He, however, fell in love with Catherine II; they, however, did not marry, but it was suspected that he was the father of her children.
She later became the Empress of Russia. He struggled to keep Poland as well as his power intact, after neighboring countries like Russia annexing portions of is country, the Catholic Church revolting and even going through manipulation by external powers.
He only succeeded in strengthening his position and improving education in Poland. He was also passionate about art, architecture. He has over 30 portraits painted of himself done by Ludwik Marteau the French artist. He also developed 74 hectares of a park in Warsaw where he died. He is accredited as being the king who establishes suzerainty over Prussia.
He succeeded his elder brother Alexander I as grand prince of Lithuania in He established fiscal and monetary reforms, though he died without holding any land titles, unlike his brothers.
His rule witnessed some of the cruelest events in Polish history- the burning of John Hus, the Turkish Invasion of Hungary among others.
He was also known as a brave fighter. Sigismund married twice; his first wife Barbara Zapolya was a Hungarian noblewoman who died leaving four daughters and Gian Galeazzo Sforza Duke of Milan. His son who was also the last Jagiellon king took power when Sigismund died. He was the first ruler of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth and the last male monarch from the Jagiellonian dynasty. His wife died in , and he secretly married the Lithuanian Barbara Radziwill; who was from an influential family.
That ended the lineage of the Jagiellon rule. He is known for uniting the Grand duchy of Lithuania and Livonia by signing the Union of Lublin which formed the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and is known to have been extremely compassionate with minorities and encourages peaceful relations with neighbors.
Cossack revolts against Poland began in , but the great revolt came in It was led by the Cossack Hetman Commander-in-Chief Bohdan Khmelnitsky , who wanted to establish his own kingdom. Khmelnitsky had suffered at the hands of a Polish neighbor and failed to obtain justice in Warsaw. He then decided to use the cossack masses for his own ends.
The revolt began with a brutal "pogrom" massacre of Jews and Polish nobles in Kiev, though it is not clear whether Khmelnitsky ordered it, or whether he could not, or would not stop it. In any case, the cossacks defeated the Polish armies in two major battles and drove deep into Poland. Later, Khmelnitsky asked the Russian Tsar Alexis I for protection in , thinking he could use the Russians to help him fight the Poles - but instead, he gave the Tsar a pretext to take over a large part of Ukraine.
The Polish nobles tried belatedly to conciliate the Cossacks, offering them autonomy in a union with Poland. After Khmelnitsky's death, Ivan Vykhovsky b.? He signed the Union of Hadiach pron. Khadzhyach with Polish representatives on Sept. But the Orthdox-peasant Cossack masses hated the Catholic Polish lords, so they revolted against Vykhovsky who fled to Poland, and the Union was still born.
The Russian Tsar Alexis I had used Khmelnitsky's request for protection as a pretext to annex eastern Ukraine, while western Ukraine stayed with Poland. The division of Ukraine between Poland and Russia interrupted the natural development of Ukrainian statehood, and thus also language, literature. The Treaty of Andrusovo, , signaled the emergence of Russia as the pre-eminent power in Eastern Europe , replacing Poland. Note that Poland had already been greatly weakened by the Swedish Wars, especially the war of In the 19 th century, Ukranian national consciousness developed mostly in western Ukraine.
It was inspired by an idealized view of Khmelnitsky and the Cossacks. Its leaders' aim was to create a large Ukrainian state to unite all Ukrainians. Despite valiant efforts in and again in , Ukraine did not become an independent state until after the collapse of the USSR in December iii The Swedish Wars. The first of these wars broke out over Livonia in Sweden was now a strong Baltic power and was trying to extend its rule to the southern Baltic shores.
After some Polish victories, an armistice was signed in The Swedes broke the armistice when they invaded Poland in This began a war often called "The Deluge" by Polish historians because of the multiple evils it brought on the country. The Swedish advance was supported by the great Polish-Lithuanian magnate, Janusz Radziwill , pron.
Yanoosh Raadzeeveel , who signed a treaty uniting Lithuania with Sweden. A History of Poland. The Swedes marched all over Poland, devastating the country.
This led the Polish gentry lesser nobles , as well as some peasants, to fight the Swedes. Chenstokhovah in The Polish victory - due to a combination of good Polish defense and the exhaustion of Swedish armies - was attributed to the miracle-working picture of Mary , the Mother of God and her child in the monastery church. The monastery is the chief religious shrine in Poland to this day. By the Treaty of Oliva pron. Most important of all, Brandenburg Prussia acquired sovereignty over East Prussia.
This region had been under Polish sovereignty since the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albrecht von Hohenzollern, had accepted the Lutheran faith and swore fealty to Poland in The Great Elector was also a Hohenzollern, though a distant relative.
From now on, a narrow strip of land, Polish Pomerania , divided Brandenburg Prussia from East Prussia, and this led Prussian rulers to desire the union of the two Prussias at Poland's expense. Only a small part of E. Finally, religious toleration declined in Poland during the 17 th century wars.
Therefore, Polishness came to be identified with Catholicism, while other religions were suspect. The Swedish War of devastated much of Poland, especially the towns. It was accompanied by a flare up of the Black Death. As a result of war damage, famine, and the plague, Poland-Lithuania is estimated to have lost between one third and half of its population, which was about 11,, in , before the war started.
The country recovered to some extent by , but then came the Great Northern War, , in which Swedish and Russian armies devastated Poland again. See under: Saxon Kings, below. Polish wars with the Ottoman Turks lasted on and off for about two centuries. However, after the Battle of Mohacs, , when the Hungarian armies led by Louis Jagiellon, then King of Bohemia and Hungary, were defeated by the Turks, most of the fighting was with the Crimean Tatars, subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
In , a Polish noble , Jan pron. Khotseem , in Nine years later, Sobieski marched with a Polish army to the relief of Vienna, besieged by the Turks, and Polish winged hussars played a major role in defeating the Turkish army there on 12 September Sobieski had hoped that one of his children would marry into the Habsburg family, but the Habsburgs were not interested.
Though Sobieski had many children with his French wife Marie-Casimiere d'Arquien - whom he loved to distraction, and to whom he wrote wonderful love letters - he failed to establish a dynasty. Sobieski at Vienna. The Saxon Kings, An important factor in the later decline of Poland were the Saxon Kings, the first of whom involved Poland in the Great Northern War, He was elected with money from the rulers of Austria, Prussia and Russia, to counter the French candidate, the Duke of Conti, who was elected by the majority of Polish nobles.
The supporters of Augustus conducted another "election" and had him crowned in Cracow P. He ruled until his death in , when he was succeeded by son, who ruled as Augustus III , with brief interruptions until his death in Augustus II was nicknamed "Augustus the Strong" because of his great physical strength and his many illegitimate children a portrait is in the Nelson Gallery, Kansas City, MO , but he was not equally strong in political-military judgment.
Thus, he embroiled Poland in another long war: the Great Northern War , when Poland was devastated again. More wars in map below.
A History of Poland, vol. Leszczynski reappeared again as King of Poland, this time elected by most Polish nobles and backed by France, in , during the War of the Polish Succession a war actually fought in the west between France and Austria. However, Leszczynski did not get any French military help, so he was forced to flee back to France, where he lived until his death as the Prince of Lorraine.
He wrote political works attacking the Liberum Veto and advocating the abolition of serfdom. Polish Reform Projects and their Failure. There had been proposals to reform the Polish political system as far back as the 16 th century, especially those of Andrzej Frycz-Modrzewski , pron: Andzhey Frych-Modzhevskee. He advocated equal citizenship for all Poles, the democratization of the state and the church, and a centralized though not absolute monarchy. Concrete projects to refom the Polish state were proposed from the mids onward by members of the Czartoryski pron.
Chartoryskee family of great magnates known as "The Family. At first, the Czartoryskis looked to the Austrian Habsburgs for support, mainly because of the Austrian rulers' dislike of the Saxon Electors, also their distrust of Russia and their enmity to Prussia. However, France was the enemy of Austria, so it opposed the Czartoryski projects by supporting a rival magnate family, the Potockis pron.
The Czartoryskis then looked to Russia , assuming her rulers would wish to have a strong Poland as an ally. However, the Russian rulers preferred to have a weak Poland which they could control. Therefore, Catherine II the Great b. He was elected King with Russian support in September He had been a lover of the young Catherine before she became Empress, and she assumed that he would be obedient to her. At the time of his election, Catherine and Frederick agreed to " guarantee the Polish Constitution, "which meant the ramshackle Polish political system.
They agreed to do so, because they both wanted a weak Poland: Frederick aimed to seize part of western Poland, while Catherine wanted to control the country through the King. However, Stanislas Augustus disappointed them both. He was a well educated man with enlightened ideas, who wanted to reform the Polish system of government.
He helped establish government commissions for the Army and the Finances. These were really departments which worked by majority rule. Furthermore, the Seym was forced to accept non-Catholic deputies.
This meant German Lutherans who were loyal to Prussia, as well as orthodox Ukrainian and Belorussian nobles who were loyal to Russia. Catherine was praised by some in western Europe for religious toleration, but this was a move to control the Poles in their parliament. A group of Polish nobles and gentry rebelled against these measures. They formed the Confederation of Bar a town then in S. Poland, now in western Ukraine , to fight for the Catholic faith and Polish independence.
Their war with Russia spilled over into Turkish territory and led to a Russo-Turkish War , which gave the Poles some breathing space. Lecture Notes. The Partitions of Poland. The First Partition, However, it is unlikely that even a strong Polish army could have defeated any two, let alone all three powers, at the same time. At best, it might have postponed or reduced territorial losses for a time.
For Catherine II , the decisive factor against allowing a weak Poland to continue to exist with all her territories under Russian oversight was the state of the Russian imperial treasury, which had been emptied by the Russo-Turkish war.
Therefore, she eyed part of eastern Poland and agreed to the proposals of Frederick II who wanted to seize Polish Pomerania for Brandenburg Prussia, thus uniting the latter with East Prussia. The Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa, who had already taken a small bite of Poland Zips decided to seize southern Poland, which she called "Galicia-Lodomeria," claiming it on the grounds that it had once belonged to the Hungarian crown.
In fact, it had been claimed by Hungarian kings in the 12 th and 13 th centuries, but ruled in name only by Lazslo [Louis] the Great of Hungary, Thus, by a secret partition treaty signed by the three rulers on Feb. Russia took the largest piece: eastern Livonia, and and part of today's Belorussia; Austria took "Galicia-Lodomeria;" Prussia acquired Polish Pomerania and Warmia pron. On September 18, , the Polish Seym, surrounded by Russian troops, approved the loss of these Polish lands.
The Era of Revival and Reform, King Stanislas Augustus , together with some enlightened Polish nobles and churchmen, pressed for reform of the government in order to strengthen Poland and preserve its independence.
They were much influenced by the ideas of the "Enlightenment" as developed in western Europe, particularly in France. The King had spent some time in France and England as a young man. He was impressed by the English system of government, that is, constitutional monarchy. The men who exercised the greatest influence on the King, his advisers, and other reform minded Poles were three well educated, enlightened, Catholic churchmen and one layman: 1 Hugo Kollataj pron.
Kohwontay, a Piarist, but an enlightened thinker; Stanislaw Konarski pron. Konarskee , a priest and well known educator, who died in but provided a blueprint for the educational reform that followed ; and 3 Stanislaw Staszic pron. Stashyts, , a learned clergyman; and 4 Stanislaw Malachowski, who was to be the co-author with the King of the Polish Constitution of May 3 All of them wanted to reform the Polish political system. Poland portal. Abraham Prochownik. Mieszko I. Mieszko II Lambert.
Dytryk Thiedric. Kazimierz I the Restorer Casimir I. Mieszko III the Old. Leszek I the White. Mieszko IV Tanglefoot. Konrad I of Masovia. Henryk I the Bearded Henry I. Leszek II the Black.
Rudolf Austriacki Rudolph I of Bohemia. Henryk Karyncki Henry of Bohemia. Jan Luksemburski John of Bohemia. Jadwiga of Poland Hedwig d'Anjou.
Aleksander Alexander, Aleksandras. Maksymilian II Maximilian I. Maria Teresa. Leopold II. Franciszek II. Ferdynand I. Karol I.
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