Why Poland-Lithuania Disappeared
The Polish-Lithuanian Republic (1569-1795) was one of the largest and most populous states in Early Modern Europe, yet in 1795, its last remnants were partitioned between Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Here we take a look at the reasons why this mighty power ended up so weak that the neighbours who once feared it could now consume it.
The Noble Republic
The reason why Poland-Lithuania was called a Republic, even though it had a king, was because that monarch shared power with the fiercely independent nobles, and was very often treated as their equal. During one of the many interminable blood feuds between noble families, the king summoned a perpetrator to the Sejm (parliament) to explain himself, but received a curt refusal: "I am not a slave but a Polish gentleman". Writers have long blamed the decentralised political system of Poland-Lithuania – that is, the way that power was dispersed across many people and institutions – for its weakness.
Even before the union of Poland and Lithuania in 1569, both countries had powerful and independent nobles. Poland already had the legal principle neminem captivabimus, the rule that no noble could ever be arrested by the king without a court verdict. On the other hand, the royal courts could not intervene in cases between nobles and their serfs. These two laws illustrate how nobles had autonomy from the crown, but enormous power over the people. Once Poland and Lithuania joined together, the rights of the nobility only grew.
One of the most well-known features of Poland-Lithuania was that the nobility elected their king. All nobles could vote, and they stuck to the principle of unanimity: a king was only elected when all the nobles present agreed. To win them over, kings promised to maintain or expand the independence of the nobles. The very first elected king signed an agreement called the Henrician Articles (after his name, Henry of Valois), which guaranteed the privileges of the nobles and signed away most power to the Sejm. All kings thereafter, right up to the end of the Republic, had to sign the Henrician Articles.
The Sejm, rather than the king, was the true apex of the state. As with royal elections, legislation was passed by unanimity rather than by majority. All nobles present had to agree for the legislation to be passed. Of course, this meant that a single noble could prevent a new law, and in fact they could dissolve the session, nullifying any legislation that had been passed over that whole sitting of the Sejm. That is the famous Liberum Veto - veto just means ‘I do not allow it’ in Latin (Polish nobles were exceptionally well-educated in Latin). When everyone was acting in good faith, passing legislation was therefore a delicate act, with layers of compromise and negotiation. However, it meant anyone acting in bad faith could easily prevent the state from carrying out a policy, as in 1652, when a veto exploded any hope of a united response against the Cossack Rebellion. Agents of powerful nobles or foreign powers could, and did, abuse it. Between 1582–1762, 53 Sejms (almost 60%) were dissolved or broken up. Less famous, but arguably even worse, was that most nobles saw their local Sejmik (little Sejm) as more important than the central Sejm, and felt quite free to ignore any legislation the Sejm did pass if their Sejmik did not agree. It was a vicious cycle: as the central government weakened, the Sejmiki (plural of Sejmik) had to take on more responsibility, so the central government lost more responsibility, and so the central government weakened.
The Polish-Lithuanian nobility’s obsession with unanimity was because of their obsession with equality. Not equality between all people, but between nobles. Whereas nobles in England made up about 2% of the population, in Poland-Lithuania it was up to 9%. The upshot of this was that many had only a tiny amount of land, or none at all - in 1670, there were over 400,000 landless nobles. Although these landless nobles were often not much better off than a serf, they insisted on their legal equality with all nobles, no matter how rich and powerful, and invented the bizarre ideology of Sarmatism. The exact meaning is confused, but they were claiming special descent from the Sarmatians, who supposedly occupied Poland in ancient times, to distinguish the nobility from the common people, and associated the Sarmatians with their ideas of Golden Freedom: personal independence, lawlessness, and a kind of chivalry. This was not an ideology that would support reform in favour of a more powerful central state.
Perhaps the most tragic expression of the ‘Golden Freedom’ was the rokosz. A rokosz was a sort of confederation, which in Poland-Lithuanian law meant a temporary grouping of nobles to achieve some specific objective. In a country where power was so dispersed, it made sense for local nobles to take matters into their own hands. For example, a confederation was formed in 1655 with the aim of driving out the invading Swedes. However, a confederation could be formed to resist the royal government with force of arms. That did not just mean rebellion, it meant a legal rebellion. In the case of a rokosz, where in 1606 and 1662 the confederates’ rebellion spiralled out of control, it was legalised civil war. These were terrible wars that wracked the Republic, yet it was all perfectly legal, and so led to no changes to the constitution.
The cards were strongly stacked against reform. Not only did kings struggle with the Liberum Veto, confederations, and the Golden Freedom, they could not even ally with the lesser nobles to cut the major nobles down to size. This is what happened in states like Prussia, where the lesser nobles became military officers and civil servants. In Poland-Lithuania, the major nobles co-opted the minor ones, especially after devastating wars with the Cossacks, Muscovy and Sweden in the late 17th/early 18th centuries. The major nobles had reserves of cash, and they used it to buy up the wrecked lands of the now penniless lesser nobles. Minor nobles served in the private retinues and armies of major nobles, instead of for the government.
There was another argument against reform. That is, when the going was good, Poland-Lithuania seemed a better place to live than its neighbours. In the late 16th and early 17th century, the Republic avoided the horrific civil wars that blighted its neighbours, like the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire (1618-48), the English Civil Wars (1642-51), the French Wars of Religion (1562-98), or Muscovy’s Time of Troubles (1598-1613). Poland-Lithuania had its share of glories, too, like the reign of Stephen Báthory (reign 1576-86) and the victory of Jan Sobieski against the Ottoman Empire at the Gates of Vienna (1683). The Republic avoided royal tyranny and the extremes of religious conflict. Yet, by the 18th century, the same system was in headlong decline and mocked by famous writers like Voltaire and Montesquieu, while its neighbours recovered and thrived - especially Muscovy, which became the vast Russian Empire.
The problem was that the system was only fit for good times. Kings with powerful personalities, like Stephen Bathory and Jan Sobieski, could cover up its internal weaknesses for a time, but it was not a system that could survive serious pressure. What were those pressures?
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⇒ Why Poland-Lithuania Disappeared
