News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-10-14
MAZEPPA'S REAL STORY.
Tho COssack Who Created so Great n
Sensation In the World.

A portrait of Mazeppa, painted from
life, has been discovered in Kief, in
Southern Russia, and is being engraved
by the Russian academician, Demetry
hnowkowsky. 1t will surprise nearly
every one who hears that Mazeppa was
q real, living man VINO could sit for his
portrait-he seems so like a purely
mythical being, like Bellerophen or like
one of the Amazons. Yet he was real
man and cut quite figure in his part of
the world 200 years ago.
Joan Stephanovitch Mazeppa was a
Cossack, who made successful war upon
the savage TartaIs who desolated South
crn Russia, driving them back to the
Caspian. This so recommended him to
Peter the Great that he invited the Cos
sack to his court and covered him with
honors and gifts. But when Peter set
him against the invading Swedes under
harles XII. he betrayed the Russian
and went over with his followers to the
enemy. Peter defeated them both and
drove them into Turkish territory, where
fearing to fall into the hands of his
former relentless master, Mazeppa killed
himself. He had before this hidden all
the treasures which he had amassed in
he had served, in caverns in the hills
around Kief. The portrait now discov-
cred was probably hidden at this time.
The incident by which alone we know
him actually did occur. He was by
birth Cossack, but when very young
he was sent to serve as a page in the
court of the Polish king. There his
beauty and bravery won him great IA
vor, especially with the ladies. With
one of them, the wife of certain
noble, he was suspected of too great an
intimacy, and the jealous husband
ordered him to be bound naked to the
back of wild horse that had never
been ridden. The horse was a Tartar
horse, from the Steppes, and when
lOOsed he rushed madly back to his
native country with the unwilling rider
bound to his back. The Cossacks re-
ceived the unhappy youth when nearly
dead from exhaustion, and he grew up
among them remarkable for strength
and bravery. Byron GOT his story out of
Noltaire's Life of Charles XII.," and
worked it up into his dashing and at
tractive poem. A story SO dramatic was
at once seized upon for adaptation to
the stage, and it was presented here as
early as 1925, by an Englishman named
Hunter. He was also very handsome
man and made a great stir in the town.
This was at the circus which is now the
Walnut Street ] heatre. The picture Of
Mazeppa bound to the horses back,
which everybody knows so well, was
painted by Horace Nernet, one of the
greatest of French artists. Fernet, Of
course, got his inspiration from Byron,
to whom we all owe whatever knowl-
edge we have of the brilliant Cossack
rider and soldier.
Mazeppa's real motives for betraying
Peter are not certainly known. The
Poles, who look upon HIM as hero,
always maintain that he had in view
the welfare of the Polish nation, and
they Point to the fact that he stipulated
with the Swedish king for the indie
pendence of Poland. If this be the
truth, it gives certain dignity to the
act, but the Russian story runs more in
accord with what otherwise is known
of him. They say that he was led to
go over to the enemy by the blandish-
ments of a certain Polish princess.
This would better correspond with the
rest of his adventurous career. Few
men, however, who are simply adven-
turers, get their actions recorded ty a
historian like Voltaire and celebrated
by poet like Byron, and painted by a
master like Vernet and get to be known
by all school boys who speak the Eng
lish language, and all this not from any
act of dong, but one of suffering
merely. A better man might find it
disagreeable to be personated before the
public by some of the persons who have
represented Mazeppa in this city in re
cent tim es.-PhiladelphiG Times.