Anniversary of the signing of the Lublin Union under which the Republic of both Nations was established.
Today, in our Calendar, we will look at the road through which the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania passed, on the way to merging both countries.
Due to the increasingly probable death of King Sigismund August without a male descendant, there was a problem with the succession of the Polish and Lithuanian thrones. The confirmation by Sigismund of the Old right of nobility to free king's election threatened to break the alliance of Poland and Lithuania. If the Polish nobles on free election chose to be ruler, e.g. 1 of the Habsburgs, and the Lithuanian nobles e.g. the prince of Moscow, there would be a dispute of interests leading to the reversal of alliances and even war.
On both sides, therefore, there was a more close link between the 2 countries. Poles saw them in the form of the creation of a single state, and Lithuanians, fearing the dominance of Poland in specified a creature, only advocated the creation of a unchangeable mechanics of common government. any of the boyars even advocated returning to the hereditary monarchy phase in Lithuania, so that the large Lithuanian prince would inactive be the king of Poland in a natural way.
The legal and administrative separation of Lithuania and much poorer than Polish political culture of nobility stood in the way of unification. While in the Crown for years there have been natural and bottom-up earthly seismics, which were simply recognized and "coupled" into the state system, in Lithuania there were only large semes in crucial political matters. Possible lower-level seymites appeared there thanks to the Polish settlement and the pressures of central authorities, alternatively than from the bottom-up initiative of the public nobility.
Although a peculiar commission was established in 1551 to unify Lithuanian law in terms of bringing it closer to the Kingdom of Poland, the political culture of the knighthood could not change rapidly. In 1565, King Sigismunt issued a statute, which he introduced in Lithuania territory seymikas and renounced any of his prerogatives to the Lithuanian Sejm, bringing him closer legally to the Polish Sejm. The forceful launch of the Seymites by the authoritative request of their functioning, as any detached reform, proved to be pure fiction, a dead recipe.
In 1563 a peculiar Crown Sejm was convened in Warsaw, to which 28 delegates from Lithuania besides arrived. The Sejm addressed the issue of a fresh union between countries. On February 12, 1564, the king appointed the Polish Kingdom as the hereditary law of the dynasty Jagillons to regulation the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which would facilitate the election of the ruler of the combined state after his death. A joint committee was formed to prepare the principles of the fresh union. Her work rapidly found opposition to the Lithuanians. The Polish nobles hoped to repeat the records of the unrealised municipal union from the time of Alexander Jagiellończyk, and the Lithuanian nobles advocated loose ties of both countries, as a standard only wishing to establish a common monarch and permanent Polish aid against Moscow.
On March 13, 1564, a protocol of divergences in these matters was written; a joint election of the king was agreed, the establishment of a combined parliament, the unification of offices and territorial division, and the introduction of a common defence policy. However, the parliament in Parczew, which was to approve these provisions, was boycotted by the Lithuanian side, which was represented almost exclusively by the magnates there. The Lithuanians began to make concessions only erstwhile the war with Russia during that time showed weakness of their troops, which could not cope with the Moscals without Polish help.
On 10 January 1569, he started a fresh unification parliament in Lublin. This time, the basis of the talks was a task that only included the joint election of the ruler and defence policy. The Union's opposing Lithuanian magnates even boycotted these minimum conditions and left the city, thus gaining the majority and carrying out their intentions to the end. utilizing the boycott of Lithuanian nobles, Poles with the support of the king and the mediate of the Podlasie and Russian nobility, in the atmosphere of the coup, besides pushed through other, previously unlifted postulates. In subsequent session of the Sejm (March – June 1569) the accession to the Crown of Podlasie, Volyn, Bracławszczyzna and Kiev was passed.
The nobles of these lands received the same rights and privileges as the Polish nobles, in addition as an authoritative language, the Russian language was left there next to the Polish language. afraid about the fact-finding method of the Lublin Sejm, Lithuanian magnates returned to the meeting, but were shouted and marginalized by Union supporters. The issue of bribes received by the Lithuanian nobles in support of the decisions of the Lublin Sejm, raised in any sources, requires detailed investigation by historians.
An act of the Lublin Union signed on July 1, 1569, successfully survived until our time.On 28 June, a fresh Polish-Lithuanian union was passed. Its final content was that since then:
- both countries will have a common ruler elected by free election by general nobles,
- the place of coronation and the state capital will be Kraków and the name of the state is the Republic of Both Nations,
- a joint Sejm of the Wall is created, based in Warsaw. The parliamentary Chamber will consist of 77 Polish Members (including Podlasie and Ukrainian) and 50 Lithuanian Members; The legislature is to consist of 113 Polish and 27 Lithuanian senators,
- a common abroad and defence policy is established, although military funds, form of units, rules of service in the army and command are to be separate,
- the coin is to be unified and its value, although the reverse remains different for the Crown and Lithuania,
- Internal duties and restrictions on the acquisition of land goods by Poles in Lithuania and Lithuania in Poland will be abolished.
The delegations swore and signed the unitary papers on July 1, 1569. From that day on, we number the existence of a fresh state creation – the Republic of Both Nations.
Previous entry from our calendar is available Here.
