You have not been quite just in your reprimand.

The Cossacks would have been guilty, and deserving of death, had they got drunk on the march, or when engaged on heavy toilsome labour during war; but we have been sitting here unoccupied, loitering in vain before the city.

There was no fast or other Christian restraint; how then could it be otherwise than that a man should get drunk in idleness?
There is no sin in that.

But we had better show them what it is to attack innocent people.

They first beat us well, and now we will beat them so that not half a dozen of them will ever see home again." The speech of the hetman of the kuren pleased the Cossacks.