To weave a connected narrative from the known episodes of Cossack history would be a difficult and, in many ways, an impossible task. Such a work would, moreover, involve years of patient preparation and research – for authentic records concerning the subject are only to be found scattered as isolated chapters or paragraphs among the pages of Russian, Polish and Turkish history. Poets and native bards were, generally speaking, the chief historians of the Cossacks or “Free People”. The guiding traditions of their race, like those of all pastoral peoples, are to be found in songs, ballads and folkstories, rather than in written records. Yet the national ideals thus orally maintained have lost nothing thereby in strength or influence. The Cossack ballads and khorovod of the present day, like those of earlier times, teach love of freedom, loyalty to comrades and hetman, and a sturdy devotion to the privileges which the courage of their forefathers obtained for them in the past. Cossack folktales differ in many respects from the heroic legends and peasant bylines of the North. They possess, moreover, a characteristic strain – praise of joyous adventure and “glad living” – all their own. Filled with the spirit of the “Free Steppes”, they tell of hard knocks given and taken for the sheer love of fight; of struggles desperate and bloody, followed by Gargantuan feasting and debauch. Doughty feats with the wine-cup are honoured almost equally with deeds of war. In all these romances the dominant note is the praise of personal liberty and of a freedom often degenerating into license. While the Cossack did, or ballad-mongers, frankly celebrate the deeds of their heroes in a measure of exaggeration permitted by patriotism and poetic license, the more ambitious and labored “historical” works of certain Polish and Russian writers only furnish an account so manifestly partial and prejudiced that they have little more scholarly authority than the Cossack folklore tales. A great historical romance has added to this confusion. All that is generally known abroad concerning the most glorious epoch of Cossack history is contained in the heroic pages of the late Henryk Sienkiewicz. In these masterpieces of fiction the part played by the tyrannical oppressors of the Cossack patriot Bogdan is lauded to the skies, and every act of his “base-born” followers too often treated with a fine if unconvincingly nobiliary William Penn Cresson The Cossacks ISBN: xxx 107 pages

Read a sample About the author William Penn Cresson was born in Philadelphia on 17 November 1873. He came from a distinguished American family and received a comprehensive education that fostered his later interest in history, politics and international relations. After completing his studies, he initially devoted himself to academic and literary work before joining the United States Foreign Service. During his career, Cresson held various diplomatic posts and developed a particular interest in the Middle East and the Islamic world. Through numerous travels, he established contacts with political leaders and gained first-hand insights into the profound changes the region underwent in the early 20th century. He combined his experiences with historical research and journalistic work. Cresson gained particular renown for his biography The Life of Faisal I, King of Iraq, which was published in 1933. The work describes the life and work of Faisal I, one of the most significant Arab statesmen of his time, and is regarded as an important contemporary source on the emergence of modern Iraq. In addition, Cresson published further historical and political studies dealing with relations between the West and the Middle East. William Penn Cresson died in 1948. His writings are characterised by a combination of historical accuracy, personal observation and diplomatic experience, and are still valued today as valuable testimonies to international politics in the early 20th century.