In 1557, Mikhail Eskovich came to the Tsar and Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich of All Rus' from Vishnevetsky Prince Dmitry Ivanovich, so that his sovereign would favor him and order him to serve, and the king would leave Lithuania and go to the Dnieper. On the Khortytsky Island the city was placed opposite the Konskie Vody (river) near the Crimean nomads. Both the Tsar and the Grand Duke sent the children of the boyars to Vishnevetsky: Andrei Shchepotev and Nechay Rtishchev, and that same Mikhail (Eskovich) with a dangerous letter and a complaint**. - This is what we read in the chronicles of the Moscow Tsar stva; From this it is clear that in 1556 on the Zaporozhye r.
an embattled mestechko (city), the future “Sych”, appeared. This Ukrfileshe was the first in Niza; it did not last long: after 2 years it was destroyed by the Crimean Tatars.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the Cossacks again occupied the island of Khortitsa. Here the word "cat" was placed - in Potatar language: camp, camp.
His ataman, the Koshevoy father, Pyotr Konashevich Sagaidachny and the hetman of the Malorosoi (Zaporozhye) army ordered the Cossacks to surround their dwellings (kureni) with an earthen rampart and a wooden tyn or “zaskoya”*, from which this Ukrfileshe received the name “Sjchi”*. preserved even during the transition of the kosha zanoreztsiev to another meta.
If the name “Sbch” appears, as we see, only at the beginning of the 18th century, then it itself, in the sense of a well-organized military society, existed a long time ago.
It is difficult to indicate exactly the time when Niza was formed. simple fishermen-warriors of this military brotherhood-kosha, but we can say with confidence that for a hundred years. before Sagaidachny it already existed, there was only no defined and organized place to live, i.e. selenium; The Cossacks spent the winter in dugouts and sheds (kurens) and abandoned them when they were no longer needed. ness, or for some reason found it inconvenient and unsafe to stay in them any longer.
In the internal structure, the kosh wore many similarities with the structure of the Dnierov Cossacks: it lasted for kurens, hundreds, etc., as well as with the orders and customs of their neighbors-enemies—the Crimean Tatars.
The Tatars did not like the appearance of the Ukrainian Cossack villager “OFch” near their nomad, and they went several times to get it, but without success, since Sjch immediately appeared on a new place; that’s how it was then to Khortyts, then to Tomakovk, then to Mikitin Rog (cape) and, finally, at the mouth of Chortomlyk and the Gnilaya (Prognoy) river. Kromf also appeared a second time on the old ashes of Khortytsia and Chortomlyk.
The island or cape where the attack was set up was usually fortified in the most accessible place for the enemy, with a number of trenches and batteries: so, on the cape from the side of the field and on the island, where the shore was better. Khortytsia, which had granite plumes up to 30 fathoms in height on its northern and western banks, was embanked on the eastern and southern sides, from where the Tatars could most likely be expected to attack.
In general, the city presented the following picture: part of the city, like a suburb, where there was a pier for the ferry and boats communicating with the adjacent shore, was occupied by a number of forges, dug into the ground and covered with turf, canopies of various workshops, tents and trays.
The slopes of the shore should be covered with a multitude of boats, gas chambers, kayaks and camping “seagulls” brought onto land, i.e., large ships on which the Cossacks brought the Dnefprom into the Black Sea, “rummage” on the shores of Analolsha, get themselves on zipuns and light their cradles (pipes), in simple terms, plunder and burn the coastal cities of Malaya Azsh and Crimea.
Since these campaigns took place frequently, one could almost always see extensive preparations for them in Sjchi; near the shore, on the bright flames of fires, resin was boiling in huge cauldrons (cauldrons), which the Cossacks, completely naked in the heat, stirred with long poles; the boats were immediately caulked and tarred.
Above this part, smell the smoke and soot from the forges. workshops and cauldrons, rising in clouds to the sky, the roar of hammers, the clatter of axes, the clang of iron, the crackling of wood, the whinnying of horses, swearing, shouting, screaming
AND"
into a continuous and deafening roar, they amazed everyone who first arrived in Sjuch.
The villages all over the island were set up in a huge quadrangle of kurens, among which a small wooden perk towered in the square.