Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/303

Rh 1448-1572.] POLAND 291 much upon his merits. In 1538 occurred the first rokosz, as it is termed in Polish, or rebellion of the nobility against the king. The affairs of Wallachia caused Sigis- ! mund to undertake a military expedition. Accordingly he appealed to the rzeczpospolita, or commonwealth, as the Polish republic was called. One hundred and fifty ! thousand nobles assembled at Lemberg, but instead of j marching to the war they laid their complaints before the king and refused to serve, and the old man was obliged to put them off with promises. The Lithuanians had not | yet become reconciled to their union with Poland, even after so long a time, and one of their chief men, Glinski, taking advantage of this feeling, attempted to restore its former independence to the country. Sigismund, however, succeeded in defeating Glinski, who fled to Russia. He then persuaded the grand-duke to invade Lithuania, and assisted him in getting possession of Smolensk in 1514. Sigismund made a treaty with the grand-duke, but he did not succeed in getting back Smolensk. In 1526, by the death of the last of the dukes of Masowsze (Masovia), this duchy was reunited to the crown of Poland. In 1533 Sigismund concluded a treaty with the Turks, then at the height of their power. This peace guaranteed to Poland the free navigation of the Black Sea, with the sovereignty of Moldavia, and prevented the irruption of the Mongols into Podolia, where they were in the habit of committing great excesses, as the Little-Russian national ballads pathetically tell us. The reign of Sigismund was a period of great peace for Poland, and we may truly say that its glory at this time culminated. It seems a rule that the great men of a country are produced at periods of national pro sperity, so we now find Copernicus flourishing, the one man of genius produced by Poland whose glory has re sounded throughout the world. In 1529 Sigismund pub lished his code of laws for Lithuania, which was issued in the White-Russian language, and forms one of the most important monuments of Polish law. He was succeeded by his son Sigismund II. (1548-72), otherwise called Sigismund Augustus, but this prince was not elected till a very stormy debate had ensued as to whether he should repudiate his wife or not. He had married, as a widower (his first wife having been Elizabeth, daughter of Ferdinand of Austria), a fair widow of the house of Radziwitt one of the most illustrious of the families of Lithuania. The nobles, however, who already treated their sovereign as a chief magistrate and nothing more, and had begun to control all his movements, required at the diet of Piotrkow that the marriage should be annulled, merely on the grounds that the country would gain more by his alliance with the daughter of a foreign potentate. But Sigismund, by sowing discord in the ranks of his opponents proposing among other things to destroy pluralities in church and state contrived to carry his point. His wife was crowned in 1550, but died within six months after, not without suspicions of having been poisoned by her mother-in-law. She is said to have made herself universally beloved during the short period in which the Poles had beheld her as queen. In three years time Sigismund married a third wife, the sister of the first, and widow of Francis Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. During this reign the quarrels between Protestants and Romanists raged fiercely in Poland, and the latter were very severe in their persecutions. A priest was burnt to death for administering the sacrament in both kinds, and a lady suffered the same terrible fate for denying the real presence. Many of the nobles were infected with the new teaching, but Sigismund was disingenuous and inconsist ent in his conduct. He is himself supposed to have been inclined to the doctrines of the Reformation ; he certainly permitted Calvin to dedicate to him a commentary on one of the epistles of Paul, and Luther an edition of his German Bible. Finally, realizing that the majority of his subjects were Catholics, he abandoned a faith to which he had perhaps given bat a half-hearted adherence, and allowed the bishops to suppress with severity all promulga tion of the new doctrines. The religious question was keenly debated in a diet held at Wola near Warsaw the year after the death of Sigis mund. It was resolved not to allow the sword to settle any religious differences. According to the language then used there was to be universal toleration. We shall soon see how little this was carried out. We find from it that the Polish peers were supposed to be masters of the spiritual as well as the material condition of their serfs, for it was expressly stated that their power over them was to be unlimited, &quot;tarn in sascularibus quam in spiritualibus.&quot; In his wars with Ivan the Terrible, in which the subject of quarrel was the Baltic provinces, Sigismund was not very fortunate ; he was not able to prevent the Russians from acquiring the palatinate of Polotsk, nor could he sub sequently hinder the Swedes from making themselves masters of Livonia. He died in 1572, leaving no issue by his three wives ; and with him became extinct the race of the Jagieltos, the second great family which had ruled over Poland. His reign was very favourable to the develop ment of Polish literature. Then, too, the laws were first authoritatively promulgated in the native language, which was spoken at court, although Latin continued to be ex tensively employed. During the reign of Sigismund Augustus, Poland reached the height of outward prosperity. It included Lithuania and western Prussia, and by the ad dition of Masovia and Livonia extended its limits from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and almost from the Oder to the Don. The seeds of disintegration, however, had long been sown ; since the marriage of Jadwiga with Wtadyslaw Jagielfo the crown of Poland had been more or less elective, although it continued in the same family. One important event which marked this reign must not be forgotten ; in Diet of 1569 took place the celebrated diet of Lublin. By this a Lublin, close union was effected between Poland and Lithuania, which up to this time had been ill united, and indeed there were continual jealousies breaking out during the exist ence of Poland as a nation two great points being the difference of religion and language. Even the union of Lublin was not effected without considerable resistance. The following were its conditions : Lithuania gives Pod- lasie to Poland ; Livonia, under the title of duchy, belongs equally to the two states ; Volhynia and the duchy of Kieff that is to say, the Ukraine are incorporated with Poland ; the kingdom of Poland and the grand-duchy of Lithuania are to form a single indivisible republic, and are to have a single head, elected by their common votes; the senate is to be composed of nobles of both nationali ties. Warsaw was fixed upon as the seat of the diet, since, being part of Masovia (Masowsze), it was, strictly speaking, neither Polish nor Lithuanian. It afterwards became the regular capital of the country in the reign of Sigismund III. ; as we have seen, the first two capitals of Poland were Gniezno (Gnesen) and Cracow. Warsaw is of comparatively late origin. It is said to have been founded by Conrad, the duke of Masovia, in 1269. The old dukes of Masovia resided at Czersk near Warsaw, of which some of the ruins might be seen one hundred and fifty years ago (C. H. Erndtel, Warsavia physice illustrate, Dresden, 1730). The city is most advantageously situated, and with a better railway system and fewer fiscal restric tions would be one of the greatest emporiums in Europe. An interregnum now occurred on the failure of the line of the Jagielfos, and the throne was publicly offered for competition. Four candidates appeared : -Ernest, arch-