Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The term Deluge (…) denotes a series of mid-17th-century campaigns in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In a wider sense it applies to the period between the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 and the Truce of Andrusovo in 1667, thus comprising the Polish theatres of the Russo-Polish and Second Northern Wars. In a stricter sense, the term refers to the Swedish invasion and occupation of the Commonwealth as a theatre of the Second Northern War (1655–1660) only; In Poland and Lithuania this period is called the Swedish Deluge (Polish: potop szwedzki, Swedish: Svenska syndafloden), or less commonly the Russo–Swedish Deluge (…) due to the Russian invasion in 1654. The term deluge (or potop in Polish) was popularized by Henryk Sienkiewicz in his novel The Deluge (1886). During the wars the Commonwealth lost approximately one third of its population as well as its status as a great power due to invasions by Sweden and Russia." [Wikipedia]