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Constitutional Trends and Social Developments in Central Europe, the Baltic Countries and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

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Constitutional Trends and Social Developments in Central Europe, the Baltic Countries and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS IN CENTRAL EUROPE, THE BALTIC COUNTRIES, AND THE POLISH-LITHUANIAN COMMONWEALTH MARIAN MAŁOWIST Two important problems have for years been attracting the attention of the historians. The first concerns the nature of the political system of the nobility republic that,is thought to have existed in the Polish- -Lithuanian Commonwealth at the beginning of the modern period. The second problem centers on how this system evolved and what its eco­ nomic and social foundations might have been. The two questions are obviously closely related. It should be remembered that from its outset in the laite Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, the Latin term res publica referred not so much to a specific form of political system as to any state generally; in fact the terms regnum and res publica were often used interchange­ ably. It was in this general sense, then, that the Polish realm was a “republic,” although at the same time it also gradually adopted many features characteristic of a republican system in the modem sense of the term. Poland and, later, the Grand Principality of Lithuania witnessed a rise in the power of representative institutions of the estates which over the years took on many of the important functions of the royal prerogative. In Western Europe, the burghers, and particularly their upper class, shared substantially in the development of estate institu­ tions; in .Sweden and Norway, this was also true for the landowning peasantry. In Poland and the Grand Principality of Lithuania, burghers also took part in the sessions of provincial legislative assemblies and, in Royal Prussia, of the diet. Yet another important political question should be emphasized here, namely, that, unlike the West, Polish institutions representing the 78 MABIAN. MAïjOWJST interests of the estates stripped the monarch of many of his functions and thus effectively prevented the development of absolutism. From the fifteenth century onwards these institutions represented the entire nobility, which commanded similar privileges vis-à-vis the king and other estates. In the sixteenth century, this led to the emergence of a belief in the equality of all the members of the noble class, irre­ spective of the economic status of the individual. This idea of the equ­ ality of nobles conHinued to play a prominent role in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although by then it no longer reflected political reality and was simply used by the aristocracy in attempts to maintain its political domination. I believe that the views of both S. Sreniowski and W. Czapliński con­ cerning the political evolution of Poland from the so-called nobility democracy to the rule of oligarchy require further discussion,1 for they prompt the question whether it would not be better to consider that both forms of government co-existed throughout the period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuriep, rather than one emerging from the other. There is no doilbt that, in the course of the seventeenth cen­ tury, the landed aristocracy gained the upper hand and continued to consolidate its power in the country, manipulating the nobility to sup­ port their policies. Nevertheless, prior to the collapse of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, the aristocracy had never been able to afford the luxury of doing without the political support of the nobil­ ity. Privileges that a succession of Polish kings had by the end of the fourteenth century bestowed on the nobles, reduced their fiscal obliga­ tions to the Crown and granted them concessions in the realm of the judiciary. Throughout the period and into the fifteenth century, the nobility evolved a system of provincial assemblies and other forms of representative organs of estates that could apply pressure when the succession to the throne in Poland was in question, although this was not yet so in Lithuania. In practice, throughout the fourteenth and most of the fifteenth centuries, the central authority was vested in the king, and he used it with full backing of the secular and ecclesiastical lords. In the fourteenth century, King Casimir the Great rallied around him a group of local strongmen from the Little Poland region in the South and, with their support, he managed to break the opposition of powerful *S. Sreniowski, Państwo polskie w połowie XVII w. Polska w okresie drugiej woj­ ny północnej 1655—1660 (Warsaw, 1959), pp. 16 ff.; W. Czapliński, „Rządy oligarchii V' Polsce nowożytnej”, Przegląd Historyczny (cited hereafter as PH), LII, 3 (1SM?1), pp. 445—463. CONSTITUTIONAL TRENDS AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 79 Great Polish families in the West, establish a centralized monarchy and take strong initiatives in foreign policy that benefited both the landed aristocracy and the merchants of Little Poland. Adopting .this — econom­ ically the most developed area in Poland — as power base allowed both Casimir the Great and the first Jagielloriians to set up a relatively strong state, partly because the noblês were restricted to their function as warriors and were not yet an autonomous political force. From the mid-fourteenth-century until the mid-fifteenth, the Polish kings based their rule on their alliance with the Little Polish magnates. Later, however, this policy was changed and the new power base was founded on an alliance with the Great Polish magnates. It was this group whose assistance Casimir Jagiellonian gained to crush the opposition which had come from the old aristocratic families and had been led by the Bishop of Cracow 'Zbigniew Oleśnicki. * Although neither of the two aristócratic groups had anywhere near the degree of power and influ­ ence that would later be wielded by the great families of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, nevertheless they were a force to be reckoned with. The lack of adequate source material precludes a detailed discussion of the relationship between the nobility and the landed aristocracy in the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries. For instance, we do not know whether or not the Polish magnates extended feudal patronage to knights which was the case in West Europe and which, in the late Middle Ages, constituted an important part of feudal lord’s political power. Neither are there any reliable results of research on social and economic changes in the fifteenth century, and this lacuna makes an explanation of sharp conflicts between the nobility and aris­ tocracy in the following century very difficult indeed. The fifteenth century saw an increased political and economic activity ■of the nobility in East Central Europe, although it assumed different guises in different countries. I think the earliest signs of it can be de­ tected in Teutonic Prussia, which by the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century had attained the highest level of economic development in East "Central Europe. This, however, ended in 1410, with the defeat of the Teutonic Knights, and it was followed by a period of crisis — both political and economic. In Teutonic Prussia the nobility and burghers had become politically very active by the end of the second decade of the fifteenth century. This new activism found its expression in a mounting opposition by the representatives of the burgher assemblies and nobility assemblies against the growing *The vieiw that King Casimir allied himself with the nobility against the Little Polish magnates has been disproved. 80 MARIAN MAŁOWIST fiscal pressure exerted by the Teutonic Order. Joint positions of the two estates were taken against limitations in internal and foreign commodity turnover, as well as against the Order’s monopolistic ten­ dencies in trade generally. There was wide opposition to the debasement of the coinage by the Teutonic Knights and to their unceasing demands for higher taxes; there were also demands for the streamlining of the judiciary. The Prussian nobility also fought the Order’s attemps to limit the number of people legally entitled to inherit property. The nobility and the merchants were also unanimous in their strong con­ demnation of the Teutonic Order’s foreign policy. The Order exposed Prussia to a series of disastrous wars in the years 1411—1453 apparently oblivious to its diminishing political role and the simultaneous growth of Poland’s influence. These wars were particularly harmful to Prussia’s larger towns, which were at that time forging strong economic links with Poland.s The establishment of the Prussian Union in 1441, uniting the large and middle-sized towns with most of the nobility was not surprisingly the outcome. Initially meant simply to protect the interests of these groups against the Order’s power, it eventually was forced to become openly hostile to its overlords and to advocate unioh with Poland. However, it should also not be forgotten that the nobility, merchants, and artisans of Prussia were divided into two opposing blocs, which by the middle of the century almost brought about the collapse of the Union. The antagonism broke out when the nobility confronted the merchants with extreme demands for trade concessions, in both the towns and the countryside, and for abolition of the laws limiting the nobility’s business contacts with the Dutch and English outside city boundaries. They also opposed the conflicts with the Low Countries and England, maintaining that they were having a depressing effect on agriculture. The Prussian towns were often hostile to visitors from the West, preventing them from going inland, and thus displaying their solidarity with other members of the Hanseatic League. The nobility of Prussia was also not particularly enthusiastic about the importing of grain from Poland, a trade then in the hands of the Gdańsk merchants, because they believed it brought down the price of grain in Prussia.
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