Sigismund I of Poland

“ SIGISMUND I. (1467-1548) , king of Poland, the fifth son of Casimir IV. and Elizabeth of Austria, was elected grand-duke of Lithuania on the 21st of October 1505 and king of Poland on the 8th of January 1506. Sigismund was the only one of the six sons of Casimir IV. gifted with extraordinary ability. He had served his apprenticeship in the art of government first as prince of Glogau and subsequently as governor of Silesia and margrave of Lusatia under his elder brother Wladislaus of Bohemia and Hungary. ”

“ Sigismund was deposed. It was decided that a Polish prince should be chosen as sovereign, and that meanwhile a provisional government, composed of twenty men belonging to the various parties, should be established. In 1422 Sigismund again invaded Bohemia, but was decisively defeated by Žižka at Nêmecký Brod (Deutschbrod) . The Polish prince, Sigismund Korybutoviĉ, now arrived in Bohemia, and was recognized as regent by the large majority of the inhabitants; but through the influence of the papal see Religious War. he was recalled by the rulers of Poland after a stay of only a few months. ”

“ This task Sigismund volunteered to undertake, and he also proposed to avert the impending war between England and France, to reconcile the Burgundian and Armagnac parties in the latter country, and to negotiate peace between the King of Poland and the Teutonic Knights. It would, indeed, be a revival of the imperial idea if its representative could thus act as a general mediator in European quarrels. The council welcomed the offer with enthusiasm, and showed their loyalty to Sigismund by deciding to postpone all important questions till his return. ”

“ Sigismund, emperor of Germany, son of the Emperor Charles IV., was markgrave of Brandenburg, king of Hungary, and palatine of the Rhine; struggled hard to suppress the Hussites; held the Council of Constance, and gave Huss (q. v.) a safe-conduct to his doom; he is the “Super Grammaticam” of Carlyle's “Frederick” (1362-1437) .
Sigismund is the name of three kings of Poland, the last of whom died in 1632.
Signorelli, Luca, the precursor of Michael Angelo in Italian art, born at Cortona ”

“ The questionable fame of a conqueror never tempted him to spend the blood of his subjects in unjust wars; but he never shrunk from a just one. His arms were successful against Russia, and Sweden was augmented by several important provinces on the east.
In the meantime, Sigismund of Poland retained against the son the same sentiments of hostility which the father had provoked, and left no artifice untried to shake the allegiance of his subjects, to cool the ardor of his friends, and to embitter his enemies. ”

“ Eminently practical, Sigismund recognized that the first need of Poland was a standing army. The miserable collapse of the Polish chivalry during the Bukovinian campaign of 1497 had convinced every one that the ruszenie pospolite was useless for serious military purposes, and that Poland, in order to hold her own, must in future follow the example of the West, and wage her warfare with trained mercenaries. But professional soldiers could not be hired without money, and the difficulty was to persuade the diet to loose its purse-strings. ”

“ The most important political event during the reign of Sigismund was the collapse of the ancient Hungarian monarchy at Mohacs in 1526. Poland, as the next neighbour of Hungary, was more seriously affected than any other European power by this catastrophe, but her politicians differed as to the best way of facing it. Immediately after the death of King Louis, who fell on the field of battle, the emperor Ferdinand and John Zapolya, voivode of Transylvania, competed for the vacant crown, and both were elected almost simultaneously. ”

“ With these he will besiege Dantzig, besiege Thorn; will plunge, suddenly, like a fiery javelin, into the heart of Poland, and make Poland surrender its claim. Whereupon King Sigismund bestirred himself in earnest; came out with vast clouds of Polish chivalry; overset Albert's 8,000;—who took to eating the country, instead of fighting for it; being indeed in want of all things. One of the gladdest days Albert had yet seen, was when he got the 8,000 sent home again. ”

“ Each of the two separate realms had a mission of its own, and with great difficulty Poland was forced to ascertain the price of political community with the only half-christianised Lithuania and Hungary to find the means of providing for her own military and political true needs, in the time of Sigismund, an emperor, a restorer of the catholic unity, a peace-maker between France and England, without feeling the lacks of him as a sovereign at home. ”

“ The diet heartily supported him, and appointed him governor-general of Sweden; whereupon he set to work in earnest to put down Catholic intriguers, and to promote the interests of the peasantry in opposition to those of the great nobles. In 1598 Sigismund advanced against him with a Polish army, and was defeated at Stängebro, near Linköping. The war went on for some time, but Sigismund himself returned to Poland. In 1600 the diet demanded that he should reside in Sweden or send his son to be educated as a Protestant. ”

“ Triumph and Dominance.—As the Reformation in Poland was steadily gathering strength and growing in influence, King Sigismund I died on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1548, and was succeeded by his son Sigismund Augustus, crowned since 1530 to succeed his father as king of Poland. Sigismund Augustus was a truly religious man, believing sincerely in the fundamentals of the Christian religion, but indifferent to the forms in which they were to be expressed. He adhered to the Church of Rome as the state church in which he had been brought up and to whose forms of worship he had become accustomed. ”

“ Even the nobles were only induced to consent to Sigismund becoming King of Poland without forfeiting his right to succeed in Sweden, by the grant of extravagant privileges, practically so great, had they been observed, as to emasculate the Vasa monarchy. Luckily the people had a deliverer at hand. Charles, Duke of Sudermania, the youngest of the sons of Gustavus I., lived wholly in the best traditions of his father's policy. He might be relied upon to head an insurrection, if necessary. ”

“ Sigismund being a Catholic, and bitterly hostile to Lutheranism, which had been introduced into Sweden by Gustavus Vasa, Charles, by the consent of the senate, assumed the government, and a decree was passed that Lutheranism should be the only religion of Sweden, and that Sigismund should not be recognized as king until he had signed the decree. This he did, and was crowned in 1593, but he became obnoxious on account of the favor which he manifested to Catholicism. There was also a party, led by Charles, opposed to a union of the crowns of Poland and Sweden. ”

“ The Khan of the Crimea, the useful friend of Vassili's father, had become the son's enemy; Vassili offset him by an alliance with the Khan of Astrakhan. When Sigismund tried to secure the help of Sweden, Vassili sought that of Denmark; and when his enemy set the Dnieper Cossacks at him, the grand duke induced the Teutonic Order to invade Poland. After Sigismund was defeated at Smolensk, the Emperor of Germany and the Pope offered to mediate; the latter advised Vassili to let Lithuania alone, and to turn his attention toward Constantinople. ”

“ The grand-prince, nevertheless, demanded, as he had done in Herberstein’s former embassy, that the king of Poland should, as a proof of his own wish to establish peace, himself send ambassadors to Moscow, and the imperial legates accordingly sent to Sigismund, who was at that time staying at Dantzig, to request his compliance with this demand. The king received the proposal without objection, and sent two noblemen as negociators ”

“ Casimir IV. (1444-1492) recovered West Prussia from the Teutonic Knights. The Wallachian invaders carried off 100,000 Poles, and sold them to the Turks as slaves, 1498. Sigismund I. (1506-1548) surnamed “the Great,” raised the country to the utmost pitch of prosperity; he was forced into a war with Russia, in which he lost Smolensk. Sigismund II., Augustus, was a successor worthy of him; Lithuania was finally joined indissolubly to Poland. Livonia was conquered from the Knights Sword-bearers. (See Sword-bearers, Knights.) ”

“ The new doctrines gained ground there in spite of severe persecution. Warsaw became the capital in 1569. The power and arrogance of the nobles grew; the necessity for unanimity in the votes of the Diet gave them a weapon to stop all progress and all correction of their own malpractices. Sigismund III. made unsuccessful attempts to seize the crowns of Russia and Sweden. In the middle of the 17th century a terrible struggle against Russia, Sweden, Brandenburg and the Cossacks ended in the complete defeat of Poland, from which she never recovered. ”

“ John Albert died unmarried. Alexander married Helen, daughter of Ivan, Grand Duke of Muscovy; but died without children. Sigismund had by his first wife, Barbara, daughter of Stephen, Count of Zips, Hedwige, who became wife of Joachim, Elector of Brandenburgh. By his second, Bona, daughter of John Sforza, Duke of Milan and Bari, he had Sigismund, second king of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, who married Elizabeth, daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand, king of Hungary and Bohemia, on the 6th of May 1543 ”

“ But he never quite dared to take the step, dreading the hostility of Catholic neighbors. Singularly enough the championship of the Catholic cause was undertaken by Greek-Catholic Muscovy, [Sidenote: 1562] whose Czar, Ivan, represented his war against Poland as a crusade against the new iconoclasts. Unable to act with power, Sigismund cultivated such means of combating Protestantism as were ready to his hand. His most trenchant weapon was the Order of Jesuits, who were invited to come in and establish schools. ”

“ They, too, had been at Uglich, and had seen the dead boy, almost seen him slain. Vengeance upon himself was their sole motive. But was it possible that Sigismund of Poland was really deceived, as well as the Palatine of Sandomir, whose daughter was betrothed to the adventurer, Prince Adam Wisniowiecki, in whose house the false Demetrius had first made his appearance, and all those Polish nobles who flocked to his banner? ”

“ Their numbers rapidly increased, deserters from all nations being attracted to them by the hope of booty, and their setcha, or head-quarters, on an island of the Dniepr, became famous throughout the land for the military services and the valour of its inhabitants. In 1540, such was the importance of these colonies to Poland, that King Sigismund granted a large tract of land above the cataracts to the Zaporogues, in order to strengthen the barrier erected by them between his dominions and the Tatars. ”

“ Much depended on the attitude of Žižka and his Táborites. Žižka, as will be remembered, had signed the first letter offering the Bohemian crown to the King of Poland. Subsequently he seems to have conceived a not unjustifiable distrust of the Polish princes. He knew that King Ladislas was entirely subservient to the Pope, though at moments when he was on bad terms with Sigismund he sometimes appeared to encourage the Bohemian national movement for the purpose of embarrassing the King of Hungary. ”

“ In 1592 Sigismund married the Austrian archduchess Anne, and the same year a reconciliation was patched up between the king and the chancellor to enable the former to secure possession of his Swedish throne vacant by the death of his father John III. He arrived at Stockholm on the 30th of September 1593 and was crowned at Upsala on the 19th of February IS94, but only after he had consented to the maintenance of the " pure evangelical religion " in Sweden. On the 14th of July 1594 he departed for Poland leaving Duke Charles and the senate to rule Sweden during his absence. ”

“ After a time, however, being of an adventurous spirit, he again repaired abroad, serving this time apparently under Sigismund III, king of Poland, in whose interest he undertook in 1623 to raise eight thousand volunteers in Scotland (Register of the Privy Council Scotland, xiii. 364) . ”

“ Afterwards he served in the Danish and Polish armies, and in 1586 was invested with the rank of a Senator of the Polish crown by Sigismund III., whom he had assisted in gaining the throne of Poland. As field-marshal of Poland he subsequently fought against Sweden, where, however, he was defeated. ”

“ He, too, like Sigismund I, wished to rule peaceably over the goats as well as over the sheep.
When we turn from the kings to the nation, we meet with the same broad-minded liberality and tolerance. The Polish nation of the sixteenth century loved liberty no less than at any other period of its history. Liberty constituted the foundation and was an essential characteristic of all its institutions, political and social. The Polish nobility worked and fought strenuously for its political rights and privileges, and having secured them, guarded them jealously. ”

“ To meet the constant inroads of the Tartars he established the Cossacks, a rough cavalry formed of the hunters, {140} fishers, and graziers of the Ukraine, quite analogous to the cowboys of the American Wild West. From being a military body they developed into a state and nation that occupied a special position in Poland and then in Russia. Sigismund's fiscal policy, by recovering control of the mint and putting the treasury into the hands of capable bankers, effectively provided for the economic life of the government. ”