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When Bratzlav, for instance, was destroyed by the Tatars, in 1479, more than four hundred of its six hundred Jewish citizens were slain. When the city was attacked by the Cossacks in 1569, the greater number of the plundered and murdered were Jews.
Heshel's successor was Rabbi Moyshe Savranski, who established a regular hasidic "court," after the pattern of Chernobyl and Ruzhin. The only Tzaddik to whom it was not given to be the founder of a dynasty was the somewhat eccentric Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav, a great-grandson of Besht.
The same happened when Chmielnicki gained the upper hand in Bratzlav in 1648, again when the Russians slaughtered all the inhabitants in 1664, and when the Tatars plotted against their victorious enemy, Peter the Great. The Jew became for him a sponge to be squeezed for money, and a clown to contribute to his brutal amusements.
After his death, the Bratzlav Hasidim, who followed the lead of his disciple Rabbi Nathan, suffered cruel persecutions at the hands of the other hasidic factions. The "Bratzlavers" adopted the custom of visiting once a year, during the High Holidays, the grave of their founder in the city of Uman, in the government of Kiev, and subsequently erected a house of prayer near his tomb.
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