Cossacks

The Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Orthodox Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. Historically, they were a semi-nomadic and semi-militarized people, who, while under the nominal suzerainty of various Eastern European states at the time, were allowed a great degree of self-governance in exchange for military service. Although numerous linguistic and religious groups came together to form the Cossacks, most of them coalesced and became East Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christians.

• The Kozacks, or, if so you please, Cossacques
    (I don’t much pique myself upon orthography,
  So that I do not grossly err in facts,
    Statistics, tactics, politics, and geography)—
  Having been used to serve on horses’ backs,
    And no great dilettanti in topography
  Of fortresses, but fighting where it pleases
  Their chiefs to order,—were all cut to pieces.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto 8

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Cossacks