Constitutional Trends and Social Developments in Central Europe, the Baltic Countries and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL

DEVELOPMENTS IN CENTRAL EUROPE,

THE BALTIC COUNTRIES, AND THE

POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH

MARIAN MAŁOWIST

Two important problems have for years been attracting the attention of the historians. The first concerns the nature of the political system of the nobility republic t h a t ,is thought to have existed in the Polish- -Lithuanian Commonwealth at the beginning of the modern period. The second problem centers on how this system evolved and w hat its eco­ nomic and social foundations might have been. The two questions are obviously closely related.

It should be remembered th at from its outset in the laite Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, the Latin term res publica referred not so much to a specific form of political system as to any state generally; in fact the terms regnum and res publica were often used interchange­ ably. It was in this general sense, then, that the Polish realm was a “republic,” although at the same time it also gradually adopted many features characteristic of a republican system in the modem sense of the term.

Poland and, later, the Grand Principality of Lithuania witnessed a rise in the power of representative institutions of the estates which over the years took on many of the im portant functions of the royal prerogative. In Western Europe, the burghers, and particularly their upper class, shared substantially in the development of estate institu­ tions; in .Sweden and Norway, this was also true for the landowning peasantry. In Poland and the Grand Principality of Lithuania, burghers also took part in the sessions of provincial legislative assemblies and, in Royal Prussia, of the diet.

Yet another im portant political question should be emphasized here, namely, that, unlike the West, Polish institutions representing the

interests of the estates stripped the monarch of many of his functions and thus effectively prevented the development of absolutism. From the fifteenth century onwards these institutions represented the entire nobility, which commanded similar privileges vis-à-vis the king and other estates. In the sixteenth century, this led to the emergence of a belief in the equality of all the members of the noble class, irre­ spective of the economic status of the individual. This idea of th e equ­ ality of nobles conHinued to play a prominent role in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although by then it no longer reflected political reality and was simply used by the aristocracy in attem pts to maintain its political domination.

I believe that the views of both S. Sreniowski and W. Czapliński con­ cerning the political evolution of Poland from the so-called nobility democracy to the rule of oligarchy require further discussion,1 for they prompt the question whether it would not be better to consider that both forms of government co-existed throughout the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuriep, rather than one emerging from the other. There is no doilbt that, in the course of the seventeenth cen­ tury, the landed aristocracy gained the upper hand and continued to consolidate its power in the country, manipulating the nobility to sup­ port their policies. Nevertheless, prior to the collapse of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, the aristocracy had never been able to afford the luxury of doing without the political support of the nobil­ ity.

Privileges that a succession of Polish kings had by the end of the fourteenth century bestowed on the nobles, reduced their fiscal obliga­ tions to the Crown and granted them concessions in the realm of the judiciary. Throughout the period and into the fifteenth century, the nobility evolved a system of provincial assemblies and other forms of representative organs of estates th at could apply pressure when the succession to the throne in Poland was in question, although this was not yet so in Lithuania. In practice, throughout the fourteenth and most of the fifteenth centuries, the central authority was vested in the king, and he used it with full backing of the secular and ecclesiastical lords. In the fourteenth century, King Casimir the Great rallied around him a group of local strongmen from the Little Poland region in the South and, with their support, he managed to break the opposition of powerful

*S. Sreniowski, Państwo polskie w połowie XVII w. Polska w okresie drugiej w oj­

ny północnej 1655—1660 (Warsaw, 1959), pp. 16 ff.; W. Czapliński, „Rządy oligarchii V' Polsce nowożytnej”, Przegląd Historyczny (cited hereafter as PH), LII, 3 (1SM?1),

CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 79

Great Polish families in the West, establish a centralized monarchy and take strong initiatives in foreign policy that benefited both the landed aristocracy and the merchants of Little Poland. Adopting .this — econom­ ically the most developed area in Poland — as power base allowed both Casimir the Great and the first Jagielloriians to set up a relatively strong state, partly because the noblês were restricted to their function as warriors and were not yet an autonomous political force. From the mid-fourteenth-century until the mid-fifteenth, the Polish kings based their rule on their alliance with the Little Polish magnates. Later, however, this policy was changed and the new power base was founded on an alliance w ith the Great Polish magnates. It was this group whose assistance Casimir Jagiellonian gained to crush the opposition which had come from the old aristocratic families and had been led by the Bishop of Cracow 'Zbigniew Oleśnicki. * Although neither of the two aristócratic groups had anywhere near the degree of power and influ­ ence that would later be wielded by the great families of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, nevertheless they were a force to be reckoned with.

The lack of adequate source material precludes a detailed discussion of the relationship between the nobility and the landed aristocracy in the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries. For instance, we do not know whether or not the Polish magnates extended feudal patronage to knights which was the case in West Europe and which, in the late Middle Ages, constituted an im portant part of feudal lord’s political power. Neither are there any reliable results of research on social and economic changes in the fifteenth century, and this lacuna makes an explanation of sharp conflicts between the nobility and aris­ tocracy in the following century very difficult indeed.

The fifteenth century saw an increased political and economic activity ■of the nobility in East Central Europe, although it assumed different guises in different countries. I think the earliest signs of it can be de­ tected in Teutonic Prussia, which by the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century had attained th e highest level of economic development in East "Central Europe. This, however, ended in 1410, with the defeat of the Teutonic Knights, and it was followed by a period of crisis — both political and economic. In Teutonic Prussia the nobility and burghers had become politically very active by the end of the second decade of the fifteenth century. This new activism found its expression in a mounting opposition by the representatives of the burgher assemblies and nobility assemblies against the growing

*The vieiw that King Casimir allied himself with the nobility against the Little Polish magnates has been disproved.

fiscal pressure exerted by the Teutonic Order. Joint positions of the two estates were taken against limitations in internal and foreign commodity turnover, as well as against the Order’s monopolistic ten­ dencies in trade generally. There was wide opposition to the debasement of the coinage by the Teutonic Knights and to their unceasing demands for higher taxes; there were also demands for the streamlining of the judiciary. The Prussian nobility also fought the Order’s attemps to limit the number of people legally entitled to inherit property. The nobility and the merchants were also unanimous in their strong con­ demnation of the Teutonic Order’s foreign policy. The Order exposed Prussia to a series of disastrous wars in the years 1411—1453 apparently oblivious to its diminishing political role and the simultaneous growth of Poland’s influence. These wars were particularly harmful to Prussia’s larger towns, which were at that time forging strong economic links with Poland.s The establishment of the Prussian Union in 1441, uniting the large and middle-sized towns with most of the nobility was not surprisingly the outcome. Initially meant simply to protect the interests of these groups against the Order’s power, it eventually was forced to become openly hostile to its overlords and to advocate unioh with Poland.

However, it should also not be forgotten that the nobility, merchants, and artisans of Prussia were divided into two opposing blocs, which by the middle of the century almost brought about the collapse of the Union. The antagonism broke out when the nobility confronted the merchants with extreme demands for trade concessions, in both the towns and the countryside, and for abolition of the laws limiting the nobility’s business contacts with the Dutch and English outside city boundaries. They also opposed the conflicts with the Low Countries and England, maintaining that they were having a depressing effect on agriculture. The Prussian towns were often hostile to visitors from the West, preventing them from going inland, and thus displaying their solidarity with other members of the Hanseatic League. The nobility of Prussia was also not particularly enthusiastic about the importing of grain from Poland, a trade then in the hands of the Gdańsk merchants, because they believed it brought down the price of grain in Prussia. Trade in agricultural products was of crucial importance in the first half of the fifteenth century; export opportunities to the Netherlands were numerous and the nobility wanted their share. Competition for these markets was no doubt a basic reason for antagonism, particularly

*M. Małowist, „Polityka gospodarcza Zakonu Krzyżackiego w XV wieku”, Pamięt­

nik VII Powszechnego Zjazdu Historyków Polskich we Wrocławiu, I (Warsaw, 1948),

CONSTITUTIONAL TP.ENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS ₈₁

with Gdańsk. * However, domestic and foreign trade in grain would require a substantial expansion and intensification of production, the agricultural yield at that time being rather low. The dramatic debase­ ment of the Prussian coinage after 1410 made the dues paid by the peasants in money a less lucrative proposition, resulting in attemps by the nobility to restrict their movement, in order to prevent them from defecting to the estates of other landlords, and to impose, at least upon certain groups of peasants, an obligation to provide child labor, with a compulsory tax on the w ages.6

Because -the policies of the nobility were directed against both mer­ chants and peasants, they had the full backing of the Teutonic Order whose aims and interests in these respects coincided exactly. In other areas, however, pressures that the Order tried to exert were directed against the nobility itself, but they utterly failed to dislodge it from the Prussian Union. The «situation became more difficult around 1448, when the towns — eager to have a constant supply of cheap labor from the countryside — refused to curtail peasant migration. The social unrest that swept through Prussia in the first half of the fifteenth century, and spread throughout East Central Europe over the next de­ cades, is a movement easy to trace, thanks to the profusion of docu­ mentation and source materials. It should be emphasized, however, that the alignment of social forces in Teutonic Prussia —>■ and later in Royal Prussia as well — differed from those in other countries in that part of Europe. For one thing, Prussia was the most urbanized area. Her large towns — Gdańsk, Toruń, and even Elbląg — and the merchant class holding sway there were sufficiently strong economically and po­ litically to stand up against the nobility both under Teutonic and later, Polish rule when the lands adjoining Vistula were returned to Poland in 1466 after a thirteen-year war. The merchants also maintained a very strong position both in the Prussian Diet and in the country as a whole — especially the merchants of Gdańsk, a port that was easily the richest and most powerful city in Poland. Thanks to their financial power, the Gdańsk merchants monopolized the export of timber and grain from Poland and Lithuania, generously handing out credit to their suppliers. * Their capital resources also allowed them to exert influence over the policies of the king and the landed aristocracy, both in the fifteenth

4M. Małowist, Studia z dziejów rzemiosła w okresie kryzysu feudalizmu w Zachod­

niej Europie w 14 i 15 w. (Warsaw, 1954), pp. 421 ft.

‘Małowist, Polityka gospodarcza...

*M. Małowist, “A Certain Trade Technique in the Baitic Countries in the 16th and the 17th Centuries”, Poland at the X lth International Congress of Historical Sciences

and the sixteenth centuries and even later.7 Other large Prussian towns, such as Toruń, also maintained a relatively strong position vis-à-vis the crown.

During the rule of the nobility in Poland, the Gdańsk merchants — and to a lesser extent those of Toruń — held their own against the ruling party and even found a modus vivendi of a sort. I would, there­ fore, hesitate to claim for the nobility a dominant place in the political and economic scene in Prussia even after 1569, as was the case in the remaining provinces of the Commonwealth. The system of the landed estates based on the exploitation of serfs also did not take root there. Many analogous features appeared in Livoniâ, prior to her partition in 1561, where the growth of the estate autonomy reduced the effective­ ness of the Teutonic Order’s rule. This 'development was accom­ panied by an attack on the burghers from whom the nobility demanded freedom of commerce within their own boundaries and in the coun­ tryside. Still, such places as Reval and Riga took a lesson in survival from Grańsk and managed to maintain a comparatively independent position thanks to their considerable economic power and favorable geo­ graphic location. As for the serfs, the nobility dominated them totally, and the sixteenth century saw a steep rise in the number of the landed estates worked by them. Similar phenomena could be noted in Western Pomerania and in Mecklenburg, and, at least until the mid-seventeenth century in Denmark.

In the meafttime, the other regions of Poland evolved a system that differed from the Prussian one. The towns had also become afctive there in the fifteenth century, but less conspicuously so. It should be borne in mind, however, that although the towns of Poland had been through a long period of economic prosperity, they were still incomparably weaker than either their Prussian counterparts or the towns of many Western European countries. This view is bome out not only by their small size, but also by the low accumulation of merchant capital and the rather primitive state of their handicrafts.8 I am even inclined to believe that the annexation of a part of Teutonic Prussia, including the larger towns, to Poland negatively influenced the welfare of her own urban subjects. For example, the price King Casimir Jagielloniän paid to Gdańsk for financial aid was to withdraw the support to Cracow

7M. Małowist, ’’Les produits des pays de la Baltique dans le commerce internatio­ nal au XVIe siècle”, Révue du Nord, XLII, 166 (1960), pp. 175—206; idem,., ’’Croissance et régression en Europe au XIVe—XVIIe siècles”, Cahiers des Annales, XXXIV (1972), p. 159.

8This was pointed out by M. Bogucka, A. Mączaik, D. Molendowa, H. Samsonowicz, A. Wyrobisz B. Zientara and other scholars analyzing the history of handicrafts, mining, and commerce in Poland in the late Middle Ages.

CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 83

and other towns striving for free access to the Baltic th at had been extended to them before the 1454—1466 war with the Teutonic Order. One should also stress here the conflicting interests of the Polish and Lithuanian towns, e.g., Cracow, Gdańsk and Wilno, which preculded the adoption of a common policy on many issues. Inadequate economic contacts between the towns of such provinces as Great and Little Poland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had the same effect.9 The uni­ form, nation-wide m arket which began to emerge in the fifteenth century and gained momentum over the next hundred years was brought to a halt around the end of the sixteenth century partly because of changes in the countryside and partly because of modifi­ cations in the political and social structure of Poland.

The Polish nobility and landed aristocracy and, even more, their Lithuanian counterparts enjoyed a very broad scope for political and social action due to the absence of strong rival social forces. As in Prussia, the nobility in Poland had been on the offensive against the central authorities, the towns, and the peasantry since the middle of the fifteenth century. Although a detailed analysis of the evolution of Poland’s political system in the late Middle Ages is not possible here, it should be remembered that after a dramatic reduction in prop­ erty taxes in 1374, the nobility, through the provincial assemblies in mid-fifteenth century had a say in such m atters as the levy of extra­ ordinary taxes and the calling to arms of able-bodied among th e m .1#

The early sixteenth century saw the Polish nobility stepping up their offensive against both the central authority and the peasantry. This phenomenon had its parallel in similar developments taking place in neighboring countries, especially in Hungary, Livonia, Western Pome­ rania, and D enm ark.11 In Denmark, the struggle against the king, burghers, and peasants was led by the aristocrats, while in Poland a sharp division was beginning to be apparent between thé aristocracy and the nobility. I do not think the timing of these two developments

•As stated in what has already become a classical work, R. Rybarski’s Handel

i polityka handlowa w Polsce w XVI stuleciu (2 volumes; Warsaw, 1958*).

10I have in mind here the privilege of Koszyce, conferred in 1374, and those of Nieszawa and Cerekwica granted in 1454 and 1455 respectively.

nZ. P. Pach, “Das Entwicklungsniveau der Agrarverhältnisse in Ungarn in der zweiten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts”, Studia Historica Acad. Scient. Hung., 6 (Budapest, 1960); idem., „Osteuropa und die Anfangsperiode der Entstehung des modernen internationalen Handels”, V Kongress der ökonomischen Geschichte (Mos­ cow, 1970); M. Malowist, “La politique commerciale de la noblesse de la Baltique au XVe et XVIe siècles”, Cahiers des Annales, XXXIV (1972), pp. 185 ff.; A. E. Chris­ tensen, “Danmarks Handel i Middelalderen”, Nordiste Kultur, XVI (1934), pp. 118,

120 ff.; E- Arup, Danmarks Historie, II (Copenhagen, 1932), p. 134; P. Jorgensen,

Dansk Retshistorie (Copenhagen, 1940), pp. 474 ff.; M. Spahn, Verfassungs- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Herzogtums Pommern von 1478 bis 1625 (Leipzig, 1896),

was accidental. The tendency that now predominates in our discipline to confine historical research to the territory of a single state is harmful as it turns the synthesis of events into a very difficult task indeed. Bear­ ing in mind the weakness of comparative studies today, I shall content myself with noting just one example: The close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries marked the end of a long period in Europe when the prices of grain and live­ stock were notoriously low. The agricultural depression prevailed not only in the West, which was then overcoming a century-long perioH of crisis, but also in East Central Europe, where no earlier signs of depression had been evident, probably because the continuing urban development and growing possibilities for export had opened up new markets for agriculture. The debasement of the currency was hardest on those who depended upon rents, that is, primarily the nobility. In this situation, it is not difficult to understand why the nobles were making concerted efforts to tie the serfs to the soil by increasing (in Hungary and Denmark) the work requirements on the estates, or by limiting their freedom to migrate to towns or seek better term s from other landlords (in Poland, Livonia and Norfh-eastern Germany). The nobility of the Baltic states and of the Polish lands situated away from the coast, sought cheap serf labor or indentured labor (known in Prussia and Germany as Gesindezwang), as a precondition for the de­ velopment of estates producing for the home m arket or for export. V. I. Koreckij’s latest research seems to indicate that, in the second half of the fifteenth century, there were similar trends in Russia, where the demand for grain was growing along with the territorial expansion of the country.12 In Hungary, which at the beginning of the sixteenth century was in thę grips of acute economic and political difficulties, a dramatic drop in the value of the currency precipitated a socio-eco­ nomic offensive b y 'th e landed nobility against the peasantry. At that time, the landowners’ domains did not yet show much evidence of growth, even though the aristocracy was making efforts to join in the mainstream of commerce, by offering farm produce — chiefly livestock — levied from the serfs.11 This put them on a collision course with the merchant class of the country’s weakened towns.

Similar economic warfare was evident in the Baltic states. In Den­ mark, the aristocrats and the nobility were firm ly established in the export of livestock and grain, although neither peasants nor burghers

ttV. I. Koreckij, ZakrepoScenie krest’jan i klassovaja bor’ba v Rossii vo vtoroj po-

lovine XVI v. (Moscow, 1970), passim. The author quotes evidence of a growth of

the manorial system of agriculture, dependent on serf labor, in the Muscovite state in the second half of the fifteenth century.

CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS ₈₅

had been driven- out of it en tire ly 11 In North-eastern Germany, the Prussian and Livonian coastal towns put up a vigorous resistance to the nobility’s attemps to make direct commercial contacts with the Dutch and other foreigners who reached these p o rts,16 In Poland, a sim­ ilar confrontation between the landed nobility and the burghers of Gdańsk did not occur, probably because they shared in the commerce of grain from the Polish mainland to the estuary of the Vistula River. Nevertheless, in the sixteenth century, the nobility tried hard to strip towns of their rights of the staple and even to dissolve the guilds, both apparently evidence for an emerging conflict of interest between these two groups. The nobility did succeed in eliminating the rights of the staple, although Gdańsk still managed to maintain its facilities in ope­ ration. The subsequent lifting of customs duties on goods produced on the estates, as well as those purchased by the nobility for their own use, encouraged trade and strengthened the nobility in their dealings with the merchants of the many surrounding small towns.

None of the above seems to indicate any evidence for the deteriora­ tion of the economic situation for both peasants and burghers in Poland and other Central European coutries by the close of the fifteenth, and, throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. The losses they suffered from increases in duties were offset by increases in prices of agricultural products. In addition, the peasants continued to benefit from opportunities for migration to the towns or sparsely populated settled areas elsewhere, which acted as a safety-valve for the social conflicts prevailing in that part of Europe. Only Hungary experienced a large-scale peasant uprising, in 1514, but the circumstances there were more conducive to rebellion.10

It is significant that the Peasant War of 1525 sent only weak ripples through the Baltic region. This testifies to the tolerably good situation for the serfs there, coupled with the growing agricultural prosperity. This was true also for Livonia where, throughout this period, the nobles adopted much stiffer policy toward the serfs and merchants than was the case in Poland. In Livonia, the lord not only made things difficult for the serf, forcing him to till the land on the lord’s behalf for a given number of days a year, but he bought the surplus produce at a low

l4Christensen, Danmafks Handel..., pp. 120, 123 ff. Nevertheless the peasants partici­ pated in the export of cattle to Germany.

“Małowist, ”La politique commerciale...”, pp. 176 ff. See quoted sources.

wIn 1514, the peasantry was called to arms for a crusade against the Turks. But the crusade in fact never took place because the peasants started a rebellion under the leadership of George Dozsa, a nobleman and career soldier.

price, reselling it later in the towns in return for the salt and other commodities indispensable to his subjects.17

Contacts between the serfs and the town population began to decline in Livonia in the first half of the sixteenth century, in Poland at the end of the century, and in Hungary not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What the situation was in Bohemia is not yet clear, though it is now thought that the system of landed estates based on serf labor was not introduced there until the time of the Thirty Years’ War. I do not think that the replacement of the old Bohemian nobility with the new German landowning class was the only reason for this delay. The deterioration in agriculture and the consequent im­ poverishment of Bohemia, which had been laid waste by the war, were also factors. The adoption of a system of serfdom is, in a sense, the product of economic weakness.

In summary, the whole of East Central Europe saw a transforma­ tion of the structure of the rural economy, as well as changes in the alignment of forces between the nobility and towns. The latter phenom­ enon, however, failed to affect the richest of the Baltic port cities. Nevertheless, the nobility’s economic program, enacted by the Polish Diet, and similar programs in other countries at the beginning of the six­ teenth century, could not be implemented overnight. An expanded net­ work of administrative institutions of the nobility, including parliaments, local assemblies, and their bureaucratic apparatus were instrumental in its implementation. The weak central administration was unable to halt the peasant migrations, or enforce other similar measures. Manpower was in short supply. Vast areas under colonization were in need of set­ tlers. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many people from Mazovia, a province in Central Poland, resettled in Ducal Prussia and in the Grand Principality of Lithuania. In the sixteenth and sev­ enteenth centuries, people migrated from the central Polish provinces to the Ukraine, while in Livonia serfs escaped to lands bordering on Russia. Migration in the other direction was also much in evidence. In fact, the nobility never thoroughly succeeded in confining the peasantry to its estates, although they m et with partial success in the sixteenth century. A very im portant factor in consolidating their ..power was the extension of their juridical control over peasants in Poland after 1518.

The nobility’s position was therefore consolidated at least in some states. Large exports of grain in the sixteenth century brought vast profits to the landed aristocracy of Poland and the other Baltic states,

17V. Niitemaa, Der Binnenhandel in der Politik der livländischen Städte im M ittelal­

ter (Helsinki, 1952), p. 148; H. Bosse, Der livländische Bauer am Ausgang der Ordens­ zeit bis 1561 (Riga, 1933), p. 401; A. Soom, „Guteberrschaft in Livland am Ausgang

CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS ₈₇

while the rising prices for cattle swelled the coffers of the Hungarian landlords. The middle class of the nobility, which represented the backbone of this social group, reaped huge profits. The lower class of the nobility, however, which was very numerous in Mazovia and in parts of Great Poland, did not differ very much from the peasantry, and had to be content with minimal profits. Nevertheless, the develop­ ment of an administrative system by the nobility was of great benefit to the nobility as a whole through the .new opportunities that it provid­ ed to exert political pressure on both the king and the aristocracy re­ presented in the senate. Economic conflicts were understandably the chief source of contention that in both Poland and the West, led to deep divisions in the country’s political system. The growth of tension over economic issues in Poland can be traced back to the sixteenth century,18 and was an important aspect of the nobility’s growing awareness of the cleft between their political and economic aspirations and those of other social groups.

The growing needs of a country as large as Poland, including the necessity of warding off her numerous enemies, put a great strain on the treasury. The king and the magnates asked for extraordinary taxes to solve the problem, and these enabled subsequent rulers to allocate , these funds, proceeding from estates of the crown and from royal revenues more liberally. By rewarding magnates with land for real or imaginary services, handing out estates and privileges, as well as high government posts, in exchange for loans, the king bound them in allegiance to his own person and the central administration he repre­ sented. So long as he held onto his vast land holdings, and before the magnates themselves had accumulated vast estates — as was the case with thé families that rose to prominence at the beginning of the six­ teenth century — the monarch’s position was secure. The alliance between the king and the landed aristocracy which lasted from around 1500 to 1570 was based on fairly solid foundations. Later, members of the royal Vasa dynasty were to follow the same policies, encouraging the emergence of new aristocratic families from lower echelons of the nobility class.11

This alliance was unfortunate for the nobility (in the sixteenth cen­ tury for its middle class — that is to say, owners of at least one or two

l8This is amply proved by the process of extending the rights of the magnates sitting in the senate and the subsequent annulment of these same privileges at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

leW. Czapliński, op. cit., pp. 454 ff., and sources. I think the author underestimates the influence of some magnates— such as Mniszech, for example—on King Sigismund HI who (and here I thoroughly agree with Professor Czapliński) was not a very talented politician.

villages). At that time, the peasants and burghers contributed the major share of revenue to the state. However, under the manorial system, the well-being of the serf was of importance for the proper functioning of the estates. That is why imposing high taxes on the serfs, who in addition were the victims of sporadic looting by underpaid or unpaid mercenary armies, was also extremely harmful to the interests of the nobility. The poor yields-per-acre in Polish agriculture during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been discussed by L. Żytkowicz.20 Even with the great demand for grain, particularly in the second half of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, the middle no­ bility was not economically secure against the adversities of poor crops, flood, or fire. Attemps to eliminate the burdensome taxes were made, in order that the serfs’ efforts could be entirely devoted to the task of improving the economic situation of their lords. I am inclined to believe that the nobility’s attem pts to make the crown’s property the main source of state revenue was, to some extent, a result of the reorganization of Poland’s agriculture. This led to an inevitable curtailment of the royal prerogatives by making the distribution of crown property dependent upon the' decisions of the Diet in which .the nobility was influential. A victory by the noibility would have deprived the magnates of an opportunity to accumulate wealth at the expense of the king, which in the sixteenth century was a short-cut to economic power and political influence.

In the fifteen-seventies the nobility scored a number of what appeared to be spectacular victories, although they later turned out to be short­ lived. The magnates handed back to the king only a negligible part of the estates. The Exchequer could not cope with the expenses of main­ taining a standing army during the periods of interm ittent wars. Extraordinary taxes were therefore imposed, ‘while the crown’s debts to the magnates continued to climb. Even if we agree that the merger of Pomerania (Royal Prussia) with Poland strengthened the economic basis of the central authorities, the territorial gains in the East, espe­ cially of underdeveloped lands, complicated the situation politically and militarily, and stretched the country’s economic resources to the breaking point. Poland’s position was in this respect similar to that of Spain or Portugal, both of which had outgrown their economic capaci­ ties. However, they also differed considerably in that the Spanish H'absburgs, drawing on the niches flowing in from their colonies, were able to establish an absolutistic rule and to offer the aristocracy a whole

20L. Żytkowicz, “The Peasant’s Farm and the Landlord’s Farm in Poland from the 16th to the Middle of the 18th C entury”, The Journal of European Economic History, I 1 (1972), pp. 135 ff.

CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 89

array of opportunities for personal aggrandisement.11 In Poland, no such central system existed and no, such favors could be offered. The new aristocracy, whose properties were situated' predominantly in the Ukrai­ ne, including some populous regions settled in earlier periods, based their strength upon their private holdings. Their hand was strengthened by migrations of the serfs and the nobility eastwards, which had been evident since the end of the sixteenth century. Only a very small number of magnates, such as the rich and powerful Lubomirski and Zamoyski families, had their estates in Poland proper, mostly along the country’s eastern borders. The Mniszechs and the Lithuanian Sa­ pieha family saw their future in the conquest of Russia. W. Czapliński pointed out some time ago that, during the civil war that took place at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Russia was referred to by some aristocrats as Poland’s India.22 The nobility’s political confronta­ tion with the magnates may have prompted the latter to turn to the East on what was formally the king’s property and in reality was unclaimed land. Its economic development would require considerable resources, much more, as it turned out, than the nobility could muster.

There is no doubt that in the period between ca. 1560 and the beginning of the seventeenth century, the nobility, and particularly its middle class was very powerful. Agriculture was prospering, with grain and livestock exports high. A large m ajority of the nobility was quite well off, and this affluence also helped maintain political inde­ pendence. By the end of the sixteenth century, the situation of the serfs had deteriorated because of steep rise in services for the manor, a reduction in the amount of produce they were allowed to keep, which barred them from trade and severed their contacts with towns. Re­ search on the history of the handicrafts amply demonstrates the in­ fluence these measures had on the artisans, although the producers of luxury items increased in prosperity.23 Nevertheless, theirs was a re­ latively narrow market, and they also had to .face competition from the imported products that were flooding the country as a result of the trade policies imposed by the nobility and the aristocracy. The situation

21 In fact, similar phenomena occurred in Sweden, during the reign ■ of Gustavus Adolphus and his successors, and much later in Prussia where the aristocracy was also firmly ensconced in the slate administration. However, in both these countries the larger landowners were economically weaker than in Spain and Poland.

22W. Czapliński, O Polsce siedemnastowiecznej, Problemy i spraw y (Warsaw, 1966), pp. 179, 190—193.

8 M. Malowist, “L’évolution industrielle en Pologne du XIVe au XVIIIe siècle”,

Studi in onore Armando Sapori, I (Milan, 1957), passim; A. Wyrobisz, „Rola miast

prywatnych w Polsce w XVI i XVII wieku”, PH, LXV, 1 (1974), pp. 19 ff. The author points out that the towns belonging to the magnates and supported by them were in effect better equipped to weather the deteriorating economic situation than royal towns. Wyrobisz maintains that the private towns were, in general, weak and that they did not contribute to the growth of the burgher class on a national scale.

played into the hands of rich merchants conducting import-export operations. But the boom did not last for long. The crisis of the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War and the destruction inflicted upon the country by a series of wars with Sweden brought about a lasting drop in the price of grain, and later also of cattle, large herds of which were driven to the west of Europe. A sharp currency crisis followed in 1617.24 These phenomena posed a serious threat to the lower and middle nobility classes. The landed aristocracy, better equipped to weather hard times, bought up the estates of the newly impoverished nobility. Recent research by A. Mączak covering the second half of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century seems to indicate that the middle nobility fared relatively well, while the poorer members of this group were loosing their farms to big land­ owners. He rightly emphasizes that the latter’s economic and political position vis-à-vis the nobility as a whole was thus being advanced.2S The comparatively large size of the nobility — 8 to 10 per cent of the total, population — added to their weakness as the growth in population had resulted in the gradual fragmentation of the estates, while the primitive farming methods of the day resulted in poor yields. Positions in the Church, as a rule reserved for the younger sons of the nobility, were inadequate safeguards against poverty, since high offices were reserved for the aristocracy, in any case. Therefore, beginning in the first half of the seventeenth century, positions of management in the magnate’s holdings, service in mercenary armies, and the like, played no small part in the support of many noble families. With the passage of time, this process gained momentum, with great lords extending a form of patronage over the lower and middle classes of the nobility. Given the considerable political power wielded by the latter, gaining control over them was, for the magnates, a precondition to establishing full control over the country as a whole.

The mid-seventeenth-century Cossack revolution followed by wars with Sweden and Russia combined to administer the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth a severe economic blow, as they hit a country already weakened by domestic crisis. These wars impoverished the_ serfs still further, spread to broad segments of the nobility, and accelerated the collapse of the towns. This in the long run, played into the hands of the magnates whose economic and political scope was correspondingly broadended. Although the election of Michał. Korybut Wiśniowiecki as

24Z. Sadowski, Pieniądz a początki upadku Rzeczypospolitej w X V II w ieku (Warsaw, 1964), pp. 79 ff. Unfortunately, the research on the history of the coinage in Poland is still in its early stages.

25A. Mączak, “Zur Grundeigentumsstruktur in Polen von 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert”, Jahrbuch fü r W irtschaftsgeschichte, IV (1967), pp. 122 ff.

CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS ₉₁

king proved that the political power of the nobility was still not to be ignored, the magnates, .secure in their wealth and enormous prestige, were able to control the “younger brethren” as they called them.

Was Poland governed by an “oligarchy”? I rather doubt it. It should be rememberd that in the second half of the seventeenth century cut­ throat competition between powerful aristocratic families set the state administration system on the road to catastrophe.

British scholars refer to the pre-Tudor political system in England as “bastard feudalism.” I once put forth a thesis that, prior to its collapse, the res publica had been sent on its way back to, feudalism by reactionary forces, and I still think this was the case.

I should like to conclude by suggesting a subject for future discussion. I think that the nobility democracy was short-lived in Poland, spanning roughly the period between the middle of the sixteenth and the be­ ginning of the seventeenth century, and depended upon prosperity in agriculture for its existence. It was doomed from the very beginning for both domęstic and external reasons.

The idea of nobility democracy, conceived during a period of struggle with the landed aristocracy, later degenerated into the myth that had tremendous popular appeal, a myth that was exploited by power-hun­ gry aristocratic coteries.