Pruth, where Bayezid II., then embarrassed by the Egyptian war, offered peace, but as no agreement concerning the captured fortresses could be arrived at, hostilities were suspended by a truce. During the remainder of his reign the Turks gave no trouble.
It was a fortunate thing for Poland that, during the first
century of her ascension to the rank of a great power, political
exigencies compelled her to appropriate almost more territory
than her primitive and centrifugal government could properly
assimilate; it was fortunate that throughout this period of
expansion her destinies should, with one brief interval, have
been controlled by a couple of superior statesmen, each of whom
ruled for nearly fifty years. During the fourteen years (1492–1506)
which separate the reigns of Casimir IV. and Sigismund I.
she was not so lucky. The controlling hand of Casimir IV. was
no sooner withdrawn than the unruly elements, ever present
in the Republic, and ultimately the casuse of its ruin, at once
burst forth. The first symptom of this lawlessness was the
separation of Poland and Lithuania, the Lithuanians proceeding
to elect Alexander, Casimir's fourth son, as their grand-duke,
without even consulting the Polish senate, in flagrant violation
of the union of Horodlo. The breach, happily, was of no very
long duration. A disastrous war with Ivan III., the first
Muscovite tsar, speedily convinced the Lithuanians that they
were not strong enough to stand alone, and in 1499 they
voluntarily renewed the union. Much more dangerous was
the political revolution proceeding simultaneously in Poland,
John I. Albert,
1492–1501.
where John Albert, the third son of Casimir, had
been elected king on the death of his father. The
nature of this revolution will be considered in detail
when we come to speak of the growth of the Polish
constitution. Suffice it here to say that it was both
anti-monarchical and anti-democratic, tending, as it did, to place all
political authority in the hands of the szlachta, or gentry.
The impecunious monarch submitted to the dictation of the
diet in the hope of obtaining sufficient money to prosecute his
ambitious designs. With his elder brother Wladislaus reigning
over Bohemia and Hungary the credit of the Jagiellos in Europe
had never been so great as it was now, and John Albert, bent
upon military glory, eagerly placed himself at the head of what
was to have been a great anti-Turkish league, but ultimately
dwindled down to a raid upon Moldavia which ended in disaster.
The sole advantage which John Albert reaped from his championship
of the Christian cause was the favour of the Curia, and the
ascendancy which that favour gave him over the Teutonic
knights, whose new grand-master, Albert of Saxony, was reluctantly
compelled to render due homage to the Polish king.
Alexander,
1501–1506.
Under Alexander (q.v.), who succeeded his brother
in 1501, matters went from bad to worse. Alexander's
election cemented, indeed, once for all, the
union between Poland and Lithuania, inasmuch as, on the
eve of it (Oct. 3, 1501) the senates of both countries agreed
that, in future, the king of Poland should always be grand-duke
of Lithuania, but this was the sole benefit which the Republic
derived from the reign of Alexander, under whom the Polish
government has been well described as a rudderless ship in a
stormy sea, with nothing but the grace of God between it
and destruction. In Lithuania the increasing pressure of the
Muscovite was the chief danger. Till the accession of Ivan III.
Russia and Lithuania.
in 1462 Muscovy had been a negligible factor in
Polish politics. During the earlier part of the 15th
century the Lithuanian princes had successfully
contested Muscovite influence even in Pskov and Great Novgorod.
Many Russian historians even maintain that, but for the fact
that Witowt had simultaneously to cope with the Teutonic
Order and the Tatars, that energetic prince would certainly
have extinguished struggling Muscovy altogether. But since
the death of Witowt (1430) the military efficiency of Lithuania
had sensibly declined; single-handed she was no longer a match
for her ancient rival. This was owing partly to the evils of an
oligarchic government; partly to the weakness resulting from
the natural attraction of the Orthodox-Greek element in
Lithuania
towards Muscovy, especially after the fall of Constantinople,
but chiefly to the administrative superiority of the highly centralized
Muscovite government. During the reign of Alexander,
who was too poor to maintain any adequate standing
army in Lithuania, the Muscovites and Tatars ravaged the
whole country at will, and were prevented from conquering it
altogether only by their inability to capture the chief fortresses.
In Poland, meanwhile, something very like anarchy prevailed.
Alexander had practically surrendered his authority to an
incapable aristocracy, whose sole idea of ruling was systematically
to oppress and humiliate the lower classes. In foreign affairs
a policy of drift prevailed which encouraged all the enemies
of the Republic to raise their heads, while the dependent states
of Prussia in the north and Moldavia in the south made strenuous
efforts to break away from Poland. Fortunately for the integrity
of the Polish state the premature death of Alexander in
1506 brought upon the throne his capable brother Sigismund,
Sigismund I.,
1506–1548.
the fifth son of Casimir IV., whose long reign of
forty-two years was salutary, and would have been
altogether recuperative, had his statesmanship only
been loyally supported by his subjects. Eminently practical,
Sigismund recognized that the first need of Poland was a standing
army. The miserable collapse of the Polish chivalry during
the Bukovinian campaign of 1497 had convinced every one that
the ruszenie pospolite was useless for serious military purposes,
and that Poland, in order to hold her own, must in future follow
the example of the West, and wage her warfare with trained
mercenaries. But professional soldiers could not be hired
without money, and the difficulty was to persuade the diet to
loose its purse-strings. All that the gentry contributed at
present was two pence (groschen) per hide of land, and this only
for defensive service at home. If the king led the ruszenie
pospolite abroad he was obliged to pay so much per pike out of
his own pocket, notwithstanding the fact that the heavily
mortgaged crown lands were practically valueless. At the
diet of 1510 the chancellor and primate, Adam Laski, proposed
an income-tax of 50% at once, and 5% for subsequent years,
payable by both the lay and clerical estates. In view of the
fact that Poland was the most defenceless country in Europe,
with no natural boundaries, and constantly exposed to attacks
from every quarter, it was not unreasonable to expect even this
patriotic sacrifice from the privileged classes, who held at least
two-thirds of the land by military tenure. Nevertheless, the
diet refused to consider the scheme. In the following year a
more modest proposal was made by the Crown in the shape of
a capitation of six gulden, to be levied on every nobleman at
the beginning of a campaign, for the hiring of mercenaries.
This also was rejected. In 1512 the king came forward with a
third scheme. He proposed to divide the country into five
circles, corresponding to the five provinces, each of which was
to undertake to defend the realm in turn should occasion arise.
Moreover, every one who so desired it might pay a commutation
in lieu of personal service, and the amount so realized was to be
re-used to levy troops. To this the dietines, or local diets, of
Great Poland, and Little Poland, agreed, but at the last moment
the whole project foundered on the question who was the proper
custodian of the new assessment rolls, and the king had to be
content with the renewal of former subsidies, varying from
twelve to fifteen groats per hide of land for three years. Well
might the disappointed monarch exclaim: “It is vain to labour
for the welfare of those who do not care a jot about it themselves.”
Matters improved somewhat in 1527, when the
szlachta, by a special act, placed the mightiest magnates on the
same level as the humblest squire as regards military service,
and proposed at the same time a more general assessment for
the purpose, the control of the money so realized to be placed
in the hands of the king. In consequence of this law the great
lords were compelled to put forces in the field proportioned to
their enormous fortunes, and Sigismund was able in 1529 to
raise 300 foot and 3200 horse from the province of Podolia alone.
But though the treasury was thus temporarily replenished and
the army increased, the gentry who had been so generous at