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

At the ‘Convocation’ Sejm in January 1573, the gentry’s leaders had blustered the senatorial elite into conceding that all nobles were entitled to vote for their king viritim - in person. The Sejm formed an association, the ‘Confederacy of Warsaw’, which drew up constitutional ground rules. The king would not secure a successor vivente rege, during his own lifetime; he would have to preserve interdenominational peace; he would decide matters of peace and war in conjunction with the Senate and the Sejm; parliament was to be called every two years for a six-week term, or as necessary; its consent would be required for all extraordinary taxation. The nobility’s jurisdiction over their peasants would remain untouched. If a ruler failed to observe his sworn commitments, he would forfeit his subjects’ obedience. These ‘Henrician articles’ were complemented by the pacta conventa, obligations crafted for individual kings. King Henri’s ranged from the provision of scholarships at the Sorbonne for young nobles to extravagant promises of financial and military support for Poland-Lithuania in the Muscovite war.

The 1573 settlement remained basic to the structure of the Commonwealth of the Two Nations for most of its existence. Interregnums and ‘free’ royal elections were essential to correct the abuses and infractions of the previous reign. Warsaw’s central location made it much more convenient as the election venue than Krakow (for the same reason Sigismund III made it his permanent place of residence from t6ii). The formal procedures evolved during the first interregnum remained in place for two centuries. The archbishop-primate of Gniezno stood in for the king, as interrex. The Election Sejm heard representations from would-be monarchs’ agents (foreign candidates were not allowed into the country before the election). The attendant szlachta, organized by palatinates and counties, camped around the huge barn-like structure in which the senators and gentry leaders debated before proposing a candidate for general acclamation.

As many as 40,000 nobles may have attended Henri of Anjou’s election. Only some 4,000 turned up for Wladyslaw IV’s election in 1632, because no one seriously doubted he would succeed his father, Sigismund III. Most elections saw several ‘Piast’ (native Polish) candidates, but a nation of supposedly equal noblemen disliked seeing one of its fellows elevated above the rest. When electors divided, as in 1576, 1587 or 1697, then readiness to move quickly and use force carried the day.

At his coronation, Henri refused final confirmation of the articles bearing his name. Monarchy in the French tradition was incompatible with Polish legalism. The extent of privilege, and its dissemination among some 6 per cent of the population, gave so many an immediate, vested interest in the status quo as to make change enormously difficult. Wealthier, better-educated and more widely travelled nobles might be sufficiently mature (or cynical) to appreciate that their kind could do very well under strong monarchs, but even they were predisposed, by custom and outlook, to the preservation of extensive constitutional checks. On the night of 1 8 June 1574, four days after hearing of the death of his elder brother, Charles IX, a frustrated Henri III of France slipped out of Krakow’s Wawel palace and made for the nearby frontier as fast as his horse could carry him.

The szlachta nation ran its own affairs: the sejmiki performed a huge range of tasks and gave men of even moderate wealth (even those who owned only a fraction of a village, if they had the education) an opportunity to engage in local government and selfadvancement. The creation, in 1578 and 1581, of independent, annually elected supreme courts, the Crown and Lithuanian Tribunals, placed the bulk of judicial business affecting the nobility in its own hands. The Sejm’s enactments, particularly on taxation, continued to require the electorate’s further approval, amendment or even rejection at the sejmiki. Direct royal appeals to the constituencies for monies usually received a sympathetic response, but did nothing to enhance parliament’s authority. Nevertheless, the extensive network of local institutions which the szlacbta built up provided them with a machinery for dealing with most of the public business they deemed important - there was therefore little purpose served in building up the elaborate, centralized bureaucracies developing elsewhere in Europe.