despoliation. "There where three hostile nations came in contact it
was manured with bones, wetted with blood. A single Tatar invasion
destroyed the whole labour of the soil-tiller; the meadows and the
cornfields were trodden down by horses or destroyed by flame, the
lightly-built habitations reduced to the ground, the inhabitants
scattered or driven off into captivity together with cattle. It was a
land of terror, and for this reason there could develop in it only a
warlike people, strong in its unity and desperate, a people whose
whole existence was bound to be trained and confined to war."

This constant menace, this perpetual pressure of foes on all sides,
acted at last like a fierce hammer shaping and hardening resistance
against itself. The fugitive from Poland, the fugitive from the Tatar
and the Turk, homeless, with nothing to lose, their lives ever exposed
to danger, forsook their peaceful occupations and became transformed
into a warlike people, known as the Cossacks, whose appearance towards
the end of the thirteenth century or at the beginning of the
fourteenth was a remarkable event which possibly alone (suggests
Gogol) prevented any further inroads by the two Mohammedan nations
into Europe. The appearance of the Cossacks was coincident with the
appearance in Europe of brotherhoods and knighthood-orders, and this
new race, in spite of its living the life of marauders, in spite of
turnings its foes' tactics upon its foes, was not free of the
religious spirit of its time; if it warred for its existence it warred
not less for its faith, which was Greek. Indeed, as the nation grew
stronger and became conscious of its strength, the struggle began to
partake something of the nature of a religious war, not alone
defensive but aggressive also, against the unbeliever. While any man
was free to join the brotherhood it was obligatory to believe in the
Greek faith. It was this religious unity, blazed into activity by the