Seeing everyone in the room turn toward him, Chaddov recalled the strategy that gentleman had told him, drew a deep breath, and said:
"For us, the most important thing at present is to expand our own strength."
He pointed southwest. "The Military Settlements at Lubny and Poltava have abundant sources of troops, and the people there are all filled with hatred for Alexander.
"We should seize those places swiftly while Kutuzov has no time to attend to us. As long as we promise the Serfs in the settlements land, perhaps along with a few Rubles at most, they will not resist us at all. They may very well even join us.
"After that, we can continue south. There are many Cossack camps there. We could even go to the Danube River and form an alliance with Katerlez's Cossack Sich."
The so-called "Sich" referred to defensive fortifications built by Cossacks upon the open plains, and later became a term for large Cossack autonomous regions.[Note 1]
A large Sich was governed by its own Rada, an institution similar to a Parliament. It had its own army and church, its members helped one another, and it was essentially an independent little country.
More than twenty years earlier, Catherine II had destroyed the Zaporozhian Sich, the largest in Ukraine. The Cossacks unwilling to submit to the Tsar fled to the Danube River and established a new Sich along the Russo-Turkish border.
It could be said that these Cossacks bore a blood feud as deep as the sea with Russia. During the later Russo-Turkish War, they even served the Ottomans. It was not until near the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Ottomans had been beaten so badly by Russia that they could scarcely take care of themselves, that these Cossacks completely lost their