The book tells about the emergence and development of the Ukrainian Cossacks. The first Cossack detachments in Zaporozhye in the 16th century, popular uprisings in Ukraine at the beginning of the 17th century, the brilliant Bohdan Khmelnitsky, Ruina, the desperate Ivan Mazepa, the rearguard battles of I. Skoropadsky, D. Apostol, K. Razumovsky, the terrible 19th "ministerial" century - the authors created a reliable and a detailed history of the Cossack Ukraine of the XV-XX centuries, using for this a lot of documents and memoirs of this amazing time. Following the foreign authors of the 17th century, one wants to exclaim: “Bravo, Cossacks! Bravo, Ukrainian Cossacks! You always have gunpowder in the flasks.”