Severyn Nalyvaiko

Seweryn Nalywajko (Ukrainian Северин Наливайко, scientific transliteration Severyn Nalyvajko * around 1560 in Husiatyn, † April 21, 1597 in Warsaw) was a Ukrainian Cossack leader who became a hero of Ukrainian folklore. The Russian poet and Decembrist Kondrati Ryleyev and Taras Shevchenko poems dedicated to him.

Naliwajko was born in Husiatyn in the family of an Orthodox priest. He served under Prince Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski, the son of Prince Konstanty Ostrogski in the Army of Lithuania, to which Ukraine belonged. In 1593 he fought against the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who rose up in a rebellion under Krzysztof Kosiński against the Polish feudal lords. However, when his father was killed by a Polish nobleman, Naliwajko switched sides and eventually became the leader of the Nalywajko uprising.

Naliwajko initiated in 1594 a group of Cossacks, who did some successful attacks on Moldova and Hungary. The next year, after his army had received great popularity by runaway peasants, he captured the city of Lutsk, where his men massacred the entire Polish nobility, the Roman Catholic clergy and the religious defectors. From Volhynia attracted Naliwajkos Cossacks to Belarus and plundered the city Mogilev.

Naliwajko offered the Polish king Sigismund III. Wasa then at peace, under the condition that Poland cedes the Cossack territories between the Southern Bug and Dniester south of the Brazlaw. The Polish king refused and sent 1596 Stanisław Żółkiewski to put down the revolt, which now the whole of Ukraine and Belarus all included.

Naliwajko united his army with the Cossack Hetman Grigori Loboda, but had to swerve into the left bank of Ukraine. In May 1596 the Cossacks were encircled from Poland near the town of Lubny. The Cossacks fought for four weeks until their supplies of food and water came to an end. They provided Naliwajko to the Poles from in exchange for their own amnesty, but were subsequently massacred treacherously. The later Ukrainian national hero was put in a cage to Warsaw, where he was publicly drawn and quartered. Folk legends about the fact that he was crowned before his death with a red-hot iron crown or boiled alive, are not supported by written evidence.