to the Peace of Karlowitz of 1699 and the end of the Koniecpolski line (1719). About a town that fell from the rank of «gorod» to «sloboda», but survived at a time when everything around it was «ruined to the foundations».
Twenty-five hearths
1664. Ten years after the siege. The Bracław region was slowly recovering from the Khmelnytsky Uprising. A hearth-tax register (rejestr podymny) was taken — a census of taxable households across all the voivodeships of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This is what it records about Miastkivka:
«Z Miastkowki, słobody j. mc. p. Koniecpolskiego, wojewodzica Sędomirskiego, z dymow dwudziestu pięci, z młynow korecznikow kamieni dwoch po zł. jednemu, — summa zł. czterdziesci jeden, gr. piętnascie, ad rationem.»AYuZR, part VII, vol. 2, p. 561 (hearth-tax register of 1664)
Translation: «From Miastkowka, a sloboda of the illustrious lord Koniecpolski, voivode's son of Sandomierz, from twenty-five hearths, from two mill-stones of the tavern-mills at one zloty each — the sum of forty-one zlotys, fifteen groszy, on account.»
Miastkivka in the hearth-tax register of 1664
| Indicator | Value | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Słoboda (sloboda) | In 1654 — a «gorod». A two-step demotion |
| Hearths | 25 | ~100–150 inhabitants (4–6 per hearth) |
| Mills | 2 tavern-mill stones | The town is still alive — the mills are working |
| Tax | 41 zl. 15 gr. | Minimal — a sloboda enjoys exemptions |
| Owner | Koniecpolski, «voivode's son of Sandomierz» | = Stanisław Samuel (~21 years old), son of Aleksander, voivode of Sandomierz (†1659) |
Compare. In 1649 the Miastkivka sotnia numbered 253 Cossacks (1649 Register of the Zaporozhian Host, p. 253). With families, non-Cossack population, and craftsmen — more than a thousand inhabitants. Now — 25 hearths. A tenfold contraction in fifteen years.
Krykun (Bracław Voivodeship, 2008, p. 244) classifies Miastkivka's status in this period as «с.» — a village. In 1635 and 1645 it held the status «м.» (a small town, miasteczko). By 1664 it had been demoted to a village-sloboda.
The owner — «Koniecpolski, voivode's son of Sandomierz». This is Stanisław Samuel Koniecpolski, who in 1664 was about 21 years old — son of Aleksander, voivode of Sandomierz (†1659). Wojewodzic — a voivode's son — is a courtesy title inherited by birth. Had he ever been to Miastkivka? Hardly. His estates existed on paper. The real Bracław region was in ruins.
Inventory of a vanishing empire
1672. The Peace of Buczacz — the most shameful treaty in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Ottoman Empire acquired the Podole and Bracław voivodeships. Kamieniec Podolski — in Turkish hands. The whole Bracław region formally became Ottoman territory.
At this moment Stanisław Samuel Koniecpolski, Grand Crown Camp-Master (obożny wielki koronny), printed a small document — a six-page pamphlet with a list of all his estates. This is the Connotatio dobr («Notation of Estates») — not an archival record but a political pamphlet, issued for circulation (probably at the Sejm). Its aim — to demonstrate the scale of the losses after the Peace of Buczacz.
The estates are divided into tracts (trakty) — administrative clusters along trade routes. Miastkivka and related settlements appear in two of them:
Miastkivka and its neighbours in the Connotatio dobr
| Tract | Settlements |
|---|---|
| Dniester | Kamienobrod, Łosiów, Krasnopole, Oszanka, Chrestyszcza, Dymitraszówka, Kusnica, Kaczkowka, Jangułów, Piszczannowa... |
| Bug (Boh) | Kitajgrod... Miastkowka, Kruszeniówka, Sokołówka, Dubrowieckie, Markowka... |
Note: Kamienobrod and Miastkowka (Miastkivka) are recorded in different tracts — the Dniester and the Bug respectively. This is one more argument that administratively they were separate units, even though they stood next to each other. Here too is Kusnica (Kosnica) — the same small town on our river, which «perished utterly» («со всѣмъ пропала») two years after this document.
The overall scale of the Koniecpolski inheritance in this document is 170 towns and 740 villages, with a combined income of more than 500,000 zlotys a year (Przyłecki, p. 373; Rodowód of the Koniecpolskis).
The khan at the walls
August 1674. The Peace of Buczacz (1672) had ceded Podole and the Bracław region to the Ottoman Empire — but the Sejm refused to ratify it (1673). Jan Sobieski routed the Turks at Chocim (November 1673) and became king. The Ottomans regarded the treaty as binding; the Poles did not. Sultan Mehmed IV set out to enforce it: he launched a major punitive campaign against Right-Bank Ukraine. The Crimean khan and his horde — the vanguard. The route: from Moldavia across the Dniester at Soroca — and onward to Uman and to Kyiv.
The first stop after the crossing was Miastkivka. But in the document it is not called «the small town of Koniecpolski» — but «the small town of Colonel Zelenskyi»:
«А переправясь ханъ чрезъ ДнѣстрЪ, сталъ въ мѣстечкѣ Мясковкѣ полковника Зеленского, тому нынѣ 33-й день. А на другой день послѣ хана, пришолъ къ ДнѣстрЪ турской Ибрагимъ паша съ великимъ войскомъ, и сталъ у ДнѣстрЪ на берегу.»AYuZR, vol. XI, p. 612
«The small town of Colonel Zelenskyi» — not of Koniecpolski, not of the voivode's son of Sandomierz. In the hearth-tax register of 1664 the formal owner is Koniecpolski. But for the scouts and for the horde, Miastkivka is the town of Zelenskyi, the Cossack colonel who had stood here with his troops twenty years earlier.
The khan had been standing at Miastkivka for 33 days already. The day after he arrived, the Turkish Ibrahim Pasha came up to the Dniester with a large army. Hetman Samoilovych reports the same to the tsar (p. 621):
«Хана крымского съ ордами съ Волоскіе земли на сю сторону ДнѣстрЪ прежде себя послалъ, которой ДнѣстрЪ подъ городомъ Сорокою чрезъ мосты перешедчи, сталъ въ мѣстечкѣ въ Мясковке.»AYuZR, vol. XI, p. 621 (letter of Hetman Samoilovych to the tsar)
This is the very same strategic position that Paul of Aleppo had described twenty years before: «for the watching of the border of the Poles, Moldavia, and the Tatar land». Only now control of this junction had passed to the other side.
The interrogation of captured Tatars (14 August 1674) yields three key fragments. The first — the phrase that has given this chapter its title:
«А Месковъ де мѣстечко еще не взято; а иное мѣстечко они взяли и разорили до основанія и людей розобрали. А два мѣстечка сдались, и въ тѣхъ мѣстечкахъ ничего разоренія не учинили. А иные де мѣсти междо ДнѣстрЪ и Буга крѣпкіе, и можетъ быть, что подъ ними стоятъ и ихъ добываютъ, и потому по се время и замѣшкались.»AYuZR, vol. XI, p. 615
Miastkivka — «not yet taken». All around — total destruction: another small town «they took and ruined to the foundations and carried off the people». Two small towns surrendered voluntarily — those were not touched. And the other towns between the Dniester and the Bug — «крѣпкіе» (strong), and the horde may still be standing before them and storming them — «and that is why to this day they are held up». It is precisely the fortifications of the Pobereże that are holding back the whole campaign.
The second fragment — the reasons for the campaign, named by the captive Tatar himself:
«Мышкота де чинитца для того, первое: чаетъ онъ, что Поляки имъ въ миру отказали; а другое то: намѣреніе ихъ такое, что междо ДнѣстрЪ и Буга городки всѣ очистить и до основанія разорить, чтобъ впредь въ тѣхъ мѣстѣхъ ничего не было; и развѣ они затѣмъ замѣшкались. Третія причина мышкотъ ихъ, чаетъ онъ, та, что ДнѣстрЪ и Бугъ переправы великіе.»AYuZR, vol. XI, pp. 615–616
Three reasons from the captive himself: the Poles have refused them peace (= the Sejm had not ratified the Peace of Buczacz), to clear out and raze to the foundations all the small towns between the Dniester and the Bug, and the difficult crossings of the great rivers. Miastkivka — is in the zone of total destruction. And it holds out.
The wooden wall and trenches that had been dug in June 1654 «because of what the Poles did on the night before Easter» — twenty years later they are working again. Or they have been rebuilt. The captive says it plainly: the towns of the Pobereże are «крѣпкіе». Miastkivka is one of them.
Zelenskyi's last chord
That same summer of 1674, on 12 July — a month before the interrogation in which «not yet taken» would be uttered — Mykhailo Zelenskyi, now colonel of Podole, wrote a letter from Klebań (Klebań alias Sławogrod, ~42 km north of Horodkivka, near Tulchyn).
He asks Hetman Samoilovych for urgent aid (AYuZR XI, p. 523): «Изволь съ войсками сюда вступити [...] а буде бы не поспѣшилъ, то конечно погибель христіянская вскорѣ была». Zelenskyi has already abandoned Klebań and is retreating.
And in a postscript to the same letter:
«Подлинная вѣдомость пришла, что Кусница со всѣмъ пропала; по разоренію жъ, имѣть и иные городы разоряти орды съ Турками.»AYuZR, vol. XI, p. 523
Kusnica — is Kosnica, the small town at the mouth of our Markivka, where it flows into the Dniester. The Chronicle of the Eyewitness (Dzherela ed., p. 118) confirms: «притягнувши, турчин Косницю достал, і усіх людей вистинано, а напотом місто Ціну достали і вистинали». The Turks took Kosnica and put all its inhabitants to the sword.
This is the last time we see Zelenskyi in the documents. The thread that ran from the 1649 Register (p. 253) — sotnyk of the Miastkivka sotnia → colonel of Bracław (1654) → the siege of Miastkivka → his estate at Klebań (1664) — closes here. The former sotnyk of Miastkivka reports the destruction of the neighbouring small town on our river. Whether Zelenskyi himself survived — is unknown. But Miastkivka, unlike Kosnica, is «not yet taken».
The end of the line
In 1676–1679 Miastkivka still figures in the list of Koniecpolski estates (Krykun, Bracław Voivodeship, p. 244: «Сп. м. С. Конєцпольського, складений у 1676–1679 рр.» — the list of estates of S. Koniecpolski compiled in 1676–1679). But the line that founded the small town was drawing to its end.
Stanisław Samuel Koniecpolski (c. 1643–1682) — Grand Crown Camp-Master, later voivode of Podole.
Jan Aleksander Koniecpolski (1635–1719) — the last male of the line. Grand Crown Equerry, then voivode of Bracław (1704–1710), voivode of Sieradz (1710–1719). Married to Elżbieta Rzewuska. Childless.
He died in 1719. At the funeral «the coats of arms were broken» — the szlachta rite of kasowanie herbu, the sign that the line had died out forever.
The Ukrainian estates at the time of Jan Aleksander's death were largely empty. The Ottoman occupation of the Bracław region (1672–1699), Tatar raids, and the Cossack wars had left the land «entirely empty». Only the Peace of Karlowitz (1699) returned Podole and the Bracław region to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth — but the rebuilding would be someone else's task.
After 1719 Miastkivka passed to the Lubomirskis. The mechanism of transfer is complex: according to Heleniusz (1882), the Koniecpolski estates in Ukraine «remained in complete desolation» until c. 1700, and in 1724 the Lubomirskis acquired them. The Lublin Tribunal of 1744 confirmed their ownership. In 1747 Prince Lubomirski built a Roman Catholic church (kościół) in Miastkivka (SG T.VI, p. 289) — the first masonry building in the small town. But that is the next story.
The first century: a summary
From the founding (c. 1637) to the end of the Koniecpolski line (1719) — eighty years.
Miastkivka: the first century
| Year | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|
| c. 1637 | Privilege of Magdeburg law; foundation on the Kuczmański Trail | AGAD, MK 182, k. 185v–187v |
| 1649 | A Cossack fortress: 253 Cossacks, sotnyk Zelenskyi, the largest sotnia in the region | 1649 Register of the Zaporozhian Host, p. 253 |
| Jan. 1654 | «Пуста» (deserted) — abandoned after the punitive expeditions | AYuZR X, p. 239 |
| June 1654 | Revived: walls, trenches, two churches, a colonel with troops | Paul of Aleppo, bk. IV |
| July 1654 | Siege: 8,000 Poles and Moldavians | AYuZR X, pp. 701–704 |
| 1664 | «Słoboda» — 25 hearths, «Colonel Zelenskyi's» | AYuZR VII.2, p. 561; XI, p. 612 |
| c. 1672 | In Koniecpolski's Connotatio dobr (Bug tract) | Przyłecki, p. 373 |
| 1674 | «Not yet taken» — holds out against the horde for 33+ days | AYuZR XI, pp. 612, 615 |
| 1682 | Estates → Jan Aleksander (his cousin) | Przyłecki, pp. 375–379 |
| 1699 | Peace of Karlowitz — the Bracław region returns to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth | |
| 1719 | The Koniecpolski line dies out. «The coats of arms are broken» |
What survived: the name — Miastkivka; two churches — the Annunciation on the left bank (still in use today) and St Nicholas on the right (by some accounts, it burned down only in the 19th century); and a stone fortress — a two-storey kamienica (stone house) with walls a metre thick, a cellar and underground passages, which still stands on the market square of Horodkivka.
What perished: the Koniecpolski line — the founders of the small town, one of the most powerful houses of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. 170 towns, 740 villages, the hetman who built Kodak and Brody — and in eighty years not a single heir. With them vanished the original name of the small town as well — Kamienobrod, which still figures in the Connotatio dobr but after 1682 appears in no document at all.