Part 823

The worthless French prince, Henry of Valois, whom the Poles had chosen to be their king, and whom they crowned at Cracow, on the 21st of February, 1574, "soon sighed for the banks of the Seine: amidst the ferocious people whose authority he was constrained to recognize, and who despised him for his imbecility, he had no hope of enjoyment. To escape their factions, their mutinies, their studied insults, he shut himself up within his palace, and, with the few countrymen whom he had been permitted to retain near his person, he abandoned himself to idleness and dissipation. … By the death of his brother [Charles IX. king of France], who died on the 30th of May, 1574, he was become heir to the crown of the Valois. His first object was to conceal the letters which announced that event, and to flee before the Poles could have any suspicion of his intention. The intelligence, however, transpired through another channel. {2548} His senators advised him to convoke a diet, and, in conformity with the laws, to solicit permission of a short absence while he settled the affairs of his new heritage. Such permission would willingly have been granted him, more willingly still had he proposed an eternal separation; but he feared the ambition of his brother the duke of Alençon, who secretly aspired to the throne; and he resolved to depart without it. He concealed his extraordinary purpose with great art," and achieved a most contemptible success in carrying it out,—stealing away from his kingdom like a thief, on the night of the 18th of June. "Some letters found on a table in his apartment attempted to account for his precipitate departure by the urgency of the troubles in his hereditary kingdom; yet he did not reach Lyons till the following year. In a diet assembled at Warsaw, it was resolved that if the king did not return by the 12th of May, 1575, the throne should be declared vacant. Deputies were sent to acquaint him with the decree. … After the expiration of the term, the interregnum was proclaimed in the diet of Stenzyca, and a day appointed for a new election. After the deposition of Henry [now become Henry III. of France], no less than five foreign and two native princes were proposed as candidates for the crown. The latter, however, refused to divide the suffrages of the republic, wisely preferring the privilege of electing kings to the honour of being elected themselves. The primate, many of the bishops, and several palatines, declared in favour of an Austrian prince; but the greater portion of the diet (assembled on the plains opposite to Warsaw) were for the princess Anne, sister of Sigismund Augustus, whose hand they resolved to confer on Stephen Batory, duke of Transylvania. Accordingly, Stephen was proclaimed king by Zamoyski, starost of Beltz, whose name was soon to prove famous in the annals of Poland. On the other hand, Uchanski the primate nominated the emperor Maximilian, who was proclaimed by the marshal of the crown: this party, however, being too feeble to contend with the great body of the equestrian order, despatched messengers to hasten the arrival of the emperor; but Zamoyski acted with still greater celerity. While his rival was busied about certain conditions, which the party of the primate forced on Maximilian, Batory arrived in Poland, married the princess, subscribed to every thing required from him, and was solemnly crowned. A civil war appeared inevitable, but the death of Maximilian happily averted the disaster. … But though Poland and Lithuania thus acknowledged the new king, Prussia, which had espoused the interests of the Austrian, was less tractable. The country, however, was speedily reduced to submission, with the exception of Dantzic, which not only refused to own him, but insisted on its recognition by the diet as a free and independent republic. … Had the Dantzickers sought no other glory than that of defending their city, had they resolutely kept within their entrenchments, they might have beheld the power of their king shattered against the bulwarks below them; but the principles which moved them pushed them on to temerity. … Their rashness cost them dear; the loss of 8,000 men compelled them again to seek the shelter of their walls, and annihilated their hope of ultimate success. Fortunately they had to deal with a monarch of extraordinary moderation. … Their submission [1577] disarmed his resentment, and left him at liberty to march against other enemies. During this struggle of Stephen with his rebellious subjects, the Muscovites had laid waste Livonia. To punish their audacity, and wrest from their grasp the conquests they had made during the reign of his immediate predecessors, was now his object. … Success every where accompanied him. Polotsk, Sakol, Turowla, and many other places, submitted to his arms. The investiture of the duchy (Polotsk, which the Muscovites had reduced in the time of Sigismund I.) he conferred on Gottard duke of Courland. On the approach of winter he returned, to obtain more liberal supplies for the ensuing campaign. Nothing can more strongly exhibit the different characters of the Poles and Lithuanians than the reception he met from each. At Wilna his splendid successes procured him the most enthusiastic welcome; at Warsaw they caused him to be received with sullen discontent. The Polish nobles were less alive to the glory of their country than to the preservation of their monstrous privileges, which, they apprehended, might be endangered under so vigilant and able a ruler. With the aid, however, of Zamoyski and some other leading barons, he again wrung a few supplies from that most jealous of bodies, a diet. … Stephen now directed his course towards the province of Novogorod: neither the innumerable marshes, nor the vast forests of these steppes, which had been untrodden by soldier's foot since the days of Witold, could stop his progress; he triumphed over every obstacle, and, with amazing rapidity, reduced the chief fortified towns between Livonia and that ancient mistress of the North. But his troops were thinned by fatigue, and even victory; reinforcements were peremptorily necessary; and though in an enfeebled state of health, he again returned to collect them. … The succeeding campaign promised to be equally glorious, when the tsar, by adroitly insinuating his inclination to unite the Greek with the Latin church, prevailed on the pope to interpose for peace. To the wishes of the papal see the king was ever ready to pay the utmost deference. The conditions were advantageous to the republic. If she surrendered her recent conquests—which she could not possibly have retained—she obtained an acknowledgment of her rights of sovereignty over Livonia; and Polotsk, with several surrounding fortresses, was annexed to Lithuania." Stephen Batory died in 1586, having vainly advised the diet to make the crown hereditary, and avert the ruin of the nation. The interregnum which ensued afforded opportunity for a fierce private war between the factions of the Zborowskis and the Zamoyskis. Then followed a disputed election of king, one party proclaiming the archduke Maximilian of Austria, the other Sigismund, prince royal of Sweden—a scion of the Jagellonic family—and both sides resorting to arms. Maximilian was defeated and taken prisoner, and only regained his freedom by relinquishing his claims to the Polish crown.

_S. A. Dunham, History of Poland, book 2, chapter 1._

{2549}

POLAND: A. D. 1578-1652. Anarchy organized by the Nobles. The extraordinary Constitution imposed by them on the country. The Liberum Veto and its effects.

"On the death of the last Jagellon, 1573, at a time when Bohemia and Hungary were deprived of the power of electing their kings, when Sweden renounced this right in favour of its monarchs, Poland renewed its privilege in its most comprehensive form. At a time when European monarchs gradually deprived the great feudal barons of all share in the administration of the law, … the Polish nobles destroyed the last vestiges of the royal prerogative. … In the year 1578 the kings lost the right of bestowing the patent of nobility, which was made over to the diet. The kings had no share in the legislation, as the laws were made in every interregnum. As soon as the throne became vacant by the death of a king, and before the diet appointed a successor, the nobles of the provinces assembled to examine into the administration of the late king and his senate. Any law that was not approved of could be repealed and new arrangements proposed, which became law if the votes of the diet were unanimous. This unanimity was most easily obtained when a law threatened the individual or when the royal prerogative was to be decreased. … The king had no share in the administration, and even the most urgent circumstances did not justify his acting without the co-operation of the senate [which consisted of 17 archbishops and bishops, 33 palatines or woiwodes—'war-leaders'—who were governors of provinces or palatinates, and 85 castellans, who were originally commanders in the royal cities and fortresses, but who had become, like the woiwodes, quite independent of the king]. The senate deprived the king of the power of making peace or war. … If there was a hostile invasion, war became a matter of course, but it was carried on, on their own account, by the palatines most nearly concerned, and often without the assistance of the king. … Bribery, intrigue and party spirit were the only means of influence that could be employed by a king, who was excluded from the administration, who was without domains, without private property or settled revenue, who was surrounded by officers he could not depose and by judges who could be deposed, and who was, in short, without real power of any sort. The senate itself was deprived of its power, and the representatives of the nobles seized upon the highest authority. … They alone held the public offices and the highest ecclesiastical benefices. They filled the seats of the judges exclusively, and enjoyed perfect immunity from taxes, duties, &c. … Another great evil from which the republic suffered was the abuse of the liberum veto, which, dangerous as it was in itself, had become law in 1652." This gave the power of veto to every single voice in the assemblies of the nobles, or in the meetings of the deputies who represented them. Nothing could be adopted without entire unanimity; and yet deputies to the diet were allowed no discretion. "They received definite instructions as to the demands they were to bring forward and the concessions they were to make. … One step only was wanting before unanimity of votes became an impossibility, and anarchy was completely organized. This step was taken when individual palatines enjoined their deputies to oppose every discussion at the diet, till their own proposals had been heard and acceded to. Before long, several deputies received the same instructions, and thus the diet was in fact dissolved before it was opened. Other deputies refused to consent to any proposals, if those of their own province were not accepted; so that the veto of one deputy in a single transaction could bring about the dissolution of the entire diet, and the exercise of the royal authority was thus suspended for two years [since the diet could only be held every other year, to last no longer than a fortnight, and to sit during daylight, only]. … No law could be passed, nothing could be resolved upon. The army received no pay. Provinces were desolated by enemies, and none came to their aid. Justice was delayed, the coinage was debased; in short, Poland ceased for the next two years to exist as a state. Every time that a rupture occurred in the diet it was looked on as a national calamity. The curse of posterity was invoked on that deputy who had occasioned it, and on his family. In order to save themselves from popular fury, these deputies were accustomed to hand in their protest in writing, and then to wander about, unknown and without rest, cursed by the nation."

_Count Moltke, Poland: an Historical Sketch, chapter 3._

"It was not till 1652 … that this principle of equality, or the free consent of every individual Pole of the privileged class to every act done in the name of the nation, reached its last logical excess. In that year, the king John Casimir having embroiled himself with Sweden, a deputy in the Diet was bold enough to use the right which by theory belonged to him, and by his single veto, not only arrest the preparations for a war with Sweden, but also quash all the proceedings of the Diet. Such was the first case of the exercise of that liberum veto of which we hear so much in subsequent Polish history, and which is certainly the greatest curiosity, in the shape of a political institution, with which the records of any nation present us. From that time every Pole walked over the earth a conscious incarnation of a power such as no mortal man out of Poland possessed—that of putting a spoke into the whole legislative machinery of his country, and bringing it to a dead lock by his own single obstinacy; and, though the exercise of the power was a different thing from its possession, yet every now and then a man was found with nerve enough to put it in practice. … There were, of course, various remedies for this among an inventive people. One, and the most obvious and most frequent, was to knock the vetoist down and throttle him; another, in cases where he had a party at his back, was to bring soldiers round the Diet and coerce it into unanimity. There was also the device of what were called confederations; that is, associations of the nobles independent of the Diet, adopting decrees with the sanction of the king, and imposing them by force on the country. These confederations acquired a kind of legal existence in the intervals between the Diets."

_Poland: her History and Prospects (Westminster Review, January, 1855)._

POLAND: A. D. 1586-1629. Election of Sigismund of Sweden to the throne. His succession to the Swedish crown and his deposition. His claims and the consequent war.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES(SWEDEN): A. D. 1523-1604; and 1611-1629.

{2550}

POLAND: A. D. 1590-1648. Reigns of Sigismund III. and Ladislaus IV. Wars with the Muscovites, the Turks and the Swedes. Domestic discord in the kingdom.

"The new king, who was elected out of respect for the memory of the house of Jaguello (being the son of the sister of Sigismond Augustus), was not the kind of monarch Poland at that time required. … He was too indolent to take the reins of government into his own hands, but placed them in those of the Jesuits and his German favourites. Not only did he thereby lose the affections of his people, but he also lost the crown of Sweden, to which, at his father's death, he was the rightful heir. This throne was wrested from him by his uncle Charles, the brother of the late king.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1523-1604.

This usurpation by Charles was the cause of a war between Sweden and Poland, which, although conducted with great skill by the illustrious generals Zamoyski and Chodkiewicz, terminated disastrously for Poland, for, after this war, a part of Livonia remained in the hands of the Swedes." During the troubled state of affairs at Moscow which followed the death, in 1584, of Ivan the Terrible, Sigismond interfered and sent an army which took possession of the Russian capital and remained in occupation of it for some time.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1533-1682.

"As a consequence … the Muscovites offered the throne of the Czar to Ladislas, the eldest son of the King of Poland, on condition that he would change his religion and become a member of 'the Orthodox Church.' Sigismond III., who was a zealous Catholic, and under the influence of the Jesuits, wishing rather to convert the Muscovites to the Catholic Church, would not permit Ladislas to change his faith—refused the throne of the Czar for his son. … By the peace concluded at Moscow, 1619, the fortress of Smolenski and a considerable part of Muscovy remained in the hands of the Poles. … Sigismond III., whose reign was so disastrous to Poland, kept up intimate relations with the house of Austria. The Emperor invited him to take part with him … in what is historically termed 'the Thirty Years' War.' Sigismond complied with this request, and sent the Emperor of Austria some of his Cossack regiments. … Whilst the Emperor was on the one hand engaged in 'the Thirty Years' War,' he was on the other embroiled with Turkey. The Sultan, in revenge for the aid which the Poles had afforded the Austrians, entered Moldavia with a considerable force. Sigismond III. sent his able general Zolkiewski against the Turks, but as the Polish army was much smaller than that of the Turks, it was defeated on the battlefield of Cecora [1621], in Moldavia, [its] general killed, and many of his soldiers taken prisoners. After this unfortunate campaign … the Sultan Osman, at the head of 300,000 Mussulmans, confident in the number and valour of his army, marched towards the frontier of Poland with the intention of subjugating the entire kingdom. At this alarming news a Diet was convoked in all haste, at which it was determined that there should be a 'levée en masse,' in order to drive away the terrible Mussulman scourge. But before this levée en masse could be organized, the Hetman Chodkiewicz, who had succeeded Zolkiewski as commander-in-chief, crossed the river Dniester with 35,000 soldiers and 30,000 Cossacks, camped under the walls of the fortress of Chocim [or Kotzim, or Khotzim, or Choczim] and there awaited the enemy, to whom, on his appearance, he gave battle [September 28, 1622], and, notwithstanding the disproportion of the two armies, the Turks were utterly routed. The Moslems left on the battlefield, besides the dead, guns, tents, and provisions. … After this brilliant victory a peace was concluded with Turkey; and I think I am justified in saying that, by this victory, the whole of Western Europe was saved from Mussulman invasion. … The successful Polish general unhappily did not long survive his brilliant victory. … While these events were taking place in the southern provinces, Gustavus Adolphus, who had succeeded to the throne of Sweden, marched into the northern province of Livonia, where there were no Polish troops to resist him (all having been sent against the Turks), and took possession of this Polish province.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1611-1629.

Gustavus Adolphus, however, proposed to restore it to Poland on condition that Sigismond III. would renounce all claim to the crown of Sweden, to which the Polish sovereign was the rightful heir. But in this matter, as in all previous ones, the Polish king acted with the same obstinacy, and the same disregard for the interests of the kingdom. He would not accept the terms offered by Gustavus Adolphus, and by his refusal Poland lost the entire province of Livonia with the exception of the city of Dynabourg." Sigismond III. died in 1632, and his eldest son, Ladislas IV., "was immediately elected King of Poland, a proceeding which spared the kingdom all the miseries attendant on an interregnum. In 1633, after the successful campaign against the Muscovites, in which the important fortified city of Smolensk, as well as other territory, was taken, a treaty advantageous to Poland was concluded. Soon afterwards, through the intervention of England and France, another treaty was made between Poland and Sweden by which the King of Sweden restored to Poland a part of Prussia which had been annexed by Sweden. Thus the reign of Ladislas IV, commenced auspiciously with regard to external matters. … Unhappily the bitter quarrels of the nobles were incessant; their only unanimity consisted in trying to foil the good intentions of their kings." Ladislas IV. died in 1648, and was succeeded by his brother, John Casimir, who had entered the Order of the Jesuits some years before, and had been made a cardinal by the Pope, but who was now absolved from his vows and permitted to marry.

_K. Wolski, Poland, lectures 11-12._

POLAND: A. D. 1610-1612. Intervention in Russia. Occupation of and expulsion from Moscow.

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1533-1682.

POLAND: A. D. 1648-1654. The great revolt of the Cossacks. Their allegiance transferred to the Russian Czar.