37
The legislative achievement of the execution sejms was substantial, although it remained to be seen if their statutes were any more enforceable than those of 1440, 1454, and 1504. That was a problem for the future. The szlachta had other matters to consider. For Sigismund August’s embrace of the executionist programme was not confined to revindication of the domain. As his response to the Małopolskan szlachta in May 1562 and his instructions for the 1562 sejm demonstrated, he had also changed his position over the union. He discussed the matter with the Lithuanian council before leaving for Piotrków, securing its agreement that the issue should be placed on the sejm agenda.1 His conversion to the idea did not, however, mean that he was abandoning the Radziwiłłs. Although a delegation from the Vitsebsk camp, led by Jan Chodkiewicz, fulfilled its promise to come to Piotrków if their desire for a joint sejm was rejected, Sigismund August refused to receive it, and it was restricted to private meetings with Polish envoys. Despite the tensions that had arisen between them, Sigismund August had no wish to break with the Radziwiłłs; indeed he intended them to take a leading role in the negotiations.2 On 6 December 1562 he wrote to Czarny fromPiotrków stating his intention to summon a joint sejm of all his realms to discuss ‘effective realization of this union’.3
The declaration was received with great enthusiasm by the sejm, but the question of the royal domain absorbed so much attention that consideration of the issue was postponed; indeed the envoys showed more interest in the question of closer union with Royal Prussia and the Silesian duchies of Oświęcim and Zator, since there the execution programme with regard to the royal domain was a live issue. Negotiations took place during the sejm, and the Silesians agreed to incorporation subject to certain conditions. The Prussian case was more complex, and no settlement was reached.4
A sense of urgency was injected by news of the fall of Polatsk, which reached Piotrków on 25 February 1563. Sigismund August, deeply shaken, opened a debate on how to rescue Lithuania. The Poles responded generously, agreeing to the calling of the levy, an offer that the king tactfully declined, and voting substantial rates of taxation to raise professional troops.5 The Polish commitment was, however, conditional upon the calling of a common sejm to discuss closer union. Summoned in August 1563 to gather in Łomża, it opened on 11 November in Warsaw, where the accommodation was more suitable, to meet the Lithuanian request that it take place nearer the border. The Lithuanian delegation arrived on 14 December; deliberations continued until early April 1564.
It was preceded by a meeting of the Lithuanian sejm in Vilnius in May and June, which focused on the disastrous military situation following the fall of Polatsk, blame for which was ascribed to the levy. By January 1563 Rudy had a mere 100 horse from the levy at his disposal. Facing a Muscovite army of up to 32,000 with 150–200 siege guns, he could not save Polatsk, whose garrison numbered no more than 2,000 men, including 500 Polish infantry and 30–40 guns. Rudy had only 2,000 Lithuanians under his command, and 1,300–1,400 Polish professionals; after these were joined by forces sent by Czarny, the Lithuanian contingent may have reached 5,000.6 The 1528 military reforms had not provided Lithuania with an army capable of resisting the Muscovites, and the envoys petitioned for the levy’s reform, demanding that starostas and all holding leases on domain land should serve in the district companies, not separately as was then the case. Twenty out of thirty-eight demands concerned defence, and the tenor was notably hostile to the council elite. The programme was not implemented in full, but the sejm did undertake substantial revisions of military obligations. All were to serve from their hereditary estates, raising one man in ten as decreed by the 1544 Brest sejm. Those who failed to respond were to have their estates confiscated, with the grand duke receiving two-thirds of the land and the rest assigned to those who had brought the failure to his attention in what was an informer’s charter.7
Although the petition did not mention closer union, the extent of noble support for it was clear, allowing Sigismund August to take the initiative. A delegation of twenty-eight was appointed. Led by Czarny it included leading councillors and individuals ‘from the estate of lords and princes’: Walerian Protasewicz, bishop of Vilnius, Mikołaj Pac, bishop nominate of Kyiv, Rudy’s elder son Mikołaj, and Hieronim Chodkiewiz, castellan of Vilnius. There was one noble envoy from each district, and the urban estate was represented by two Vilnius burgomasters.8 The delegation’s composition was a compromise between the council lords and the nobility. The lords had for the first time agreed to the presence of noble representatives, but their hand had been forced by the Polish demand for a common sejm. When the delegation reached Warsaw the Poles complained at its small size, but were told that in the desperate situation faced by Lithuania, defence of the realm was the main priority, and no more men could be spared.9
The instructions reveal much about Lithuanian thinking. They envisaged a union aeque principaliter, in which Lithuania’s dignity and separate status were to be preserved, but in which there were to be common institutions in what was a blueprint for a real, if limited, institutional union.10 The Lithuanians insisted that they were based on previous union treaties. The conceptual framework was largely provided by Mielnik, with its concept of two peoples joined into one body, with one common head:
We wish that in perpetuity there should be one prince, one king, one duke, one lord in the kingdom of Poland as in the grand duchy of Lithuania, under whom it were as if, under one head, each political community formed one body and one people.11
The instructions exist in several versions. Kutrzeba and Semkowicz print two Latin versions and a Polish translation, published by Działyński. The parallel Polish translation—which may be Działyński’s own, since Kutrzeba and Semkowicz could find neither the original nor the copy he cited—translates uterque populus as ‘the people of both states’ (lud obojego państwa) and gens as ‘nation’ (naród). These are dubious translations. The Latin text does not here use the term dominium, usually translated in sixteenth-century Polish as państwo, although it appears elsewhere in the document. The texts are striking, since although they closely echo the formulations of the Mielnik treaty, the way they use the Latin terms is subtly different. According to Mielnik, Poland and Lithuania were to be united ‘in unum et indivisum ac indifferens corpus, ut sit una gens, una populus, una fraternitas et communia consilia eidemque corpori perpetuo unum caput, unus rex unusque dominus’.12 The 1563 instructions maintain this idea, but stress that this one body should be formed by two separate ‘political communities’, the best translation of the Latin ‘populus’.
Thus if the instructions accepted the nebulous metaphor of one body politic under one lord elected in common, which would meet regularly in common sejms to discuss matters of common interest, they rejected the idea of one political community, insisting not on Lithuanian statehood, but on the continued existence of a separate Lithuanian political community, a Lithuanian republic. Should Sigismund August produce an heir, the instructions proposed that he be elected vivente rege; historians have suggested that this was designed to allow a return to the Vytautan system, but it seems more likely that it was simply an attempt to give the Lithuanians the initiative in the election of a successor, as they had done with Sigismund August himself, in a measure that may have appealed to him as a means of avoiding the dangers of an interregnum.13 Since the Poles were unlikely to accept the proposal, it may simply have been a bargaining counter.
The instructions made clear the extent to which the Lithuanians were willing to compromise on the road to closer union. The main stress was on the common election of one ruler, who was to embody Lithuania’s distinct status. He was to be crowned king in Cracow, but there was to be a separate coronation as grand duke in Vilnius, and the title of grand duke was to be preserved.14 There was no echo, however, of the plans of the 1420s and 1520s for Lithuania to be raised to the status of a kingdom. It was to remain a separate realm, however, with a separate treasury, separate offices of state, its own laws and court system, and its own army. The principle of closer union was embodied in the acceptance of a common currency, a common foreign policy, and common defence: wars were only to be fought with the agreement of each realm. In a major concession, the Lithuanians agreed that Poles could acquire and hold landed estates in Lithuania in return for similar arrangements in Poland.
It is usually suggested that these instructions marked the hijacking of the Vitsebsk programme by the magnates and the king.15 While it is true that there were differences between the two documents, they should not be exaggerated. The Vitsebsk petition demanded a common sejm for all matters, but the Vilnius instructions suggested that common sejms be held only for important matters of mutual concern. In practice, if both war and foreign policy were to be conducted in common, and since the need for taxation to pay for war was the most common reason for calling a sejm, it was likely that sejms would, more often than not, have to be common. The Lithuanians had good reason to be wary about the institution of a common sejm on all matters, however. The union state was huge, and Lithuanians would have to travel vast distances to attend sejms, at considerable expense: the instructions therefore warned of the dangers of calling sejms for trivial reasons.16 In any case, as Halecki observes, separate sejms did not breach the terms of previous treaties of union. In most other respects, the Vilnius instructions were broadly in line with the Vitsebsk petition.
Support for closer union among ordinary Lithuanian nobles did not mean that they accepted the Polish incorporationist programme as outlined by the executionists, who believed that all that was required was for the union treaties to be executed. Although the Vitsebsk petition stressed the need for one sejm and one law, it clearly envisaged the continuation of a separate Lithuanian realm, for which it used the term państwo. As in the Vilnius instructions, separate Lithuanian offices were to be maintained, including government offices, from which Poles were to be excluded, as was a separate army under its own hetman. The 1529 Lithuanian statute was to be preserved, albeit amended and improved to include certain liberties and privileges granted under Polish law.17
Thus although the Vitsebsk petition was more radical than the Vilnius instructions, enough common ground was found to present a united front to the Poles in support of a union aeque principaliter. The envoys were to ensure that Lithuania retained its dignity, territorial integrity, and, crucially, its legal autonomy and power of government (dignitas, amplitudo et iuridicio imperiumque). Its ancient privileges were to be preserved. In the common parliament Lithuanians were to be seated on equal terms, according to their status, and were not to be regarded as inferior to their Polish counterparts; similar demands were made with regard to the army. Poles were not to command campaigns in Lithuania, just as Lithuanians should not in Poland.18 Lithuania was to be regarded as equal in every respect to Poland, and this equality was to be carefully preserved: thus Vilnius was to have the same status as Cracow.19
The 1563–4 negotiations in Warsaw were not about whether union, but about the union’s nature and the practical arrangements by which it should be institutionalized. After the fall of Polatsk, the Lithuanians could not afford to push the Poles too far. Yet although historians frequently present the matter as a discussion between Poles and Lithuanians, neither side was united in its views. There were radicals and moderates on both sides. Between them was an astute and resourceful monarch who had served his political apprenticeship and was not afraid of dramatic action, or of challenging entrenched tradition.
One such challenge was a decree issued in Vilnius on 7 June 1563, in which Sigismund August unilaterally and perpetually annulled clause eleven of the Horodło treaty, which limited office to Catholic nobles.20 This was no impetuous act, but had been carefully prepared. The confirmation of Horodło during the fuss over Ostrozky’s appointment as palatine of Trakai in 1522 had highlighted the second-class status of Orthodox nobles, who made clear their disapproval, and joined the wider campaign for a revision of noble privileges and amendments to the 1529 statute at the 1544 Brest sejm. Sigismund I claimed that such corrections were unnecessary, but had been forced to promise to appoint a commission of five Catholic and five Orthodox nobles to consider amendments to the statute.21 It never met. Sigismund August replied, when reminded of the matter at the 1551 sejm, that the nobles had not chosen its members as he had suggested in 1547. This time, however, the commission was established, and began its work.
By 1563 Sigismund August was ready to accept its findings. His decree removed the restrictions on Orthodox nobles being appointed to office, and allowed their entry into Polish heraldic clans.22 He thereby completed the process, begun in 1432 and 1434, of granting full rights and complete equality to Orthodox nobles. Despite the fuss caused by the appointments of Orthodox nobles to high office in 1522 and 1551, grand dukes had quietly ignored clause eleven for many years. It was the Lithuanian council lords who clung to Horodło, not the Jagiellons, who were well aware of the dangers of excluding the Orthodox from power. At a time when they were being asked to contribute on the same basis as Catholics to the war against an Orthodox foe, and when the sejm was decreeing that the Orthodox clergy should pay taxes on the same basis as their Catholic counterparts, it was sensible and just to remove the last remnants of discrimination.
Yet was the context of the war the only motivating factor, as Ianushkevich claims? It was undoubtedly important: as he points out, the concession was made at a sejm called exclusively to deal with the problems of defence after the fall of Polatsk.23 It opened after Sigismund August’s dramatic public conversion to the executionist cause in Piotrków, where the instructions for the Lithuanian delegation to the Warsaw sejm were drafted. It is unlikely, therefore, that the question of the union played no part in the decision. The 1568 confirmation of the 1563 privilege stressed that one reason for the concession was to win Ruthenian support for closer union, although Ruthenians probably did not need much persuasion: Ruthenian nobles had been prominent among those pressing for reform since the 1520s. Orthodox nobles had been present at Vitsebsk, and one of their number, Havrylo Bokei, was a member of the second and third delegations sent with the 1562 petition to Sigismund August.24 This enthusiasm for reform sounded a warning to the Lithuanian council, which realized that it was not just Muscovy that was angling for Orthodox support. The 1563 privilege was therefore signed by the Lithuanian council, including Czarny and Rudy, and the Catholic bishops. Czarny’s conversion to Calvinism had in any case altered his perspective, and opened the way to a different approach to the Orthodox issue.
The Ruthenian question was to play a central role in the drama that lay ahead, but after the end of the Vilnius sejm in July 1563, attention focused on the negotiations that began in Warsaw in early December. The sejm opened on 12 November, bickering its way impatiently through piles of documents thrown up by the execution process. As at Piotrków a year earlier, attendance was high, with 95 envoys present, although the senators proved less assiduous, and many delayed their arrival. The speaker, Mikołaj Sienicki, was an accomplished and experienced politician, an envoy from the Chełm district at every sejm since 1550, who had already served as speaker on three occasions.25 The Lithuanians were formally welcomed by the senate on 14 December; their letters of accreditation were read on 19 December, but it was not until 7 January that the Poles began discussing the union—although the 1432 Hrodna union had been read out on 27 November—despite the desire of many senators to start as soon as possible in order to escape the relentless execution process.26
The Poles began the debate alone. To their disappointment, the Lithuanian delegation was small and the sejm did not take the form of a common parliament. The Lithuanians for the most part debated separately, although the Poles claimed that the Lithuanian envoys wished to sit among them but were prevented by the council lords.27 The opening ceremonies on 14 and 19 November were only attended by Czarny, Protasewicz, and Prince Władysław Zbarazky, representing the council, and Rudy’s son Mikołaj, representing the ‘lords and others from the knightly estate’.28 Mikołaj was an unconvincing representative of the Vitsebsk petitioners, but he did not in any case have the opportunity to state his views: throughout the discussions, which lasted a month, only Czarny spoke on Lithuania’s behalf. He spoke frequently, eloquently, and at length, but this hardly constituted the joint parliament the Poles had so long desired, to their evident frustration.
That Czarny exercised a dominant influence over the Lithuanian delegation is certain. He was closely involved in its nomination, and it contained none of the envoys from the Vitsebsk camp. He controlled what was said in the chamber, and what was reported back to the Lithuanian envoys, although there are occasional hints of dissent, suggesting that the delegation was not as united as Jasnowski claims.29 Czarny has, therefore, been widely blamed for the failure of the negotiations. He is accused of wanting only ‘the loosest form of union’, and the continuation of the status quo.30 Only the two large Muscovite armies that invaded Lithuania in January 1563, potentially threatening Vilnius itself, had forced him to compromise, and to contemplate the settlement towards which he was inching, with agreement reached in principle on a number of contentious issues. The situation changed dramatically, however, on 1 February when news arrived of a stunning victory by the Lithuanian army, led by Rudy, over a much larger Muscovite force at Chashniki on the Ula river on 26 January, which enabled Czarny to adopt a much harder line.31
The influence of Chashniki on the Warsaw negotiations should not be exaggerated. While it undoubtedly stiffened Czarny’s resolve and gave him an excellent propaganda opportunity, the widespread assumption that agreement was close, with only ‘a few disputed points’ to be settled is optimistic.32 Nothing had been formally accepted by the Lithuanians before 1 February. There was no agreement on the fundamental issues of the continued existence of separate Lithuanian offices, the preservation of the title of grand duke, and a separate coronation.33 Although various compromises had been suggested, none had proven acceptable, and in late January it was agreed that disputed points should be postponed to another joint sejm, a point included in the draft Polish terms presented on 2 February, which suggests that agreement was proving rather more difficult than is usually assumed.34
The Warsaw discussions revealed that the two sides were separated by more than differences on practical arrangments. Moreover, if Czarny proved a tough and fearless negotiator, bargaining fiercely and alone in long speeches in a frequently hostile chamber, it was the Poles who were principally to blame for the stalemate. Despite their willingess to concede on minor points concerning practical arrangements, they proved utterly inflexible with regard to the union’s nature. This rigidity was signalled on 7 January, when the senate and the chamber debated the union without any Lithuanian presence. Treasurer Walenty Dembiński set the tone, presenting an incorporationist vision of which Oleśnicki would have been proud. He stated bluntly that while it was necessary to strengthen the union, in its essence it had already been achieved. Everything was laid out in the old acts of union; all that needed to be done was to ensure that they were enforced, so that there would, in future, be one single election, as they decreed, and no more separate elections by the Lithuanians. As to the nature of the union, the parties to it formed, in his view, a unitary state. He showed some sensitivity to the Lithuanian desire to retain the grand duchy’s name by proposing that although the union state was to have a common name, the title ‘grand duchy’ might be used for Lithuania as a province alongside Małopolska and Wielkopolska. His proposed name for it—New Poland—showed rather less sensitivity.35
Thus Lithuania was to be reduced to the level of a Polish province. There was to be one prince—the king of Poland, who was no longer to bear the title grand duke of Lithuania—one state seal, one marshal’s staff—by which Dembiński meant no separate Lithuanian offices—and one legal system. He stated that ‘if there is to be a union, let the grand duchy’s territories be regarded as lands of the [Polish] crown’. He airily dismissed the issues raised by the Lithuanians in their instructions, saying merely that they could be sorted out.36 Dembiński set the tone. Bishop Filip Padniewski of Cracow drily observed that when Jagiełło came chasing after Jadwiga’s hand he had been told that if he did not wish to accept the terms on offer, which included incorporation, there were plenty of other suitors. Jagiełło had accepted, and the union was effected. While Vytautas and others had ruled Lithuania, they had done so as vassals and lifetime administrators. Suzerainty had always remained with the Polish crown, to which starostas in Lithuania swore their oaths.37
The notion that the union was done and that all that was required was some light dusting was even more eagerly propagated in the chamber. For the executionists, the laws had been passed; the treaties agreed; they simply needed to be executed. The Lithuanians were cast as the villains who had ignored the law, and little concern was shown for Lithuanian sensibilities. Yet the matter was by no means straightforward. Challenged by Czarny, Sienicki had to admit that the crown archives were in such a state of disorder that the Poles could not even find some of the old acts—including the original of the crucial Mielnik treaty—despite the registers recently drawn up by Marcin Kromer, who had quoted them in his great chronicle, published a decade earlier. Fourteen crates of documents were hastily ordered up from Cracow in the hope that the Poles might find the ‘spisy’ in which they placed so much store.38 This slight embarrassment did not, however, prevent speaker after speaker from pontificating about the meaning of the spisy. Jagiełło, it was suggested, had tied an indissoluble knot, and the full panoply of Horodło synonyms was trotted out: the Lithuanians were told that they had been incorporated, inviscerated, annexed, and appropriated. Their instructions were in breach of the old agreements, and therefore could not be countenanced. Their sins against the union were paraded before them. They were upbraided for pre-empting royal elections by their separate elevations of successive grand dukes, which was not a ‘brotherly act’, and told that the union, by incorporating Lithuania, had in eternity ‘established not a league or association of political communities, but from two states had formed one state, one people, one council, and one republic, under one lord: the king of Poland’.39 It was therefore impossible and, indeed, illogical, that Lithuania should continue to have its own title, symbols of its separate status, and offices. Lithuanians, like Małopolskans or Wielkopolskans could of course serve in Polish office under the crown, but many speakers were unable to hide the fact that they regarded Lithuanians as inferior. The primate, Jakub Uchański, observed with studied vagueness that kingdoms always had something in them that was superior to mere provinces or duchies.40 It was clear where power would lie in this great Polish vision: while the Poles were willing to countenance a Lithuanian as field hetman of the common army, overall command would always lie with a Polish grand hetman.41
The Polish vision of union propounded at Warsaw took the metaphor of the body politic alluded to in the Mielnik treaty and used it to promote the idea of a unitary state.42 From their point of view Mielnik had been agreed with the Lithuanians, even if they had subsequently refused to ratify it. Yet in their insistence that the metaphor of the body politic could only admit one interpretation, and that the union state had therefore to be unitary in nature, they went far beyond Mielnik. There was nothing in its terms about Lithuania’s relegation to the status of a province; indeed its second clause specified that bishops, palatines, and dignitaries ‘in ipso Ducatu’ would participate in royal elections. Lithuania was regarded throughout as a separate realm, and clause twelve promised to uphold the laws, jurisdictions, customs, prerogatives, liberties, and statutes in each realm (utriusque dominii).43
Thus despite the confident Polish claim that the Lithuanian instructions did not accord with the old agreements that they were unable to find, in fact they were very much in the spirit of Mielnik. They accepted its central elements: a common monarch, a common election, a common sejm, and a common currency. On one or two points they did go beyond the Mielnik terms—in the proposal that in certain circumstances there might be separate elections, and in the proposal for a separate coronation—and there was no mention of a common council, which had been proposed at Mielnik. Mielnik, however, had made no attempt to outline the practical implications of its stipulations. In two important respects the Lithuanian instructions went beyond Mielnik, in accepting a common foreign policy, and in the clause allowing Poles to own land in the grand duchy.
These were substantial concessions, and the instructions provided a perfectly workable model for a union aeque principaliter. The Poles, as the opening speeches of the sejm demonstrated, were considerably less generous and, in their insistence on the unitary nature of the union state, had themselves moved considerably beyond Mielnik. It is therefore doubtful if there was any great division within the Lithuanian delegation concerning the Polish terms, which showed that they were unwilling to countenance the Lithuanian vision of a union of equal partners.
Czarny defended the Lithuanian position with consummate skill. He listened to the Polish speeches with considerable equanimity and replied with even greater aplomb, demonstrating that he was far from being an opponent of union. What he was not prepared to accept was incorporation. He stressed that the Lithuanians desired closer union regardless of their difficult position, and that they had come to Warsaw to agree it.44 Throughout, he highlighted the fraternal relations between the two peoples fostered by the union. He used himself as an example of its benefits, admitting that he called himself a Pole and pointing out that he had married a Pole, was in the process of marrying his daughter to a Pole, and hoped that he might marry all his daughters to Poles—a wish that was fulfilled, albeit after his death.45 His appeal was not just to the heart. He opposed the rigid Polish concept of an accessory union that had, supposedly, already created a unitary state with the most coherent defence of the union as a relationship aeque principaliter yet mounted, and outlined a viable framework for institutionalizing it that formed the basis for the final compromise at Lublin five years later.
He fought the Poles on their own terms. At the welcoming ceremony, he reminded Sigismund August of his hereditary status—and his lack of heirs—stating that the Lithuanians had come to secure unification, and to establish an effective union. This union, however, should be a union of equals, founded on the law, and on equal liberties.46 The key issue was the nature of that union, and Czarny was careful in the terms he used: on 18 January he talked of coming to complete ‘this holy league’; he also talked of ‘this union or confederation’.47 He confronted the problem of the union’s legal basis by challenging the Polish interpretation of the treaties. As the fourteen crates of documents lumbered up from Cracow, he denied that they had effected Lithuania’s incorporation. He observed that Mielnik, on which the Poles placed such store, had never come into effect, and that the Lithuanian copy of Horodło lacked the clause with all the incorporationist synonyms that the Poles paraded before him. It was a disingenuous claim, although not strictly inaccurate, since the document to which he referred contained the oaths of loyalty sworn by the Lithuanian boyars on 2 October 1413, which indeed omitted the relevant clause that was present, however, in the other two versions of Horodło.48
He emphasized that ‘our copy’ of Horodło, while saying nothing about incorporation, emphasized brotherhood and friendship, and maintained that his Lithuanian ancestors had challenged ‘those stern words in the old documents that were so hard to accept: subici, obedire et servire’.49 The vision of union he presented was a stark contrast to the Polish view based on rigid adherence to past agreements, even when they contradicted one another. As he stressed, circumstances had changed since Horodło, and the relationship he described was an organic one, a process of development and growth which could not and should not be determined by literal adherence to outmoded agreements; at one point he compared the relationship to a marriage, and accused the Poles, with considerable justification, of introducing new terms, ‘unheard of by our ancestors’, despite their veneration for the old documents.50 The union should take account of the different nature of what he insisted were the two separate republics that formed it, and respect their separate laws, customs, and traditions, as Mielnik had done. Thus when Padniewski objected that the other copies of Horodło clearly stressed incorporation, and the relevant clause was read out, Czarny responded that the document required long consideration. It was as Padniewski stated, but not without reason the Lithuanians could not praise this privilege issued by Jagiełło, ‘since we were neither bought by Poland, nor taken by violence’. In consequence ‘our ancestors amended this confederation, which seems hard and unworthy of a Christian people’.51 Likening the relationship established by the clause to ‘the yoke of servitude’, Czarny argued that amendments to the treaties had secured the liberty ‘that you wish for us’. The Lithuanians, he assured them, would not abandon ‘our league with you’, but like their ancestors they insisted on removing from the treaties ‘those words that sting and vex us’.52
Thus Czarny restated the case made by Jonas Goštautas in the 1450s, but in a more constructive and challenging manner. Throughout he appealed to the principles on which the Polish political system was based. Stressing the Horodło adoption, he argued that the union could only be based on this fraternal model. He stressed that the Lithuanians had come here of their own free will, not because they had been ordered to by king or sejm, maintaining that there were certain clauses in the union treaties which ensured that closer union could not come into force.53
His audience was not persuaded. His arguments were met with indifference and the occasional sneer: having heard the Poles speak at length about the military aid they had sent to the Lithuanians over the years Czarny mentioned the Lithuanian contribution at Tannenberg and allowed himself a rare flash of anger when Marcin Zborowski, castellan of Cracow, muttered that they had run away.54 Despite moving far beyond Mielnik, the Poles refused to concede. Their proposals of 19 January 1564 stated bluntly that Lithuania had been definitively incorporated into Poland, ‘on which point we stand with determination and will continue to stand’. Despite their call for common sejms, elections were to be carried out by the Polish sejm and members of the Lithuanian council, to the apparent exclusion of the Lithuanian nobility. The proposal stressed at length the unitary nature of the union state. There was to be one treasury—situated, naturally, in Poland—one council, one seal, one hetman, and one marshal—which meant that there were to be no separate Lithuanian government offices, although there were to be local offices on the Polish pattern. All border disputes, of which there were many, were to be decided according to Polish law.55
The Poles did take some account of Lithuanian sensibilities by agreeing to remove phrases from the old acts that the Lithuanians found offensive, replacing them with phrases of brotherly love, but in the light of the general tenor of the Polish offer, it is hardly surprising that Czarny and the Lithuanians regarded this as cosmetic tinkering to disguise the harsh incorporationist reality: Czarny remarked that ‘you do not want to depart from the old treaties, well then, you are making us into your servants’.56 The Poles found this perplexing. Uchański remarked that ‘they say they will be subjected to us, but we see them as brothers, not servants’, wholly unable to see why the unitary Polish model upset the Lithuanians. Padniewski seemed to have no sense of irony when he called the union ‘an unbreakable chain’.57
Irony was in short supply. As Czarny pointed out, the Poles, by insisting that incorporation had already taken place, and that its nature could not be changed, were denying Lithuanian citizens the free choice that underpinned the Polish system. His explicit appeal to the principle of quod omnes tangit was ignored. Once the Lithuanians hardened their stance after the news of Chashniki, the Poles were reduced to begging the king, who had remained largely silent, to impose a settlement: Dembiński openly confessed that he believed the Lithuanians had no choice: ‘Where can they go? To the Muscovite tyrant?’58
Some Poles did understand. Stanisław Myszkowski, castellan of Sandomierz, argued that it would be a shame to allow the union to founder on the issue of offices and begged the king to intervene. On 12 February Sigismund August finally did, suggesting that the issue of separate offices was not as significant as the Poles supposed, invoking the metaphor of the body politic and pointing out that the arms of a body act separately without compromising its unity. The plea fell into the void, however. The most the Poles were prepared to concede was that if Lithuanian offices were to survive, they should be designated ‘crown offices for Lithuania’ (koronne per Lithuaniam).59
The proposal completely missed the point. As Czarny sadly observed in his closing speech, the Lithuanians had a different interpretation of the nature of the union from the Poles: ‘you defend your republic; . . . do not take it badly if we defend ours’.60 The issues between them, even before Chashniki, were not minor. As Czarny observed, it was unlikely that the process of union, which had developed over 160 years, could be brought to a conclusion at one sejm; he closed with an appeal to one of the basic principles of the Polish political system: ‘we are not here without the mandates and instructions of our brothers, against which we can decide nothing; now we must bring this matter back to our brothers, and there, at our sejm, undertake serious discussions to reach a conclusion’.61
The Poles had only themselves to blame. It is entirely possible that agreement could have been reached in Warsaw if they had paid closer attention to the actual terms of Mielnik, to which they appealed so frequently, and had allowed the Lithuanians to retain their offices and the symbols of their separate identity. By the time the two sides reconvened at Lublin five years later, the balance of forces had changed significantly, and the outcome was very different to that which might, with more flexibility from the Poles, have been achieved at Warsaw. As Czarny gently implied more than once, the Poles had failed to respect the basic principles of their own political system.
1 Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 155–6; Jasnowski, Czarny, 348.
2 Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 158–9.
3 Listy króla, no. 244, 410.
4 Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 157–8; Jasnowski, Czarny, 348–9.
5 VC, ii/i, 112–19; Halecki, Dzieje, ii/i, 162.
6 Ferenc, Rudy, 250–1; Янушкевіч, Вялікае княства, 61–2.
7 Andrej Januškevič, ‘Początek przełomu: Sejm wileński 1563 r. na tle wojny inflanckiej i reform ustrojowych w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim’, in Ciesielski and Filipczak-Kocur (eds), Rzeczpospolita, 81–8; Любавский, Сеймъ, 639–42.
8 AU, no. 87, 156; Любавский, Сеймъ, приложенія, no. 47, 131–3.
9 Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 166.
10 AU, no. 88, 158–70, no. 89, 170–6; ŹDU, ii/i, 172–8.
11 ‘Volumus enim, ut in perpetuum sit unus princeps, unus rex, unus dux, unus dominus tam regni Poloniae, quam magni ducatus Lituaniae, sub quo tanquam uno capite uterque populus sit unum corpus unaque gens . . . fuerit’: AU, no. 88, 162. There are a few minor differences in the second Latin text: ŹDU, ii/i, 172.
12 AU, no. 79, 137.
13 For example Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 167.
14 AU, no. 88, 163–4.
15 For example Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 167 and, following him, Dembkowski, Union, 85–6.
16 AU, no. 88, 165–6.
17 ‘A obawithelie tego panstwa tutecznego maią te dostoienstwa zaszadzacz i vrzędi swemi sprawowacz zlaski Jego KM iem danemi a nye panowie poliaczi Takze i okolo obroni panistw obvdwuch . . . za spolnem zezwolieniem woysk koronnego i Lithewskiego kozde znich woisko pod swoią chorągwią y sprawą wielkiego Hethmana thegosz panstwa po dawnemu bedą sprawowacz’, ‘Poszelstwo’: XVI amžiaus, 87.
18 AU, no. 88, 167.
19 ‘Ac ne quid sit reliquum utque per omnia magnus ducatus Lithuaniae regno Poloniae exaequetur, aequum et consentaneum iustitiae, quae aequalitate constat’: AU, no. 88, 169.
20 ‘Жалованная грамота Литовскому и Русскому дворянству и рыцарству православной вѣры’: AZR, iii, no. 32, 118–21.
21 AZR, iii, no. 4, 5–6; Любавский, Сеймъ, 290–2, 520; Иван Лаппо, Великое княжество Литовское во второй половине XVI столетия (Юрьев, 1911), 19; Czermak, ‘Sprawa’, 393–4; Darius Vilimas, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės žemės teismo sistemos formavimasis (1564–1588) (Vilnius, 2006), 56.
22 ‘Жалованая грамота’, 119.
23 Янушкевіч, Вялікае княства, 274–5; Januškevič, ‘Początek’ 87.
24 Januškevič, ‘Początek’, 275. Cf. Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 229–30; Chodynicki, Kościół, 87–8. Jaroslaw Pelenski, ‘The incorporation of the Ukrainian lands of old Rus' into Crown Poland (1569)’, in Anna Cienciala (ed.), American Contributions to the Seventh International Congress of Slavists, Warsaw, August 21–27, 1973, iii (The Hague, 1973), 48; Halecki, ‘Sejm’, 325.
25 Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 171; Anna Dembińska, Polityczna walka o egzekucję dóbr królewskich w latach 1559/64 (Warsaw, 1935), 106–7; PSB, xxxvii, 155. Dembkowski claims he also served in 1550 and 1553, but this is not confirmed in the sources, and it would be unusual for an envoy to be elected speaker before he had established his reputation in the chamber: Union, 83, 299, 138–9.
26 Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 171–2.
27 ŹDU, ii/i, 314, 316.
28 Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 172.
29 Jasnowski, Czarny, 352; cf. Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 183.
30 Dembkowski, Union, 102.
31 Rudy had at his disposal 6,000–10,000 men, of whom only about 1,000 were professionals; the Muscovite force numbered 17,000–20,000: Янушкевіч, Велікае Князства, 74–90; Ferenc, Rudy, 263–5.
32 Dembkowski, Union, 91, closely following Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 179–81.
33 Although Dembkowski includes this in his list of agreed points: Union, 91. Cf. Zujienė, ‘Pastangos išsaugoti Lietuvos didžiojo kunigaikščio titulą i pakėlimo ceremonialą’, in Liudas Glemža and Ramunė Šmigelskytė-Stukienė (eds), Liublino unija: Idėja ir jos tęstinumas (Vilnius, 2011), 66–7.
34 Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 180.
35 ŹDU, ii/i, 272.
36 ŹDU, ii/i, 272.
37 ŹDU, ii/i 272–3.
38 ŹDU, ii/i 291–2, 296–7. Nobody cited the Krewo act, which languished forgotten in the Cracow cathedral chapter archive: Halecki, Dzieje, ii, 174.
39 ‘aby był zawżdy nie jako foederatus aut consociatus populus, ale ze dwu Państw jedno Państwa, jeden lud, jedna Rada, jedna Respublica, pod jednym Panem i Królem Polskim’: ŹDU, ii/i, 293, 294.
40 ŹDU, ii/i, 300.
41 ŹDU, ii/i, 285.
42 ‘aby discrepantia in uno corpore ni w czem nie było’: ŹDU, ii/i, 294; ‘A jeśli jedno ciało i jedna Rada być ma, tedyć to już jedno nie może być roztargnione, ani consilia mogą być rozdwojone, ale zawżdy jedne i spólne’: ŹDU, ii/i, 358–9.
43 AU, no. 79, 137–8.
44 AU, no. 79, 301.
45 ‘A zatem zwałem się Polakiem’: AU, no. 79, 351–2. Of his daughters, Elżbieta married Mikołaj Mielecki; Zofia married Achacy Czema—a Prussian; Anna married Mikołaj Tworowski, and Krystyna, Jan Zamoyski.
46 ‘gotowi jesteśmy zjednoczenie a skuteczną uczynić Unią’: ŹDU, ii/i, 238.
47 ŹDU, ii/i, 304.
48 ŹDU, ii/i, 304–5, 361; cf. AU, no. 50, 55–9. He was probably referring to the redrafting of Horodło copied into the Lithuanian Metryka on Bona’s orders in 1541: see Ch. 28, 333–4.
49 ŹDU, ii/i, 301, 305.
50 ŹDU, ii/i 312, 337.
51 As the reworked copy of Horodło in the Metryka demonstrates.
52 ŹDU, ii/i, 307.
53 ŹDU, ii/i, 338.
54 ŹDU, ii/i, 302.
55 ŹDU, ii/i, 308–10.
56 ŹDU, ii/i, 311, 312.
57 ŹDU, ii/i, 355, 356.
58 ŹDU, ii/i, 359, 362.
59 ŹDU, ii/i, 359, 365.
60 ŹDU, ii/i, 378.
61 ŹDU, ii/i, 377, 378.