The Commonwealth faced its third interregnum in the space of fourteen years, which fostered a feeling of impermanence and did nothing to contribute to the orderly conduct of the next election. Although the candidates included the late king’s nephew Andrew Bathory and the new Tsar of Muscovy Fyodor, the contest was essentially between the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian and Prince Sigismund Vasa of Sweden. The Habsburg faction included all those disgruntled by the firm rule of King Stephen and was strongly supported by Rome and the money of Philip II of Spain. With the Armada about to sail against England, the Habsburgs were at the height of their aspiration to dominate Europe.
The anti-Habsburg camp lent their support to Sigismund Vasa, son of King John III of Sweden and Katherine Jagiellon, second sister of Zygmunt Augustus. The pro-Habsburg party attempted to force through their candidate, but on 19 August 1587 Sigismund Vasa was elected to rule as Zygmunt III. Three days later Maximilian invaded at the head of an army and laid siege to Kraków, but he was defeated by Hetman Zamoyski, who pursued him into Silesia and took him prisoner.
When Zygmunt arrived in Kraków to take up his throne he enjoyed the accumulated popularity of his Jagiellon forebears and sealed this by his excellent command of the Polish language. But the twenty-two-year-old King’s difficult childhood had marked his character and outlook. He was born in a dungeon where his parents had been imprisoned by the then King of Sweden Eric XIV, and the only ray of light in this dismal incarceration had been brought by Polish Jesuit priests who attended to his education. As the Papal Legate Annibale di Capua noted: ‘King Stephen was good to soldiers, this one will be good to priests.’
His first appointments made it clear that Catholics were more likely to get the best offices. He overruled the Sejm of 1589 when it attempted to reinforce the clauses on religious freedom of the Act of the Confederation of Warsaw. A casualty of this was Chancellor Zamoyski’s project for tightening up election procedure, which included limiting the interregnum to a maximum of eight weeks, introducing voting by delegation from the sejmiks (i.e. abolishing the universal vote), and, perhaps most important of all in view of later events, the introduction of majority voting. At the King’s insistence, the Primate introduced the
He had been elected largely for anti-Habsburg reasons, and the attempt by Maximilian to usurp his throne should have entrenched him in this position. Yet Zygmunt wasted little time in freeing the Archduke, marrying a Habsburg, and signing an ‘eternal peace’ with Vienna whose benefits for the Commonwealth were not apparent. His intentions were locked away behind a countenance of frigid reserve, and only began to reveal themselves with time.
Zygmunt had been reared by his religious mentors as the future leader of the Counter-Reformation in Sweden, and therefore regarded the Polish throne primarily as a means to an end. It seems he even considered the possibility of handing over Poland to the Habsburgs in return for their support in reclaiming Sweden for himself and Catholicism, a Sweden possibly enlarged by Polish possessions on the Baltic such as Livonia.
Chancellor Zamoyski uncovered evidence of the King’s machin—ations and in 1592 led the Sejm in a formal indictment of his behaviour, which amounted to breaking the
That same year his father John III of Sweden died, and Zygmunt determined to take up his inheritance. The Sejm allowed him to go, on condition that he returned within a year, which he did, leaving his uncle, Charles of Södermannland, as regent. The inevitable followed: Charles ruled Sweden as his own to the growing annoyance of his nephew, who went over in 1598 to reaffirm his authority, only to be humiliated. In the following year the Swedish Riksdag deposed Zygmunt, adding the proviso that his son Władysław could succeed if he became a Lutheran.