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

The problems facing the dynasty were on a physical scale scarcely to be found elsewhere in Latin Christendom. In 1490, Poland and Lithuania covered vast expanses, getting on for twice the size of France, yet numbering fewer than 8 million people. From Krakow or Poznan to Viazma or Briansk on Lithuania’s eastern marches was over 700 miles - almost as far as to Paris. East of the Vistula, agriculture scarcely rose above subsistence level in a landscape dominated by forest, swamp and steppe. These distances and the paucity of resources, especially in Lithuania, help to explain much of the passive, or at least reactive, nature of foreign policy. Polish magnates saw in the Grand Duchy a kind of Jagiellonian dowry, which should, by rights (the various acts of Union), be theirs. The abandonment by Sigismund the Old of any kind of forward policy in Bohemia, Hungary and against the Ottomans encouraged them to look with interest at the prospects of new wealth in Lithuania and Rus’. As for the Lithuanians, they feared Polish pretensions, were unwilling to accept that Vytautas’ era of predominance over Rus’ belonged to the past and, when and if they did receive military help from Poland, always found it wanting. In these conditions, the preservation of the link between the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was an achievement in itself. Only the Ottoman Porte and Muscovy faced comparable difficulties. Their solutions - sustained, brutal centralism with little or no regard for, nor even conception of, their subjects’ rights and privileges, were utterly impracticable in Poland.

Wladyslaw II Jagiello was made king not just to bring territory, but to consolidate the dominance of an elite of ‘prelates et barones’. In T426, when Jagiello refused a fresh confirmation of privileges, his leading nobles slashed their document of assent to the succession of his baby son to pieces in front of him. He relented and issued the confirmation four years later. His successors were never allowed to forget their elective position. His second son, Casimir IV, had to wait almost three years after the death of his elder brother, Wladyslaw 111 ‘of Varna', before he was accepted as king and had to be threatened with deposition before he would confirm his subjects’ privileges in 1453.

The ‘prelates et barones’ or ‘proceres’ were, in the first instance, members of the royal council, which, in the early sixteenth century, assumed the name of Senate: the Catholic bishops and great officers (chancellor, treasurer, marshal); the palatines (wojewodowie) and castellans, heading the hierarchy of counties (terrae) and palatinates (palatinatus) which had coalesced out of the old Piast duchies. Of these approximately seventy dignitaries, those who took key decisions of state with the king numbered some half-a-dozen. Membership of the council depended on talent and patronage (especially through the royal chancellery). Its members took further royal favour for granted - and could be relied upon to cause trouble if they did not receive it. Once made, appointments were regarded as irrevocable.

Lower down the scale, participation in the feudal levy, the pospolite ruszenie, might be enough to ensure acceptance as a knight/gentleman/noble - a szlacbcic. Even this was not always necessary. To ease the incorporation into the Crown of the duchies of Plock and Masovia in 1495 and 152.6, John Albert and Sigismund I confirmed the supposedly noble status of thousands of impoverished smallholders - illiterate, uncouth and eager to be distinguished from what were, in reality, other peasants. The result, by the second quarter of the sixteenth century, was social inflation, with a ‘noble’ estate making up perhaps some 6 per cent of the 5 million or so inhabitants of the Crown - a proportion largely maintained until the end of the eighteenth century.