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

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the creation of massive complexes of estates in these lands. Intermarriage and royal favour allowed comparative newcomers such as the Potockis or Lubomirskis to measure up to the likes of established princely houses of Lithuania, the Radziwills or the Wisniowieckis. These great landowners soon learned to manipulate the values of ‘Golden Liberty’. By the eighteenth century, Polish politics largely became centred on the acquisition of office and crown leaseholds. Kings gave rewards for service - or because they had to. Their power to punish was increasingly limited. King Stefan Batory (1576-86) had Samuel Zborowski executed in May 1584 for plotting his overthrow. His successor, Sigismund III (1587-1632), won praise for pardoning those who, in 1606 and 1607, had fomented armed revolt and sought his deposition. But he dared not press matters too far: even the army which defeated the rebellious ‘rokosz of Sandomierz’ in July Г607 suspected that their opponents had some justification in claiming that they were resisting ‘absolutum dominium’. Attempts by John II Casimir (1648-68) in the 1650s and 1660s to rid himself of prominent opponents backfired, even when proofs of their dealings with hostile powers were palpable.

12 The town hall of Žarnose, the centrepiece of the vast estate built up by Jan Zamoyski (т 542-1605), grand hetman and grand chancellor of the Crown. Zamoyski was the principal collaborator of king Stefan Batory and, thanks to royal patronage, was able to build up a huge clientele and massive fortune. In Žarnose, after т 580, he created a model Renaissance town, designed by the Paduan architect, Bernardo Morando (t540-1 600).

The Sejm proved unable to cope with regional differences and magnate rivalries. It was these which underlay the emergence of the liberum veto - the right of a single individual to destroy the parliamentary session. No machinery for formally voting on legislation existed before 1768: acclamation remained the norm. The marshal, or speaker, of the Chamber of Envoys had virtually no real power to discipline, direct or control proceedings, which, amid intense factional rivalries, could all too easily degenerate into an undignified shambles. The primary role of the Sejm was not necessarily to pass laws at all. It was to protect noble freedoms and to restore them where they had been infringed. In the words of the historian, Anna Sucheni-Grabowska, ‘Once the nobility had secured a legally privileged status within the state, legislation, in the fullest sense, became, in general, undesirable.’ Thus, the occasional failure of Sejmy to produce any final enactments did not cause undue alarm - that was how the Commonwealth staggered along politically. ‘It is nothing unusual, Your Majesty’, explained the speaker of the 1606 Sejm to Sigismund III, ‘for Sejmy to end in failure . . . There is something hereditary in Poland about these parliaments, one way or another they take place, but they do not always succeed.’

Bills became law only after a final reading in the closing davs of the Sejm: Wladyslaw Sicinski’s protest in March 1652 against any prolongation of the normal six-week term terminated the proceedings. Though the detailed circumstances of this first, formal disruption by a single protestor remain controversial, royalists and oppositionists allowed it to happen because both feared that prolongation would bring them political defeat. In November 1669, a Sejm was, for the first time, disrupted before the end of its normal term. The veto caught on at local level - sejmiki became liable to disruptions, wreaking administrative and judicial havoc. The szlachta’s attitude to the veto was ambivalent. It was the ‘palladium of liberty’, yet individuals who wielded it (though no one man would do so unless he was sure of strong support) were widely condemned. In the eighteenth century it was as common to talk proceedings out as to disrupt the Sejm outright. Three of the five Sejmy of Michael Wisniowiecki’s reign (1669-74) were broken; under John III Sobieski (1674-96), it was five out of eleven. Of thirty-seven Sejmy between 1697 and 1762, only twelve enacted legislation. The establishment of a Confederacy - a league with a common programme - was the only effective means of setting the veto aside, but such leagues, formed during wars or interregnums, invariably aimed to preserve cherished ancestral liberties. For all the opprobrium heaped on individuals who dared exercise the veto, it had become one of those liberties. Sejmy which met after 1767 were much more successful - but most met under the aegis of confederacies imposed on the nobility.