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THE EYALET OF KANT'lANEC 91appeared unlikely, offering them Ottoman protection and thus directingtheir attacks northward did seem a possible solution.Many of the Cossacks and Ukrainian peasants greeted the Ottomans withhope following the twenty years of wars and the recent partition of Ukrainebetween Poland and Russia. This response is mentioned in the Ottomanchronicles of Haci Ali and Silahdar, as well as in Polish sources. 12The typicalOttoman policy of supporting the Orthodox Ukrainian peasants againstthe Catholic Polish nobility and the extension of the millet policy towardArmenian and Jewish merchants meant that only the Polish Catholic communitycould be considered totally opposed to the new rulers. And evenfrom among that group there were some poturczeńcy. 13To control the Cossacks, however, an active Ottoman presence—astronghold ruled directly from Istanbul—was necessary. As early as 1670,the Polish envoy warned the king that the Turks wanted to captureKam "janee'. That Kam "janee' was a main strategic target of the war canbe deduced from the activity—or, rather, inactivity—of the Ottoman armyafter it seized the fortress in August 1672: the Ottomans seemed wellsatisfied with this conquest.The immense strategic importance of Kam"janec' in securing Ottomanrule over Cossack Ukraine and Moldavia is evident from its geographiclocation. According to Metin Kunt, a parallel role was played by the neweyalets (provinces) of Yanova (Romanian, Ineu) and Varad (Romanian,Oradea) in relation to Transylvania. 14In times of crisis, and given theunstable allegiance of the three Danubian principalities, such bulwarks wereindispensable. In this context the strategic importance of seizing KoSice(Kassau), which in fact ensued a few years later, is also evident. SeizingPodillja enabled the strengthening of control over the Crimean Khanate.Two major Tatar routes to the Commonwealth, the Wołoski (Turkish, Eflak)and the Kuczmański (Turkish, Göçmen yolu), ran across this province.In addition to these strategic reasons, two other classical explanations forthe Ottoman attack against the Commonwealth should be noted: the use ofcontinual campaigns in maintaining necessary discipline in the army and theeagerness of Sultan Mehmed IV (who had never taken part personally in a12Haci Ali, Fethmme-i Kamaniçe, Süleymaniye Kütüpkanesi, Lala Ismail 304, fol. 101a;Silahdar tarihi, vol. 1, p. 610; compare "Copia di relatione venuta dalla Corte di Polonia"—[the Turks] "dichiaratosi di trattare male la solta nobilta e bene la gente rostica"—in J.Woliński, "Materiały do dziejów wojny polsko-tureckiej 1672-1676," Studia i Materiały doHistorii Wojskowości 10.pt. 1 (1964): 260.13Polish, poturczeniec: a person who has "become a Turk" (i.e., accepted Islam).14M. Kunt, "17. yüzyılda Osmanlı kuzey politikası üzerine bir yorum," in Boğaziçi ÜniversitesiDergisi, Beşeri Bilimler-Humanities 4-5 (1976-1977): 111-16.