Imagine standing on the bank of the Shumylivka in 1600. All around — nothing. Not a single document knows this place. Not a single register mentions a village, a hamlet, or even a road. 28 square miles of emptiness in the basin of the Markivka — a left tributary of the Dniester, where only the steppe wind blows and Tatar trails run.

«...obręb dorzecza Kosnicy (Markowki)... przestronny, 28,05 m. kw. ... dopóźna pozostawał pustynią, która właśnie na pocz. XVII-go w. dopiero zaludniać się zaczęła.»

«The basin of the Kosnica (Markivka)… spacious, 28 square miles… long remained a wilderness that had only just begun to be settled at the beginning of the 17th century.»

Jabłonowski A. — Ziemie ruskie, T. 3, p. 724

Jabłonowski — Ziemie ruskie, T. 3, pp. 724–725 «Na Kosnicy i Kamienicy» — description of the Markivka basin as a wilderness until the beginning of the 17th century.

Źródła dziejowe, T. XXII (1897), pp. 724–725

This is no exaggeration. The collection «Documents of the Bracław Voivodeship 1566–1606 from the Pisochynski Archive» (ed. Krykun, Piddubniak, Vinnychenko; Lviv, 2008) contains some 430 acts covering forty years — judicial, land, and property records — and not a single one of them mentions a settlement in this wilderness. At the edge of the void stood Raszków, Kamianytsia, Jampol, Busha — but these clung to the bank of the Dniester. The great centres — Nemyriv (~67 km), Shpykiv (~47 km), Bracław (~53 km) — were far away. Between them — «wilderness», the Wild Fields.

Who held the wilderness

There was, nonetheless, a landlord over this emptiness. As early as 1459 the Lithuanian prince Semen Olelkovych confirmed to his servitor Shashko the rights to his «otchyna and didyzna» (paternal and ancestral estate) along the rivers Rusava, Kosnica, and Kamienica — between the Kuczmański Trail and the Dniester. But these were merely «sieliszcza puste» — empty settlement-sites. Jabłonowski explains the term directly: «sieliszczem» — is «siedlisko spustoszałe dawnego sioła, zburzonej wsi», the deserted site of a former hamlet, a ruined village (T. 3, p. 185). Traces remain — but no living people.

The descendants of Shashko — the Szaszkiewicz family, petty Volhynian szlachta — held these lands for centuries but did not live on them themselves. Still in 1569 they resided in Volhynia, while their Bracław lands remained «sieliszcza Podniestrskie i Zapolskie na Kosnicy i Kamienicy» — Dniester-side and Zapolskie settlement-sites on the Kosnica and Kamienica. «Wilderness» did not mean total emptiness — on these lands cattle were pastured and apiaries kept, but there were no permanent settlements.

«Szaszkiewicze — ród wołyński ale bardzo już wcześnie uposażony w Bracławszczyznie; nadanie bowiem z r. 1459 … jest jakoby już potwierdzeniem jedynie posiadania jego ojcowizny i dziadowszczyzny, położonej nad rz. Rusawą, Kosnicą i Kamienicą, pomiędzy szlakiem „kuczmańskim” i Dniestrem.»

«The Szaszkiewicz — a Volhynian family, but endowed in the Bracław region from a very early date; for the grant of 1459 … is as it were merely a confirmation of his already-held paternal and ancestral estate, situated on the rivers Rusava, Kosnica, and Kamienica, between the ‘Kuczmański’ Trail and the Dniester.»

Jabłonowski A. — Ziemie ruskie, T. 3, p. 605

Jabłonowski — Ziemie ruskie, T. 3, pp. 604–605 The «Szaszkiewicze» entry — the 1459 grant from Semen Olelkovych, «empty settlement-sites» on the Kosnica and Kamienica between the Kuczmański Trail and the Dniester.

Źródła dziejowe, T. XXII (1897), pp. 604–605

Conflict with the Zamoyski family

From the beginning of the 17th century the void began to attract the attention of magnates. In 1604 the Szaszkiewicz took the Zamoyski family to court over «the Drahushowski ground» on the Rusava — land that the Komar family had sold to the Zamoyski without proper right. On this ground the Zamoyski built the town of Komargród with a castle, and later also Tomaszpol.

In 1609 the conflict sharpened. Mikołaj (standard-bearer of Bracław, chorąży) and Fedir Szaszkiewicz filed two separate suits against the chancellor and Grand Crown Hetman Jan Zamoyski: for sending his servitors and subjects onto the Kosnica and Rusava grounds and carrying off cattle, and for sending them onto the Tymonivka grounds and carrying off cattle «of various kinds, amounting to a substantial sum».

Note the point: the land is «empty», there are no people — but there are cattle. The Szaszkiewicz lived at Tymonivka (on the Silnytsia, a tributary of the Bug) and from there drove their cattle to pasture on their «empty settlement-sites» in the Kosnica basin — tens of kilometres to the south-west. Zamoyski, having just built Komargród on the Rusava (between Tymonivka and the Kosnica), found himself in the middle of their route — and intercepted the cattle. Hence the two separate suits: over the Kosnica grounds (the distant pastures) and over the Tymonivka grounds (closer to home).

Jabłonowski — Ziemie ruskie, T. 3, pp. 606–607 The dispute with the Zamoyski family over the «Drahushowski ground» on the Rusava. The sale of the Kosnica and Kamienica to the Czetwertyński family (1626).

Źródła dziejowe, T. XXII (1897), pp. 606–607

Jabłonowski — Ziemie ruskie, T. 3, pp. 144–145 «R. 1609 skarżą się Szaszkiewicze na kancl. Żamojskiego o najazdy jego sług: na Kosnicę i Rusawę, na Tymonówkę, na Dolenki Markowe.»

Źródła dziejowe, T. XXII (1897), pp. 144–145

The first attempt — the privilege of 1605

The Szaszkiewicz did not merely litigate — they actually tried to settle the land. In 1605 King Sigismund III issued a privilege (charter) to the brothers Mikołaj and Fedir Szaszkiewicz: permission on the Kisnytsia ground «to found a small castle and to settle a town» with fairs.

«Осада и волност мЪстскаа Шашкевичом во именю их Косницы»

Ruthenian (Lithuanian) Metrica, doc. 66 (RGADA, f. 389, op. 1, d. 204)

The 1605 privilege remained on paper. No small castle was built, no town was settled. Four years later the Szaszkiewicz were already suing Zamoyski over cattle — not over settlers, because there were none. Another seventeen years later, in 1626, they would sell these lands. Not villages — but still the same «sieliszcza», empty places where once someone had lived.

Why? The land between the Kuczmański Trail and the Dniester — is not simply an emptiness. It is a corridor of Tatar raids, one of the main routes by which the hordes marched into Podolia and Volhynia. The soil here is fertile, water is plentiful — the Markivka, the Yalanets, the Kamionka, and dozens of smaller streams. But any settlement along this route became the first target. To survive here one needed not privileges — but castles, garrisons, and a force that petty Volhynian szlachta could not afford.

For more than a century and a half the Szaszkiewicz family held this land — from the 1459 grant to the 1626 sale. And in all that time no one managed to settle it. Not the Lithuanian prince, not King Sigismund, not the Szaszkiewicz themselves. But in 1626 a buyer appeared — Prince Stefan Światopełk-Czetwertyński — who would at last accomplish what no one else had managed.