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for mutual See also:defence against the barbarians who en-
vironed them. For a See also:time it seemed highly probable that See also:Poland would be completely germanized, like See also:Silesia, or become a See also:part of the new Bohemian See also:Empire which See also:Wenceslaus II. (crowned See also: See also:Sword. had now to See also:deal. In the first See also:year of the 3th See also:century, the Knights of the Sword, one of the numerous orders of crusading military monks, had been founded in See also:Livonia to " convert " the See also:pagan Letts, and, in 1208, the still more powerful Teutonic See also:order was invited by Duke See also:Conrad of Masovia to See also:settle in the See also:district of See also:Kulm (roughly corresponding to modern See also:East See also:Prussia) to protect his territories against the incursions of the See also:savage Prussians, a See also:race closely akin to the See also:Lithuanians. Conrad has been loudly blamed by Polish historians for introducing this See also:foreign, and as it ultimately proved, dangerous See also:element into Poland. But the unfortunate See also:prince had to choose between dependence and extermination, for his unaided resources were powerless against the persistent attacks of the unconquerable
The Prussians. The Teutonic Order, which had just
Teutonic been expelled from Hungary by See also:Andrew II., joyfully
order. accepted this new See also:domicile, and its position in the See also:north was definitely established by the compact of Kruschwitz in 1230, whereby it obtained See also:absolute See also:possession of the maritime district between See also:Pomerania and See also:Courland, and southwards as far as See also:Thorn. So far were the Poles from anticipating any danger from the Teutonic Order, that, from 1243 to 1255, they actually assisted it to overthrow the See also:independent Pomeranian princes, the most formidable opponents of the Knights in the earlier years of their existence. A second Tatar See also:raid in 1259, less dangerous, perhaps, but certainly more ruinous, than the first invasion—for the principalities of Little Poland and See also:Sandomir were systematically ravaged for three months—still further
TheLithuanians.
but Poland formed but a small portion of his vast domains, and Poland's interests were subordinated to the larger demands of an imperial policy which embraced See also:half See also:Europe within its See also:orbit
On the See also:death of Louis there ensued an See also:interregnum of two
years marked by fierce See also:civil wars, instigated by duke Ziemovit
of Masovia, the northernmost See also:province of Poland,
the daughter of Louis the Great and the See also:grand-daughter of Wladislaus Lokietek, had an equal right, by See also:inheritance, to the thrones of Hungary and Poland. By an agreement with the queen mother of Hungary at Kassa in 1383, the Poles finally accepted Jadwiga as their queen, and, on the 18th of See also:February 1386, greatly against her will, the See also:young princess, already betrothed to See also: During Olgierd's reign the See also:southern boundaries' of Lithuania touched the See also:Black See also:Sea, including the whole See also:tract of land between the mouth of the See also:Bug and the mouth of the See also:Dnieper. Olgierd was succeeded by his son Jagiello as grand duke in 1377, while Kiejstut was left in possession of Samogitia, Troki and See also:Grodno; but the Teutonic Order, alarmed at the growth of Lithuania, succeeded in estranging See also:uncle and nephew, and Kiejstut was treacherously assassinated by Jagiello's orders, at Krewo, on the 15th of See also:August 1382. Three See also:weeks later Jaglello was compelled to cede Samogitia, as far as the Dubissa, to the Knights, and, in the following year they set up against him Kiejstut's son See also:Witowt. The eyes of Jagiello were now opened to the fact that the machiavellian policy of the Knights aimed at subjugating Lithuania by dividing it. He at once made See also:peace with his See also:cousin; restored him his patrimony; and, to secure Lithuania against the future vengeance of the Knights, Jagiello made overtures to Poland for the hand of Jadwiga, and received the Polish See also:crown along with it, as already mentioned
Before proceeding to describe the Jagiellonic See also:period of Polish See also:history, it is necessary to See also:cast a rapid glance at the social and See also:political See also:condition of the country in the preceding Piast period.
The paucity and taciturnity of our See also:sources make it impossible to give anything like an adequate picture of Old Poland during Beginnings the first four centuries of its existence. A glimpse of the Polish here and there of the political development of the
Constitu- country is the utmost that the most diligent See also:scrutiny
tion. can glean from the scanty See also:record of the See also:early See also:chronicles. See also:External pressure, here as elsewhere, created a patriotic military See also:caste, and the subsequent partitional period, when every little prince had his own separate See also:court, still further established the growing See also:influence of the szlachta, or gentry, who were not backward in claiming and obtaining See also:special privileges in return for their services. The first See also:authentic pacta conventa made between the Polish See also:nobility and the Crown See also:dates from the compact of Kassa (See also:September 17, 1374), when Louis of Hungary agreed to exempt the szlachta from all See also:taxation, except two Polish groschen per hide of land, and to compensate them for the expenses of all military service rendered beyond the confines of the See also:realm. The See also:clergy received their See also:chief
privileges much earlier. It was at the See also:synod of Leczyca, nearly a century before the compact of Kassa, that the See also:property of the See also: To say nothing of the labours of the See also:Cistercians as colonists, pioneers and church-builders, or of the See also:missions of the See also:Dominicans and See also:Franciscans (the former of whom were introduced into Poland by Ivo, See also:bishop of Cracow,' the See also:personal friend of See also:Dominic), the Church was the one See also:stable and unifying element in an See also:age of centrifugal particularism. The frequent synods represented the whole of Poland, and kept alive, as nothing else could, the See also:idea of See also:national solidarity. The See also:Holy See had also a considerable share in promoting the political development of the land. In the 13th century alone no fewer than See also:forty-nine papal legates visited Poland, and thirty provincial synods were held by them to regulate church affairs and promote See also:good See also:government. Moreover the clergy, to their eternal See also:honour, consistently protected the See also:lower from the tyranny of the upper classes.
The growth of the towns was slower. During the heroic Boleslawic period there had been a premature outcrop of civil
See also:life. As early as the 11th century Kruschwitz, Growth
the old Polish See also:capital, and See also:Gnesen, the See also:metropolitan of the
see, were of considerable importance, and played a Towns. leading part in public life. But in the ensuing anarchic period both cities were utterly ruined, and the centre of political gravity was transferred from Great Poland to Little Poland, where Cracow, singularly favoured by her position, soon became the capital of the See also:monarchy, and one of the wealthiest cities in Europe. At the end of the 14th century we find all the great trade See also:gilds established there, and the See also:cloth manufactured at Cracow was eagerly sought after, from See also:Prague to Great See also:Novgorod. So wealthy did Cracow become at last that Casimir the Great See also:felt it necessary to restrain the luxury of her citizens by sumptuary ordinances. Towards the end of the loth century the Polish towns even attained some degree of political influence, and their delegates sat with the nobles and clergy in the king's See also:councils, a right formally conceded to them at See also:Radom in See also: Even the peasants, who had suffered severely from the wholesale See also:establishment of prisoners of See also:war as See also:serfs on the estates of the nobles, still preserved the rights of personal See also:liberty and See also:free transit from See also:place to place, whence their name of lazigi. The only portion of the community which had no privileges were the See also:Jews, first introduced into Poland by Boleslaus the Pious, duke of Great Poland, in 1264, when See also:bitter persecutions had driven them northwards from the shores of the Adriatic. Casimir the Great extended their liberty of domicile over the whole kingdom (1334). From the first they were better treated in Poland than elsewhere, though frequently exposed to outbreaks of popular fanaticism. The transformation of the pagan Lithuanian chieftain Jagiello into the See also:catholic king of Poland, Wladislaus II., was an event of capital importance in the history of eastern Europe. Wladis- Its immediate and inevitable consequence was the taus H. formal reception of the Lithuanian nations into the and the See also:fold of the Church. What the Teutonic Order had Teutonic vainly endeavoured to bring about by See also:fire and sword, order. for two centuries, was peacefully accomplished by Jagiello within a single See also:generation, the Lithuanians, for the most part, willingly yielding to the arguments of a prince of their own See also:blood, who promptly rewarded his converts with See also:peculiar and exclusive privileges. The See also:conversion of Lithuania menaced the very existence of the Teutonic Knights. Originally planted on the Baltic See also:shore for the See also:express purpose of christianizing their savage neighbours, these crusading monks had freely exploited the See also:wealth and the valour of the See also:West, ostensibly in the cause of See also:religion, really for the purpose of See also:founding a dominion of their own which, as time went on, lost more and more of its religious See also:character, and was now little more than a See also:German military forepost, extending from Pomerania to the Niemen, which deliberately excluded the Slays from the sea and thrived 'See also:Archbishop of Gnesen 1219–1220. Died at See also:Modena 1229. wiadts- which continued to exist as an independent princi- taus iL /agielio. pality alongside of the kingdom of Poland. Ziemounion of vit aimed at the Polish crown, proposing to marry Poland and the See also:infant princess Jadwiga of Hungary, who, as
Lithuania.
at their expense. The See also:mere See also:instinct of self-preservation had, at last, See also:drawn the Poles and Lithuanians together against these ruthless and masterful intruders, and the See also:coronation of Jagiello at Cracow on the 15th of February 1386, was both a warning and a See also:challenge to the Knights. But if the Order had now become a superfluous See also:anachronism, it had still to be disposed of, and this was no easy task. For if it had failed utterly as a See also:mission in partibus, it had succeeded in establishing on the Baltic one of the strongest military organizations in Europe. In the See also:art of war the Knights were immeasurably See also:superior to all their neighbours. The pick of the feudal See also:chivalry composed their ranks; with all Europe to draw upon, their resources seemed inexhaustible, and centuries of political experience made them as formidable in See also:diplomacy as they were valiant in warfare. And indeed, for the next twenty years, the Teutonic Order more than held its own. Skilfully taking See also:advantage of the jealousies of Poland and Lithuania, as they were accentuated by the personal antagonism of Jagiello and Witowt (q.v.), with the latter of whom the Knights more than once contracted profitable alliances, they even contrived (Treaty of Salin, 1378) to extend their territory by getting possession of the province of Samogitia, the See also:original seat of the Lithuanians, where paganism still persisted, and where their inhuman cruelties finally excited the horror and indignation of See also:Christian Europe. By this time, however, the prudent Jagiello had become convinced that Lithuania was too strong to be ruled by or from Poland, and yet not strong enough to stand alone, and by the compact of See also:Vilna (See also:January 18, 1401, confirmed by the compact of Radowo, March so) he surrendered the whole grand duchy to Witowt, on the understanding that the two states should have a common policy, and that neither of them should elect a new prince without the consent of the other. The See also:wisdom of this arrangement was made See also:manifest in 1410, when Jagiello and Witowt combined their forces for the purpose of delivering Samogitia from the intolerable tyranny of the Knights. The issue was fought out on the See also: A few weeks after the victory the towns of Thorn, See also:Elbing, See also:Braunsberg and See also:Danzig submitted to the Polish king, and all the Prussian bishops voluntarily offered to render him See also:homage. But the excessive caution of Jagiello gave the Knights time to recover from the See also:blow; the Polish levies proved unruly and incompetent; Witowt was suddenly recalled to Lithuania by a Tatar invasion, and thus it came about that, when peace was concluded at Thorn, on the 1st of February 1411, Samogitia (which was to revert to the Order on the death of Jagiello and Witowt), Dobrzyn, and a war See also:indemnity of soo,000 marks payable in four instalments, were the best terms Poland could obtain from the Knights, whose territory practically remained intact. Jagiello's See also:signal for the attack at the See also:battle of Grunewald, " Cracow and Vilna " (the respective capitals of Poland and Lithuania) had 'eloquently demonstrated the solidarity of the two states. This solidarity was still further strengthened by the Union of Horodlo (See also:October 2, 1413) which enacted that henceforth Lithuania was to have the same order of dignitaries' as Poland, as well as a See also:council of state, or See also:senate, similar to the Polish senate. The See also:power of the grand-duke was also greatly increased. He was now declared to be the equal of the Polish king, and his successor could be elected only by the senates of Poland and Lithuania in See also:con-junction. The Union of Horodlo also established absolute parity between the nobility of Poland and Lithuania, but the privileges of the latter were made conditional upon their profession of the See also:Roman Catholic faith, experience having shown that difference of religion in Lithuania meant difference of politics, and a tendency See also:Moscow-wards, the See also:majority of the Lithuanian boyars being of the See also:Greek Orthodox See also:Confession. ' All the chief offices of state were consequently duplicated, e.g. the See also:hetman wielki koronny, i.e. " grand hetman of the crown," as the Polish See also:commander-in-chief was called, had his counterpart in Lithuania, who See also:bore the title of wielki hetman litewski, i.e. ` grand hetman of Lithuania," and so on. During the See also:remainder of the reign of Wladislaus II. the Teutonic Order gave Poland much trouble, but no serious anxiety. The trouble was due mainly to the repeated efforts of the Knights to evade the fulfilment of the obligations of the Treaty of Thorn. In these endeavours they were materially assisted by the See also:emperor See also:Sigismund, who was also king of Hungary. Sigismund, in 1422, even went so far as to propose a See also:partition of Poland between Hungary, the empire and the Silesian princes, a See also:scheme which foundered upon Sigismund's impecuniosity and the reluctance of the See also:Magyars to injure the Poles. More than once Wladislaus II. was even obliged to renew the war against the Knights, and, in 1422, he compelled them to renounce all claims upon Samogitia; but the See also:long struggle, still undecided at his death, was fought mainly with See also:diplomatic weapons at See also:Rome, where the popes, generally speaking, listened rather to the victorious monarch who had added an ecclesiastical province to the Church than to the discomfited and turbulent Knights. Had Wladislaus II. been as great a See also:warrior as Witowt he might, perhaps, have subdued the Knights altogether. But by nature he was pre-eminently a diplomatist, and it must in fairness be admitted that his diplomacy in every direction was distinctly beneficial to Poland. He successfully thwarted all the schemes of the emperor Sigismund, by adroitly supporting the revolutionary party in Bohemia (q.v.). In return Hussite mercenaries fought on the Polish See also:side at Tannenburg, and See also:Czech patriots repeatedly offered the crown of Bohemia to Wladislaus. The Polish king was always ready enough to support the Czechs against Sigismund; but the See also:necessity of justifying his own orthodoxy (which the Knights were for ever impugning) at Rome and in the See also:face of Europe prevented him from accepting the crown of St Wenceslaus from the hands of heretics. Wladislaus II. died at See also:Lemberg in 1434, at the age of eighty-three. During his long reign of forty-nine years Poland had gradually risen to the See also:rank of a great power, a result due in no small measure to the insight and sagacity of the first Jagiello, who sacrificed every other See also:consideration to the vital necessity of See also:welding the central Slays into a compact and homogeneous state. The next ten years severely tested the stability of his great See also:work, but it stood the test triumphantly. Neither a turbulent minority, nor the neglect of an absentee king; neither the revival of separatist tendencies in Lithuania, nor the out-breaks of aristocratic lawlessness in Poland, could do more than shake the superstructure of the imposing edifice. After the death at See also:Varna, in 1444, of Jagiello's eldest son and successor, Wladislaus III. (whose history belongs rather to Hungary than to Poland), another great statesman, in no See also:wise inferior to Wladislaus II., completed and consolidated his work. This was Wladislaus's second son, already grandduke of Lithuania, who ascended the Polish throne as Casimir IV. in 1447, thus reuniting Poland and Lithuania under one monarch. Enormous were the difficulties of Casimir IV. He instinctively recognized not only the vital necessity of the See also:maintenance of the union between the two states, but also the fact that the chief source of danger to the union See also:lay 1447-1 7-1 r /v.. /492. in Lithuania, in those days a See also:maelstrom of conflicting political currents. To begin with, Lithuania was a far less composite state than Poland. Two-thirds of the grandduchy consisted of old See also:Russian lands inhabited by men who spoke the Ruthenian See also:language and professed the Orthodox Greek religion, while in the north were the Lithuanians proper, semi-savage and semi-catholic, justly proud of their heroic forefathers of the See also:house of Gedymin, and very sensitive of the pretensions of Poland to the provinces of See also:Volhynia and See also:Podolia, the fruits of Lithuanian valour. A Lithuanian himself, Casimir strenuously resisted the attempts of Poland to wrest these provinces from the grandduchy. Moreover, during the earlier years of his reign, he was obliged to reside for the most part in Lithuania, where his tranquilizing influence was needed. His supposed preference for Lithuania was the real cause of his unpopularity in Poland, where, to the very end of his reign, he was regarded with suspicion, and where every effort was made to thwart his far-seeing and patriotic political combinations, which were beyond the comprehension of his self-seeking and narrow-minded contemporaries. This was notably the See also:case as regards his dealings with the old enemy of his race, the Teutonic Order, whose destruction was the chief aim of his ambition. The Teutonic Order had long since failed as a religious institution; it was now to show its inadequacy as a political organization. In the domain of the Knights the gentry, parochial clergy and townsmen, who, beneath its See also:protection, had attained to a high degree of wealth and See also:civilization, for long remained without the slightest political influence, though they bore nearly the whole See also:burden of taxation. In 1414, however, intimidated by the growing discontent, which frequently took the See also:form of armed See also:rebellion, the Knights consented to the establishment of a See also:diet, which was re-formed on a more aristocratic basis in 1430. But the old abuses continuing to multiply, the Prussian towns and gentry at last took their affairs into their own hands, and formed a so-called Prussian See also:League, which demanded an equal share in the government of the country. This league was excommunicated by the See also:pope, and placed under the See also:ban of the empire almost simultaneously in 1453, whereupon it placed itself beneath the protection of its nearest powerful See also:neighbour, the king of Poland, who (March 6, 1454) issued a manifesto incorporating all the Prussian provinces with Poland, but, at the same time, granting them See also:local See also:autonomy and free trade. But provinces are not conquered by manifestoes, and Casimir's See also:acceptance of the homage of the Prussian League at once involved him in a war with the desperate Teutonic Knights, which lasted twelve years, but might easily have been concluded in a twelvemonth had he only been loyally supported by his own subjects, for whose benefit he had embarked upon this great enterprise. But instead of support, Casimir encountered obstinate obstruction at every point. No patriotic See also:Pole, we imagine, can read the history of this miserable war without feeling heartily ashamed of his countrymen. The acquisition of the Prussian lands was vital to the existence of Poland. It meant the excision of an See also:alien element which fed like a See also:cancer on the See also:body politic; it meant the recovery, at comparatively little cost, of the command of the See also:principal See also:rivers of Poland, the See also:Vistula and the Niemen; it meant the obtaining of a seaboard with the corollaries of sea-power and See also:world-wide See also:commerce. Yet, except in the border province of Great Poland, which was interested commercially, the whole enterprise was regarded with such indifference that the king, in the very crisis of the struggle, could only with the utmost difficulty obtain contributions for war expenses from the half-dozen local diets of Poland, which extorted from the helplessness of their distracted and impecunious See also:sovereign fresh privileges for every See also:subsidy they grudgingly granted. Moreover Casimir's difficulties were materially increased by the necessity of paying for Czech mercenaries, the pospolite ruszenie, or Polish See also:militia, proving utterly useless at the very beginning of the war. Indeed, from first to last, the Polish gentry as a body took good care to pay and fight as little as possible, and Casimir depended for the most part upon the liberality of the Church and the Prussian towns, and the valour of the Hussite See also:infantry, 170,00o of whom, fighting on both sides, are said to have perished. Not till the victory of Puck (September 17, 1462), one of the very few pitched battles in a war of raids, skirmishes and sieges, did See also:fortune incline decisively to the side of the Poles, who maintained and improved their advantage till absolute exhaustion compelled the Knights to accept the See also:mediation of a papal See also:legate, and the second peace of Thorn (October 14, 1466) concluded a struggle which had reduced the Prussian provinces to a wilder- ness.' By the second peace of Thorn, Poland recovered the provinces of Pomerelia, Kulm and Michalow, with the bishopric of See also:Ermeland, numerous cities and fortresses, including Marien 18,000 of their 21,000 villages were destroyed, moo churches were razed to the ground, and the See also:population was diminished by more than a See also:quarter of a million.See also:burg, Elbing, Danzig and Thorn. The territory of the Knights was now reduced to Prussia proper, embracing, roughly speaking, the district between the Baltic, the lower Vistula and the lower Niemen, with See also:Konigsberg as its capital. For this territory the grand-masters, within nine months of their See also:election, were in future to render homage to the Polish king; but, on the other hand, the king undertook not to make war or engage in any important enterprise without the consent of the Prussian province, and See also:vice versa. Thus Prussia was now confederated with Poland, but she occupied a subordinate position as compared with Lithuania, inasmuch as the grand-See also:master, though filling the first place in the royal council, was still a subject of the Polish crown. Thus the high hopes entertained by Casimir at the beginning of the war had not been realized. The final See also:settlement with the Poles was of the nature of a See also:compromise. Still the Knights had been driven beyond the Vistula, and Poland had secured a seaboard; and it was due entirely to the See also:infinite See also:patience and tenacity of the king that even as much as this was won at last. The whole foreign policy of Casimir IV. was more or less conditioned by the Prussian question, and here also his superior diplomacy triumphantly asserted itself. At the beginning of the war both the empire and the pope were against him, but he neutralized their hostility by allying himself with See also:George of Podvebrad, whom the See also:Hussites had placed on the throne of Bohemia. On the death of George, Casimir's eldest son Wladislaus was elected king of Bohemia by the Utraquist party, despite the determined opposition of See also:Matthias See also:Corvinus, king of Hungary, whose ability and audacity henceforth made him Casimir's most dangerous See also:rival. Sure of the support of the pope, Matthias (q.v.) deliberately set about traversing all the plans of Casimir. He encouraged the Teutonic Order to See also:rebel against Poland; he entertained at his court See also:anti-Polish embassies from Moscow; he encouraged the Tatars to ravage Lithuania; he thwarted Casimir's policy in See also:Moldavia. The death of the brilliant adventurer at See also:Vienna in 1490 came therefore as a distinct See also:relief to Poland, and all danger from the side of Hungary was removed in 1490 when Casimir's son Wladislaus, already king of Bohemia, was elected king of Hungary also. It was in the reign of Casimir IV. that Poland first came into See also:direct collision with the See also:Turks. The See also:Republic was never, indeed, the " Buckler of Christendom." That glorious epithet belonged of right to Hungary, the which the uak Turkss. . had already See also:borne the brunt of the struggle with the See also:Ottoman power for more than a century. It is true that Wladislaus II. of Poland had fallen on the field of Varna, but it was as a Magyar king at the See also:head of a Magyar See also:army that the young monarch met his fate. Poland, indeed, was far less able to See also:cope with the Turks than compact, wealthy Hungary, which throughout the 15th century was one of the most efficient military monarchies in Europe. The Jagiellos, as a See also:rule, prudently avoided committing themselves to any political system which might irritate the still distant but much-dreaded Turk, but when their dominions extended so far southwards as to embrace Moldavia, the observance of a strict See also:neutrality became exceedingly difficult. Poland had established a sort of See also:suzerainty over Moldavia as early as the end of the 14th century; but at best it was a loose and vague overlordship which the Hospodars repudiated whenever they were strong enough to do so. The Turks themselves were too much occupied elsewhere to pay much See also:attention to the Danubian principalities till the See also:middle of the 15th century. In 1478 See also:Mahomet II. had indeed attempted their subjugation, with but indifferent success; but it was not till 1484 that the Ottomans became inconvenient neighbours to Poland. In that year a See also:Turkish See also:fleet captured the strongholds of See also:Kilia and See also:Akkerman, commanding respectively the mouths of the See also:Danube and See also:Dniester. This aggression seriously threatened the trade of Poland, and induced Casimir IV. to accede to a See also:general league against the See also:Porte. In 1485, after See also:driving the Turks out of Moldavia, the Polish king, at the head of 20,000 men, proceeded to See also:Kolomea on the
Pruth, where Bayezid II., then embarrassed by the See also:Egyptian war, offered peace, but as no agreement concerning the captured fortresses could be arrived at, hostilities were suspended by a truce. During the remainder of his reign the Turks gave no trouble.
It was a fortunate thing for Poland that, during the first century of her See also:ascension to the rank of a great power, political exigencies compelled her to appropriate almost more territory than her See also:primitive and centrifugal government could properly assimilate; it was fortunate that throughout this period of expansion her destinies should, with one brief See also:interval, have been controlled by a couple of superior statesmen, each of whom ruled for nearly fifty years. During the fourteen years (1492—15c6) which separate the reigns of Casimir IV. and Sigismund I. she was not so lucky. The controlling hand of Casimir IV. was no sooner withdrawn than the unruly elements, ever See also:present in the Republic, and ultimately the casue of its ruin, at once burst forth. The first symptom of this lawlessness was the separation of Poland and Lithuania, the Lithuanians proceeding to elect See also: Suffice it here to say that it was both anti-monarchical and anti-democratic, tending, as it did, to place all political authority in the hands of the szlachta, or gentry. The impecunious monarch submitted to the dictation of the diet in the See also:hope of obtaining sufficient See also:money to prosecute his ambitious designs. With his See also:elder brother Wladislaus reigning over Bohemia and Hungary the See also:credit of the Jagiellos in Europe had never been so great as it was now, and John Albert, See also:bent upon military glory, eagerly placed himself at the head of what was to have been a great anti-Turkish league, but ultimately dwindled down to a raid upon Moldavia which ended in disaster. The See also:sole advantage which John Albert reaped from his See also:champion-See also:ship of the Christian cause was the favour of the See also:Curia, and the ascendancy which that favour gave him over the Teutonic Knights, whose new grand-master, Albert of See also:Saxony, was reluctantly compelled to render due homage to the Polish king. Alexander, Under Alexander (q.v.), who succeeded his brother in 15or, matters went from See also:bad to worse. Alexander's election cemented, indeed, once for all, the union between Poland and Lithuania, inasmuch as, on the See also:eve of it (Oct. 3, 1501) the senates of both countries agreed that, in future, the king of Poland should always be grand-duke of Lithuania; but this was the sole benefit which the Republic derived from the reign of Alexander, under whom the Polish government has been well described as a rudderless ship in a stormy sea, with nothing but the See also:grace of See also:God between it and destruction. In Lithuania the increasing pressure of the Muscovite was the chief danger. Till the See also:accession of Ivan III. in 1462 Muscovy had been a negligible See also:factor in La and Polish Lithuania. . Politics. During the earlier part of the 15th century the Lithuanian princes had successfully contested Muscovite influence even in See also:Pskov and Great Novgorod. Many Russian historians even maintain that, but for the fact that Witowt had simultaneously to cope with the Teutonic Order and the Tatars, that energetic prince would certainly have extinguished struggling Muscovy altogether. But since the death of Witowt (1430) the military efficiency of Lithuania had sensibly declined; single-handed she was no longer a match for her See also:ancient rival. This was owing partly to the evils of an oligarchic government; partly to the weakness resulting from the natural attraction of the Orthodox-Greek element in Lithu-ariia towards Muscovy, especially after the fall of See also:Constantinople, but chiefly to the administrative superiority of the highly centralized Muscovite government. During the reign of Alexander, who was too poor to maintain any adequate See also:standing army in Lithuania; the Muscovites and Tatars ravaged the whole country at will, and were prevented from conquering it altogether only by their inability to See also:capture the chief fortresses. In Poland, meanwhile, something very like anarchy prevailed. Alexander had practically surrendered his authority to an incapable See also:aristocracy, whose sole idea of ruling was systematically to oppress and humiliate the lower classes. In foreign affairs a policy of See also:drift prevailed which encouraged all the enemies of the Republic to raise their heads, while the dependent states of Prussia in the north and Moldavia in the south made strenuous efforts to break away from Poland. Fortunately for the integrity of the Polish state the premature death of Alexander in 1506 brought upon the throne his capable brother Sigismund, the fifth son of Casimir IV., whose long reign of forty-two years was salutary, and would have been ~ 06 548.. ~' altogether recuperative, had his statesmanship only been loyally supported by his subjects. Eminently See also:practical, Sigismund recognized that the first need of Poland was a standing army. The miserable collapse of the Polish chivalry during the Bukovinian See also:campaign of 1497 had convinced every one that the ruszenie pospolite was useless for serious military purposes, and that Poland, in order to hold her own, must in future follow the example of the West, and wage her warfare with trained mercenaries. But professional soldiers could not be hired without money, and the difficulty was to persuade the diet to loose its See also:purse-strings. All that the gentry contributed at present was two pence (groschen) per hide of land, and this only for defensive service at See also:home. If the king led the ruszenie pospolite abroad he was obliged to pay so much per See also:pike out of his own See also:pocket, notwithstanding the fact that the heavily mortgaged crown lands were practically valueless. At the diet of 15ro the See also:chancellor and See also:primate, See also:Adam See also:Laski, proposed an income-tax of 50% at once, and 5% for subsequent years, payable by both the lay and clerical estates. In view of the fact that Poland was the most defenceless country in Europe, with no natural boundaries, and constantly exposed to attacks from every quarter, it was not unreasonable to expect even this patriotic See also:sacrifice from the privileged classes, who held at least two-thirds of the land by military See also:tenure. Nevertheless, the diet refused to consider the scheme. In the following year a more modest proposal was made by the Crown in the shape of a capitation of six gulden, to be levied on every nobleman at the beginning of a campaign, for the See also:hiring of mercenaries. This also was rejected. In 1512 the king came forward with a third scheme. He proposed to See also:divide the country into five circles, corresponding to the five provinces, each of which was to undertake to defend the realm in turn should occasion arise. Moreover, every one who so desired it might pay a See also:commutation in lieu of personal service, and the amount so realized was to be re-used to See also:levy troops. To this the dietines, or local diets, of Great Poland, and Little Poland, agreed, but at the last moment the whole project foundered on the question who was the proper custodian of the new See also:assessment rolls, and the king had to be content with the renewal of former subsidies, varying from twelve to fifteen groats per hide of land for three years. Well might the disappointed monarch exclaim: " It is vain to labour for the welfare of those who do not care a jot about it them-selves." Matters improved somewhat in 1527, when the szlachta, by a special See also:act, placed the mightiest magnates on the same level as the humblest See also:squire as regards military service, and proposed at the same time a more general assessment for the purpose, the See also:control of the money so realized to be placed in the hands of the king. In consequence of this See also:law the great lords were compelled to put forces in the field proportioned to their enormous fortunes, and Sigismund was able in 1529 to raise 300 See also:foot and 3200 See also:horse from the province of Podolia alone. But though the See also:treasury was thus temporarily replenished and the army increased, the gentry who had been so generous at
1501-1506.
the expense of their richer neighbours would hear of no additional burdens being laid on themselves, and the king only obtained what he wanted by sacrificing his principles to his necessities, and helping the szlachta to pull down the magnates. This fatal See also:parsimony had the most serious political consequences, for it crippled the king at every step. Strive and scheme as he might, his needs were so urgent, his enemies so numerous, that, though generally successful in the end, he had always to be content with compromises, adjustments and semi-victories. Thus he was obliged, in 1525, to See also: The diet unanimously approved of this See also:simple and inexpensive See also:plan; a special See also:commission examined and approved of its details, and it was submitted to the next diet, which rejected it. So nothing at all was done officially, and the defence of the eastern Ukraine was left to See also:providence. Oddly enough the selfish prudence of Sigismund's rapacious See also:consort, Queen See also:Bona, did more for the national defence than the Polish state could do. Thus, to defend her immense possessions in Volhynia and Podolia, she converted the castles of See also:Bar and Krzemieniec into first-class fortresses, and placed the former in the hands of her Silesian steward, who acquitted himself so manfully of his See also:charge' that " the Tatars See also:fell away from the frontier all the days of See also:Pan Pretficz," and a large population settled securely beneath the walls of Bar, henceforth known as " the See also:bastion of Podolia." Nothing, perhaps, illustrates so forcibly the casual character of the Polish government in the most vital matters as this single incident.
The most important political event during the reign of Sigismund was the collapse of the ancient Hungarian monarchy at See also:Mohacs in 1526. Poland, as the next neighbour of Hungary, was more seriously affected than any other European power by this See also:catastrophe, but her politicians differed as to the best. way of facing it. Immediately after the death of King Louis, who fell on the field of battle, the emperor See also: more than justified him, and the long See also:duel which ensued between Ferdinand and Zapolya (see HUNGARY: History) enabled the Polish monarch to maintain to the end a cautious but observant neutrality. More than once, indeed, Sigismund was seriously compromised by the diplomatic vagaries of Hieronymus Laski, who entered the service of Zapolya (since 1529 the protege of the See also:sultan), and greatly alarmed both the emperor and the pope by his disturbing See also:philo-Turk proclivities. It was owing to Laski's intrigues that the new See also:hospodar of Moldavia, Petrylo, after doing homage to the Porte, intervened in the struggle as the foe of both Ferdinand and Sigismund, and besieged the Grand Hetman of the Crown, See also:Jan See also:Tarnowski, in Obertyn, where, however, the Moldavians (August 22, 1531) sustained a crushing defeat, and Petrylo was slain. Nevertheless, so anxious was Sigismund to avoid a collision with the Turks, that he forbade the victorious Tarnowski to See also:cross the Moldavian frontier, and sent a See also:letter of explanation to Constantinople. On the death of John Zapolya, the Austro-Polish See also:alliance was still further cemented by the See also:marriage of Sigismund's son and See also:heir, Sigismund See also:Augustus, with the archduchess Elizabeth. In the reign of Sigismund was effected the See also:incorporation of the duchy of Masovia with the Polish crown, after an independent existence of five See also:hundred years. In 1526 the male See also:line of the ancient See also:dynasty became See also:extinct, and on the 26th of August Sigismund received the homage of the Masovians at See also:Warsaw, the capital of the duchy and ere long of the whole kingdom. Almost every See also:acre of densely populated Masovia was in the hands of her sturdy, ultra-conservative squires, in point of culture far below their brethren in Great and Little Poland. The additional See also:revenue gained by the Crown from Masovia was at first but 14,000 gulden per annum. The four and twenty years of Sigismund II.'s reign was a See also:critical period of Polish history. Complications with the Turk were avoided by the adroit diplomacy of the king, while the superior discipline and efficiency of the Polish armies under the great Tarnowski (q.v.) and his pupils overawed the Tatars and extruded the Muscovites, neither of whom were so trouble-some as they had been during the last reign. All the more disquieting was the See also:internal condition of the country, due mainly to the invasion of Poland by the See also:Reformation, and the coincidence of this invasion with an internal revolution of a quasi-democratic character, which aimed at substituting the rule of the szlachta for the rule of the senate. Hitherto the Republic had given the Holy See but little anxiety. Hussite influences, in the beginning of the 15th century, had been superficial and transitory. The The Refor-Polish government had employed Hussite mercen- madcap in See also:aries, but rejected Hussite propagandists. The P018nd• See also:edict of Wielun (1424), remarkable as the first anti-heretical See also:decree issued in Poland, crushed the new See also:sect in its See also:infancy. Lutheranism, moreover, was at first regarded with See also:grave suspicion by the intensely patriotic Polish gentry, because of its German origin. Nevertheless, the extremely severe penal edicts issued during the reign of Sigismund I., though seldom applied, seem to point to the fact that See also:heresy was spreading widely throughout the country. For a time, therefore, the Protestants had to be cautious in Poland proper, but they found a sure refuge in Prussia, where Lutheranism was already the established religion, and where the newly erected university of Konigsberg became a See also:seminary for Polish ministers and preachers. While Lutheranism was thus threatening the Polish Church from the north, Calvinism had already invaded her from the west. Calvinism, indeed, rather recommended itself to the Poles as being of non-German origin, and See also:Calvin actually dedicated his Commentary on the See also:Mass to the young krolewicz (or crown prince) Sigismund Augustus, from whom protestantism, erroneously enough, expected much in the future. Meanwhile conversion to Calvinism, among the higher classes in Poland, became more and more frequent. We hear of crowded Calvinist conventicles in Little Poland from 1545 onwards, and Calvinism continued to spread throughout the kingdom during the latter years of Sigismund I. Another sect, which ultimately found even more favour in Poland than the Calvinists, was that of the Bohemian Brethren. We first hear of them in Great Poland in 1548. A royal decree promptly banished them to Prussia, where they soon increased so rapidly as to be able to hold their own against the See also:Lutherans. The death of the uncompromising Sigismund I. came as a great relief to the Protestants, who entertained high hopes of his son and successor. He was known to be See also:familiar with the See also:works of the leading reformers; he was surrounded by See also:Protestant counsellors, and he was actually married to See also:Barbara, daughter of Prince See also:Nicholas Radziwill, " Black Radziwill," the all-powerful chief of the Lithuanian Calvinists. It was not so generally known that Sigismund II. was by conviction a sincere though not a bigoted Catholic; and nobody suspected that beneath his diplomatic urbanity lay a patriotic firmness and statesmanlike qualities of the first order. Moreover, they ignored the fact that the success of the Protestant propaganda was due rather to political than to religious causes. The Polish gentry's See also:jealousy of the clerical See also:estate, whose privileges even exceeded their own, was at the bottom of the whole See also:matter. Any opponent of the established clergy was the natural ally of the szlachta, and the scandalous state of the Church herself provided them with a most formidable weapon against her. It is not too much to say that the condition of the Catholic Church in Poland was almost as bad as it was in See also:Scotland during the same period. The bishops were, for the most part, elegant triflers, as pliant as reeds, with no fixed principles and saturated with a false See also:humanism. Some of them were notorious evil-livers. " See also:Pint-pot " Latuski, bishop of See also:Posen, had See also:purchased his See also:office for 12,000 ducats from Queen Bona; while another of her creatures, See also:Peter, popularly known as the " wencher," was appointed bishop of See also:Przemysl with the promise of the reversion of the still richer see of Cracow. Moreover, despite her immense wealth (in the province of Little Poland alone she owned at this time 26 towns, 83 landed estates and 772 villages), the Church claimed exemption from all public burdens, from all political responsibilities, although her prelates continued to exercise an altogether disproportionate political influence. See also:Education was shamefully neglected, the masses being left in almost See also:heathen See also:ignorance—and this, too, at a time when the upper classes were greedily appropriating the ripe fruits of the See also:Renaissance and when, to use the words of a contemporary, there were " more Latinists in Poland than there used to be in See also:Latium." The university of Cracow, the sole source of know-ledge in the vast Polish realm, still moved in the vicious circle of scholastic formularies. The provincial See also:schools, dependent upon so decrepit an See also:alma mater, were suffered to decay. This criminal neglect of national education brought along with it its own See also:punishment. The sons of the gentry, denied proper instruction at home, betook themselves to the nearest See also:universities across the border, to See also:Goldberg in Silesia, to Wittemberg, to See also:Leipzig. Here they fell in with the adherents of the new faith, grave, See also:earnest men who professed to reform the abuses which had grown up in the Church; and a sense of See also:equity as much as a love of novelty moved them, on their return home, to propagate wholesome doctrines and clamour for the reformation of their own degenerate prelates. Finally the poorer clergy, neglected by their bishops, and excluded from all preferment, took part with the szlachta against their own spiritual rulers and eagerly devoured and imparted to their flocks, in their own language, the contents of the religious tracts which reached them by See also:divers ways from Goldberg and Konigsberg. Nothing indeed did so much to popularize the new doctrines in Poland as this beneficial revival of the long-neglected See also:vernacular by the reformers. Such was the situation when Sigismund II. began his reign. The bishops at once made a high bid for the favour of the new Skis- king by consenting to the coronation of his Calvinist mantilla consort (Dec. 7, 1J5o) and the king five days 1348-1372. afterwards issued the celebrated edict in which he pledged his royal word to preserve intact the unity of the Church and to enforce the law of the land against heresy. Encouraged by this pleasing symptom of orthodoxy the bishops, instead of first attempting to put their own dilapidated house in order, at once proceeded to See also:institute prosecutions for heresy against all and sundry. This at once led to an See also:explosion, and at the diet of See also:Piotrkow, 1552, the szlachta accepted a proposition of the king, by way of compromise, that the See also:jurisdiction of the clerical courts should be suspended for twelve months, on condition that the gentry continued to pay See also:tithes as heretofore. Then began a religious See also:interim, which was gradually prolonged for ten years, during which time Protestantism in Poland flourished exceedingly. Presently reformers of every shade of See also:opinion, even those who were tolerated nowhere else, poured into Poland, which speedily became the battle-ground of all the sects of Europe. Soon the Protestants became numerous enough to form ecclesiastical districts of their own. The first Calvinist synod in Poland was held at Pinczow in 1550. The Bohemian Brethren evangelized Little Poland, but ultimately coalesced_ with the Calvinists at the synod of Kozminek (August 1555). In the diet itself the Protestants were absolutely supreme, . and invariably elected a Calvinist to be their See also:marshal. At the diet of 1555 they boldly demanded a national synod, absolute See also:toleration, and the equalization of all the sects except the Antitrinitarians. But the king intervened and the existing interim was indefinitely prolonged. At the diet of Piotrkow, 1558–1559, the onslaught of the szlachta on the clergy was fiercer than ever, and they even demanded the exclusion of the bishops from the senate. The king, however, perceiving a danger to the constitution in the violence of the szlachta, not only supported the bishops, but quashed a subsequent reiterated demand for a national synod. The diet of 1558–1559 indicates the high-See also:water See also:mark of Polish Protestantism. From this time forward it began to subside, very gradually but unmistakably. The chief cause of this subsidence was the See also:division among the reformers them-selves. From the See also:chaos of See also:creeds resulted a chaos of ideas on all imaginable subjects, politics included. The Anti-trinitarian proved to be the chief dissolvent, and from 156o onwards the relations between the two principal Protestant sects, the Lutherans and the Calvinists, were fratricidal rather than fraternal. An See also:auxiliary cause of the decline of Protestantism was the beginning of a Catholic reaction. The bulk of the population still held persistently, if languidly, to the faith of its fathers; the new bishops were holy and learned men, very unlike the creations of Queen Bona, and the Holy See gave to the slowly reviving zeal of both clergy and laity the very necessary impetus from without. For Poland, unlike Scotland, was. fortunately, in those days of difficult inter-communication, not too far off, and it is indisputable that in the first instance it was the papal nuncios, men like See also:Berard of See also:Camerino and Giovanni Commendone, who reorganized the scattered and faint-hearted battalions of the Church militant in Poland and led them back to victory. At the diet of Piotrkow in 1562, indeed, the king's sore need of subsidies induced him, at the demand of the szlachta, to abolish altogether the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts in cases of heresy; but, on the other hand, at the diet of 1564 he accepted from Commendone the Tridentine decrees and issued an edict banishing all foreign, and especially Anti-trinitarian, heretics from the land. At the diet of 1565 Sigismund went still farther. He rejected a See also:petition for a national The pacificatory synod as unnecessary, inasmuch as the Counters council of See also:Trent had already settled all religious Reformation questions, and at the same time consented to the in Poland. introduction into Poland of the most formidable adversaries of the Reformation, the See also:Jesuits. These had already been installed at Poltusk, and were permitted, after the diet See also:rose, to found establishments in the dioceses of Posen, Ermeland and Vilna,. which henceforth became centres of a vigorous and victorious propaganda. Thus the Republic recovered her catholicity and her internal See also:harmony at the same time. With rare sagacity Sigismund II. had thus piloted the Republic through the most difficult internal crisis it had yet encountered. In purely political matters also both initiative and fulfilment came entirely from the Crown, and to the last of the Jagiellos Poland owed the important acquisition of Livonia and the welding together of her loosely connected component parts into a single state by the Union of See also:Lublin. In the middle of the 16th century the ancient order of the Knights of the Sword, whose territory embraced See also:Esthonia, Livonia, Courland, Semgallen and the islands of See also:Dago and See also:Oesel, was tottering to its fall. All the Baltic See also:powers were more or less interested in the See also:apportionment of this vast tract of land, whose See also:geographical position made it not only the chief commercial See also:link between east and west, but also the See also:emporium whence the See also:English, Dutch, Swedes, Danes and Germans obtained their See also:corn, See also:timber and most of the raw products of Lithuania and Muscovy. Matters were complicated by the curious political intricacies of this long-coveted domain, where the grand-master, the archbishop of See also:Riga, and the estates of Livonia possessed concurrent and generally conflicting jurisdictions. Poland and Muscovy as the nearest neighbours of this moribund state, which had so long excluded them from the sea, were vitally concerned in its fate. After an anarchic period of suspense, lasting from 1546 to 1561, during which See also:Sweden secured Esthonia, while Ivan the Terrible fearlessly ravaged Livonia, in the hope of making it valueless to any other potentate, Sigismund II., to whom both the grand-master and the See also:arch-bishop had appealed more than once for protection, at length intervened decisively. Both he and his chancellor, Piotr Myszkowski (d. 1591), were well aware of the importance of securing a See also:coast-land which would enable Poland to become a See also:naval power. But the diet, with almost incredible See also:short-sightedness, refused to See also:waste a See also:penny on an undertaking which, they argued, concerned only Lithuania, and it was not as king of Poland, but as grand-duke of Lithuania, and with purely Lithuanian troops, that Sigismund, in 1561, occupied Livonia. At his See also:camp before Riga the last grand-master, Gotthard von See also:Ketteler, who had long been at the head of the Polish party in Livonia, and William of See also:Brandenburg, archbishop of Riga, gladly placed themselves beneath his protection, and by a subsequent See also:convention signed at Vilna (Nov. 28, 1561), Livonia was incorporated with Lithuania in much the same way as Prussia had been incorporated with Poland thirty-six years previously. Ketteler, who had adopted Lutheranism during a visit to See also:Germany in 1553, now professed the See also:Augsburg Confession, and be-came the first duke of a new Protestant duchy, which he was to hold as a See also:fief of the Polish crown, with local autonomy and absolute freedom of See also:worship. The southern provinces of the ancient territory of the Order, Courland and Semgallen, had first been ceded on the 24th of See also:June 1559 to Lithuania on similar conditions, the matter being finally adjusted by the compact of March 1562. The apathy of Poland in such a vital matter as the Livonian question must have convinced so statesmanlike a prince as Sigismund II. of the necessity of preventing any possibility of cleavage in the future between the two halves of his dominions whose absolute solidarity was essential to their existence as a great power. To this patriotic See also:design he devoted the remainder of his life. A personal union, under one monarch, however See also:close, had proved inadequate. A further step must be taken—the two independent countries must be transformed into a single state. The great obstacle in the way of this, the only true See also:solution of the difficulty, was the opposition of the Lithuanian magnates, who feared to lose the absolute dominancy they possessed in the grand-duchy if they were merged in the szlachta of the kingdom. But, at the last moment, the dread of another Muscovite invasion made them more pliable and, at a Polish diet held at Warsaw from See also:November 1563 to June 1564, which the Lithuanians attended, the question of an absolute union was hotly debated. When things came to a deadlock the king tactfully intervened and voluntarily relinquished his hereditary title to Lithuania, thus placing the two countries on a constitutional equality and preparing the way for fresh negotiations in the future. The death, in 1565, of Black Radziwill, the chief opponent of the union, still further weakened the Lithuanians, and the negotiations were reopened with more prospect of success at the diet which met at Lublin on the Tothof January 1569. But even now the Lithuanians were indisposed towards a See also:complete union, and finally they quitted the diet, leaving two commissioners behind to See also:watch their interests. Then Sigismund executed his master stroke. Knowing the sensitiveness of the Lithuanians as regards Volhynia and Podolia, he suddenly, of his own authority, formally incorporated both these provinces with the kingdom of Poland, whereupon, amidst great See also:enthusiasm, the Volhynian and Podolian deputies took their places on the same benches as their Polish brethren. The hands of the Lithuanians were forced. Even a complete union on equal terms was better than mutilated See also:independence. Accordingly they returned to the diet, and the complete union was unanimously adopted on the 1st of July union of 1569. Henceforth the kingdom of Poland and the Lithuania grand duchy of Lithuania were to constitute one ndPotand, inseparable and indivisible body politic, under onets69. sovereign, elected in common, with one diet and one currency. All dependencies and colonies, including Prussia and Livonia, were to belong to Poland and Lithuania in common. The retention of the old duality of dignities was the one See also:reminiscence of the original separation. No decision, however, could be come to as to the successor of the childless king, partly because of the multiplicity of candidates, partly because of Austrian intrigue, and this, the most momentous question of all, was still unsettled when Sigismund II. expired on the 6th of July 1572. The Jagiellonic period (1386–1572) is the history of the consolidation and See also:fusion into one homogeneous, political whole of numerous national elements, more or less akin character ethnologically, but differing immensely in language, of the religion and, above all, in degrees of civilization. /agteionic Out of the ancient Piast kingdom, mutilated by the Pertod, loss of Silesia and the Baltic shore, arose a republic 1386-1572. consisting at first of various loosely connected entities, naturally centrifugal, but temporarily drawn together by the urgent need of See also:combination against a superior foe, who threatened them separately with extinction. Beneath the guidance of a dynasty of princes which, curiously enough, was supplied by the least 'civilized portion of this congeries of nationalities, the nascent republic gradually See also:grew into a power which subjugated its former oppressors and, viewed externally, seemed to See also:bear upon it the promise of empire. It is dangerous to prophesy, but all the facts and circumstances before us point irresistibly to the conclusion that had the Jagiellonic dynasty but endured this promise of empire might well have been realized. The extra-See also:ordinary thing about the Jagiellos was the equable persistency of their See also:genius. Not only were five of the seven great statesmen, but they were statesmen of the same See also:stamp. We are disturbed by no such See also:sharp contrasts as are to be found among the Plantagenets, the Vasas and the Bourbons. The Jagiellos were all of the same See also:mould and See also:pattern, but the mould was a strong one and the pattern was good. Their predominant and constant characteristic is a sober sagacity which instinctively See also:judges aright and imperturbably realized its inspirations. The Jagiellos were rarely brilliant, but they were always perspicacious. Above all, they alone seem to have had the See also:gift of guiding the most difficult of nations properly. Two centuries of Jagiellonic rule made Poland great despite her grave external difficulties. Had that dynasty been prolonged for another century, there is every See also:reason to suppose that it would also have dealt satisfactorily with Poland's still more dangerous internal difficulties, and arrested the development of that anarchical constitution which was the ruling factor in the ruin of the Republic. Simultaneously with the transformation into a great power of the See also:Betty principalities which composed ancient Poland, another and equally momentous political transformation was proceeding within the country itself. The origin of the Polish constitution is to be sought in the wiece or councils of the Polish princes, during the partitional period (c. 1279–1370). The privileges conferred upon the magnates of which these councils were composed, especially upon the magnates of Little Poland, who brought the Jagiellos to the throne, directed their policy, and grew See also:rich upon their liberality, revolted the less favoured szlachta, or gentry, who, The polish towards the end of the 14th century, combined for Coastttu- mutual defence in their sejmiki, or local diets, ttoa. of which originally there were five, three in Great Poland, one in Little Poland and one in Posen-See also:Kalisz.1 In these sejmiki the deputies of the few great towns were also represented. The Polish towns, notably Cracow, had obtained their privileges, including freedom from tolls and municipal government, from the Crown in return for important services, such as warding off• the Tatars, while the cities of German origin were protected by the See also:Magdeburg law. Casimir the Great even tried to make municipal government as democratic as possible by enacting that one half of the See also:town council of Cracow should be elected from the civic patriciate, but the other half from the commonalty. Louis the Great placed the burgesses on a level with the gentry by granting to the town council of Cracow jurisdiction over all the serfs in the extra-rural estates of the citizens. From this time forth deputies from the cities were summoned to the sejmiki on all important occasions, such, for instance, as the ratification of See also:treaties, a right formally conceded to them by the sejmik of Radom in 1384. Thus at this period Poland was a See also:confederation of half a dozen semi-independent states. The first general See also:assembly of which we have certain See also:notice is the zjazd walny which was summoned to Koszyce in November 1404, to relieve the See also:financial embarrassments of Wladislaus, and granted him an extraordinary subsidy of twenty groats per hide of land to enable him to See also:purchase Dobrzyn from the Teutonic Knights. Such subsidies were generally the See also:price for the See also:confirmation of ancient or the con-cession of new privileges. Thus at the diet of Brzesc Kujawski, in 1425, the szlachta obtained its first habeas corpus act in return for acknowledging the right of the infant krolewicz Wladislaus to his father's throne. The great opportunity of the szlachta was, of course, the election of a new king, especially the election of a See also:minor, an event always accompanied and succeeded by disorders. Thus at the election of the infant Wladislaus III., his guardians promised in his name to confirm all the privileges granted by his father. If, on attaining his majority, the king refused to ratify these promises, his subjects were ipso facto absolved from their obedience. This is the first existence of the mischievous principle de prestanda obedientia, subsequently elevated into a See also:statute. It is in this reign, too, that we meet with the first rokosz, or insurrection of the nobility against the executive. The extraordinary difficulties of Casimir IV. were freely exploited by the szlachta, who granted that ever impecunious monarch as little as possible, but got full value for every penny they grudgingly gave. Thus by the Articles of Cerekwica presented to him by the sejmik or dietine of Great Poland in 1454 on the outbreak of the Teutonic War, he conceded the principle that no war should in future be begun without the consent of the local diets. A few months later he was obliged to grant the Privileges of Nieszawa, which confirmed and extended the operation of the Articles of Cerekwica. The sejmiki had thus added to their original See also:privilege of self-taxation the right to declare war and control the national militia? This was a serious political retrogression. A strongly centralized government had ever been Poland's greatest need, and Casimir the Great had striven successfully against all centrifugal tendencies. And now, eighty-four years after his death, Poland was once more split up into half a dozen loosely federated states in the hands of country gentlemen too ignorant and prejudiced to look beyond the boundaries of their own provinces. The only way of saving the Republic from disintegration was to concentrate all its political factors into a se m-walny or general diet. But to this the magnates and the szlachta were equally opposed, the former because they feared the rivalry of a national assembly, the latter because they were of more importance in their local diets than they could possibly hope to be in a 1 The Red Russian sejmik was of later origin, c. 1433. T In view of the frequency of the Tatar inroads, the control of the militia was re-transferred to the Crown in 1501.general diet. The first sejm to legislate for the whole of Poland was the diet of Piotrkow (1493), summoned by John Albert to grant him subsidies; but the mandates of its deputies were limited to twelve months, and its decrees were to have force for only three years. John Albert's second diet (1496), after granting subsidies the burden of which fell entirely on the towns and peasantry, passed a series of statutes benefiting the nobility at the expense of the other classes. Thus one statute permitted the szlachta henceforth to export and import goods duty free, to the great detriment of the towns and the treasury. Another statute prohibited the burgesses from holding landed property and enjoying the privileges attaching thereto. A third statute disqualified plebeians from being elected to canonries or bishoprics. A fourth endeavoured to bind the peasantry more closely to the See also:soil by forbidding See also:emigration. The condition of the serfs was subsequently (1520) still further deteriorated by the introduction of See also:socage. In a word, this diet disturbed the See also:equilibrium of the state by enfeebling and degrading the middle classes. Nevertheless, so long as the Jagiello dynasty lasted, the political rights of the cities were jealously protected by the Crown against the usurpations of the nobility. Deputies from the towns took part in the election of John Albert (1492), and the burgesses of Cracow, the most enlightened economists in the kingdom, supplied Sigismund I. with his most capable counsellors during the first twenty years of his reign (1506—1526). Again and again the nobility attempted to exclude the deputies of Cracow from the diet, in spite of a severe edict issued by Sigismund I. in 1509, threatening to prosecute for See also:treason all persons who dared to infringe the liberties of the citizens. During Sigismund's reign, moreover, the Crown recovered many of the prerogatives of which it had been deprived during the reign of his feeble predecessor, Alexander, who, to say nothing of the curtailments of the See also:prerogative, had been forced to accept the statute nihil novi (1505) which gave the sejm and the senate an equal See also:voice with the Crown in all executive matters. In the latter years of Sigismund I. (1530—1548) the political influence of the szlachta grew rapidly at the expense of the executive, and the gentry in diet assembled succeeded in curtailing the functions of all the great See also:officers of state. During the reign of Sigismund II. (1548—1572) they diverted their attention to the abuses of the Church and considerably reduced both her wealth and her privileges. In this respect both the Crown and the country were with them, so that their interference,if violent,was on the whole distinctly beneficial. The childless Sigismund II. died suddenly without leaving any regulations as to the election of his successor. Fortunately for Poland the political See also:horizon was absolutely Inter. unclouded. The Turks, still reeling from the See also:shock rernum, of See also:Lepanto, could with difficulty hold their own 15724574 against the See also:united forces of the pope, See also:Spain and See also:Venice; while Ivan the Terrible had just concluded a truce with Poland. Domestic affairs, on the other hand, were in an almost anarchical condition. The Union of Lublin, barely three years old, was anything but consolidated, and in Lithuania it continued to be extremely unpopular. In Poland proper the szlachta were fiercely opposed to the magnates; and the Protestants seemed bent upon still further castigating the clergy. Worst of all, there existed no recognized authority in the land to curb and control its jarring centrifugal political elements. It was nearly two hundred years since the Republic had suffered from an interregnum, and the precedents of 1382 were obsolete. The primate, on See also:hearing of the See also:demise of the Crown, at once invited all the senators of Great Poland to a See also:conference at Lowicz, but passed over the szlachta altogether. In an instant the whole Republic was seething like a caldron, and a rival assembly was simultaneously summoned to Cracow by Jan Ferlej, the head of the Protestant party. Civil war was happily averted at the last moment, and a national convention, composed of senators and deputies from all parts of the country, assembled at Warsaw, in See also:April 1573, for the purpose of electing a new king. Five candidates for the throne were already in the field. Lithuania favoured Ivan IV. In Poland the bishops and most of
the Catholic magnates were for an Austrian See also:archduke, while the strongly anti-German szlachta were inclined to accept almost any See also:candidate but a German, so long as he came with a gift in his hand and was not a Muscovite. In these circumstances it was an easy task for the adroit and energetic See also:French See also:ambassador, See also:Jean de See also:Montluc (d. 1579), brother of the famous marshal, and bishop of See also:Valence, to procure the election of the French candidate, See also: 28, 1573), which granted absolute religious liberty to all non-Catholic denominations (dissidentes de religione, as they now began to be called) without exception, thus exhibiting a far more liberal intention than the Germans had manifested in the religious peace of Augsburg eighteen years before. Finally, early in April 1573, the election diet assembled at Warsaw, and on the r nth of May, in the midst of intrigue, corruption, violence and confusion, Henry of See also:Valois was elected king of Poland. The election had, however, been preceded by a correctura jurum, or reform of the constitution, which resulted in the Henry of famous " Henrican Articles " which converted Valois, king, Poland from a limited monarchy into a republic 1573-1574. with an elective chief See also:magistrate. Henceforward the king was to have no voice in the choice of his successor. He was not to use the word haeres, not being an hereditary sovereign. He was to marry a wife selected for him by the senate. He was neither to seek for a See also:divorce nor. give occasion for one. He was to be neutral in all religious matters. He was not to See also:lead the militia across the border except with the consent of the szlachta, and then only for three months at a time. Every year the senate was to appoint sixteen of its number to be in constant attendance upon the king in rotas of four, which sedecimvirs were to supervise all his actions. Should the king fail to observe any one of these articles, the nation was ipso facto absolved from its See also:allegiance. This constitutional reform was severely criticized by contemporary political experts. Some strongly condemned the clause justifying renunciation of allegiance, as tending to treason and anarchy. Others protested against the anomalous and helpless position of the so-called king, who, if he could do no harm, was certainly powerless for good. But such Cassandras prophesied to heedless ears. The Republic had deliberately cast itself upon the downward grade which was to lead to ruin.
The reign of Henry of Valois lasted thirteen months. The tidings of the death of his brother See also: The collapse of the mend 111., Muscovite tsardom in the east, and the submersion 1587-1632, of the German Empire in the west by the Thirty Years' War, presented Poland with an unprecedented oppor-tunity of consolidating, once for all, her hard-won position as the dominating power of central Europe. Everywhere circumstances were favourable to her, and in 'Lolkiewski, See also:Chodkiewicz and See also:Koniecpolski she possessed three of the greatest captains of that or any other age. With all the means at her disposal cheerfully placed in the hands of such valiant and capable ministers, it would have been no difficult task for the Republic to have wrested the best part of the Baltic littoral from the Scandinavian powers, and driven the distracted Muscovites beyond the See also:Volga. Permanent greatness and See also:secular See also:security were within her reach at the commencement of the Vasa period; how was it, then, that at the end of that period, only fifty years later, Poland had already sunk irredeemably into much the same position as See also:Turkey occupies now, the position of a moribund state, existing on sufferance simply because none was yet quite prepared to administer the coup de grace? There is only one See also:answer; the principal cause of this complete and irretrievable collapse is to be sought for in the folly, egotism and selfishness of the Polish gentry, whose insane dislike of all discipline, including even the salutary discipline of See also:regular. government, converted Poland into something very like a primitive tribal community at the very time when every European statesman, including the more enlightened of the Poles them-selves, clearly recognized that the political future belonged to the strongly centralized monarchies, which were everywhere rising on the ruins of See also:feudalism. Of course there were other contributory causes. The tenacity with which Sigismund III. clung to his hereditary rights to the See also:Swedish Crown involved Poland in a quite unnecessary series of wars with Charles IX. and Gustavus See also:Adolphus, when her forces were sorely needed elsewhere. The See also:adhesion of the same monarch to the League of the Catholic Reaction certainly added to the difficulties of Polish diplomacy, and still further divided the already distracted diet, besides alienating from the court the powerful and popular chancellor Zamoyski. Yet Sigismund III. was a far more clear-sighted statesman than any of his counsellors or contradictors. For instance, he was never misled by the successes of the. false See also:Demetrius in Muscovy, and wisely insisted on recovering the great . eastern fortress of See also:Smolensk rather than attempting the See also:conquest of Moscow. His much-decried alliance with the emperor at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War was eminently sagacious. He perceived at once that it was the only way of counteracting the restlessness of the sultan's proteges, the Protestant princes of Transylvania, whose undisciplined hordes, scarcely less savage than their See also:allies the Turks and Tatars, were a perpetual menace both to Austria and to Poland. Finally he was bent upon reforming the Polish constitution by substituting the decision of all matters by a See also:plurality of votes for a unanimity impossible to See also:count, upon. When we turn to the szlachta who absolutely controlled the diet, we find not the slightest trace, I will not say of political foresight—that they never possessed—but of common patriot-ism, or ordinary public spirit. The most urgent national necessities were powerless to stir their See also:hearts or open their purses. The diets during the reign of Sigismund III. were even more niggardly than they had been under the Jagiellos, and on the single occasion when the terrors of an imminent Tatar invasion constrained them to grant extraordinary subsidies, they saw to it that such subsidies should See also:rest entirely on the shoulders of the burgesses (who had in the meantime been deprived of the See also:franchise) and the already overburdened peasantry. In the very crisis of the Swedish War, the diminutive army of the victorious Chodkiewicz was left unpaid, with the result that the soldiers mutinied, and marched off en masse. Both Chodkiewicz and 'Golkiewski frequently had to pay the expenses of their See also:campaigns out of their own pockets, and were expected to conquer empires and defend hundreds of See also:miles of frontier with armies of 3000 or 4000 men at most. When they retreated before overwhelming odds they were publicly accused of cowardice and incompetence. The determination to limit still further the power of the executive was at the bottom of this fatal parsimony, with the inevitable consequence that, HISTORY] while the king and the senate were powerless, every great See also:noble or lord-marcher was free to do what he See also:chose in his own domains, so long as he flattered his " little See also:brothers," the szlachta. In-credible as it may seem, the expedition to place the false Demetrius on the Muscovite throne was a private See also:speculation of a few Lithuanian magnates, and similar enterprises on the part of other irresponsible'noblemen on the Danube or Dniester brought upon unhappy Poland retaliatory Tatar raids, which reduced whole provinces to ashes. Every See also:attempt to improve matters, by reforming the impossible constitution, stranded on the opposition of the gentry. Take, for instance, the typical and highly instructive case of Zebrzydowski's rebellion. Nicholas Zebrzydowski, a follower of the chancelor Zamoyski, was one of the wealthiest and most respectable magnates in Poland. As See also:palatine of Cracow he held one of the highest and most lucrative dignities in the state, and was equally famous for his valour, piety and liberality. Disappointed in his hope of obtaining the great See also:seal on the death of Zamoyski, he at once conceived that the whole of the nobility had been insulted in his See also:person, and proceeded to make all government impossible for the next three years. On the 7th of March 16o6 Sigismund summoned a diet for the express purpose of introducing the principle of decision by majority in the diet, whereupon Zebrzydowski summoned a See also:counter-confederation to Stenczyn in Little-Poland, whose first act was to open negotiations with the prince of Transylvania, Stephen See also:Bocskay, with the view of hiring mercenaries from him for further operations. At a subsequent confederation, held at Lublin in June, Zebrzydowski was reinforced by another great nobleman, See also:Stanislaus Stadnicki, called the See also:Devil, who " had more crimes on his See also:conscience than hairs on his head," and was in the See also:habit of cropping the ears and noses of small squires and chaining his serfs to the walls of his underground dungeons for months at a time. This champion of freedom was very eloquent as to the wrongs of the szlachta, and proposed that the assembly should proceed in a body to Warsaw and there formally renounce their allegiance. The upshot of his See also:oratory was the summoning of a rokosz, or national insurrection, to Sandomir, which was speedily joined by the majority of the szlachta all over the country, who openly See also:pro-claimed their intention of dethroning the king and chastising the senate, and sent Stadnicki to Transylvania to obtain the armed assistance of Stephen Bocskay. Only the clergy, naturally conservative, still clung to the king, and Sigismund III., who was no See also:coward, at once proceeded to Cracow to overawe the rokoszanie, or insurrectionists, by his proximity, and take the necessary measures for his own protection. By the See also:advice of his senators he summoned a zjazd, or armed convention, to Wislica openly to oppose the insurrection of Sandomir, which zjazd was to be the first step towards the formation of a general confederation for the defence of the throne. Civil war seemed inevitable, when the szlachta of Red Russia and See also:Sieradz suddenly rallied to the king, who at once ordered his army to advance, and after defeating the insurrectionists at Janowiec (in October), granted them a full See also:pardon, on the sole condition that they should refrain from all such acts of rebellion in future. Despite their promises, Zebrzydowski and his colleagues a few months later were again in arms. In the beginning of 16o7 they summoned another rokosz to Jendrzejow, at the very time when the diet was assembling at Warsaw. The diet authorized the king to issue a See also:proclamation dissolving the rokosz, and the rokosz retorted with a manifesto in which an insurrection was declared to be as much superior to a See also:parliament as a general council was to a pope. In a second manifesto published at Jezierna, on the 24th of June, the insurrectionists again renounced their allegiance to the king. Oddly enough, the diet before dissolving had, apparently in order to meet the rokosz half-way, issued the famous edict De non praestanda obedientia, whereby, in case of future malpractices by the king and his subsequent neglect of at least two See also:solemn warnings there-anent by the primate and the senate, he was to be formally deposed by the next succeeding diet. But even this was not enough for the insurrectionists. It was not the contingent but the actual deposition of the king 913 that they demanded, and they had their candidate for the throne ready in the person of See also:Gabriel See also:Bethlen, the new prince of Transylvania. But the limits of even Polish complacency had at last been reached, and See also:Zolkiewski and Chodkiewicz were sent against the rebels, whom they routed at Oransk near Guzow, after a desperate encounter, on the 6th of July 1607. But, though driven from the field, the agitation simmered all over the country for nearly two years longer, and was only terminated, in 16o9, by a general See also:amnesty which excluded every prospect of constitutional reform. Wladislaus IV., who succeeded his father in 1632, was the most popular monarch who ever sat on the Polish throne. The szlachta, who had had a " King See also:Log " in Sigis- Madlsmund, were determined that Wladislaus should be Taus w.. " a King See also:Bee who will give us nothing but See also:honey "— 1632-1648. in other words they hoped to wheedle him out of even more than they had wrested from his predecessor. Wladislaus submitted to everything. He promised never to declare war or levy troops without the consent of the sejm, undertook to fill all vacancies within a certain time, and released the szlachta from the See also:payment of income-tax, their one remaining fiscal See also:obligation. This boundless complacency was due to policy, not weakness. The second Polish Vasa was a See also:man of genius, fully conscious of his powers, and determined to use them for the benefit of his country. The events of the last reign had demonstrated the incompetence of the Poles to govern themselves. Any amelioration of the existing anarchy must be extra-See also:parliamentary and proceed from the throne. But a reforming monarch was inconceivable unless he possessed the confidence of the nation, and such confidence, Wladislaus naturally argued, could only be won by striking and undeniable public services. On these principles he acted with brilliant results. Within three years of his accession he compelled the Muscovites (Treaty of Polyankova, May 28, 1634) to retrocede Smolensk and the eastern provinces lost by Sigismund II., overawed the Porte by a military demonstration in October of the same year, and, by the Truce of Stumdorf (See also:Sept. 12, 1635), recovered the Prussian provinces and the Baltic seaboard from Sweden. But these achievements excited not the gratitude but the suspicion of the szlachta. They were shrewd enough to guess that the royal See also:triumph might See also:prejudice their influence, and for the next five years they deliberately thwarted the enlightened and far-reaching projects of the king for creating a See also:navy and increasing the revenue without burdening the estates, by a system of tolls levied on the trade of the Baltic ports (see WLADISLAUS IV.), even going so far as to refuse for nine years to refund the expenses of the Muscovite War, which he had defrayed out of his privy purse. From sheer weariness and disgust the king refrained from any intervention in public affairs for nearly ten years, looking on indifferently while the ever shorter and stormier diets wrangled perpetually over questions of preferment and the best way of dealing with the extreme dissenters, to the utter neglect of public business. But towards the end of his reign the See also:energy of Wladislaus revived, and he began to occupy himself with another scheme for regenerating his country, in its own despite, by means of the Cossacks. First, however, it is necessary to describe briefly the origin and previous history of these romantic freebooters who during the second half of the 17th century were the determining factor of Polish and Muscovite politics. At the beginning of the 16th century the illimitable steppe of south-eastern Europe, extending from. the Dnieper to the Urals, had no settled population. Hunters and The fishermen frequented its innumerable rivers, return- cossacks. See also:ing home laden with rich See also:store of See also:fish and pelts, while runaway serfs occasionally settled in small communities beneath the shelter of the fortresses built, from time to time, to guard the southern frontiers of Poland and Muscovy. Obliged, for fear of the Tatars, to go about with arms in their hands, these settlers gradually grew strong enough to raid their raiders, selling the See also:booty thus acquired to the merchants of Muscovy and Poland. Moreover, the Turks and Tatars being the natural enemies of Christendom, a war of extermination began to prevail. The old Calvinist nobility of Lithuania were speedily reconverted; a Uniate Church in connexion with Rome was established; Greek Orthodox congregations, if not generally persecuted, were at least depressed and straitened; and the Cossacis began to hate the Pans, or Polish lords, not merely as tyrants, but as heretics. Yet all these obstacles to a good understanding might, perhaps, have been surmounted if only the Polish diet had treated the Cossacks with common fairness and common sense. In 1619 the Polish government was obliged to prohibit absolutely the piratical raids of the Cossacks in the Black Sea, where they habitually destroyed Turkish property to the value of millions. At the same time, by the compact of Rastawica, the sejm undertook to allow the Cossacks, partly as See also:wages, partly as See also:compensation, 40,000 (raised by the compact of Kurukow to 6o,000) gulden and 170 wagons of cloth per annum. These terms were never kept, despite the earnest remonstrances of the king, and the complaints of the aggrieved borderers. Parsimony prevailed, as usual, over prudence, and when the Cossacks showed unmistakable signs of restiveness, the Poles irritated them still further by ordering the construction of the strong fortress of Kudak at the confluence of the Dnieper and the See also:Samara, to overawe the Zaporozhian community. This further act of repression led to two terrible Cossack risings, in 1635 and 1636, put down only with the utmost difficulty, whereupon the diet of 1638 deprived the Cossacks of all their ancient privileges, abolished the elective hetmanship, and substituted for it a commission of Polish noblemen with absolute power, so that the Cossacks might well declare that those who hated them were lords over them. Such was the condition of affairs in the Ukraine when Wladislaus IV. proposed to make the Cossacks the See also:pivot of his foreign policy and his domestic reforms. His far-reaching plans were based upon two facts, the absolute devotion of the Zaporozhians to himself personally, and the knowledge, secretly conveyed to him by Stanislaus Koniecpolski (q.v.), that the whole of the Ukraine was in a ferment. He proposed to provoke the Tatars to a rupture by repudiating the humiliating See also:tribute with which the Republic had so long and so vainly endeavoured to buy off their incessant raids. In case of such rupture he meant, at the head of 1oo,000 Cossacks, to fall upon the Crimea itself, the seat of their power, and exterminate the Khanate. This he calculated would bring about a retaliatory invasion of Poland by the Turks, which would justify him in taking the field against them also with all the forces of the Republic. In case of success he would be able to impose the will of a victorious king upon a discredited diet, and reform the constitution on an English or Swedish See also:model. Events seemed, at first to favour this audacious speculation. Almost simultaneously a civil war See also:broke out in the Crimea and the Porte declared war against the Venetian republic, with which Wladislaus at once concluded an offensive and defensive alliance (1645). He then bade the Cossacks prepare their boats for a raid upon the Turkish galleys, and secured the co-operation of the tsar in the See also:Crimean expedition by a special treaty. Unfortunately, Venice, for her own safety's See also:sake, insisted on the publication of Wladislaus's anti-Turkish alliance; the Porte, well informed of the course of Polish affairs, remained strictly neutral despite the most outrageous provocations; and Wladislaus, bound by his coronation See also:oath not to undertake an offensive war, found himself at the See also:mercy of the diet which, full of consternation and rage, assembled at Warsaw on the 2nd of May 1647. It is needless to say that the Venetian alliance was repudiated and the royal power still further reduced. A year later Wladislaus died at his See also:hunting-See also:box at Merecz, at the very moment when the long-impending See also:tempest which he himself had conjured up burst with overwhelming fury over the territories of the Republic. The See also:prime mover of the great rebellion of 1648, which shook the Polish state to its very foundations, was the Cossack Bohdan See also:Chmielnicki (q.v.), who had been initiated in all the plans of Wladislaus IV. and, with good reason, feared to be the first victim of the Polish magnates when the king's designs were against them was regarded by the Cossacks as a sacred duty. Curiously enough, these champions of orthodoxy borrowed the name, which has See also:stuck to them ever since, from their " See also:dog-headed " adversaries. The rank and See also:file of the Tatar soldiery were known as Kazaki, or Cossacks, a word meaning " freebooters," and this See also:term came to be applied indiscriminately to all the free dwellers in the Ukraine, or border-lands. As time went on the Cossacks multiplied exceedingly. Their daring grew with their See also:numbers, and at last they came to be a constant annoyance to all their neighbours, both Christian and Mussulman, frequently involving Poland in dangerous and unprofitable wars with the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, it is not too much to say that, until the days of Sobieski, the Cossacks were invariably the chief cause of the breaches between the Porte and the Republic. We have seen how carefully the Jagiellos avoided participating in any of the See also:crusades directed by the Holy See against the arch-enemies of the Cross. So successful was their prudential abstention that no regular war occurred between Turkey and Poland during the two centuries of their sway. The first actual collisions, the Cecora campaign of 162o and the See also:Khotin War of 1621 (for John Albert's Moldavian raid does not count), were due to the depredations of the Cossacks upon the dominions of the sultan by land and sea, and in all subsequent treaties between the two powers the most essential clause was always that which bound the Republic to keep its freebooters in order. But in the meantime the Cossacks themselves had become a semi-independent community. The origin of the Cossack state is still somewhat obscure, but the germs of it are visible as early as the beginning of the 16th century. The union of Lublin, which led to the polonization of Lithuania, was the immediate occasion of a considerable See also:exodus to the lowlands of the Dnieper of those serfs who desired to See also:escape from the taxes of the Polish government and the tyranny of the Polish land-lords. Stephen Bathory presently converted the pick of them into six registered regiments of r000 each for the defence of the border. Ultimately the See also:island of Hortica, just below the falls of the Dnieper, was fixed upon as their headquarters; and on the numerous islands of that broad See also:river there gradually arose the famous Cossack community known as the Zaporozhskaya Syech, or Settlement behind the Falls, whence the Dnieperian Cossacks were known, generally, as Zaporozhians, or Backfallsmen 1 The Cossack kosh, or See also:commonwealth, had the privilege of electing its hetman, or chief, and his chief officers, the starshins. The hetman, after election, received from the king of Poland direct the insignia of his office, viz. the bulawa, or See also:baton, the bunchuk, or horse-tail See also:standard, and his See also:official seal; but he was responsible for his actions to the kosh alone, and an inquiry into his conduct was held at the expiration of his term of office in the obschaya shkoda, or general assembly. In time of peace his power was little more than that of the responsible See also:minister of a constitutional republic; but in time of warfare he was a See also:dictator, and disobedience to his orders in the field was punish-able by death. The Cossacks were supposed to be left alone as much as possible by the Polish government so long as they faithfully fulfilled their chief obligation of guarding the frontiers of the Republic from Tatar raids. But the relations between a community of freebooters, mostly composed of fugitive serfs and refugees, and a government of small squires who regarded the Cossacks as a mere See also:rabble were bound to be difficult at the best of times, and political and religious See also:differences presently supervened. The Cossacks, mostly of Lithuanian origin, belonged to the Orthodox religion, so far as they belonged to any religion at all, and the Jagiellos had been very careful to safeguard the religious liberties of their Lithuanian subjects, especially as the Poles themselves were indifferent on the subject. But, at the beginning of the 17th century, when the current of the Catholic reaction was See also:running very strongly and the Jesuits, after subduing the Protestants, began to undermine the position of the Orthodox Church in Lithuania, a more intolerant spirit r Cf. See also:American, Backwoodsmen. unmasked and frustrated. To See also:save himself he See also:hit upon the novel ' transferred his allegiance to the tsar, and the same year the and terrible expedient of uniting the Tatars and the Cossacks cossack in a determined onslaught upon the Republic, whose Rebellion of inward weakness, despite its brave outward show, 1648. he had been See also:quick to discern. On the 18th of April 1648, at the general assembly of the Zaporozhians, he openly expressed his intention of proceeding against the Poles and was elected hetman by See also:acclamation; on the 19th of May he annihilated a small detached Polish See also:corps on the See also:banks of the river Zheltndya Vodui, and seven days later overwhelmed the army of the Polish grand-hetman, massacring 85oo of his io,000 men and sending the grand-hetman himself and all his officers in chains to the Crimea. The immediate consequence of these victories was the outburst of a khlopskaya zloba, or " serfs' fury." Throughout the Ukraine the gentry were hunted down, flayed, burnt, blinded and sawn asunder. Every See also:manor-house and See also:castle was reduced to ashes. Every Uniate or Catholic See also:priest who could be caught was hung up before his own high See also:altar, along with a See also:Jew and a hog. The panic-stricken inhabitants fled to the nearest strongholds, and soon the rebels were swarming over the palatinates of Volhynia and Podolia. Mean-while the Polish army, 40,000 strong, with See also:loo guns, was assembling on the frontier. It consisted almost entirely of the noble militia, and was tricked out with a splendour more befitting a bridal See also:pageant than a battle See also:array. For Chmielnicki and his host these splendid cavaliers expressed the utmost contempt. " This rabble must be chased with whips, not smitten with swords," they cried. On the 23rd of September the two armies encountered near Pildawa, and after a stubborn three days' contest the gallant Polish pageant was scattered to the winds. The steppe for miles around was strewn with corpses, and the Cossacks are said to have reaped io,000,000 guldens See also:worth of booty when the fight was over. All Poland now lay at Chmielnicki's feet, and the road to the defenceless capital was open John II. before him; but he wasted two See also:precious months in Casimir, vain before the fortress of Zamosc, and then the 16484668. newly elected king of Poland, John Casimir, Wladislaus IV.'s brother, privately opened negotiations with the rebel, officially recognized him by sending him the bulawa and the other insignia of the hetman's dignity, and promised his " faithful Zaporozhians " the restoration of all their ancient liberties if they would break off their alliance with the Tatars and await the arrival of peace commissioners at See also:Pereyaslavl. But the negotiations at Pereyaslavl came to nothing. Chmielnicki's conditions of peace were so extravagant that the Polish commissioners durst not accept them, and in 1649 be again invaded Poland with a countless host of Cossacks and Tatars. Again, however, he made the See also:mistake of attacking a fortress, which delayed his advance for a See also:month, and gave John Casimir time to collect an army for the relief of the besieged. By the compact of Zbor6w (Aug 21, 1649) Chmielnicki was recognized as hetman of the Zaporozhians, whose registered number was now raised from 6000 to 40,000; a general amnesty was also granted, and it was agreed that all official dignities in the Orthodox palatinates of Lithuania should henceforth be held solely by the Orthodox gentry. For the next eighteen months Chmielnicki ruled the Ukraine like a sovereign prince. He made Chigirin, his native place, the Cossack capital, subdivided the country into sixteen provinces, and entered into direct relations with foreign powers. His attempt to carve a principality for his son out of Moldavia led to the outbreak of a third war between suzerain and subject in February 1651. But fortune, so long Bohdan's friend, now deserted him, and at Beresteczko (July 1, 1651) the Cossack chieftain was utterly routed by Stephen See also:Czarniecki. All hope of an independent Cossackdom was now at an end; yet it was not Poland but Muscovy which reaped the fruits of Czarniecki's victory. Chmielnicki, by suddenly laying See also:bare the nakedness of the Polish republic, had opened the eyes of Muscovy to the fact that her secular enemy was no longer formidable. Three years after his defeat at Beresteczko, Chmielnicki, finding himself unable to cope with the Poles single-handed, very reluctantlytsar's armies invaded Poland, still bleeding from the all but mortal wounds inflicted on her by the Cossacks. The war thus begun, and known in Russian history as the The See also:Rug. Thirteen Years' War, far exceeded even the Thirty siansinvade Years' War in grossness and brutality. It resembled Poland. nothing so much as a hideous scramble of ravening beasts and obscene fowls for the dismembered limbs of a headless carcase, for such did Poland seem to all the world before the war was half over. In the summer of 1655, moreover, while the Republic was still reeling beneath the shock of the Muscovite invasion, Charles X. of Sweden, on the flimsiest of pretexts, Invasion of forced a war upon reluctant and inoffensive Poland, Charles X. simply to gratify his greed of See also:martial glory, and ofsweden, before the year was out his forces had occupied the 1655. capital, the coronation See also:city and the best half of the land. King John Casimir, betrayed and abandoned by his own subjects, fled to Silesia, and profiting by the See also:cataclysm which, for the moment, had swept the Polish state out of existence, the Muscovites, unopposed, quickly appropriated nearly everything which was not already occupied by the Swedes. At this crisis Poland owed her salvation to two events—the formation of a general league against Sweden, brought about by the apprehensive court of Vienna and an almost simultaneous popular outburst of religious enthusiasm on the part of the Polish See also:people. The first of these events, to be dated from the alliance between the emperor See also:Leopold and John Casimir, on the 27th of May 1657, led to a truce with the tsar and the welcome diversion of all the Muscovite forces against Swedish Livonia. The second event, which began with the heroic and successful defence of the monastery of See also:Czenstochowa by See also:Prior Kordecki against the Swedes, resulted in the return of the Polish king from See also:exile, the formation of a national army under Stephen Czarniecki and the recovery of almost all the lost provinces from the Swedes, who were driven back headlong to the sea, where with difficulty they held their own. On the sudden death of Charles X. (Feb. 13, i66o), Poland gladly seized the opportunity of adjusting all her outstanding differences with Sweden. By the peace of See also:Oliva (May 3, s66o), made under French mediation, John Casimir ceded Livonia, and renounced all claim to the Swedish crown. The war with Muscovy was then prosecuted with renewed energy and extraordinary success. In the autumn of 1661 the Russian commanders were routed at Zeromsk, and nearly all the eastern provinces were recovered. In 1664 a peace congress was opened at Durovicha and the prospects of Poland seemed most brilliant; but at the very moment when she needed all her armed strength to sustain her diplomacy, the rebellion of one of her leading magnates, Prince Lubomirsky, involved her in a dangerous civil war, compelled her to reopen negotiations with the Muscovites, at Andrussowo, under far more unfavourable conditions, and after protracted negotiations practically to accept the Muscovite terms. By the truce of Andrussowo (Feb. 11, 1667) Poland received back The Truce from Muscovy See also:Vitebsk, See also:Polotsk and Polish Livonia, of Andrus-but ceded in See also:perpetuity Smolensk, Syeversk, Cherni- sowo,1667• gov and the whole of the eastern See also:bank of the Dnieper, including the towns of Konotop, Gadyach, Pereyaslavl, Mirgorod, See also:Poltava and Izyum. The Cossacks of the Dnieper were henceforth to be under the See also:joint dominion of the tsar and the king of Poland. Kiev, the religious See also:metropolis of western Russia, was to remain in the hands of Muscovy for two years. The " truce " of Andrussowo proved to be one of the most permanent peaces in history, and Kiev, though only pledged for two years, was never again to be separated from the Orthodox See also:Slavonic state to which it rightly belonged. But for the terrible and persistent See also:ill-See also:luck of Poland it is doubtful whether the " truce " of Andrussowo would ever have been signed. The war which it concluded was to be the last open struggle between the two powers. Henceforth the influence of Russia over Poland was steadily to increase, without any struggle at all, the Republic being already stricken with that creeping See also:paralysis which ultimately left her a See also:prey to her neighbours. Muscovy had done with Poland as an adversary, and had no longer any inquiry into their misdeeds,1 or by malcontents, desirous of reason to fear her ancient enemy. embarrassing the executive. The origin of the liberum See also:veto Poland had, in fact, emerged from the cataclysm of *.648-1667 is obscure, but it was first employed by the See also:deputy Wladislaus a moribund state, though her not unskilful diplomacy had Sicinski, who dissolved the diet of 1652 by means of it, and before enabled her for a time to save appearances. Her territorial the end of the 17th century it was used so frequently and reek-losses, though considerable, were, in the circumstances, not lessly that all business was frequently brought to a standstill. excessive, and she was still a considerable power in the opinion In later days it became the chief See also:instrument of foreign ambassaof Europe. But a fatal See also:change had come over the country dors for dissolving inconvenient diets, as a deputy could always during the age of the Vasas. We have already seen how the be bribed to exercise his veto for a handsome consideration. ambition of the oligarchs and the lawlessness of the szlachta had The Polish crown first became an See also:object of universal corn-reduced the executive to See also:impotence, and rendered anything petition in 1573, when Henry of Valois was elected. In 1575, like rational government impossible. But these demoralizing and again in 1587, it was put up for public See also:auction, when the and disintegrating influences had been suspended by the religious Hungarian Bathory • and the Swede Sigismund respectively revival due to the Catholic reaction and the Jesuit propaganda, gained the See also:prize. But at all three elections, though money and a revival which reached its height towards the end of the 26th intrigue were freely employed, they were not the determining century. This, on the whole, salutary and edifying move- factors of the contest. The Polish gentry were still the umpires ment permeated public life, and produced a series of great as well as the stake-holders; the best candidates generally won captains who cheerfully sacrificed themselves for their country, the See also:day; and the defeated competitors were driven out of the and would have been See also:saints if they had not been heroes. But country by force of arms if they did not take their discomfiture, this extraordinary religious revival had wellnigh spent itself after a fair fight, like sportsmen. But with the Eledionot by the middle of the 17th century. Its last manifestation was election of See also:Michael Wisniowiecki in 1669 a new era Michael the successful defence of the monastery of Czenstochowa by began. In this case a native Pole was freely elected wisnlo-Prior Kordecki against the finest troops in Europe, its last by the unanimous See also:vote of his countrymen. Yet a wie69-ck1l, 166Td. representative was Stephen Czarniecki, who brought the fugitive few weeks later the Polish commander-in-chief formed John Casimir back from exile and reinstalled him on his tottering a whole series of conspiracies for the purpose of dethroning his throne. The succeeding age was an age of unmitigated See also:egoism, lawful sovereign, and openly placed himself beneath the proteccrowing in which the old ideals were abandoned and the old tion of Louis XIV. of See also:France, just as the rebels of the 18th corruption examples were forgotten. It synchronized with, and century placed themselves under the protection of See also:Catherine II. In Poland. was partly determined by, the new political system of Russia. And this rebel was none other than John Sobieski, which was spreading all over Europe, the system of dynastic at a later day the heroic deliverer of Vienna ! If heroes could diplomatic competition and the unscrupulous employment of so debase themselves, can we wonder if men who were not heroes unlimited secret service funds. This system, which dates from See also:lent themselves to every sort of villainy? We have come, in See also:Richelieu and culminated in the reign of Louis XIV., was based t fact, to the age of utter shamelessness, when disappointed on the secular rivalry of the houses of See also:Bourbon and Habs- place-hunters openly invoked foreign aid against their own burg, and presently divided all Europe into two hostile camps. country. Sobieski himself, as John III. (he See also:sue- &maw. Louis XIV. is said to have expended 5o.000,000 livres a year for ceeded Michael in 1674), was to pay the See also:penalty Sobleskl, bribing purposes, the court of Vienna was scarcely less liberal, of his past lawlessness, to the uttermost See also:farthing. 1674-1696. and very soon nearly all the monarchs of the See also:Continent and Despite his brilliant military achievements (see JOHN III., their ministers were in the pay of one or other of the antagonists. KING 01' POLAND), his reign of twenty-two years was a Poland was no exception to the general rule. Her magnates, failure. His victories over the Turks were fruitless so far as having already got all they could out of their own country, Poland was concerned. His belated attempts to reform the looked eagerly abroad for fresh El Dorados. Before long most constitution only led to conspiracies against his life and crown, of them had become the hirelings of France or Austria, and the in which the French See also:faction, which he had been the first to value demanded for their wages was, not infrequently, the encourage, took an active part. In his later years Lithuania betrayal of their own country. To do them See also:justice, the szlachta was in a state of chronic revolt, while Poland was bankrupt at first were not only free from the taint of official corruption, both morally and materially. He died a broken-hearted man, but endeavoured to fight against it. Thus, at the election diet 1 prophesying the- inevitable ruin of a nation which he himself of 1669, one of the deputies, Pieniaszek, moved that a new and had done so much to demoralize. hitherto unheard-of clause should be inserted in the agenda of It scarcely seemed possible for Poland to sink lower than she the general confederation, to the effect that every senator and had sunk already. Yet an era was now to follow, compared deputy should solemnly swear not to take bribes, while another with which even the age of Sobieski seemed to be an age of See also:gold. szlacic proposed that the ambassadors of foreign Powers should This was the Saxon period which, with occasional violent be excluded permanently from the Polish elective assemblies. interruptions, was to See also:drag on for nearly seventy years. By the But the flighty and ignorant szlachta not only were incapable time it was over Poland was irretrievably doomed. It only of any sustained political See also:action, but they themselves uncon- remained to be seen how that See also:doom would be accomplished.
sciously played into the hands of the enemies of their country On the death of John III. no fewer than eighteen candidates by making the so-called liberum veto an integral part of the Polish for the vacant Polish throne presented themselves. Austria constitution. The liberum veto was based on the See also:assumption supported See also: Immediately afterwards Augustus was persuaded by the plausible Livonian exile, Johan See also:Reinhold See also:Patkul, to form a nefarious league with Frederick of See also:Denmark and Peter of Russia, for the purpose of despoiling the youthful king of Sweden, Charles XII. (see SWEDEN: History). This he did as elector of Saxony, but it was war with the unfortunate Polish republic which paid for the Charles XII hazardous speculation of its newly elected king. "swede'. Throughout the Great Northern War (see SWEDEN: History), which wasted northern and central Europe for twenty years (170o-1720), all the belligerents treated Poland as if she had no political existence. Swedes, See also:Saxons and Russians not only lived upon the country, but plundered it systematically. The diet was the humble servant of the conqueror of the moment, and the leading magnates chose their own sides without the slightest regard for the interests of their country, the Lithuanians for the most part supporting Charles XII., while the Poles divided their allegiance between seanisiaus Augustus and Stanislaus Leszczyfiski, whom Charles Leszczyh- placed upon the throne in 1704 and kept there till sm. 1709. At the end of the war Poland was ruined materially as well as politically. Augustus attempted to indemnify himself for his failure to obtain Livonia, his covenanted share of the Swedish See also:plunder, by offering Frederick William of Prussia Courland, Polish Prussia and even part of Great Poland, provided that he were allowed a free hand in the disposal of the rest of the country. When Prussia declined this tempting offer for fear of Russia, Augustus went a step farther and actually suggested that " the four 1 eagles " should divide the banquet between them. He died, however (Feb. 1, 1733) before he could give effect to this shameless design.
On the death of Augustus II., Stanislaus Leszczyfiski, who had. in the meantime, become the father-in-law of Louis XV., attempted to regain his throne with the aid of a small French army corps and 4,000,000 livres from See also:Versailles. Some of the best men in Poland, including the Czartoryscy, were also in his favour, and on the 26th of August 1733 he was elected king for the second time. But there were many malcontents, principally among the Lithuanians, who solicited the intervention of Russia to favour of the elector of Saxony, son of the See also:late king, and in October 1933 a Russian army appeared before Warsaw and compelled a phantom diet (it consisted of but 15 senators and .J.ugustus 500 of the szlachta) to proclaim Augustus III. From U1., 1733• the end of 1733 till the 3oth of June 1734 Stanislaus '763. and his partisans were besieged by the Russians in Danzig, their last refuge, and with the surrender of that for-tress the cause of Stanislaus was lost. He retired once more to his little court in See also:Lorraine, with the title of king, leaving Augustus III. in possession of the kingdom.
Augustus III. was disqualified by constitutional indolence from taking any active part in affairs. He left everything to his omnipotent minister, Count Heinrich Brfihl, and See also:Bruhl entrusted the government of Poland to the Czartoryscy, who had intimate relations of long standing with the court of See also:Dresden.
The Czartoryscy, who were to dominate Polish politics for the next half-century, came of an ancient Ruthenian stock which had intermarried with the Jagiellos at an early date, and had always been remarkable for their civic virtues and political sagacity. They had powerfully contributed to the adoption of the Union of Lublin; were subsequently received into the Roman Catholic Church; and dated the beginning of their influence in Poland proper from the time (1674) when See also:Florian See also:Czartoryski became primate there. Florian's nephews, Fryderyk Michal and Augustus, were now the principal representatives of " the Family," as their opponents sarcastically called them. The former, through the influence of Augustus's minister and favourite Brtihl, had become, in his twenty-eighth year, vice-
' The fourth See also:eagle was the See also: Poland.chancellor and subsequently grand chancellor of Lithuania, was always the political head of the family. His brother and Augustus, after fighting with great distinction against the Turks both by land and sea (Prince See also:Eugene decorated him with a sword of honour for his valour at the See also:siege of See also:Belgrade), had returned home to marry See also:Sophia Sieniawska, whose fabulous See also:dowry won for her See also:husband the See also:sobriquet of " the Family See also:Croesus." Their See also:sister See also:Constantia had already married Stanislaus See also:Poniatowski, the father of the future king. Thus wealth, position, court influence and ability combined gave the Czartoryscy a commanding position in Poland, and, to their honour be it said, they had determined from the first to save the Republic, whose impending ruin in existing circumstances they clearly foresaw, by a See also:radical constitutional reconstruction which was to include the abolition of the liberum veto and the formation of a standing army. Unfortunately the other great families of Poland were obstinately opposed to any reform or, as they called it, any "violation" of the existing constitution. The Potoccy, whose possessions in south Poland and the Ukraine covered thousands of square miles, the Radziwillowie, who were omnipotent in Lithuania and included half a dozen millionaires' amongst them, the Lubomirscy and their See also:fellows, hated the Czartoryscy because they were too eminent, and successfully obstructed all their well-meant efforts. The castles of these great lords were the foci of the social and political life of their respective provinces. Here they lived like little princes, surrounded by thousands of retainers, whom they kept for show alone, making no attempt to organize and discipline this excellent military material for the defence of their defenceless country. Here congregated hundreds of the younger szlachta, fresh from their school benches, whence they brought nothing but a smattering of Latin and a determination to make their way by absolute subservience to their " elder brethren," the pans. These were the men who, a little later, at the bidding of their " benefactors," dissolved one inconvenient diet after another; for it is a significant fact that during the reigns of the two Augustuses every diet was dissolved in this way by the hirelings of some great lord or, still worse, of some foreign potentate. In a word constitutional government had practically ceased, and Poland had become an See also:arena in which contesting clans strove together for the mastery. It was against this primitive state of things that the Czartoryscy struggled, and struggled in vain. First they attempted to abolish the liberum veto with the assistance of the Saxon court where they were supreme, but fear of foreign complications and the opposition of the Potoccy prevented anything being done. Then they broke with their old friend Briihl and turned to Russia. Their chief intermediary was their nephew Stanislaus Poniatowski, whom they sent, as Saxon minister, to the Russian court in the See also:suite of the English minister Hanbury See also:Williams, in 1755. The handsome and insinuating Poniatowski speedily won the susceptible heart of the grand-duchess Catherine, but he won nothing else and returned to Poland in 1759 somewhat discredited. Disappointed in their hopes of Russia, the Czartoryscy next attempted to form a confederation for the deposition of Augustus III., but while the strife of factions was still at its height the absentee monarch put an end to the struggle by expiring, conveniently, on the 5th of October 1763. The interregnum occurring on the death of Augustus III. befell at a time when all the European powers, exhausted by the Seven Years' War, earnestly desired peace. The position of Poland was, consequently, much more advantageous than it had been on every other similar occasion, and. if only the contending factions had been able to agree and unite, the final catastrophe might, perhaps, even now, have been averted. The Czartoryscy, of all men, were bound by their principles and professions to set their See also:fellow citizens an example of fraternal See also:concord. Yet they rejected with scorn and derision the pacific overtures of their political opponents, the Potoccy, the Radziwillowie, and the Braniscy, Prince Michal openly declaring that of two tyrannies he preferred the tyranny of the Muscovite to the 2 Michal Kazimierz Radziwill alone was worth thirty millions. tyranny of his equals. He had in fact already summoned a Russian army corps to assist him to reform his country, which sufficiently explains his own haughtiness and the unwonted compliancy of the rival magnates. The simplicity of the Czartoryscy was even more mischievous than their haughtiness. When the most enlightened statesmen of the Republic could seriously believe in the benevolent intentions of Russia the end was not far off. Their naive expectations were very speedily disappointed. Catherine II. and Frederick II. had already determined (Treaty of St See also:Petersburg, April 22, 1764) that the existing state of things in Poland must be maintained, and as early as the 18th of October 1763 Catherine had recommended the election of Stanislaus Poniatowski as " the individual most convenient for our common interests." The personal question did not See also:interest Frederick: so long as Poland was kept in an anarchical condition he cared not who was called king. Moreover, the opponents of the Czartoryscy made no serious attempt to oppose the entry of the Russian troops. At least 40,000 men were necessary for the purpose, and these could have been obtained for 200,000 ducats; but a congress of magnates, whose collective fortunes amounted to hundreds of millions, having decided that it was impossible to raise this sum, there was nothing for it but to fight a few skirmishes and then take refuge abroad. The Czartoryscy now fancied themselves the masters of the situation. They at once proceeded to pass through the See also:convocation diet a whole series of salutary measures. Four special commissions were appointed to super-intend the See also:administration of justice, the See also:police and the finances. The extravagant powers of the grand hetmans and the grand marshals were reduced. All financial and economical questions before the diet were henceforth to be decided by a majority of Stanislaus votes. Shortly afterwards Stanislaus Poniatowski 11. Ponia- was elected king (Sept. 7, 1764) and crowned (Nov. towski, 25). But at the beginning of 1766 Prince Nicholas '764-1795. See also:Repnin was sent as Russian minister to Warsaw with instructions which can only be described as a carefully elaborated plan for destroying the Republic. The first weapon employed was the dissident question. At that time the population of Poland was, in See also:round numbers, 11,500,000, of whom about 1,000,000 were dissidents or dissenters. Half of these were the Protestants of the towns of Polish Prussia and Great Poland, the other half was composed of the Orthodox population of Lithuania. The dissidents had no political rights, and their religious liberties had also been unjustly restricted; but two-thirds of them being agricultural labourers, and most of the rest artisans or See also:petty tradesmen, they had no See also:desire to enter public life, and were so ignorant and illiterate that their new protectors, on a closer acquaintance, became heartily ashamed of them. Yet it was for these persons that Repnin, in the name of the empress, now demanded absolute equality, political and religious, with the gentlemen of Poland. He was well aware that an aristocratic and Catholic assembly like the sejm would never concede so preposterous a demand. He also calculated that the demand itself would make the szlachta suspicious of all reform, including the Czartoryscian reforms, especially as both the king and his uncles were generally unpopular, as being innovators under foreign influence. His calculations were correct. The sejm of 1766 not only rejected the dissident See also:bill, but repealed all the Czartoryscian reforms and insisted on the retention of the liberum veto as the See also:foundation of the national liberties. The discredit into which Stanislaus had now fallen encouraged the Saxon party, led by Gabriel Podoski (1719—1777), to form a combination for the purpose of dethroning the king. Repnin knew that the allied courts would never consent to such a measure; but he secretly encouraged the See also:plot for his own purposes, with signal success. Early in 1767 the malcontents, fortified by the adhesion of the leading catherinelb political refugees, formed a confederation at Radom, of Russia whose first act was to send a deputation to St and Poland. Petersburg, petitioning Catherine to See also:guarantee the liberties of the Republic, and allow the form of the Polish constitution to be settled by the Russian ambassador at Warsaw. With this See also:carte See also:blanche in his pocket, Repnin proceeded to treat the diet as if it were already the slave of the Russian empress. But despite threats, wholesale corruption and the presence of Russian troops outside and even inside the izba, or chamber of deputies, the patriots, headed by four bishops, Woclaw Hieronim Sierakowski (1699—1784) of Lemberg, Feliks Pawel Turski of Chelm (1729—1800), Kajetan Ignaty Soltyk of Cracow (1715—1788), and J6zef Jendrzej Zaluski of Kiev (1702—1774), offered a determined resistance to Repnin's demands. Only when See also:brute force in its extremest form had been ruthlessly employed, only when three senators and some deputies had been arrested in full session by Russian grenadiers and sent as prisoners to See also:Kaluga, did the opposition collapse. The liberum veto and all the other ancient abuses were now declared unalterable parts of the Polish constitution, which was placed under the guarantee of Russia. All the edicts against the dissidents were, at the same time, repealed. This shameful surrender led to a Catholic patriotic uprising, known as the Confederation of Bar, which was formed on the 29th of February 1768, at Bar in the Ukraine, by a handful of small squires. It never had a See also:chance confedera-See also:Lion of Bar. of permanent success, though, feebly fed by French subsidies and French See also:volunteers, it lingered on for four years, till finally suppressed in 1772. But, insignificant itself, it was the cause of great events. Some of the Bar confederates, scattered by the Russian regulars, fled over the Turkish border, pursued by their victors. The Turks, already alarmed at the progress of the Russians in Poland, and stimulated by See also:Vergennes, at that time French ambassador at Constantinople, at once declared war against Russia. Seriously disturbed at the prospect of Russian aggrandizement, the idea occurred, almost simultaneously, to the courts of See also:Berlin and Vienna that the best mode of preserving the equilibrium of Europe was for all three powers to readjust their territories at the expense of Poland. The idea of a partition of Poland was nothing new, but the vastness of the country, and the See also:absence of sufficiently powerful and united enemies, had hitherto saved the Republic from spoliation. But now that Poland lay utterly helpless and surrounded by the three great military monarchies of Europe, nothing could save her. In February 1769 Frederick sent Count Rochus See also:Friedrich Lynar (1708—1783) to St Petersburg to See also:sound the empress as to the expediency of a partition, in August See also:Joseph II. solicited an interview with Frederick, and in the course of the summer the two monarchs met, first at See also:Neisse in Silesia and again at See also:Neustadt in See also:Moravia. Nothing definite as to Poland seems to have been arranged, but Prince Kaunitz, the Austrian chancellor, was now encouraged to take the first step by occupying, in 1770, the See also:county of Zips, which had been hypothecated by Hungary to Poland in 1442 and never redeemed. This act decided the other confederates. In June 1770 Frederick surrounded those of the Polish provinces he coveted with a military See also:cordon, ostensibly to keep out the See also:cattle See also:plague. Catherine's consent had been previously obtained by a special mission of Prince Henry of Prussia to the Russian capital. The first treaty of partition was signed at St See also:Peters-burg between Prussia and Russia on the 6—17th of February 1772; the second treaty, which admitted Austria also to a share of the spoil, on the 5—16th of August the same year. It is unnecessary to recapitulate the unheard-of atrocities by which the consent of the sejm to this act of See also:brigandage was at last extorted (Aug. 18, 1773). Russia obtained the palatinates of Vitebsk, Polotsk Mscislaw: 1586 sq. m. of territory, with a population of 550,000 and an See also:annual revenue of 920,000 Polish gulden. Austria got the greater part of Galicia, minus Cracow: 1710 sq. m., with a population of 816,000 and an annual revenue of 1,408,000 gulden. Prussia received the maritime See also:palatinate minus Danzig, the palatinate of Kulm minus Thorn, Great Poland as far as the Nitza, and the palatinates of See also:Marienburg and Ermeland: 629 sq. m., with a population of 378,000, and an annual revenue of 534,000 thalers. In See also:fine, Poland lost about one-fifth of her population and one-fourth of her territory. First Partition of Poland, 1772. In return for these enormous concessions the partitioning the loth of March 1791, concluded an alliance with Poland which engaged the two powers to guarantee each other's possessions and render mutual assistance in case either were attacked. But external aid was useless so long as Poland was hampered by her anarchical constitution. Hitherto the proceedings of the diet had not been encouraging. The most indispensable reforms had been frantically opposed, the debate on the re-organization of the army had alone lasted six months. It was only by an audacious surprise that See also:Kollontaj and his associates contrived to carry through the new constitution. Taking advantage of the See also:Easter See also:recess, when most of the malcontents were out of town, they suddenly, on the 3rd of May, brought the whole question before the diet and demanded urgency for it. Before the opposition could remonstrate, the marshal of the diet produced the latest foreign despatches, which unanimously predicted another partition, whereupon, at the solemn adjuration of Ignaty See also:Potocki, King Stanislaus exhorted the deputies to accept the new constitution as the last means of saving their country, and himself set the example by See also:swearing to defend it. The revolution of the 3rd of May 1791 converted Poland into an hereditary 3 limited monarchy, with ministerial responsibility and duennial parliaments. The liberum veto and all the intricate and obstructive machinery of the anomalous old system were for ever abolished. All invidious class distinctions were done away with. The franchise was extended to the towns. See also:Serfdom was mitigated, preparatorily to its entire abolition; absolute religious toleration was established, and every See also:citizen declared equal before the law. Frederick William II. officially congratulated Stanislaus on the success of " the happy revolution which has at last given Poland a wise and regular government," and declared it should henceforth be his " chief care to maintain and confirm the ties which unite us." Cobenzl, the Austrian minister at St Petersburg, See also:writing to his court immediately after the reception of the tidings at the Russian capital, describes the empress as full of consternation at the idea that Poland under an hereditary dynasty might once more become a considerable power. But Catherine, still in difficulties, was obliged to watch in silence the collapse of her party in Poland, and submit to the See also:double humiliation of recalling her ambassador and withdrawing her army from the country. Even when the peace of See also:Jassy (Jan. 9, 1792) finally freed her from the Turk, she waited patiently for the Polish malcontents to afford her a pretext and an opportunity for direct and decisive interference. She had not long to wait. The constitution of the 3rd of May had scarce been signed when See also:Felix Potocki, Severin Rzewuski and See also:Xavier Branicki, three of the chief dignitaries of Poland, hastened to St Petersburg, and there entered into a secret convention with the empress, whereby she undertook to restore the old constitution by force of arms, but at the same time promised to respect the territorial integrity of the Republic. On the 14th of May 1792 the conspirators formed a confederation, consisting, in the first instance, of only ten other persons, at the little town of Targowica in the Ukraine, protesting against the constitution of the 3rd of May as tyrannous and revolutionary, and at the same time the new Russian minister at Warsaw presented a formal See also:declaration of war to the king and the diet. The diet met the crisis with dignity and firmness. The army was at once despatched to the frontier; the male population was called to arms, and Ignaty Potocki was sent to Berlin to claim the assistance stipulated by the treaty of the 19th of March 1791. The king of Prussia, in direct violation of all his oaths and promises, declined to defend a constitution which had never had his " concurrence." Thus Poland was left entirely to' Russia her own resources. The little Polish army of 46,000 overthrows men, under Prince Joseph Poniatowski and Tadeusz the consti-See also:Kosciuszko, did all that was possible under the radon. circumstances. For more than three months they kept back the invader, and, after winning three pitched battles, retired in perfect order on the capital (see PONIATOWSKI, and 3 On the death of Stanislaus, the crown was to pass to the family of the elector of Saxony. powers presented the Poles with a constitution superior to any-thing they had ever been able to devise for themselves. The most mischievous of the ancient abuses, the elective monarchy and the liberum veto, were of course retained. Poland was to be dependent on her despoilers, but they evidently meant to make her a serviceable dependant. The government was hence-forth to be in the hands of a rada nieustajaca, or permanent council of thirty-six members, eighteen senators and eighteen deputies, elected biennially by the sejm in secret See also:ballot, sub-divided into the five departments of foreign affairs, police, war, justice and the See also:exchequer, whose principal members and assist-ants, as well as all other public functionaries, were to have fixed salaries. The royal prerogative was still further reduced. The king was indeed the See also:president of the permanent council, but he could not summon the diet without its consent, and in all cases of preferment was bound to select one out of three of the council's nominees. The annual See also:budget was fixed at 30,000,000 Polish gulden,' out of which a regular army of 30,0002 men was to be maintained. Sentiment apart, the constitution of 1775 was of distinct benefit to Poland. It made for internal stability, order and See also:economy, and enabled her to develop and husband her resources, and devote herself uninterruptedly to the now burning question of national education. For the shock of the first partition was so far salutary that it awoke the public con-See also:science to a sense of the national inferiority; stimulated the younger generation to extraordinary patriotic efforts; and thus went far to produce the native reformers who were to do such wonders during the great quadrennial diet.
It was the second Turkish War of Catherine II. which gave patriotic Poland her last opportunity of re-establishing her independence. The death of Frederick the Great (Aug. 17, 1786) completely deranged the See also:balance of power in Europe. The long-standing See also:accord between Prussia and Russia came to an end, and while the latter See also:drew nearer to Austria, the former began to look to the Western powers. In August 1787 Russia and Austria provoked the Porte to declare war against them both, and two months later a defensive alliance was concluded between Prussia, See also:England and See also: Its leaders, Stanislaw Reform of See also:Malachowski, See also:Hugo Kollontaj and Ignaty Potocki, the con- were men of character and capacity, and its measures st;tutlon, were correspondingly vigorous. Within a few months 1788' of its assembling it had abolished the permanent council; enlarged the royal prerogative; raised the army to 55,000 men; established direct communications with the Western powers; rejected an alliance which Russia, alarmed at the rapid progress of events, had hastened to offer; declared its own session permanent; and finally settled down to the See also:crucial task of reforming the constitution on modern lines. But the difficulties of the patriots were commensurate with their energies, and though the new constitution was drafted so early as See also:December 1789, it was not till May 1791 that it could safely be presented to the diet. Meanwhile Poland endeavoured to strengthen her position by an advantageous alliance with Prussia. Frederick William II. stipulated, at first, that Poland should surrender Danzig and Thorn, and See also:Pitt himself endeavoured to persuade the Polish minister Michal Kleophas Oginski (1765—1833) that the protection of Prussia was worth the sacrifice. But the Poles proving obstinate, and Austria simultaneously displaying a disquieting interest in the welfare of the Republic, Prussia, on 1 1 Pol. gulden = 5 silber groschen. 2 At the very next diet, 1776, the Poles themselves reduced the army to 18,000 men. Ko cIuszKO). But the king, and even Kollontaj, despairing of success, now acceded to the confederation; hostilities were suspended; the indignant officers threw up their commissions; the rank and file were distributed all over the country; the reformers fled abroad; and the constitution of the 3rd of May was abolished by the Targowicians as " a dangerous novelty." The Russians then poured into eastern Poland; the Prussians, at the beginning of 1793, alarmed lest Catherine should appropriate the whole Republic, occupied Great Poland; and a diminutive, debased and helpless assembly met at Grodno in order, in the midst of a Russian army corps," to come to an amicable understanding " with the partitioning powers. After Second See also:par- every conceivable means of intimidation had been ehlon of unscrupulously applied for twelve weeks, the second Poland. treaty of partition was signed at three o'See also:clock on the See also:morning of the 23rd of September 1793. By this pactum subjectionis, as the Polish patriots called it, Russia got all the eastern provinces of Poland, extending from Livonia to Moldavia, comprising a quarter of a million of square miles, while Prussia got Dobrzyn, Kujavia and the greater part of Great Poland, with Thorn and Danzig. Poland was now reduced to one-third of her original dimensions, with a population of about three and a half millions. The See also:focus of Polish See also:nationality was now transferred from Warsaw, where the Targowicians and their Russian patrons Koiciuszko. reigned supreme, to Leipzig, whither the Polish patriots, Kosciuszko, Kollontaj and Ignaty Potocki among the number, assembled from all quarters. From the first they meditated a national rising, but their ignorance, enthusiasm and simplicity led them to commit blunder after blunder. The first of such blunders was Kosciuszko's mission to See also:Paris, in January 1794. He was full of the idea of a league of republics against the league of sovereigns; but he was unaware that the See also:Jacobins themselves were already considering the best mode of detaching Prussia, Poland's worst enemy, from the anti-French See also:coalition. With a See also:hypocrisy worthy of the diplo- macy of " the tyrants," the See also:committee of public safety declared that it could not support an insurrection engineered by See also:aristo- crats, and Kogciuszko returned to Leipzig empty-handed. The next blunder of the Polish refugees was to allow themselves to be drawn into a premature rising by certain Polish officers in Poland who, to prevent the incorporation of their regiments in the Russian army, openly revolted and led their troops from Warsaw to Cracow. Kosciuszko himself condemned their hastiness; but, when the Russian troops began to concentrate, his feelings grew too strong for him, and early in April he himself appeared at Cracow. In an instant the See also:mutiny became a revolution. The details of the heroic but useless struggle will be found else- where (see Ko cluszRo, KOLLONTAJ, POTOCKI, IGNATY, DOM- BROwsKI). Throughout April the Polish arms were almost universally successful. The Russians were defeated in more than one pitched battle; three-quarters of the ancient territory was recovered, and Warsaw and Vilna, the capitals of Poland and Lithuania respectively, were liberated. Kogciuszko was appointed dictator, and a supreme council was established to assist him. The first serious See also:reverse, at Szczekociny (June 5), was more than made up for by the successful defence of Warsaw against the Russians and Prussians (July 9 to Sept. 6) ; but in the meantime the inveterate lawlessness of the Poles had asserted itself, as usual, and violent and ceaseless dissensions, both in the supreme council and in the army, neutralized the superhuman efforts of the unfortunate but still undaunted dictator. The death-blow to the See also:movement was the disaster of Maciejowice (Oct. 1o), and it expired amidst the carnage of Praga (Oct. 29), though the last Polish army corps did not capitulate till the 18th of November. Yet all the glory of the bitter struggle was with the vanquished, and if the Poles, to the last, had shown themselves See also:children in the science of government, they had at least died on the field of battle like men. The greed of the three partitioning powers very nearly led to a rupture between Austria and Prussia; but the tact and statesmanship of the empress of Russia finally adjusted all difficulties. On the 24th of October 1795 Prussia acceded to the Austro-Russian partition compact of the 3rd of January, and the See also:distribution of the conquered provinces Thirdparwas finally regulated on the loth of October 1796. allot: of By the third treaty of partition Austria had to be Poland, content with Western Galicia and Southern Masovia; /796. Prussia took Podlachia, and the rest of Masovia, with Warsaw; and Russia all the rest. The immediate result of the third partition was an immense emigration of the more high-spirited Poles who, during' the next ten years, fought the battles of the French Republic and of See also:Napoleon all over Europe, but principally against their own enemies, the partitioning powers. They were known as the Polish legions, and were commanded by the best Polish generals, e.g. Joseph Poniatowski and Dombrowski. Only Kogciuszko stood aloof. Even when, after the peace of See also:Tilsit, the independent grand-duchy of Warsaw was constructed out of the central provinces of Prussian Poland, his distrust of Napoleon proved to be invincible. He was amply justified by the course of events. Napoleon's anxiety to conciliate Russia effectually prevented him from making Poland large and strong enough to be self-supporting. The grand-duchy of Warsaw originally consisted of about 185o sq. m., to which Western Galicia and Cracow, about 900 sq. m. more, were added in 1809. The grand-duchy was, from first to last, a mere recruiting-ground for the French emperor. Its army was limited, on See also:paper, to 30,000 men; but in January 1812 65,000, and in November the same year 97,000 recruits were drawn from it. The constitution of the little state was dictated by Napoleon, and, subject to the exigencies of war, was on the French model. Equality before the law,. absolute religious toleration and local autonomy, were its salient features. The king of Saxony, as grand-duke, took the initiative in all legislative matters; but the administration was practically controlled by the French. (R.N.B.) The Congress Kingdom, 1813-1863.-The Grand Duchy of Warsaw perished with the Grand Army in the See also:retreat from Moscow in 1812. The Polish troops had taken a prominent part in the invasion of Russia, and their share in the plundering of Smolensk and of Moscow had intensified the racial hatred felt for them by the Russians. Those of them who survived or escaped the disasters of the retreat fled before the tsar's army and followed the fortunes of Napoleon in 1813 and 1814. The Russians occupied Warsaw on the 18th of February 1813 and overran the grand duchy, which thus came into their possession by conquest. Some of the Poles continued to hope AlexanderL that Alexander would remember his old favour for and Poland. them, and would restore their kingdom under his own rule. Nor was the tsar unwilling to encourage their delusion. He himself cherished the desire to re-establish the kingdom for his own advantage. As early as the 13th of January 1813 he wrote to assure his former favourite and confidant, Prince Adam Czartoryski, that, " Whatever the Poles do now to aid in my success, will at the same time serve to forward the realization of their hopes." But the schemes of Alexander could be carried out only with the co-operation of other powers. They refused to consent to the See also:annexation of Saxony by Prussia, and other territorial arrangements which would have enabled him to unite all Poland in his The Con. own hand. By the final act of the Congress of Areas of Vienna, signed on the 9th of June 1815, Poland was vtenna• divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia, with one trifling exception: Cracow with its population of 61,000 was erected into a republic embedded in Galicia. Posen and Gnesen, with a population of 81o,000, were left to Prussia. Austria remained in possession of Galicia with its 1,5oo,000 inhabitants. Lithuania and the Ruthenian Palatinates, the spoil of former partitions, continued to be incorporated with Russia. The remnant was constituted as the so-called Congress Kingdom under the emperor of Russia as king (tsar) of Poland. It had been stipulated by the Final Act that the Poles under foreign rule should be endowed with institutions to preserve their national existence according to such forms of political existence as the governments to which they belong shall think See also:fit to allow them. Alexander, who had a sentimental regard for freedom, so long as it was obedient to himself, had promised the Poles a The New constitution in April 1815 in a letter to Ostrov-Polish con- skiy, the president of the senate at Warsaw. His stitutlon, promise was publicly proclaimed on the 25th of 1815. May, and was reaffirmed in the Zamok or See also:palace at Warsaw and the See also:cathedral of St John on the loth of June. The constitution thus promised was duly drafted, and was signed on the 3oth of November. It contained 165 articles divided under seven heads. The kingdom of Poland was declared to be united to Russia, in the person of the tsar, as a separate political entity. The kingdom was the Congress Kingdom, for the vague promises of an See also:extension to the east which Alexander had made to the Poles were never fulfilled. Lithuania and the Ruthenian Palatinates continued to be incorporated with Russia as the Western Provinces and were divided from the Congress Kingdom by a customs barrier till the reign of Nicholas I. The kingdom of Poland thus defined was to have at its head a See also:lieutenant of the emperor (namiestnik), who must be a member of the Imperial house or a Pole. The first holder of the office, General Zajonczek (1752-1826), was a veteran who had served Napoleon. Roman Catholicism was recognized as the religion of the state, but other religions were tolerated. Liberty of the See also:Press was promised subject to the passing of a law to restrain its abuses. Individual liberty, the use of the Polish language in the law courts, and the exclusive employment of Poles in the civil government were secured by the constitution. The machinery of government was framed of a council of state, at which the Imperial government was represented by a See also:commissioner plenipotentiary, and a diet divided into a senate composed of the princes of the blood, the palatines and councillors named for life, and a house of nuntii elected for seven years, 77 chosen by the " dietines " of the nobles, and 51 by the See also:commons. The diet was to meet every other year fcr a session of thirty days, and was to be renewed by thirds every two years. Poland retained its See also:flag, and a national army based on that which had been raised by and had fought for Napoleon. The command of the army was given to the emperor's brother See also:Constantine, a man of somewhat erratic character, who did much to offend the Poles by violence, but also a good deal to please them by his marriage with Johanna Grudzinska, a Polish See also:lady afterwards created Princess Lowicz, for whose sake he renounced his right to the throne of Russia (see CONSTANTINE PAVLOVICH). The diet met three times during the reign of Alexander, in 1818, in 182o and in 1825, and was on all three occasions opened by the tsar, who was compelled to address his subjects in French, since he did not speak, and would not learn, their language. It is highly doubtful whether, with the best efforts on both sides, a constitutional government could have been worked by a Russian autocrat, and an assembly of men who inherited the memories and characters of the Poles. In fact the tsar and the diet soon quarrelled. The Poles would not abolish the See also:jury to please the tsar, nor conform as he wished them to do to the Russian law of divorce. Opposition soon arose, and as Alexander could not understand a freedom which differed from himself, and would not condescend to the use of corruption, by which the ancient Polish diets had been managed, he was driven to use force. The third session of the diet—13th of May to 13th of June 1825—was a mere formality. All publicity was sup-pressed, and one whole district was disfranchised because it persisted in electing candidates who were disapproved of at court. On the other hand, the Poles were also to blame for the failure of constitutional government. They would agitate by means of the so-called National See also:Masonry, or National Patriotic Society as it was afterwards called, for the restoration of the full kingdom of Poland. The nobles who dominated the diet did nothing to remove the most crying evil of the country—the miserable state of the peasants, who had been freed from personal serfdom by Napoleon in 1807, but were being steadilydriven from their holdings by the landlords. In spite of the general prosperity of the country due to peace, and the See also:execution of public works mostly at the expense of Russia, the state of the agricultural class grew, if anything, worse. Yet no open breach occurred during the reign of Alexander, nor for five years after his death in 1825. The Decembrist movement in Russia had little or no See also:echo in Poland. On the death of Zajonczek in 1826, the grand duke Constantine be-came Imperial lieutenant, and his administration, The Grand though erratic, was not unfavourable to displays Duke Con-of Polish nationality. The Polish army had no stantine• share in the Turkish War of 1829, largely, it ,is said, at the See also:request of Constantine, who loved parades and thought that war was the ruin of soldiers. No attempt was made to profit by the embarrassments of the Russians in their war with Turkey. A plot to See also:murder Nicholas at his coronation on the 24th of May 1829 was not carried out, and when he held the fourth diet on the 30th of May 183o, the Poles made an ostentatious show of their nationality which Nicholas was provoked to describe as possibly patriotic but certainly not civil. Nevertheless, he respected the settlement of 1815. In the meantime the Patriotic Society had divided into a White or Moderate party and a Red or Extreme party, which was subdivided into the Academics or Republicans and the Military or Terrorists. The latter were very busy and were supported by the Roman Catholic Church, which did little for the Prussian Poles and nothing for the Austrian Poles, but was active in harassing the schismatical government of Russia. The outbreak of the French Revolution in 183o and the revolt of See also:Belgium produced a great effect in Poland. The spread of a belief, partly justified by the language of Polish Nicholas, that the Polish army would be used to Rising' of coerce the Belgians, caused great irritation. At last, 1830. on the 29th of November 183o, a military revolt took place in Warsaw accompanied by the murder of the minister of war, Hauke, himself a Pole, and other loyal officers. The extra-ordinary weakness of the grand duke allowed the rising to gather strength. He evacuated Warsaw and finally left the country, dying at Vitebsk on the 27th of June 1831 (see CONSTANTINE PAVLOVICH). The war lasted from January till September 1831. The fact that the Poles possessed a well-drilled army of 23,800 foot, 6800 horse and rob guns, which they were able to recruit to a See also:total strength of 80,821 men with 158 guns, gave solidity to the rising. The Russians, who had endeavoured to over-See also:awe' Europe by the See also:report of their immense military power, had the utmost difficulty in putting 114,000 men into the field, yet in less than a year, under the leadership of See also:Diebitsch, and then of See also:Paskevich, they mastered the Poles. On the political and administrative side the struggle of the Poles was weakened by the faults which had been the ruin of their kingdom—faction pushed to the point of anarchy, want of discipline, intrigue and violence, as shown by the abominable See also:massacre which took place in Warsaw when the defeat of the army was known. The Poles had begun by protesting that they only wished to defend their rights against the tsar, but they soon proceeded to proclaim his deposition. Their See also:appeal to the powers of Europe for protection was inevitably disregarded. When the Congress Kingdom had been reconquered it was immediately reduced to the position of a Russian province. No remnant of Poland's separate political existence Poland a remained save the See also:minute republic of Cracow. Russian Unable to acquiesce sincerely in its insignificance Province. and even unable to enforce its neutrality, Cracow was a centre of disturbance, and, after Russia, Prussia, and Austria had in 1846 agreed to its suppression, was finally occupied by Austria on the 6th of November 1848, as a consequence of the troubles, more agrarian than political, which convulsed Galicia. The administration established by Nicholas I. in Russian Poland was harsh and aimed avowedly at destroying the nationality, and even the language of Poland. The Polish universities of Warsaw and Vilna were suppressed, and the students compelled to go to St Petersburg and Kiev. Polish recruits were distributed in Russian regiments, and the use of marked by no real battle. The suppression of the rising was followed by a return to the hard methods of Nicholas. The Polish nobles, gentry and Church—the educated classes generally —were crushed. It must, however, be noted that one class of the measures taken to punish the old governing part of the population of Poland has been very favourable to the majority. The peasants were freed in Lithuania, and in Poland proper much was done to improve their position. The Russian government has benefited by their See also:comparative prosperity, and by the incurable hatred they continue to feel for the classes which were once their oppressors. The national history of Poland closes with the rising of 1863. the Russian language was enforced as far as possible in the civil administration and in the law courts. The customs barrier between Lithuania and the former Congress Kingdom was removed, in the hope that the influence of Russia would spread more easily over Poland. A very hostile policy was adopted against the Roman Catholic Church. But though these measures cowed the Poles, they failed to achieve their See also:main purpose. Polish national sentiment was not destroyed, but intensified. It even spread to Lithuania. The failure of Nicholas was in good part due to mistaken measures of what he hoped would be conciliation. He supported Polish students at Russian universities on condition that they then spent a number of years in the public service. It was the hope of the emperor that they would thus become united in interest with the Russians. But these Polish officials made use of their positions to aid their countrymen, and were grasping and corrupt with patriotic intentions. The Poles in Russia, whether at the universities or in the public service, formed an element which refused to assimilate with the Russians. In Poland itself the tsar left much of the current civil administration in the hands of the nobles, whose power over their peasants was hardly diminished and was misused as of old. The Polish exiles who filled Europe after 183o intrigued from abroad, and maintained a constant agitation. The stern government of Nicholas was, however, so far effective that Poland remained quiescent during the Crimean War, in which many Polish soldiers fought in the Russian army. The Russian government felt safe enough to reduce the See also:garrison of Poland largely. It was not till 1863, eight years after the death of the tsar in 1855, that the last attempt of the Poles to achieve independence by arms was made. The rising of 1863 may without injustice be said to be due to the more humane policy of the tsar Alexander II. Exiles were allowed to return to Poland, the Church was tasurrecuoa propitiated, the See also:weight of the Russian administration ot/863. was lightened, police rules as to passports were relaxed, and the Poles were allowed to form an agricultural society and to meet for a common purpose for the first time after many years. Poland in short shared in the new era of milder rule which began in Russia. In April 1856 Alexander II. was crowned king in the Roman Catholic cathedral of Warsaw, and addressed a flattering speech to his Polish subjects in French, for he too could not speak their language. His warning, " No nonsense, gentlemen " (Point de reveries, Messieurs), was taken in very ill part, and it was perhaps naturally, but beyond question most unhappily, the truth that the tsar's concessions only served to encourage the Poles to revolt, and to produce a strong Russian reaction against his liberal policy. As the Poles could no longer dispose of an army, they were unable to assail Russia as openly as in 183o. They had recourse to the so-called " unarmed agitation," which was in effect a policy of constant provocation designed to bring on measures of repression to be represented to Europe as examples of Russian brutality. They began in 186o at the funeral of the widow of General Sobinski, killed in 183o, and on the 27th of February 1861 they led to the so-called Warsaw massacres, when the troops fired on a See also:crowd which refused to disperse. The history of the agitation which culminated in the disorderly rising of 1863 is one of intrigue, secret agitation, and in the end of sheer terrorism by a secret society, which organized political assassination. The weakness of the Russian See also:governor, General See also:Gorchakov, in 1861 was a repetition of the feebleness of the Grand Duke Constantine in 183o. He allowed the Poles who organized the demonstration of the 27th of February to form a See also:kind of provisional government. Alongside of such want of firmness as this were, however, to be found such measures of ill-timed repression as the order given in 186o to the agricultural society not to discuss the question of the settlement of the peasants on the land. Concession and repression were employed alternately. The Poles, encouraged by the one and exasperated by the other, finally broke into the partial revolt of 1863-1864. It was a struggle of ill-armed partisans, who were never even numerous, against regular troops, and was (D. H.) King Stanislaus. Albert See also:Sorel's La Question d'Orient au X VIIP. siecle (Paris, 1889) is lucid and accurate, but somewhat superficial. Wolfgang Michael's Englands Slellung zur ersten Teilung Polens (See also:Hamburg, 1890) is of especial interest to Englishmen. Maryan Dubiecki's Karol Prozor (Pol., Cracow, 1897) shows with what self-sacrificing devotion the gentry and people supported Kosciuszko's rising. For more complete bibliography see Jozef Korzeniowski's Catalogus actorum et documentarum res gestas Poloniae illustrantium (Cracow, 1889), and Ludwik Finkel's Bibliography of Polish History (Pol., Lemberg, 1891). For the period 1815-1863 see also N. A. Day, The Russian Government in Poland (See also:London, 1867) ; Theodor Schiemann, Russland unter Kaiser Nikolaus I., vol. i. (Berlin, 1904). 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