In the mid-seventeenth century in the Polish Commonwealth (at that time the largest nation in Europe), a terrible war broke out between the Cossacks let by Bohdan Chmielnicki (a national hero of the Ukraine) and the Poles. The Cossacks, long time allies of the Poles in battles against the forces of Islam had become alienated from the Poles due in part to the actions of the great Polish magnates, the differences in religion (Catholics vs. Orthodox), the Cossacks and Ukrainian view of being exploited by the Jews brought in by the magnates and a lack of opportunity for plunder by the peace between the Commonwealth and Islam.

The ensuing war lasted about nine years during which much of the Ukraine, parts of Poland and Lithuania were laid to waste as hundreds of thousands were killed in battles, sieges, and local slaughter. Invited into the Ukraine by the Cossacks, both Tartars and Turks rampaged across the land and took so many prisoners that the slave prices in the Crimea and Constantinople were drastically lowered.