Poland полностью

Henri de Valois and his entourage travelled to Poland overland and arrived in the middle of an exceptionally cold winter. The tight hose and light jerkins of the Frenchmen were no match for the climate, and by the time the royal party reached Kraków they were frozen and depressed by the sight of the snowy wastes. The King and his new subjects were in many respects ill-matched. The mincing, scented young man, with his earrings and his codpieces, came as something of a shock to the robust Poles. In spite of this, and although he showed unwillingness to be bound by the Pacta Conventa, he was not unpopular. He was gallant towards Anna Jagiellon, though he made no move in the direction of marriage, and went out of his way to charm and captivate those he saw as the most important figures. But on 30 May 1574 Charles IX died unexpectedly, and Henri became King of France.

His intention was to keep both crowns, a course of action favoured by some magnates, who assumed that they would be free to rule in his absence, and it was agreed that he would set off for France in the autumn. But Henri made his own plans. On the night of 18 June he slipped out of Kraków and left the country.

The King’s behaviour raised the delicate constitutional question of whether there was now an interregnum or not. In the autumn, letters were despatched to the newly crowned Henri III of France, one from the Polish senators and deputies, one from the Lithuanians. The Poles gave him an ultimatum—if he did not present himself in Kraków by 12 May 1575 the throne would be declared vacant. The Lithuanians merely pleaded for his return. Henri replied that he had every intention of keeping the Polish throne, and suggested sending his younger brother the Duc d’Alençon as viceroy.

The Poles would have none of it, and called a new election. The experience of the first had considerably dampened the optimism of the voters, and only some 10,000 turned out. The magnates saw an opportunity of settling the question themselves as they had always aspired to do. The Senate conducted its own election and chose the Emperor Maximilian II, but as they gathered in Warsaw Cathedral to sing the Te Deum, the szlachta set up howls of protest. It was then that a minor candidate at the first election, Stephen Bathory, Duke of Transylvania, was suggested, and on 14 December 1575 he was acclaimed king. Stephen reached Kraków on 23 April of the following year, and was married to Anna Jagiellon and crowned on 1 May. He arrived in Poland without finery, accompanied only by a couple of regiments of Hungarian infantry. He dutifully bedded Anna, making it clear that he did not take the Polish throne lightly. A forthright man and an able commander, he knew how to pick men who would serve him well. He appointed a new Chancellor, Piotr Wolski, and a new Vice Chancellor, Jan Zamoyski, who was to become a close partner in all his enterprises and a mainstay of his rule.

But he was in a difficult position, as Maximilian brokered an alliance with Muscovy and succeeded in getting the city of Gdańsk to declare for him. King Stephen marched north to Gdańsk, but although he defeated the army sent out head him off, the prospect of a long siege was not alluring. Tsar Ivan had invaded from the east, and the international situation was looking ugly. The King therefore lured Gdańsk back to the fold with a number of trading concessions, and switched his attention to problems that had been brewing unchecked for decades while the Poles had been absorbed by their religious and political debates.

Dramatic shifts in power had been taking place around Poland since 1515, when King Zygmunt the Old, the Emperor Maximilian I and the Jagiellon King Władysław of Hungary and Bohemia had met at Pressburg (Brno) to discuss the future of East Central Europe. The two Jagiellons were then in possession of the areas coveted by the Habsburgs, but Władysław’s son Louis had no heir, and it was in order to avoid a war that the three met. The issue was settled amicably. It was agreed that Hungary and Bohemia would pass to the Habsburgs if Louis produced no heir, in return for which the Habsburgs bound themselves to eschew their traditional policy of supporting the Teutonic Order and other enemies of Poland. But other questions were left unresolved.