Mazeppa
IVAN STEPHANOVICH (mä-zep'pä), hetman of the Cossacks; born in Mazepintzi, in 1644. He was descended from a poor but noble family of Podolia, and became a page at the court of John Casimir, King of Poland. A Polish nobleman, having surprised him in an intrigue with his wife, caused him to be stripped naked, and bound on his own horse, lying on his back, and with his head to its tail, and let the animal loose, leaving Mazeppa to his fate. The horse carried him, senseless from exhaustion, to its native wilds of the Ukraine, according to the usual account.
He won the confidence of Peter the Great, who loaded him with honors, and made him Prince of the Ukraine; but he conceived the idea of throwing off the sovereignty of the czar, and for this purpose entered into negotiations with Charles XII. of Sweden. Mazeppa's hopes perished in the disaster of Pultowa, and he fled with Charles to Bender, where he died miserably, Sept. 22, -1709.