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The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (or the Republic of the Two Nations: in Polish, Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów; in Lithuanian, Žečpospolita; in Latin, Regnum Serenissima Poloniae; in Belarusian, Рэч Паспалі́тая) was a federal monarchy-republic formed by the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569, lasting until 1795.
The Commonwealth was an extension of the Polish-Lithuanian Union, a personal union between those two states that had existed from 1386. The Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous states in Europe and for over two centuries successfully withstood aggressions from the Teutonic Order, the Mongols, the Russians, the Ottomans, and Sweden.
The Commonwealth was notable for its political system, which was a precursor to modern democracy and federation; for its remarkable religious tolerance; and for the second-oldest written national constitution in the world. Its economy was dominated by agriculture. While the Commonwealth's first century was a golden age for both Poland and Lithuania, the second century was marked by military defeats, a return to serfdom for the peasants, and growing anarchy in political life.
The Duchy of Warsaw, established in 1807, traced its origins to the Commonwealth. Other revival movements appeared during the January Uprising (1863-1864) and in the 1920s, when Józef Piłsudski advanced the concept of a confederation of Międzymorze (translatable as "Tween-Seas"). Today's Republic of Poland considers itself a successor to the Commonwealth.
History
Main article: Nobles' Democracy The creation of the Commonwealth by the Union of Lublin in 1569 was one of the signal achievements of Sigismund II Augustus, last king of the Jagiellon dynasty. His death in 1572 was followed by a three-year interregnum during which adjustments were made to the constitutional system that effectively increased the power of the nobility (the szlachta) and established a truly elective monarchy.  The Commonwealth at its greatest extent The Commonwealth reached its Golden Age in the first half of the 17th century. Its powerful parliament (the Sejm) was dominated by nobles who were reluctant to wage offensive wars, thus sparing the country the ravages of the Thirty Years' War. The Commonwealth was mostly victorious against numerous incursions by Sweden, Russia, and vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and even managed for a time to take Moscow during the Russian Time of Troubles.
Commonwealth power waned after the double blow of 1648: history's greatest Cossack rebellion (the Chmielnicki Uprising, supported by Crimean Khanate Tatars, in the eastern territories of Kresy), which resulted in Cossacks falling under Muscovy sphere of influence after in 1652, and the Swedish invasion in 1655 (supported by troops of Transylvanian duke Rakoczy and Elector of Brandenburg), known as the Deluge, provoked by the policies of Commonwealth kings from the Swedish royal House of Vasa.
In the late 17th century, the weakened Commonwealth under King Jan III Sobieski was still strong enough to deal crushing defeats to the Ottoman Empire: in 1683, the Battle of Vienna marked the final turning point in a 250-year struggle between the forces of Christian Europe and the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Over the next 16 years (in the "Great Turkish War") the Turks would be permanently driven south of the Danube River, never to threaten central Europe again.
By the 18th century, the Commonwealth was facing many internal problems and was vulnerable to foreign influences. This destabilized its political system almost to the brink of anarchy. Attempts at reform, such as those made by the Four-Year Sejm of 1788–1792, which culminated in the May 3rd Constitution of 1791, came too late, and the country was partitioned in three stages by the neighboring Russian Empire, Kingdom of Prussia, and Austrian Empire. By 1795 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been completely erased from the map of Europe.
How the Commonwealth disappeared from the map of Europe: The Commonwealth at its greatest extent ( 1648) | The First Partition ( 1772) | The Second Partition ( 1793) | The Third Partition ( 1795). Poland disappears for 123 years. |
State organization and politics - See also: Offices in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Commonwealth military Commonwealth armies were commanded by four hetmans. The armies comprised: - Wojsko kwarciane: Regular units with wages paid from taxes (these units were later merged with the wojsko komputowe)
- Wojsko komputowe: Semi-regular units created for times of war (in 1652 these units were merged with the wojsko kwarciane into a new permanent army)
- Pospolite ruszenie: Szlachta levée en masse
- piechota łanowa and piechota wybraniecka: Units based on peasant recruits
- Registered Cossacks: Troops made up of Cossacks, used mainly as infantry, less often as cavalry (with tabors) were recruited until 1699
- Royal guard: A small unit whose primary purpose was to escort the monarch and members of his family
- Mercenaries: As with most other armies, hired to supplement regular units
- Private armies: In time of peace usually small regiments (few hundred men) were paid for and equipped by magnates or cities. However, in times of war, they were greatly augmented (to even a few thousand men) and paid by state
Some units of the Commonwealth used fairly unique tactics. These units included: - Hussars: heavy cavalry armed with lances; their charges were extremely effective until advances in firearms in the late 17th century substantially increased infantry firepower.
- Cossacks: general name for all Commonwealth units of light cavalry, even if they did not contain a single ethnic Cossack; fast and manueverable like oriental cavalry units of Ottoman Empire vassals, but lacking the firepower of European cavalry such as the Swedish rajtars.
- Tabor: military horse-drawn wagons, usually carrying army supplies. Their use for defensive formations was perfected by the Cossacks, and to a smaller extent by other Commonwealth units.
The Commonwealth Navy was small and played a relatively minor role in the history of the Commonwealth.
The Golden Freedoms The political doctrine of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was: our state is a Republic under the presidency of the King. Chancellor Jan Zamoyski summed up this doctrine when he said (naturally, in Latin) that Rex regnat et non gubernat (The King reigns but does not govern). The Commonwealth had a parliament, the Sejm, as well as a Senat and an elected king. The king was obliged to respect citizens' rights specified in King Henry's Articles as well as in pacta conventa negotiated at the time of his election.
The monarch's power was limited, in favor of a sizable noble class. Each new king had to subscribe to King Henry's Articles, which were the basis of Poland's political system (and included near-unprecedented guarantees of religious tolerance). Over time, King Henry's Articles were merged with the pacta conventa, specific pledges agreed to by the king-elect. From that point, the king was effectively a partner with the noble class and was constantly supervised by a group of senators.
The foundations of the Commonwealth, the Golden Freedoms (Polish Zlota Wolność, a term used from 1573), included:
- free election of the king by all nobles wishing to participate;
- pacta conventa (Latin), "agreed-to agreements" negotiated with the king-elect, including a bill of rights, binding on the king, derived from the earlier King Henry's Articles;
- rokosz (insurrection) — the right of szlachta to form a legal rebellion against a king who violated their guaranteed freedoms;
- liberum veto (Latin) — the right of an individual Sejm deputy to oppose a decision by the majority in a Sejm session; the voicing of such a "free veto" nullified all the legislation that had been passed at that session; during the crisis of the second half of the 17th century, Polish nobles could also use the liberum veto in provincial sejmiks;
- konfederacja (from the Latin confederatio) — the right to form an organization to force through a common political aim.
The provinces of the Commonwealth enjoyed wide autonomy. Each voivodship had its own parliament (sejmik), which exercised serious political power, including choice of poseł (deputy) to the national Sejm and charging of the deputy with specific voting instructions. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania had its own army, treasury and other institutions.
The Golden Freedoms created a state that was unusual for its time. Perhaps the most similar political system existed in the city-state Republic of Venice, and it is interesting to note that both states were known as the Most Serene Republic. At a time when most European countries were headed toward centralization, absolute monarchy and religious and dynastic warfare, the Commonwealth experimented with decentralization, federation, democracy, religious tolerance and pacifism. Since the Sejm usually vetoed a monarch's plans for war, this constitutes an interesting argument for the democratic peace theory.
This unique system stemmed from the victories of the szlachta (noble) class over other social classes and over the political system of monarchy. In time, the szlachta accumulated enough privileges (such as those established by the Nihil novi Act of 1505) that no monarch could hope to break the szlachta's grip on power. The Commonwealth's political system is difficult to fit into a simple category, but it can be tentatively described as a mixture of:
- federation, with regard to the broad autonomy of its regions;
- oligarchy — as only the szlachta — around 10% of the population — had political rights (still, a substantially larger percentage than in any other European country);
- democracy, since all the szlachta were equal in rights and privileges, and the Sejm could veto the king on important matters, including legislation (the adoption of new laws), foreign affairs, declaration of war, and taxation (changes of existing taxes or the levying of new ones);
- elective monarchy, since the monarch, elected by the szlachta, was Head of State.
The political players See also list of szlachta.
The major players in the politics of the Commonwealth were:
But the szlachta were far from united, with many supporting either the monarch or various of the magnate factions.
Shortcomings of the Commonwealth Once the Jagiellons had disappeared from the scene in 1572, the fragile equilibrium of the Commonwealth's government began to shake. Power increasingly slipped away from the central government to the nobility.
In their periodic opportunities to fill the throne, the szlachta exhibited a preference for foreign candidates who would not found another strong dynasty. This policy often produced monarchs who were either totally ineffective or in constant debilitating conflict with the nobility. Furthermore, aside from notable exceptions such as the able Transylvanian Stefan Batory (1576–1586), the kings of foreign origin were inclined to subordinate the interests of the Commonwealth to those of their own country and ruling house. This was especially visible in the policies and actions of the first two elected kings from the Swedish House of Vasa, whose politics brought the Commonwealth into conflict with Sweden, culminating in the war known as The Deluge (1648), one of the events that mark the end of the Commonwealth's Golden Age and the beginning of the Commonwealth's decline.
The Commonwealth's political system was vulnerable to outside interference, as Sejm deputies bribed by foreign powers might use their liberum veto to block attempts at reform. Such actions sapped the power of the Commonwealth and threw it into political paralysis and anarchy for over a century (from the mid-17th century to the end of the 18th century), while its neighbors stabilized their internal affairs and increased their military might.
Late reforms Eventually the Commonwealth did make a serious effort to reform its political system, adopting in 1791 the May 3rd Constitution, Europe's first written national constitution and the world's second, after the United States Constitution that began functioning in 1789. The revolutionary Polish Constitution recast the erstwhile Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a unitary state with a hereditary monarchy and abolished many of the deleterious features of the old system. The new constitution: These reforms came too late, however, as the Commonwealth was immediately invaded from all sides by its neighbors. The latter feared the revolutionary implications of the May 3rd Constitution's political reforms and the prospect of the Commonwealth regaining its position as a European empire. In the end the May 3rd Constitution was never fully implemented, and the Commonwealth entirely ceased to exist only four years after the Constitution's adoption.
Economy The economy of the Commonwealth was dominated by feudal agriculture. Typically a nobleman's landholding comprised a folwark, a large farm worked by serfs to produce surpluses for internal and external trade. The peasantry's situation worsened from the late 17th century on, when the landed szlachta sought to compensate for falling grain prices by increasing the peasants' workload.
Although the Commonwealth was Europe's largest grain producer, the bulk of her grain was consumed domestically. Estimated grain consumption in the "Crown" (Poland proper) and Prussia in 1560-1570 was some 113,000 tons of wheat (or 226,000 łaszt — a łaszt, or "last," being a large bulk measure--in the case of grain, about half a ton). Average yearly production of grain in the Commonwealth in the 16th century was 120,000 tons, 6% of which was exported while cities consumed some 19% and the villages the rest. The exports probably satisfied about 2% of the demand for grain in Western Europe, feeding three-quarters of a million people there. Commonwealth grain achieved far more importance in poor crop years, as in the early 1590s and the 1620s, when governments throughout southern Europe arranged for large grain imports to cover shortfalls in their jurisdictions.
Still, grain was the largest export commodity of the Commonwealth. The owner of a folwark usually signed a contract with merchants of Gdansk (which controlled 80% of this inland trade) to ship the grain north to that seaport on the Baltic Sea. Many rivers in the Commonwealth were used for shipping purposes: the Vistula, Pilica, Bug, San, Nida, Wieprz, Niemen. The rivers had relatively developed infrastructure, with river ports and granaries. Most of the river shipping moved north, southward transport being less profitable, and barges and rafts were often sold off in Gdansk for lumber. "Rivermen's camp at the Wisła ( Vistula)," 1858, by Wilhelm August Stryowski ( 1834- 1917), 110 x 138 cm. From Gdansk, ships, mostly from the Netherlands and Flanders, carried the grain to ports such as Antwerp and Amsterdam. Gdansk ships accounted for only 2-10% of this maritime trade. Besides grain, other seaborne exports included lumber and wood-related products such as tar and ash.
By land routes, the Commonwealth exported hides, furs, hemp, cotton (mostly from Wielkopolska) and linen to the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire, including cities like Leipzig and Nuremberg. Large herds (of around 50,000 head) of cattle were driven south through Silesia.
The Commonwealth imported spices, luxury goods, apparel, fish, beer and industrial products like steel and tools. A few riverboats carried south imports from Gdańsk like wine, fruit, spices and herring. Somewhere between the 16th and 17th centuries, the Commonwealth's trade balance shifted from positive to negative.
Royal City of Gdańsk coin of 1589 (Sigismund II Vasa period) With the advent of the Age of Exploration, many old trading routes such as the Amber Road lost importance as new ones were created. Poland's importance as a caravan route between Asia and Europe diminished, while new local trading routes were created between the Commonwealth and Russia. But even with improvements in shipping technology the Commonwealth remained an important link between Occident and Orient, as many goods and cultural aftifacts passed from one region to another via the Commonwealth. For example, Persian carpets imported across the Commonwealth were actually known in the West as "Polish carpets."
Commonwealth currency included the złoty and the grosz. The City of Gdansk had the privilege of minting its own coinage.
The Commonwealth's preoccupation with agriculture, coupled with the szlachta's dominance over the bourgeoisie, resulted in a fairly slow process of urbanization and thus a fairly slow development of industries. While similar conflicts among social classes may be found all over Europe, nowhere were the nobility as dominant as in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. There is, however, much debate among historians as to which processes most affected those developments, since until the wars and crises of the mid-17th century the cities of the Commonwealth had not markedly lagged in size and wealth behind their western counterparts.
Still, the Commonwealth did have numerous towns and cities, commonly founded on Magdeburg rights. Some of the largest trade fairs in the Commonwealth were held at Lublin. See the geography section, below, for a list of major cities in the Commonwealth (commonly capitals of voivodships).
If such a commonwealth of countries existed in 2005, it would've been 10th largest economy in the world.
Culture The Commonwealth was one of the important European sites for the development of modern social and political ideas. It was famous for its unique quasi-democratic political system praised by philosophers such as Erasmus, was known for a near-unparalleled religious tolerance during the Counter-Reformation, and was one of the safest places for Jews. It gave rise to the famous Christian sect of Polish Brethren, antecedents of the British and American Unitarians.
With its unique political system, the Commonwealth gave birth to political philosophers such as Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (1503-1572) and Piotr Skarga (1536-1612). Later, works by Stanisław Staszic (1755-1826) and Hugo Kołłątaj (1750-1812) helped pave the way for the Commonwealth's Constitution of May 3rd, 1791, the first written national constitution in Europe, which enacted revolutionary principles of political science for the first time in Europe.
The Jagiellonian University in Kraków is one of the oldest universities in the world. The Commonwealth's Commission for National Education (Polish Komisja Edukacji Narodowej), formed in 1773, was the world's first national ministry of education. Commonwealth scientists included:
"The Alchemist Michał Sędziwój," oil on board by Jan Matejko, 73 x 130 cm, Museum of Arts ( Łódź). The many classics of Commonwealth literature include: - Jan Kochanowski, (1530-1584), writer, dramatist and poet,
- Wacław Potocki, (1621-1696), writer, poet
- Ignacy Krasicki, (1735-1801), writer, poet, author of the first Polish novel,
- Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, (1758‑1841), writer, dramatist and poet.
Many szlachta wrote memoirs and diaries; perhaps the most famous of those are the Memoirs of Polish History by Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł (1595-1656) and the Memoirs of Jan Chryzostom Pasek (c.1636-c.1701).
Magnates often undertook construction projects as monuments to themselves: churches, cathedrals, and palaces like the present-day Presidential Palace in Warsaw built by Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski. The largest projects involved entire towns, although in time many of them would lapse into obscurity or be totally abandoned. Usually they were named after the sponsoring magnate. Among the most famous is the town of Zamość, founded by Jan Zamoyski and designed by the Italian architect Bernardo Morando.
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