Page:Works of Voltaire Volume 20.djvu/178

158 Muscovy. This country extends about a hundred French leagues from south to north, and almost as many from east to west. It is divided into two parts, almost equal, by the Boristhenes, which runs from the northwest to the southeast. The chief town is called Bathurin, and is situated on the little river Sem. The northern part of the Ukraine is rich and well cultivated. The southern, near the forty-eighth degree of latitude, is one of the most fertile countries in the world, and yet one of the most desolate. Its bad form of government thwarts the blessings which nature exerts herself to bestow upon the inhabitants. The people of these cantons neither sow nor plant, because the Tartars of Budziac, Precop, and Moldavia, all of them freebooters and banditti, would rob them of their harvests.

Ukraine has always aspired to liberty; but being surrounded by Muscovy, the dominions of the Grand Seignior, and Poland, it has been obliged to choose a protector, and consequently a master, in one of these three states. The Ukranians at first put themselves under the protection of the Poles who treated them with great severity. They afterwards submitted to the Russians who governed them with despotic sway. They had originally the privilege of electing a prince under the name of general; but they were soon deprived of that right; and their general was nominated by the court of Moscow.

The person who then filled that station was a Polish gentleman, named Mazeppa, and born in the palatinate of Podolia. He had been brought