welding together of her loosely connected component parts into a single state by the Union of Lublin.
In the middle of the 16th century the ancient order of the Knights of the Sword, whose territory embraced Esthonia, Livonia, Courland, Semgallen and the islands of Dago and Oesel, was tottering to its fall. All the Baltic powers were more or less interested in the apportionment of this vast tract of land, whose geographical position made it not only the chief commercial link between east and west, but also the emporium whence the English, Dutch, Swedes, Danes and Germans obtained their corn, timber and most of the raw products of Lithuania and Muscovy. Matters were complicated by the curious political intricacies of this long-coveted domain, where the grand-master, the archbishop of Riga, and the estates of Livonia possessed concurrent and generally conflicting jurisdictions. Poland and Muscovy as the nearest neighbours of this moribund state, which had so long excluded them from the sea, were vitally concerned in its fate. After an anarchic period of suspense, lasting from 1546 to 1561, during which Sweden secured Esthonia, while Ivan the Terrible fearlessly ravaged Livonia, in the hope of making it valueless to any other potentate, Sigismund II., to whom both the grand-master and the archbishop had appealed more than once for protection, at length intervened decisively. Both he and his chancellor, Piotr Myszkowski (d. 1591), were well aware of the importance of securing a coast-land which would enable Poland to become a naval power. But the diet, with almost incredible short-sightedness, refused to waste a penny on an undertaking which, they argued, concerned only Lithuania, and it was not as king of Poland, but as grand-duke of Lithuania, and with purely Lithuanian troops, that Sigismund, in 1561, occupied Livonia. At his camp before Riga the last grand-master, Gotthard von Ketteler, who had long been at the head of the Polish party in Livonia, and William of Brandenburg, archbishop of Riga, gladly placed themselves beneath his protection, and by a subsequent convention signed at Vilna (Nov. 28, 1561), Livonia was incorporated with Lithuania in much the same way as Prussia had been incorporated with Poland thirty-six years previously. Ketteler, who had adopted Lutheranism during a visit to Germany in 1553, now professed the Augsburg Confession, and became the first duke of a new Protestant duchy, which he was to hold as a fief of the Polish crown, with local autonomy and absolute freedom of worship. The southern provinces of the ancient territory of the Order, Courland and Semgallen, had first been ceded on the 24th of June 1559 to Lithuania on similar conditions, the matter being finally adjusted by the compact of March 1562.
The apathy of Poland in such a vital matter as the Livonian question must have convinced so statesmanlike a prince as Sigismund II. of the necessity of preventing any possibility of cleavage in the future between the two halves of his dominions whose absolute solidarity was essential to their existence as a great power. To this patriotic design he devoted the remainder of his life. A personal union, under one monarch, however close, had proved inadequate. A further step must be taken—the two independent countries must be transformed into a single state. The great obstacle in the way of this, the only true solution of the difficulty, was the opposition of the Lithuanian magnates, who feared to lose the absolute dominance they possessed in the grand-duchy if they were merged in the szlachta of the kingdom. But, at the last moment, the dread of another Muscovite invasion made them more pliable and, at a Polish diet held at Warsaw from November 1563 to June 1564, which the Lithuanians attended, the question of an absolute union was hotly debated. When things came to a deadlock the king tactfully intervened and voluntarily relinquished his hereditary title to Lithuania, thus placing the two countries on a constitutional equality and preparing the way for fresh negotiations in the future. The death, in 1565, of Black Radziwill, the chief opponent of the union, still further weakened the Lithuanians, and the negotiations were reopened with more prospect of success at the diet which met at Lublin on the 10th of January 1569. But even now the Lithuanians were indisposed towards a complete union, and finally they quitted the diet, leaving two commissioners behind to watch their interests. Then Sigismund executed his master stroke. Knowing the sensitiveness of the Lithuanians as regards Volhynia and Podolia, he suddenly, of his own authority, formally incorporated both these provinces with the kingdom of Poland, whereupon, amidst great enthusiasm, the Volhynian and Podolian deputies took their places on the same benches as their Polish brethren. The hands of the Lithuanians were forced. Even a complete union on equal terms was better than mutilated independence. Complete Union of Lithuania and Poland, 1569. Accordingly they returned to the diet, and the union was unanimously adopted on the 1st of July 1569. Henceforth the kingdom of Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania were to constitute one inseparable and indivisible body politic, under one sovereign, elected in common, with one diet and one currency. All dependencies and colonies, including Prussia and Livonia, were to belong to Poland and Lithuania in common. The retention of the old duality of dignities was the one reminiscence of the original separation. No decision, however, could be come to as to the successor of the childless king, partly because of the multiplicity of candidates, partly because of Austrian intrigue, and this, the most momentous question of all, was still unsettled when Sigismund II. expired on the 6th of July 1572.
The Jagiellonic period (1386-1572) is the history of the consolidation and fusion into one homogeneous, political whole Character of the Jagiellonic Period, 1386-1572. of numerous national elements, more or less akin ethnologically, but differing immensely in language, religion and, above all, in degrees of civilization. Out of the ancient Piast kingdom, mutilated by the loss of Silesia and the Baltic shore, arose a republic consisting at first of various loosely connected entities, naturally centrifugal, but temporarily drawn together by the urgent need of combination against a superior foe, who threatened them separately with extinction. Beneath the guidance of a dynasty of princes which, curiously enough, was supplied by the least civilized portion of this congeries of nationalities, the nascent republic gradually grew into a power which subjugated its former oppressors and, viewed externally, seemed to bear upon it the promise of empire. It is dangerous to prophesy, but all the facts and circumstances before us point irresistibly to the conclusion that had the Jagiellonic dynasty but endured this promise of empire might well have been realized. The extraordinary thing about the Jagiellos was the equable persistency of their genius. Not only were five of the seven great statesmen, but they were statesmen of the same stamp. We are disturbed by no such sharp contrasts as are to be found among the Plantagenets, the Vasas and the Bourbons. The Jagiellos were all of the same mould and pattern, but the mould was a strong one and the pattern was good. Their predominant and constant characteristic is a sober sagacity which instinctively judges aright and imperturbably realized its inspirations. The Jagiellos were rarely brilliant, but they were always perspicacious. Above all, they alone seem to have had the gift of guiding the most difficult of nations properly. Two centuries of Jagiellonic rule made Poland great despite her grave external difficulties. Had that dynasty been prolonged for another century, there is every reason to suppose that it would also have dealt satisfactorily with Poland's still more dangerous internal difficulties, and arrested the development of that anarchical constitution which was the ruling factor in the ruin of the Republic.
Simultaneously with the transformation into a great power of the petty principalities which composed ancient Poland, another and equally momentous political transformation was proceeding within the country itself.
The origin of the Polish constitution is to be sought in the wiece or councils of the Polish princes, during the partitional period (c. 1279-1370). The privileges conferred upon the magnates of which these councils were composed, especially upon the magnates of Little Poland, who brought the Jagiellos to
