Part 5

REPUBLIC OF THE GENTRY
-- POLAND'S GOLDEN AGE

The successful 15th century opened the way for the 16th century, called the golden age in Poland's history. The combined territory of Poland and Lithuania amounted to 815.000 sq. km. with a population of 8 million. Peasants accounted for some 67% of the population, burghers for some 23%, and the gentry and clergy for some 10%. Grain exports and the resulting trade surplus ensured Poland prosperity and a large natural increase.

In politics, it was a period of might and lack of dangers. Only a few wars were fought on Poland's peripheries or on Lithuania's borders. In culture, it was a period of Renaissance and development of Polish-language literature. The high level of education enabled the knights [gentry] to reach for power and create a specifically Polish form of social and political system: the Republic of the Gentry.

Rights, gained by Polish noblemen in the 14th and 15th centuries, were extended to the Lithuanian knighthood, as well as to the Orthodox boyars in the Ruthenian part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. That was important for molding a uniform social group, having the same rights and aspirations but speaking different languages and professing different religions. The political unity of the gentry and their common actions to win power prevailed over regional, ethnic and religious divisions.

Of the nobility's rights, the most important privilege for the emergence and formation of the new regime were the Nieszawa freedoms. The obligation to consult the noblemen and obtain their consent for collecting taxes and waging wars meant that the king had to send his officials to regional sejms [parliaments] of the gentry. The practice of such consultations, however. was troublesome and time-consuming. At the end of the 15th century regional sejms started sending their deputies to the national congress, attended by the Royal Council and the monarch himself. Thus the General Sejm came into being (1493). That bicameral assembly was common to both states: Poland and Lithuania. The House of Deputies represented the gentry, while the erstwhile Royal Council, also called the Senate, stood for magnates.

The Senate's debates were presided over by the king. From the end of the 15th century until the 1560s century, a struggle for power was going on between the magnates and rank-and-file noblemen. The dividing line between the two groups was volatile, as an aristocratic class never formed in Poland and no separate rights, freedoms and titles of princes or counts existed. The whole of the knighthood was uniform in terms of the laws.

Acclaimed magnates were those people who had huge estates and held high state or Church positions, the rest of that group being regarded as noblemen. The numerical strength of the gentry was large, as they amounted to some 10% of the total population. That made Poland similar to the Iberian countries and different from the other European states where the gentry amounted to some 1.5%-2% of the entire society.

The material independence of the noblemen was the trump card in their hand in the competition in politics against the magnate groups. A nobleman usually owned several villages. There also were noblemen who had no subjects or villages, but who enjoyed all the rights of their estate. Those people served in the army, and held royal positions or posts at magnates' courts.

The land-owning noblemen were relatively numerous, as they amounted to 3%-4% of the population. Income from farming kept on growing throughout the 16th century, reaching a peak at the beginning of the 17th century. This resulted from the demand of Western Europe, particularly of the Netherlands, England and northern Germany for Polish grain. Shipped via Gdansk were also forest products--timber, tar and timber ash. Huge cattle herds were driven overland each year to Silesia and Germany, those kind of exports being profitable, as prices kept on increasing throughout the whole 16th century. Accordingly the prosperity of the gentry and towns kept pace with those exports. In terms of prosperity and importance, the place of eminence went to Gdansk.

Massive grain production required major changes in the organization of the Polish village, as well as in the relationships between the noblemen, the clergy and the peasantry. Each landowner aspired to enlarge the acreage of his farmland lying in the direct vicinity of the master's manor [folwark]. The levy from serfs was collected in labor [corvee], with the land rent (in money) being decreased. Thanks to serfdom the running of the farm was cheap, while, because of grain exports, the farm's profits were large. Those transformations did not entail peasants' opposition or objections, although they trimmed the economic and personal freedom of the rural population. Judging by the high population increase, the prosperity of peasants in the 16th century was considerable which explains the lack of opposition.

The propertied, well-educated and independent gentry, led by gifted leaders, waged its struggle for power first of all at the forum of the General Sejm. The Laws (called constitutions) passed by the Piotrkow Sejm (1504) restricted the distribution of royal estates and banned holding of several offices by one person. That hit out at the financial position of the magnates.

The Constitution of the Radom Sejm in 1505 called "Nihil novi" [Nothing new] stipulated that no new laws could be passed without the Sejm's consent. From that time the program of the gentry's camp was to enforce those constitutions--the so-called execution of estates and laws. That was no easy task, as King Sigismund the Old (1506-1548) based his rule on the magnates. Also, his spouse, Bona Sforza, surrounded herself with a magnate faction.

Sigismund's policy was also carried on by his son, Sigismund Augustus (1548-1572), but the war against Moscow, the necessity to collect levy and taxes, as well as the problem of the succession to the throne (in the absence of natural heirs,) compelled the ruler to cooperate with the noblemen. The Sejms of the 1560s decided on the execution of the estates distributed after 1504 and resolved to make a list of royal estates and their incomes (the so-called "musters",) as well as to create a separate fund out of those incomes for the maintenance of a regular army. The system of extraordinary taxes was reformed and the system of weights and measures was standardized.

In line with the will of the gentry resolved was the problem of the succession to the throne and further Union with Lithuania. During the Sejm of Lublin (1569), Sigismund Augustus overcame the opposition of magnates from Lithuania and incorporated the southeastern Ruthenian Lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into the Crown. The Union of Lublin was then proclaimed. The king gave up his hereditary title to the Lithuanian throne, thus opening the way for both states to jointly elect the ruler. Both states preserved separate offices, laws, army and treasury. They were united, on the other hand, by the joint Sejm, ruler and foreign policy. Therefore, it was a real union and not only a personal one.

In the socio-cultural domain, it produced growing uniformity of political culture of the gentry and the emergence of a nation of nobility, made up of various ethnic and religious groups.

After the extinction of the Jagiellonian dynasty in 1572, the gentry set up regional confederations to defend the state order. A dispute erupted over the form of election--either by the Senate only or by the entire Sejm. Jan Zamoyski, the leader of the gentry's camp, demanded free election with personal participation [viritim] by each nobleman who had arrived for the debates. The Convocational Sejm of 1573 adopted that solution, as well as the act of the so-called Warsaw Confederation which provided for religious tolerance and a ban on religious wars. Peace and religious tolerance was something quite unusual in contemporary Europe, which was torn apart by religious wars.

The first free election was called in 1573. The noblemen elected Henri of Valois as the King of Poland. He was required to swear upon the so-called "Henry Articles." Those articles specified the principles for the political regime of Poland and Lithuania. The future king had to renounce the principle of hereditary succession to the throne, recognize the principles of free election, the Sejm's powers, and the right of the Senate to oversee foreign policies, as well as to swear to religious tolerance. In case of the violation of these rights, the gentry were entitled to renounce allegiance to the king.

Henri of Valois' reign was a short one. Having learned that the throne of France was vacant, he fled Poland. Stefan Batory (1576-1586), the Prince of Transylvania, was elected his successor. He renounced his judicial powers over the gentry. Courts of Appeal replaced the royal courts, with the judges being elected by noblemen. A Royal Court was retained, however, for special cases, but it held its sessions in the presence of the Sejm.

The judicial reforms executed by Stefan Batory completed the formation of the state system of Poland and Lithuania. The state was a monarchy and, at the same time, a republic of the gentry. The equality of all noblemen, the powers of the Sejm and control over royal power, religious tolerance--those were the foundations of the nobles' democracy. It was an original, attractive system which ensured civil rights, a system entirely different from the absolute monarchy system prevailing in Europe.

Availing themselves of favorable business trends and being preoccupied with the quest for power, the noblemen were against waging wars. Nevertheless, since the end of the 15th century, Lithuania was engaged in a fight against the expansion of the Moscow Duchy, suffering considerable territorial losses. The steady pressure by Moscow had the effect of consolidating the Polish-Lithuanian Union.

In the years 1520-1525, Poland waged war against the Teutonic Order, whose Grand Master, Albrecht Hohenzollern, refused paying homage. The war ended in the so-called Prussian Homage (in Krakow, 1525), but Albrecht scored a diplomatic success. The Polish king acquiesced in secularization of the Order. He also agreed, relative to Prussia, to conversion to Lutheranism and formation of a lay liege dukedom. In 1561, the Teutonic Order of Livonia, holding the Livonian land, was secularized. It went under the liege dependence on Poland, seeking shelter against the Russian aggression. That led to wars between Poland, Lithuania and Russia in 1562-1570 and in 1577-1582, ending in the victorious expedition by Stefan Batory to Pskov and the repelling of the Russian incursion into Livonia.

Less favorable were the effects of the dynastic policy pursued by the Jagiellonians, and relations with the Habsburgs and Turkey. The growth of Turkish might induced Sigismund the Old to conclude a treaty with Emperor Maximilian (Vienna, 1515), which, in case of the extinction of the Bohemian and Hungarian line of the Jagiellonians, gave rights to those thrones to the Habsburgs. When, in 1526, Louis the Jagiellonian was killed in the battle of Mohacz, leaving no heirs behind, the Habsburgs gained the Bohemian crown and control over that part of Hungary that had not fallen under Turkish rule. In the competition for influence in Moldavia, the Turkish side prevailed, being then at the peak of its might.