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

Kings had no alternative sources of effective support. Major towns were pitifully few. Krakow, Lwow or Poznan were content with their individual privileges. Their town halls, markets and churches (most spectacularly, Veit Stoss of Nuremberg’s dazzling altar-piece in Krakow’s Lady-Church) bespeak a real prosperity, founded mainly on overland transit trade and raw material exports. But there were no centres of manufacture capable of competing with the Rhine valley, Flanders or northern Italy. Even the capital, Krakow, at the end of the sixteenth century, numbered around 14,000 inhabitants - barely the size of a secondary provincial centre in France. Piotrkow, the usual venue for the Sejm Walny, numbered only some y,ooo inhabitants. The fastest-expanding group within the towns was the Jews who, by 1600,

7 The church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Krakow. Completed 1 У97. Krakow was unique among the major cities within the post-т945 borders of Poland in suffering only minimal structural damage during the Second World War.

8 The great altarpiece by Veit Stoss (Polish, Wit Stwosz) of Nuremberg (died T533) in the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Krakow. Stoss lived in Krakow between 1477 and 1496. He spent many years, between 1477 and 1489, working on his masterpiece. In Г484, he was granted full citizen rights in Krakow. In 1939, the Germans removed Stoss’ triptych to Nuremberg. It was recovered by the Poles in 1946, but prolonged restoration work meant that it was reinstated in its rightful place only in *957-may have numbered over 200,000 through immigration and natural increase. Of course, they played no direct political role (though isolated individuals might rise high in the royal or magnate administration) and many towns legally excluded them from permanent residence. For that reason they were much favoured by the nobility whose ‘protection’ was bought by creaming off the profits of their trading and banking activities.

The one concentration of urban wealth allied to real political power lay in Royal Prussia. Danzig in 1500 counted over 35,000 inhabitants; Thorn and Elbing over 10,000 each; their commercial wealth allowed them to dominate the local nobility. Yet although the 1454 ‘Letters of Incorporation’ proclaimed Royal Prussia’s return ‘to the body of the realm’, they simultaneously conceded such extensive autonomy that the province regarded itself as virtually distinct from the Crown proper. Before 1569, the Prussian estates sent only observers to the Sejm and rarely, if ever, were prepared to vote tax monies unless their own immediate interests were served. The Jagiellonians courted individual towns (although Sigismund II, unlike his father, loathed Krakow and never visited it after 1559) for their goodwill and money. Towns sent representatives to assist in royal elections throughout the fifteenth century; leading patricians might even take a seat on the royal council. Wealthy townsmen and merchants had little difficulty in obtaining ennoblement, either by royal favour or by securing court judgements ‘confirming’ their new status. In 1492, Krakow took this to its logical extreme when it secured noble status and the right to send its own representatives to the Sejm, to exercise their influence on Krakow’s behalf.

The nobility extended their advantages into the economic sphere. Under the Statute of Warka of 1423, noble landlords were permitted to buy out, against independently assessed valuations, the rich hereditary holdings (solectwa) of negligent or recalcitrant village administrators (often szlacbta themselves). Price controls were imposed on towns; guilds were declared abolished; peasants were forbidden to migrate to towns without their seigneurs’ consent. Most of these provisions were unenforceable. They were reaffirmed and sharpened in 1496 and 1520. It was only from then that the restrictions on the peasantry began to take on real force, as an agrarian boom, fuelled by grain exports through Danzig, brought about a shift from cash rentals to revenues derived from the direct exploitation of peasant labour services. Free peasants became enserfed because there was no way of stopping the process, although for much of the sixteenth century agrarian prosperity cushioned the worst effects of the restrictions on their freedom. Save for its Baltic rim, Poland remained overwhelmingly agrarian, even by contemporary European standards. The price revolution made manufactured imports much cheaper relative to raw material exports. If artisanal activity in Poland’s own towns suffered, most nobles were unconcerned.