Poland

A

The Piast Dynasty

Mieszko led the Poles into Christianity, in response to the crusading and marauding Germans. During the reign of his son, Boleslav I (992-1025), the Christian Church was firmly established in Poland. Boleslav also conducted successful wars against Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and considerably expanded the Polish domain. He was crowned king by the pope in 1025. At his death, Poland extended beyond the Carpathian Mountains and the Oder (Odra) and Dnestr rivers.

During the next three centuries Poland met with repeated misfortunes from internal disorder and foreign invasions. In 1079 Boleslav II murdered the Bishop of Kraków and Poland was placed under a papal interdict. Boleslav III, who reigned from 1102 to 1138, conquered Pomerania, defeated the pagan Prussians, and defended Silesia against Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. On the death of Boleslav III Poland was divided among his sons, and the kingdom subsequently disintegrated into a number of independent warring principalities.

In 1240-1241 the Mongols invaded and ravaged Poland. The neighbouring Baltic dominions of the pagan Prussians had been subjugated, meanwhile, by the Teutonic Knights, and German colonists, encouraged by the Polish princes, began to settle in the country (see Baltic Crusades). During the period of German colonization, large numbers of Jews, in flight from persecution in western Europe, took refuge in Polish territory.

Władysław I the Short, of the Piast dynasty, was crowned King of Poland in 1320. From 1305 to 1333, defeats were inflicted on the Teutonic Knights, and the kingdom was reunited. The power and prosperity of Poland increased tremendously during the reign, from 1333 to 1370, of his son Casimir III, one of the most enlightened rulers in Polish history and the last of the Piast dynasty. He initiated important administrative, judicial, and legislative reforms, founded the University of Kraków (1364), extended aid to the Jewish refugees from western Europe, and added Galicia to the Polish domains.

B

The Jagiełłon Dynasty

The second dynasty of Polish kings, the Jagiełłonians, was founded by Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania. In 1386 Jagiełło married Jadwiga, Queen of Poland, a grand niece of Casimir III, and ascended the throne as Władysław II Jagiełło. Christianity was introduced into Lithuania, a pagan country, by Władysław, who was converted on his accession. In 1410 Polish and Lithuanian armies under Władysław won a decisive victory at Tannenberg over the Teutonic Knights, thereby raising Poland to a leading position among European nations. Thereafter, until 1569, a single sovereign usually ruled both states.

Under the Jagiełłon dynasty, which lasted until 1572, Poland attained great heights of power, prosperity, and cultural magnificence. Casimir IV, who ruled from 1447 to 1492, conducted a protracted and successful war (1454-1466) against the Teutonic Knights. In 1466, by terms of the Peace of Thorn, which terminated the conflict, he secured West Prussia, Pomerania, and other territories. The landed gentry and lesser nobility acquired extensive privileges during Casimir’s reign, mainly at the expense of the peasantry. The Sejm, a parliamentary body that evolved out of earlier assemblies of nobles and other social groups, began to assume greater importance. The succeeding Jagiełłon kings, notably Sigismund I, were generally victorious in the military and diplomatic struggles of the period, despite some setbacks in the east. In 1569 Sigismund II Augustus united the two realms of Poland and Lithuania. The country was officially termed the Commonwealth. Protestantism, which made many converts among the nobility in the middle years of the 16th century, ceased to be significant after 1600.

With the death of Sigismund II Augustus, last of the Jagiełłonians, in 1572, the Polish nobility successfully concluded a prolonged campaign for complete control of the country. A regime of elected kings was instituted with the power of election vested in the Sejm, then a bicameral body consisting of the lesser and greater nobility. One important aspect of this system was to be the liberum veto, which made it possible for any member of the Sejm to prevent the passage of legislation. The constitution also sanctioned the formation of military confederations of nobles.

C

Wars and Polish Decline

For two centuries after these developments, the political, economic, and military position of Poland deteriorated. Successive and generally disastrous wars with Sweden, Russia, the Ukrainian Cossacks, Brandenburg, and the Ottoman Turks led to the loss of important Polish territories and the devastation of much of Poland. In 1683 Polish and German armies under the command of John III Sobieski defeated a vast Turkish army at the gates of Vienna, halting a serious threat to Christendom in central Europe, but his victory could not halt Poland’s decline. Early in the 18th century the Russian Empire opened a systematic offensive against declining Poland.

Supplementing military force with bribery and intrigue, the Russian rulers gradually reduced neighbouring Poland to impotence. Widespread political corruption among the Polish nobility accelerated the drift towards national catastrophe. Through shameless bribery of a faction of the Sejm and armed Russian intervention, Frederick Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and son of Augustus II—the previous king of Poland—was placed on the Polish throne in 1733 as Augustus III. These events brought on the conflict known in history as the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735). Although sections of the Polish nobility subsequently united around a programme of national salvation, Poland was unable to withstand the next Russian onslaught. In 1764 Russian troops entered Poland and forced the enthronement of Stanislas II Augustus, a paramour of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.

D

Partitions of Poland

Russian expansionism, as exemplified by these events, caused profound alarm among the European powers. The Ottoman Empire immediately declared war on Russia. Prussia and Austria, fearful of a general European conflict and coveting Polish territory, submitted a proposal to the Russian government for the partition of Poland.

E

First Partition and the Polish Commonwealth

The Russian government agreed, and in 1772 the treaty of partition was concluded at St Petersburg. By the terms of this document, Russia, Austria, and Prussia acquired large portions of Polish territory, amounting to about one quarter of the total area of the country. A constitution, which established safeguards against Polish resurgence, was also imposed on the nation by the partitioning powers. The country was officially termed the Polish Commonwealth. Consent of the Sejm to the treaty was obtained largely by bribery.

Despite the political restrictions surrounding the Polish Commonwealth, the attenuated nation progressed in several domestic fields in the decade following partition. The national education system was secularized and completely modernized. A movement for constitutional reform also developed during this period, but the Polish nobility frustrated effective action. Relations between Russia and Prussia deteriorated rapidly after 1786. With encouragement from Prussia, Polish patriots in the Sejm instituted sweeping governmental reforms in 1788 and began the draft of a new constitution. The draft, which proclaimed Poland a hereditary monarchy and strengthened and liberalized the government, was adopted, in the face of violent opposition from a section of the gentry, on May 3, 1791.