(Cambridge Concise Histories) Jerzy Lukowski, Hubert Zawadzki - A Concise History of Poland-Cambridge University Press (2006)

The road to even partial reunification was a tortuous one. In 1289, the nobles, knights and the bishop of Krakow chose as princeps Duke Boleslaw II of Plock, in Masovia. Boleslaw transferred his rights over the principate to his cousin, Wladyslaw ‘the Short’ (Lokietek, literally ‘Elbow-High’), ruler of the little duchies of Lęczyca, Kujawy and Sieradz. This princely thug found that his penchant for brigandage won much support among knights and squires on the up. He was quite unacceptable in Krakow, whose townsmen handed over the capital to Henry IV Probus, the Honourable, duke of Wroclaw/Breslau. It was Henry who took the first serious steps towards what would be so symbolically important for any reunification of the Polish lands. He began to negotiate with the papacy and with his patron, the emperor-elect Rudolf, for agreement to his coronation. Just before his childless death in June 1290 he bequeathed the duchy of Krakow to Duke Przemysl II of Wielkopolska. Przemvsl was already suzerain of the port of Gdansk and of eastern Pomerania. On paper, he had a stronger territorial power-base than any of his predecessors for over a century. The idea of a crowned head was much more attractive to a more latinized Poland than it had been in the early Piast state. Archbishop Swinka was all in favour: the canonization in 1253 of Bishop Stanislaw of Krakow, whose dismembered body had undergone a miraculous regrowth, provided an irresistible metaphor for Swinka’s aspirations. Przemysl’s only serious Polish rival was Lokietek, clinging on in the duchy of Sandomierz. Both men were, however, overshadowed by an ambitious and powerful foreign ruler, Vaclav II of Bohemia.

Vaclav was one of the Middle Ages’ most successful territorial stamp-collectors. His father, Premysl Otakar II (1253-78) -Pfemysl to his Slav subjects, Otakar to his Germans - had built up a glittering court at Prague. Bohemia’s mineral, commercial and agricultural wealth enabled him to support an ambitious programme of expansion, until his bid for leadership of the German Empire came to an abrupt end when he fell at the battle of Durnkrtitt on 26 August 1278, against the closest he had to a German rival, Rudolf of Habsburg. The petty rulers of the disintegrating Piast lands looked abroad for protection: one such focus of attraction was the Premyslid court of Bohemia; the other was its rival, the Arpad court of Hungary. After the death of Henry Probus, Vaclav’s own ambition to acquire Krakow was abetted by the local barons and patricians. In terms of security, prestige and economic prospects, he offered far more than either Przemysl or E.okietek. Vaclav secured the crucial support of Malopolska by the Privilege of I.itomyšl of 129 i. He promised its clergy, knights, lords and towns the preservation of all their existing rights, immunities and jurisdictions; he would impose no new taxes on them and fill all existing offices from their ranks. Eokietek’s position collapsed. His unruly soldiery and knightly followers spread alienation everywhere they went. By 1294, he had not only to sue for peace but to receive his own remaining lands hack from Vaclav as a fief. It may have been to pre-empt the almost certain coronation of Vaclav that Archbishop Swinka persuaded the pope to consent to Przemysl IPs coronation in Gniezno cathedral on 26 June 1.295. The machinations behind this decision are as obscure as anything in Polish history; nor is it clear whether Przemysl regarded himself as ruler of the whole of Poland, or just of Wielkopolska and eastern Pomerania. He did not survive long enough to test his real support. In February 1296 he was murdered, almost certainly on the orders of the margraves of Brandenburg, whose territorial ambitions were blocked by the new king's lands. He left Poland one enduring bequest, in the shape of the crowned eagle which he adopted as the emblem of his new state.

The nobles of Wielkopolska opted at first for Tokietek as his successor - but his continued inability to control his own men, his readiness to carve up Przemysl's kingdom with other petty dukes, and a military offensive from Brandenburg drastically eroded his support. In 1299, he once again acknowledged Vaclav as overlord. Even Archbishop Swinka, conscious that the Krakow clergy were behind Vaclav, accepted the inevitable. In September 1300 he crowned him king - although he could not refrain from complaining at the ‘doghead’ of a priest who delivered the coronation sermon in German.