32
The relatively smooth incorporation of Mazovia after 1526 and the rapidity of its integration into the Polish system completed a process of unification that had started long before 1526, and owed much to the well-established links of the Mazovian szlachta with their counterparts in Poland that were made easier by a common—albeit distant—history, and commonalities of language and culture. The process was not so smooth in Royal Prussia, where there was no dynastic link to Poland, where German was the language of government, and where incorporation into Poland between 1454 and 1466 was effected by treaties whose meaning—as in Lithuania—was contested. Yet if powerful groups among the Prussian elites proved resistant to forces of integration and unification, seeking to institutionalize and guard their autonomy after 1466, views on the relationship to Poland were by no means monolithic among the complex mosaic of social groups that made up these elites, and forces tending towards unification and closer integration with Poland were strengthened after 1500 by the continuing existence of the truncated Ordensstaat, whose grand masters still dreamt of recovering Royal Prussia.
That Royal Prussia had been incorporated into the Polish kingdom in the period 1454–66 was indisputable; as in the case of Lithuania, however, there was considerable disagreement over the nature of that incorporation. The Bund’s leaders, who now constituted the province’s governing elite, stood firmly on the measures in the union treaties that institutionalized the many differences between Royal Prussia and the rest of the kingdom. Autonomy was embodied in Prussia’s own currency minted in Danzig and Thorn—coins had to be issued bearing the king’s likeness after 1454, but that was the only common feature—its own coat-of-arms and seal, and its own governor.1 Government was exercised by the Prussian council (Landesrat), which emerged from the Bund’s secret council and was given form by the replacement of the Order’s governing structure, based on the Komturei, by the three palatinates of Pomerelia, Culm/Chełmno, and Marienburg/Malbork, in 1467. Originally it comprised the palatines, castellans, and chamberlains of the three palatinates, and representatives of Danzig, Thorn, and Elbing. The bishops were originally excluded as potential agents of the king or—in the case of Ermland—the Order, but when Casimir began appointing Prussian nobles to the bishoprics, and won his battle for control of Ermland, they were admitted in 1479 (Ermland) and 1482 (Culm). With the cities sending two representatives each, membership was stabilized at seventeen in 1526.2
It is difficult to distinguish Prussian council meetings from meetings of the estates. The union treaties stipulated that the council could not impose taxation without agreement with the commons, the gemeyne stete und gemeyne lande; thus assemblies of the Royal Prussian estates, known originally as Ständetage and later, as their form and procedures became regularized, the Landtag, became frequent: Ständetage met on 111 occasions between 1466 and 1492. While this emergence of parliamentary government paralleled developments in Poland, Lithuania, and Mazovia, the peculiar nature of Prussian society, with the prominent economic position enjoyed by its cities, in particular Danzig, Thorn, and Elbing, meant that the Prussian Landtag developed differently to the sejm. After 1466, meetings of the estates comprised members of the council and representatives of the nobility and the cities. Initially the form of its deliberations was not rigidly established and it is hard to determine the extent to which ordinary nobles and envoys from the smaller cities participated in them: the attendance of representatives from the 27 lesser cities—of which Dirschau, Stargard, Konitz, and Marienburg were the most prominent—can be confirmed for only 25 out of those 111 assemblies. The fact that when urban representatives were absent it was noticed and discussed, however, suggests that they probably attended more frequently than these figures suggest. Before 1526 the estates model of western Europe prevailed, in which—apart from the council—representatives of the nobility and the cities debated separately, although an attempt in 1488 to establish a separate chamber for the clergy foundered on the opposition of the other estates: memories of ecclesiastical rule were too fresh and too painful.3 Attempts by Casimir in 1471 and by Sigismund in 1513 to insist that authority to summon the estates lay solely with the king—as it did in Poland—stimulated fierce resistance, and could not be sustained. Although they accepted that their incorporation into the regnum meant that they could not conduct a separate foreign policy, Prussians only participated with great reluctance in the kingdom’s institutions: they refused to attend meetings of the royal council, and although Prussians were invited to the royal elections of 1492, 1501, and 1506 on the same basis as Polish nobles, only council members turned up: in 1492 they ostentatiously sent one envoy to vote on behalf of the whole province; in 1506 they sent two palatines and a castellan.4
The council tenaciously defended Prussia’s autonomy and institutional structure against the views of Casimir and the Polish council concerning the nature of incorporation, and attempts to exercise control from Cracow. The first major clash came over the office of governor, established by Casimir on 9 March 1454 for Hans von Baysen. The governor was not, however, to be the obedient executor of royal policy: he was elected by the estates and confirmed by the king. The implications were not so evident during the war, when Baysen and his younger brother Stibor, elected following Hans’s death in 1459, on the whole cooperated closely with Casimir’s government. The governor had wide powers, including the disposal of leases on royal estates. Stibor proved sensitive on matters of honour and status, and his elevation was against Casimir’s better instincts. After 1466, when he began to act more as the representative of the council and the estates than the loyal lieutenant for which Casimir had hoped, the king had second thoughts. In March 1467 he abolished the office, appointing Stibor palatine of Marienburg instead, and attempted to govern Prussia through ad hoc commissioners and with the support of Wincenty Kiełbasa, the royalist bishop of Culm. In 1472, facing growing resistance to this policy, Casimir tried to bring the province’s administration more in line with Polish norms by appointing Stibor starosta general—an official not dependent upon the estates, who could be dismissed at the king’s pleasure—but the estates refused to accept the nomination. Stibor rejected the title, styling himself governor of Prussia until his death in 1480. His son, Nicholaus, was appointed palatine of Marienburg, but Casimir did not grant him the title of governor, or the starosty of Marienburg, naming him instead administrator (Anwalde) of Prussia.5
This was a meaningless post, and Nicholaus conspicuously refused to act as Casimir’s loyal lieutenant, becoming instead a malcontent focus for opposition in both council and estates, which called regularly for the king to appoint a proper leader: a Haupt des Landes. At a meeting of the estates in Thorn in 1485 Nicholaus resigned his office and refused to take the oath as a royal councillor. When Casimir proposed a grant of taxation for the Ottoman war, a cause remote from Prussian concerns, he led the estates in forming a brief confederation, complaining about breaches of Prussian privileges, most notably the appointment of non-Prussians as starostas and the taking of decisions concerning Prussia without consulting the Prussian council.6
Although the estates demanded an end to the appointment of Poles to Prussian starosties, the confederates could not force Casimir to accept their petitions. He rejected Nicholaus’s resignation, but Nicholaus still refused to take the oath, and Casimir abandoned for the moment the attempt to find an amenable local politician to act as governor. He granted all the palatines, bishops, and the three great cities the title of Anwalde, which merely recognized its emptiness, and strengthened the role of the starosta of Marienburg as his representative in Prussia. Since 1457 he had appointed outsiders to the post: Ścibor Chełmski, the starosta general of Wielkopolska (1457–9), Jan Kościelecki, palatine of Inowrocław (1459–75), Kościelecki’s brother Mikołaj, palatine of Brześć (1475–8), Piotr Dunin (1478–84), and Paweł Jasieński (1484–5). After Nicholaus’s posturing in 1485, Casimir appointed his favourite, Zbigniew Tęczyński, a Małopolskan magnate and political heavyweight.7
Tęczyński ran the starosty astutely until 1496, but he was in a difficult position. He did not sit on the council, and his judicial powers were formally limited to his own starosty, the seventeen starosties held by non-Prussians—thirteen were in the hands of native Prussians—and to the villages of the free peasantry, die freien Bauerndörfer. It was an unsatisfactory solution to an intractable problem. In Prussia it was the palatines, not the starostas, as in Poland, who exercised jurisdiction over the castle courts. The attempt to establish a dual system of administration risked entrenching division and highlighting the role of the council and the estates in defending Prussian autonomy. The palatines may have been responsible for criminal justice, but there were problems with its administration: since the starostas controlled the royal castles, the courts of the palatines, although known as ‘castle courts’ had no permanent locations, and the starostas encroached on the powers of the palatines with royal encouragement, using their garrisons to chase bandits and arrest and imprison criminals. The abolition of the governorship left a vacuum at the head of the judicial system, since the governor, presiding over the Prussian council, had heard appeals on the king’s behalf from the lower courts. At the estates of 1467 and 1474 bitter complaints were raised against the starostas, while Casimir’s attempts to establish a new appeal court in 1468 presided over by the bishops of Culm, Ermland, and Cujavia was first revised by the estates to exclude all non-Prussians and finally rejected in 1472 in the presence of Casimir himself; this left appeals de facto in the hands of the Prussian council.8
Exerting influence over the council was difficult, however, since Casimir did not enjoy the same measure of control over the episcopate he had secured in Poland, and bishops were excluded from it until 1479. While Casimir established influence over the bishopric of Culm, it was a different matter with regard to Ermland, a 4,250 km2 wedge of land that thrust deep into the Ordensstaat from its narrow connection to Royal Prussia along the Frische Haff near Elbing. The Ermland estates supported the Bund in 1454, withdrawing their obedience to their bishop, Franz Kuhschmalz, but Ermland was not incorporated in 1454, and was only placed under Polish protection in 1464 when its bishop, Paul Legendorf, who vacillated between the two sides during the war, finally opted for Poland.9 The 1466 Thorn treaty did not regulate Ermland’s position, however, and on Legendorf’s death in 1467 the chapter provocatively elected one of its members, Nicholaus von Tüngen, instead of Kiełbasa, Casimir’s preferred candidate. Tüngen maintained that Ermland was not subject to Polish rule, but was an ecclesiastical principality recognizing no superior but the pope. On this issue, Casimir was supported by the Prussian council, concerned that Ermland might fall under the Order. In 1470 Polish garrisons in the castles beat off Tüngen’s attempt to seize them; in 1472, with the Order’s support, Tüngen occupied most of the main towns, and although the Royal Prussian estates sought to mediate, Tüngen, encouraged by Matthias Corvinus and the Order, took most of the rest in 1474. Tüngen travelled to Rome to secure papal approval, and in 1477, assured of the Order’s military support, formally withdrew his obedience to Casimir. In the brief ‘priests’ war’ that broke out in 1478, Royal Prussia—and Danzig in particular—rallied behind Casimir. The pope had no divisions; Corvinus, despite his fine words, was far away; and the Order’s forces were no match for the Poles. Tüngen, facing disaster, was only rescued by Corvinus, who brokered a settlement in 1479. Ermland was explicitly incorporated into Poland, Tüngen swore an oath of loyalty to the crown and was granted a seat on the Prussian council, while his subjects were given the right of appeal to the king, to whom they had to swear oaths of loyalty. Tüngen remained unreconciled to Polish rule until his death in 1489, and Casimir failed in his attempt to have him succeeded by Cardinal Frederick, that notable collector of bishoprics. The candidate elected by the chapter and supported by the papacy and the Prussian estates, was Tüngen’s ally on the Ermland chapter, Lucas Watzenrode, son of a Thorn burgher and Copernicus’s uncle. Watzenrode, educated in Cologne and Bologna, had begun his career in court service, where he came under the influence of Zbigniew Oleśnicki the younger when he was moving into opposition to Casimir.10
As in the case of Lithuania, it was the nature of the union with Poland that was contested after 1466, not the union itself. Despite the vigorous defence of Prussia’s privileges and autonomy there were many forces gently pushing it towards closer dependence upon, and cooperation with, Poland, and little desire to challenge the incorporation treaty upon which Prussian liberties rested. As in Lithuania, there were various interest groups that frequently clashed, and were perfectly willing to seek allies in Poland—whether the king or the sejm—to help settle Prussian conflicts. There was much about the Polish system that was attractive, particularly to ordinary nobles who had fought the Order, and who did not feel they had reaped their due reward.
The emergence of the council as the dominant force after 1466 signalled the increasing control of a small group of wealthy noble families, in a sometimes tense alliance with the great cities, who were the true victors of the Thirteen Years War. Many of these families were emigrés from the lands that formed the new Ordensstaat after 1466, including the Baysens, the Pfeildorfs, the Mortangens, the Feldens, the Legendorfs, the Cygenbergs, and the Dameraws.11 Their influence eclipsed that of the ordinary nobles who had fought the Order, whose voice was still heard in the estates, but who were in no position to challenge the council elite. In several respects the council families were more powerful even than in Małopolska, since the Order’s legacy ensured that there was a greater proportion of royal land to be granted by the king as starosties: 50.9 per cent of the land after 1466, as compared with 33 per cent in Małopolska; 33 per cent in the palatinates of Ruthenia, Podolia, and Bełz; 15 per cent in Wielkopolska; and 14 per cent in Mazovia. Since the royal lands contained many uncultivated wildernesses and forests, the proportion of cultivated land held by the crown was 38.9 per cent overall, although in the palatinate of Marienburg, royal land comprised 56.7 per cent of all land, and no less than 60.3 per cent of the cultivated land, reflecting the Order’s domination of what had been its heartland.12 Even if Casimir granted more than half the Prussian starosties to Polish outsiders, leases on the rest were controlled by this small elite which—thanks to the principle of indygenat guaranteed in 1454–66—dominated high office: the Baysens provided four out of six palatines of Marienburg between 1454 and 1569, one palatine of Culm, one castellan of Danzig, two castellans of Elbing, and frequently held the most significant starosties, including Stuhm (four holders), Mewe, Christburg (three), Tolkemit (three), Golub, and Schönsee. The Zehmen provided two palatines of Marienburg, one of Culm, one of Pomerelia, two castellans of Danzig, and held the starosties of Christburg (two holders), Mewe (two), Stargard (two) and Stuhm.13
The tight grip of this small group of families on leaseholds on royal land that were proving ever more lucrative as Prussia’s economy began to boom caused much resentment among the wider nobility. Support for closer links with Poland grew among ordinary nobles, many of whom—especially in the Culm palatinate—were Polish or of Polish descent. After 1466 the Prussian elites, whether of Polish or German background, were increasingly drawn to the University of Cracow as it entered its greatest period of intellectual distinction. Between 1466 and 1525, 495 Royal Prussian students matriculated in Cracow, among them Copernicus, who studied there between 1491 and 1495, and his brother Andreas. Matriculations in Cracow substantially exceeded those in Leipzig, the next most popular destination, with 363 between 1471 and 1525. Over half were German-speaking burghers from Danzig, Thorn, and Elbing, including Johann von Höfen or Flachsbinder (1485–1548), from a German emigré family of noble origin that lost its property during the Thirteen Years War and settled in Danzig, where Johann’s father made a fortune brewing beer. Johann studied at Greifswald and Cracow, before entering service at John Albert’s court and making his reputation as a humanist and Latin poet. Starting as a secretary under Łaski, he became a trusted diplomat and acquired the name under which he became known in humanist circles across Europe: Joannes Dantiscus, Jan Dantyszek in Polish. He served under Tomicki, and enjoyed a distinguished diplomatic career, undertaking missions to Vienna, Rome, the Netherlands, and London, where he met Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More—he was later to befriend Thomas Cranmer in Regensburg—before ending his career in Prussia, becoming a canon of Ermland (1529), bishop of Culm (1530), and Ermland (1537).14
Copernicus and Dantyszek were exceptional, but their careers demonstrate the extent to which the 1454–66 union opened up opportunities in Poland for Prussian nobles and burghers. The path they followed was not unusual, and was one way in which loyalty to the king and the wider union state grew, and spread through various institutions, including the church, where the number of canons on the Culm and Ermland chapters who were either Poles or had been educated in Poland grew. Kings used their power of appointment to introduce royal supporters onto the council, such as Jan Bajerski, created palatine of Pomerelia in 1483.15 Even as a common Prussian identity developed, based not on nationality but on a shared past, common institutions, and the memory of the struggle against the Order—the subject of a rash of historical works—the growing contacts with Poland created opportunities for the strengthening of royal influence, and there was in consequence a gradual growth of support for the process of unification.
Casimir’s death in 1492 opened a new chapter in Prussia’s relationship to Poland. His appointment of Zbigniew Tęczyński had hardened opposition to attempts to rule the province directly through the starostas, and he ended his life in a bitter dispute with Watzenrode that looked like it might even end in war when John Albert was ordered to summon the Prussian levy to enforce Casimir’s will in Ermland. Yet Watzenrode was no Tüngen, and much of Casimir’s hostility to him was artificially sustained by members of the Polish council. Watzenrode may have angered John Albert by attending his coronation and whispering ‘et terrarum Prussarum’ after the primate—his former mentor Oleśnicki—had intoned the section of the coronation oath in which the new monarch swore to respect Polish liberties, but the new reign was marked by a change of atmosphere. Watzenrode distanced himself from Oleśnicki’s opposition to John Albert and after a dispute with the Order that flared up in 1493 he instigated a rapprochement. When John Albert visited Thorn in October 1494, Watzenrode begged his pardon, and remained at his side throughout his eight-month Prussian stay, becoming one of his closest advisors.16
Watzenrode had ambitions to become the dominant politician in Prussia, and perhaps even governor, a prospect that opened up in 1496, when John Albert dismissed Tęczyński. The election of Frederick, younger son of the elector of Saxony, as grand master of the Order in 1498 gave Watzenrode another reason for looking to Poland: Frederick’s election was a reaction against the previous grand master, Johann von Tiefen, who, despite initially refusing to take his oath of loyalty after his election in 1489, finally did so in 1493, and thereafter favoured good relations with Poland: he died leading a contingent of troops during the 1497 Moldavian campaign. A powerful group within the Order sought to use Frederick’s connections to the Empire to reopen the question of its territorial losses in 1466, and his election opened a period of tense relations that lasted until 1525.
The move helped cement better relations between Poland, Ermland—all but surrounded by the Ordensstaat—and the Royal Prussian estates. While Watzenrode had defended Prussian autonomy before 1494, thereafter he gradually moved in a more integrationist direction, even supporting the levying of taxes in Prussia to support the Ottoman war. Without consulting the Prussian council or estates, Watzenrode and Nicholaus von Baysen began attending meetings of the royal council, and in 1499 Watzenrode appended his seal to the 1498 peace treaty with Moldavia. At the 1509 Piotrków sejm he broke with precedent by taking a seat in the senate.17 He continued to defend Prussian autonomy, in 1501 demanding a separate oath from Alexander to uphold Prussian rights against the Polish claim that since Prussia had been incorporated and therefore formed one body with Poland, there was no need. Watzenrode responded that although they were one body, a body has limbs with different functions, an argument that Sigismund August later appropriated with regard to Lithuania. Watzenrode argued that Royal Prussia was a separate country with separate laws, in respect of which it should swear a separate oath of allegiance, as did the Lithuanians, which, Watzenrode suggested, should be to the king alone. Yet his support for Prussian autonomy was broader in theory than in practice. Despite Alexander’s failure to appoint him governor, and his surprise nomination of Ambroży Pampowski, palatine of Sieradz, another Pole, as starosta of Marienburg in 1504, Pampowski was subordinated to the council, which Watzenrode saw, under his own guidance, as the key institution in the province. Despite Pampowski’s appointment, and despite occasional opposition to individual measures, Watzenrode supported many of the king’s centralizing policies, and was keen that he be followed as bishop by a Pole.18
Pampowski’s appointment did not mark a return to the days of Tęczyński. It came as a direct result of a request from the Prussian estates for a Haupt des Landes during Alexander’s visit to Marienburg in May 1504, during which he swore to respect the province’s privileges and received oaths of loyalty from his Prussian subjects.19 The request stemmed in large part from the estates’ desire for a more effective legal system, and above all for a system of appeal from the lower courts. The failure of Casimir’s attempt to establish an appeal court in 1472 left appeals in the hands of the council; since the palatinates also controlled the castle courts, the ordinary nobles—and members of other estates—had little faith in their ability to win any appeal.
Pampowski’s appointment did little to solve the problem, and the experiment ended in 1510 when Sigismund removed him as starosta of Marienburg and Haupt des Landes. His six years in Prussia, however, marked a distinct change of tone in the relations between the province and the rest of the kingdom. With Pampowski’s appointment, Alexander achieved what his father had singularly failed to, since he was accepted on the council despite his lack of indygenat status. Despite his precedence disputes with Watzenrode—who had not welcomed the appointment—Pampowski’s easy manner gradually won over many among the Prussian elites, and he initiated a process of reform that, while it respected the province’s traditions, was much influenced by Polish models.
Watzenrode worked with Pampowski—initially with some reluctance—and other members of the Prussian council on a new Prussian statute, influenced by Łaski’s efforts in Poland, that was intended to combat the mounting anarchy that so disturbed the estates: local nobles were often at loggerheads with the towns over trade, disputes were common, and the fragmented nature of the court system meant that few emerged satisfied, and an increasing number sought recourse in violence. The situation was exacerbated by Danzig’s robust defence of its privileges, which provoked much resentment not just among the nobility, but among other towns and even its own burghers, excluded from power by the narrow patrician group that ran the city. The state affairs had reached was symbolized by the private war waged by the Materna family of small merchants between 1493 and 1517, which received considerable support from impoverished Cashubian nobles.20
Watzenrode, who had urged the establishment of a court of appeal at the 1503 Prussian estates in Elbing, secured the nomination of a royal commission in September 1506 which, in addition to himself and Pampowski, contained two Poles: the archbishop of Gniezno, Andrzej Boryszewski, and the bishop of Cujavia, Wincenty Przerębski. The statute presented to the estates by the commission on 18 September 1506 displayed many Polish influences in its regulation of the judicial system, including the reorganization of the land courts along Polish lines, and its arrangements for the calling of the levy, although much local practice was retained: thus regular musterings were established on the Polish pattern, although they were to be the responsibility not of the palatines and castellans as in Poland, but of local commissions. The powers of starostas over the nobility were reduced, although they retained responsibility for implementing land court verdicts. There was to be a high court of appeal, convened by the starosta of Marienburg, comprising three representatives of the nobility, three of the great cities, and two canon lawyers representing the bishops of Culm and Ermland, appointed by the Prussian council, not the king. The most significant measure was the establishment of a central Prussian treasury, run by a Prussian treasurer, who was to present accounts to the starosta of Marienburg and a commission of the council.21
Alexander died before the statute could be enacted, and it foundered on the powerful opposition of Danzig, which refused to recognize the right of the proposed court to hear cases judged in its own courts, and of Elbing, which insisted that because it still operated on Lübeck law, appeals from its courts could only be heard in Lübeck. Sigismund, who proved less accommodating to Watzenrode than his elder brothers, struggled for four years to rescue the legislation, but some measures did come into effect, including the establishment of the new Prussian treasury under its first treasurer, Jan Konopacki. Sigismund’s attempt to appoint Watzenrode as supreme judge in Prussia, and Pampowski to the position of starosta general to enforce his verdicts failed at the 1509 estates, although Watzenrode took most of the flak, while the astute Pampowski secured his own recognition as supreme judge and his consequent admission to the Prussian council. Pampowski began hearing appeals but the solution was seen as temporary, and was only possible because of Pampowski’s political skills: his death at the end of 1510 left Sigismund with no plausible candidate to succeed him, and the long attempt to rule through a Polish starosta general was abandoned.22 Nevertheless, the acceptance of the first non-native Prussian on the council was a significant moment, and demonstrates that the problems of the judicial system resulted from internal Prussian conflicts rather than any clash between Polish integrationism and Prussian separatism: the 1506 statute was characterized by a sensible spirit of cooperation, in which the common aims of improving the operation of the judicial system combined ideas taken from Polish practice with local Prussian structures and customs.
In 1511 Sigismund sent Łaski to try again. Łaski was no friend of Watzenrode, and favoured Danzig, but he brokered a compromise in a meeting of the estates held in the city in June. The Danzig courts and Danzig citizens—except for individuals who owned landed estates—would not be subject to appeals to the high court, which would only judge appeals from the land courts. This was a partial defeat for the king, as was the clause that overturned the 1506 stipulation that Danzig’s representatives on the Prussian council would be selected by the king from four names nominated by the city council, but the 1511 reforms nevertheless marked an important stage in the establishment of a new relationship between Royal Prussia and the rest of the kingdom.23
Łaski’s astute negotiations revealed much about the complexity of Prussian politics. Watzenrode, who was in dispute with Danzig and had hoped to use ecclesiastical law to settle the dispute in his favour was astonished to see that, with Łaski’s encouragement, Danzig was perfectly willing to have its case heard by the sejm, although it was not so happy when Dantyszek—himself born in Danzig—appealed a case to the royal court from the city court in 1512, which was returned to the Prussian council, effectively annulling the Danzig court’s verdict.24
If even Danzig was willing on occasion to use the institutions of the union state to secure its aims, this was even more true of other groups in society, most notably ordinary nobles, who increasingly saw in Polish law and Polish institutions means to advance their own cause. After the successful implementation of the 1511 statutes, unificatory trends gathered pace. This did not mean that Prussians accepted Polish views of the nature of the incorporation, or that they wished to end their distinctiveness and surrender their autonomy; it meant that Prussians were increasingly ready and willing to adopt or adapt Polish models to suit their local circumstances, and to play an increasing role within the union state. As in Lithuania, there was a broad spectrum of opinion; while there were fierce arguments, their use by nationalist historians to portray the relationship as one of entrenched hostility is greatly overdrawn.
National and ethnic loyalties played little or no role. The greatest impetus for change came from ordinary nobles, who had most to gain from the adoption of Polish-style institutions and Polish noble privileges which, in a province in which urban-dwellers constituted over a third of the population and the three great cities were an integral part of the ruling oligarchy, proved increasingly attractive. From the outset, ordinary nobles had shown an interest in Polish institutions: in 1454, the Prussian estates called for the introduction of local offices on the Polish pattern.25 In 1488 there were the first signs of support for royal policies from among the nobility—especially the Culm nobility—at the estates, when they accepted most of the royal proposals.26 Nobles were particularly supportive of royal attempts to reform the Prussian legal and monetary systems: from the early sixteenth century, calls for a currency union with Poland intensified as Prussia suffered from the circulation of poor-quality coins. Nobles were increasingly dissatisfied with some of the features of Culm law, established as the sole law code in Royal Prussia in 1476. Other systems of law previously in operation, such as Polish and Magdeburg law, were no longer recognized, although Ermland was not covered by the decree, and the handful of cities—notably Elbing—that used Lübeck law—were exempted.
Culm law, a mixture of Flemish, Saxon, Magdeburg, and Polish law, had been introduced by the Order and developed to aid its drive to colonize the Prussian lands. The lack of any modern codification of the law, however, caused problems, as did certain of its provisions, most notably with regard to inheritance law. Unlike Magdeburg law, which privileged inheritance in the male line, or Polish law, which stipulated the division of property among all children, Culm law safeguarded inheritance in the female line in a provision of Flemish origin under which daughters could claim up to half of their father’s property.27 This suited the urban environment, but it caused serious problems for ordinary nobles, owing to the peculiar conditions of Royal Prussia following the dismantling of the Order’s power. Although this put an end to the Order’s control of the land market through the stipulation that it had to approve all sales of land, nobles owned only around one third of the land, while the nature of Culm law meant that they did not enjoy full allodial rights. The protection of daughters’ rights in a province where the availability of cultivated land was limited; where—unlike in Poland—there was no ban on burghers purchasing landed properties; and where the great cities controlled substantial landed estates, Culm law over the generations promoted subdivision of estates. With leases on royal land in the hands of Poles or members of the narrow group of Prussian council families, there was little chance of securing the capital from that source to mitigate the effects of subdivision. Consequently, by 1570, of 1,232 known noble properties in Royal Prussia three proprietors (0.24 per cent) owned over 100 hides (1,670–1,750 hectares) of farmland; twenty (1.6 per cent) owned more than 60 hides (1,002–1,050 hectares), eighty-four (6.8 per cent) owned more than 20 hides (334–350 hectares). Only 455 (36 per cent) had tenant farmers at all: among the numerous petty nobility the average holding was a mere 3 hides (50.1–52.5 hectares), with 407 estates over 3 hides, but without tenants.28
The effects of subdivision were particularly galling as the boom in agricultural products brought ever greater profits to owners of large estates. The lesser Prussian nobility began looking enviously at their Polish counterparts: Polish inheritance law did not support primogeniture, but its weaker protection for the rights of daughters left noble families with more options to counteract property leaving the family by marriage. The Prussian political system, dominated as it was by a narrow group of families, and by the great cities, gave ordinary nobles little hope of effecting any change in the law, as Danzig’s blocking of legal reform in 1506 and 1511 demonstrated.
Thus if the Prussians defended the principle of indygenat, and opposed Poles acquiring estates and offices in the province, they were by no means hostile to the adoption of Polish institutions and Polish law. Loyalty to the union was strengthened by the renewal of conflict with the Order following the election of the energetic twenty-four-year-old Frederick, younger son of Albrecht, duke of Meissen, as grand master in 1498, and in particular after he was succeeded in 1511 by Albrecht von Hohenzollern, from the Franconian branch of the family, the third son of Frederick I of Ansbach-Bayreuth and his wife, Sophia, Sigismund I’s older sister.29 Albrecht’s election opened the last phase of Poland’s wars against the Order. Encouraged by Maximilian I, Albrecht adopted a hostile attitude towards his uncle; for the next fourteen years he pursued a revanchist policy, hoping for support from the Empire to overturn the 1466 Thorn treaty.
Albrecht’s hopes were soon dashed. Maximilian did pursue a broadly anti-Polish policy and indulged in grand gestures, such as summoning Danzig to the Reichstag in 1495 and placing it under an imperial ban in 1497 for refusing to pay imperial taxes, but he was more interested in advancing Habsburg interests in the Jagiellon kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary. His hostility was strongest in the years after Sigismund’s marriage to his first wife Barbara, daughter of Stefan Zápolya, palatine of Transylvania, but was reduced considerably in July 1515, when he reached agreement with Sigismund in Vienna over the betrothals of Anna, daughter of Sigismund’s brother Władysław, to one of his grandsons, Charles or Ferdinand, and of his granddaughter Maria to Władysław’s son Louis. The marriages did not take place until 1521, when Anna married Ferdinand, and 1522, when Maria married Louis; until they did, Maximilian, and then Charles, who succeeded him as Emperor in 1519, while not entirely friendly towards Poland, at least offered Albrecht no support.
Albrecht, however, encouraged by Vasilii III, who was delighted at the prospect of a war that would distract Sigismund, did not back down. In 1519, as he sought the support of German princes, and of Christian II of Denmark, and as reports came in of his attempts to raise 10,000 men in the Empire, Sigismund decided to act, supported by the Prussian estates and Danzig, which ordered a blockade of the Order’s ports. In December 1519 Sigismund launched Poland’s last war against the Order. It was a messy affair. Albrecht was unable to secure substantive aid from the many princes he courted, but he raised enough of an army to prove an obstinate foe. Although the Polish forces were larger and superior in the field, Albrecht’s imaginative campaigning and seizure of key strongpoints, including Braunsberg and Allenstein in Ermland, meant that the Poles, deficient in infantry and siege guns, had to adopt a strategy of laying waste to the countryside to try and force a settlement. After two years of often desultory fighting, peace was made in April 1521, mediated by Hungary and the Empire.30
Despite Albrecht’s plucky resistance, the Order’s days were numbered. With widespread reports of debauchery among the brothers and a recruitment crisis as the currents of the Reformation coursed across northern Germany, the disadvantages of electing a German prince grand master became apparent. Albrecht was a canny politician; aware that he had little chance of winning another war with Poland, he turned his mind to a possibility that he had long considered: to secularize the Order’s lands and turn the Ordensstaat into a secular principality. Encouraged by Martin Luther, with whom he entered into a lively correspondence—it was difficult to have a dull correspondence with Luther—Albrecht turned to Sigismund, aware that Charles V, who was executing heretics in the Netherlands with conspicuous enthusiasm, was unlikely to prove sympathetic. Sigismund, unconvinced that the sejm would agree the means necessary to crush the Order, was prepared to listen. On 10 April 1525, in a magnificent ceremony on Cracow market square, Albrecht knelt before Sigismund to swear homage. The Ordensstaat was secularized, becoming a fief of the Polish crown, to be held by Albrecht and his heirs. The Poles insisted that they were to be known as dukes in—not of—Prussia; should the dynasty become extinct in the direct male lines of Albrecht and his three brothers, the duchy would revert to Poland.31
Generations of Polish historians, with the dubious benefit of hindsight, have castigated Sigismund for his failure to crush Albrecht and the Ordensstaat, although Halecki and Vetulani rightly argued that the Cracow treaty should not be judged on account of its unforeseen consequences. There were certainly contemporary politicians, including Dantyszek and the bishop of Ermland, Moritz Ferber, who criticized Sigismund for his niggardly caution and stressed that he need not have been so generous.32 Whatever the consequences of Sigismund’s decision to settle—and he was aware of the dangers of establishing a Hohenzollern duke in Prussia—he had little reason to suppose that it would be easy to crush Albrecht. His Polish and Prussian subjects showed no appetite for voting funds on the necessary scale, while there were good reasons to fear that attempts to do so would galvanize Charles V and Denmark. Relations with Muscovy remained tense; with the Ottoman threat building in the south, it would have been rash to overcommit himself.
Moreover, although the Royal Prussians had proven perfectly loyal during the war, the rapid spread of Lutheran ideas across Prussia in the early 1520s introduced a new note of uncertainty. Sigismund may have acted as midwife for the first Lutheran state in Europe in 1525, but he responded quickly and decisively to stem the spread of Lutheranism in Danzig, which had been torn by political strife since the collapse of the city’s finances in 1517, as a consequence of the policies of the narrow patriciate that dominated the city. With tension rising, and demands for reform emerging from the commonality, the spread of Lutheran ideas created a volatile situation. It was by no means clear after 1521 that Danzig would support a new war against Albrecht. It was therefore sensible for Sigismund to settle with Albrecht before dealing with Danzig, where an attempt by the patriciate to reassert its authority in January 1525 backfired badly, provoking riots. In April 1526 Sigismund entered Danzig with 3,000 men to restore order and the Catholic religion. He executed ringleaders of the popular movement and restructured the city’s government to take account of the demands of the commonality, while ensuring that the new council of the 100 was dependent on the patrician elite.33
Whatever the long-term consequences, the Prussian homage of 1525, as it came to be known, marked Poland’s complete victory over the Order, and opened a long period of political stability on the southern Baltic coast which allowed Danzig and Royal Prussia to flourish. Good relations were restored between both parts of Prussia, whose elites still saw themselves as belonging to one country divided into two parts, each enjoying a different relationship to Poland. Since they still shared a common currency and, in Culm law, a common law code, envoys from both parts of Prussia regularly attended meetings of the estates in the other part, to negotiate on matters of common interest: between 1466 and 1488, envoys from the Ordensstaat attended the Royal Prussian estates on seventeen occasions, and the relationship resumed after 1525, despite the fact that the Royal Prussians were not pleased at the Cracow treaty, since they had hoped for the reunification of Prussia, or at least the annexation of the diocese of Pomezania.34
Albrecht retained a close interest in Royal Prussian and Polish politics, but despite his best efforts, ties between Royal Prussia and Poland had strengthened considerably by his death in 1568. The province’s social and political divisions were not resolved; indeed they were deepened by the rapid spread of Lutheranism in the cities: Sigismund may have successfully remodelled Danzig’s constitution, but his attempt to turn the Protestant tide was a failure. In 1526, Danzig definitively adopted the Reformation; Thorn and Elbing rapidly followed. Catholicism remained strong in the countryside, however, and the victory of Protestantism in Ducal Prussia and the Royal Prussian towns ensured that the bishops of Culm and Ermland looked more eagerly than ever to Poland for support.35
The attraction was particularly strong among ordinary nobles, whose experience of Prussian autonomy was rather different to that of the council oligarchy. Although the Prussian council and the Prussian estates continued to conduct their business in German after 1466, the Polish language made rapid inroads among Prussian nobles of German descent from the 1510s and 1520s. It was only in the seventeenth century that Polish became the normal language of debate in the Prussian Landtag, but by 1527 there were already complaints from representatives of the great cities that some council members were using Polish at meetings, even though they spoke good German. In 1555 a speech by Wysocki, a Gniezno canon, to the Prussian estates no longer had to be translated into German; by now royal decrees and ordinances to the province were circulated in Polish, and debates in the estates frequently took place in Polish: two protests from the nobility at the Landtag in 1563 and 1565 concerning breaches of the province’s privileges were written in Polish. The council families were already polonizing their names: the Baysen emerged as the Bażyński; the Zehmen became the Cema; the Dameraw became the Działyńskis, and the Mortangen became the Mortęskis. They polonized the names of their estates, so Paulsdorf became Pawłowo; Witramsdorff emerged as Wytramowice, and Kunzendorff became Conczewicze. The Kleinfelds from 1531 styled themselves Krupocki, taking the name from their estate of Krupoczyn. Some families abandoned their traditional coats-of-arms and sought to attach themselves to Polish heraldic clans: thus the Golststein, originally from the lower Rhine, adopted the Jelita coat-of-arms; the Zieh adopted the Ogończyk crest, and the Hacke attached themselves to the Lubicz.36
None of this meant that these families had forgotten their roots, or thought of themselves as Poles. The spread of the Polish language among the nobility ran parallel to the development of a strong sense of Prussian identity that was bilingual and bicultural, as the concept of a natio Prussica was consolidated. From 1525 historians based in Royal Prussia, in particular Simon Grunau (c.1470–1531) and Caspar Schütz (1540–94), drawing on the work of Erasmus Stella (c.1460–1521) and Prussian chroniclers hostile to the order such as Posilge discerned the origins of the Prussian nation in a past that was neither Polish nor German, but derived from the Baltic Pruzzen, from whom a handful of noble families such as the Raba and the Machwitz (Machwicz) could claim descent. Bilingualism embedded itself, and individuals would use the Polish or German form of their family name depending on the context.37
Identity was not exclusive, as nineteenth-century nationalists urged that it should be, but multi-layered, and it was by no means clear even to contemporaries, what constituted a true native Prussian, an indygena. At the 1533 Graudenz Landtag, there was a bitter dispute between Jan Dantyszek/Johann Flachsbinder and Stanisław Kostka (1487–1555), appointed Prussian treasurer in 1531, over the estate of a deceased priest in Dantyszek’s Culm diocese. Kostka had been born in Prussia, but his father was an immigrant from Mazovia. As a young man Kostka served at Władysław Jagiellon’s Buda court, then became a loyal servant of Sigismund. He inherited an estate in Cujavia and was granted several starosties as he rose in royal service, including Golub and Dirschau in Prussia. Despite his Prussian birth he was regarded as an outsider. His appointment as treasurer was not welcome to the council, on which he did not sit. Under attack from Dantyszek and other envoys at the 1533 Landtag, he stamped out of the chamber to complain to Sigismund, denouncing his tormentors as anti-Polish. Dantyszek retorted that he and his fellow councillors were no less Poles in their loyalties than Kostka, who had been born among them.38
The two sides buried the hatchet at the 1536 Landtag. Kostka subsequently worked amicably with Dantyszek and the council, but the exchange reveals the complex web of loyalty and identity that characterized Royal Prussia. Patriotism was multifocal: depending on context, Prussians could claim to be Germans, Prussians or loyal Poles, and their acceptance of individuals as Prussians depended on the acceptance of certain attitudes and norms of behaviour. Awareness among the ordinary nobility of the potential advantages of closer involvement in the politics of the wider union state was growing. The 1511 statute had by no means brought the legal system into a satisfactory state as far as ordinary nobles were concerned, and demands for further reform to Culm law continued. With the council refusing to listen to noble demands they began to look for other channels through which they could press their case. In December 1519 the sejm met in Thorn, where Sigismund had travelled to organize the war against Albrecht. Some Prussian nobles attended, observing the way in which the sejm operated. It was not long before they took to heart the lessons they learnt there. At sejms held in Thorn, and in nearby Bydgoszcz a year later, labour rent in Poland was standardized at one day per week; demands for a similar law in Prussia, where ordinary nobles were just as affected by the ability of wealthy landowners to lure away their tenants, began to be heard. A delegation of Prussian nobles appeared at the 1521 Piotrków sejm with complaints about Danzig. At the next Prussian Landtag in Graudenz in March 1522
the nobility presented their gravamina and proposals, which included demands for reform of inheritance law, a ban on burghers purchasing landed estates, and better regulation of urban guilds, all of which drew explicitly on Polish models. There was a powerful sting in the tail, for the nobility also demanded that they be free to send one envoy from each palatinate to attend the Polish sejm so that they could secure the same privileges enjoyed by their Polish counterparts, a proposal that was strongly opposed by the council, which defended the separate nature of the Polish and Prussian estates.39
The threat was clear: if the council refused to take their demands seriously, then nobles knew an institution that might. The threat did not go unnoticed, and political and judicial reform returned to the agenda. The Prussian estates were already evolving. From around 1512, a lower house on the Polish model was taking shape, albeit in a Prussian form, as the lesser nobility and representatives of the smaller cities began to debate together and coordinate their demands. In 1517 a request was put to the palatines that they respect the Polish principle of summoning envoys from the nobility, but also from the lesser cities, while in 1521 it was laid down that local assemblies—sejmiks to use the Polish term—should meet at least twice a year.40
The decisive breakthrough came in the summer of 1526 when Sigismund summoned the Landtag to Danzig. He was accompanied by several Polish politicians, including Krzysztof Szydłowiecki, who had taken part in the Landtag debates, while the absence of representatives from Danzig and Elbing, in the throes of the Reformation crisis, gave the noble envoys an excellent opportunity to realize their reform programme. The outcome was a new Landesordnung, agreed by the estates on 17 July.41 The document reveals much about the complex process by which unificatory tendencies were melded with respect for local tradition. Sigismund promised only to appoint native Prussians to offices, dignities, and starosties, and ordered that henceforth every palatine should carry with him a copy of Royal Prussia’s privileges, to ensure that his judgements were compatible with the law. A commission was appointed to codify and reform Culm law, which was to contain, in addition to Tidemann Giese and Achacius Freunt, both canons of Ermland, two Danzig lawyers, Franz Soldau and Philipp Holkner, but also Łaski’s protégé Maciej Śliwnicki, a Gniezno canon, who had helped prepare Łaski’s digest of Polish law.42
Measures were taken to reform the provision of justice by regulating the land courts, and by establishing that the Landtag, not the council, would henceforth hear appeals from the land and urban courts, with a right to appeal against its verdicts within one year to the king. The Landtag was to meet biannually, in Dirschau and then in Graudenz, to hear these appeals; its protocols were to be kept by a competent judge selected from one of the land courts by the council.43 The most significant measure, however, was the establishment of a system of local assemblies—sejmiks—on the Polish model. These were to meet in the districts of each palatinate in order to elect envoys to the Landtag. This measure definitively established the Prussian Landtag as a bicameral body—the only provincial sejmik in the union to have this form, with the Prussian council forming the upper chamber—or senate, as it became known—whose composition was fixed at seventeen members. The lower chamber was formed by envoys from the district sejmiks, and by representatives from the councils of the twenty-seven smaller cities. Although they were summoned separately—noble sejmiks were summoned by the palatine, while the summonses for urban envoys were issued by the royal chancery—noble and urban envoys appear to have deliberated together. Urban envoys attended the Landtag far more frequently than they had before the reforms: while sessions were sometimes thinly attended, there were only four sessions between 1548 and 1562 at which their absence was noted.44
None of these developments heralded any dilution of Prussian determination to protect the province’s interests against Polish incursions. Dantyszek, who had argued with Kostka in 1533 over who was the better Pole, threatened to return his diocese to loyalty to the archbishopric of Riga in 1535 during one of his many arguments with the Polish church, while the Prussian clergy adamantly refused to attend Polish synods. Ordinary nobles might look for support to the sejm, but obdurately maintained that although the kings of Poland had committed themselves to defend Prussia, the Prussians had never agreed to similar obligations with regard to Poland.45
The establishment of the bicameral Landtag opened a new phase in the relationship between Royal Prussia and Poland, which saw the gradual strengthening of integrationist forces, despite frequent rancorous disputes. The most important manifestation of such forces was the establishment of the currency union agreed in the 1526 statute.46 This was a considerable achievement. A common currency for Poland, Prussia, and Lithuania was proposed by the 1510 Piotrków sejm, but the Prussian estates, while supporting monetary reform, were not generally in favour of currency union. The great cities, keen to defend their profitable minting rights, were hostile. The dispute stimulated the preparation by Copernicus of three versions of his treatise on coins, presented to the Landtag in 1517, 1522, and 1526.47 The promise by Albrecht to abandon the separate minting of coins in the 1525 Cracow treaty, and the absence of envoys from Danzig and Elbing at the 1526 Landtag, however, enabled a compromise to be reached. Presented with a fait accompli, the great cities grumbled, but the argument was over details, not the principle of currency union, and a compromise was finally reached in 1529. Henceforth Poland and both parts of Prussia shared a common coinage, although the cities retained their minting rights.48
The currency union was a major step in the unification process, and ensured that Prussians would have to take a closer interest in the sejm. This was officially encouraged: from 1537, when, after demands from the szlachta for Royal Prussia to bear its share of defence costs during the Lwów rokosz, all royal summonses to the sejm were sent to the Royal Prussian sejmiks. The council may steadfastly have refused to accept Polish invitations to attend the senate, but the appearance of ordinary Prussian nobles at sejms became increasingly common, despite the increasingly sharp tone of demands from the chamber that the Prussians produce the privileges on which they claimed exemption from paying their share of defence costs. The Prussian council insisted that they were not senators, and that ordinary nobles had no right to participate in sejm debates. Sigismund’s death in 1548, however, when the council was anxious to obtain a confirmation of Prussia’s privileges from Sigismund August, and when the council and the ordinary nobility found common cause in opposition to certain appointments of non-Prussians—several inspired by Bona—to starosties and offices in Prussia, marked the first occasion on which a full delegation from both chambers of the Landtag appeared at the sejm.49
It was an important moment. While Prussian nobles attended the sejm in growing numbers before 1548, they took no official part in it, merely observing debates and making private representations on matters that concerned them. It was becoming increasingly difficult, however, for the Prussians to ignore the sejm and its decisions, which inevitably bore consequences for Prussia, while Polish demands that the Prussians, whom the Poles were obliged to defend, should bear their share of the common burdens of the union state were put with increasing force. In 1530 Łaski raised the issue in a speech to Sigismund August’s coronation sejm. Echoing arguments put by the Poles at Constance a century earlier, he stated that the Prussian and Pomerelian lands belonged to Poland, as was demonstrated by local place-names derived from the ‘Polish mother-tongue’. That many of them were now inhabited by Germans was the result of the Order’s illegal seizure of these lands, and their expulsion of the Polish population, who were replaced by the Order’s German compatriots. These lands had now been restored to Poland. Łaski echoed Oleśnicki’s arguments with regard to Lithuania during the coronation tempest, citing the terms ‘reunivimus’, ‘reincorporimus’, and ‘reintegramus’ used in the incorporation privilege as they had been used in Horodło. It therefore followed, Łaski argued, that Poles and Prussians ‘form one body; the inhabitants [of both countries] are the subjects of one lord, and constitute one people and one brotherhood’.50 He challenged the Prussian interpretation of indygenat, claiming that because of the nature of the incorporation, Poles could be appointed to any office in Prussia, just as Prussians could be appointed to any office in Poland: a Pole was an indygena in Prussia, just as a Prussian was an indigenatus in Poland. It was therefore just that the Prussians should contribute to general taxes, and bear the burdens of military campaigns and whatever was necessary to protect the security of the realm, just as the Poles had sacrificed their lives and property to liberate Prussia from the Order’s tyranny.51
The members of the Prussian council present prepared a written response in which they attacked Łaski’s interpretation of the incorporation privilege and grumbled that they had simply come to Cracow to attend the coronation; they therefore had no powers from the Landtag to negotiate on matters that touched the whole realm. Łaski’s speech may have reflected the views of many Poles, but it achieved little apart from upsetting the Prussians. It was subsequently alleged that Sigismund had made a secret, written undertaking to the szlachta in 1529—the year ofMazovia’s successful incorporation—to secure their support for his son’s election, in which he promised that when Sigismund August took over the government, he would end the separate status of Royal Prussia, Lithuania, and the Silesian duchies of Oświęcim and Zator, purchased by Casimir IV in 1457. Even if this is true, it seems unlikely that Sigismund, given his tense relations with Łaski, would have encouraged his intervention; indeed he chided himthrough Tomicki for it, although he had to consume a large slice of humble pie for having failed to invite the Prussians to Sigismund August’s election. The Prussians pored over the document he gave them to make amends, in which he confirmed and strengthened Prussia’s rights to participate in royal elections, and the Prussians forced him to acknowledge certain council interpretations of the incorporation privilege.52
Łaski’s speech was the opening shot in a battle that lasted until 1569 over the nature of the relationship between Royal Prussia and Poland. It demonstrates the consistency of Polish views of union and its nature, and highlights the extent to which the szlachta had adopted the interpretation of union that Oleśnicki had outlined a century earlier. As the execution movement gathered strength during the 1540s, calls from the chamber for the Prussians to take their place in the sejm in accordance with the Polish interpretation of the 1454 incorporation grew in strength and frequency. Yet the context was different to that of Lithuania. While Lithuania still faced the unresolved Muscovite threat throughout this period, the Order’s defeat and the creation of Ducal Prussia in 1525 had transformed Royal Prussia’s situation. Łaski might huff and puff about the sacrifices the Poles had made to liberate it, but that was now ancient history; after 1521 there were, for the moment, no serious threats to Prussian liberty.
Yet the Poles could not take Royal Prussian loyalty for granted. Albrecht von Hohenzollern, that supple politician, took a close interest in Royal Prussia. He played on the historic unity of Prussia, encouraged family links across the border, and promoted the idea of a general Prussian indegenat. He cultivated leading Royal Prussian politicians, including Johann von Werden, the mayor of Danzig ennobled for his part in putting down the troubles in 1525–6, Georg von Baysen, palatine of Marienburg, and Achacius von Zehmen, chamberlain of Pomerelia then castellan of Danzig, and Baysen’s successor as palatine of Marienburg. Despite his Lutheranism, he maintained a regular correspondence with the bishops of Culm and Ermland, establishing particularly close relations with Dantyszek.53 His closest correspondent on the council was Achacius von Zehmen: 320 letters have survived to Zehmen from Albrecht, and 51 replies. These men looked to Albrecht for support during Baltic conflicts, such as the war between Lübeck and Christian II of Denmark (1535–7), and in disputes with Poland. Albrecht supported the council’s defence of Prussian autonomy, was happy to encourage the loosening of ties to Poland, and supported council opposition to the programme of the Royal Prussian nobility.54
Albrecht’s attitude to Poland was ambivalent. He was just as well connected to leading Polish politicians, including Szydłowiecki and Tomicki, and had a wide range of contacts, with 315 correspondents in Poland and 404 in Lithuania between 1525 and 1548.55 The Cracow treaty had granted him a place in the senate, yet Sigismund refused to summon him to its meetings and failed to invite him to the 1529 royal election. Albrecht protested to no avail when he turned up to the coronation sejm: Sigismund may have humoured the Royal Prussians but he conceded nothing to Albrecht, who received various excuses over the years, but was never admitted to the senate.56 He did, however, use his extensive network of correspondents to seek support for his main aims, which included Polish recognition for the succession of the Brandenburg Hohenzollerns should his branch fail—a distinct possibility after all his brothers died childless—and more ambitiously, the possibility of the election of his son, Albrecht Friedrich, to the Polish throne should Sigismund August die without a male heir. His support for the council meant that his influence over the Royal Prussian nobility was limited. By April 1537—when Zehmen and Werden travelled to Königsberg to attend a secret council with Albrecht and the ducal Prussian council—the nobility of Culm and Pomerelia were becoming militant, sending a separate delegation to Sigismund for the first time to complain at council policies; throughout the 1540s and 1550s, groups of Prussian nobles attended sejm sessions, while complaining at their local sejmiks about council policy.57 Yet ordinary Prussian nobles also defended Prussia’s status and position within the union. Despite their opposition to many of the council’s policies, there was no strong support for overturning the Prussian interpretation of the incorporation documents. This meant that as the execution movement stepped up its pressure for closer union with both Lithuania and Prussia in the 1560s, it was the relationship between Poland and Lithuania that took centre stage. Nevertheless, when the showdown came at Lublin in 1569, it did not catch the Prussians unprepared.
1 Małłek, ‘Stany’, 71; Historia Pomorza, ii/i, ed. Gerard Labuda (Poznań, 1976), 45–6; Stanisław Kubiak, Monety i stosunki monetarne w Prusach Królewskich w 2 połowie XV wieku (Wrocław, 1986), 24–30; Urzędnicy Prus Królewskich, 15–16.
2 Janusz Małłek, ‘Ze studiów nad dwuizbowym systemem reprezentacji w Prusach Zakonnych, Prusach Królewskich i Prusach Książęcych od XV do XVIII wieku’, CPH, 44/1–2 (1992), 237–8; Historia Gdańska, ii, 1454–1655, ed. Edmund Cieślak (Gdańsk, 1982), 262; Karin Friedrich, The Other Prussia: Royal Prussia, Poland and Liberty, 1569–1772 (Cambridge, 2000), 24–5.
3 Janosz-Biskupowa, ‘Chronologia zjazdów stanów Prus Królewskich w latach 1466–1492’, AUNC, Historia, 9 (1973), 58, 113; Małłek, ‘Dwuizbowy system’, 238; Janusz Małłek, ‘From the rebellion of the Prussian League to the autonomy of Royal Prussia: The estates of Prussia and Poland in the years 1454–1526’, PER, 14/1 (1994), 21; Turowski, Innenpolitische, 58; Zbigniew Naworski, ‘Status Prus Królewskich w Rzeczypospolitej Obojga Narodów: evenement czy reguła?’, in Tomasz Ciesielski and Anna Filipczak-Kocur (eds), Rzeczpospolita państwem wielu narodowości i wyznań (Warsaw, 2008), 63–4.
4 ASPK, v/i, no. 8, 10; Małłek, ‘Stany’, 71–2; Historia Pomorza, 74; Turowski, Innenpolitische, 49.
5 Górski, ‘Prussian estates’, 45; Górski, Starostowie malborscy w latach 1457–1510 (Toruń, 1960), 33–4, 74; Urzędnicy Prus Królewskich, 11.
6 Górski, ‘Prussian estates’, 49–50; Małłek, ‘Estates’, 23–4.
7 Górski, Starostowie, 11, 19, 36, 57–62.
8 Zbigniew Naworski, Szlachecki wymiar sprawiedliwości w Prusach Królewskich (1454–1772) (Toruń, 2004), 44–5, 208; Janina Bielecka, ‘Organizacja i działalność sądów grodzkich w Prusach Królewskich od wieku XV do XVIII włącznie’, Archeion, 65 (1977), 157–8; Bogucka, Kazimierz, 126–7; Górski, Starostowie, 61–2.
9 Stanisław Achremczyk, Historia Warmii i Mazur (Olsztyn, 1997), 69.
10 Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 49–51, 76–9; Górski, Watzenrode, 8–12, 17–21; Achremczyk, Historia, 70–1.
11 Jolanta Dworzaczkowa-Essmanowska, ‘Ruch szlachecki w Prusach Królewskich w pierwszej połowie XVI wieku’, Unpublished Masters dissertation, University of Poznań, 1951; Górski, ‘Pierwsze czterdziestolecie Prus Królewskich, 1466–1506’, RG, 11 (1938), 33–4.
12 Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 201. The figures for Poland are from Sucheni-Grabowska, ‘Królewszczyzny’, in Encyklopedia historii gospodarczej Polski do 1945 r., ii (Warsaw, 1981), 390.
13 Górski, Starostowie, 73; Urzędnicy Prus Królewskich, 194–5; 198–9.
14 PSB, iv, 424–30; Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 109–10.
15 Małłek, ‘Estates’, 23.
16 Górski, Watzenrode, 48, 70.
17 Górski, Watzenrode, 70; Turowski, Innenpolitische, 75–6.
18 Górski, Watzenrode, 73–7.
19 Górski, Starostowie, 127.
20 Historia Gdańska, ii, 270–1.
21 ‘Constitutiones terrarum Prussiae’, CIP, iii, no.2, 2–10; Zbigniew Naworski, ‘Sejmik generalny Prus Królewskich jako trybunał apelacyjny prowincji’, AUNC, Prawo 30 (Toruń, 1990), 131–2; Górski, Starostowie, 140–50; Górski, Watzenrode, 78–83.
22 Naworski, ‘Sejmik’, 132–3; Górski, Starostowie, 169–70.
23 ‘Constitutiones terrarum Prussiae’, CIP, iii, no. 79, 171–84; Naworski, ‘Sejmik’, 133.
24 Górski, Watzenrode, 93; Naworski, ‘Sejmik’, 133.
25 36.7 percent of the inhabitants of Royal Prussia, excluding Ermland, lived in towns—43.1 percent in the palatinate of Marienburg: Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 258.
26 Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 75.
27 Friedrich, Other Prussia, 41; Janusz Małłek, ‘Prawo chełmińskie w Prusach Krzyżackich (1466–1525) i Prusach Książęcych (1525–1620)’, in Zbigniew Zdrójkowski (ed.), Księga Pamiątkowa 750-lecia prawa chełmińskiego, ii (Toruń, 1988), 137–9; Janina Bielecka, ‘Organizacja i działalność sądów ziemskich w Prusach Królewskich od wieku XV do XVIII włącznie’, Archeion, 63 (1975), 148.
28 Antoni Mączak, ‘Prusy w dobie rozkwitu gospodarczego i w okresie walk o zjednoczenie z Koroną’, in Historia Pomorza, ii/i, ed. Gerard Labuda (Poznań, 1976)’, 202–3.
29 Jacek Wijaczka, Albrecht von Brandenburg-Ansbach (1490–1568) (Olsztyn, 2010), 12–13, 38–9.
30 See Marian Biskup, ‘Wojna Pruska’: Czyli walka Polski z Zakonem Krzyżackim z lat 1519–1521 (Olsztyn, 1991); Jan Tyszkiewicz, Ostatnia wojna z Zakonem Krzyżackim 1519–1521 (Warsaw, 1991).
31 Die Staatsvertäge des Herzogtums Preussen. Teil I: Polen und Litauen. Verträge und Belehnungsurkunden 1525–1657/58, ed. Stephan Dolezel and Heidrun Dolezel (Berlin, 1971), nos. 1–9, 12–56. The classic accounts are by Adam Vetulani, Lenno pruskie od traktatu krakowskiego do śmierci księcia Albrechta 1525–1568 (Cracow, 1930), 1–123, and Stephan Dolezel, Das preussisch-polnische Lehnsverhältniss unter Herzog Albrecht von Preussen, 1525–1568 (Berlin, 1967).
32 For the debate see Wijaczka, Albrecht, 106–15.
33 Historia Gdańska, ii, 233–48.
34 Małłek, ‘Estates’, 28.
35 The impact of the Reformation in Poland-Lithuania and Royal Prussia will be fully analysed in volume 2 of this study.
36 Turowski, Innenpolitische, 89–91.
37 Friedrich, Other Prussia, 83–5; Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 120; Bömelburg, ‘Das Landesbewußtsein im Preußen königlich polnischen Anteils in der Frühen Neuzeit’, in Sabine Beckmann (ed.), Kulturgeschichte Preußens königlich polnischen Anteils in der Frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen, 2005), 47.
38 Lengnich, Geschichte, document 61, 144.
39 Essmanowska-Dworzaczkowa, ‘Ruch’, 22; Małłek, ‘Estates’, 28; Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 84.
40 CIP, iii, no. 247, 619–21; Małłek, ‘Dwuizbowy system’, 241.
41 ‘Constitutiones terrarum Prussiae’, CIP, iv/i, no. 78, 232–9; Essmanowska-Dworzaczkowa, ‘Ruch’, 31.
42 CIP, iv/i, no. 78, 234; Essmanowska-Dworzaczkowa, ‘Ruch’, 31–2.
43 CIP, iv/i, no. 78, 235–6; Essmanowska-Dworzaczkowa, ‘Ruch’, 32; Naworski, ‘Sejmik’, 134–5; Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 355.
44 CIP, iv/i, no. 78, 236; Witold Szczuczko, ‘Izba niższa sejmiku generalnego Prus Królewskich 1548–1562. Struktura i tok obrad’, in Zenon Nowak (ed.), W kręgu stanowych i kulturowych przeobrażeń Europy północnej w XIV–XVIII w. (Toruń, 1988), 142.
45 Essmanowska-Dworzaczkowa, ‘Ruch’, 64, 93.
46 CIP, iv/i, no. 78, 239.
47 Nicholas Copernicus, Meditata de aestimatione monetae (1517); Modus cudendi monetam (1522); Monete cudende ratio (1526).
48 Essmanowska-Dworzaczkowa, ‘Ruch’, 37–8.
49 Essmanowska-Dworzaczkowa, ‘Ruch’, 82, 92, 106, 108; Historia Pomorza, ii/i, 362.
50 ‘Folgete also daß Polen und Preussen einen Cörper, beyder Einwohner eines Herrn Unterthanen, ein Volck, und eine Brüderschafft ausmachten’: quoted by Lengnich, Geschichte, 88–9; the original is in BPGdańsk, 300/29, no. 9, f. 414v. Włodkowicz argued at Constance that the Culm lands were naturally part of the Polish kingdom on account of the fact that their inhabitants spoke Polish: Stanislaus Belch, Paulus Vladimiri, i (The Hague, 1965), 280 n. 16.
51 Lengnich, Geschichte, 89.
52 Lengnich, Geschichte, 82–3, 89; Małłek sensibly suggests that, if Sigismund did make such a promise to secure support for the election, he had no intention of implementing it: Dwie części Prus, 74.
53 For Albrecht’s correspondance with Stanisław Hozjusz, bishop of Ermland, and with officials of the bishopric see Herzog Albrecht von Preußen und das Bistum Ermland (1550–1568), ed. Stefan Hartmann (Cologne, 1993).
54 For this relationship, see Janusz Małłek, Prusy Książęce a Prusy Królewskie w latach 1525–1548 (Warsaw, 1976).
55 Wijaczka, Albrecht, 169.
56 Wijaczka, Albrecht, 178–84.
57 Małłek, Dwie części Prus, 75; Małłek, Prusy Książęce, 144–5.