13: The Second Half of the Seventeenth Century
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THE GREAT SWEDISH INVASION
The countries of East Central Europe were under a permanent pressure from the west and
from the east. After the conquest of the Balkans by the Turks, the remaining part of the
most exposed region of Europe also had to suffer from an additional pressure coming from
the south. But only on exceptional occasions did invasions from the north, from across the
natural boundary of the Baltic Sea, add new dangers to the precarious position of East
Central Europe. Except for the protohistoric period of the Norman raids and migrations,
that happened only in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries when Sweden played
the part of a great power.
The invasion of Livonia by Charles IX, and even the invasions
of Gustavus Adolphus which reached as far as Prussia, were only preludes if compared with
the conquests of Charles X Gustavus in the middle of the seventeenth century. And though
they ended in failure, as did those of Charles XII later, they seemed to have more chance
of success and they did have more lasting consequences for East Central Europe, as well as
less disastrous results for Sweden herself, than the adventures of the last Swedish
conqueror.
This time the Polish-Swedish war was no longer a dynastic
dispute between two branches of the Vasa dynasty which in Sweden had been replaced by the
German family of Pfalz-Zweibrücken. Neither was it a territorial conflict limited to
Livonian and Prussian lands. What was at stake was the existence of Poland as an
independent nation, her union with Lithuania, and all that remained of free political
development in East Central Europe. The greater was the responsibility of a few traitors
who encouraged the unprovoked aggression of Charles Gustavus and facilitated his
advance. Even the fact that John Casimir, the last of the Vasas, continued to use the
title king of Sweden, was no justification for the break of the truce of Stumdorf which
had left him that title and was to expire only in 1661.
In July 1655 the Swedes first invaded Great Poland where the
only forces which could be mobilized, in view of the dangerous situation in the East,
capitulated before the well-trained veterans of the Thirty Years’ War and recognized
the protectorate of Charles Gustavus. Three months later the most powerful Lithuanian
magnate, Prince Janusz Radziwill, signed the agreement of Kiejdany which replaced
Lithuania’s union with Poland by a union with Sweden. He hoped thus to obtain a
leading position in the grand duchy and possibly also Swedish help against the
simultaneous Russian invasion. But the majority of the Lithuanians considered his
arbitrary decision just another act of treason, and under the leadership of Paul Sapieha
they continued to resist in the no man’s land between the advancing Swedish and
Russian forces.
The commonwealth was in danger of total partition because
Charles Gustavus, who had occupied most of Poland proper including Warsaw and Cracow,
promised some Polish territories to Frederick William of Prussia, the “Great
Elector,” who, deserting the Polish suzerain of East Prussia, made that province in
January, 1656, a vassal duchy of Sweden. In what would remain of Poland after the
additional losses in the East, Charles Gustavus wanted to be king himself, having forced
the legitimate ruler to go into exile in Silesia. Only Danzig held out against Swedes and
Prussians, and so did Lwow against Cozacks, Tartars, and Russians, but the turn of the
tide came with the successful defense of the monastery of Czestochowa at Christmas, 1655.
The retreat of the Swedish forces before a handful of monks and
knights who refused to surrender the famous shrine of Our Lady was an inspiration to the
whole country which suffered hard from the conqueror’s absolute rule and which
particularly resented the persecution of Catholicism by Protestant invaders. Returning to
Poland, John Casimir created a general enthusiasm when he solemnly swore in Lwow to
venerate the Virgin Mary who had saved the country as Queen of the Crown of Poland, and to
improve the conditions of life of the peasant population.
Unfortunately the badly needed reforms regarding the peasants
were neglected in the midst of a war which was to continue for several years with varying
success. The whole country remained a battlefield, and in spite of a series of victories
of the Polish forces under the able command of Stefan Czarniecki, Warsaw, retaken at the
end of June, 1656, was re-occupied by the Swedes a month later after a battle of three
days in which the invaders had the support of the Great Elector. Even after another
liberation of the capital, the enemies of Poland, including the Prince of Transylvania who
temporarily entered Cracow, signed a treaty at the end of the same year which was, as a
matter of fact, a plan of partitioning the whole country.
Russia was, however, no part of that agreement. An armistice
had been concluded with the czar, to whom the succession after John Casimir was promised
in order to gain some respite on the eastern front. These negotiations were hardly taken
seriously and were never ratified by the Diet. But Czar Alexius himself, who was alarmed
by the Swedish advance, turned against Charles Gustavus, hoping to gain access to the
Baltic for Russia. Even more alarmed were the Habsburgs, especially since Sweden had the
support of all Protestant powers, including even distant England under Cromwell. The
Polish-Austrian treaty of 1657 not only brought to the commonwealth some reinforcements
sent by Leopold I, but also encouraged Sweden’s old rival, Denmark, to join that
alliance and to enter the war on land and on sea. And since France, as usual, was eager to
mediate between Poland and Sweden, practically all Europe became interested and at least
indirectly involved in the conflict.
Leopold I needed the voice of the Elector of Brandenburg for
his forthcoming election as emperor and therefore he avoided having to fight against the
Hohenzollern. But he persuaded him to pass from the Swedish to the Polish side, with
Poland, however, having to pay a heavy price. By the Treaty of Wehlau, concluded on
September 19, 1657, she gave up her suzerainty over the duchy of Prussia. Her former
vassal, who had deserted her in the most critical phase of the war, became completely
independent. East Prussia, with even some temporary gains in Polish West Prussia which
separated that duchy from Brandenburg, was now an even more dangerous enclave in the
commonwealth because it was completely under German control.
In the meantime George Rákóczi who with Sweden’s
assistance had advanced as far as Warsaw and inflicted one more occupation upon the
unhappy capital had been forced to a disastrous retreat and had been practically
annihilated by the Tartars before he reached his own country. But on the other hand,
Charles Gustavus defeated the Danes, who had to sign a separate peace in February, 1658,
and only in the fall of that year, Polish and allied forces, after crossing the sea, were
sent to Denmark. A little later almost the whole of Polish Prussia was at last reconquered
from the Swedes, who lost not only the control of Poland but even their most important
gains along the Baltic shores. And when after Cromwell, their own king unexpectedly died
too, the Swedes were ready for the French mediation which eventually led to the Treaty of
Oliwa, near Danzig, signed on May 3, 1660.
In spite of her military successes in the last years of the
Swedish war, Poland had to make serious concessions because she continued to be threatened
in the east. Most of Livonia, occupied by the Swedes in the time of Gustavus Adolphus, was
now definitely ceded, including the port of Riga. Only the region on the upper Dvina, with
the city of Dünaburg, was left to the commonwealth, and the duchy of Curland which, in
spite of all the troubles of the period was able to gain colonial possessions in Africa,
remained a Polish fief under the Kettler dynasty. It was much less important that the last
of the Vasas finally had to give up his theoretical rights to the Swedish crown, keeping
only his title for life.
Thus, after sixty years, the conflict between Sweden and
Poland, harmful for both countries, seemed finally concluded. After threatening
Poland’s survival, the great Swedish invasion had provoked a real rebirth of the
vitality of the nation which avoided disaster in spite of so many simultaneous
aggressions. Poland’s position on the Baltic was badly shaken, however, not so much
because of the territorial losses in Livonia but particularly through the emancipation of
East Prussia, a decisive step in the rise of the Hohenzollern dynasty which now, from both
Berlin and Königsberg, was able to exercise a growing influence not only in the empire
but also in East Central Europe. It is true that the agreement of 1657, confirmed at
Oliwa, left Poland a claim to East Prussia in case of the extinction of the Hohenzollern
dynasty, and some rights of interference in favor of the Prussian estates which were soon
to suffer from the ruthless centralization of the new regime. But even in the most
striking cases, these rights proved of no avail to the defenders of the old liberties.
While avoiding an open conflict with Poland, the Great Elector could now embark on his
general policy of aggrandizement. This was to cause much trouble to that same Sweden which
had first helped him to gain full independence for the duchy of Prussia.
In addition to her losses on the Baltic and the terrible
devastation of the whole country, Poland, in consequence of the so-called
“Deluge,” also had to suffer from a serious internal crisis which even after the
Peace of Oliwa did not allow her to concentrate on the grave eastern problems. During the
most critical years of the war, Queen Louise Marie de Gonzague, the widow of Wladyslaw IV
whose second husband was John Casimir, had played a very remarkable part in general
politics. Better than anybody else she realized the necessity for strengthening the royal
authority, and she was deeply concerned with the problem of succession after the death of
the childless king. The plan which in her opinion was to replace the fictitious idea of a
candidature of the czar was the election of a French candidate during the king’s
lifetime. That return to the conception of Sigismund Augustus would have replaced the
Austrian alliance by a close cooperation with the queen s country of origin and was to be
combined with constitutional reforms. But for these very reasons Louise Marie’s
action was opposed not only by the partisans of the Habsburgs but also by all those who
feared an absolutum dominium on the French model. Therefore the Swedish invasion
was followed by a civil war which prolonged the crisis of the country.
THE RUSSIAN AND TURKISH ADVANCE
Twice in the seventeenth century the basic idea of the Polish constitution, that the
king had to be obeyed only as long as he respected the laws of the country, led to an
armed rebellion of those who considered the reform projects of the court as being contrary
to the constitution. The first of these rebellions, called rokosz—a
designation of Hungarian origin—was directed in 1606 against Sigismund III and its
consequences explain the lack of unity in Polish politics during the “time of
troubles” in Russia. The rokosz of George Lubomirski, which openly broke out
in 1664 and lasted two years, was even more dangerous. True, it ended like the first one
in a defeat and humiliation of the opposition leader, but again the royal authority
suffered greatly and all reform projects had to be abandoned. Furthermore, Poland, in her
exposed position and with the foreign wars not yet ended, could not afford a bloody,
internal crisis which, similar to the almost contemporary French Fronde, had much deeper
repercussions in international relations.
Not only was the succession problem left open, inviting the
intrigues of foreign powers in view of the forthcoming election after John Casimir, but
the fruits of earlier victories in the war against Russia were lost, the prospects of
reuniting the Ukraine within the limits of the commonwealth had no longer any chances of
success, and in 1667 an armistice had to be concluded at Andruszowo which involved much
greater sacrifices than the Treaty of Oliwa and more profoundly affected the balance of
power in Eastern Europe.
On the Russian side, the negotiator on behalf of Czar Alexius
was A. N. Ordin-Nashchokin, a skillful diplomat who sincerely aimed at a lasting
betterment of the relations with Poland. But even he, of course, wanted to save for Russia
most of the gains which resulted from the pact concluded with the Ukrainian Cozacks
thirteen years before, and the compromise which was accepted was definitely to
Russia’s advantage. It is true that in the northern, White Ruthenian region only
Smolensk, with its province, was definitely ceded by the commonwealth, and in the south
the Ukraine was divided along the Dnieper River, which seemed to be the best possible
natural boundary. But it was precisely Smolensk, which in all previous wars had proved of
decisive military importance, and the eastern, left-bank Ukraine alone was much easier to
absorb by Russia than the whole of it. On the other hand, in spite of large territorial
cessions, Poland did not at all get rid of the troublesome Cozack problem which only
changed its aspect.
One of the new features of that problem was the possibility of
Russian influence and even interference in the territories on the right bank of the
Dnieper, which continued to be part of Poland but retained close ties with those Cozacks
who were now under Russian rule. But what was particularly dangerous was the solution of
the problem of Kiev. Though situated on the western side of the dividing river, that
center of the Ukraine and of the whole old Rus was ceded to Russia, with its
environs, for two years and it was doubtful from the outset whether it would be returned
to Poland after that period. Ordin-Nashchokin was himself in favor of respecting that
clause of the treaty, but his opinion did not prevail and Kiev was never given back, thus
providing Russia with a strong base on the right bank.
It is therefore hardly necessary to point out the strategic
weakness of the new frontier which, strangely enough, was to last longer than any other
boundary line in that region of transition. It was not changed before the partitions of
Poland more than a hundred years later. But this is precisely an indication that in the
following period of Polish-Russian relations the main issue was no longer any question of
boundaries but of Russian penetration far into Poland with a view to either controlling
the whole of her territory or if necessary partitioning it with another power. That basic
change in the situation did not appear immediately. Indeed there seemed to be a certain
improvement in the relations between the two countries during the years after the
Andruszowo truce so that it was transformed into a “permanent” peace in 1686.
This improvement, however, was to last only as long as Russia had her own problems of
succession, after Czar Alexius and his feeble-minded eldest son Fedor, who died in 1682.
During these years of trouble within the Romanov dynasty, which this time did not lead to
any foreign intervention, there still was some equality of forces between the commonwealth
and Russia. Only when Peter the Great became the uncontested master of his country did its
full power appear in the relations with all its neighbors.
Even before Peter’s violent and rather superficial
“Westernization” of Russia, there was a remarkable cultural progress in that
typically East European or rather Eurasian land, and this was one more result of the
annexation of Kiev and of the final transfer of that important center from Poland to
Russia. Its influence, which introduced some Western elements into the life of the latter
country, was not strong enough, however, to check Muscovite influence which in turn
penetrated into the eastern Ukraine, leading to its gradual Russification and cutting it
off from the West. There was also a parallel progress of the Polonization process in the
western Ukraine so that the new frontier was just like the previous one, a clear dividing
line between a reduced East Central Europe, part of the Latin world, and a different,
predominantly eastern sphere of culture. At the same time this was a serious setback for
the Ukrainian national movement into which the Cozack opposition against Poland had
developed under Khmelnitsky’s leadership.
But the Ukraine also suffered from the steady advance of
Ottoman power which took advantage of the precarious situation of Poland and more and more
seemed to concentrate its onslaught in that direction. It is true that warfare was also
continuing along the Turkish-Austrian border in western Hungary, but there an Austrian
victory, under Montecuccoli, at the Battle of Saint Gotthard, in 1664, was followed by a
twenty years truce concluded at Vasvár, while two factors contributed to an
increased pressure against Poland. These were, first, the decision of the Cozack hetman
Peter Doroshenko to place the part of the Ukraine which he controlled under Ottoman
protection in 1666, and two years later, the abdication of King John Casimir.
Doroshenko’s policy of course raised Turkish claims to just that section of the
Ukraine which the agreement with Russia left to Poland. And the last of the Polish Vasas
who had shown real qualities of leadership in the worst situations, but who now,
pessimistic as to the future of the country, left for France, proved to be very difficult
to replace.
At the election of the following year, the Poles, disgusted by
foreign intrigues, particularly the rivalry of Austrian and French partisans which
reflected the general situation in Western Europe, decided to choose a native candidate.
But Michael Wisniowiecki, the son of Prince Jeremiah—the hero of the earlier Cozack
wars—was entirely different from his father and as king proved a great
disappointment. Even his marriage to a sister of Emperor Leopold I did not contribute to
his prestige, and his poor rule of four years, far from strengthening the position of the
Commonwealth in Europe after all failures of the preceding reign, offered the Turks an
excellent opportunity for another aggression.
The war ended with the humiliating Treaty of Buczacz in 1672,
which, besides the obligation to pay a tribute to the sultan, deprived Poland not only of
her part of the Ukraine but also of the province of Podolia, whose capital, the important
fortress of Kamieniec, had been taken after a dramatic siege. The territorial losses in
the north and in the east were now followed by a similar retreat in the south which was a
retreat of Western Christendom to an artificial boundary, impossible to defend.
It was then that a great military leader, John Sobieski, saved
Poland and as a matter of fact all Christendom, although his universal role was only to
become evident ten years later during what might be called the last crusade in European
history. Already his less spectacular victory of 1673, at Chocim, the same place where the
forces of the Commonwealth had stopped the Turks in 1621, was of decisive importance.
Although it did not end the war, it marked the turn of the tide. Sobieski’s election
as King of Poland in 1674, after the death of Michael, immediately after the Battle at
Chocim, was a well-deserved reward.
At the same time it seemed a success for France and her
partisans, to which party Sobieski had belonged for a long time. Thanks to his wife, Marie
Casimire d’Arquien de la Grange, Poland again had a French queen, less talented but
as ambitious as Louise Marie had been, and Louis XIV expected that under John III Poland
would be his faithful ally. The new king was mainly known as a persistent and successful
opponent of Turkey, another link in the traditional French system of alliances, and even
French mediation could not finally settle the Polish-Turkish conflict. But a preliminary
agreement was reached at the southern front in 1676, and Sobieski, realizing that the
struggle against the Ottoman power had to be postponed, proved equally interested in the
problems of the Baltic.
Here the general European situation seemed to favor an attempt
at recovering East Prussia at least, since the Hohenzollerns were indeed more dangerous
for France than any other German dynasty, including the Habsburgs, had ever been. After
Poland’s reconciliation with Sweden in 1660, cooperation with that country, another
traditional French ally, against the common enemy, seemed quite possible. But
Sobieski’s plan to occupy East Prussia with Swedish cooperation and French support
was doomed to failure because of the skillful policy of the Great Elector and the frequent
shifts of alliances among the Western powers. From 1678 Frederick William, after defeating
the Swedes, was himself in the French camp, and the Peace of Nimwegen, in the following
year, made a necessarily isolated Polish action completely hopeless.
The Polish Diet of 1679 1680 was a turning point in
Sobieski’s policy which also affected the European situation. More than personal
disappointments of his wife in the relations with Louis XIV, the missed opportunity on the
Baltic contributed to a cooling off in John III’s French sympathies. In spite of the
intrigues of the French ambassador and his partisans in Warsaw, the king decided to turn
again to the main task of his life, the defense against the Muslim danger. He did it with
the hope that all European powers, possibly even France herself, could be gained for a
joint action, and therefore he sent diplomatic missions to practically all the European
courts.
And in spite of his sympathy with the Hungarian opposition
against the Habsburgs, led at that moment by Emeric Thököly, he did not hesitate at a
rapprochement with that dynasty, convinced that such cooperation between the two powers
directly threatened by the Ottoman Empire, was indispensable. For the commonwealth it was
more than a question of security. It was a unique occasion to play again a leading part in
the European community.
THE BATTLE OF VIENNA AND ITS AFTERMATH
From the beginning of the year 1683 it was apparent that the Turks, under the influence
of Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha, were planning a new war. It was uncertain, however, whether
their main onslaught would be directed against Austria or against Poland. In any case a
formal alliance between both threatened powers now became urgent, and with the papal
nuncio in Warsaw acting as mediator, it was concluded there on March 31. The treaty
provided that sixty thousand men would be mobilized by the emperor and forty thousand by
the king of Poland, and that in case of a siege by the Turks of either Vienna or Cracow,
all efforts would be made by the ruler of the other country to liberate the capital of his
ally.
At that time it was already easy to foresee that Vienna, easy
to reach from the Turkish-controlled part of Hungary whose other part was in open
rebellion against Habsburg rule, would be the goal of that last Ottoman attempt to
penetrate deep into Central Europe. Warfare also continued, however, on the Podolian front
where part of the Polish forces, supported by loyal Cozacks, had to be kept during the
whole campaign. Nevertheless, as soon as Sobieski was informed that the siege of Vienna
had started, he rapidly moved with an army of twenty-five thousand through Silesia and
Moravia to Austria’s assistance, while a Polish auxiliary corps of six thousand,
under Hieronymus Lubomirski, had already joined the imperial forces before the king’s
arrival.
The question as to who would be the commander in chief of the
allied armies, which included contingents from most German states with the exception of
Brandenburg-Prussia, was decided in favor of the King of Poland, since the emperor was not
present in person. The main leader of the imperial forces of seventy thousand men, Charles
of Lorraine, agreed to place himself under the orders of Sobieski whose unique experience
in fighting the Turks was universally recognized and particularly stressed by the papal
representative, Marco d’Aviano. It was the King of Poland who, after the junction of
both armies, drafted the plan of the battle which was fought before Vienna on September
12, 1683, and was to be one of the decisive battles in European history.
The Christian forces occupied the mountain range west of the
city, which in spite of the heroism of its defenders under Rudiger von Starhemberg was
already in a desperate position, and from these heights they launched their attack against
the Muslims. The fighting started at the left wing near the Danube, where the imperial
regiments distinguished themselves, but according to all witnesses the battle was decided
through a brilliant assault of the Polish cavalry at the right wing, which under the
king’s personal leadership penetrated into the camp of the Turks and broke their
resistance.
The victory was so complete that the liberation of Vienna could
be followed immediately by an advance far into Hungary. But while the population of the
Austrian capital welcomed Sobieski with grateful enthusiasm, misunderstandings between the
two monarchs arose at the arrival of the emperor. Leopold I resented the fact that the
king had not waited for him to enter Vienna and at once he wanted to discourage
Sobieski’s hopes that his eldest son James, who had also fought bravely in the great
battle, would receive an archduchess in marriage. In spite of his disappointment, the
king, with all Polish forces, joined in the Hungarian campaign, and after a setback in the
first battle of Párkány, where he himself was in mortal danger, he won another important
victory near that place and also participated in the taking of Esztergom, Hungary’s
ecclesiastical center. Furthermore, he tried to mediate between Leopold I and the
Hungarians and to make the reconquest of their whole country a real liberation.
That war was to continue for sixteen years. Though Sobieski and
his army returned to Poland at the end of 1683, he remained resolved to participate in the
struggle against the Ottoman Empire and to eliminate the Muslim danger to his own country
and to the whole of Christendom once and for all. Therefore in 1684 he joined the
so-called Holy League which included, besides Austria and Poland, the Republic of Venice,
eager to regain its possessions in the Levant, and Pope Innocent XI, who from the very
beginning had inspired the joint action in defense of Christendom.
Now, however, the forces of Austria and those of Poland were
concentrated on two different fronts. For Leopold I, the main objective was the occupation
of all Hungary. Sobieski wanted to regain Podolia with Kamieniec and, advancing in the
direction of the Danube, to bring Moldavia and possibly also Wallachia under Polish
suzerainty again. Unfortunately both actions were not only insufficiently coordinated but
they were also troubled by a growing distrust between the Allies. The Emperor was afraid
that Poland’s progress in the neighborhood of Transylvania, the old stronghold of the
Hungarian independence movement, would attract the sympathies of the anti-Habsburg
elements on the other side of the Carpathians. If these apprehensions proved unjustified,
it was mainly because the Austrian campaigns of the following years were much more
successful than Sobieski’s campaigns had been.
Two events were decisive in the Hungarian war. In 1686 Buda,
the old capital, was retaken from the Turks who had ruled there for 145 years, a victory
which produced an impression second only to the triumph before Vienna and which at last
made the Habsburgs the real masters of a country which they had claimed since 1526. That
success, gained by Prince Charles of Lorraine, was supplemented in 1697 by the victory of
Prince Eugen of Savoy, another prominent Austrian general of foreign origin, in the battle
of Zenta. Two years later the Turks were obliged to sign the Treaty of Karlowitz which was
the first step in their withdrawal from conquered East Central Europe. In addition to
important concessions to Venice, they had to give up all Hungary with only the exception
of the banat of Temesvár at the southern border. Leopold I, whom the Diet of 1687 had
already recognized as hereditary king of Hungary in the male line, also decided directly
to govern Transylvania whose prince, Michael Apafy, a puppet of the Turks and opponent of
the Habsburgs for almost thirty years, died in 1690. The former principality was now
supposed to be merely an autonomous province of the kingdom, although a descendant of the
Rákóczis, Francis II, looking for French and possibly Polish support also, was already
leading a resistance movement against Austria.
The Treaty of Karlowitz also at last restored Podolia to
Poland, but John Sobieski did not live to see the liberation of Kamieniec which he had
simply bypassed in his Moldavian campaigns. In spite of all his efforts, including the
appeasement of Russia in the Treaty of 1686, these campaigns ended in failure. Only one of
them, undertaken that same year, parallel to the Austrian advance to Buda, had any chance
of success. The immediate reason why the Polish forces, after advancing far into the
Danubian principalities, had to retreat, as they also had to in subsequent expeditions
until 1691, was the lack of support from the native Rumanian population. Even at the
height of her power, Poland had failed to win their full confidence in a lasting
protection against the Turks. Now, seeing their homeland turned into a battlefield once
again, they were even less prepared to exchange a loosening Ottoman overlordship for the
rule of the commonwealth, which in recent years had so poorly defended its southern
borderlands, or for the domination of the Sobieski family.
For even in Poland there was a suspicion—one more reason
for the king’s failure—that he wanted to turn the conquered territories into a
private domain for one of his sons, thus strengthening his own power and securing the
future election of his descendants to the Polish throne. The result was, on the contrary,
a growing opposition to Sobieski which disregarded all his outstanding achievements and
troubled the end of his otherwise so glorious reign until his death in 1696.
It would be vain to speculate whether it would have been wiser,
instead of persisting in the Danubian project which proved beyond Poland’s military
power, to concentrate on a better solution of the old Ukrainian problem with a view to
regaining access to the Black Sea in the steppes between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers.
This no man’s land would have been much more difficult to defend by the declining
Ottoman Empire, and nobody would have been better qualified to make an attempt in that
direction than Sobieski, who to a large extent appeased the Cozacks, restored order in the
borderlands torn by war and revolution, and time and again even succeeded in coming to an
understanding with the Crimean Tartars.
Their invasions, which had plagued these borderlands and the
commonwealth as a whole from the thirteenth century—there had been about two hundred
Tartar incursions in the course of those four hundred and fifty years—ceased
completely at the end of the seventeenth century, and this was only one of the lasting
results of Sobieski’s victories. Another was not only the disappearance of the
Turkish danger which had so frequently paralyzed Poland’s policy from the days of
Varna and Mohács, but also a basic change in Polish-Turkish relations. Permanent tension,
if not open hostility, was replaced by bonds of common interest between two countries,
formerly great powers, both now facing decline if not destruction. After the last abortive
Polish endeavors to interfere with the Balkan problems, any interference with the internal
situation of Poland, coming from powers which also began to threaten the Ottoman Empire,
was considered contrary to Turkey’s own interests.
This was particularly the case of Russia, whose cooperation in
Sobieski’s Turkish wars had been inadequate throughout the regency of Sophia, the
elder sister of Peter the Great. Peter himself, from the outset hostile to Poland and
determined to take advantage of any possibility of intervention opened by the 1686 treaty,
began by attacking the important Turkish outpost of Azov which he conquered shortly before
Sobieski’s death. The pressure which the czar, jointly with Austria, Turkey’s
other opponent, exercised upon Poland in connection with the election after John III, was
chiefly directed against a candidate who would have well suited the Ottoman Empire, since
it was a French prince, François de Conti, supported by the policy of Louis XIV.
That policy, after the crisis in French-Polish relations during
Sobieski’s cooperation with the Habsburg emperor, resulted in 1692, after John
III’s gradual withdrawal from the Turkish war, in another plan of cooperation with
France’s traditional allies in the East. Sweden seeming to be powerless and Turkey
suffering unprecedented defeats, Poland remained the most important of these possible
allies, and the establishment there of a branch of the French dynasty would have changed
the whole balance of power in Europe to the advantage of Louis XIV. But this was precisely
one of the reasons why Poland’s neighbors opposed such a solution which, coming soon
after the rise of her prestige in 1683, could have saved her from either Russian control
or partition. That they succeeded in forcing upon Poland in the first election, which was
not really free, the worst possible candidate, the Elector of Saxony, was to influence the
history of East Central Europe throughout the eighteenth century and must be explained by
the constitutional crisis of Poland and of that whole region of Europe toward the end of
the seventeenth.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS OF EAST CENTRAL EUROPE
It is an almost universally admitted opinion that the Polish constitution, as finally
developed after the extinction of the Jagellonian dynasty, was very inadequate if not
simply “crazy,” and that it led almost fatally to the decline and fall of the
commonwealth. This interpretation requires, however, three rather important
qualifications.
First, the Polish institutions, though far from being perfect,
were not at all so bad, particularly if considered against the background of the period
and of the neighboring countries. There was in Poland much more political freedom than in
most of the other states of modern Europe. No other country except England had such a
powerful legislature, based upon a long tradition of parliamentary government. And in
spite of the strict limitations of the executive, the authority of the king largely
depended on his own abilities and spirit of initiative. Until the middle of the
seventeenth century, when unanimity rule in the Diet, the only too well-known liberum
veto was first applied in its extreme form, the whole constitutional machinery, unique
in its kind, worked fairly well.
What really was deplorable was the gradual abandonment of any
ideas of constitutional reform, so seriously discussed and carried out on many occasions
in the earlier periods of Polish history. Royal attempts toward a strengthening of the
executive power failed one after the other, including Sobieski’s rather vague
projects in that direction, not without a serious responsibility of those of his
predecessors who had tried to achieve their aims through court intrigue and illegal
action. The stagnation of the normal evolution of political institutions, which was to
last well into the second half of the eighteenth century, was indeed extremely harmful but
certainly not irremediable as long as the nation was free to direct its own destinies.
Secondly, Poland’s internal crisis around 1700, greatly
aggravated by the political and economic consequences of so many foreign invasions, was
not exclusively nor even predominantly of an institutional character connected with the
form of government. Much more serious were the social and the cultural crises both of
which reached their climax in the same period.
It was more than a defect of the constitution that all
liberties, of which the Poles were rightly proud, remained limited to the szlachta
which identified itself with the nation at large. It is true that this typically Polish
privileged class was never limited to a small closed circle of aristocratic families, but,
jealous of a truly democratic equality of rights and opportunities for all its members,
constituted about one-tenth of the population. But being equally jealous of the
development of the cities, so prosperous in earlier centuries, that numerous nobility
reduced the burghers to an insignificant role, and worst of all, kept the peasants in
conditions of serfdom which, though not worse than in most Western countries and
definitely better than in Russia, badly required a basic reform which was completely
neglected in spite of the promises of 1656.
What might be called Poland’s hundred years war in the
seventeenth century brought the general level of culture much lower than it had been in
the “golden age” of the sixteenth. Even Polish literature of the period of
crisis, though not so insignificant as it was for a long time supposed to have been,
produced no masterpieces comparable to those of the Renaissance. The old universities, to
which that of Lwow had been added in 1661, were declining, and education of all degrees,
largely in the hands of the Jesuit Order, whose influence is, however, often
misrepresented through a very one-sided criticism, was of course badly affected by the
general conditions. And the participation in the development of Western culture was
greatly reduced in spite of close intellectual ties with the France of the “grand
siècle.”
Nevertheless, even in these comparatively dark years, Polish
culture proved strong enough to assimilate, more than even before, the non-Polish elements
of the commonwealth, at least as far as the upper classes were concerned. Just as before,
that gradual and spontaneous process of Polonization contributed to making the eastern
boundaries of the country the cultural frontier of Europe. That fact is, however, closely
connected with a third point which must be stressed. The crisis toward the end of the
seventeenth century has to be considered from the point of view not only of Poland, then
the only fully independent state in that region of the Continent, but of all countries and
peoples of East Central Europe.
Particularly critical, indeed, was the situation of the
Ruthenians, although their national consciousness developed in connection with the Cozack
insurrections, not without the beginning of a differentiation between the White Ruthenians
(now Byelorussians) in the north and the Ruthenians proper (sometimes misleadingly called
Little Russians, now called Ukrainians) in the south.
As to the former, part of their territory, particularly the
Smolensk region, after being definitely conquered by Moscow, was absorbed by and
amalgamated into Great Russia, or Russia proper, and thus completely cut off from East
Central Europe as part of the new Russian Empire. Most of the White Ruthenians remained in
the Grand Duchy of Lithuania where, however, their cultural influence was to such an,
extent replaced by the Polish that the so-called coaequatio iurium of 1696 made
Polish, instead of Ruthenian (in a form near to the White Ruthenian tongue) the official
language of that grand duchy.
As a body politic, Lithuania continued to enjoy that full
equality with the kingdom of Poland which was guaranteed by the Union of Lublin. In 1673
it was even decided that every third Diet of the commonwealth should meet, not in Warsaw,
but in Grodno, on the territory of the grand duchy, under a Lithuanian speaker. But the
Lithuanian citizens, deeply attached to the tradition and the local autonomy of the grand
duchy, included peoples of various racial origin. Among those who were Lithuanians
racially, only the peasants continued to use their own Lithuanian language which had not
yet produced any notable literature. A Lithuanian national consciousness in the modern
sense was hardly more developed than that of their Latvian kinsmen, now predominantly,
together with the Finns and Estonians, under Swedish rule and German cultural influence.
Quite different was the situation of the Ruthenians who since
the Union of Lublin had all been united within the limits of the kingdom of Poland, and
since the Union of Brest, amidst the ardent discussions between its partisans and its
opponents, went through a revival of their cultural life. The Cozack movement which
started there as a social force and which soon became a political power also, was leading
to the formation of a Ruthenian or Ukrainian nation which the Union of Hadziacz wanted to
make another equal partner in the commonwealth, with all guaranties for the Orthodox
faith. But the partition of the Ukraine between Poland and Russia, without even speaking
of the temporary Turkish domination in a third part of the country, necessarily led to a
progressive Polonization of the western section and to a gradual suppression of the
promised autonomy, hence to Russification, in the eastern part, a situation which was to
influence the Ukrainian national movement in the following centuries.
As to Ottoman rule in South Eastern Europe, it was becoming
even more oppressive and degrading with the decline of the empire. Of all the peoples of
the Balkans, only the Rumanians continued to enjoy a certain amount of autonomy, both in
Wallachia, where a series of princes of Greek origin (called Phanariots because coming
from Phanar, the Greek quarter of Constantinople) succeeded in establishing a greater
continuity of government, and even more so in Moldavia, where Prince Demetrius Cantemir,
Sobieski’s opponent, also contributed to the cultural development of the country.
Both Danubian principalities remained not only a battleground between the neighboring
powers but also a gateway of conflicting cultural influences.
The Turkish withdrawal from the Danubian Plain at last brought
almost the whole of Hungary, along with Bohemia, under Habsburg rule. That German dynasty
thus realized its agelong objective, attained only in part after the battle of Mohács in
1526, to establish its hereditary rule in both kingdoms. The important section of East
Central Europe, which the Jagellonians had before associated with Poland, was now
connected with Austria, and the common dynasty tried to make that connection as close as
possible. The constitutional and cultural crisis which in Bohemia had already reached its
climax after the battle of the White Mountain in 1620, now affected the whole of Hungary
also, where the main part, liberated from the Ottoman yoke, had to face the same danger
which the northwestern border region had opposed, not without difficulty, for a century
and a half. This was the centralizing and Germanizing trend of the Habsburg regime.
There was, however, a considerable difference between the
situation in Bohemia and in Hungary. In the former country there was hardly any national
resistance. The nobility, now largely of foreign origin, supported the policy of the
court, showing little interest in the traditional autonomy of the kingdom within the
empire and no interest at all in the preservation of the Czech language which in spite of
its eloquent but isolated defense by the Jesuit Bohuslav Balbin was gradually replaced by
German, particularly in the cities. The peasants suffered so much from the deteriorating
conditions of serfdom that they revolted in 1680, only to be crushed and severely punished
by the Patent of the same year. The country, whose state rights were no longer defended by
the Prague Diet which was completely losing its importance, seemed ripe for the unifying
policy of the Habsburgs in the next century.
In Hungary, where the national nobility remained powerful and
politically active in the Diet, with Latin as the official language, a prominent leader,
Nicholas Zrinyi, a great-grandson of the hero of Szigetvár, had already realized the
danger of unlimited Habsburg rule before the expulsion of the Turks, which he was one of
the first to anticipate. But he died before that liberation, and the other Hungarian
magnates, including his brother Peter, by conspiring with Louis XIV, only provoked the
court’s violent reaction and a temporary suspension of the constitution. A similar
policy by Emeric Thököly and the rebellion of the so-called Kurucok (Crusaders) amidst
the Turkish war created a tense situation between Leopold I and the Hungarian estates
after the unification of the country under the emperor’s rule. Here too, as in
Bohemia, after the devastation of so many war years, many foreign colonists were settled,
Austrian generals and dignitaries exercised an increasing influence, encouraging the
non-Magyar elements, and although the Diet agreed to abolish the clause of the Golden Bull
of 1222, which authorized resistance against any unconstitutional action of the king, an
open rebellion broke out in 1697.
Its leader, Francis Rákóczi II, was not only a nephew of
Nicholas Zrinyi but also a descendant of former princes of Transylvania where he found
strong support. After a manifesto addressed to all peoples of Hungary he was elected
“ruling prince” by the estates and amidst the War of the Spanish Succession that
anti-Habsburg movement was again welcomed by Louis XIV, while England and Holland tried to
mediate. Emperor Joseph I, who succeeded Leopold I in 1705, found Hungary in a state of
rebellion which was typical of the internal crisis in the various countries of East
Central Europe at the turn of the century.
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