At first the elected kings performed like responsible hired managers, and some actually provided excellent custodianship, but the inevitable arrival of weak foreign kings precipitated the decline of the kingdom, for as the papal legate explained in one report to Rome: ‘It would be much easier for some trivial French nobleman to become King of Poland than for an honest Polish patriot. You see, the magnates are satisfied that if they don’t like the Frenchman, they’ll be able to kick him out of the country, something they might not be able to do with a native Pole.’ He might have added that on occasion the voting had ended in such chaos that two different kings were elected, a situation that could be resolved only by civil war.
Electing a foreigner king under such circumstances was bound to be a sorry affair, but even so, it might have worked had not the Poles added a fourth and a fifth complication after the man was elected. Having chosen a Swede or a Saxon or a Hungarian to be their king, they then refused to give him any real power, or any right of taxation, or even the privilege of conscripting a serious army. The king must be kept a figurehead, never a dictator, and what pitiful power he might amass in his self-defense, he could obtain only by cajoling or flattering magnates like the master of Castle Gorka.
Why did Cyprjan behave in this fashion? He was a patriot; without question he was loyal to the concept of a free, strong Poland; he was intelligent and liked to associate with other magnates who were as well-traveled as he, and he listened carefully when they explained what was happening in Italy and England and France. Constantly he speculated on procedures which would prove good for Poland and his family.
And there was the rub! Whenever he voiced this last concern he invariably phrased it: ‘What’s good for my family and Poland.’ As a great magnate who literally owned more than sixty villages and thousands of peasants, he simply could not visualize any governing entity more important than himself. He was not a vain man, not a poseur, and certainly not one who flaunted his immense wealth, but he was convinced that he was Poland and that every instrument of state power or policy must be judged by one simple criterion: ‘Is it good for the magnates?’ If in the slightest way a suggested change in procedure—such as electing the next king while the old king still lived, to avoid the horrendous interregnums which sometimes left Poland for two or three years without a king while the magnates wrestled over the election—if such a change threatened even the slightest prerogative of the magnates, Cyprjan had to oppose it, which he did, most vigorously. Indeed, he would have taken arms on a day’s notice to protect his rights, and he would not have been able to conceive of this as treason, for he thought of himself as markedly superior to the king and much closer to the soul of Poland, for the king would vanish after a brief reign, whereas he, the magnate, would continue forever.
The final monstrosity which the magnates invented to protect what they called their Golden Freedom, and at the same time hamstring both the king and the rising middle gentry, can only be described as insane. Reported the papal legate: ‘The concept of liberum veto must have been devised in hell by a special devil charged with the task of destroying Christian Poland.’ In 1654, Magnate Cyprjan, through the agency of his slow-witted but honest henchman Lukasz, demonstrated what the liberum veto could accomplish in speeding a great nation on its slide to oblivion.
Three times in a row—1587, 1632 and 1648 during the Cossack uprisings—the magnates had elected as their king a member of the Swedish royal family, and this was remarkable because Poland was an intensely Catholic nation while Sweden was just as intensely Lutheran, the most obdurate of the Protestant faiths. True, the various kings imported by Poland had promised that whereas in Sweden they had been Protestant, in Poland they would be Catholic, and they were faithful to this pledge. Up to now, Poland had had no great cause for religious complaint, but there was always confusion and an underlying irrationality. At any moment the apparently Catholic Swedish king might revert to Protestantism, with disastrous consequences.
Magnates like Cyprjan were not at all happy with Jan Kazimir, their present Swedish king, and it was only with the greatest reluctance that they voted him any taxes or army; in 1648 a well-organized Poland should have been able to drive back the Cossacks within three months of frontier fighting, but the confused little army did not like to venture into the frontier, so the Cossacks had been allowed a free hand to burn and plunder.
Now throughout Poland there arose among the lesser gentry, the town burghers, some of the clergy and the farmers who had obtained land, a realization that the current system of government was defective, and there was talk that when the Seym, Poland’s parliament, convened in Warsaw, correction would surely be made. Like many other parliaments, Poland’s consisted of two houses, Senate and Deputies, and only magnates or their personal representatives or their churchly equals could sit in the first; lesser nobles only, in the second. In addition to passing laws, the Seym acted as the court of last appeal to which any person of noble rank could present his plea for clemency. Of course, townspeople, traders, Jews and peasants could appeal to no one.
Cyprjan, an aloof patriot who did not like personal display and who would have abhorred showing himself arguing in public, deputized Lukasz of Bukowo to sit for him and gave him the strictest instructions as to what he must do and how: ‘Seym is a silly business. It creates only trouble. You sit there and keep your mouth shut and I’ll send you word as to how you’re to vote.’
When the 1654 Seym had been in session only two of its allotted six weeks, it became clear to the magnates that decisions were being discussed which would strengthen the king, give townsmen privileges they never had before, and weaken the magnates’ oppressive grip on the peasants. So Cyprjan, already distressed by his losses in the Ukraine and fearful of any change, which he termed revolution, summoned Lukasz to a meeting with three of the more powerful magnates, who seated him on a chair before them as if he were an unruly schoolboy. They formed a frightening quartet: heads shaved, except for tufts of hair down the middle; great protruding bellies swathed in gold-encrusted sashes; flowing mustaches. And they spoke as roughly as they looked: ‘Your stupid Seym. Have you gone out of your mind? Everything you propose threatens our position, and that means it threatens Poland.’
‘We thought that the townsmen—’
‘Traders. Men of no substance. Pitiful persons who have been to the university. The townsmen have no rights and they deserve none. Don’t speak to us of townsmen.’
‘We also thought that the peasants—’
‘We will tell the peasants what to do. We will protect their interests. The Seym has no concern with peasants.’
‘But there is a spirit in the air—’
‘It is to be extinguished.’
‘How? It seems very strong.’
‘It is to be extinguished by revoking every change you have made so far.’
‘I don’t think the Seym would permit that,’ Lukasz said weakly, for the magnates in their golden coats, brocaded belts and shaved heads were overpowering.
‘It is no longer what the Seym wants. It’s what we want. What Poland wants.’
When Lukasz said nothing, the magnates glared at him, waiting for him to come to his senses, but this did not happen, so Cyprjan, as the owner of the man, said sternly: ‘Lukasz, everything that the Seym has done will be revoked … tomorrow … by you.’
‘Me?’ The voice was very small.
‘Yes. In the 1652 Seym the patriot Wladyslaw Sicinski, acting under secret orders from the Radziwills, said in a loud voice “I object!” and this established the good principle that every act of every Seym must have unanimous approval. If even one member objects, the act is rejected. And what is most valuable to us, every other act which Seym has enacted is also rejected. It’s as if the Seym had never existed.’
‘What am I to do?’ Lukasz asked, and he received instructions which seemed incomprehensible: ‘You are to stand up and cry in a loud voice “I object!” and when you say that, the Seym ends. And every
thing wrong it’s done so far is also canceled.’
‘But our Seym has four more weeks to run,’ Lukasz protested feebly.
‘Not now it doesn’t. Your Seym ends tomorrow.’
So when the Seym reconvened, having passed more than a dozen commendable laws which would have strengthened the nation, bringing it into conformity with the powerful nation-states being so painfully forged in England, France, Russia and even America, Lukasz of Bukowo rose from his seat and cried as directed ‘I object!’ and the whole structure collapsed. One little man, voicing the will of one selfish magnate, was able to frustrate the thoughtful efforts of an entire nation to reform itself.
In Seym after Seym, many of the wisest decisions then being made in the world, the equal at least to anything being accomplished in England or France and much like the tentative beginnings in America, were destroyed by the single veto of one man working in the interests of a venal aristocracy. Progress was defeated at each turn by the selfish interests of magnates who preached that they were acting thus to defend their Golden Freedom, and in a sense they were.
They were defending their freedom to neutralize the king; they were defending their freedom to keep the newly built towns subservient to their country areas; they were defending most strongly their freedom to keep their peasants in a state of perpetual serfdom as opposed to the liberties which were being grudgingly won in the western parts of Europe; and they were doing everything reactionary within their power to preserve the advantages they had against the legitimate aspirations of the growing gentry. The Golden Freedom which the magnates defended with every bit of chicanery and power they commanded was the freedom of the few to oppress the many, the freedom of a few grasping magnates to prevent a strong king from arising.
When any essential part of a governing system becomes corrupt, it endangers all parts because it tempts officials to engage in parallel wrong actions, and this inescapable truth became criminally obvious when the magnates took intricate steps to protect the freedoms they obtained through the liberum veto. Many magnates began to look outside Poland for support in their efforts to thwart the popular will, and they began to forge alliances with some alien power, accepting bribes and other advantages from Russia, or Sweden, or Austria, or France, or one of the German states in return for voting not in the interests of Poland but of the foreign power that was paying the money. Thus the Radziwills often defended the interests of Russia or Sweden; the Leszczynskis, those of France; and Cyprjan, with a coterie of his friends, those of Austria.
Why would he, with one of the most powerful names in Poland, look outside his native land for leadership, and why to Austria? From childhood he had failed to construct in his mind a vision of Poland united and capable of governing itself. The heroes extolled in his family were the rowdy Mniszechs, the freebooting Radziwills, the self-directed magnates who ventured into the vastness of the Ukraine, hacking out great estates, with thousands of peasants subservient to their whims—they were the prototypical Poles. Never had he visualized the professors at Jagiellonian University as leaders of a nation, not even when he invited them to his castle, and he certainly had no respect for the functionaries who bothered with taxes and the administration of laws. Each Swedish king he had known seemed pettifogging, a Protestant at home, a Catholic in Poland, so that strong central government could not be his ideal, because he had never known it.
On the other hand, he revered the Habsburgs and the resolute way they went about enlarging their territories, decade after decade. He foresaw that one of these days they would encompass outlying principalities like Hungary and Transylvania, and all to the good. He did not actually think that Austria would one day engulf Poland; he was too much a patriot for that, but he did admit that if any outside nation were to do so, it ought to be Austria.
With such rot at the core, the politics of Poland became the most corrupt in Europe, surpassing in venality even that of the Turks in Constantinople, and year by year the Golden Freedom of the magnates meant the weakening and debasement of Poland.
Cardinal Pentucci, the papal legate, wondering how Christian Poland could be saved, reported:
Now when a bill comes before the Seym the question is not ‘Will this be good for Poland?’ but rather ‘How does Russia want me to vote on this? Or France? Or Austria?’ Because of the corrupt weaknesses that I have spoken of earlier—the election of foreigners, the refusal of the magnates to share their power, and especially the degradation of the Seym with its liberum veto and the sale of votes, one might say that Poland has become the plaything of Europe.
Never was this shrewd judgment more applicable than in the chain of years starting in 1655, when Barbara Ossolinska and her husband, Roman, were beginning to make Krzyztopor Castle one of the adornments of Europe.
‘Why would the King of Sweden want to invade Poland?’ the legate asked the French ambassador at the latter’s palace in Warsaw.
‘Because of Sweden’s perpetual lust to control the Baltic coastline,’ the Frenchman replied.
‘Can she do it?’
‘I think so.’
‘But will Poland allow her?’
The ambassador considered how best to answer this probing question, and he saw that there were two logical explanations, an easy one pertaining to Poland’s military ability, and a most difficult one involving her will power. He decided to tackle the latter first: ‘Like all nations, Cardinal Pentucci, Poland has wonderful strengths and weaknesses, and they derive from her basic character. But the strangest deficiency, and I’ve watched the rise and fall of many nations, is her refusal to look northward … to the Baltic.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
The ambassador poured himself and his guest drinks of good French brandy, and said: ‘I’ve developed a theory that every nation has a natural territory which it must occupy if it’s to fulfill its destiny. At whatever cost, it must reach out and use that space. France has done this. England is doing it rather well with her recent alliances with Wales and Scotland. On some appropriate day your Italy will do it, and Germany is already in the painful process.’
‘I see what you mean about nations with natural boundaries. But what about Poland, which has none?’
‘There you’re wrong! East and west you’re right. Poor Poland has no natural limits. But in the other directions she does. South with the Carpathians. And most important, north with the Baltic Sea. To fulfill her destiny she must, in my opinion, control her proper share of that coastline.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the legate said reflectively. ‘Her great river the Vistula does empty into the Baltic. Danzig does control all her trade. The fish her people love so much do reach her in the fishing boats of other nations.’
‘Don’t you see, Cardinal? If she allowed the Teutonic Knights in the past, or Sweden now, or Germany in the future to dominate her Baltic coastline, she’s sure to be strangled. Yet she does nothing to avoid it. Time and again, she backs away from her own destiny.’
‘Would she have the power to halt Sweden now, even if she did have the will?’
‘Bluntly, no. Poland’s allowed herself to become incredibly weak. Her magnates will permit no army, afraid it might become an agency of the king.’
‘Is he as foolish as he seems?’
‘Jan Kazimir is deceptive, Cardinal Pentucci. As the Catholic King of Poland, he’s rather good. A real patriot. But as a secret Protestant trying to gain the throne of Sweden … It’s a pitiful confusion.’
‘He’s been baptized a Catholic, you know,’ the legate said. ‘And I believe he’s a rather good one.’
‘But as a member of the Swedish royal family, he dreams of becoming King of Sweden, and obviously the Swedes will permit none of that.’
‘Is he really so ill-advised?’
‘He’s worse. He not only dreams of becoming King of Sweden. He takes overt steps to achieve it.’
‘And so the legitimate King of Sweden … His cousin or something? He must oppose. And is that where the thr
eatened invasion springs from?’
‘The king ruling in Sweden is like all other kings, Your Eminence. One-third avarice. One-third stupidity. One-third sheer brilliance in protecting his interests.’
‘And if this complex man, this Charles X Gustavus, proceeds with his plan to invade, will he conquer Poland?’
‘I have advised my king that Sweden will crush Poland within a matter of months.’
The two men pondered this for some minutes, after which the legate said: ‘Is it not strange that a small country like Sweden, with so few people and such little wealth, can presume to conquer a great nation like Poland, superior in so many ways?’
‘It isn’t strange if the small nation is well governed and holds together, while the big nation is poorly governed and flies apart.’
‘Does government mean so much?’
‘It means everything.’
‘But what about spirit? Will? Faith?’
‘Without an army, what are they?’
‘A great deal, sometimes. What army has our Pope? He has only faith and will.’
‘That’s why he rules the world of faith, and kings rule the world of power and wealth.’
‘I cannot believe that a Catholic Poland will surrender so easily to a Protestant Sweden.’
‘Now there,’ said the Frenchman, ‘you begin to face the real problem. Poland by itself could exist, and nicely. But when, through its unfortunate kings, it becomes involved in the dynastic disputes of neighboring countries … then it falls into peril. And if you add religious warfare as well, the whole thing falls into chaos. Have you heard what the Swedish king has boasted in a letter to Oliver Cromwell? “When I finish with Poland, there will not be a papist in the land.” ’
‘Alas! Another Lutheran fanatic to deal with! Poor Poland.’ But even as he issued this lament, he thought of certain Polish leaders he had met who did not fit the description of irresponsibility the ambassador was drawing: ‘I know this man Cyprjan of Gorka, and I truly doubt that he could ever bring himself to betray either Poland or his king.’