Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Henry de Valois (1573–74)

The election had been preceded by a reform of the constitution, which resulted in the Henrician Articles converting Poland from a limited monarchy into a republic with an elective chief magistrate. The king was obliged to convoke the Sejm every two years, and in the periods between sessions he was to be advised by a group of senators. Should the king fail to observe any one of these articles, the nation was ipso facto absolved from its allegiance. Whatever its intrinsic demerits, the disastrous fruits of this reform were largely caused by the geographical position of Poland, and it must be remembered that Poland alone with England preserved the tradition of parliamentary government in the increasing absolutist Europe of the time. Besides constitutional restrictions, the new king had to undertake certain personal obligations called Pacta Conventa.

Henry reached Poland on January 25, 1574, and was crowned in Kraków on February 21. His reign lasted just 14 months. The tidings of the death of his brother Charles IX of France determined him to exchange a thorny position for what he hoped would be a flowery throne, and at midnight on June 18, 1574, he literally fled from Poland to become Henry III of France. The king’s escape caused dismay, and trouble broke out while the country was awaiting his return; finally an interregnum was proclaimed. In November 1575 the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian II was advanced as a candidate to the throne. The szlachta, at the suggestion of prominent noble Jan Zamoyski, chose a prince of Transylvania, Stephen Báthory. To strengthen his claim to the throne, Báthory married Anna, the last surviving princess of the Jagiellon dynasty.

Stephen Báthory (1575–86)

Báthory focused his energy on two vital objectives: the maintenance of Poland’s access to the sea by way of Gdańsk and the defense of its newly gained farther seaboard in the northeast against the rising power of Moscow. Gdańsk, on Báthory’s election, began to intrigue against him with the emperor Maximilian (until his death in October 1576) and with Russia and Denmark. Báthory, who had the able and strenuous support of his chancellor Zamoyski, conducted a campaign against Gdańsk by land and sea and finally enforced its complete submission to his rule.

Before peace was made with Gdańsk, Ivan the Terrible had raided Livonia once more. Báthory, using infantry rather than cavalry and calling peasants and burghers to arms together with the gentry, achieved in the operations against Russia the great military triumphs of his reign. In three successive expeditions he fought his way northeastward as far as Pskov, and in desperation the tsar asked Pope Gregory XIII to intervene and conclude an armistice. As a result of Báthory’s victories, Poland pushed Russia entirely away from the Baltic and regained sway over nearly the whole of Livonia.

Báthory, a skilled politician, knew how to make the most of the important minority groups, the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Jews. The Cossacks were largely runaway serfs, who had organized themselves into a sort of military republic on the vast and scantily inhabited plains of Ukraine, stretching from the southeast of the monarchy toward the Black Sea along the Dnieper River. The Cossack community had been drawn into the Polish military system under Báthory’s predecessors by registration and pay and had already been granted exemption from taxation, as well as their own jurisdiction. Báthory, who needed them for his Russian wars, confirmed and enlarged these privileges. His successors used the Cossacks against the Russians, Turks, and Tatars.

The privileges which the Jews had obtained from former kings were augmented; from Báthory’s day until 1764 the Polish Jews had a parliament of their own, meeting twice a year, with powers of taxation. It was also chiefly in the interest of the Jews that Báthory restricted, by special edict, the trading rights of Scottish merchants who were very numerous in Poland at the time. Among other domestic measures, Báthory reformed the Polish judicial system by the creation of a Supreme Court of Appeal for civil and penal cases. He founded, in 1579, the University of Vilnius as the first institution of higher education in Lithuania. For internal affairs Báthory knew how to strengthen his position and authority, despite the existing restrictions on royal power. Hungarian tradition and relations with the Habsburgs and with the Holy See induced him to plan a great expedition against the Turks. This project was carried with Báthory to his grave on his sudden death in 1586.

Sigismund III Vasa (1587–1632)

The Vasa period of Polish history, which began with the election of Sigismund, son of John III of Sweden and of Sigismund I’s daughter Catherine, was one of last and lost chances. The collapse of the Muscovite tsardom and the submersion of Germany by the Thirty Years’ War presented Poland with an unprecedented opportunity of consolidating, once for all, its hard-won position as the dominating power between central and eastern Europe. It might even have wrested the best part of the Baltic littoral from the Scandinavian powers and pushed Russia back for good. That this was not achieved was partly caused by the opposition of the szlachta, who continued to defend their prerogatives at the very time when the need of a strong central executive was more urgent than ever.

Other grave causes of failure were not wanting, however. One of them consisted in the very personality of the new foreign-born king. The tenacity with which Sigismund clung to his hereditary rights to the Swedish crown involved Poland in unnecessary wars with Sweden at most inopportune times. His devotion to the cause of Roman Catholicism introduced a new spirit of religious fanaticism and persecution into the atmosphere of a country hitherto distinguished for toleration. Poland’s greatest statesman of the time, Jan Zamoyski, discovered in the earliest years of the reign that the king, who had married Anna, daughter of the Habsburg Charles of Styria, was willing to surrender the crown of Poland to an Austrian archduke and to return to his native Sweden in order to bring it back to the Roman Catholic fold. Zamoyski, who had himself placed Sigismund on the throne by conquering a rival Austrian candidate, was naturally indignant. The whole affair of the king’s secret negotiations with Austria culminated in Sigismund having to answer the charges of a special “diet of inquisition” (1592)—the first time that the prestige of the crown in Poland was exposed to such a trial.

Władysław IV Vasa (1632–48)

Sigismund’s son Władysław, born in Poland and brought up as a Pole, enjoyed a popularity that his father had never possessed. As crown prince, he had been successful in military operations against Moscow and Turkey. On his ascension to the throne he ingratiated himself with the gentry, but essentially he collaborated with a group of nobles at his court. The “wisest of the Polish Vasas,” as he was called, intended to create a basis of public favor and confidence for the constitutional reforms that he planned. However, the international difficulties inherited from his father diverted his energies largely into channels of foreign policy. The very first years of his reign were marked by new victories over Russia near Smolensk (1634) and also by a new and much more advantageous truce with Sweden, which in 1635 withdrew from Royal Prussia.

He was less fortunate in a new conflict with Gdańsk and with its supporter Denmark, over the tolls he intended to impose on the trade of the Baltic ports. No interest in these matters was to be awakened in the gentry, and the most powerful magnates—those of the eastern border—thought more of expansion into the fertile Ukrainian regions than of sea power. Accordingly, the Polish navy, which had begun to develop in a promising manner under Sigismund II, was allowed to fall into permanent decay, and Władysław’s plans for foreign action on a large scale were unrealized. He wavered in his diplomacy between Austrian and French influences, represented by his two successive queens, and his tolerant and friendly attitude toward the Orthodox East caused serious trouble with the Vatican. His project of a great crusade against the Turks, although encouraged by the Venetian Republic and acclaimed by the South Slav nations, in the end came to nothing. He did not profit from the Thirty Years’ War, obtaining only for several years the possession of a small part of Silesia (the duchy of Opole and Racibórz), whereas his predecessors had thought of regaining all Silesia.

The chief obstacle that prevented Władysław’s Turkish plans from maturing was the impossibility of winning the help of the Ukrainian Cossacks, who had become too numerous and powerful to be willing instruments of Polish policy. Roman Catholic intolerance toward this Orthodox population, in the time of Sigismund III, had combined with the policies of Polish landowners to produce in the Cossacks a spirit of religious, racial, and social enmity against the Polish government. The Polish parliament had not kept the financial terms of its compacts with the Cossacks, and repressions inspired by the border magnates had infuriated them. Polish landlords had created immense estates and oppressed the peasants and town dwellers, enforcing on them high and unfair levies. This prepared the ground for revolutionary movements.

Already in the earlier years of Władysław’s rule (as during that of Sigismund III) terrible Cossack revolts had flared up and been unwisely punished by the abolition of ancient privileges. Now, instead of letting themselves be made the tools of Władysław’s anti-Turkish agenda, the Cossacks made common cause with the Crimean Tatars, who were the most immediate objective of the king’s crusading plans. Władysław’s reign ended amid a wave of Cossack insurrection, engineered by the sultan, assisted by Tatar hordes, and led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a country gentleman personally wronged by a Polish official. It was only the resistance of the Polish burghers of Lwów (Lviv) that stemmed the Cossack and Tatar tide from flooding the inner provinces of Poland. The defense of Lviv meant only a respite, and on Władysław’s death his brother and successor—John Casimir, the last of the Polish Vasas—found himself faced by a powerful renewal of Khmelnytsky’s attack on central Poland.

John II Casimir Vasa (1648–68)

John Casimir was summoned to the throne from Italy, where he had lived as a priest and had become a cardinal. He was obliged to begin his reign by negotiating with his rebel subject Khmelnytsky, but Khmelnytsky’s conditions of peace were so harsh that the negotiations came to nothing. It was only after a second invasion of Poland, in 1649, by a host of Cossacks and Tatars, that the Compact of Zborów was concluded, by which Khmelnytsky was officially recognized as hetman (chief) of the Cossack community. A general amnesty was also granted, and it was agreed that all official dignities in the Orthodox palatinates of the Polish kingdom should henceforth be held solely by the Orthodox gentry. For the next 18 months Khmelnytsky ruled Ukraine like a sovereign prince. He made Chigirin, his hometown, the Cossack capital, subdivided the country into 16 provinces, and entered into direct relations with foreign powers. The Orthodox patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople were his friends and protectors, and Russia established relations with him. Khmelnytsky’s fortunes turned at Beresteczko (June 28–30, 1651), and the hetman, betrayed by the Tatars who had until now been his allies, was utterly routed by John Casimir. All hope of an independent or even autonomous Cossackdom was at an end, yet it was not Poland but Moscow that reaped the fruits of successive victories and defeats.

Khmelnytsky, by laying bare the vulnerabilities of the Polish republic, had opened the eyes of Moscow to the fact that its ancient enemy was no longer formidable. Three years after his defeat at Beresteczko, Khmelnytsky, unable to cope with the Poles single-handed, transferred his allegiance to the tsar Alexis Mikhailovich, whose armies, after the Pereyaslav Agreement (1654), invaded Poland and began what is known in Russian history as the Thirteen Years’ War. The Russians occupied Vilnius and a large part of Lithuania.

In the summer of 1655, while Poland was still reeling beneath the shock of the Muscovite invasion, Charles X Gustav of Sweden, on the flimsiest of pretexts, launched a war to establish a Swedish mastery over the Baltic; before the year was out his forces had occupied more than half of Poland, including Warsaw and Kraków. John Casimir, betrayed and abandoned by his own subjects (headed by the nobles of the country), fled to Silesia. Two factors would save Poland in this crisis. First, the country experienced an upsurge of patriotic and religious feeling among the peasants, townspeople, and gentry. Second, a league against Sweden was formed with the participation of Austria and reinforcements from the Tatars. The people undertook guerrilla warfare, and the famous defense of the monastery of Częstochowa by its prior Augustyn Kordecki was followed by the king’s return. John Casimir organized a new national army and undertook the recovery of almost all the Polish provinces from the Swedes, who, after a long fight, were pushed back to the sea by Stefan Czarniecki.

In addition to an alliance with Leopold I (1657), Poland secured a truce with Moscow, whose armies acted against the Swedes in Livonia. Neither the help of György Rákóczi II, prince of Transylvania, nor that of Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg, brought any relief to the Swedes. On the sudden death of Charles X, Poland seized the opportunity to address all its outstanding differences with Sweden. By the Peace of Oliwa (Oliva; 1660), made under French mediation, John Casimir ceded northern Livonia and renounced all claim to the Swedish crown. The worst setback was that Poland was obliged, by the Treaty of Welawa (Wehlau) in 1657, to renounce sovereignty over Ducal Prussia. The war with Moscow was then prosecuted with renewed energy and changing luck. In 1664 a peace congress was opened, and the prospects of Poland seemed most bright, but, at the very moment when it needed all its armed strength to sustain its diplomacy, the rebellion of Marshal Jerzy Lubomirski involved the country in a dangerous civil war. Poland was thus compelled to reopen negotiations with Moscow and to accept many of the Muscovite terms.

By the Truce of Andruszow (Andrusovo; 1667) Poland received back from Moscow Vitebsk (Vitsyebsk), Polotsk (Polatsk), and Polish Livonia but ceded in perpetuity Smolensk, Starodub, and, in Ukraine, the whole of the eastern bank of the Dnieper. The Cossacks of the Dnieper were henceforth to be divided between the dominion of the tsar and the king of Poland. Kyiv, the religious metropolis of southwestern Russia, was to remain in the hands of Moscow for two years. The “truce” of Andruszow proved to be one of the most enduring peaces in history, and Kyiv, though pledged to Russia for only two years, would never be recovered by Poland. Henceforth the political influence of Russia toward Poland was steadily to increase, although Polish culture and manners, exercised chiefly through the Academy of Kyiv, still continued to permeate Russia down to the advent of Peter I the Great.